The Pleasanton school board will be receiving an update on its 2022-23 budget this Thursday, which includes $14.35 million in new combined funding coming in from the recently enacted state budget.

The board approved the district budget for the new school year during its June 23 meeting -- one week before Gov. Gavin Newsom signed California's $300 billion budget for next year.

According to the state budget, the base funding for the Local Control Funding Formula, the mechanism through which most of the state's public schools are funded, will increase by $9 billion.

That base funding alone will give the district about $4 million in ongoing funding, according to a district staff report.

"These additional ongoing revenues will be extremely helpful in stabilizing and improving our budget planning as the economy encounters some potential challenges," according to the staff report.

The new state budget also increased the ongoing funding for the Expanded Learning Opportunities Program, which will translate to about $2.1 million that will strictly be used on after-school programs.

Two one-time grants that were not proposed in the original school budget but will now be included are the Learning Recovery Block Grant and the Arts, Music, and Instructional Materials Discretionary Block Grant.

"These funds will allow the district to continue supporting critical learning recovery work and programs funded by one-time state and federal pandemic funds," the staff report states.

According to the staff report, all of the funds have a specific list of what the money can be used for, reporting requirements and deadlines for when the funds must be expended.

District staff will begin developing plans for how to best use these new funds and will report back to the board at a 45-day budget update or at a first interim budget report session after consulting the board's finance committee.

The school board's open-session meeting is scheduled to start at 6 p.m. Thursday (Aug. 11). Read the full agenda here.

In other business

* The board is set to review a report on the status of the integrated waste management policy and how the district is doing with its waste reduction and diversion compliance programs.

Authored by the Pleasanton Unified District Green Team, the report is an evaluation of how nine school sites in the district are complying with several State Assembly bills focused on waste reduction and diversion.

"Our green team programs are central to the district's efforts to conserve natural resources, comply with state law, teach environmental literacy and reduce spending on overhead," the district staff report reads. "The study has collected feedback from stakeholders participating in these programs with the intention of optimizing and institutionalizing them."

In the report, the green team included suggested equipment, practices and programs so that schools can achieve better waste management.

Some of these recommendations are to re-establish green teams at each school and facilitate training for students, teachers and staff as well as setting up quarterly progress report funding for waste tracking.

Included in the report are also examples of schools showcasing success with contaminator-free bins, which illustrates how students are throwing their waste away in the appropriate bins.

"Bin monitors and institutionalized, campus-wide training are essential to success," the report reads.

Some of the requests the green team will be making in the report will be more lids for compost and recycling bins at different middle and high schools as well as re-launching the food share program, which is meant to reduce food waste.

Food share programs would allow students to give away their unwanted, still sealed or unbitten food items, so other students can select these food and beverages at no cost.

"Green Team members across the district care greatly about optimizing food packaging for sustainability," the report reads. "Teams at Mohr, Valley View and Vintage Hills request utensil and condiment dispensers to prevent pre-packaged bundles from going to waste."

The green team's next steps will be meeting with administrators to prepare training needs and focusing on institutionalizing these different waste management programs.

* Mehdi Rajabzadeh, executive director of operations, will be presenting to the board an annual report and plan for the Maintenance, Operations and Transportation Department.

The report will be going over several accomplishments, ongoing projects and future plans and challenges the department will face in the future.

One of the main improvements to all the schools noted in the report is in water conservation efforts. According to the department's presentation, push faucets have been adjusted to stay on for 5 seconds, rather than 20-30 seconds.

All the sites are also now equipped with iCentral Irrigation controllers, which are more accessible and can be adjusted using an iPad.

Gym floor renovations at Foothill High School, Hart Middle School and Pleasanton Middle School were also completed with the support of the city as a joint-use partner.

The other main issue that was addressed at almost every school was tripping hazards. Apart from Amador Valley High School, which is currently being evaluated because of the significant repair work, every tripping hazard at the other schools have been removed and repaired.

Other maintenance work included in the report are: renovations to the baseball field at Foothill; addressing the sprinkler system to ensure water conservation; renovated ball walls at several sites; blacktop and parking lot resurfacing; and plumbing issues across the district, which still needs to be further addressed.

"The team, in conjunction with contractors, addressed many plumbing issues across the sites," the report reads. "We continue to have significant issues with constant underground broken pipes."

According to the report, other challenges the department faces are addressing older facilities that are in need of modernization, institutionalizing the culture of preventive maintenance and coordinating improvements with the $270 million general obligation Measure I1 bond that voters passed in 2016.