On Thursday, March 30, 2023, the Office of Public School Construction (OPSC) held a stakeholder meeting in Sacramento to review OPSC’s draft grant agreements for the School Facility Program (SFP). The OPSC is planning to receive stakeholder input, and then take the item to the State Allocation Board (SAB) on its April agenda scheduled for April 26, 2023. This is a key document that needs to completed before Proposition 51 funds become available for school districts projects. CASH’s Board of Directors goal on OPSC’s proposed front-end grant agreement is to ensure that the grant agreement and audit guide are consistent with one another so that districts understand the rules and expectations throughout the entire life of the project. Further, CASH is requesting concurrent adoption of the Administration’s trailer bill language by the date of the April SAB Board meeting. CASH believes that such coordination is necessary to allow for the establishment of clear expectations while facilitating swift implementation of Proposition 51.  Joe Dixon, Tom Duffy, and Ian Padilla attended the stakeholder meeting to represent CASH.

The substance of the meeting discussion was OPSC receiving and responding to stakeholders concerns. While the meeting included discussion of many significant policy and technical issues, the overarching concern expressed by stakeholders was to distinguish between what are clarifications to the existing process and what are changes to the existing process. In addition, stakeholders expressed concern that there has been insufficient time to provide quality input on the proposal and requested additional opportunities to provide feedback. In response, OPSC staff stated that they are open to additional written input and would look into the possibility of another stakeholder meeting, but that they wanted to ensure they had adequate time to prepare the document for presentation at the April SAB meeting.

~ CASH Staff