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e welcome everybody I'd like to do the pledge of religions of the flag please States America stands Nace moment of silence please for uh servicemen and women here in abroad especially our students thank you vote call please show Mr Mercedes AB Mr toox Miss Fitzgerald present Miss dla present Mr Jones pres Mr Mahia presid Mr haam here uh before we get to the uh students report uh the superintendent would like to say a few words okay Co good evening everybody evening everybody I uh do want to introduce our new assistant superintendent uh that's with us tonight Brenda Richardson who uh attend our school committee meetings uh in the future and I'd like to start the meeting off uh with a uh congratulations and a uh uh a huge thank you to Marilyn Fitzgerald for the 15 of ser 15 years of service she's had here on scho [Applause] committee um and she has served many years uh as uh as a member of overseeing the swimming program here at glts um was it 10 years Marilyn that you served on that position oh no way more than that oh okay I came to work here in November of 1986 and I was employed till 2009 I think it was maybe be on that but yeah a while yeah you know all the work you that uh maryn has uh done for glts um is you know very small in compared to the community leader that she's been throughout particularly in the endo Community through the marac valley with the why uh I can't think of anybody that has contributed to her community the youth youth programs for adults uh she's been her whole life committed to other people uh and so uh we're we've been fortunate to have you as part of our community uh having such a a uh role model for our students but for all of our uh School Community the person that you are you've been such a a great example to what real Community commitment is about so we thank you for that as well uh me um you know for myself as I uh complete my 14th year I can only honestly say that uh your support for me uh and your leadership uh has made uh glts a better uh school um from you know where we were 14 years ago we were a good school I think today we're great school you were on the school committee all those years making some uh we made some tough decisions we we had some uh good uh you know I think for the most part I think we agreed on mostly everything but not everything uh so I always looked at uh forward to hearing your perspectiv on things because it was always coming from the right place which was for from your heart but also about kids uh I think you lived your life uh for young people and so there's no doubt about that in the way you approach this role as you know uh school committee member um and I I know that uh if Leo was here he would uh say um you know you brought a lot of uh humor and uh well you provided him with a lot of ability to express his humor uh in the in the relationship and work that you did with him so and made the meetings fun a lot of times so uh I appreciate that as well um but you know um you are truly thought of as a a member of our family of glts um you know and you will be missed but do know that you always welcomed here at glts as a family member as somebody will will will always be happy to see when you come back to visit us and um we'll be looking for you uh uh to watch us on on the streaming and then call me the next day and tell me what I did right or what I did wrong would be fine it would be good to hear from it will always be good to hear from you so uh again I personally know that I would not have probably be in this role today if it wasn't for Maryland support 14 years ago with the committee she advocated for me and really fought hard for me to get this position CU she believed in me and uh and I and I and that belief I think played out throughout the year so I'm really grateful for that uh cuz my work can't happen without the school committee the school committee is so critical playing a role in our progress as a school I can only bring to the committee but the committee often makes things happen that I can't make happen without your support and uh and in the in the case of my getting this position your support made the huge difference uh so thanks for that it's uh enriched my life and uh um had made I've always been happy I love every day that I come and do this job so thanks for making that possible for me um so with that uh we did go kind of a St Patrick's Day we know how much you like the Irish we make sure to put some green on your on your cake and uh just as a uh can you can cut the cake after and we'll make sure everyone eats the cake uh so thanks a lot Marilyn thank you welcome okay yes no not okay uh so just a small plaque to uh hang along with hundreds of the other plaques you have at home uh for serving here on G2 glts and to present [Music] Marilyn present Maryland uh and appreciation for your out outstanding years of service and dedication Great Law Regional Vocational Technical School District committee 2009 to 2024 on this day March 12 2024 thank you Mar thank you thank you thank you [Applause] all they set thank you Mr Lavoy before we get started uh we have a couple things that were added to the agenda you'll see him in red oh thank uh District committee regular meetings under new business um committeemen Mr May here asked for that and there were a couple of job postings that weren't on there that have been added on there I'd like to get them added on we need a motion can I get a second second thank you um students report Moren please uh I think we have to vote on that motion oh I'm sorry yeah I'm sorry you're right um Mr Maha yes Mr toox yes Miss Fitzgerald yes Miss dla yes Mr Jones yes Mr Hayden yes thank you please good evening Jason Mora student committee allor right you can press the next button um we will be covering many different topics during this presentation