for a second Andrew uh any discussion or edits or amendments seeing none all in favor unanimous of those present thank you this Harrigan uh is there any correspondence have no correspondence this evening okay thank you we will move on to of course the highlight of the evening the superintendent's report I appreciate that Mr grippo in Sam stole a little bit of my thunder um with her acknowledgment of the Cabe legislative breakfast coming up in February but no worries there the um just two real quick things um in addition to what I'm going to touch upon with the school building committee but Economic Development Council I appreciate um you know Mr Martelli inviting me to participate in a meeting earlier this week uh very productive where we talked about how to um you know kind of propel our our symbiotic relationship between the Cheshire public schools and the business Community uh some really good ideas came out of that and The Great Exchange we look forward to continuing that as we evolve our school uh Business Partnership committee that had been meeting um and really needed reinfused energy our newly infused energy I guess so I think we're we're making good progress there I look forward to that group working together the other thing I wanted to share make sure everybody was aware that we had applied for a grant for a new Greenhouse in the planning committee meeting the members talked about the really decaying condition of the Cheshire High School greenhouse and we received the state Grant which is really exciting to be be able to build a greenhouse on the humiston property right next to the existing trailer we have there the storage trailer so that can be used by students across the district and including humiston School supports um Our Food Services Program and allows us to do more like local Farm to Table in a community that Prides itself on our bedding plants and our greenhouses I'm excited to be able to you know continue to move that forward for our students in this community uh go ahead no sorry actually I just got from the assessor we have 2.2 million square feet of greenhouse space in town holy smokes we'll add that to the count yeah so yeah I don't know if it'll it's not going to move any comments on that uh but anyway so uh there's there's that piece the um Next Generation School building committee continues to meet um actually I really have to commend the volunteers on that committee we are in essence meeting weekly now uh with special meetings on the odd weeks that we didn't already have planned meetings on on Thursdays tonight is a rare exception to that uh the request for qualifications have been sent out for Architects for each of the two projects um we're currently receiving questions uh clarifying questions from architectural firms about the two projects as we receive those questions on the town website that posts the rfqs um we add these addenda uh as they come as the questions come in and we answer the questions they have to be posted for everybody to see uh though that's on our RFQ page or our I think it's our titled RFP page on the on the town website um but we should be receiving those in the coming weeks we'll be evaluating those and moving to the Town Council to issue contracts for an architect which is is really exciting stuff so that's where we are right now in the process we started to evaluate requests for qualifications on an owner's representative which will be the next um phase that we issue and I think that will happen sometime next month we're targeting February 9th I think it is um so the process is moving along pretty well right now um I want to thank Sean Kimball the the town staff for their assistance and uh the town attorney Jeff D'Onofrio has been super responsive and and very helpful in our our work so thanks to everybody that's it for me thank you Adam um so with I know I mentioned last month so with regard to the RFP was there a request for qualifications with respect to sustainable construction history knowledge so the RFQ is yes we we do I think then right we've talked about um in the our we're asking for what are your qualifications as an architecture sure an inherent in there Inc and and that's actually one of the agenda that's going up is about um sustainability and you know are we adhering to just the lead silver uh requirements or is there more in there uh for that so I think when we get the qualifications of the firm and refine that down to the interviewing and request for proposals that was something that we had talked about in the rating scales okay for when we actually interview these people okay but I will certainly you know reinforce that when we get together with the group next Thursday to talk about the rating scales and my second question when are these are public meetings yeah okay and their video as well and and when are they happening Town Hall generally town hall seven o'clock um in room 207.
that was four extra classes for students who used to graduate with 21 credits luckily for us what majority over about 50 in that year when I did the Lookouts graduated with more than 25 a lot of the Getters who decide them and take more classes competitive sales for college or work whatever they wanted to go but the class of 21 we went back and worked out 303 out of the 737 that graduated had 25 or more credits that's 41 percent of students who are finding different ways and getting jobs and things like that didn't take those extra classes which kind of helped us but the problem with that is you have 110 students out of those 300 remainers 110 needed four more classes so for them to get four more classes that's 440 seats they have to take up in a class somewhere whatever elected they need to take besides the English boards and all of those things do that if you divide that and following the model each teacher can teach 130 students and you've got full seats for 440 of them you come out to 3.4 teachers just for that group of 21 credits to do that following the kids that have 22 credits 23 credits and 24 credits to fill the requirement for all of those students to hit 25 you need a 9.1 teachers just on the enrollment just on the credit Team part alone to satisfy the class of 21.
family members who completed the survey indicated where their child which area their child was enrolled from kindergarten through eighth grade there was an other category and there was a subgroup with no data how long their child had been at the school if their child received free or reduced price breakfast or lunch if their child received an individual education plan or IEP and if their child was an English language development learner these categories have very tiny print but board members if you have not already received the survey data results you will have the slide Deck with information and feel free to ask any follow-up questions at the end as well and now just again the topic overviews for families they were able to respond on their thoughts on the after school programs in our district the climate of support for academic learning their child's sense of belonging knowledge and fairness fairness of discipline the rules and Norms in the school sites and safety again if you think about the heat map and green meat being good orange or red being less favorable we are all in the green which is at least 59 to 60 percent or higher for the percentile ranking and finally for family surveyed with the regard of belonging you'll see one particular question which was highlighted at 97 favorability and that question was my child's background is valued at this school 97 of those who responded said their child did have value or seen and heard by regardless of their race or ethnicity religion or economic status on the bottom where the red arrow is pointing pointing down you'll see the breakdown of percentage points for individual ethnic groups and we found that 79 of black or African-American families reported a favorable response compared to Asian Hispanic and Filipino families so putting it into context 97 of the district families that responded to the survey said we see positive value and our child feels a sense of belonging but in Breaking that down by specific racial ethnic categories those who felt the least sense of belonging were black or African-American families so moving on to our staff survey results um the number um of survey takers were uh was the number was 466 and this was um all staff it was classified and our teachers so the the questions were if they were a classroom teacher what was the race or ethnicity how many years they have worked in any position at the school and it was also how many years they have worked at any school in their current current position as a teacher counselor administrator food service so again it was all all staff um and then the employee role and then employee gender and you you're going to see in each of these there was a subgroup with no data so they did not respond to this particular question in moving on so the topic overview um for the staff it was climate of support for academic learning knowledge and fairness of discipline rules and Norms in their you know where they work um sense of belonging or school connectedness um how the staff how did they feel about uh belonging to the school it was around safety and finally there was the area of interest for our racial Equity committee was the cultural awareness and action so if we look [Music] um this graph this bar graph shows that um compared to other districts core districts um we are showing we are all like um 40th to 59th percentile um and we do see a change of one percent since the spring of 2022 and cultural awareness and action so that was something that really caught our attention now the question around the cultural awareness and action that we are going to highlight today was how confident are you that adults at your school can have honest conversations with each other around wreaths and in this question if we kind of dig deeper we break it down further by recent ethnicity we see that the American Indian or Alaskan native they responded least favorably followed by the other or multi-ethnic group so definitely um this group they are not feeling very confident about having on this conversation with each other in their workplace around race and ethnicity and now we're drawing to a close here and for those who are unfamiliar with the work of the racial Equity committee it did begin um with a three-year plan this is our third and final year but the vision of the racial Equity committee was to have all analog students feel proud and confident about their personal identity and joy and learning due to intentional efforts to engage engage in anti-racist work including culturally responsive pedagogy and the de-centering of whiteness in our organization and transformational social emotional learning so the recommendation of our committee on next steps include scaling Equitable practices where we can learn more about cultural awareness and action since those were areas of concern with the survey data for the fall and in analyzing this data we want to begin to have conversations about race and there are School sites that have engaged in this work but we want to equip everyone to be able to speak out Against Racism and identify it so it can ultimately be dismantled in our school communities yeah and the next one that we want to focus on is explore school safety and it was interesting to see that there were some discrepancies between how the adult and the students you know their perception around school safety and and this we we believe this might be an opportunity for our youth group youth focus groups to uh deeply understand you know the concerns and experiences of our students and we try to mitigate some of those concerns the third and final recommendation is to increase family diversity and inclusion collaborating with the leaders in our school district to examine those that are underrepresented marginalized and those who are over represented on this data so that we can generate accurate representation and that everyone can feel that sense of belonging we can increase teachers cultural awareness and action because that is part of the mission that was created by the racial Equity committee and we can do that by working with equity-based organizations to deliver anti-racist and anti-bias training again that was our mission for the three years and when this school year concludes the work must continue foreign we are going to have we are ready to answer questions if you have any uh any questions that we you would like more clarification on or any any anything any feedback they want to share with us well uh thank you very much Mrs Dalton Mrs vasu for your time and your work as well as all the members of the racial Equity committee so before I take questions from members of the board I would like to open this item up to public comments so uh Louise is there any public comment on item 3.01 yes board President we have one speaker Claudia all right you have one minute please unmute yourself the moment you begin speaking your timer will begin a good evening president famine uh board members my name is Claudia cuello I'm a parent of the alma Unified School District and part of a public committee I'm here today to ask for information regarding the racial Equity committee I would like to know when at what times are the Committees meetings also if the meetings are open to the parents and the community and um whom do we get information from as well as who is part of the committee and if they are still open spaces for more parents to join I am asking here because our committee sent request for these answers and however we have not received them yet I know you guys are all coming back from vacation and are busy and uh do appreciate today's presentation very much as well so we hope to hear back from you guys thank you thank you very much Claudia President we have a few more speakers we our next speaker is dilsa Gonzalez these are gorsames you have one minute please mute yourself the timer will begin the moment you begin speaking could any members of the board president him and superintendent power my name is Lisa Gonzalez I am a parent from the Arundel school district and a proud member of I heard that um first of all thank you for the amazing presentation uh for showing um the results and our kids voice reflected and our kids boys parents and boys reflected on the presentation however I have that same questions that Claudia has on I heard that this might be the last um the last meeting somebody might is having so I would like to know when they're meeting what time and if they're open to the public and if there's a and also if there's an interest of expanding um that racial Equity comedy based on the amazing work that they have on the vision and values but also on the perspective to continue this work and not let it go um thank you and have a really good evening thank you uh Louis our next speaker is Jocelyn mercs Jocelyn merch you have one minute please unmute yourself the timer will begin the moment you begin speaking thank you and I want to thank Miss Basu and Miss Dalton for your presentation and the information that you've provided um my question is will this be available will this report uh be available on the district website for us to take a close look at I hope and maybe it's not a question but a request so thank you our next speaker is please unmute yourself the moment you begin speaking your timer will begin all right unless that doesn't happen do your business and family board members my name is Arturo Munoz organizer coordinator with some of Mayfair as a community advocate I am pleased to see the Alamo School District University School District is taking steps to further enhance the rest of equity practices within the district I'll be sharing with the community that my notes from the presentation and the amazing world being done by the district our community is very interested in the racial equity and is looking to be further involved I'm here here today to ask for details regarding the existing virtual Equity committee is there anywhere we could find is the where are in the community can find either the meeting agendas meeting time and locations and whether the community the community meetings are open to the community as well if this information is not readily available is there someone or a community leader who should contact with this information as they are leaders are excited to collaborate with President Prime that's the and fellow board members in the restaurant Equity committee to you know continue to be in this temporary racial Equity model for other foreign thank you for your time thank you for president there are no more speakers okay seeing now for the public comment I'll take uh questions and comments from members of the board at this time Christy Bay harano you have the floor thank you president fam and thank you miss tolton and miss Basu for your presentation and for entertaining my questions in the beginning um and you know I can't believe that three years has flown by since we since you started this work um and it's obvious you know we've come a long way since that very first Inception of of this work and that's because of the leadership that yourself and the committee has demonstrated so I want to thank you all for that um secondly before I get to my questions which I have several just um as a reflection of some of the public comment if you could briefly just clarify um whether or not the materials are available and the accessibility or or the the extent of accessibility for of the meetings or meeting materials for the public that may be interested as far as the meeting materials I just want to explain for those who are newer to our district the process in which the racial Equity committee members were selected there was an application process and there was a screening committee made of various District stakeholders which reviewed the applications and made determinations to include all racial ethnic groups that they would be a part of the committee as well as all stakeholders so family members parents uh teachers we have community members and higher ed we also have a district administrators that are part of the survey and in applying for the racial Equity committee slots they had to commit to a three-year time commitment and so those meetings are not open to the public however we do have something coming up in the spring that Miss vasu will tell you about that everyone in racial ethnic committee groups and allies can take part in and we also have a slide with our contact information which we could show also but miss Basu will tell you about that okay so yeah we are very excited that um our racial Equity committee moving forward this year we are going to we have plans to hold uh at least um a couple of affinity groups of Slash allies meetings and um those meetings will be open to all members of the community we want to create some safe space for all racial ethnic groups so that they can come together and they we can talk about our needs and our celebrations we are also looking into um looking into trainings for facilitating those meetings and that is going to happen and I'm going to go back to Veronica because she will give you a a better idea about how that training or who's doing that training so again for those who are unfamiliar with the Genesis of this work um I along with several other area leaders with the support of our local president Jocelyn Mertz who's the Alum Rock Educators Association president saw the need in 2020 to ask the Board of Education to adopt a black lives matter in school resolution and as a part of that adoption we specifically asked for a racial Justice task force I'm proud to say that the board of Board of Education and Dr Bauer gave their support and this committee was formed I'm serving as one of the leaders as an area member and also as a district educator and African-American so with regard to the training for the Affinity spaces as an area member I'm also a California Teachers Association member and their human rights department will be training our racial Equity committee as well as members of area who choose to participate next week and from that training we will move to adopt specific virtual spaces where anyone that is an ethnic minority or a white Ally can participate we will have a general overview and grounding in of what will take place some Norms or agreements and then we will form breakout groups by racial ethnic uh group and the leaders of the racial ethnic committee are those who choose to take on that leadership role uh we'll lead the discussion and the facilitation of different different topics that are tailor-made for that racial ethnic group so we certainly hope to have we will definitely have one we certainly would like to have two before the school year concludes and going forward as one of the um public comments speakers mentioned we don't want to see this work disappear even though the committee's three-year time span and goal setting has completed thank you for for that um I just want to make sure to provide the opportunity and the space to respond to some of that so thank you for that information I do have several questions now of my own um Oh I thought something was going on over there I do have several questions on my own um and I don't need you know anything extensive because the presentation was thorough just just a brief answer which should suffice for most most of them uh the first question that I have question or comment I know this is specifically uh racial and ethnic uh Focus Equity effort um but I'm wondering off the top in the beginning um are the gender categorizations are they defined by Panorama or do we have input into that um is the first question and I might have a follow-up so is that our uh definition or our ability to to provide the categories or just Panorama automatically do that I think you're on mute Miss Basu if you're answering so again the gender was also um there were two different ways that um the data was broken up uh one was that was um the gender at enrollment for students and then one was some questions uh it was like a self-identified gender so one slide I think Ms Dalton shared where um there was a small box which was it said male female and then did not want to respond so that was where uh students were given a choice were they open-ended self-defined responses or do we give them cat a b or c like do we provide for them the opportunity to not respond or they just open-ended on their own choose to not respond so there's it's male female or don't want to uh respond okay okay I just I think that's um just in in the spirit of inclusivity I think um particularly for our middle school students I would be interested in and also I would be interested in the results of that and that and there's some in here and also um you know I think it is important again particularly for me for the middle school students to just give that option in case you know we do have the you know students who would like to choose that so thank you for that response the second one I'm trying to go fast here um the this is kind of my main thought or question with the overall presentation which is great but I'm wondering and it's always a challenge you know with data and numbers when when the total and or the total population is one thing and then you have subgroups that have varying um overall numbers so obviously in in our district um the broadly the Latino definition or categorization and the Asian categorization are like in the range of 80 and 20 of the total population so when we look at some of those the heat maps for the most part I think I don't want to lose my place but I think those numbers seem to be um less less big numbers like plus seven or minus eight which uh miss talking you did identify those are reflective of the percentage of that population if I'm correct so when there's a large number obviously then any um movement is less reflected because it's just a bigger population whereas if there's a population of just you know hypothetical group X then and there's ten total people if three people answer something then that's that thirty percent you know plus or minus uh difference and so you know absolutely in these cases you don't want to minimize the validity of those in those smaller number populations who respond in a positive or negative because that's you know however many are in that group that's what they feel individually so I just I wonder if in the I mean this is the third year and if we continue to move forward if the report backs um maybe you I I guess it would be just providing raw numbers and also a table maybe with the raw numbers so that the board can understand not only see the percentage because that is significant but also the raw numbers just to get some more context of that variance that may occur with smaller populations um so that's I mean if if you have a response that's fine but I just can't share that yes so I will say that we had nearly 60 slides of data in which to share that which we had to be condensed to a 20 25 minute presentation so as deep as the board members want to go the data is there um and you're absolutely correct that the large percentage of the Alum Rock District consists of latinx Latino Latina students and the second highest would be the Asian however one of the things we implemented this is not necessarily uh a panorama thing we request it missed by suing myself along with the support of our social emotional learning um liaison's Dr almazan and Dr artigas that we provide student voice with open-ended questions and we are allowing students regardless of their racial ethnic group be it large or small the opportunity to share specifically how they feel in a box they can type as much or as little as they want and so what the data platform does on panoramas takes the words that are used most often and it even has word clouds so the words that are used 600 times versus only 20 times it would be based on the frequency and it shows larger words as those that were used most often so we do have extensive data and has racial Equity committee leaders we have access to that along with Sandra Garcia who leads with the lcap and so the data is there we have additional information that can be obtained in PDF reports or via access to the Panorama platform but we must not forget about those who are the most marginalized and hear from all the groups how they're feeling because again the racial Equity committee focuses on sense of belonging and culture and climate thank you for that I think that's excellent that we're providing an opportunity for some qualitative responses because because of these number issues and stuff it's quantitative is often doesn't give you the picture that you really need to see so that's great thank you for that my next question um hopefully I think it's a quick one on page 12 at least on the one that I have here um or I think it's on multiple Pages after that when there's the designation of a favorable response um so gave a favorable response I forgot how it was worded but is that um let's see was that okay so was that yes or no so it was determined by someone saying yes that's favorable no not favorable or was it a scale and then we took like you know threes fours and fives as favorable and one's twos is unfavorable is that clear the question hopefully still um your question is like um how do we how do we determine what is favorable was it yes or no and yeses were favorable or a scale and we took the upper end and considered those to be favorable foreign surveys it's a scale I don't know specifically about the student one um but their scales and so you just click the circle so they're like yeah most favorable these favorable and there's a range okay you can make almost like a likert yes thank you and a couple more I'm trying to be mindful of time for the family survey where those um respondents were the individuals I'm assuming or was it one per family so um for the family survey that is a good question uh Mr Aaron I probably wanted to go back and look into it uh but as far as I know we encouraged one uh family member but um there was no restriction as like uh it could be anyone in the family a father a mother could take the survey okay okay it's an excellent response rate um in all the categories so that's to you to be congratulated for that as well the last points that I will make on this um thank you for answering those questions but is one thing that I think um are you already alluded to it but the opportunity for deeper conversations with staff I think I mean of course there's there's exceptions here but I think at the student level a lot of this is a it's a personal awareness um it's a certain I mean it's a certain level but I think when we talk about the adults whether it be parents or staff I think just the complexities of racial interactions and and the reality of race in in our society in our district is is much deeper and it looks like um there's an opportunity for that so I'm glad to hear Miss Dalton and Miss Boston you share these upcoming uh platforms or opportunities where our staff particularly you know because they're interacting on a day-to-day basis not only with our students but with each other and it's those it's alluded to in the report those difficult conversations tough conversations about race I think that's where we're gonna need to really you know dig in and have those conversations and so it's encouraging to hear that we're opening that up because I think that when we can have those deep uncomfortable conversations sometimes with our staff I think it can trickle down um to students as well and the last thing you already answered um I was going to ask your thoughts about continuing the Community Committee beyond the three years but I think I hear pretty loudly that you think that it is a good idea to continue this work um beyond the three years I would agree um but I guess we'll get to that when we get to it but I think I've heard live and clear that you believe this to be work that is not only important enough but it's it's a it's an ongoing project it's not going to end at a three-year end date so um I'll be supportive of that if that time comes so thank you apologize for the time that it took but I wanted to make sure that I understood this important work thank you thank you and we're open to discussing ways in which to continue it because there should be a discussion about how to transition into that thank you we'll address any other questions and we do have a slide with our contact information for any parents or Community I just want to just mention Veronica one more time that we just um you know our our presentation was through the equity lens so the racial Equity lens but um the rest of the data is also going to be presented by um Miss Sandra Garcia and the SEO leader from the district so you will get more of this from our other leaders at the district and then going back to our slides um so let me go back to the slide and make sure that um I am also again showing our contact information just in case anyone would like to get in touch with us and you know ask more questions and more president will will address any questions at the other trustees anymore has her hand up all right hello uh Miss Talton and Miss Basu thank you so much for your hard work you know I remember um three years ago when we introduced the also black lives matter resolution here um and you know it's great to see the work not just in our district but also out in the community so thank you for being involved and uh it's great to hear that as a Santa Clara County Office of Education that they will be also um including you Ms Talton in this important work um so I just like trustee you know I also um look forward to seeing this work continue maybe not necessarily as we have been but transitioning so and you know I um absolutely uh support and know that you are all you know meeting and looking at what's going to be the next best being for Alum Rock um and so I look forward to hearing those recommendations when they come um it just as trustee Hernando mentioned it went so fast um but and I know you've all been busy and just to hear just knowing about Gathering data you know and and putting it in a presentation because it's also important I can't imagine what work it took to like say we'll put this in this is the most important because I'm sure all of it is so thank you for doing that um and you know I I hear a lot of our community members also excited um and you know it's great to hear their voice um and to hear their passion and wanting to be a part of this work so um I look forward to seeing how we can also incorporate those community members that want to be a part of this because we are just scratching the surface right um you know the realities of our community members whether staffs students or parents is a reality whether it's one or uh you know a thousand um as we've discussed and so we also know that um just you know as Generations we've gone through so much and we're barely like starting to have um these conversations and kind of looking into things that we haven't looked at before right it's like I'm I I can give so many analogies but um it's something that whatever you know whether it's we've been scared to or we just haven't opened that you know closet that we've kept closed for so long for whatever reason so thank you for doing that work it's healing work and healing work as we know is hard work one of the hardest works that's um that's why some some of us just continue doing what we do sometimes because you know it's hard to do something different um so thank you for that and yeah I just look forward to um hearing about the next steps uh both and the county you know I I if it were my heart to hear that Miss telton will be a part of that work uh which she very much should be um you know as a lot an expert in this and I'm doing a lot of work and then also how that will you know work um how the work will continue in Alum Rock um in a different way maybe not as a committee maybe in each school maybe whatever that looks like like so thank you for leading this and I look forward to the continuous work that we'll do together okay any fur questions or comments yes I see Clark Montero has his hand up uh yeah just I wanted to uh acknowledge the work of the committee I know that this was um an excellent presentation with a lot of very very important information that you know I read them as guideposts in the path that we have to take for the steps that we have to take towards addressing towards the ongoing process of addressing the issues that have been identified so thank you for that um I also appreciate uh Ms Dalton reminding us of the of the very open and transparent process that was taken to create this committee I know that it was a while ago and so therefore you know memories tend to kind of fade but it's good to remind everybody who of the very a very good process that took place in order to bring about the committee that had that had all the right you know I had all the stakeholders um that needed to be at the table to bring forward this this product and so thank you for that much appreciated and more uh okay so I will wrap up with my comments thank you so much uh principal Basu and miss tolton and members at the racial faculty committee uh you know this was a very enlightening presentation you know I like to think that this gives us a baseline it gives us an uh how do you say for a lack of a better term kind of like a uh snapshot of of the situation as it is and you know uh you know in the reality of Urban public schooling in general we you know there are you know aspects that are very promising in our district but also uh things that we need to work on and this shines the light on as you know aspects of the educational experience that we need to work you know uh improve for our kids our staff and our parents and uh what is it uh you know we don't succeed unless you know uh every every part of us succeeds so this gives us a you know uh uh a goal to aim for you know and our and and the hope is that we can continue to make progress to that goal and you know and you know it in in light of the realization that um progress is not always straightforward we're working with a young children we're working with uh families in uh sometimes difficult situations that are beyond their control but uh nevertheless we do what we do to uh you know mitigate those aspects or we're able to and to provide the best possible education for our children so thank you very much and want to congratulate Miss Talton on uh you know her uh uh you know taking this work to the next level the County Office of Education so uh you know I have all the confidence in you that you'll you know you will do very very well by our County with that so again thank you so much for the presentation uh principal bassoon Miss Talton and oh I forgot I wanted to make one announcement uh yes uh this will be posting the presentation online for all uh interested members of the public all righty so with that um alrighty thank you so much and we move on to the next item on our agenda item 3.02 the California dashboard and systems of support identified schools for support again this item is information only so superintendent Bauer would you please introduce the item yes thank you so much this is our annual uh middle of the year um update to the board about our dashboard and I'm going to ask a city superintendent of academic Services Barbara Campbell to bring this item to the board good afternoon um Dr Bickford will also be joining me and sharing her screen my event and if I may more president just to give a huge shout out to Dr bigford because she just completed her degree in the fall which was okay and I haven't had a chance you know since since she got it so congratulations to Dr big for for accomplishment of her doctorate okay okay thank you thank you all right Dr uh Dr Bickford are you with us I am excellent okay good evening board president Pham board members superintendent Dr Bauer cabinet staff and Community Dr Bickford and I will be presenting information about the California dashboard with the album results the California dash part is part of the state accountability system report performance and progress in 11 different areas the pandemic as you know interrupted the state data collection and accountability the last dashboard to be published was the 2019 and that reflected data from 1718 and 1819 school years this year's dashboard is a restart of the accountability system due to recovering from the pandemic we want to acknowledge that the dashboard is just one data point I think we skipped one there we go sorry if we want to acknowledge that the dashboard is just one data point or one data set to measure our students performance and progress we have local Improvement efforts underway across the district and continuously Monitor and analyze with our site leaders and our district leaders some of those local Improvement efforts are our fast Bridge mid-year beginning of the year mid-year at end of the year our leveled screener which is our for lower elementary our esgi data which is for our um for our tkk and students the 22- the 22 dashboard gives results for the 21-22 school year which demonstrates difficulties evidenced throughout the system in terms of attendance achievement and engagement we'll Begin by sharing the state indicators this the um the state and these the indicators that we'll be covering are the academic indicators which are the language arts and then mathematics chronic absenteeism rate our English learner progress which is considered what they call LP and the suspension rate so we'll Begin by sharing we're going to today talk about the state measures but I just wanted to remind and bring to your attention that the local indicators displayed on the right are ones that we shared with you at the May board meeting when the elk was approved and that's how the process works in relation to reporting our data so prior to the pandemic the leas schools and student groups received performance colors on the dashboard as you can see on the the top bar it the colors were blue green yellow orange and red where blue indicated the highest performance and red indicated the lower lowest performance the performance colors determined based on combination of status which was the current year performance and change which was the current year performance compared to previous year but since the 2022 is a restart for schools and LEDs accountability only current year performance or status will be recorded or was reported on the 2022 dashboard that was released late December no performance colors were assigned for this 22 2022 dashboard in 2023 performance colors will return since we will have progress data instead of performance colors we have new cell phone bar Graphics will represent the five status levels we have very low low medium high and very high more shaded shaded bars indicated stronger performance and fewer bars indicated the attention needed are areas of attention needed go back one please this just gives you an idea that moving forward 2022 dashboard is status only but next year and the following year we will start reporting back colors and progress so when first logging onto the dashboard you will see an overview of all of our state indicators state and local indicators I'm sorry to interrupt um but just a quick question when you say status and performance that will be coming up the status basically like establishing a baseline yes absolutely so this whole year dashboard is meant to be used as a baseline there's actually an assembly bill that was passed to not compare the results to Prior dashboards because we know the impact that the pandemic has played so the state's accountability on the dashboard is meant to be used as a baseline to move forward and so as we'll see next year we will be seeing those colors return with the comparison from year to year and that growth thank you sorry for that no problem all right so each state indicator has a tile that includes the status bar which we discussed earlier the performance band which is tied to the status and the equity report which breaks down how subgroups performed on those specific indicators it also shows the total number of students reportable for this indicator the status is determined by taking each student's score and calculating the distance from meeting standard in those academic indicators all of those distances are then added together an average to find the lease average distance from standard the Lea's distance from standard score is then applied to a one by five cut score grid to find the status level each grid varies per each indicator on the next few slides we will share Alum Rock's status tile compared to the Statewide status tile and additional supports that we have put in place on this slide it shows how the district placed low in the English language arts academic indicator this year some initiatives that we have put in place to support this indicator are after school interventions intervention specialists foundational skill programs for lower elementary and newcomer students amongst others in mathematics in the mathematic academic indicator the district plays low this this year some initiatives that we have in place are we purchased and implemented updated math Core curriculum we provided an extensive professional development program which is grade level specific and standards focused and we also have new new teacher supports along with several other things here this next slide shows the English learner progress indicator commonly called LP this indicator does show progress from 2021 to the 2122 lpac scores the district Place medium on the English learner progress indicator however I want to highlight that our district saw more growth in the lp than other districts in Santa Clara County this helps emphasize the strong commitment to supporting our English language Learners here in Alum Rock as we continue to support the progress of our English Learners we have continued the constructing meaning workshops that support integrated ELD in all levels and provided all Sites with we'll get training all students the opportunity to take ELD programs and we also have summer ELD programs along with an array of other items foreign next for chronic absenteeisms indicator the district placed medium this year some initiatives that we have in place are working with sites to emphasize a safe and welcoming School climate that encourages students to be in school site incentives around school good attendance and continuing our community supports with our community Liaisons finally this slide indicates that the district placed in medium on the suspension rate indicator this year some initiatives that we have in place are sites facilitating culturally responsive activities conscious classroom management professional development mentorship programs and counseling across the district and school-wide behavior expectation assemblies and programs to summarize the variety of continuous Improvement efforts we have in place I wanted to highlight that we have teachers on special assignment intervention Specialists working directly with our students we've worked to align professional development we have professional learning communities focused on improving instructional practices and our site leaders are continuing to engage in data analysis and cycle planning for student Improvement some of the ongoing work with our site leaders has been a collaborative effort to name these five elements of classrooms that they should have for students to thrive this has been a work in progress since last year and will continue for the remaining of this year and next year the first half of the year we have focused on a safe and welcoming environment elements the second half of the Year we're building out a common culture of instruction with our teams we will continue this work next year focusing on our inclusive practices student-centered engagement and fun and engaging activities for our students we really want to make sure all students are thriving in our classrooms So based on the results of the California dashboard California will determine districts and schools eligible for additional support one level of support is called differentiated assistance it is predicted or was predicted that more schools in California would be eligible for differentiated assistance based on the 2022 dashboard every year the state selects districts to receive that support and based on a combination of subgroup status so we have been selected in Alum Rock to focus on our homeless youth subgroup in the area of academics and chronic absenteeism and our African American students in academics and suspension rate I wanted to share our Equity report just to us to share a little um information around the size of the reportable population for these subgroups as you can see in on the on this slide is that for the academic indicators the reportable students are only for third through eighth grade because those are only the only students that take the Casp or the smarter balance assessment while the other indicators bring in the kindergarten through eighth grade these population sizes differ for each indicator for our subgroups to be reportable on the dashboard it must have a reportable population of over 30.