some from February and others that will be coming up in the weeks ahead these topics include Valentine's Day celebration CTE month Black History Month women's history month student athletes the student versus staff basketball games a sport up update skills USA GSA update chess club talent show NHS updates the teen poetry contest and a senior update in superlative winners Valentine's Day since we did not see you all last month we just wanted to um acknowledge the fundraiser that the class of 2025 and the class of 2027 had last month there was a Valentine's Day sale that sold things like Bears heart-shaped lollipops flowers this was a great way for students and families to show support for the juniors and freshmen and also a good way to support someone special glts celebrated CTE month during February some of the activities included daily announcements that highlighted various CTE accomplishments guest speakers and weekly Raffles for students and staff during Black History Month students participated in decorating doors in celebration here are some of the top doors that were decorated first place cosmetology second place early childhood development and third place Health assisting there were also announcements of Black History Month facts every day to celebrate women's History Month there is a bulletin board being decorated here is what it currently looks like it also highlights the contributions of women in our shops here is an example of an automotive designer um this board can be found outside of the gym there will be announcements every week on Wednesdays to highlight accomplishments of women um we had our student versus staff faculty basketball game before we headed out for February break we had students versus staff faculty basketball games here are some pictures of the game good question um we have our Sports banquet on Wednesday the 13th from 300 p.m.

to 12:00 p.m. Saturdays total hours 140 among all tutors this is a new position can I have a motion to vote vote on those three please discussion discussion uh for the physics and math teacher positions are these previously vacated positions superintendent or are these positions that are being added within the school year they are new positions that are in the budget due to the increase enrollment in the school we needed to uh add on uh additional instructors so these these instructors what classes would they be covered and given that the school year is already going so who's teaching these classes right now so I don't think that's been totally determined yet that'll we will sit down and determine if we want to we'll look at each of the career areas I mean each of the topics the academic topics and determine if we want to move any existing instructors to a different grade level or we want to keep them based on the um the uh skill and the experience of the two new are the new instructors coming in where their strengths lie uh will help Drive the decision what grade level they should teach and what their background experience have been in the past I have a motion a motion to approve second second any further discussion Mr Jones yes Mr Mahia yes Mr tbox yes yes Miss Fitzgerald yes Miss dla yes Mr hayam yes future uh agenda items I see none uh we do have a need for an executive session want some take before you I'm sorry we could bring it with us okay um do we have to approve the minute from the previous session first or once we get in there we can approve them okay thank you the question is do we take the the cake can I have a motion to uh go into ex session motion do I have a second call the roll call we go in M dler Mr Jones yes Mr Mahia yes yes Mr tbox Miss Fitzgerald yes Mr Hayden yes yeah almost forgot that still have to finish that so focus on so many other things ah turn heat on we're going in have to have the superintendent [Music] check you thanks see you tomorrow go to thank you for e for e for e for e for e for e for e one two 1 2 3 4 5 e for e would you like to say theice would you like to say the Bice um [Music] earlier said that what was not the April 1 I know have to um you said you were going to let us know about something and we might need a vote on anyway I might still be here for another week or two good don't don't knock me out of your emails yet no we're not can I get a motion so thank you I'm I'm going to an Marie and maybe you want to come in when she comes in to talk with me I'm GNA see because I know she wants she's interested in uh meeting Melissa she wants to meet Melissa so she was it me in last night she was I didn't see well I didn't get in you know they wouldn't let me into the hall I I she was sitting way up in the balcony and Mr Mahia yes yes Mr toox yes Miss Fitzgerald yes Miss dla yes Mr Jones yes Mr ha him 8

recognize some of our guests we have some of our Administration team here Dr kidw and uh Mr dep pipo from the high school Mr Amory from Cherry Brook primary school and we have our uh inim business person here uh Sue H did I say that right Hanbury good thank you for being here tonight so um and we have a lot of guests and a lot to get through so as we kick off our meeting we'll start with the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with libery and justice for all okay I have another guest I'd like to introduce to everybody that we've filled our board of education spot and I'd like to introduce Carlin Fox who is now a member of the Board of Education she completes the board our nine members Carlin is a parent two children she's an attorney and she's going to be a great addition to the board of education so welcome to the Board of Education okay with respect to the Chairman's Corner uh just a couple things I'd like to remind everybody about um last Tuesday we accepted the superintendance uh budget um and now it becomes the board of educations budget so it's incumbent on uh each member of the Board of Education to take a look at those highlights we will try to simplify things for you with some bullet points for the public but I think it's important that we get out there now with our con our constituents and we start talking about the budget and some of the things that are going on relative to uh uh what the needs are of the school district in the system so now the board uh can go into um conversation and we will be able to do that right through until the um there's a quiet period that comes out right after the board of Finance um has their meeting and declares um I think the public document that comes out then and forgive the term the selling stops if you will and uh we are to um just go silent with that but we'll give you the actual dates on when that happens okay um tonight I was supposed to have a letter prepared uh and I don't have it prepared yet but one of the things we said we were going to do is uh to encourage the Governor to fully fund our excess cost excess cost or ECS excess cost excess cost is is uh for folks that don't know this um we were promised by the state of Connecticut all districts were prom state of Connecticut to be funded and with they call the excess cost Grant uh up to 88% and I'm not going to get into the details of how that all works but we were supposed to get 88% of a certain number and in fact the governor went back on his word and only funded us at 70% every Board of Education in the state of Conneticut was funding because we were promised that number so there there's a little bit of a wobbliness and we're going to get into our financial report because we didn't get that now typically our Board of Education in years gone past we never expected to be funded at a level in the 80s we always funded at 75% to get less than 75% from a governor that promised us 80% or 88% is is a real um it's a real um heart punch for the town of Canton but other towns are having the same problem so um I would just encourage everybody as you read the budget and you understand where we are today uh because we you'll be hearing a financial report and you'll hear about some some changes in numbers um but we also need the governor to fulfill that promise for next year it's so important in a very difficult every year is a difficult budget year but we had I had promised the Board of Education and I have going to the governor we'll try to get that done in the next week or so we'll have that out to you and you can approve that letter and then we'll get it to the governor okay um and really that's the uh that's all that I uh pretty much have so I'll turn it over to uh Dr Gman for the superintendent announcement super thank you Mr Daniels good evening everyone in public everyone online and those that will watch this recording it's been a very exciting month met for our last official board meeting I also want to welcome our Mr dep pipo Mr Amry and Dr Kidwell I also want to take the time to really honor this Canton Board of Education this board of education volunteers their time and March is Board of Education Month by the the state it may even be National so we presented to you on behalf of the The Canton Community and administration and the staff and teacher a bag thanking this board of education for all the time that they spend th this is something that you you may see an hour and a half two hours to tonight but there's a lot of work that goes in between each of the meetings so I definitely want to thank the board of educ thank you for the GI as Mr Daniel said I I also want to thank the board of education for supporting the administrative budget that was presented to you early December we started the the process this board really looked at where we were at that moment in time and this board did an outstanding job questioning the administration from where we were proposed in December at a 5.5% increase to where we landed at a net increase of 5.39 and the Board of Ed really did a diligent job asking the administration several questions that to the public and people that are here if you go on the website all our information regarding the budget is on the website we've also been sending weekly emails if not a couple times a week with budget information and when budget workshops are will continue to do that to be as transparent as we can in the budget as Mr Daniel says it's not the administrative budget anymore it's the board of education budget so we'll be sending out as much information as we can to keep the community posed on the budget this month has been very very exciting with many different events ranging from the coral concerts ranging from the the band concerts that was at CIS ranging to the exciting Adams Family show that is happening this week that you're boor you're actually going to have an opportunity to go down we're going to recess and we're actually going to go down for about 5 or 10 minutes and watch and I I do have to say this and I don't single sport out at all I I never do but I'm going to do it tonight I had the opportunity to go to the girls basketball game and we have our senior Captain here tonight that was the best Bas girls basketball game I've been to my entire life in in in 30 years it was just exciting and and to see our student athletes compete and no doubt it was a game that we were the underdog there there there's no doubt going in and those young ladies battled like I've never seen a team B battle and compete right to the end and I was sitting standing right underneath that basket that it came about an inch short from going in and US celebrating on the court and like I said I I don't normally single out a team but I've been to a lot of girls and women's basketball uh games and grew up living right next door right down the street from coach arama and I was really impressed with our girls and I I say that because I'm staring right at our uh senior Captain