okay so we have 10.7 II 10.8 10.30 10.16 and 10.19 promotion for the balance second second any other any discussion seeing that all in favor say aye aye opposed let's take 10.7 I and 10.8 so move second you have a motion in a second all in favor say aye aye opposed abstain once uh four zero one uh 10.30 10.16 10.30 is up I'm calling okay second motion second do we need a motion in a second I'll move second okay and minus Barrel you have any uh no I just like okay all right so all in favor say aye aye opposed abstain four zero one ten thirty ten thirty yeah yeah that's one wrong 10 30. yeah that's what we just did didn't you have a question no no 401 abstaining okay 10.16 and 919 together okay second okay okay uh I apologize I didn't ask in advance but I was just wondering how um uh the funds are being utilized to make sure um that the students are retained how is this going to work ten point was six yes from my understanding in working with Scott Rendell it's typically in Amanda have you you worked at the hcop as well Scott did you want to come up and talk a little bit about thank you Scott we've had the blessing of working with them for quite some time now good evening good evening um so yeah the hcap um program so um these these Grant funds are to help provide an after-school program for students so we're going to be providing a program after school for 30 students will be officially enrolled that will be tracked through the grant they welcome additional students as guests so if additional students want to participate they can and what we're doing is really Innovative with North Orange County ROP to align with the Community Schools efforts so this Grant's focused on getting students in the public health careers Allied Health fields and so they're going to partner these students with the Community Health Schools tasks for task forces which have students on them to start to learn what the community needs in terms of Public Health and then bring the resources that they're learning in their coursework as well as the after school program to bear on those Community needs so not even not only teaching them but showing them to be more of service yeah in the community yeah and it'll essentially be a work-based learning experience for the students that goes along with the their patient care Pathways and public and Community Health Care Pathways so how are they reaching out to their students on this program to select the 30 to select the students so they're being selected out of our career pathway programs at Western Savannah and Magnolia High Schools okay those are the identified schools under the grant okay so they'll be recruited right out of those career pathway programs Okay so wonderful yeah absolutely yeah we're excited thank you thank you and what about 1 10.1 million okay you want to vote separately because we called 16 and 19 at the same time yeah because they're different okay but they're all open at the same time all right oh okay I didn't know that we had we had uh SEC first and second in the 19th okay I just uh wanted just a really quick um just the description I felt it was a little bit vague so I just wasn't sure yeah so this is coming from Dr Cruz and essentially it's it's empowering students to be trained with the support of an advisor on items related to mental health so it's pure LED mental health clubs essentially um yeah essentially that's what it is but it's not it's going as an item because it's connected to the advisor stipend that they're receiving to support that work okay fantastic all right thank you very much any other questions okay see none all in favor say aye aye opposed five zero good Brian you're welcome okay moving on past that we are now on item 11.
let me do that okay all right so Mr uh assistant superintendent gengaro will um award our pbsis recipients at Clifton High School so we'll find out in a second before I begin I just wanted to reiterate and concur with President Smith just said my position is assistant superintendent I have attended several meetings over the course of many many years and it goes without saying that for me the best part of every meeting is that the opportunity we have to highlight the successes of our students and and our staff it's just that overwhelming sense of happiness and accomplishment is shared amongst communities so president Smith you couldn't have said it any better so that's why when I got the call from the bullpen this evening to present on PB the sis I gladly welcome the opportunity just to contribute to the the joyous occasion of celebrating these successes so on behalf of our PBS pbsis team Mrs Paula Ray goza a coordinator and her team of Tracy marigi and Stephanie de sanjis we would first like to take a moment to welcome and congratulate our new Commissioners and again thank everybody for the opportunity to showcase positive behavior supports in schools this framework that has been thriving in the Clifton Board of Education in the continuing effort to promote pro-social behaviors and provide students with access to an equitable learning experience we recognize the importance of positive relationship building between social between School staff and our students this month we highlight Clifton High School and their pbsis team on the development and implementation of what's referred to as Mustang Aces it's a recognition that's awarded to students each marking period the criteria for the honor to be a Mustang Ace includes academic performance the display of pro-social behaviors and everyday contributions to the classroom environment this acknowledgment began over eight years ago under the leadership of Mrs Susan schneff the East Wing vice principal and the success and impact of the Mustang Aces has now evolved to Encompass grades 9 through 12 providing increased opportunities for all Learners to be recognized for their Excellence the Mustang Aces is yet another reason why it's a great day to be a Mustang so let's take a look at this in action as we play the Mustang Aces video [Music] sorry Hi ever everyone I'm Effie Kelso and I'm one of the pbsis coaches for Clemson high school we are honored to highlight a Potter of our pbsis student recognition system that we are extremely proud of our Mustang Aces program so many of our students demonstrate exceptional examples of what it means to be a Mustang to recognize their contributions to our school Community they have the opportunity to be selected as a Mustang Ace each marking period teachers from two departments select one student who has gone above and beyond in their class the teachers fill out a form that includes a message to the student that message is included on the certificate that the student receives at the celebratory event at this time I'd like to introduce you to our principal Mr hamda we're extremely proud of the students who were selected as Mustang Aces for the first marking period and were blown away by the comments that the teachers wrote about the students when making their nominations here's a quick look at some of the kind words that their teachers had to say about their students and some footage from the ice cream party where the first marking period Mustang Aces received their certificates we look forward to getting to do this three more times this year we know it but these days really prove that it's a great day to be a Mustang thank you [Music] here's a segment highlighting just some of the teachers who nominated student Aces for the first marking period ariadne I just want to congratulate you on being chosen as a Mustang ace For The First Market period you are a hard-working student you are kind you are helpful you really um embody what it means to be a Mustang congratulations I am so proud of you congratulations kasmira on your marking period one Mustang Ace nomination you are a hard worker you are dedicated you come to school in class each day ready to work you're prepared I am very proud of you and keep up the hard work Clifton I'm Mr wise metal my nomination is Mary necrosis she has been absolutely killing it in class and I am so proud of all the work that has been going on aside from that Mary also has the best name in the world so yeah hello everybody so I nominated albera for the Mustang Aces he is a true leader in our class he is the first to discuss anytime and we have a question he's the first to share his thoughts and he does so in a very respectful way he's a great model for his peers and congratulations Alberta hi this is Miss Anderson and I am here to talk about my Mustang Ace who is Maria Maria is a stellar student in my studio art one class she puts her Blood Sweat and Tears into every single artwork she creates every week and cares about every assignment as if it is a major project and she's the most conscientious student always asks questions in class and make sure she's doing what she needs to do so congratulations Maria I nominated Gianna Kennedy because she has all the skills that are necessary to be a Mustang Ace she's hard working she's dedicated to being an excellent scholar she is a critical thinker she is someone does not that does not settle for less I'll give you a good example we just did essays in our social studies class in my social studies class and Gianna came up to me every single day asking how her essay could be better she took her time and energy to make that essay be the best essay that she could be I get emails frequently from her asking about how she can improve not only her grade but herself she really is a Mustang Ace and very deserving of this honor [Music] [Applause] you know I was very honored I I felt like I didn't deserve it but uh I'm enjoying this ice cream uh you see I was really proud I think my mom my dad for this great honor I guess finding out that I was a Mustang Ace was pretty exciting because I've never gotten an academic achievement or anything like that um so it was definitely really surprising when I did get it and I wasn't expecting it but it's cool I love ice cream I recently found out because I've been out sick but it was a great surprise to come back to and it just made my entire week made me feel so much better I was really surprised at first but it feels good to be recognized and plus we get ice cream it's kind of exciting you know I was nominated for this I really like Mr Rogers and I'm kind of happy that he dominated to come and have fun and enjoy the timing when I found out I was a Mustang is I was very shocked and happy so I heard that there was going to be free ice cream and that's what sold me [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] so I think the best part about that for me was just watching the ear to ear smile that our students had as they were recognized with our hard-working efforts and it's just demonstrating that Pride that makes Mustang students just that our Mustang students so as our students were recognized for their all their hard work and efforts we as a pbsas team would be remiss if we didn't take this opportunity to publicly recognize our administrators and pbsis team members who made this a possibility for our students so first and foremost the captain of our ship our principal Mr Ahmad hamda and president Smith and vice president Danny if it would be so kind to join us that would be wonderful one of our vice principals Mr Timothy Waka [Applause] our pbsis high school coach Miss Effie kelsell [Applause] pbsas team member Miss Wendy angomas foreign pbsis member Kathy matriba [Applause] pbsas team member Mr Matthew Stewart [Applause] the man the myth The Legend and the huge shout out to this next individual and his entire cast team for his hard work and efforts in making all these videos videos a possibility huge shout out again to Mr Michael McKenney [Applause] I hope you've heard the love from your students in the back and then last and certainly not least who I'm going to consider the absolute backbone of the the pbsis team for over eight years a friend a mentor a colleague and everything in between again that backbone Mrs vice principal Mrs Susan schneff [Applause] thank you if you guys wouldn't mind getting together with a picture for the commissioners [Music] three two one and one more beautiful thank you congratulations thank you very much you know that whole that whole PBS is program is so so wonderful but honoring our our staff uh and especially our high school staff that's walking out when I'm talking but okay um we we we thank you guys for uh for all that you're doing uh the board would like ice cream next time you come so okay uh let's move on um we have some presentations tonight but um if the board does not mind um I would like to hope p25 all right so we have uh some appointments of um some staff members and I know one of our staff members is here tonight so if the board doesn't mind if we could just skip to um p25 so I'll pull p25 separate and then we'll move the group after so can I have a motion motion p25 by Miss basford second by Mr avatravo so um p25 um resolve the superintendent schools recommends uh Lynn fund a 10-month secretary signed to the high school her change in status to a 12-month secretary assigned to the high school then we have I'm going to skip the last one uh superintendent schools recommends John Salazar Fernandez custodian assigned to Clifton High School 3 P.M to 12 a.m if you change the status to custodian assigned to the high school 11 A.M to 8 P.M wow great good hours now huh um next is when the schools recommends uh Danielle liebe computer education teacher assigned to Christopher Columbus Middle School to be changed in status to technology trainer facilitator grade six through eight assigned to Christopher Columbus Middle School resolved that the superintendent of schools recommends Edward lavash LTS special education teacher assigned to Clifton High School be changed in status to TTR special education teacher assigned to the high school and B resolved that the superintendent of schools recommends Sean Smith maintenance General grounds um jack of all trades uh person assigned to the district to be changing status to the supervisor of custodians assigned to the district he replaces Ryan Mooney who resigned so we congratulate all of those uh yeah we'll do uh congratulate all those that are in this resolution and if I could have a roll call on it please Mr abidrabo yes Miss bass yes Mr Brunswick yes Mr Mejia yes Mr Paris yes Mr Santiago yes vice president Danny yes president yes and uh congratulations to everybody and I know our new supervisor custodians is here uh Mr Sean Smith if you'd like to come up and say a few words and we congratulate you thank you [Applause] I gotta have my gun there we go I apologize restart hit the reset button thank you everybody uh 19 years here I'm excited for this opportunity um just can't wait to get started I would like to just thank you know president Smith the board members Mr shahada Mr gengaro Mr UC Mr kozeski and Dr robertozzi thank you for this opportunity I'm so excited to get working uh I just appreciate from the bottom of my heart thank you for giving me this opportunity and I look forward to getting to work I look forward to your continued support in the future thank you I bring it on sure and bring the girls up and uh get a picture and uh Eddie Eddie and these I would like to thank my family too for supporting me I left them out that's get in trouble when I go home [Applause] thank you so much thank you um again I'm speaking on my my own but um a dedicated employee for 19 years and uh and um moves up to better himself and better our district so uh congratulations we we have I think um one of uh the best supervisors of Maintenance and custodians and um we have a tremendous team doing great things for our district so um Eddie Moe and now Sean thank you for all that you do for our district okay right now it's Gina right oh you know what we must can we do the rest of P why we're here um so we'll have uh P1 through P38 minus p 25 motion most by Mr Roberto seconded by who was that Paris Mr Paris uh discussion seeing non-roll call please Mr abadrabo yes Miss basford yes I abstain on P35 name only Mr Brunswick I want to abstain abstain from P 35 only your name only and the recipe yes correct correct okay Mr Mejia yes Mr Paris yes Mr Santiago yes but I abstain on P39 vice president Danny yes president Smith yes motion scary um just okay um I'm skipping around here sorry guys why don't we do uh education Administration ea1 through ea9 Minister Roberto's second my Miss basford discussion seeing none roll call please sorry Mike I'm sorry I'm skipping around a little bit yes and oh miss basford yes all right Mr abdrabo yes Miss basford yes Mr Brunswick yes Mr Mejia yes Mr Paris yes to stand on three [Music] Mr President I'm sorry I apologize I want to abstain I apologize no problem Mr Santiago yes vice president Danny yes president Smith yes uh you know it's it's hard enough for the new board members to get accustomed to our agenda and everything and I'm making it harder on them by skipping around so I apologize guys um I I just didn't want our employees sitting around all night that's the only reason I moved them around a little bit um okay so uh let's go to um adoption motion by Mr Robert second by Miss basford discussion seeing none roll call please Mr abadrabo yes Miss basford yes Mr Brunswick stain Mr Mejia yes Mr s you weren't here and you weren't here abstain Mr Mr Paris yes Mr Santiago abstain vice president Danny yes president Smith yes the minutes Carrie uh adoption of the minutes of January 5th motion Mr Roberto second second by Mr Paris discussion seeing none roll call please Mr abujrabo yes Miss basford yes Mr Brunswick yes yes Mr Paris yes Mr Santiago yes vice president Danny yes president Smith yes um our superintendent uh um graciously does not have his report uh tonight but he'll just uh say hi to everybody and wave foreign I too uh do not have any announcements so we'll move on to um first reading of policy I don't think there is anything right now um so next we'll move on to uh Miss uh kusilevic and um oh Mr doctor I didn't even see you here um for your presentation right yeah I'm sorry now we'll do it next sorry to kill Danny with all these presentations and one night but we have Mr doctor so no no we'll go back to that yes you ready all right good evening president Smith vice president Danny Commissioners Dr oberton District administrators my name is Mike doctor I'm director of operations and I'm here to unfortunately talk about bullying violence vandalism and substance abuse the exact opposite of everything that we've talked about over the last two hours um however I have to give this presentation twice a year and part of it deals with hibs which is harassment intimidation and bullying the trainings and programs are associated with that that we have to report that go from September through the end of December we'll do another report at the end of the school year and we also have to talk about actual hip cases and vvsas violence vandalism and substance abuse cases we as a district need to report this throughout the school year culminating in one report that goes as I said from September through December and then January through June with that I'm going to be presenting the violence evangelism numbers for us last year we had 58 violent acts between September and December seven vandalism 12 weapons and 42 substance abuse cases this year we had a slight increase in violent uh situations most of those were because of situation two or three situations that happen with multiple people you can notice that our vandalism and weapons cases went down as did our substance abuse cases very significantly from 42 down to 19.
thank you thank you are there any questions for the superintendent okay uh hearing none we're going to go to 1.05 information item assistant superintendent of curriculum instruction report assistant superintendent Martin thank you president Nigro governing board thank you assistant superintendent Cooper and superintendent reichman we've been busy in the education sector we have worked with our interpreter and went to a Statewide model our educational and public interpreters are now under the leadership of Dr Scarborough this will hopefully allow us to reduce attrition provide more consistent focused PD for all interpreters across the board and most importantly this was an issue brought to my attention by one educational interpreter that would allow educational interpreters to earn additional pay with certifications so Dr Scarborough was actually getting that underway there are some challenges and bumps but she is um dead on target we have also in the itinerant area um led by Jason Lilly Stephanie Johnson and Rosie Hicks and dhh Leeds we've been trying to rethink how to use teachers Statewide we this was echoed by all three regional directors to get away from looking at the itinerant space as borders our border quoted by Stephanie Johnson is just the State of Arizona so we have come around the table the dhh leaves did an incredible job of how to look at geographically where our teachers are located and provide service to schools in that fashion that serves one purpose um makes us a little bit more efficient and it reduces travel for itinerant teachers which is a very huge factor and sometimes them leaving that work has progressed we are in phase one of that and we will be moving forward the feedback that we've received so far from teachers with the new schedule they're actually loving it for our schools and sites bar we I have been working with bar we have everything set up with the bar model we are now the the contract is with the procurement office and so we're waiting for that they will need a three-week lead time for implementation so as soon as we have the contract back we will um Implement right away um that model is a very Progressive model that helps teachers deal with students more respectfully and students to deal with teachers more respectfully so this is a model that we will use in both schools the high school and middle school will probably keep PBIS in the elementary but that will be the principal's choice um we have hired um glad to say we have hired a sped director we've recruited uh pretty talented eager sped director this is huge because this is the first time we've ever had a full-time sped director and we're at school with 100 spread rate we have a lot of internal candidates and I want to say thank you you guys made it extremely tough we have also I believe identified as of today a bed teacher to write IEPs for the PD pdsd campus so as we on board the sped director which will be July 1 she's currently under contract now we will start re-envisioning and creating this this sped department for asdb her and I have had some conversations that will probably touch base little by little between now and July 1 just to kind of get the ground running we are still moving with portrait of a graduate that work is led by Mike Olivier he is now working on focus groups and setting up the committee there is also bumps in the road some things that he had to recalibrate but I am confident as to where he is I have offered um myself as well as other staff members and resources but he is plugging away on it EOP with Dr Benedict she she is um she's on it we will start meeting about restructuring which I I had to chuckle because I'm most excited about this work because they're they're little kids and they just get me every time but we'll start restructuring ELP um with her and her team and she has some phenomenal creative ideas and how to do it so we'll start that works he's also plugging some of the holes in ELP that is needed before we actually can start that work this is probably the case with our sites as well the high schools there are positions that we have to fill that present prevents us from moving forward with some of the work but we we are making progress odd um guys odd has been involved with a lot of tasks across the board one is working with the regional directors team building working with the schools and training they've taken on the LMS implementation and odd is what I usually call and say hey Lauren I need you he's there um goals that I have coming up and this is not an exhaustive list I only have so much time but we still have to get out for our sites both campuses prior the principals and I had planned this dream team meeting but we have to go to our schools I've also opened that up for itinerant directors as well we still have to learn about what's being done and do it right and then that Focus that I kind of let people know that it is we do this for the students and it's all about kids that's all I have for you questions thank you are there any questions it's me uh this is where remember Brittany I'm a superintendent Martin assistant superintendent Martin I just had a question when I was reading for your report um you touched on the importance of attendance at the PTSD campus um up to and including that it looks like you guys might be instituting a new policy uptune including a jpo officer Vernon Powell I just had a couple questions about that first off I'd really like to know if this officer is deaf himself or has had any training in Deaf culture if he'll be dealing with our students and our families I'm going to bring up our principal and let her give you some additional context on there it's a boy hello everyone thank you very much for your question um he does not have any current training in Deaf culture but he will be attending the meetings with me with the parents and we will we're working side by side together and he will be um getting that training throughout as he works with our school I have a few questions so I mean don't run away um so I was reading I kind of Googled through some of this program that looks like that you're instituting as far as truancy Grand attendance and it looks like up to and including that this officer could be going to the student family's houses and interfacing with them about their true students is that correct not at this time all all meetings will be happening at the PTSD campus and that has not been discussed yet because obviously I have concerns that if he's going to be going out and he has no doesn't speak ASL and doesn't have any training we have a quite unique culture here and that could very much interfere with that absolutely no not at this time he'll just be meeting with the families and myself and I'll be running all of those meetings he will just be present there with me has he been working on our campus at PTSD for long or is this a completely new to us higher this is this was brought on by the principal the former principal and I just found out about him and I reached out in October when I first was appointed as interim principal and I started my work then he's met with myself he's also met with the attendance team and the nurses um and we have established this relationship and now we're moving forward under about [Music] truancy and absences um right now you know we're still kind of we're just in it a huge pandemic absolutely and this winter I my background is in healthcare I'm actually a healthcare worker okay um so I have seen how terrible that this winter especially has been yes flu RSV covid coughs colds and I just wonder how enforcing a very very strict um truancy policy is going to actually help our students instead of hurt absolutely and I was wondering if you could shine some light on your thought processes for that absolutely um any medical reasons for absences are exempt we do not hold that to the student or the family we reach out with communication with our nurses to see how we can support those students and get them back here and work with the Physicians as well to make sure that we have a safe environment at our school when they return we're talking about students who are truant in excess of so many days um where there's no medical reason present so by medical reasons being exempt to the student themselves would have to have a medical reason to be exempt is that correct can you please say that again for medical reasons being exempt the student themselves would have to be the person with a medical reason is that correct that is correct what about our students that maybe are not sick themselves but maybe live in a household that have maybe a medically fragile person in the house and you know especially during this winter it's been so bad like I know we I had a former medically fragile child myself and sometimes we would have to keep my son home from school because it just wasn't worth a risk to my medically fragile child um and I feel like this can be very punitive especially to families like like us and I mean our population and our culture is a little different than say you know my neighborhood school down the street absolutely so I just have kind of big concerns about enforcing this and the timing of it okay now okay um and my other follow-up concerns are the fact that this officer may or may not be familiar especially with our culture and our population that we serve okay okay um thank you very much I would be happy to sit with you more and discuss um how we're moving forward and our action plan I'd be happy to do that I'd also be happy to write I also ensure all the documents that I have and working with the officer um and I also when students are at home because they're medically fragile or they are dealing with maybe something like a family emergency at the house we we help students by providing technology to them and then they're able to zoom into our classroom as well and also documents and resources are uploaded into their Google Classroom so they can access that education at home as well it's very good to hear thank you so much you're welcome thank you are there any other questions for assistant superintendent Morton okay first I noticed that there was no mention of any additions or changes or comments so I'm wondering what is happening and what action is being taken in order to provide additional support or resources for our principles on both campuses our assistant principal position is still big into remote campuses if they are still vacant what is being done to help and really do active recruiting efforts for those positions while they're making it until they're filmed how are those principles being supported thank you board member chance both principals still work with the principal coach that we hire they have a schedule that they meet that principal coach pretty much guides them along in what they want to do with the school how they want to grow it how they want to change it my feedback to the principal coach is get them to imagine get them to just go crazy in their thoughts the AP positions are still open I have to say the principles were a thousand hats and they move a thousand miles a second I do not say that lightly because I do worry about their stress they have utilized their staff they have delegated at Tucson campus principal Waddell is rethinking those roles and wants to do it to make sure it fits where she's going in the future so she's putting thought into all of her positions that she has open PTSD we there's some other challenges that we're dealing with but principal white also is recruiting for that as well we have had no luck we are now working with HR and our new recruiter so we are hopefully we'll start making some Headway I really would hats off because they could have um taken just a warm body and threw it in that position and made their life somewhat easier but they both chose to not go that route do the additional work and wait until they find the right person that matches their vision and where they're going but they are still being supported by a principal coach who's a 25 plus year veteran principal and District administrator and as coach principals for over 15 years you mentioned the principal coach which I am aware of and I appreciate you and where do you fit into that support system for the principles I am you know I'm the guy by the side I believe a school is it's the principal's canvas if they have challenges or they have ideas I'm there any time of day and night where they bounce ideas off of me I also guide them as well but I do not cross that line because being a former principal myself I know what it means to be able to Create and Craft your school according to your vision so I support them 120 in everything they do and typically when they come to me with an idea it's never known it's let's figure out a way to make it happen and they usually I can say both principles which I love um will out-think me they're very creative they're very they're on point so we have this relationship that operates in this creative realm we think about not where we are but where we want to go and I do Challenge and push them but very I have to do that very little they are great in doing that themselves they do want the best for their campuses and they do have a heavy lift right now principleship is difficult okay I'm sorry um can you can you give me a little bit more context when you say administrative burden board member chance so for example or um staff resources to them so that they can delegate some of their duties what are you giving them practically speaking to help them have the space on the energy anyone else that's an opinion report you mentioned that Jill is implementing PBIS with her leadership team and that includes School administrator Joe Voight and that's the only thing that I see there's no other administrator or administrator support working this campus listed um and then you have pbsd staff who have already um who are already occupants so what can you do to help both of the principles not just think creatively and generate ideas and actually half the time yes um PTSD Jill Voight is is listed um there is staff that she has delegated that to because she cannot be in every place at one time as far as support um you know we have a relationship I understand and know what they're doing and why they're doing it typically if they need a position or need additional help they will reach out without hesitation and say hey George I need this and we go back behind the scenes and find a way to make it happen some of it is systemic organizationally and we have to get people to think differently but it's usually I leave it to what they need and I trust and I have no reason to doubt that because they come to me every single time when they need additional support as far as anything that the schools have need that they need we found out when I started that the schools were a little bit understaffed and we've been chipping away at that the difficult part is we just can't go get a Genet teacher or a person off the street to fit our schools we are for me anyway we're thinking about when we do hire some of these people like the sped director their ASL fluent because we're thinking about the culture and the community so they have for me every resource available and that is when they say we need this what do you need it for how we're going to use it and then I figure out how to make and today knock on the wood we've done an excellent job at backfilling and getting these schools a little bit whole in that way but it's driven by um what they need but I've never ever had to say no to them it's we've always figured out a way to make it happen I hope that answers your question board member chance yes how many admin secretaries do they currently have according to the restructure they will have three admins in each office this restructure and I'll let assistant superintendent Cooper I think she's going to speak on it on her portion but if the schools need something this is the ground level of looking at how we can be more efficient um we um if there is a need and I've shared this with both principles if there is a need after we get through this restructure I'm okay with going um and fighting for it and that's been the behavior ever since so if there is a need I'm not a fan I am a principal um proud and true I will fight for schools and what they need and staff them correctly so I know them pretty well and I know the systems and what they're dealing with so we're getting through the this restructure of the admin once it settles if there is a need I will not let them do without because we have to get away from this this cycle of we're just running around like crazy and people will burn out and they're quitting and they're leaving so we're trying to do this the right way with quality in mind and people in mind so that's my focus and that's what I will continue to fight for when they bring something to me so thank you and I agree it is one of my concerns we have already lost a former principal and as the board that it looks like we eat our principles and so I'd like to make sure that they are getting the support that they need to clarify you said that there will be three NH office that admin for the principles or is that admin it the the each principle will have a dedicated admin and then there will be two additional admins that service the office and the school needs again if there is something that um after that settles and they say hey George we just can't do it then we come back around the table this process happens pretty quickly when they bring it to me um and I'm I'm pretty much a thorn in assistant superintendent Cooper's side but we come to the table and we we come up with a solution um so and I agree losing a principal sets back a school three to five years and so it's devastating when you lose a principle because a lot goes with that that's where we are right now is rebuilding both sites and my last question is what plans or actions or comments do you have regarding to helping retain our current principles campuses if you can't comment on that currently I would like to see um a potential actions anymore to retain both of our principles for an effort today if you're able I would like to know a little bit about what we're doing it to help keep our principles um you know yes I will add something on there formally we I have thrown um at both principles um trainings that I have identified development opportunities that I've identified both principles respectively said George we we just we can't we're swimming we're underwater we're trying to keep our sights going and I gave them the the Comfort to say Okay so we've had there's been a lot that the two principles that we've set down and we again our Dream Team we have a lot of names for it but I understand what it is to be a principal I understand what it is to turn around schools I understand what it means to go into school as a brand new principal and everyone's against you I also know what it feels like to have support from an assistant superintendent that helps you grow and lets you make mistakes as well as look out for opportunities for you but challenge you to find them for yourself so some of it is is more spoken than written for me PV because um that's something that's that's near and dear to me I I I've been in schools where I haven't been supported as a principal and I know what that means and I've been in schools where superintendents said you know George go create I'm here for you you can do everything but spend money everything else go go at it so both principles um to me they are they are the epitome of what a strong principle is I've seen principles break I've seen principles fall apart throw Tantrums run out of the schools the things that they're faced with are some of the things that I've faced over my career and I've stood the test of time with it but they have my full support I will always watch out for them some of it will be informal because our relationship is very informal because that's the space they live for them it's all about people School culture and they balance and juggle so I will put something down formally but I'll develop that with both principles because I do want their input on what they need I will suggest everything for them and anything but I leave it to them to also look into it and say what's right and they have no issues with saying George or we don't like it so but thank you for that board member chance thank you and like I mentioned I do want to see some more detail um if you report from the next board meeting regarding specifically what will be done what actions and ensure that we are able to retain those principles now the other question I have was on a different topic is this related to the Bedrock vocabulary curriculum it says that odd staff continue to develop interactive dual language vocabulary instructional materials for Elementary classrooms uh and you know what you mean by dual language vocabulary instructional materials so that that mean that they are developing Which languages in terms of dual visual language I'm going to bring up Oren from odd to provide more context good evening board board member PB dance so with the the BGC curriculum and the Bedrock it starts first with ASL of teaching the concept in the word in ASL once that's solidified then it moves to English the written English um thank you so that means when a teacher is teaching in ASL they're just teaching and self or are they also teaching structure are you teaching grammar are they teaching big hand Shades the five parameters so the details of this would be better answered by Tina scharzer and Michael Olivier as they're the ones doing the training but what I can tell you is that it does start with American Sign Language it does take the hand shapes it takes the grammar and it treats ASL like its own language um as soon as the concept is learned in ASL then we move over to English we look at the spelling and we look at the grammar of written English it's to clarify it does respect both languages it tries not to intermix them but to truly start in one language and then move that concept over to English thank you so again to clarify you mentioned Mike correct and I'm sorry who was the other individual so we have three people on the odd who are helping when we look at um anything that has to do with literacy and language we have Michael Olivier this is his first year working with the team very excited to have him as he is an expert in the BGC he's done it out in Boston and now is is here we also have Tina scharzer I'm here in Tucson as well as Rose Andrea Cola they're both veteran educators they teach me on a regular basis about ASL linguistics um three phenomenal experts that we have set up to be in positions to truly help get this curriculum up and running and that is done correctly and with fidelity so those three are are they directly teaching the students in this dual language model they are not so what they're doing is they're creating they're helping create materials and then Mike has been going in and working with the teachers directly okay so again to clarify we have materials and an individual going in to assist teachers and is that are they kind of in and out of the classroom assisting or are they focusing solely on assistant teachers all the time I think both with the BGC there are some materials that have been pre-created out of Boston we've identified in the last couple years that there's a lot of holes as far as materials that need to be there to support the curriculum Tina and Rose have been working Lord I'm trying to think it's pretty pre-covered so easily for the last four years and trying to create materials um with Mike on board this year he is also helping create materials but he is going in and working with the teachers um either when we're Crest when sorry when requested or when time permits okay and so who's providing the formal ASL instruction portion when the BGC is being taught to the kids that would be on the classroom teacher they would be responsible for the curriculum any of those teachers meeting the requirements of ASL fluency that that is a good question prior to covid we did start working in trying to get every teacher to have a formal ASL assessment so we could see where they were where they were scoring and what things are taking place what we could put in place to support them that did lose some steam during covid um this Monday myself Michael Rose Andrea Cola and Chrissy Voyer who is doing some Consulting work for the agency will be meeting with an individual named Molly um drawing a blank on the last name at the moment about the vcso I believe training and putting that in place to assess staffs ASL proficiency the reason that we're doing that instead of the aslpi is that they're from what we've understood is that with gallaudet there is quite the backlog of trying to get them to come in and evaluate ASL proficiency in meeting with Molly she has a plan of how we can train internal staff to be assessors once we have staff who are trained to assess we can expedite it we won't have to worry about gallaudet we can do it on a much quicker basis um that meeting that is it is actually perfect timing that you mentioned it because it's taking place on Monday um as soon as we have that in place we can discuss how many evaluators we need and what's the best way to do it in the agency so nobody feels that there's favoritism being given so for example could it be that Tucson staff evaluates Phoenix Phoenix evaluates Tucson on all of that we haven't thought of yet we're just at the beginning of um discussing how would we do it what it would cost and then at that point at that point we'd approached the superintendents with it and hopefully get the green light to make that a reality for the 23-24 school year okay and how many ASL Specialists does the agency currently have that would be a good question for the principles I believe that we have one ASL specialist on each campus as well as an ASL teacher um but if I'm incorrect okay so for the specialist there's one on each campus okay so we do have a BGC meeting every two weeks the ASL Specialists are part of those meetings they tell us what's going well they tell us what they're seeing what materials they believe need to be in place um areas of the curriculum that might not be moving as fast as as they would like or that we would like so every two weeks we do have a meeting from eight and nine in the morning where we discuss what's going on look at the data that's collected and then come up with additional steps on what's needed so those ASL Specialists are part of those meetings every two weeks [Music] we're struggling um I'm struggling to understand is if you have those things in place why are ASL skills not improving on micro campus I think we need to one area that we're hoping to do with the BGC is that this is one of the first years that we're collecting data from both campuses to see the vocabulary Improvement based on the Bedrock vocabulary lists in a future meeting we can share with you what we have so far and we have seen some great gains in some classrooms in the classrooms that we haven't uh that's where we get to ask really good questions about what additional supports are needed um there's that old saying a visit it can't do or won't do as far as the implementation of the curriculum but this this is the first year that we have been collecting data across both elementary schools and getting close to 100 participation so when you I'm trying to think of how I want to word this right when you're saying that the ASL is not improving I'm not sure that we're all looking at a constant data point and a constant assessment to make that decision I'm hoping with the BGC we can start using that the assessments that come with that as the indicator to collectively either say this isn't working what do we need to do or it is getting better and that's why we need to keep doing it and putting additional supports into the BGC and the bilingual curriculum um so thank you for providing that extended explanation my only concern with your answer is in reference to data and you are correct that you don't have a full picture of the data at this stage because we did have a significant impact in that area I know it has been a struggle however I do think you're correct there are some areas where we might be seeing a camp and others where we might be saying won't so with that in mind with one ASL Specialists on each campus is that sufficient are you documenting how much is how much time is dedicated to formal ASL instruction and formal English instruction what about other students whose households speak other languages such as Spanish or native languages are they receiving a similar approach and similar supports or is it exclusively as L right now it is exclusively ASL and English do you know the population of students whose own language is Spanish uh we do we actually have that assuming that their language intake form when they come in is correct we do have a very large population of students where their home language is Spanish um okay so the BGC is not being implemented in our blind School our School for the Blind um any additional supports that they had they would have would come from that it's called the float a phlot it's the home language survey if they've been identified as on that float for not having English as the primary language that's used at home or their first language uh we are required by law to give them what's called the Azela test um we continue to do that and as part of the the findings from the azealot test it is up to the school and everybody involved with that child to really focus on how to improve their English skills um and that's that's a federal requirement that's not an Arizona thing or an asdb thing um as far as using something like Spanish from the home language to support um they're learning that would be more of a bilingual approach in using Spanish in order to learn academics and that really hasn't been the emphasis here at asdb at least in the six years that I've been here okay thank you very much thank you as as you're aware on the boards where there is no off-the-shelf curriculum that we can get for ASL that's aligned to the Arizona academic standards which means that this small faithful team that's within the odd has to build almost everything from scratch we're very great when I when I started there was nobody I'm very thankful for the support that we've had with superintendent reichmann to see the need and to continue to build that team larger and larger because it's necessary we can't we we have to build everything because you can't Pearson doesn't have anything none of the major Publishers offer something in ASO which means that it has to be homegrown we we are and I apologize but we are also working with other schools that are using the BGC to try to partner with creating materials we've had multiple conversation and by we I'm talking about Mike Tina and Rose have had conversations with the Hawaii school for the deaf as well as other schools that are using it to see if we can collaboratively fill all the gaps in the materials so we're not all doing this independently as well no we can move forward thank you all right thank you uh thank you uh we're gonna move on to 1.06 information item assistant superintendent of agency operations and support services assistant superintendent Cooper good afternoon board president Nigro superintendent reichmann assistant superintendent Martin members of the board ascb community and staff members each of the directors have provided to you their departmental reports there is no additional information that has come forth since those reports have been provided to you as we continue to strategize and roll out our changes to maximize resources in the agency while at the same time meeting our mission and vision and alignment with pillar 4 of the Strategic plan I wanted to just give an update on a few major projects that the directors and I have been working on the first project consists of the administrative assignment realignment that we've been working on with each of the administrative assistants which started in the fall of 2021 where we began reviewing the structure of our administrative support staff across the agency which consists of over 35 individuals at that time it was determined that many of the administrative support staff tasked could be completed through a centralized shared service model through that shared service model we identified tasks that were either being shared or duplicated across various departments and we determined that a lot of that could be substantially eliminated from each of the individual support tasks that each of the admins were doing and so we've identified quite a bit of inefficiencies we've determined an increase in need of providing more customer service and also looking at how to better streamline our processes in addition we have been focusing on centralizing and consolidating some of the administrative support staff with the intended outcome of ensuring that those processes are optimizing and providing better agency support to ensure that we are effectively making sure that our students are being served I'm glad to say that we actually finally completed phase one of the project so again we started in the fall of 22 21 and now we just completed phase one we were able to fill almost all of the centralized support service staff positions and those are housed within my area which is at the agency Administration and support services we're now looking at filling the educational administrative support positions and realigning those positions in addition to filling those that have been vacant so we've also identified a more structured approach and how to standardize when a principal or a director comes and asks for an administrative assistant historically we've just approved the request and that is why we had got to almost 40 administrative assistants across the agency and as I mentioned earlier we've now identified a standardized structure some of which assistant superintendent Martin had already discussed for example what the principles we've determined that there's three administrative support staff half one which would consist of a registrar one an administrative assistant directly supporting the principals and then an administrative secretary so that's just one example of the area that we've looked at we also had administrative assistants that were actually working with the student information system they've traditionally been called administrative assistants but we have looked at identifying or reclassifying those titles to registrars since they actually do the work specifically with the student Information Systems so we hope to have phase two completed by the end of this month and then we'll work on the Final Phase of that project the other project that the directors and I continue to work on is the compensation restructure which you heard a lot about last year we actually looked at um grade nine and Below staff we've increased their salaries we continue to look at how we can ensure internal equity and external competitiveness across the agency not only looking at recruiting but also retaining staff and this is also in alignment with the workforce analysis that we're looking at making sure that we do have staff and student ratios that are working more optimally across the agency in addition to us looking at now grade 10 and above we are also looking at various salary schedules across the agency and determining how we can either combine or modify some of those salary schedules I have already have staff reaching out to me and asking me when we expect that project or phase of the project to be completed we don't expect that to be completed until probably May or July when we will bring that to the board for implementation for Effective school year 2024 contention upon board approval so as a assistant superintendent Martin also mentioned we've been busy working with our newer recruiter that we hired within HR um we also have identified and hired a consultant to help and identify ways on how we can improve our recruitment efforts and so that's just to give a quick update on a compensation restructure project that we've been working on and over the next few weeks we'll actually be gearing back up to work with the Auditors which will be back here in March as they begin their six-month follow-up test work from the sunset audit finding and recommendation and so we'll be working on that we just had our hearing this past week with the house and that was pretty successful in addition to when we met with the Senate a few weeks ago there are no other updates that I have at this time to provide uh thank you are there any questions for assistant superintendent Cooper okay um here hi grow thank you for your patience I do have a quick question for you assistant superintendent Cooper in your report you mentioned Food Services and the expectation for Ade review and needing to collect some additional information I'm recalling a few board meetings ago making a request of wanting to see some student input on their thoughts and feelings about the food and whether or not they're satisfied with our food services do they eat the food that's been provided to them do you have any information if you can't speak to it right now are you able to provide information as to whether our students are eating and satisfied with our food services or should we change vendors if they're non-satisfied not satisfied board member chance I will ask that our director of operations Albert Duff come up and provide more context for you foreign thank you for that PV um Yes actually we do collect a lot of informal data just right off the service line also seeing what is eaten and what is not eaten a lot of times what we see is in the trash can tells it all in addition to that we also have Global bites and some other tasting evaluations where we expose students to new tasting options and then we incorporate those into the menu so on average what percentage of students are liking and eating the food as compared to not well every palette's a little different um so and once again that would be each meal so as they look at once again I know it seems kind of informal but going through that trash can and deciding that most of the students threw this away that's whenever those items are actually removed off the menu and then we don't do that again we also work with our vendor to try and keep that varied within our palette we also have to meet a lot of special dietary restrictions that do restrict some of the offerings that we have so what we are planning to do as part of our health committee is actually sending out information not just to students but also to parents within we're hoping by the end of the school year so that way we can collect from parents their input of what their students are saying whenever they come home whether or not they like the meal whether or not they don't as well as out to staff members within our agency to gain their opinion as well so that is part of the health committee which is also part of policy and so we will as part of that administrative review have to enforce the those policy recommendations it is a 5 30 so we do need to take a break for The Interpreter so we're going to take a 10 minute break thank you okay go ahead president negro yeah we're ready to come back now it's been 10 minutes uh so hello everyone we're um back now um into our meeting don't ask me okay we're starting the meeting now everyone yeah if I could have everyone's attention um we are going to resume the meeting now to make me use the gavel so we are back on 1.06 .