here tonight so congratulations on a great just a reminder to the community we will have a uh conferences March 19th through the 21st that that's an opportunity for you to reflect on your uh students learning and I'm very excited that I met with our students reps last two weeks ago now to come up with the next students at the center episode and this is going to be a really exciting one that the students have um a little bit of a surprise for the community in the superintendent's conversation and I do want to let the board know that tonight you have on your agenda uh a field trip an overnight field trip to to Peru I'm going to table that for tonight I met with the World Language Department today with Mr dep pipo and they have some plans for another trip um so we're going to table that and I'm going to bring another trip back to you in uh April for the April mean we're really looking at um different trips and things like that so we met today so I just want to let you know that we won't be going over that tonight and voting on that tonight I'll take any questions out of the superintendent's office at this time any board member have a a question for the superintendent tonight ficia just check in Russell checking down the end I can't see everybody good okay thank you for that report Dr Gman um Now we move to our student Representatives reports Maggie do you want to go first tonight or sure um I'll be reporting on CIS and I got a lot um CIS celebrated random acts of kindness week and they set the goal of collecting 150 kindness star cards in three school days and they did it and as a result each grade ended the week with a 15-minute dance party fifth grade students made and deliberate cards to all the seniors at the senior center on Valentine's Day and advisory students P thank you cards to show appreciation to our community line workers in the fire and police departments and those Center CIS celebrated bus driver appreciation day and the PTO provided gift bags to driver Monitor and cross guard and students make cards in early March astronaut Lieutenant Lieutenant Colonel Dwayne dier Cary presented to all students about his experiences as an astronaut and then students participated in breakout sessions learning about solar and lunar cpses CIS help annual student faculty B game and it was a huge success students won in overtime by five points and they collected a lot of food for the Canton food B thank you to the P for organizing this great Community event CIS readers have been practicing National reading month by participating and drop everything and read and a student counil SP here week and reading challenge cast members from K High School visited CIS this week to read a lot of picture books and promote their upcoming production of The Adams Family and the school went on a schoolwide trip to the Warner Theater to watch the musical dot dot dot on new musical this week is mystery reader week and they have 75 mystery readers from the community most the Merit but not all coming in read that's very good Maggie thank you Juliana okay um so I'll be reporting in cherra on Tuesday evening February 27th uh Cher held its annual kindergarten orientation where friend were able to attend and we able to tour what the life look like a kindergarten there would be in all the classrooms uh last week they also celebrated read the America week where uh chb students and staffs had an enjoyable week of reading and each day uh featured an exciting theme from wearing clothes with words Jam day dressed like your favorite character and they also had special guests like the can High School National Honor Society uh Cher Brook students and staff also enjoyed a performance of Adam's Family um Cher Brook has an I wonder KN which will be tomorrow from 5: to 7:00 and it focuses on celebrating science technology engineering art and math where uh the second grade and the seventh grade will display their stem based projects uh Cherry Brook uh second grade and first grade families were also Cher music teacher missar and also jump for heart update uh cherb bra $2,383 29 fantastic you know it's it's so great that uh we're seeing the interaction from high school down to all the way down to our Cherrybrook students and uh giving them um models and mentors to be able to look at and I I appreciate the report any questions for our student rep reps on anything you heard some exciting things going on um our our um other student rep has been kidnapped I don't know if you know this by by one of The Adams Family folks un unless Wednesday you would like to give a report no okay all right great all right so before we get to our to our uh our actors and actresses for The Adams Family there's one thing that I I I would like to do tonight and uh that's that's we're going to recognize the shops in Canton and and the reason why we're going to recognize them you know we're a small town and you all know this that 92% of our taxes are paid uh residentially only about 8 or 9% is paid commercially we don't have a lot of commercial uh um commercial paying um businesses here in town and when we do um you know they they they're usually smaller but the shops of our biggest uh taxpayers in town uh has always um been very much there for our schools and the Canton Education Foundation over the last 20 years 20 plus years the shops have contributed on their own almost over $100,000 to the Canton Education Foundation which then is given out mostly to the schools for projects and things like science projects or robotic projects or the opportunity to compete in a certain uh certain area so the shops are without a doubt one of our greatest corporate citizens that we have in town and the Board of Education along with the Canton Education Foundation would like to recognize the shops for all that they've given us uh both uh the business that they have uh the taxes that