I'm paying a dollar they're gonna love you trust me the testimonials we get are controlled I mean they're just like thank you for offering this I mean it's really a nice employee protection to be honest because this is a great Park but at the same time you know your plan is going to save a lot of money Lord I just asked Chandra so this those Figures were either from nine months or 12 months worth of data so if you say for an entire year it would have saved almost sixty thousand dollars to the school so um great thing about what we do because of this cash pay we're not dependent upon with enrollment and you don't have to change the thing to your plan you don't have to change a PDN and CPA anyway um it is a voluntary program so you're offering this program as kind of a complimentary service to all the great teams you already have in place it's up to us to drive that enrollment um but that's beautiful we launch our program 12 months a year definitely not dependent ly structure is very simple we share in the savings and that's it there's no per employee per month there's no per member per month no other acronym come up with it is shared savings so if somebody enrolls we take a share of that savings um essentially we just book about the plan what it paid based on the data Pharmacy subtract our cost we take a percentage of that savings you keep the rest that's the only time so this has never happened talk about wood if no one was to enroll we make zero hours so there's a lot of skin in the game for us to do things the right way one of the ways that we do that outside of the Great Arch providing peace of mind working with the custom right but we already went over is how we treat them whenever so I come from this idea in healthcare where relationships matter and successful Health Care programs are driven on relationships um every call you're going to have a dedicated nurse who decides to use this program you'll have a nurse dedicated to your account every call that goes out from Orange protects every call that comes in for customer support is going to be answered by so going up and it's by the same nurse daughter nurses clinician driven we have pharmacists on the staff as well if they've attempt somebody needs a consultation or a provider calls and wants to speak to this might seem like a no-brainer what's wildly important a lot of groups Source their call Center for example things like that not punishing driven not clinical driven the reason why we could drive such a high involvement rate on a voluntary program is because we do things the right way you know the nurses that we have on staff that we hire have big heart they love people they understand our missions to help people and that's what they strive to do every single time and so those are the stories that I hear some of them are on a tax basis and texting our nurses you know those are the type of relationships that are being built which is awesome it's really easy to enroll a patient completes an intake form there's multiple ways to do that they're tech savvy they can enroll online it takes one to two minutes we have to hit the compliant employee portal that kind of houses all that information and then number two and you pick up the pump and kindly call their clinician's office and say hey you've got this great new program from work where I can get this medication for free can you please fax a copy of my scripture Scripts we take that scripts we do a little you know thing that we do on the pharmacy side um if there's any questions reach out to the provider about a little dispense that medication really start that interaction with whatever that's the only two things that we need and there's four communication and transparency Concepts sometimes but that's what our nurses do all day even members that have been enrolled for six months they might check in and I shoot my text message going anything that we can do for you right it's above and beyond care because that's the only way this works last three things next step a contract that you um look it over what you don't like for buys we'll figure something out no problem we'll send out a couple messages leading up to the launch of the program I can send some messages over that have worked very well basically we'll take it from there once the launch happens it's got all on our plate to do things the right way and to get those folks involved so that you all can save money and they can save money as well yes we do have other clients together and I and in their group is working well there's my number so yeah that's that's our concept I have one good question yes um let me cover every medication perhaps just had that certain um which yeah yeah okay then the other ones could be still covered yeah exactly so um essentially what we'll do if after this we can all talk and you're like you know we should probably do this I would like to get the updated most recent artist claims data and I can do a new analysis that analysis will pick out how my day is going to pick up the medications that we know that would just be the initial Blitz that we launched with it would just be those ones yeah we're not going to save you a bunch of money if we don't have access to it and that is everything yeah but yeah just diabetic diabetic and then some of the respiratory yes yes they are yeah unfortunately right he's probably 80 80 of the magic ship out a volume but it does help so many people itself do you have ever have any issues you haven't um part of the supply chain supply chain control so in quarter four for example there's a Jose George here we were able to stay ahead of that and work with new custom Canada and custom U.S we did the exact number so we were kind of ahead of the game on that um where is your office so on paper it's in Louisville oh um I only got a caramel we're kind of segregated so my nursing staff their former you know used to work at a hospital or whatever decided to move on but still want to be in this place so I got to come over yeah compose a relationship with the providers like how I used to work in hand gentle Healthcare I know one of the hurdles for providers was getting that script to different pharmacies and there's always fighting between my doctor doesn't work at this Pharmacy or this Pharmacy business or so my doctor wants and that communication letting given that you're totally male and over border I could see that being either a scare pack you know something that people are scared of or hindrance when I can't just go into my Pharmacy and talk about my doctors probably yeah so I'd say one out of one out of about 20 enrollment too the doctor is kind of like wait I'm supposed to I'm supposed to fax the script yeah you don't have an e-script yeah so what I've learned one where there's a will there's a way um but to Dr the medication non-compliance issue today is absurd I'm solid enough if I put the actual numbers you would think I was like I'm trying to like it's insane um as to how many people don't even go get their meds and who don't pay for their meds what that does on your medical side your unnecessary medical costs go up because then people are going to the ER to our emergency care they would always think that they're not supposed to do just simply because they're not controlled on their medicines but if you eliminate cost as a barrier the doctor or something like you can get it for free let me talk to who lover and they'll call our Pharmacy that we can take a horrible Scripts okay they can print the script out and hand it to the member member can upload it to the portal that's kind of the third option that typical plan because our portals every office is a little bit different yeah or they can figure out a way to do that so that's usually like um we work a lot with those folks as well up but rarely rarely that's a good question thank you yeah thanks for having me thank you so much thank you thank you yes thank you so much again for the opportunity to to discuss the two programs that we had to offer through any questions please I just want to thank us today only you can send those to me or they're happy that I answer those questions if you talk afterwards and thanks again okay thank you this one all right December 15th and January 5th um we're going to do those separately so we have different members so um is there a motion to approve the public session minutes here December 15 2022.
okay but they're also simulcast uh generally as well oh okay so seven o'clock 207. okay is when they usually are they're usually every Thursday for the most part they're often on Thursday okay uh I would check almost every Thursday but uh certainly definitely next Thursday there's there's a meeting on the 26th which is a little problematic for our budget meetings sure um so depending on what that agenda item is and what the budget meeting is we may Ben and I may have to split some responsibilities there but and this is this is an organization or a body formed by the council not by the Board of Ed correct and so is it getting are they getting the meetings posted on the town website yes okay all right great thank you if you go to the Cheshire Public Schools website as well um at the bottom there's a banner it's it's still there school modernization if you click there there's good information on that page now it's been revamped from like why do we need schools to basically what are the process what's the process including agendas minutes RFQ like anything you could want the the membership that it's all there okay so I would encourage people to to visit that site make more info just a point of clarification so the town and the board did select the committee that's working on it now right who's helping to facilitate it as they're moving along so the chairperson of the committee is Rich Gusenberg uh the uh both myself and Sean Kimball or ex-officio mem voting members of the committee um and the esteemed Mr Vincent messiana is often present to help guide us as well Jeff D'Onofrio Town attorney has been really helpful um so it uh this is this is a big item and I'm just curious if of all the information that you are putting out for all of us do you have something just a basic tracker for the townspeople too Financial tracker you know this contract has been awarded for this amount when the funds start coming in this much has has been expended um I think I do think people are going to want to be watching these costs and I'm not sure if anything has been set up but um yeah I'll watch it but yeah we haven't reached a point yet where anything's been at all expended so um ultimately yeah certainly we can do that we just haven't we're not there yet a few months out for that the next the uh Council will ultimately appoint uh uh architect um Vin do you remember the day I want to say it's March 13th in that neighborhood sounds about it's in that that neighborhood it's the it's the March Council it's the March council meeting whatever Andrew you probably you might not remember this off top of your head but we talked a lot about scheduling and um kind of backed into the opening of the schools are we on target with the issuance of the RFQ for the architect are we ahead of that schedule we're ahead of the schedule we designed there's a lot of talk about the schools are going to be done in and again I am not trying to pensional I understand like you know we could have a monsoon we could have a snowstorm like all these things will definitely change and I don't wanna I wanna under promise and over deliver the other way around but does it look like we're getting closer to closing that window perhaps where the schools so the initial um timetable was established I want to say almost a year and a half ago with Colliers um and our group has been very diligent uh and you know relative to that initial timetable that was established we are ahead of that timetable pretty significantly good to hear thank you Sam did you have a comment s um I guess uh question is to uh if uh someone were to want to get uh caught up in all the meetings are these lists are the are the uh videos listed on the uh Town page or the uh Cheshire Public Schools page or both Town page okay I could go back to our just for ease of access I could go back to our minutes and Link the videos in in there yeah for easy use um and I know that uh I attended the kickoff meeting uh where there were discussions about whether or not to have you know an architect for each site or an architect for the entire project has there been a thought as to how they'd like to proceed as far as that or is that sort of not been determined yet that hasn't been determined yet um architectural firms are invited to submit for one or both projects at this point foreign and finally just as a sort of a point point of clarification for Faith and anyone else I believe um all of these meetings are open to the public and that if you have any recommendations or suggestions that they also take public comment as well during the meeting so if perhaps uh Faith your great suggestion about a cost tracker uh may you may want to have that entered into the public record of either whether written or in person so just as just as a thought there um are there any other questions or go ahead just I'm going back to what the superintendent said about you so we applied for the the greenhouse Grant we don't have a turnaround time yet for it then are you familiar with the turnaround we applied no we we got it right but is there a decision we got the grant oh you did yeah we did oh awesome so my next question is what's the enhanced the curricular enhancement I know we're going to use this sure we offer courses like AP Environmental Studies biology is uh life sciences or studied through all grade levels really I mean there's certain certainly focuses at different years but life science is a is a significant part of our curriculum so there there are tie-ins the greenhouse uh is not going to rival uh Castor title Farms or something Kurtz Farms or whatever they um it's certainly not on that sort of scale so it would be smaller groups that would go through there maybe a class at a time um but we don't want to get out ahead of our proverbial skis or or plants or whatever you want but we certainly see the connections there right now it's smaller scale hoping to build into something bigger so we have some sort of scheme of I'm just thinking like Hydroponics and I don't know what the plan is I'll share the um the uh Grant with you so you can all see like basically what it entails in scope um size and the whole nine yards uh it's really exciting to be moving down this road it's awesome thank you yeah I'm just wondering do you have a location for it I know you've mentioned something before but yeah the um you know the rear of the humiston building there's a large uh storage building that it would be next to that on the interior side not the street side gotcha thank you sure it's getting questions right now oh sorry um so actually this may be for Marlene so you can take a break um are there uh opportunities you know we do a lot of uh intern and apprenticeships have we started to reach out perhaps since we are the betting plank capital of the world um I'm sorry Connecticut um thank you the world is good okay I think it's Connecticut of New Haven County um but is it I have has you know is there an opportunity um for because you know from a farming background myself we are a shrinking number so um you know what have has anyone come forward anyone expressed an interest or anything like that to engage our kids in career opportunities I don't know of anyone who has stepped forward but I know through Jeff's work with economic development and looking at now that covet is over we've been branching out more and more with getting back to our internships and really reinvigorating that after the shutdown so there's lots of opportunity there and I think that the opportunity that this greenhouse while small perhaps in size is really going to give us some really nice opportunities for the future and I know you've also been in touch Jeff's also been in touch with some local folks with greenhouses to talk about possible opportunities but nothing set in stone as of yet okay yeah AJ Kurtz was great about providing us some guidance on different things and so you know we definitely want to leverage the resource that exists within our community and tie that together and if I could just add Faith to that point um so Dr solo and I have been talking about my other hat I wear for the town um we are really working to identify students who might not be who aren't dragging towards the college route and how we as a town can work with the board and with the school district in order to identify early identify those students early on and really start setting up programs in order to get some of the kids into either the manufacturing trades or agricultural trades that exist here in the community because there's a huge need for employees in those dish in those Industries and when I started going out and meeting with the manufacturers I mean they wanted to be part of so we set up this manufacturers Roundtable it's been hugely successful already and going into treasure high school and making those connections for internship programs and getting kids there and also like reaching out to the parents and you know four-year colleges aren't for everybody and a lot of these kids are able to go right into and in two years able to buy a house with no debt and that's a really real thing in trying to help facilitate that so it's in process and we had a great meeting on Tuesday Morning um Dr Solon took about two hours of everyone's time but it went really well and at the end of that we came up with a list of different different programs and things that we could start to work towards and on the economic development commission with the town there's a lot of business owners and folks that are deeply rooted in the business community so um we're working towards that so can I ask a question on the Practical side because in my mind greenhouses are pretty movable even after they've been put up so when the day comes that we are replacing the humiston building um moving us all out moving the kids the students out we'd be able to move the uh Greenhouse as well correct um I would think so it's not it is as you say it's it's uh mobile wow it's big enough to not be easy yeah you know you'd have to take it apart but um definitely flexible great thank you Dr Solon uh this is does that conclude your report it does sir thank you any other questions or comments okay great thank you Dr Solon um I I don't think we have any old business on the agenda here um uh chairman peregini did not supply me with a chairperson's update so um we do not have anything there um I guess before we adjourn I'll go over um some of the uh upcoming meetings here um let's see this one looks a little bit more up to date um so January uh 19th we have a planning wait is that today okay we'll skip maybe it's not a maybe this one is more up to date Okay so yeah um all right so I want to start down here with the budget stuff so uh January 24th we have another um uh public budget review uh meeting and that's at Dodd Middle School 7 P.M uh January 26th um we have a public information meeting uh with a board member responses to superintendent's budget and with possible adoption um we'll we'll see about that uh on January 26th at 7 p.m at Dodd Middle School um we then have on February 1st as the calendar committee meeting um I'll just add a personal note perhaps there will be some information about those reverse half the reverse uh half day things that we've been doing uh what are we calling that uh delayed delayed open delayed opening not really dismissal it's the right opening um I know I certainly got feedback about that in my own home uh so pros and cons yes perhaps you'll have some data about the the effectiveness of that or if it was uh like by our staff um let's see uh February 13th uh is a curriculum committee meeting uh that's in hummus and boardroom uh policy committee uh on February 14th uh 6 30 and that's going to be remote live stream and February 16th we have our next business meeting and that will be in town council chambers at 7 30.
so um that number hasn't really changed that much it's gone up a little when I looked back all the way back to 2018 it was a different a little bit of a different thing back then because I high school had 3050 kids in it 2018. now fast forward now believe my numbers at the high school today where 3587. we did hit 3 600 at one point it's a nice little screenshot of it it's about 3600. um but that's it's gone down a little bit changed the population of people coming and going and different things and transfers and stuff like that but we've remain steady of the 3 5 85 type of women for the rest of the time so because of that credit to 25 we needed 9.1 teachers we had that conversation with Sal and Joe at the time and also what was coming down was his enrollment increase and if you take the enrollment increases that I just mentioned for easy math purposes we'll talk about going from 3000 to 3 500 500 kids that's embrace the easy math okay take that each get taken seven classes Why seven with an eight period schedule but not you know on a staff until all eight so we go with seven some seniors take four a person like to take eight depending out as much as they can some take seven in some cases we're having some now because of difficulty with enrollment the population state in six classes which means it results in two study halls which we don't like students to have so we tried very hard so with seven classes as our average part that's 3500 seats that need to be filled you take that number you divide that by at 130 I mentioned which is the teacher can drive contracts that's 26.9 teachers that we need when an enrollment slot gone up by 500.
so you might see a couple of those that are below 30 and those would not be reportable populations in our Equity report on this on our tiles the population of our African-American and homeless students is displayed here for the academics and in the parentheses you'll see the total enrollment for across the district as you can see the work will begin we will be focusing on our differentiated assistance with a small group of students compared to a larger population this gives you an idea of the timeline for the work that we will be participating in and being part of as we work through our differentiated assistance support and we will start with working on investigating our systems and our data coming up with a theory of action conducting various Cycles uh what are called pdsa Cycles or cycles of improvement and then we'll choose some scale Improvement ideas that we will carry out into becoming part of what we do on a daily basis to support those subgroups and many situations all all our students but the focus will be on those students and I just wanted to share that on January 13th the Alum Rock team began working with the County Office of Ed on this continuous Improvement cycle to begin our data analysis and our implementation cycle and our site leaders will be joining us in this work along the way to support our students as a district as a whole but at our sites individually okay uh thank you so much Miss Campbell and Miss Bickford uh Dr Bickford uh before I open the item 3.02 to comments a question from the board I'd like to open uh open this item to uh public comment uh Luis is there any public comment on item 3.02 fourth president there are currently notes of the comments saying no public comment I'll move to uh questions and comments from members of the board uh alrighty uh Krusty Shabbos you have the floor uh yes I don't know who wants to answer it uh Miss Tara or Miss Barbara um on the homeless I know you have the figures there 32 and 85.
which is superintendents and staff report I have no report and staff yes so happy New Year New Year okay that covers staff all right no reports all right gotta might get it right all right 12 Board of Trustees report Miss Guerrero yes okay I'll try and keep this quick um I just want to give a quick shout out to some of our students that participated in the 2023 Rose Parade honor band including Aiden Vasquez who is an anime High School trumpet student um I've also had the opportunity to attend the holidays around the world at South Junior High School um I'd like to thank the family and Community engagement team for putting that on together for the South Junior High community and then I also had the opportunity to attend the and I'm high school coffee with the principal as well as yesterday attended the Anaheim High School Track and Field improvements projects and I want to thank our District staff and partners for being available at that presentation to answer any questions for my parents and team and I would like to say thank you to everyone for their continuous welcome I'm making my way to visiting most of our school sites and meeting with our staff so I'm very excited to continue you doing that thank you thank you Ms Percy okay let me see here um simple things Insurance meetings I did you know me and I couldn't believe how the second Insurance meeting just this last week was so short and quick I mean we didn't even make a full hour and it's usually two hours so Nancy wasn't there so that's why [Laughter] okay and then right after the last meeting in December the next day I had the opportunity to attend South Junior High's engage Academy they did a showcase night and I wasn't sure what it was but it was really well done the parents were you know it was really cute because you go in there and these kids some of them are dressed to the hilt I mean they were on display and they were you know like kind of some of them were with the the computers or little laptops in front of them you know kind of recording everything but they were set up at different tables and these they were like three to five kids in each group and each one had a an aim or something they were working on and I went around to the different you know they had like sessions and they would do that but I went around kind of looking and then after I did one or two of them I thought you know what I'm just stepping in front of them and listening but they have no idea who I am most of them are parents so I thought you know what let me introduce myself so I went back and I started you know so the one of the ones I had missed and I let them know who I was and I each gave each one of them one of my cards and I said just so that you know you know who you were talking to and some of the kids were like oh you know and it was really cute but I got to about four or five different presentations and then afterwards Diane Bettencourt was the one that invited me and she let me know she said the kids she said some of them were just we had a board member watch us you know this type of thing and it was really cute though and well done the parents supported it tremendously they made it a real um night of it in other words parents brought all kinds of refreshments and food and whatever and the kids were all dressed up and they did their presentations and then um you know and then afterwards they had a big kind of like party but it was really really well done and um I I was really kind of tickled by some of the the letters some of the kids wrote and Diane forwarded them to me and they had follow-ups because some of them were going to be doing a beach cleanup and they were passing out information and we're going to organize this and you come and join us and we'll clean up a beach or they had oh here it is here's I didn't think I had it but this was one of the uh things Diane sent to me she said she had the students fill out a debrief form after the Showcase to get their feedback about their experience and she said one student wrote The Following one when asked what was the best moment of the night a moment she would always want to remember and she said a moment I want to remember is when Anna Al gave us her card we were all pretty scared of her and felt extremely nervous despite this we felt proud of ourselves and I thought that was really cute and then another student said I just thought these are really cute I the proudest moment was when Mrs H presented me to a District Board member explaining my project to Mrs Piercy it was the most amazing thing to do feeling like someone who genuinely shares the same passion as you is listening to you and is one of the most amazing things to do and talking to someone in so much Authority which could potentially re she says Revolt your idea or reveal your idea makes you feel so much inspiration to do more so but it was just so cute you know and they had they had all kinds of handouts showing what their things were and they had a presentation on the computer it was extremely well organized and attended and I just thought they did a great job and that was their engage Academy fantastic yeah it was really good and then today okay I didn't do anything then in that two weeks of the holiday and whatever that was just the day after the last board meeting um this morning I attended well I visited three different schools I went to Lexington this morning they were having the sixth graders from all of Cyprus they were attending a two-hour thing and they divided them up into three groups and they had something going in the multi-purpose room and then they had something in the gym in the gym they had the band and The Choir performing and the multi-purpose room they had the drama and The Debate Club working and doing a presentation and then I don't know what the other big one but I went to the culinary arts classroom and each of the kitchens was cooking something and putting out food so all the kids and the and the teachers coming through could you know taste some of their stuff one kitchen was making creme brulee wow well Kristen told me the teacher she said with the fit-a-thon monies this was one thing she wanted to do so she bought eight little torches and the 33 uh creme brulee dishes so the kids could learn to make creme brulee and then they had all the little things so it was just really good and then there was pizza and cookies and whatever so they were putting out all their food and of course that was one of the most popular roasts I can imagine I thought of Mr O'Neill yeah yeah pretty so and then I went to Orange view because we were I I was aware of some of one of the problems they have with heating right now and it's been so miserably cold and some of these these uh our employees are freezing and so I went to check on stuff there and then I went to Cypress high school but um everybody was busy but I was going to talk to one of them you know so but anyway I just checked in on three different schools and then I said okay it's time for me to go home and read my newspaper I haven't had a chance to do that yet that was my day it was very good I really enjoyed doing that you know you know just buzzing through these three schools now I got to try a couple others so super that was it good thank you Mrs Smith I didn't make it to the insurance committee meeting and I'm glad I didn't I was talking to a friend in Ohio yesterday and she told me that Anthem has been purchased by CVS is that correct to look into yeah we have not yet received a notification about that well that made me new news but uh just talks about what the changes in our country and changes we're all seeing which is huge uh there's a lovely article about a Joshua Liu and a 16 year old Oxford Academy student organized two Global Recycling campaigns called IMB standing for 1 million batteries and we w e e cycle waste electrical and electronic equipment Recycling and engaged more than a thousand student volunteers Lou also documented his Tae slash 1 MB Journey and 40 plus action tips for youth activism in his 104 page two-time International award-winning e-book youth activism and it says colon teens against E-Waste and our quest to collect one million batteries to save the planet he also delivered a Ted X speech about the dangers of e-waste I just thought that was so impressive you can pass it down to the superintendent and um I do have a comment to make recently I've had a number of friends make comments to me about very abrasive comments that news commentators make about teachers generically I have heard them myself and I find it absolutely appalling in particular when people say to me that they believe it and my response to the people I speak to is the public the general public doesn't have a clue what is going on in education and life today with our youth with so many changes in our country affected by coven the fact that our schools were closed down teachers were having to do lesson plans and teach on epads or whatever they are and then to reopen and reformulate your your life on campus facing commuting and all of the ills that we are faced with on this planet I just have to say I find it so upsetting when these kind of comments are made by public commentators and it's not acceptable and so I'm just saying it for whatever it's worth um I don't email but I wish somebody would contact these people that are aware of them and tell them that they don't know what they're talking about because our teachers were very very hard sensationalism cells Truth Or Not Trejo thank you for the your comments that's um I'm Carr oh my goodness wow thank you so much for this um and I really loved in speaking about celebrating teachers I love that a lot of the the ambassadors uh put the photographs of the teachers getting um celebrated for the teachers of the year so that's awesome students recognize that too and on that note I was able to go with our ROP and our president O'Neill to Oxford and surprise June Cuenca for Teacher of the Year and they really surprised him and I don't think I've ever seen him speechless and he was so shocked and so humbled by the experience and Brad was there as well and to to see that I don't usually get to do that and I had a couple minutes the school was doing fine the students were great so I said I'm going to go over there and and um and help in that celebration so it was a treat for me to see one of our wonderful student teachers getting surprised and the students were were so pleased and I think they were shocked too but uh very well behaved and uh um and uh and that we got to take some photographs um but so well deserving of that honor um I was also able to um go to the strategic planning for the uh for the Arts and it was really um interesting to be in a room again with a with a lot of vapa folks and you know you talk about the pandemic and I feel like I haven't been able to be in many of those meetings and it was really nice to be again you know in these rooms and being able to have these uh these conversations so that was the first meeting and some robust conversation and looking forward to the next one I love when uh my uh my day world and my afternoon evening World Collide um and at my school at Franklin Elementary school during the day the pal students did a A can drive and I didn't know this at the time until our counselor came up to me and said hey I just want you to know our students collected a lot of canned goods and I saw the canned goods there were a lot and I just wanted to let you know we actually had Gilbert School come and pick up the cans and for their pantry and so that just really warmed my heart that our students were able to do that and give that to their they have a amazing Pantry over there and I know that it got distributed because I think they were having an event I think that weekend and so they got the cans that Friday as a matter of fact the folks that came to pick it up said that they were even Distributing them as they were on their way back to the school to some family so all right and South they're on a roll because they were also doing their sixth grade um why don't we call it welcoming Extravaganza and so uh I got to go on the bus and I got to sit in the gym in the middle of all those students oh boy I should have brought my earplugs from my elementary school so yes with the sixth graders yeah and so they did a fantastic job the students got off the bus and the band was there to play for them and they made this long line of student leaders and um and cheered them on as they came through the students really LED this event they had a lot of student leaders take groups and they LED them first they went into the gym and the dance team performed but they did a really interesting thing I thought instead of having adults talk to the kids they had students from each one of the the elective thing classes that they get to take and so from a student's perspective they they they talk to this to the students and a wonderful celebration I thought okay we're we're done that's it no uh after uh we were we left the gym they broke us up in groups and we actually got to walk into the classrooms as uh teachers and students were teaching and learning and I thought wow I mean what a great experience for the kids to actually see what it's really like to go to Junior High School I mean just right there so that was a favorite thing for us our students in the Franklin Elementary and South did a fantastic job they said that we were going to be in by a certain time and out by 11 and we were out by 10 58 I mean like clockwork it was amazing so congratulations to South I was able to go to visit the Mac again I I invited myself along with Dr Billings she said she was going to go visit and so you always learn so much every time you go and every time is just an amazing Wonder so I got to see the chickens this time got to see the chicken coop that they and they built and it's really interesting they built it so it's mobile so they put the chickens in an area they eat they poop and they scoop and they use all of that as fertilizer and so when it gets the time for them to move so that they can collect all that they just move the chickens to another area and Brian's going to laugh at me because you did at the ROP meeting but I had no idea I'm a city girl that because they the chickens were laying eggs and we got to take home an egg I said yeah really it was really delicious and um I said but how are they laying where's the rooster are they laying eggs I had no clue that chickens could lay eggs without the roosters I understand now the rooster sandwich is to make the chicks so but that was something a couple of there was somebody else that didn't know that either so so I just thought that was really tickle pink and oh my goodness the area that they're going to expand stop laughing at me and they're just going to expand and um and and then go Circle even back around to the that far area and they're thinking about fruit trees and when it's finished oh my goodness it's going to be marvelous and um that uh I I um I think it was that Saturday Academy they had parents there um and with their students they were able to do a Saturday Academy and students and parents got to plant lettuce from scraps so they learned how to you know take that wedge off and plant that and so just wonderful things going on there I was able to visit Katella and it was a testing day and so kids are kind of coming in but all admin were outside and I got to join them in welcoming the students coming in and they were dressed up and they were they were trying to cheer the kids up for you know getting getting them piped up and a lot of them really appreciated that I was able to meet a couple of students who wanted to interview a board member at Western and they were really surprised because they thought we were going to do a zoom call but I showed up on campus and got to talk with them in a counselor's office it was for their Capstone project yeah and so these students were really trying to investigate and their issue is look stores being too close to school campuses and they wanted my opinion on that and and what can be done on that so I thought that was a wonderful wonderful project for them I was able to go to the first lunar event for our students at the Asian Garden Mall and uh boy they were the the grand finale and we had our students doing a fashion show and one of the Asian Garden Mall vendors there donates the the clothing for the students and so our our students got to go on that big stage that they have there and this is all on the um it's the uh lstv it's the um Little Saigon thank you Little Saigon TV so um they have the big booms and you know our kids are our broadcast on TV and then our drummers um from the VA uh student clubs they have we have a drum team and they also have the lion dancer so that crowd was really really pleased and I am looking forward to the Saturday's server-thon events oh thank you yep thank you uh I had the pleasure of of attending the Hope holiday show and you we saw a preview here at the last board meeting uh they put on a fantastic presentation and there were two students we watched um the sound system was was not the greatest there we have to think about that for Hope School in in the future but they had all the words uh in right being shown on the screen behind them which but was still you can't see through the people so you can't see other one but these two students they knew every single word of the entire program you could see their mouths going you knew that what they were saying it was amazing my wife and I just just anyhow all the students were fantastic um it was all already mentioned about the ROP teacher of the year nominee being uh surprised and that was a great surprise I'm glad I was able to attend that but it's also uh glad I'm glad that I had the opportunity to be back on the ROP board and I've been through two meetings and it's very uh I'm looking forward to it until and tell them what we did they made me president oh yeah yeah I was a little shocked there but okay go for it and yeah moving right along um I had the pleasure of lunch with the Viking at Walker and Mr and Mrs Claus were there so the kids were going over there and having talking to them having their pictures taken it was cute and I have to say there were so many parents on campus sitting there with their kids it was amazing um Jennifer Society the principal who used to be the assistant principal there said that this is the biggest crowd they've ever had so it was really a great turnout I then I also attended the green band from Japan they haven't been performing at Kennedy for the last couple years because of covid but they were back they had a about 170 participants up on stage fantastic performance musically and they were preceded by uh the Taiko drummers from UCLA and that name is let me see if I can tell you the name of the band is very very interesting it was uh the yukai daiko Taiko drummers and they were real I loved the Beats of the drum and they were really really great in their presentation so um uh that ends my busy week or month or whatever it's been since the last meeting so we move on to item 13 Advanced planning okay information something I want to bring up I okay I should have brought it up during my report but um in December after this meeting I met with Tony Stroud from loera high school and I've spoken to Nancy and Leanna about this but Tony would like to do a presentation about therapy dogs she would like to see maybe we utilize therapy dogs in some of our work with our children who are having mental anxiety and whatever so she would like to do a presentation and inform the board of all the information she has in background and all the you know coverage because she's part of an association so I would like to put this on the agenda for our next meeting at Tony's in the op in the audience tonight and we have a second uh I will second that okay I'll third it okay very good so we'll have her give a presentation at our next meeting okay and then we can you know get the information because I learned a lot she treated me to lunch and uh during her during the work day no there's no bribes it's on record no no no I learned of a new restaurant though I didn't know that one there it's a really nice one so uh but anyway um I do want to put this and I'm glad I've got the second so you're on Tony you have a presentation for um and I don't know what else needs to be done maybe you can come yeah okay very good that's okay okay on the on the um topic of gyms and sound systems um we're maybe we can get an update on where are we has anyone looked into getting some equipment for some of those uh gems because it is hard to hear and most of most of them you have the the students that do so much work and they get their presentations and they don't know how to project their voice like the grown-ups do and so that was one of the things that I really notice um you know wherever I am if we could if we could just take a look and maybe see where the need is but I think every every gym maybe needs an upgrade or a you know but I think it's really important because our students really do deserve to be heard or you know if they're singing or they're speaking and and I you know I I just really think that's just as a reminder we have over a billion dollars of facilities needs district-wide I I I hear you just a little bit I mean if we could look for some grant money anybody listening out there on a donate I know I know Oxford Academy uh wrote some parents I've written a grant at Lowe's and they got a really nice sound system but you know whatever there's also baffling because it just bounces all around that's the problem so it's a combination is true yeah that's something that's true yeah okay we'll have staff look into it okay anything else how about number 14.