they pay and the fact that they contribute every year consistently to the Canton Education Foundation so tonight we have two proclamations uh for them and I think Liz Aran is here tonight representing the shops Liz there she is so we'll come up to the front here please take a photo for the Box take a so so the first Proclamation really comes from K Education Foundation in conjunction with Board of Education where's this this is our hardworking um manager of the shops that's you know if you ever go to the shop you see some of the fun things that are going on that's Liz she's constantly working getting new businesses into the shops and she's a great advocate for the Board of Education also she's also on the uh the Chamber of Commerce she represents on the Chamber of Commerce and she always opens up the shops to uh to our students for schools things of that nature as a matter of fact I think are we going to do the Easter EG well we doing a shopop we actually be able to hide EGS in the storage but allow the St to kids it's great kids 10 and under it tiet Education Foundation I thought that um someone came to us about doing the shops and our businesses and they super excited about it so that's great so what we have here is first Proclamation says whereas the spirited community and the collaboration plays a vital role in the success and growth of the camp public schools and WS Development shops at fingon Valley a cherished partner in our educational Journey has demonstrated exceptional generosity by making substantial donations to support the educational Endeavors of of the camp public schools and the campon education fund and whereas the contribution from WS Development shops at parment Valley will have a profound impact on our students enriching their learning experiences and providing essential resources for their academic and development and whereas the WS Development shops with Farmington Valley has consistently shown a commitment to the betterment of our school community and the well-being we now therefore the C Board of Education and the public schools and the C Education Foundation do hereby Proclaim our sincere appreciation and gratitude on behalf of the entire C Board of Education C Education Foundation to the WS Development shops at Farmington Valley for their significant heartfelt donations being further resolved that camp board of education encourages students parents teachers and staff to join in expressing gratitude to WS Development shops at farington Valley for the dedication to the advancement of Education in the camp community and one way you can do that is to always visit the shops shop locally I add that so thank thank you very [Applause] much we have one more this comes from our state representatives and you can see they have more money that we do so this says from the Connecticut general assembly and [Music] and this one uh says everybody can see it's it's uh beautifully typed and it it it's a citation by introduced by Senator heleny caros the our represented from the 17 District it's Senator Lis semaria from the a district be hereby known to all that the Connecticut General Assembly hereby offers sincere congratulations to Elizabeth AR and the WS Development shops at Farmington Valley in in recognition of years of community building and funding contribution to the C Education Foundation and the Canton Public Schools the owners of WS Development shops at faring Valley are intrical are intrical supports to the people and the children of c and their extensive contributions have allowed for numerous non-budgeted School Pro projects to enrich our children and this comes uh signed by President proen and the Speaker of the House Matt rter and the secretary of state so [Applause] app okay oh these are for you right are okay Dr Gman what would you like to do next super thank you so we're we're here for Canton celebrates also and we have Cherry Brook celebrates that has been cancelled three times I believe or two or three times because of snow so we're so excited to welcome our youngest learners tonight and Mr Amry is going to call you up just for families we'll take pictures after we'll do plenty of time for pictures after Mr Amry does his thing that we'll ask your children to come take some pictures with the Board of Ed so Mr Amry thank you Dr Gman good evening everyone yes we've been cancelled by weather but looks like there may not be more snow days which is good um I have two students friends that i' like to recognize tonight um Veronica Lindell she's um a second grader this is T class year come um she was recognized um for her her artistic talent by Mrs raposo Veronica shows her excitement for art in her attention to details and focus on her on her work her enthusiasm for creating art is evident each time she comes into the room she is kind and a caring classmate who is happy to help others she's a the wonderful Cherry Brook role model congratulations my next friend that I like to recognize is Camila Von a third grader in Miss mirx class she was recognized by Miss C for music Camila is a hardworking musician and a role model to her peers she excels in many areas of music and is is a dedicated singer and already shows great promise in instrumental skills particularly with the ukulele she is a calm presence and is focused and driven in music class and in chorus in addition camula is always kind fair and respectful to all others all other Cherry Brook friends Cherrybrook and Cherry Brook Music is lucky to have such a positive force like Camila congratulations some SC if we can call the students back up the board will just stand right here and we'll do our pictures if our students could come back up this is actually a better place for the board to bed to do you guys you all come on up behind yeah you can stand right in front and it will work you probably want to come back with us