hymns would be next uh with hibs ahib is essentially has to have two parts to it one is that there has to be a substantial disruption to the child and the other is that the child has a characteristic that's being picked on as you see on the slide we have numerous characteristics it could be race color religion all the way through down to just an imbalance of power substantial disruptions it could be missing school not wanting to go to school a change in their routine changes in how they eat sleep and situations such as that you could see that for founded hip cases we had a marked reduction we actually cut it in half we had 21 last year this year we have 10 for this same time period and for unfounded cases we went from 56 down to 23.
so so we're back on 1.06 are there any additional questions uh for assistance use the gavel use the guy the gavel appeared here today I know I didn't ask for it it just appeared um uh so we're back on 1.06 um are there any further questions for assistant superintendent Cooper yes this is board member dance I did have a follow-up question for Mr Duff I apologize Mr death not a problem thank you one thing that I've been thinking about and would like to make a possible suggestion on this is there any way to potentially set up any kind of QR code or quick poll or a survey where even during lunch that students can get their lunch eat it scan the QR code and give a thumbs up or give an immediate thumbs down or a neutral it's a myth for me today something like that if there was a way to use a social media approach to it using QR codes or something like that to get quick and instant feedback we may get more engagement for student feedback if we use that route I think that that live data may help provide more of a comprehensive picture some students because they struggle with food at home will show up and eat because they are hungry it doesn't necessarily means that they like the food that's been provided to them there are some people who come and do not receive any food because they already know that they simply don't like what's offered so it doesn't even show up in the trash they just skip the meal completely and so I want to make sure that students are not skipping meals that they're con encouraged and the their active parties participation is included so something just a thought if possible absolutely we can definitely look at that when we first rolled out the transition from in-house to contracted services our primary focus was two items which was one compliance within the nsop program and second food safety and making sure that we're beating the dietary restriction requirements of all of our students that we don't put anyone at risk so those were our first two items obviously higher participation rates or improving food quality of what what is wanted within those for example surveys those are obviously things that we would like to to get onto which is right now we're focusing on that administrative review for compliance which we're very excited about in order to make sure that we're fully compliant with the federal program and then absolutely once that is complete we can definitely take a look at how we improve our surveying of our students regarding those items what I will say though is that prior to the Food Service Company coming on we saw an average participation rate normally in the 80s which is actually pretty high for most food service programs bringing on the Food Service contractor we actually see participation rates in the 90s so we did actually see an increase in participation underneath the Food Service Company and those are submitted as part of our reimbursement so that's how we're able to track that information so we are seeing a little bit higher participation which to me would suggest that we are seeing more engagement within our student population within our food service program there's also just quite a bit of a change of administration this is my first real year kind of looking at Food Service and bringing on a new food service director as well there was a lot of change in that management and change in the direction and the thought process of food service and so we're we're having to build Rome and that isn't done overnight but we are definitely making those first critical steps with compliance and food safety great thank you okay thank you we can move on to 2.01 action item approval of the consent agenda consistent reward policy to include items 3.01 3.03 5.01 6.01 7.03 and 7.04 is there anyone that wants to remove anything from the consent agenda okay 3.03 and 6.01 and 7.03 specifically policy jlda sorry so say that again 301.
all right any discussion I will note that Steve Miller was present there but we won't be saying yeah anyway um yes okay so January 5th 2023 uh agenda minutes uh were reviewed we made a correction to that and I saw that the one that we have here that we signed is correct so is there a motion to approve January three minutes absolutely a second all right and is there any discussion right welcome Amy I will abstain because I was happy uh Carol yes Vicky yes yes right next we have a discussion item is that correct for the referendum yes and on the modified agenda I have to apologize usually we have discussion as a member item on all of our typical ones um we send out the agenda and then quickly realized we forgot that item we corrected it got that out to the media and then um when we went to do the modifications for tonight's meaning we used the the first template instead of the second one so I apologize for that it should be listed on this um physical agenda so um we had a Community member ask that we put a um the discussion topic of the referendum on tonight's agenda and with approval from our board President we decided to add that to the agenda I would like to just start with being able to identify the facts of where we're at um with this seeking of a another referendum um and then I will open it up to the board that's what I was going to say I just want to talk about procedures so uh you're going to talk and then we'll talk and then um we will have opportunities for three-minute um responses from the uh from the public um it won't be a back and forth it will just be the same format that we usually use I think who's gonna so um we held we put the referendum question on the ballot um and for the November election the referendum failed so we have a couple different options for the board to consider and seeking another referendum down the road We cannot put it on the May 2023 ballot because not enough days would have passed we are able to put it on the November 2023 ballot because legally if 350 days pass we would be able to get a petition sign and get 500 signatures between community members and employees to put it on that ballot uh Brown County specifically for the November 2023 election there is not an election there is nothing that would be on a ballot if Brown County Schools chooses to put a question on the ballot it causes the county to hold a special election legally road kind of schools would be required to pay for that election because we're requesting to hold the election essentially um so that is an option we can wait 700 days and not have to get a petition and at that very next election we would be able to seek it just like we were in November and not have to pay for it that would put us at the November thank you May 20 and 24. thank you um we cannot do it in May 2023 we can pay for an election in November of 2023 where we can wait the 700 days and not pay and have it on the May 2024 those are the facts and moving forward of seeking another representative and I will open it up to the board for discussion all right I did and do support the referendum order on the CRC The Early Childhood Center and staff salaries the Indiana legislators have mandate to a minimum to which they do not fully fund with the student tuition that we received talking about elevating up to sixty thousand dollars it's not the issued about teacher's salary I think teacher shouldn't be getting paid for what they do it's what is being dictated and not funded we need to be able to retain and recruit excellent teachers for our students to achieve excellence in their education in order to allow the greatest opportunity for success in whatever future Journey they choose in life we do have a pack available on the yes back basically that was working with on the referendum and providing education and providing style signs and opportunities to communicate with the community members and I make the presumption although we have not got to make a decision that he would be available to you that again we cannot do it within the school system by all we have to be outside of the school system to do those kind of activities that's just a general statement that um the only thing I've watched I I don't think we should pay to have a special election I think we should wait to look or put it on the ballot for that um this is my second meeting and uh so far you know sometimes you debugging sometimes in the windshield and right now or the bugs and the way it looks to me you know it from what I've seen so far the board is to bring me up to speed Emily's working her tail off you know I don't see any major catastrophe's coming but I mean we lost the referendum you know it's gotten I think I can't make it a fuzzy feeling anymore that's just the way it is right now but what I've seen so far you know there's some strategy going in I've been impressed with so far and that's what we've got to go with and I kind of agree with the board too on the the uh a new vote I think that would be um very Troublesome for us and uh you know it's just something that want to deal with I feel like I'm 24 20 24.
um yes sir I'd just like to add um tonight we decided the next planning committee meeting reviewing the capital projects is February the 8th um and it's going to be a virtual meeting at 6 30 p.m would that be of the whole or is that just a uh just of the planning committee planning committee okay fantastic thank you um all right I think I've run out of things to say here so um oh uh comments yes I just have a because my Polar Plunge partner is not here but he would support the you know we highly encourage that any other boardmans we would like to join the team I know Dr Solon wants to do so this year um Southington had a really major turnout and I'm kind of competitive so if we can I've emailed all the Cheshire faculty and we have a donation page that's up and running I haven't checked it since it started last Friday but and I there are many leapers will call them ready to go including football um yeah right uh the water if you the water is about waist high for me so it's not that real deep yeah uh Tim go ahead thanks yeah I should have mentioned this before this is probably for event I have a secret inside source at Norton school and she told me today that none of the kids get hot lunch anymore I asked her about it because we stopped doing yeah we started paying for meals this week I think yep and so just something to have on your radar if that is a significant thing I mean I didn't ask her about numbers but she said she noticed everybody went from hot lunch to take home meals in some way so just have that be aware of that oh if there is something there I don't know well aware that the Food Service um sales are way down this week okay yeah and was expected is just a question of how far down and so it'll take some time to build back up but no doubt that we are serving less breakfast and less lunches okay you know since the um families have to begin paying again gotcha okay yeah thank you thank you that's a good a good reminder that I have to put money into my son's account uh do that tonight oh you'll be getting that reminder tomorrow because it is it is pizza Friday right so that's usually a popular one at least for my son so sales went down and outstanding balances went up from parents so those reminders going out tomorrow um okay any other points of personal privilege seeing none uh motion to adjourn Tim second come on all right there we go all in favor all right we are adjourned thank you
so around that 27. so now with the graduating classes of 757 going out this year and 952 coming in as ninth grade we'll go easy math again we'll take 200 200 freshmen coming in taking seven classes is 1400 classes they need to take or 10.7 teachers that mean it's a short version request foreign luckily by the two years after that I did not get much of an increase in time remember correctly it was like a zero a three and a zero when it comes to the number of teachers last year we were lucky enough we had to be attained by the time we were done stop Supply around 15 to 16 teachers I mean absolutely needed last year so we got that so we took a big chunk out of that 29 that we had requested from there so that leaves us with what we're asking for at the high school again as this comes and that's the numbers that we know about superintendo Wilson discuss unbudgeted numbers another problem we've had is between if anybody you know kids at the high school when we start registration coming up it's in March so when we go through we build our schedule off of student requests from there we build our schedule CMD sections we have with the ftes and see what we can do we make our budget become there's so many teachers we got there's so many classes you can get great we felt very comfortable with what we were running this year and then from July 1st to September class started we had a number of like 141 students ago so if you do that and your new registers that committed 141 times out by seven classes you're in the same math that we were before and that leads to another problem of something superintendent Lawson actually which is overages so now I have no more seats in art class none whatsoever so I have to come here and try to joke superintendent walsen as best I can to get them in a good mood before I go oh by the way I need three sections of art to fill these requirements because of the 25 we do not have a lot of room in our schedules for students to take six classes and it was 21 it was a lot of music you could almost graduate as a junior if you did it right now with the 25 it means our seniors who are typically used to not taking the full load so they can go get jobs and earn you know our seniors do that right not to take a full circle that is and wiped out a little bit so they're taking more classes and we're trying to get them through so we go back and I say I need an art class it's not enough to hire a full-time teacher I mean I don't need 100 I love the 130 seats but I think this role for myself for the building and the community very serious about making a budget in my ass is I don't just say hey Dan feels like we're running another art section let's do it there's always something behind it so I'll take this very serious when we do it but sometimes we have to come and ask for it this year we are running 53 overages so there's 53 teachers who are teaching an extra class right now at Danbury High School they are compensated for that uh but it leads to another problem it's the amount of work a teacher can do because now they went from 130 students to about 150.
can you tell me exactly how many families that is but we can we can get that information for you thank you okay I see President you have the board thank you president Trump um so thank you for the report um and for your clarification to my earlier question uh I have I guess overall to start I think I've talked about this before but just to put my comment in context for me the past several years has been we've dedicated a lot of time energy effort heart and soul to establishing to first cleaning up some stuff we needed to clean up and really establishing a foundation for the needs of the students of this district and when I talk about that I'm talking about our SEL racial Equity um all the different after school and summer like all the different supports that we put in even nutrition um the things that we've done kind of outside of the academic realm even though it's connected but the things we've done to provide a foundation of support for our families such that they can focus on academics and for me as we venture into this you know a new four-year term or two-year term for some board members here and just kind of hopefully turn a page into another phase in my mind I've talked about before the my desire to and I think I hear it reflected here kind of re-engage in the the thought of our primary charge I think which is as an academic institution and focusing on academic outcomes for our students and I heard um some one of you um one of you mentioned in the presentation the word accountability I think it's as in reference to like the accountability skills and that word is something that I'm really kind of wanting to focus on as we move forward here um you know where all of us every single one of us are accountable to everything that happens here in the district and academics is certainly again I mean charge and so what I um with that in mind what I kind of am just was thinking about um going back to our strategic plan that we that was developed with stakeholders and board and everybody um and kind of what we have stated as our hypothesis of how we are going to have impact on our academic outcomes which is kind of like the big circle if you anybody remembers a graphic of the Strategic plan there's a big circle and what we have said is that if we focus on these three pillars or these three Focus areas that will lead to academic outcomes or or improved or enhanced which will lead to better prepared students to compete in a in a diverse world something along those lines um and so those three areas being Early Education um whole family focus and um the Dual language or language opportunity for for learning language so so when I think about our academic performance we stated that if we focus on those three things it will translate eventually to outcomes and so when we in going forward not only for the purpose of the reports although I would kind of like to see it to the extent possible in the reports because I know in the reports that we get we see um the like some of the outcomes and we see some of the supports like I forgot how it's worded in the report but the things that we've done what I would like to see um in the reports but also as part of the work and I'm assuming that it is kind of happening from what I'm hearing is the more specific and direct connection to our efforts and how we think that will translate to academic outcomes so like if we invest you know if our numbers are low for a particular population or a particular indicator they were saying okay well we're dedicating X Y and Z to that then to the next level how are we saying that that will impact academic outcomes you know how what are we measuring and these will need to necessarily be the exactly the answer but just off the top of my head what are we measuring what's the timeline what will we do if there does look to be a correlation between the efforts and the outcomes what will we do if there doesn't seem to be a correlation so just I think you know keeping in mind that word of accountability for myself staff everyone like how do we how do we step up our game basically and take it to the next level we've got the foundation we're beginning this Baseline how do we begin to frame the work to take it to the next level up to put that little extra so that we can begin to start seeing you know is our hypothesis correct by focusing on these three areas and providing these supports will that translate to academic outcomes if not how do we you know use those pdsa Cycles along the way to adjust um and as needed or as the data and as the results show um which is obviously support what's working and fix or eliminate what's not so um I hope that wasn't too convoluted but those are my kind of thoughts in general about how we move forward it's not specific about the dashboard or the reporting or the scores like I know it's been a difficult time and we're kind of getting our feet back on the ground my comments are just more big picture and looking forward so I appreciate the work and I hope you know that some of my thoughts can be incorporated into the work and the rest of my colleagues obviously they're whatever thoughts they may have thank you alrighty uh vice president Herrera loera thank you and congratulations Dr Tara Bickford and for your accomplishment that's great um also adds value to our district so thank you so much for being brave and doing that um thank you for the information and my comments questions maybe more comments are a long uh trustee geranos um you know thank you for the presentation and the updates on the dashboard right it is what it is we all know our students have been struggling more these past two three years and that's great that the state is giving us uh kind of an opportunity to start with the new Baseline so um thank you for the updates and I think just in general um you know as a trustee of the school district um and with you all you know Barbara I loved hearing the fact that you were like not just these students but all our students right that all our students events are average or better right is what we want um and so with that um and you know not necessarily [Applause] um because I know you all have a lot of work to do and you're all doing a great job and we're implementing new things and as trustee you know said like shifting and seeing if we focus here will it have an effect um so I think also just as a school district it might be a good time to look and see how are our students doing right with what we've implemented we know at least within our district we have our own data we know how our students are doing um possibly maybe even comparing it to four years ago I don't know three years ago uh but where are we at right now and we know that there's still students that are struggling um and so what are we doing toward that goal right Barb that everyone is is doing well not having to wait for this dashboard not you know um having to wait to compare and I know if you're doing this we're continuing to continuously but I think like trustee harano mentioned that accountability piece right like um we know there's a lot of interventions there's a lot of after school programs there's we're we're doing a lot are they working are they like you know going deeper right and like if the kids are still getting F's then obviously it's not working so does it matter if we continue to pass the you know um and approve the the monies right on a yearly basis for the same program maybe maybe not but I think you know shifting from like our every year checking the box and going is it working where are our students what's the numbers what are they telling us I know it's a lot of work I know you all have a lot to do already but I think you know focusing and zuring more into that will prevent a lot of other things that maybe we spend time doing and it's just continuing to do the work that we are all either hired or elected to do right on behalf of our children um and our constituents here at Alum Rock so thank you that's all it's just wondering if I could share the slides a quick second yes Miss Bickford could you put the slides up again okay so uh with that I sort of Quintero you have floor and then proving that sure yeah yes yes this is so if you could go back to the one on different so just I wanted to share that as we're beginning our work on differentiate assistance yes we are differentiate assistants for are those two designated subgroups but as we've begun our work we've already met twice on this work since Friday is really even though it's those designated groups we want to be able to make sure that we're looking at all students and where we need to support better in these areas and looking at cross-reference on cert if there's certain sites certain areas that have more that need more support so again to to kind of answer your question is we really are using that as a jump off point but we are going to be looking at in a broader picture and we have already begun this work also with our site leaders in two different meetings for them to also start digging into their pieces on what what they need to do to support their students better in relation to all of these and then one more tariff you could go back to the slide for the Fab Five so um kind of back to the idea of looking at all students and tying in the Strategic plan this here is a been was a work in progress it was something that we started last year we dug into it with our site leaders we did research we looked at what are those components in order to really make sure that we can start bringing back the instruction um the way we had it pre-pandemic and really starting to look at what are those systems in place to make sure that our students are all successful and built into these as we're building them out and really coming to consensus and agreements on what what do each one of these mean for the district we are building in the elements of the Strategic plan as we're cross-referencing the Strategic plan our lcat plan and what we're looking on to provide for all our students on a daily basis in the classroom so that they could all be successful when they leave Ellen Rock okay thank you did you have a question um no no questions just comments thank you for the presentation um I don't want to be labor what's already been said and I completely Echo what my colleagues have already spoken said um I do want to underscore the point that it and I'm very appreciative of the fact that we were able to reset in that we have been able to start a new Baseline uh because it would have been a completely disservice to everyone children Educators to try to go ahead and make a comparison to such a different time such a unique situation now unless you've been in the classroom you wouldn't understand and so many people were out there attack and they've been attacking the state superintendent Public Instruction um without having ever set one without ever having said well one day as an educator into the classroom and I I I'm I'm at the college level and I observed the DraStic change that took place as a result of of the pandemic lockdowns everything and to have tried to go ahead and uh it you know I don't want to deliver the appointment at the point I'm trying to make is for the public because there are folks out there who criticized and I want to you know make sure that the that we underscore the importance of having to reset and everything and coming up with a new Baseline so that it makes it so that it is an apples and Apple's comparison apples apples after the pandemic and everything that took place and then the damage that it didn't to the children um so I just those were my those were my two cents with regard to and I as I mentioned already I echoed the sentiment that's already been expressed by my colleagues hey Christy Chavez um bless you Tara um last night I was having the conversation on our 101 with Dr Bauer and I was asking her you know what do we need to you know what do you need from us trustees in order to help the learning and um if there's any ideas that you know Miss Barbara or Miss Tara thinking outside the box or sometimes when I go to other um districts other counties I asked them what was the most efficient thing that you guys did to that didn't cost much to turn things around in that school and I got a lot of different feedbacks and a lot of it was very positive so maybe something like that later on can be discussed and you know looked into um and thank you for the presentation and all the time and effort that you guys have been putting in thank you okay any further comments some questions from members of the board okay seeing them I will finish with with my comments on this thank you so much uh Miss Campbell and uh Dr Bickford and I want to congratulate Dr Bickford on uh on uh earning her doctoral degree and it's quite an achievement and you know that's a lot of work too so I can you know uh much congratulations on on your achievement uh you know I'll just say this because I I'm a guidance counselor for a living uh you know this report is a baseline report you know uh it gives us an idea of uh what you know where our children are at at this point in time uh keeping in mind that uh once in a lifetime and hopefully once in a lifetime situation has occurred uh you know we you know uh you know I work with young adults on a daily basis and uh you know uh the the pandemic and its effect on education is still having an effect that uh you know I and many of my colleagues are still trying to figure out you know you know even as we approach uh you know normality here and um you know if we're having these issues with we're seeing these issues with young adults you know I could you know at least you know like in a heart you know I mean I know that there are issues as you know uh the effects that the pandemic had on uh on our our kids who are much younger uh affected them and a much uh how you say uh developmental stage in their uh uh educational life and so you know it's going to take I I want to say that I acknowledge that it's going to take some time to untangle all this right uh we we may have we may have survived the rocky Lifeboat trip on onto dry land I like Gilligan but uh you know now that we're on dry land you know uh rebuilding is a challenge and you know this gives us a snapshot at what what what we need to rebuild and also some of the challenges with rebuilding itself and I'm looking at you know the the paper version of the slide and you know approximately three quarters of our children are socially economically disadvantaged so it's sort of like uh the analogy would be uh before we could field them on on the Gridiron to play play ball there's a lot of training that we're going to have to do before our children and I have all the confidence that they can play ball but there's there's a lot of preparation that has to be done to get our children to that point so uh you know I thank you for how you say this midterm report card up on about how how you know how we're doing so far as we return the in-person instruction and I'm you know pleased to say in this thing that you know uh we are having green shoots of recovery uh you know if the public has not read the San Jose Spotlight article our district has you know as reflected in your report our district has made gains in terms of uh English Learners reclassification and given uh you know given the sizable population of English Learners in our district that's that's key to future success you know uh language acquisition um is necessary for success in the social sciences the mathematics and the Sciences so you know I you know I take this as you know uh as as an indicator of what we need to do going forward and you know and you know I would like to say that you know my hope is that you know uh you know we stay on up you know we we uh begin the work and we implement the work to get our children to where we need to be uh you know all the while understanding that uh you know uh My Hope Is that we you know that that we we we make we stay on an improvement Trend and and in full cognizance of the fact that uh you know progress is is it's not as straight as Highway 680 although as much as I would like it to be like you know as straight as the highway you know uh young minds uh you know there are a lot of there are a lot of things that goes on in the lives of our kids and their families and you know we we have no control over that but again we we do what we do we we have what we we have the information that uh you know where we need to rebuild and so on so with that I thank you for the report and also you know and uh you know I you know want to assure you of my support and uh what whatever needs to be done to um to get our children where they need to be thank you thank you very much okay okay so with that we conclude item 3.02 uh we will move on to uh I am 3.03 the posthumous recognition of Mr Bud joba's friend of Alum Rock Amigo de Alum Rock for 37 years of service to this District including time as principal of Lindale Elementary a superintendent now or do we have a member of the family I believe we were able to reach his son and I don't know if he marivel I don't know if he's in the audience so that he can be moved into the I don't see him here Dr Barn the meeting we invited and he said he was going to be here but for president if you want to proceed uh let's stay here oh he's not here he's not here okay we invited him he said he was going to be here but Maribel talked to him and he she doesn't see him in the audience okay uh okay so uh uh let's see here I would like to you know take this opportunity to uh present to Mr Bud job uh you know uh Amigo the Alum Rock friend of Alum Rock award in honor of his 37 year career here with our Jets good including time is uh Lindale Elementary uh he certainly made a difference in the lives of many students in the professional lives of many of our teachers uh quite a few of whom are still teaching yeah you know it's a lot of commitment to uh staying in education for this you know for such a extended period of time and uh you know do do you know to see Alum Rock transition from you know the the last years of a rural District into an urban District into uh shape the future of so many children uh we are all indebted indebted to Mr Bud Joe for his distinguished service to our children and to our family so it is with pride that on behalf of the board I present uh posthumous recognition of Mr job or everything he's done for Alan rock thank you very much thank you okay so with that I'll take public comment on item 3.03 if there's so Daniel is there any public comment on item 3.03 board present there is one with speaker yes Jocelyn Murs oh you have one minute please unmute yourself you're when you begin speaking the time will work again thank you I want to thank board president and whoever else was involved in awarding this friends of Alum Rock award in honor of Bud Jobe who was my former principal at Lindale Elementary for many years I have no doubt that it will be sincerely appreciated by his family I attended the memorial service for Bud back in December and it was evident by the number of many Alum Rock employees that were in attendance as well as president board president Pham how much he was respected and loved by all who worked with him so again thank you so much it means a lot not only to his biological family but to his Lindale family thank you Daniel or president there are no more speakers okay uh seeing the further public comment any comments or comments or comments from members of the board all righty stay email for the comment from members of the board we'll move on to item 3.04 recognition of Dr George Castro as a friend of Alum Rock Amigo de Alan Rockford has long contribution to our Science Education including the Mesa program and George middle school science lab uh so uh I you know I recently learned that Dr Castro is suffering from a terminal illness um you know uh this uh incredible scientist I believe was it one of the first Latino Latino scientists uh you know certainly has made an impact on many many lines uh not just an Alum Rock but regionally and nationally uh you know Dr Castro took time out of you know his life to uh strengthen Science Education and rock I know so uh when I worked for assemblyman kudo uh you know Dr Ramon Martinez who was at the time you know and eight to accept them and assemblyman go to we took a visit out to Dr Castro's lab out out at George middle school and uh you know his vigorous efforts ensured it you know our children have access to expensive you know expensive lab equipment that would you know be seen it you know that would be readily available at uh uh you know um more affluent public schools and Dr Casper wrote the grants and did the law being in order to bring that to our children and I also remember during my time and uh you know my involvement with the Santa Clara Valley open space Authority you know he he pursued a grant at George Middle School to which I assisted and helped push through to establish a living Garden at you know at George to complement you know uh you know to further enhance uh the lab science that you know he he promoted you know as a way of giving our kids uh you know Pathways to the Future and opportunities that you know that would you know uh that would not be found in other places and in so doing uh enriched the lives of so many children here in Alum Rock and in The Wider east side of San Jose so uh it is with great pleasure you know that uh on behalf of the board I present to Dr George Castro the Amigo de Alum Rock friend of Alum Rock award for his wrong contribution to Science Education the Mesa program and the George middle school science labs so uh at this time do we have any comments from I mean I would like to open item 