you you can stand right right here right in front of me there you go there we go beautiful and hold your hold your certificates out front like that beautiful can everybody get in can K you got everybody okay everybody look at Kira your get come on up close enough one more okay job nice job and now Mr the pipo okay very excited tonight to presenting our c celebrat can high school as I get into I just want to remind the board Mr J so nice think about the shops but something resonates for me four years ago during Co we could not have graduation on rounds it actually a very difficult time to figure it all out and um Liz called me personally to say hey we' really like to help you out any way and we worked as part I didn't know her she just want to help and we work we we spoke weekly for like 3 months to trying to figure it out and then were must nothing but uh helpful and supportive and I think by the end of the evening we all felt our families all students felt so supportive and we couldn't have done a l until May night you it actually brings back emotions it was so beautiful so that was a great night and here we are March 7 2024 uh way past Co but I might mention it one more time when I talk about this group um I'm so proud of CHS year that that we had um there's so many things that we could be celebrating and we do try to celebrate daily I think wonderful things go on in our classroom daily um we've had more field trips to that than we've had in several years as Dr Gman said we have we have this wonderful production with our drama club we have Athletics up and running we have so many um clubs and opportunities and so many um teachers willing to just uh invest their time and our students to help them bring out their passions um but for tonight um we're focusing on members of our senior class um who have made really distinct impact uh a distinct impact both academically or within the art with Athletics or just generally being leaders in our building and we have several outstanding seniors that could be represented here but in my mind what distinguishes this group um a little bit over some of the others is not just their talents and the productivity and the things that they've shown and demonstrated um but really their willingness to share um they all in their own way are leaders uh within their within their groups and and they spread their wealth to others and therefore we're a much better place so i' like to bring up all the seniors who are over here maybe TR come over here um so we can talk about you just a little bit um anyone else sitting when do we go downstairs when you want to this so I know on our minds uh you know we're thinking about the Thursday um so uh you know these awards are are very timly comments and we talk about Club but I want to turn over talk a little about projects as well as our camp students being represented here thank you um so just before I recognize the students we just kind of give a reminder and a recap for for anyone who might not be familiar that camp we we kind of affectionately call it it's our C Master project and that's really um our culminating senior Capstone that began a few years ago and we've just become really really proud of this course this is just an opportunity for seniors every senior completes this course in the fall of their senior year to choose a topic is that broad right anything something that they're just interested in as passion potential um future career something that they've been dabbling with and now have an opportunity to bring out to fruition and so throughout that semester seniors go through a process of identifying that that thing that topic which is usually half to battle in itself um and then going through a whole phase of research proposal um looking for an end goal actually creating or doing whatever that project may be and then ultimately presenting it um usually in January the last couple of years at an expo that we've um come to really enjoy in that evening so um kind of as Mr too said there's a range of seniors that we could have really highlighted and celebrated um from that from this year's Expo but we have three that we're going to bring forward so I have lla and Christy come join me over here right [Applause] just to give you a brief range of the types of topics and projects that um all three of these students went through I'll start with Christy um who really from my understanding kind of the project went in a few different directions right which is been the case with our camp projects and she ultimately landed on creating um looking to to become interested in different cultures and diversities within the school and to actually highlight and celebrate and bring those to a higher awareness um And So It ultimately created a Quon board really A visual representation of the various cultures and diversities across the student body of Canton High School and it really just became a a just a very powerful visual to be able to see and it's still on display in the hallways downstairs so congratulations chissy um and then we had so for anyone who actually attended in in person the Expo you couldn't miss lia's project it was the bo so that was um very impressively done and so lla again has words also from Miss Kurt who was Camp teacher to lla and Cole and Miss cley was Camp teacher to Chrissy um but miss Curt really was praising the fact that lla had no real previous boardwork skills necessarily but just worked so hard SP hours to just create that actual vote um and is planning on getting it in the water at some point in this [Applause] summer finally Cole Edwards um Cole created the Tamar language and culture and I I can't even begin I had the pleasure of listening to um Cole practicing a presentation a couple of weeks before the Expo and his his passion and his diligence of the research is isn't just creating and making up words