3.04 to the public uh Daniel is there any public comment on item 3.04 yes for president our first speaker is Dr Tara Bickford you have one minute please unmute yourself when you begin speaking the timer will begin thank you I just wanted to um so I worked with him through Joseph George over the years and he was he is such an amazing human and brought so much um amazing support to our students at George so I just appreciate this gesture from the board to Dr Castro and his amazing and gracious amount of work to the community and the students over the years at George and the Alum Rock Community thank you thank you so much Daniel any for the public comment fourth president there are currently no more speakers okay seeing now for the Republic comment is there any comment from members of the board I see clerk Quintero yeah um appreciative of the uh our recognition has been given to Dr Castro um I think Dr Castro if you want to could have set an ivory Tower and done his thing and lived very comfortably without ever having to worry about it kids out here in East San Jose learn about science but instead he chose to roll up his sleeves he chose to go to those committee meetings and sit through hours of conversations with all kinds of people and more importantly you chose to go out there and put in the work to bring in the resources because every single meeting you'd go to he'd be talking about him chasing after this crap I'm going after that Grant in order to bring in the resources to be able to pursue his passion which was to share a science with uh future Generations which he did and so I think he's an example to everyone not just um the doctors and phds or anybody else there any example to everyone about the importance of rolling up her sleeves getting out there and giving back um he obviously had a huge passion so it overtook significant amount of his life um if everybody did just a little bit of what Dr Castro did would be in a way better place for comments members of the board all right uh board members okay okay so uh trustee Chavez um I really like seeing that they're honoring uh Dr Castro at the same time there's so many others in the Alum Rock um that have contributed so much and continue to contribute and thank you all for having the the heart to give back to this district and to the children thank you amen superintendent Bauer I am this this particular recognition hits home tremendously because I'm gonna speak from somebody who met Dr Castro when I was teaching first grade in a dual immersion program in Adams Elementary in San Antonio Texas as part of the Society of Chicanos and Native Americans in the Sciences um as a teacher he was an Inc he was a mem he was a he is a founding member of that Society and he worked tirelessly to include teachers in the conversation with what we call real life scientists so that's the reason I ended up meeting him never in a million years in 1994 do the math ever thinking that I was going to end up working with him directly as the principal in Fisher Middle School and the multiple roles that I had as the district office educator and as a superintendent so uh Alum Rock we have a treasure amongst us and I'm calling it out from the national level uh he was a tremendous man that really was is committed to um furthering the um the opportunity for our children to be in places where for whatever reason they're not allowed to be and uh what the work that he has done he is a true multiplier this is not only happening in our community it happened at the national level I'm a product of that um when I found out that you know we were moving to San Jose California he was one of the first people that I called he took my call even though I was just a lowly bilingual teacher and I don't say that disrespectfully I'm just saying you know when when uh trustee Quintero talks about he could have been in the Ivory Tower and he could have chosen to stay also in Industry because that's how he started he was a a big executive in one of the tech companies and he could have chosen to leave that life but he chose to really come back to the community and not only the immediate community of Chicanos and Native Americans in the San Jose area but throughout the nation so for that I know Dr Castro you're going to be listening to this for that from the bottom of my heart I forever forever thank you for the efforts that you did to bring Educators into that conversation so that our children the most important treasure that we have have an opportunity to compete for those careers in the stem uh Arena and thank you because that inspiration allow Alum Rock to bring the mess up program to every single middle school thank you for that inspiration we made it we did it that was the first conversation you and I had when I was physically here in San Jose it happened and we have now in your honor also develop Ocala steam Academy and Ryan steam Academy because of that tremendous Dedication that you had to inspire and Mentor a coach people like me thank you okay thank you so much so with that said we move on to item 3.05 January is School Board recognition month as a time to recognize the hard-working board members and educate the public about the important role that school boards play in schools and communities so this is um a moment for the whole community of Alum Rock and I'm sorry to take to I think is it okay for me I'm sorry because honor this fantastic team and we're gonna compare Apples to Apples tonight you have an important president can help us be the you know show the public what you are getting tonight as a very very small token of appreciation for the very thankless work that you guys do I know that you guys are the ones that get the complaints you guys are the ones that have a face in the community um but I want to thank you because no amount of money or words that I'm able to provide to you really uh highlight the tremendous job that you do for the kids in Alum Rock so thank you from the bottom of my heart to each and every one of you you have turned the district around thank you for the support uh you will I will read later on another person that wants to thank you um you have done Europe classa and thank you for everything that you do okay uh thank you so with that I'll open item 3.05 to public comment uh Daniel is there any uh members of the public pushing the comment report president there are currently no speakers okay saying no further uh comment from the public any comments from members of the board yeah okay complaints were complaints okay now thank you for the students it's beautiful we appreciate the the recognition and you know I think it's you know this is an Alum Rock team an Alum Rock family I appreciate the recognition as individual board members but I looked you know I think that this is a concerted effort by a large group of people so really every single person should get one but thank you for the recognition yeah so with that we move on to part four comments and Communications item 4.01 lmrock administrators Association okay hello yes I see Miss Martinez yes you have the floor thank you good evening Board of Trustees Dr Bauer Alan Rock staff and the Alum Rock Community my name is Maria Martinez and I am a principal on special assignment supporting academic services and I am also the past president of the Alum Rock administrators Association I want to start off by wishing each of you a wonderful National School Board month we appreciate your dedication and services to our students and community it is a privilege to speak tonight to represent a group of vibrant Educators and administrators who work tremendously hard in service to our schools and community before I offer School site and Department updates the Alum Rock administrators Association wants to recognize the following administrators who have been nominated by colleagues to represent our district at the AXA Region 8 Awards we wish them luck we have for Middle School administrator Tracy leathers for elementary school administrator Miss Kristen Burt the co-administrator at Middle School level is Jose Cortes the human resources administrator is Cesar to Rico the special education administrator is Tony Colona the business administrator is Teresa langner and in student services we have Jesus arajo for curriculum and instruction the assistant superintendent of instructional Services Miss Barbara Campbell has been nominated in technology Mr Daniel Pena has been nominated and the retired administrator nominee is Mr Brian Schmidt we are also forwarding the names of Dr Diana vallesteros for the Marcus Foster award and Dr Anya artillas for the valuing diversity award so congratulations to all of those nominees that will be representing Alum Roth now moving on to some wonderful things that are happening in our schools and various departments at Cassell Elementary they had wonderful holiday program that was a huge success and also many various sites had spirit days for each Friday in December and it was just a really wonderful way for the community to connect with each other uh Cassell staff and parents are looking forward to the two parent nights this month uh January 19th they're hosting a paranite on communication with the school and on January 30th they are hosting a parent night on everything there is to know about the lpac our parent group is assisting in planning their next family engagement event as well and in February they'll be having their first family Valentine's Day dance at the Cesar Chavez Early Learning Center the teachers have had very special activities for the students in their classrooms before the holiday break it really helps put everyone in the spirit and preschool teachers had lunch with families and there was a musical performance as well students and teachers have come back from the holidays rested and ready to start the new year they all had wonderful stories to share about the rain that started this year and our TK and Kinder students were very thrilled to go on the bus to see Palo Alto children's theater to see a live performance of a Very Hungry Caterpillar they are very excited so they have um a wonderful time playing and eating lunch with their friends in TK and Kinder and that's for the preschoolers at Dorset Elementary they had a door decorating contest along with spirit week before the holiday break and on uh the 17th the school spelling bee was held so classes could tune in to support the students and participate in person the students did a fantastic job and the dorsa Eagles are excited to participate in the district-wide spelling bee and they are also going to be having a final raft visit on the 25th with the fourth and fifth graders and Sky School yoga will be visiting in January to promote social emotional learning strategies at Lindale Elementary some recent highlights include that autism students went to Pizza My Heart on a field trip where they learned to make their own pizzas and enjoyed them with their classmates and parents also at Lindale they celebrated their reclassified fluent English proficient students with certificates a steam toy and breakfast with the principal students and teachers and parents were in attendance also at Lindale the Assistance League volunteers at Lindale brought the readers and leaders program where retired teacher volunteers do read-alouds for the students and they also donate twice a year in addition to also donating uniforms and jackets at Russo mcentee Academy Russo's students enjoyed bringing in the holiday season with a concert and also fourth and fifth grade classes went to Foothill College to see a physics show on campus all of the students and teachers received a t-shirt from Foothill College also they are continuing with their classes from science the scientists and the students in third through fifth grade are learning about water erosion and students in TK through Kinder are receiving lessons from the outdoor coordinators and learning about animal habitats in our middle schools at Shepherd they are so excited to have brought back field trips and the seventh graders are headed to the Tech Museum in downtown tomorrow and the 8th graders are headed to Alcatraz in March uh from independent studies they are hosting their virtual spelling bee on January 26th and they're also partnering with rap to host grade level spring virtual steam nights as well independent studies is continuing its monthly career day series connecting students in class learning to real-world experiences and career choices and experiences within our various departments in The District academic Services has been working with site leaders to do data Dives to help inform them on their next steps for their school plans there have also been a variety of different English professional developments and students and teachers are preparing for the lpac which is our English learner proficiency test and the window for that opens on February 1st those are all of the announcements I have to make this evening thank you very much for your time okay thank you Miss Martinez we moved to item 4.0 for the teamsters uh more president I don't know if we have anybody from the teamsters uh Tom who was not able to make it tonight Maribel I don't know if anybody has raised their hand no I don't see anybody okay uh seeing no member of the teamsters I'm moving on to item 4.03 the California School Employees Association um so Sharon Fontaine wouldn't be able to join us tonight but is it okay for me to read her message to the board she is saying to the board Happy New Year I apologize for not being there tonight however I have read the book the board book and want to say I am so happy to see the recognition of Mr job as an accountant for the district I had the pleasure of working with bud and he truly was one of the most prepared principles when it came to the his school budget and was such a pleasure to work with I am now so very happy whenever I read those quote notice of completions unquote that appear in the book that means that the work is getting done and the necessary improvements are being finished at the school sites congratulations on National School Board recognition month thank you all for your time effort and heart you put into the Alum Rock School District always Sharon Fontaine CSEA Chapter president all right thank you so much uh we you know we we look forward to seeing you here next month uh and thank you for the kind words uh so with that we move to item 4.04 Alum Rock Educators Association okay we see you Jocelyn the floor is yours thank you good evening and again Happy New Year to everyone 2023 certainly made a grand entrance bringing with it the heavy rains thunderstorms floods and power outages throughout our golden state I want to give a huge shout out to all of our students teachers and admins who survive the cold dark and wet classrooms at Joseph George and Cureton schools when they had no electricity they had to keep the classroom doors open for any light to come in as well as for air circulation due to covid because there was no power there were no telephones working and no internet for communication I heard that many of the portable radios did not work because the batteries were dead many of the people had to drive for Miles through the storms that downed trees and power lines to get to school the news media and National Weather Service was advising people in highly affected areas to stay home unless they had to flee to Higher Ground some of our teachers actually found it impossible to make the commute where roads were washed out or covered in mudslides I questioned the decision for the schools to remain open at the time I know that the schools by my house when the power went out they closed that day I know that it's clearly a difficult decision that you had to make which is the better choice leaving the schools open with no power or closing I'm glad that it was your decision and not mine um but fortunately as far as I'm aware we made it through those days without any major incidents hopefully though I would like to think that we learned from these experiences and maybe can become even better prepared if it was to happen again in the future some of the ideas might include providing lanterns in the classrooms for light I know that um some of those classrooms can get in very dark which does can be a safety issue if somebody was to fall and get hurt or run into something um possibly having blankets available I know that it was they were very cold days and without heat it those rooms get really cold and also having it um supply of batteries on hand for the portable radios or at least to make sure every so often that they are in working condition so that um communication with the administration is possible in the event of an emergency or if need be um I would like to thank Dr Bauer for reimbursing sick days to several of our teachers who were literally stuck at home with no possible way to get to school I mean I know two of them had uh tree that had come down in front of their complex so they could not get out of their driveway at all and had no power for days so thank you for that um moving on the area and districts bargaining teams has have solidified dates for negotiating our reopeners to begin in a couple of weeks after the great news that we got from the state about the expected Cola along with the district's current reserves being about more than 10 times above the necessary amount last I looked I would expect that this bargaining should wrap up quickly if our shared goals are to recruit and retain highly qualified Educators to our district we've had a really difficult time doing so over the last five years in fact we have positions remaining unfilled as we approach the last half of this school year well there is definitely a shortage of people choosing to go into teaching anymore in general it is imperative that we are competitive in what we offer for those who are looking for a teaching job us or they're going to um because I know that they won't have a hard time finding one elsewhere it's time that we raise our offerings to become more attractive than the surrounding districts if you hope to increase enrollment we must also have teachers in place to provide the service to the students so hopefully it will be um uh quick and easy process that we can come to a fair and Equitable conclusion that will do good by all um I would also like to thank each of you for the give my appreciation on behalf of area for the work that you do in this um School Board month uh I know what you do is not an easy job it's in fact an incredibly difficult one um you have many decisions to make and oftentimes we don't agree on what those what the decision should be but I do respect each of you for the work that you do and the time that you put into it and know that you I know that you're not doing it for the certainly not for the monetary benefits but doing it for the um hopefully for the the students in the community which includes everyone and the teachers the admin the parents the and of course the students so thank you and that's it for tonight all right thank you so much Jocelyn so I am 4.05 Dr Bauer that was not planned thank you everybody and I I want to call Jocelyn thank you for everybody all teachers and students that showed up in a very very uh unique week last week but I also uh want to shout out um to our classified staff that allow us to make that happen as well um we had Teamsters in the middle of the rain trying their best to address some of these challenges uh I want to thank our mot Department um to you know thanks to their perseverance you know we were able to to bring back uh the power in curiton uh and it didn't become you know a longer time um we had staff and thank you Teresa Smith principal Cureton who stay with Arturo Vasquez from our mot Department till midnight on Wednesday night until the cruise for that were reconnecting power for to the school until the job was done so as you know last Wednesday it was also rainy and it was also blustery um but that happened and so thank you to both of them for taking you know for doing that on behalf of our kids thank you to every admin thank you to every office assistant Community liaison everybody who together we weathered the storm literally speaking and we were able to keep continue education in Alum Rock uh Jocelyn is absolutely correct this is not an easy decision however all decisions are made knowing that safety for everybody is first so thank you everybody for those uh staff members teachers classified who went above and beyond the Call of Duty and they were able to make it to their classrooms thank you from the bottom of my heart because we were able to provide schooling for our students if you notice during the Panorama survey our children say one of the most important things they get is there food in the school so please remember that sometimes we make when we make those decisions we make those decisions considering our families in the kinds of services that we provide for our students I happen to witness a grandma uh showing up in one of our schools um really needing you know to leave her child in school because her mom was working and Grandma was taking care of three little ones so those are the families that we serve they uh they depend on the school for a lot of things and so as long as it's safe to be in school we're going to continue to be in school I thank all those people who sent me emails with ideas I really thank you Jocelyn some of the things that you mentioned are certainly worth considering and I will follow up on that and with an open mind whoever wants to send me an email or set up a conversation with me I definitely am open to suggestions we can always improve that if there's always room for improvement but from the bottom of my heart thank you for showing up thank you for allowing us to continue our our business of schooling kids and serving our families and Alum Rock and I wish everyone a very prosperous 2023 and I wish one of these days I'm gonna learn to say Happy New Year in Vietnamese or Cantonese or Mandarin one of these days thank you everybody okay thank you uh so we moved to item 4.06 comments and Communications from members of the board so uh yes I will any member like the volunteer okay Christy you want to go first oh okay I saw your hand whoever you pick carpentero I was going to reserve my comments because it's getting pretty late and we still got the entire agenda to cover but I think it's important to con to recognize folks who stepped up and came out a bunch of different public agencies went ahead and shut down um obviously they have the ability to do so they have the luxury of shutting down Alum Rock because of the uh population that we serve uh folks don't have the ability to just they're out there they're going into construction jobs they're out there working at the local grocery store and they rely on Ellen Rock to make sure that their kids are safe that they're being fed um while they're while they're out there doing their part to keep our society going and so I'm very appreciative for teachers for classified staff for our ministers everybody who worked and moved to ensure that we were able to be the um the support that our community needs during these difficult times uh because people look onto their local school as uh the place that's going to help them out that's going to give them some sense of uh security if we go ahead and shut down and see audios everybody for themselves that's not a good thing and so once again Ellen Rock stepped up and provided the support that the community expects much like we did back uh during the depth of the pandemic when our staff stepped up and we're out there feeding those millions of meals to all of our our family so I just wanted to appreciate each and every one of you uh who uh are out there or part of the Alum Rock family that lent support to our families out here and are you some of the community they were first if you don't mind I'll go um first and most so I want to shut my mouth a little bit but um I also I'm gonna just make a comment about the the ring theme um obviously it's nice to see rain I mean I remember it used to rain like this when I was walking to Ryan and McCollum and like 40 years ago and so it's good to have that back but when it happens um you know it brings with it challenges um and you know we've we've my colleagues and Dr Bob has already spoken to the point of in this community you know if you know anything about Alum Rock you know that that you know our families depend on us to partner with them in the safety and well-being of their children and that you know if the power is out in our schools or in district office or whatever it's out in the home surrounding the area too and many of our students are walking to school or you know they're they're coming and going but there's not nobody's home because parents are out working and doing their thing and so it's imperative that you know we do our best to try to keep our students in these unforeseen um challenging circumstances in a way that provides for their safety and well-being and so I want to thank everybody who did that um in the in these times um and specifically I won't mention any names but I do want to point out I talked you know I continue to talk about accountability um how we can be kind of go the next to the next level and I want to thank one of of our teachers who pointed out to us something that occurred at one of the sites where you know the situation was challenging it's dark it's cold it's wet it's windy all those things are going on and it's challenging for everybody um but there was one of our assistant principals um it's come to our attention kind of put out this message to to the staff which to paraphrase basically says that you know this I won't paraphrase I'll quote it this is a golden opportunity to build and rebuild relationships with your students and so I'm very appreciative of that type of mindset in our schools where we can look at these kinds of situations it's not Alum Rock is not always for the faint of heart sometimes things happen and you know we need to be able to respond um proactively and kind of put a negative into a positive and so to have that mind said that hey the lights are out the iPads are down whatever but let's look at this as a golden opportunity to build our relationships to you know whatever the expertise that each individual teacher or staff member has to do that with their students and within their classroom management structure I just thought that was very profound for me to know that we have staff out there who are probably uncomfortable probably not happy with the situation as everybody but choose to use that as an opportunity to improve to be positive to try to have a positive impact on a specific situation and a long-term um outcome at the same time so then I want to thank that for being pointed out to us and thank um our staff and everyone else who had that mindset because this is just one example of people the people who you know chugged forward chugged ahead or whatever the term is and and you know made the best May eliminate out of the lemons of the past week so thank you to that staff member and everybody else um for for doing what you've done in these rainy wet cold times thank you okay thank you uh vice president Herrero thank you um and I'll Echo that and then just also highlight the resources you know that um we could have been I'm sure there was many schools and districts across the state you know but PG e came as soon as they could and um supported him were here until it was fixed so um you know thank you to everybody um and I just want to highlight I got to go to um you know some of the winter celebrations which were great I know um we haven't had a meeting since so I just wanted to highlight um of course being a parent of Adelante it was great to be there on December 16th it was the day after our meeting um you know we've heard of some of the things happening and it was just great to be in community and see so many children and parents and um the few staff that were there smiling right um and having a great time and singing and dancing and sharing food so um it was just really good to be there so so congratulations to all the staff at all the schools that I know had many many celebrations we know first for all of them it's above and beyond their classroom teaching so thank you to each teacher each staff that take the time to create these important experiences for our students and families um who as we know just helps that emotional connection um and just feeling a part of it included so congratulations to you all congratulations students you all did amazing you know I got to see some presentations and dances and singing um so good job um future stars and you know I I I see a lot of a lot of uh Talent out there um and then again as a parent of an eighth grader you know I know that our grading period just ended right um so congratulations to another grading period for all students staff you know parents um and we and they all start with A's right so we hope that they continue to uh do well um and as a parent you know if you see your students struggling ask for help right as Dr Bauer mentioned um just ask right uh your principals your teachers communicate for the needs of your student you know what your child needs best um stay involved as you are thank you to all our parents we have wonderful parents um and and Guardians stay involved don't be afraid to ask um you know communicate the needs as we're all here to ensure that your child gets what they need in order to be successful not just here in Alum Rock but beyond so and that's it for today thank you president uh Presley Chavez um we were all praying for rain and hoping that the rain would come right so I guess that's where the saying comes in be careful what you ask me but um I uh I truly believe that it was good that the students know that no matter what the weather conditions are that the students must know that the school comes first and that you show up and you're there ready to learn no matter what the circumstances are for example in night in October 17 there was a major earthquake in 1989 on October 18th I took my four children to school there was only one other student their best one of my son's best friend who showed up in the whole school but the thing is is I instilled in my children and that you show up no matter what the conditions are because you're there to learn we're all here for the same reason we want these kids to learn and be there to know that whatever obstacles are there you can get through it in Israel when they have the bombings and there's this they don't shut down the schools they just go on carry on because they know that through education they're gonna have a better life and that's what we're I believe that what we're here for to make sure that the students get educated every opportunity where the license on is or it's not on uh we weren't expecting so much rain but from this comes learning experiences and we'll do better the next time and if it rains again bring it we'll be better prepared thank you okay so with that I will conclude with my remark so I want to start off a Happy New Year to all in Alum Rock uh also uh was it this Sunday will be Lunar New Year we will ring in uh the year of the rabbit or if the Vietnamese variant of the zodiac which would feed the Year of the Cat I will say and of course I will say that in in the February meeting because actually customarily one one says it either on the day or after but so uh you know uh and I guess I will try to say Happy New Year in Spanish uh what is it I want to wish everyone with it uh annual Prospero felicidad I hope that I do close enough what about uh that is Chinese yeah uh you know so you know uh please me so 2023 certainly came in with a huge Splash didn't it uh but I want to thank uh you know thank everyone who who made the last uh three weeks work to the extent possible I think principal Smith of Cureton and our maintenance director Arturo Vasquez for for their work and res you know restoring power to Curtin our mot department for you know keeping as much of our district uh functional in in such severe weather uh you know to have a Year's worth of rain kind of condensed in such a space of time uh you know um you know uh about you know uh a lot of children and All Families depend on the services that our District offers daily and we've seen that during the pandemic and even in uh adverse weather conditions also so uh I you know want the as board president I want to thank from the bottom of my heart you know whatever the role that every one of us does in and in keeping this District functioning uh you know so with that I do I I would like to make one request that the superintendent you know uh to please look into this the status of emergency items in our in our classrooms uh uh you know including batteries also to do what we can to improve the situation going forward again this is about in this isn't you know in improving on our on what we do so that you know next time things come around we you know we can do so better and minimize disruptions and ensure the safest possible learning environment for our children um you know I had uh quite a you know a fun way to start my board presidency so I visiting Goss and Lindale which both of which have special places in memory lane for me is that's where I started you know my educational journey and it was great to see the Christmas Pageant dead aptitude at Goss uh I want to congratulate in particular the aptitude at Goss band he played magnificently that day as well as everyone who uh participated I got to see uh was it one of Alan walk's retired teachers continued to uh continue to volunteer uh Mrs Roman who I had 30 somewhat you know 31 years ago in second grade you know even after she retired she still makes the effort to volunteer twice a week and you know we are all the Richer for her efforts you know in her career as well as um Beyond her career too to see her come back to you know the very the school where she spent her entire career you know she's still trying to make a difference so we you know I thank her for for her efforts and as well as uh all of our teacher volunteers who you know come back to our schools even when they have retired you know uh their experience and uh you know their dedication makes all the difference I want to thank Ryan Elementary for taking up my offer to decorate presti fans's Alan Rock Union School District pre and Christmas in the Park I found the I found a tree downtown originally decorated you know and I you know thank you Ryan for showing showing the rest of San Jose When Alan rock is made up you know we put you know we put in a great effort against all the other schools who put Christmas trees up in Downtown San Jose so it was uh my pleasure to sponsor that out of my own personal funds you know to see that you know we have you know we were represented among the schools uh in San Jose you know and I wanted to say that you know uh 20 you know 2020 I hope that 2023 is a a year of progress a year of new beginnings uh you know as you know uh you know as you know outlined in in the agenda we're we're com we are completing uh we are completing projects we are making tangible progress in improving our facilities and you know and you know it is my hope that this is the start of bigger and better things that come for our district and also I'm super proud to say you know uh the passage of measure s and so uh the road has been Rocky but you know uh the sun is over for a horizon across the hill and you know it you know uh we've still got some work there to do but eventually we will reach the top to him and you know and you know Alum Rock will have you know uh was it our place in the sun too or we will be able to uh you know provide for our children and our families just as well as you know um in school districts in affluent areas and uh let's see here and then on on that note you know uh new you know New Beginnings uh you know I I would like to take this opportunity to uh was it all encouraged uh my fellow colleagues to to talk to each other and to socialize and you know so that we bounced off ideas you know to the extent allowable under the brown act but you know uh you know we want you know we want you know uh a greater openness among ourselves and also to you know uh build relationships so we can get to you know uh get to uh consensus in a way that moves this District forward so with that I'll conclude my comments and uh to move on to uh part five uh superintendent slash board business more discussion and action the board we take action on any item in this section unless it is designated for information only items 5.1 discussion consideration to approve resolution number 22-22-23 authorizing remote virtual teleconference meetings of the boards and District committees subject to the brown act or the period January 20 2023 through February 20 2023.