this a wholeistic framework with grammar um and vocabulary that sharing that maybe your dog Converse a little bit and then back and forth sometimes so that works too but it's truly truly impressive he could probably deliver a little speech for us here right now in his language but I won't necessarily give a phras yeah that's fantastic that's amazing we got to get you a country I would like to thank all the people here thank mother and father that is [Applause] fantastic thank [Applause] you all right so we're going to bring up um you know award my award so I'd like to bring forward caral in [Music] b these two students are winners of our second annual Theater Arts Awards so with um the play on our mind um beginning on Thursday these awards are timely but these specific awards are really and years of effort by these two wonderful students our drama club is 4 years old and therefore these students have have played an impactful role as part of this club and really help to create what it is today which is a you know main stay in our building it started with just a few students um so this brings you know obviously people together to share their passion for theater um but they really use the theater as a a vehicle to create and develop their skills to use your energy and bring joy to all of us um so miss War Taylor was so proud um to choose these two members for different reasons first I about Carrie Carrie Carrie is a drama club officer and a founding member of the drama club she was Jan actor who has grown into one of our assistant Tech directors and these responsibilities of being an assistant Tech director car assists in coordinating the entire tech department for each of our Productions she also helps out during the school day as necessary she's been a valuable member of our theater Community both as an actress and leading the teches she's become a role model for other students as we start to bring people along in understanding all facets of the technology behind the production thank you so much Ken I'm so happy [Applause] thank tonight has been influential part of our drama club a little bit more out in front since the first day of the club in 2020 she's been uh she's been a drama club officer as well um for the last three years and she's been one of the leading students and she plans to run drama uh club meetings throughout the year so beyond the drama club Bella has a takeway for the future actors in the theater program she has flourished since her freshman year in a few roles uh include in being a lead in the fall and this year's musical so younger students look up to Bella for her Poise leadership her kindness and the drama club will not be the same about thank you so much for all of your work supp so Haley and Lauren tonight speaking of the Arts have won a wonderful State award the Connecticut High School Arts Awards annually honor two outstanding seniors froming each of their cast member schools who excel in instrumental performing or Visual Arts to be selected these students must also possess qualities of scholarship and Leadership and can high school winners this year are H Haley Catlin and Lauren Mary and they will be honored at a banquet on April 2nd at the aqu congratulations [Applause] haly is being recognized tonight for her role um for her talent in Visual Arts um according to miss Styer who our art teacher hay has stood out in the midst of her peers since her freshman year she stands out not only because for highly developed artistic skills but also her dedication to always challenging herself she not only has that going on for her but she's shows extreme wisdom empathy in her work as well as great determination and completion ay has pick has been picked for this honor and we're very proud of her because of these qualities have never wavered despite some hard days and challenges along the way so for this reason she was inducted into our national art Honor Society her junior year and she's the president of the society this year she also was extremely involved in the set design for the theater performance will be seeing soon and anywhere AR artistic skills are needed haly is always willing to help as her master project she started a pet portrait business and each portrait we have seen has been breathtaking which led Miss stifel to order one for herself so before uh be sure to ask her for some contact information if you're interested and we all miss haly next year um helping out with the art because of creativity but mostly because of her perseverance and kindness to guarantee success in all of our endeavors thank you so [Applause] much in Laura Mars he was selected for the instrum instrumental and Performing pars portion of this award Laur is a remarkable student she's a strong athlete and a wonderful musician Laur is has sung soprano in choir percussion in dance since fourth grade in her commitment to music as is admirable this Anthony to lets us know that laen at weekly percussion lessons with a college professor at har school where she studies everything from snare drum to the moraba uh to drum and set accessories La has represented our school at both Regional and all state and is one of the finest percussionists in our state B has worked hard uh to learn contemporary styles of drum set or the CHS Jazz Ensemble in the pit Orchestra at the newon Jazz Festival B was awarded the outstanding musicianship award for her performance with our group but like all of our students here tonight laoren is kind open-minded and openly shares her time her gifts and her talents she's a tribe and music Honor Society officer where she mentors young percussionist inter her session she's always willing to give to the great K thank you bring so in a similar type award the state represents uh two athletic awards what are known as our our CIA scholar athlete Awards um each School uh in the state selects