in addition 15 of those 33 cases we were able to determine very early on that they were not hip cases and therefore resolve them through a preliminary determination finally our hibs trainings and programs for this period for this year you'll see that our programs went up by 30 and our trainings however went down by a substantial amount the largest reason for that is we combine certain groups and committees and meetings so there were less trainings that will pick up a little bit but it wasn't so much that the information wasn't getting to the people we combined a lot of it to try to save time for staff members in the trainings that they received finally we're going to continue communication and professional development for the administration and are building anti-bullying Specialists we're going to review the code of conduct as we usually do throughout the year and how the implementation is being done along with adopting additional restorative justice practices and we're also going to continue to identify Trends in hibs we've been in great shape this year so far they've dropped quite a bit through our efforts from last year and we're hoping to continue that as we move forward are there any questions yeah thank you thank you for the report um there was a there was a couple of things out on social media in the last couple of weeks about outside of school incidents uh mom who took to social media she talked about her son's Nose getting broken a leg getting broken can you explain to the community what the responsibility of the school district is for those children when it's they're not on school grounds um and what we do as a district to enforce the safety of students getting home from our door to their door sure um normally if a situation happens outside of the school we don't discipline on it however if it impacts the educational process of the school if it's being discussed in school if a student doesn't feel safe things like that then it can be dealt with through discipline in addition to that counseling is provided to the student who may have been the victim of that situation along with work with the offenders to try to keep that from happening again um one more question thank you and the other thing is um what do you do with the parent population to encourage them to report first to this the chain of command versus going out on social media and using that as their um their venting block we as a district would much rather the information come to us so we can resolve it before rumors spread and information that may be twisted might get out um I couldn't speak specifically to what Mr Honda is doing at the high school or Miss Gaber Mr Jaeger at the middle schools but we encourage parents to reach out to the administration of the buildings instead of going to social media thank you Mr doctor I wanted that to be heard because there are a lot of people that are confused that they're not going to the right Source where they need to report it so thank you very much the building administrator is always the right person to reach out to any other questions Mr Smith I have a question yes Mr brinsky thank you wanted to know how far the look back period is on the statistics over here for violence vandalism substance in the substance abuse period one 21 20 21 2022 and 2022 2023 is there a comparative related to something like a decade ago if you do a prorated share whatever whatever the population was in the school district at the time and the number of incidents that occurred is it are you aware of it's comparable as long as we have the uh stats of one of the issues that um would have fallen within the last 10 years would have been coveted that skewed a lot of our numbers during that time obviously but for the most part our numbers have been uh pretty much uh steady throughout there have been dips and there have been some uh increases especially when we returned last year but you could see that we're leveling off back to uh more normal now however our hip numbers are a little bit lower than even the historical numbers thank you okay anyone else yes Mr President yeah just one question concerning uh the trainings yes I know you mentioned the number has gone down because you have larger groups so this is the number of trainings does it reflect the same or similar number of participants year over year yes okay so it's just larger groups instead of having two trainings we combined it to one so I think that would resolve that issue okay thank you so much thank you appreciate it crowd is thinned out but the clap is still there I'm Miss kousal aviciro question good evening Commissioners it's a pleasure to be here with you again today um over the last two meetings I've been presenting various forms of state and local data and at the last meeting I did indicate that we have one more assessment that is mandated to be reported out upon uh which I'm going to do but I'm going to keep that super short because I'm here with um the team that makes this all happen for language arts and math so I'm going to have them rise behind me and then each of them is going to have an opportunity just to share some of our really amazing highlights that are going on in our schools to help our students support their learning in the areas of language arts and math K-12 so if MS muda Dr kropenak Mr White and Ms Jaeger could just stand up thank you so much for being here this behind me is kind of the dream team that really helps keep our students moving forward with interesting fun engaging activities programs projects and curriculum to ensure that our students continually improve so let's begin with start strong and District actions start strong assessment is a new assessment that we're hoping is going to go away but right now it is a mandated assessment upon which we need to report in 2020 during the covid lockdown we were not able to give the NJ SLA assessments which are federally mandated the federal government gave a waiver to all states not to have to give such assessments due to lockdown in 2021 the federal government wanted us to give assessments again instead New Jersey pushed or promoted the start strong assessment in September of 2021 and that was in lieu of the spring njsla from 2021 however then we were giving njsla again in 2022 which is information that I shared with you previously the start strong should have gone away but the doe decided that some districts did not have robust local programs and therefore everyone should give start strong as well at the beginning of the year to help guide instruction however thanks to these amazing people behind me working with their teams of teachers we already had great local data that helped us adjust our curriculum and instruction to support our students in the area where they needed it um so I'm just going to quickly share with you start strong was meant as a standards-based assistance for our teachers to help Drive instruction but it does not replace local data and we really relied more on our local data start strong is supposed to be based on a subset of the previous year's standards these were very short assessments and the results Were Meant to tell us whether students needed more support some support or less support and what we see in the results is that about half of our students needed more support and half needed some or less support across all grade levels in English language arts we see similar results in mathematics that about half of our students needed more support and half needed some or less support and in science we see basically the same thing about half of our students needing more support and the other half needing some support or less support what did we do with this data we did compare it to our local assessments and using our local assessments and classroom performance this is what we use to drive instruction we use this data to make changes in instruction during the school year and to provide increasing amounts of intervention services we've used this to adjust pacing and as a result of the data that we see we've expanded our before and after school programs and summer programs through 2024 thanks to Federal Esser funding instructionally we're prioritizing reading foundational skills Hands-On math activities technology and using our Esser funds to provide wraparound supports to help support the behavioral and communication delays that have been the bigger issue for our students we're prioritizing our students Mental Health but the real magic happens in our classrooms with our teachers working on the curriculum and activities instructional programs help that are developed under the guidance of the supervisors behind me so each of them is going to have just a moment to give you uh some of our highlights we're going to start with K through 8 math with Miss Erin's muda good afternoon or good evening my name is Aaron smuda I'm the K-8 math supervisor and thank you all for this opportunity so this is our slogan for this year Clifton math it just adds up what um one of the programs we use in mathematics is called imagine math we've had some presentations with you before on it it is an adaptive math program for every student in kindergarten through eighth grade and even through high school it's great because every student goes to their own ability in mathematics and it builds from there we also had the opportunity to have a national school of excellence with school three and two Beacon Award winners Woodrow Wilson Middle School and school two has actually won twice so these are some kids playing on imagine math we also do monthly winners and marking period winners so we look at all the students um how they've done through kindergarten through eighth grade and each student at each of those grade levels is recognized for passing imagine math lessons and doing well on the program we also award the teacher as well so there's some students and some teachers uh we also post and create contests for usage for students who pass lessons and we've also won some imagine math or Imagine Learning contests as well through the company imagine learning that um that has imagine math so there are some of that and then we also have a new program now called imagine robotify imagine robotify is in every single classroom from second grade through eighth grade and kids are actually learning to code in school using a web-based program with a robot called axel plate hopefully it works nope all right can you get this yeah it's embedded um so I hit the link okay well unfortunately my technology ability to embed in a slide probably didn't work Axel's just tired it's been tired it's a long day that's okay thank you I appreciate it um but anyway here's some kids in action on the program you can kind of see what it looks like it actually looks like they're called it's called blocky so it looks like puzzle pieces and the kids actually move the robot in the screen to pick up little batteries and do little things and and move puzzle pieces to move the robot so the kids really really like it um we are still number one in the state of New Jersey for charitable giving I'm here to tell you today that for the past three days Imagine Learning has been in District and we have been filming for a national campaign and a feature for Clifton School District we have been to school three School 13 and Christopher Columbus to showcase our students our teachers and our administrators and the success we've had using imagine math imagine math facts which is um a facts based program to help the kids with their skills and then for the implementation of robotify and the success that we have seen through it we have we're going to actually start doing robotify duels coding duels between classrooms and schools so that's up and coming and we're also working with all of our new teachers to um to train them on mathematics the programs that we use and these different programs and how to use data to drive their instruction for students so thank you foreign [Applause] are driving is really amazing the gamification to get our kids engaged in in instruction is really an important piece one thing that the pandemic did bring out is our kids need a hook they need to be pulled into instruction and the The increased use of technology is resulting in us having to change how we do some things and imagine math and imagine robotify are definitely two examples of that um now those hooks continue into literacy as well I would now like to introduce Dr Valerie kropenak and have her talk to us a little bit about k through eight reading hi good evening everyone so I am proud to say Clifton is reading and we've been reading all through coven and our numbers are keep going up because our kids are reading that's our Focus tonight so we use Raz-Kids reading a to z in our kindergarten first and second grade classrooms head Sprout which is a phonics based program to remediate students phonetic awareness skills an Accelerated Reader two through eight two through eleven but my focus is two through five in this slide and as you can see our numbers kept going up from September we average around 25 27 000 books per month that means students are taking the quiz on Accelerated Reader that they're reading it and they're understanding it and they're passing the quiz so we're proud we're proud we're proud um each month I have a team of literacy coaches and I'm also thankful for this board of education to give to give to me because I couldn't do my job without them my three Elementary my one Middle School coach award our students each marking period for meeting their goals so with an Accelerated Reader each of our students get an independent goal set for them and they're tied to that for the marking period based on their star reading and as you could see students that read 85 percent or met that on their AR for the marking period are rewarded and our first prize Patrol went out around the holidays our kids were thrilled with that came our vending machine so that was part of our and we're going to get to that so we are reading um we're proud to focus because of our students are behind in Reading we are whether we have a big push for foundational skills K through three we're using our foundations program to meet that we're um excited that our Ela coaches are actually facilitators from Wilson Reading so they've been providing study groups to our teachers since September Mondays and Thursdays in person really working to the Crux of the instructional component of that and getting into the classrooms and making sure our teachers are teaching those programs to Fidelity and the results are phenomenal so our kids are learning those Concepts and they're applying them independent to the program and other content areas so they completed one and two last year that means our first and second grade this year they're focused on kindergarten and third grade and getting that facilitators training behind the scenes and they're supporting our classrooms with Fidelity um almost every day and you can see here's some feedback and some of our teachers in in-person professional learning and they love it so we have a waiting list to get into our trainings because one person goes back to their classroom they went to the train and they're so excited they want to get back on another training so we're really proud of that we send out a monthly newsletter with our deadlines for data important tips for instruction these are successful we've had a lot of success in classrooms with teachers following through with targeted lessons based on Concepts um we call it the literacy buzz and this is my buds they go out they see that as a literacy Buzz um uh for our students our students in action so we were featured in the Clifton Merchant in December um Ariana Puzo um worked with us to write an article about our vending machine and how we are supporting our students to getting books into kids hands so this is just a highlight of our students and um every school I'm very proud that every school has a vending machine thank you pbsis we have a partnership with that pbsis and our students are so excited to visit that vending machine um every month with that coin I think that's it thank you thank you Dr kropenak she's making just as much excitement about literacy as Ms muda and her team are in math and this excitement continues where we have our high school supervisors um Mr White and Ms Jaeger are going to come up and they're just going to talk a little bit about how they're helping support our teachers as we transition into trying to make instruction and continuing to make instruction more engaging at the High School Ms Jaeger and Mr White foreign [Applause] good evening everyone I'm Miss Jaeger I'm the 912 mathematics supervisor hi I'm Mr White the 912 English supervisor and and we're just going to briefly discuss how our teachers are utilizing the data that we've gained from these state and local Assessments in order to improve their instruction in the classroom and increase our student achievement so our departmental objectives we've been taking a pedal pedagogical approach to the high school level to address student achievement and we have done targeted professional development for our teaching staff focusing on identified opportunities for growth based on local and state assessment data so what have we exactly been doing with teachers Mr White and I have been collaborating trying to be a model for our teachers and we've had a small group plcs where we collaborate and develop strategies for classroom implementation we have in-class coaching support and reflective sessions to improve instruction and departmental in-person workshops to analyze state and local assessment data and to begin to create action plans addressing student performance and success indicators you'll notice these are some of our sessions of our teachers where they're engaged with one another we've actually started doing it between the middle schools and the high schools collaborating and using that data to drive our instruction thank you Miss Jaeger and Mr White I just wanted to really give them an opportunity to be highlighted because this team focuses on driving our language arts literacy and math instruction across the district we have other Personnel focused on science social studies and the other remainder of the nine New Jersey student learning standard content areas but I just wanted you to get have it have a glimpse of the amazing stuff that is going on in our content areas right now thank you so much commissioners foreign Smith excuse me yeah I'd say one question please the uh head Sprout for the grades K through one should the kindergarten teacher just reference that do they use it during class or is that extracurricular in the or is that extra to what um is part of the regular curriculum day-to-day correct so mainly seeing up and up in the summertime where students are not in school um that was when we purchased it we purchased it for summer use but then we found that it was a way to remediate students during centers and stations at the kind of that one-to-one tutoring where it's on the kids path thank you yes Mr Cynthia under District actions it mentions expand before after school and summer programs through 2024. how are we doing that um so that was as a result of the Esser funding um when as her grants were granted we had to delineate how we would be using those to accelerate learning in the past Clifton has provided an elementary program for our Title One students for language arts and math and then we also had an ESL program for title III these programs were free for students through eighth grade um however um we were not able to provide programs to our non-title one schools we did have some paid programming such as the IC program and our paid credit recovery at the high school thanks to the Esser funds we are now offering summer programs to students at all of our schools so through the end of 2024 whether you're in a title one school or a non-title one school you will still be able to participate in these summer learning experiences this summer is going to be interesting because I think thankfully the referendum is moving forward but it also means we're going to have very little space for our expanded summer programs but we're going to be creative and figure it out thank you okay thank you so much uh great job to the entire team it was really uh very uh thank you very enlightening huh yeah I know okay um I did not do uh Finance facility so we have F1 through f-17 wait Mr Robert seconded by Mr Paris discussion seeing on roll call please Mr abidrabo you guys with the potential on f-17 Miss basford yes Miss Mr Brunswick yes Mr Mejia yes Mr Paris yes Mr Santiago yes vice president Danny yes president Smith yes motions carry um unfinished business um I had planned on having your uh committee assignments tonight and I uh messed up on Paris found an error that I messed up on so I'll correct it tonight and I will get them out to you tomorrow so that our committees can start to start working um I was wondering why everyone was like had nine committees because I I assign four people plus myself so I have to go back and fix it but uh I'll do it tonight and I'll have it to you guys for tomorrow uh okay uh we have two um 18 and 19 um expressions of condolence uh would anyone like to read one and the other this past year one Mr Java the other um I'll read the first one 18 expression of condolences um whereas on December 30th 2022 the community noted the sorrow with sorrow the passing of Frank a Pesci and whereas Mr Pesci has served the Board of Education and the children of Clifton faithfully and conscientiously as a highly respected commissioner for 11 years where he served as president and vice president Mr Pesci played baseball for the Chicago Chicago Cubs and he coached the Clifton Junior Mustang football team for 25 years Mr Pesci also received the Distinguished Citizen of the Year award in 1984.
yep 3.01 or six point [Music] seven point zero three specifically jlda okay so what's left um 5.01 and 7.04 is that it 3.01 is okay yeah okay yeah 3.01 is still on there all right so three points just to clarify it's just three point six point zero one and seven point zero three specific to that is jlda okay all the others good to go right we have to do it by um agenda item so it all comes or goes as one um is there uh so you you've made a motion to remove those from the consent agendas they're a second to that motion I second that motion uh all in favor say bye thank you uh any opposed that would be me um and any abstentions no okay thank you all right so um do we have a motion to pass the rest of the consent agenda so moved is there a second I second uh all in favor aye aye folks on the phone is that Lillian and Colette and Colette okay that was cool um all right any opposed and that passes okay so we're gonna go on to action 3.02 action item approval of new District agreements assistant superintendent Martin thank you president Nigro we have one contract in Region Three with Florence Unified School District okay um if there are no comments on that I uh we approved that is our second I'll second uh all in favor aye aye aye any any post any abstentions okay then we're going to go to 3.03 approval of additional out-of-state student travel this is dependent Martin or PV did you have any any comments on this so I moved to um approve 3.03 okay PV did you you removed it did you have any comments on it okay it was only for the purposes of abstaining from this I I second all right uh all in favor um say hi hi hi any opposed quick question this is foreign yes um could you please clarify for me um so we've removed it from the consent agenda okay um my eyes cannot follow it my eyes aren't what they used to be sure yes removed and now when we're voting on it I'm just a little bit confused okay so when we remove items from the consent agenda that means that we talk about them specifically it's typically because of the board member wants to talk about it or make some statement about it or ask a question um so we still go through and we still talk about it and we can still approve it we just do so individually instead of all at once so we typically put General housekeeping matters and consent agenda things that are generally going to be not controversial so that we can you know expedite the meeting and get through housekeeping items more quickly if a board member wants to pull them off they have to ask the board the board has to vote like we just did to pull that off and then discuss it individually um and so now we're talking about 3.03 yes 3.03 this is the approval of the additional out-of-state student travel as noted in the agenda there are some documentation there that describes the as they travel that's proposed and now we're either going about to approve it or not approve it so just a for procedural purposes if a board member decides and makes a motion to remove that and has no comments what does that mean for procedural uh it doesn't mean anything I think it I think that it was done for the purposes of abstaining from this vote if there's no comment or question but I don't know because we'll we'll finish the vote in a minute okay thank you okay um thank you for the clarity oh no for any time um and then any no and any abstentions of course so um now we're going to go to 3.04 integration action item class 4 proposals for early intervention for children who are deaf and hard of hearing so um this one let me take a drink of water so we all know the history here we have seen this issue arise this is now the fourth and fifth time that this issue has arisen once with Flagstaff unified in 20 late 2018 early 2019 um again with uh the Early Learning or the the preschool contracts that we talked about back in May and now with two contracts on um I'm sorry third and fourth time now in the two contracts for early learning um they were we had two contracts with Early Learning providers that provided services to early interventions zero to three to support language acquisition for uh deaf and hard of hearing children zero in the zero to three bracket that that discontinuation of services was set to end in January of this year the parents were notified in late November we all received a number of emails about it there were 42 families that were affected by this 42 children and their respective families that were affected by this again the the same factual fact pattern that we saw back in May where the the superintendent chose not to proceed with these contracts and and not replace them with you know with other services or alternative services and these are supplemental Services these are not services that are done in performance of the ifsp these are kind of above and beyond the services that are provided in the ifsp uh to support language acquisition um it's language acquisition is a big part of pillar too it's so big it's right underneath pillar too is language acquisition um that was a goal that we have as a we said as a board um we've made the agency aware that that's a key uh goal of ours is to support early language acquisition because that is in many cases the root of of issues that we see down the road so we want to make sure we get children that are in that critical stage of development for language on that zero to three range and make sure that they get the support they need to to acquire language so we had these contracts with these two providers um again performing these supplementary uh Services now um we the the parents and rightfully so were angry when these were discontinued um I think the board was not aware that they were going to be discontinued until they were the first we heard about it was the emails from those parents and all those emails were exactly the same my child is doing great they're acquiring language I see progress we have a great a great time at um you know with these Services because we're seeing that our child is progressing and we have some hope uh we were notified that the state is not going to be supporting this anymore after January 1st and we're told that these providers charge thousands and thousands of dollars and that's not something we can afford and our child is going to suffer because of that um and I would have written the same letter I you have to remember I'm a parent too um I I've filed OCR complaints multiple ones I filed State complaints um I've done it all um for uh you know in support of getting school districts to to comply with various laws regulating to this area of education so certainly I uh I I feel you know quite a bit for these parents and you know the uh we asked the superintendent um why you know why this is completely by surprise and no by the way back in may we changed our policy lb and we said if you're going to terminate or not renew that you're going to let us know you need our approval because this has happened too many times before uh and that you know you you're cutting down these services so the superintendent wrote to us all of us um and said well and on Janet I'm reading from our the email that we received uh that on January 1 2021 ACP entered into a new IGA with a zip and uh in Prior years as it provided a small amount of funding to assist ACP and setting families to these two providers being that this practice because that you know that money was was reduced um and now I'm paraphrasing uh the azip stopped providing those additional funds at that time but the family's going to continue to have their ifsp served because that's what we're legally required to do we're just not going to do the above and beyond work um the superintendent didn't believe that she canceled or not renewed the contracts with these providers because she she believed that she just allowed the contracts to expire notwithstaying the fact that in the response of these complaints the superintendent did in these contracts for another five months through the end of May of this year I think just to satisfy some of these parents for a short period of time but you know just forget that that happened but at the time she told us that uh that she didn't consider her actions to be a cancellation or non-renewal but nevertheless we're in the situation where we've you know we have services that have been taken away and and by the way um if that reasoning is funding I I just don't accept that we we have plenty of money um in 2019 um the superintendent and others went down to the legislature and testified for additional ECFE funding early intervention funding there's a nice picture of superintendent and former president Sims and Governor Ducey um you know getting this 1.6 million dollars in recurring funding that first came through a telecommunications fund that's now folded into the general appropriation and we talked about all the language acquisition efforts we were going to do with this money but apparently and we still get that money we that's folded into the general Appropriations we still have it um you know where's it go not here um it's it's not being um it's not being it's not being used to support these services for uh these children they're they're going to be they're going to go away by May uh you know I was happy to see that that contract was extended for a few months and those children are going to get some more services at least until May so if there's not quite the urgency that we had um you know last time in May when the services were cut in uh you know May and there were three families that in August had to find new schools for their children so you know why are we here after having the same fact pattern happen two other times before and now it's happening this third and fourth time I don't know that raises broader questions but you know for now and in this agenda item the the way to solve this to support this or to support our families in early language acquisition again these are children in a critical period of language acquisition zero to three is to direct the superintendent to issue an RFP for early intervention services for deaf and hard of hearing in the ages of zero to three we can tell her to do that she'll go through the RFP process with the same services that we had in the previous contract and if whatever whoever providers in the state want to you know reply and go through that process they can they don't have to they can just maybe they're frustrated with us who knows um but that's the that's the answer so uh that's where we are that's why we have this this item um I uh I would like to you know at this point uh move that we direct the superintendent to issue an RFP for deaf and hard hearing children aged two to three using the same criteria that was used in the past in the previous RFP that small on the contracts that these these providers used um so there is a motion on the floor but if there's any discussion or questions we can certainly do I I have some questions whether or not our Early Learning Program capacity to be doing some of this stuff on campus I would also like to see that if we do provide that directive to superintendent reichmann that we include that providers need to come in and be um part C approved um why would you want them to be part Seafood um because I think we actually have more staff on campus currently that have the skills to provide these services and why would we contract out if we've got the capacity to do it internally well I don't actually don't think we have any right I mean when we had this talk in may we were told that with the agency had no LSL certified personnel and the closest one was at least 18 months away and that was in May of 2022 was at least 18 months away from getting their certification and the others were 24 to 36 months away so we we don't have that now and the outside vendors do you know at this time and I'm not sure that that is the case with both outside vendors and and that's I mean I I believe that it is but that's something to sort out through the RFP process um uh tsuke is um I think suitcase dollars still would like to to have the ability to know whether or not our staff feels they have the capacity to take that on in-house okay um you you understand and again just the point the the same point that I raised again I don't want to rehash May again that was a three-hour meeting just in this one point um but you should understand that it costs the agency far less to use the vendors than it does to produce its own its own programming as the vendors told us that you know Dan Chapman came by from Desert voices about a year ago maybe a year and a half ago and showed us pretty clearly that the agency at least in those existing contracts paid about seven thousand dollars a year for those services and it cost them somewhere around 10 or 11 000 to put those on so and that's the case that was also the case as we saw in May with preschool there was a difference of between 26 000 of the contract rate and the actual cost which is about 32 000 and they go out and they they fundraise the rest um so I mean we certainly can look into that but in every other area that we've looked at and even in May when we did this direct comparison to our preschools you know we were in a preschool too and it cost us forty thousand dollars a student um that was one of our that was one of our questions right why are we can't send contracts before a twenty four thousand dollar preschool that's costing that the community is subsidizing the state is leveraging the community generosity um to get a 32 000 education um but this if we were to do it ourselves it would cost us forty thousand dollars right we you know that's that's the difference so um that's not any different here the numbers are less it's not a full-time preschool costs much less it's you know it's it's again around seven thousand dollars a year for that for that existing contract I don't know what the new contract would be for if we had one foreign [Music] uh you've got the email that I did and that's the email that's the explanation you got it back on December 12th um I I mean I don't know who else asked I don't know who superintendent reichmann I didn't ask her to send this email if that's what you're saying if you're asking me did I say write this email I did not um I don't know who else talked to her I don't know who talks to her but she sent the same email to me and you and everyone else on the board [Music] the I would think that the board would wonder why I don't even know why you're asking this question to be honest um the superintendent gave us an answer as to why well yeah the board didn't ask because we didn't have a meeting at that time [Music] so um [Music] this is this is ridiculous PV this is this is pure don't waste our time please if you have a serious point you make that point [Music] board member members of Connecticut [Music] so I want you for science again the public comment was made saying we are to the community that before collectively not why and that is not okay that is not true I understand not so common I want to finish all discussion really you're responsible so after important we've already dropped to life and we've already established that we are towards the economy so I want to make sure that's good for the community my next Point here that I want to get off here um directed argb to conduct with the back of the financial resources and not include utilizing an in-house Church it is my understanding throughout the history that we have been building our new conference foreign [Music] foreign [Music] for that moment why would we come back out [Music] you made the comment that the agency had plenty of him I do not recall you the father of the Lord I've ever seen on the financial committee and I could assure you that board member for it and myself and we do not have anything anything million dollar s because of all the infrastructures [Music] first person if you recall the last two board meeting we were talking about communication doctor especially when we mentioned about everything now [Music] here again that the comparison that you made with other girls are just not relevant in your future no offenders according to State your children are often think and choose which student s June 3rd so if they had a student at that very high needs that are expensive they don't lose until they come for sure about students [Music] foreign [Music] do not need to be Unified State achievement law does not allow [Music] ance it expired at the end of five years [Music] okay we're gonna be equation I don't know what your experience [Music] they are not good they are not gone they are not here and if you are wanting to forward abilities foreign [Music] so I would really appreciate it about the poor not only can you have their discussion on equal footing but also with equal and mutually understand [Music] something is ridiculous [Music] therapy especially in the community groups of energy I also want to talk about to put your actions and what's been happening especially if we did board meetings that you are talking and understand that you're not going to another female board member you are not often to understanding to a death River and you know it's interesting I wanted to mean that what we have going on here here we are award that soldiers are going to do with Pacific disabilities document blindness Eric that one and if we are the board are showing the community that it locate the board members to treat each other a different way why are we migrating issue [Music] so at the end of the day please I have 3000 conversations [Music] and give everybody the time under your appropriate platform to express that discussion equally [Music] equally thank you see there are you finished so um here's here's a situation uh the statement if we were to direct the superintendent to do this RFP she does it like any other RFP the board's not involved she does RP's all the time what she did here was she didn't do another RFP to renew those services and she didn't tell the board that she wasn't going to do it she just didn't do it nowhere in her prior reports did she mentioned oh by the way this RFP that we've been doing for a while I'm not going to do it anymore to get this new contract that's that's what she did she did extend the contract when I say extend what did she do technically she worked with State procurement to get a I don't know emergency contract for five uh five months that's right what's the effect on the families the effect is you know all of a sudden now we have this new contract that we can we can still get these services um you mentioned providing faith we don't provide favor to zero to three no one provides fate to zero to three idea um it doesn't RDA part C applies to those um they uh these are these are zero to three they get fake when they age to three so we can direct the superintendent to do this and she'll do it like any other RP she does RPS all the time the agency does rfps the whole time we have ton of tons of contractors and it would be fine and whoever answers answers whatever vendor answers will answer and all of that goes through through the agency again we have a whole department that does that so there is a motion on the floor um already is there a second can we just review what the motion was I'm sorry the motion was to direct the superintendent to issue an RFP for zero to three uh deaf and hard of hearing children using the same criteria that were used in the previous RFP that resulted in the in the two contracts that were not renewed or lapsed or whatever term you'd like to use um before I feel confident in voting either way um there seems to be some debate on if we can provide this in-house or if we cannot provide this in-house is there somebody that we can have stepped down and tell us for sure that we provide this in-house um we certainly can ask I do know that we last I was told by the agency we don't have um the same Personnel the same certifications uh that these two agencies provide um so you know we have certified teachers of deaf but we don't have the certifications in this listing and spoken language um yeah [Music] and who can speak to this right now I would think that the superintendent Martin or or Kendra's catcher here doctor oh there you are oh Dr Benedict yes good evening president Nigro and board members superintendent reichmann assistant superintendent Martin and Cooper um I can answer whatever questions you'd like I'll do my best to answer them I do not have a presentation prepared for these for the evening more than happy to do so at a future date um what can I ask answer you off the bat all right this is where we Cannon I think the first question is do we provide LSL in-house we provide LSL services at the preschool level we have teachers at the birth through three level that are trained as that in that as well actually more that more in LSL than ASL to be perfectly honest um so yes um but it's it's more it's more than that it's also that even these providers and they will tell you as well as PCH Phoenix Children's Hospital they do not have providers either there are waiting lists pages long for services across these providers and so in response to this what I can share tonight is that we meaning PCH Zimmerman desert voices the ear Foundation we have gotten together and Lila zolson with ear Foundation has submitted a grant to the America to the Arizona Community Foundation um to for the next year work on building the state's infrastructure to have skilled individuals in LSL available not just at asdb but at pch in private practices asdb by ourselves cannot solve this problem and this group believes strongly that this needs to be a community effort if we want it to be sustainable and so um superintendent reichmann and I and others worked with State procurement to come up with some mechanism by which we could continue to support these families in the short term while we work with this group to come up with something for the long term the result of this planning committee what we hope to then see is to be ready come next spring to the early hearing detection and intervention Eddie the state Eddie coordinator will submit a grant to an additional Grant the same Grant it's the board maternal and help me out here guys do you know what it is I can't recall offhand I apologize but it's the same Grant I believe that supported us during covid when we had all of the um technology provided to support our birth to Three Families from a virtual platform and so if we were able to get that then we can continue to build a sustainable infrastructure across the whole state right now only children in Maricopa County are privy to these Services nowhere else not in Tucson non-emplexed death not in Colorado City nowhere and so we see it as very important to have these services available ongoing in every part of our state and that is our goal as a group and that is what has resulted from all of this which I see as a very positive outcome uh Dr Benedict I know back in May um told us that we didn't have any LSL certified staff is that any different today they are trained in LSL strategies we have we put out an RFP in Oren you can correct me if I'm wrong here we put out an RFP a year ago um four LSL Trainers for individuals to come in and certify ours and work with certifying our staff no one in the community responded to that RFP no one right so we still have zero certified there no we still internally are working no we have one certified LSL staff who is formally working with three to four other um individuals and who were like you said earlier who are on their way to full certification um I don't have it in front of me but desert voices and Zimmerman would say that they too as well have individuals working toward their certification they just don't exist they're not out there and there aren't even that many programs across the country that support certification in that there are very few and so that's why we need to look at this this issue on a broader level and then what we're hoping to do is the work that we that results from this Committee of PCH does their voices Zimmerman all of us we hope that that can provide a model for building additional services in other communication modalities whether that be ASL whether that be queued speech whether it be augmentative and assistive technology for our children with multiple disabilities we need to be reaching all of these populations all over the state that is our job as asdb and that's what we're endeavoring to do with our Community Partners and Dr Benedict I know that you're you know you're working with these Community Partners towards you know a more sustainable solution that's that's great these contracts are usually one year they're granted and then they're one year with four extensions right so if we were to do an RFP and again those families have those Services through Bay so we have a bit of time and and I know that the agency can expedite things and stay you know adoa can connect with other things if we were to get those in place assuming that whatever vendors reply reply if we were to get those um and in a year you have we've all agreed on some sustainable solution that's different or that takes a different form or that requires a different RFP or whatever form that that takes we can Transit we can have a plan we can transition to that new sustainable model and then we cannot renew the the you know the potential contract I'm talking about in a year or two years or whatever that that period is um and then you can come to us and you can come to the parents and say we've you know here's what we were providing we've realized that there was some you know we can improve that here's our new model what we're going to do here's our sustainable model and these are the services you're going to have and then transition those students to to the sustainable model so we don't have a discontinuity of of services to students who again I mean they age out right you know if you're if you're one and then you have a year of District of disrupted services and then you get something else when you're um two and a half uh you you lost out on critical time and and we don't want to do that for our children um so in other words if we were to do an RFP now that doesn't commit us for five years it commits us for a year at a time and we can plan for a transition to whatever the next delivery model is this is 2K um from a procurement standpoint we could continue with amending or not amending but extending the current contract for another year without doing an RFP we've done that already I well we've done the five months right I I right I mean we can renew and not renew and you know you throw these terms around and it depends on who you talk to but um you know can we do another year I think that it can a net might tell us that you can't I don't know the real answer um the fine dealings just from my experience working with procurement if if the need is there and we are anticipating that we are going to try and do this for a year and have something else then rfped they will they will extend that they will renew that for that additional time how long have we done that with the Des with yeah yeah this is Mike Gordon um thanks for your Insight towards the global issue being that there is a shortage amongst asdb staff and the community providers which makes eliminating contracts even more difficult certainly in a very quick decision seemingly to the extent that we have impassioned families reaching out to us you know by the tens maybe dozens telling this that they've had such good success with a community provider and now that's over obviously with for some reason not having that confidence to immediately feel that asdb will provide the same level or ability to so when you talk about a a community effort to reach the full state that's the kind of work that needs to be done a five-month contract and practicable uh that's a unusual length for sure and not enough time to get something through procurement so I don't quite understand what that's about uh those can be extended from what we see but primarily because procurement can't get them done in time so they have to be extended it's not a matter of of trying to make it better it's trying to get it even straight so I see this issue and it's obviously coming from a lot of different angles but having a community provider being a director of a private not-for-profit from a from a community provider if we get a letter saying that our contracts ending and uh and you know find uh find another Agency for your people uh that's a difficult spot to be in and that's to some degree I think what the issue is here is that this has kind of occurred before that these contracts have ended quickly without a lot of discussion that we're having right now after the fact with with a level of passion so I think if we have the opportunity to glean the information that you and your your focus group or however you want to call it can provide combined with the efforts of asdb possibly with a even by default extension of a contract impractable then that might be worthwhile in the overall run of things but when I do receive emails as we all have God knows we've received emails on multiple issues when we hear from families that don't know what they're going to do immediately that causes problem to me because we have talked about no student Left Behind when we talk about three or four students not 42 families so how are we going to resolve that in the short term or in the longer term particularly when you say as we know in the blind Community there's a shortage of providers there's a shortage of qualified teachers and and service providers so so I welcome and appreciate what you say to give some clarity to a discussion that has is multifaceted and if I may take to take this opportunity to respond to a board member court and I appreciate your comments and I do want to publicly apologize um it had been the intent to get this information out much earlier in the semester I was in and out intermittently all fall for family reasons so I take that onus um when we saw foresaw that the news wasn't going to be shared as early as we had wanted we inquired as to whether or not we could do any sort of extension because we knew that the five official extensions were out we were told no okay and then we were subsequently after some additional research that SPO did found this means by which we could do this the not practical to quote and so what we have been told to this day is that there we would have to go out for RFP maybe there's something else I don't know but that's the information we've been given today by the people that work with us at SPO and they've been very helpful through this whole process um and so I was I was happy that at the last hour we were able to find at least something for these families but I do want to publicly take on us for that and apologize well yeah and I wasn't directly towards you that um thank you any other uh thank you [Music] I work for a very large state agency of several thousand contracts and let me see um there's any people on the same issues and um as board member or dimensions experience as well he and I have had conversations about other contracts that have been we've been very frustrated with these situations unfortunately what you experienced communities experience is unfortunately pretty typical for the State recruitment office and I do know that there are several high-level administrators from different state agencies that they have similar and expose on their gymnasts to be so please do not take bonus for this this is that is just the reality of the state performance system it's not outstanding um and we will work through it the best way that we can thank you uh thank you Dr Benedict um so uh you know the situation here is we can it's unclear to me at this time how much further we can do the not practical to quote contract um I know that we've gone through May I'd like to if we can direct the superintendent to extend that further until we have a more sustainable solution then I would like to direct the superintendent to do that if the root for that is RFP which coming into the meeting I thought that was what we needed to do um then the root for that is RFP and then we cannot renew it at one point I mean to be clear uh we should be providing above and beyond service to our families we should be focusing on language acquisition in that critical period um if we're going to replace that with something else that's fine once we're providing a service we're not locked into that service forever the reason the board is so concerned about that is that if we're going to change the service or discontinue it we need to be involved in that decision that has to be communicated to the board and we have to understand what the transition is how we're still going to support those those students if the uh you know the the programming the services that they have are going to change because we don't want to leave students behind we don't want to feel like families are being left behind we don't want families to be in that position where their child loses critical development time so again um because it's unclear to me at this time and I don't think we have our appropriate attorneys in the room to tell us um and they can't anyway because they have an agenda as the executive session um I can modify uh the motion that's on the table which is nothing seconded yet to direct the superintendent to perform um uh to to move forward with the RFP as proposed and if possible uh procure those services in the as practical vein unless and until other suitable services or transition services are identified um before we move I have a question one more question true um since we are not the ones that do the RFP process and it is our superintendent our assistant superintendent services with that do we want do they have any comments to us about how the RFP process goes or what what their opinions are about what we their what would be the best case scenario for this at this time if you all want to continue these contracts then we will have to be it would have to be through an RFP that is the only way to do that so if you would like to provide supplemental services to families who have infant children from zero to three here in Maricopa County then that's what we would be that's what we have been doing those supplementary services so if you do really want that to continue then the RFP process is the way to establish that moving forward to make sure that the services are continued through the beginning of a new contract for the next five years the reason that I made the decision take off that off from the scope of work is because I wanted to focus on the finances and I the idea for excuse me focus on the Financial Funding funding of idea part C and approved services so the contracts that we have for those deaf and hard of hearing students would not align with pi DEA Part D the requirements you do not align with the Arizona Early Intervention Program want to align our services with a zip and so the purpose was not for financial reasons the decision was not made um you know against those two providers we are talking about focusing on the services we provide and aligning those with the federal and state can provide supplementary services I do not think that's the best use of our funding but at the same time if you all vote to support ordering me to do the RFP process I will do that process and we will re-establish the contract for the next three to five years I will recognize a board member for just a moment I do want to clarify that when superintendent regiment says that these vendors are not asip certified she means that the hours that are expended of their services do not count towards service hours in the ifsp and so that that's what she means nowhere does it say that we can't provide additional services in fact superintendent reckon went down to legislature back in 2019 and secured 1.6 million dollars in ECFE funding early intervention funding zero to three funding that did not have any strings attached to it it's now part of the general appropriation that money does not have any strings attached it doesn't say that we have to spend it on on Ida Port C services at all I don't know where that's going it's part of the general appropriation actually I have an idea of where it's going um but it's it's certainly not being used to to help early educate to help Early Education in these contexts with these vendors so you know those we still get that money we asked for it it's on a recurring basis and again there's there's you know we spend plenty of our general appropriation other places which we'll get to later in the meeting um a super a board member both had her income yes I raised my hand for a point of clarification from both superintendent reichmann and president um the potential was changing it or issuing a contract for one year but superintendent reichmann just said three to five years are we stuck with that term or can we decide a one-year term would an RFP process be acceptable for a one-year contract if you could clarify um board member both this is uh president Nigro the our the way the rfps have historically been done have been for one year initial term and then four one-year extensions so we could end it at any time in one year increments and the idea would be that when we have replacement services for those families we would be able to end the contract and transition those students seamlessly so they don't get delayed and they don't lose time to whatever the new services are foreign [Music] good as to be transition those services from those two current vendors to internal ASAP Services If the parents chose to do so for that issue we already do provide those kinds of services within the homes Dr Benedict talked about that can speak to that better than me but those types of services are already happening in the two contract vendors are not services that happen at the home parents have to bring their children to a Center in order to receive Services there so that would be the difference thank you it goes to vendors chose to somehow a line in the summer part C [Music] theoretically we could like to add anything Dr Benedict yes thank you I just wanted to state that if it is voted on to go out for RFP again that we do not want to put out the exact RFP that was put out five years ago things have changed and it wouldn't be relevant and so I would at least ask for that to be considered that that we're able to review that and and update it before it goes out Dr what in particular would you change because the way it's written right now it is Seeking a zip part C services and that's not what we're seeking here right um we've we updated the RFP as um for blind visually impaired services that went out and in October November so I would want to update this one as well but to reflect more accurately what we're looking for right these would be supplementary Services they don't count towards hours ifsp service hours right and right and I do again want to publicly acknowledge that desert voices and Zimmerman are great at what they do and we have an excellent working relationship with them this is nothing to do with any sort of unrest there at all we're continuing to work together very well and our providers will continue to share with families that they are resources in the community just like they share that our deaf mentors are available and a whole array of services in the community and within asdb Dr Benedict before you run away I have a follow-up question for you for these children birth to three if ASAP were not to provide these supplemental Services how would these supplemental Services be offered and or paid for for families great question so so they can obtain them at through CRS they are short on providers Zimmerman does not accept access so they have to go through their own insurance okay we could have private um practices like Zimmerman's they could accept access to allow for more access for families um and um also if azip would support us Contracting our own special our own speech language Pathologists because asif's Viewpoint is they have speech language Pathologists on the team but of course as we all know most of them and they would admit that they don't have a background and expertise and deaf and hard of hearing they would readily admit that so either we push for more speech-language Pathologists with the agencies that azip contracts with or we push for azip allowing us to have speech language Pathologists that are part of the team so I another follow-up question a little bit less specific to our population so for other birth to three services where would parents get those Services if it wasn't specific to this population where would they go for other birth to three supplemental services in for whatever that disability Mobility instruction whatever so depending on again what the family's needs are that is what our providers as well as the entire early intervention TEAM Arizona uses a team-based approach to early intervention so we are not the only ones working with families that are assigned a service coordinator there are multiple related service providers on the team depending on the child's needs and they work with the family to connect them to Community Resources we used to function as service coordinators we don't any longer because we wanted to and this happened before my time but we wanted to focus more on our direct work with families and not the coordination of services so it is the service coordinator's job to be that um social worker and there are social workers as well on the teams um on some children's and families teams that connect them with those services so that is that that is their job that is what they do so they could potentially back to our population they could potentially get these LSL Services through children's Rehabilitation Services Phoenix Children's Hospital um the the big caveat here I guess is the fact that our the providers that we're Contracting with don't accept or at least one of them don't accept access for payment which would prohibit some of our parents from being able to utilize those Services right and I want to be very careful I don't want to get into talking about anyone's business model or what they're how they're choosing to run their business desert voices is a non-profit they rely on fundraising um Zimmerman is their own private medical type practice and can make their own decisions as to how they want to run their businesses so you know I don't want to speak speak to that um but yes theoretically yes those are the individuals but again they are lacking providers as well so and these are supplemental these are not what we are required to do unless we would be allowed unless azip permitted our speech language therapists or the contractors on in other regions that have speech language therapists had these qualifications thank you for the class room David yes how much of these contracts annually um between the both of them there are probably about a hundred and fifty thousand dollars 150 000 a year both providers yes together roughly okay [Music] this is President Niagara 42.