two students to represent the school for this award so some of the criteria for the award are academic Excellence good citizenship high levels of Integrity self-discipline as well as having high personal standards which serve as role models for others and we believe that both abrian and Sam certainly have this as well as well as being incredible athletes we will we will honor them as part of a banquet on May 5th at the operater with all other schools in the state i' first like to talk about Avery Avery uh Dr Gman talked a little bit about uh the game the other night but when we think about ay over her four years here at K high school it's remarkable she's been a a four-year Varsity player for three Sports every year so 12 Varsity letters I'm not sure if that's been done um she's been the captain uh for all three Sports this year and been a captain five times in her career she's been an all conference in basketball the last two years it can still be named All State when that list comes out in a few weeks um that I think speaks to her resume but I think moreover when we talk to her coaches um especially coach Cole who spoke of May by saying she's the type of student athlete I wish all my players could Shri to be hardworking persistent determined smart and an amazing teammate he has no doubt that a will help the last team this year do great things I think another intangible to note about Avery is that those of you that have the um pleasure to watch a play this you can see that she's super intense she's super focused and works really hard but one of the favorite things that many have seen is her big smile when things go well for her or for one of her teammates and I think it's a wonderful balance of someone who is extremely competitive but also shows that balance by making sure that she's having fun and her teamates are having fun so we have real reservation that she'll do great at indicot where she'll be playing basketball next year congratulations congratulations Sam Lincoln SAR to Ay has had quite an athletic career he's a four-year Varsity player he's a three uh in baseball a three-year Varsity player for soccer he's been the captain of soccer in baseball this year and was a captain of baseball last year he was an all conference player sopore junior year in baseball this year hasn't happened yet last year was also an all State baseball player so great things to look forward to this season from Sam no pressure all right but Sam to's coach uh Mr n is the embodiment of a conate student athlete his hard work his dedication to his teammates his leadership his coachability Mak him the ideal role model for his peers to emulate while he has enjoyed incredible success on the field during his 10 Kon from being named All State team to an all Conference team to MVPs for the team he somehow manages to remain humble and puts the success teammates above his own Co has no doubt that s will continue to be an ideal representation of Canton after he graduates and moves on to achieving new goals and hopefully playing baseball in the future same looking for here [Applause] congratulations she got out of the tonight we're going to bring her back in didn't recognize so Simone um tonight actually is being recognized for all her work here mostly um as we all know Simone has been the CHS Board of Education te representative for the past two years she's put incredible incredible amount of time and effort into this position as I know she takes it very serious I think the board would attach that she is an amazing communicator and she's brought a real important points to this board and her perspective um and and the student voice um is much needed and helpful words um as I mentioned Simone is an amazing communicator and what I've always appreciated about her is that she can come forward with the student voice she can listen well and she can kind of reframe that thinking in a common mature way to represent the students behind the scenes um during our our monthly meetings as well as in front of um the public um in the board or as part of the board and for this we want to give our superintendent award it essentially it's a leadership award for being part of this board and represent um and I think the board knows this but it's important that the public knows as well as this is um as Dr Gman was talking about a huge commitment to be part of of this board mon last year we had two meetings a month hours on end supporting the board roles but she's so active in school um as you can see we're pulling her away from the dress rehearsal right now um and she's one of our leads in the play she's been a main um C to our drama club she's been a part of several Productions she's a student leader um in terms of student council she's been a class officer and um she's been in several clubs and and Sh leadership in several clubs too many to announc so we want toensure that you were um represented tonight you try to get out of the we want to make sure tonight recognize you for all your hard work thank you so [Applause] much um our opportunity to um see students um you if your direction um we could head downstairs unless you want to say a few words yeah so we we will do that we're I think we'll adjourn I'm going to take a motion to move out of order so that we can move downstairs but I just want to tell our students how impressive you are and what a contribution you've made to our schools our districts you're going to be so missed but we hope that you'll come back and um I don't know if you know about Mr Bush here he was at once a student now he's a successful businessman and he came back to Canton and now he's on the board of education and I hope maybe someday Simone maybe someday we'll see you here or whatever Community you land in but I just want to wish you on behalf of the Board of Education we want to say thank you for your contribution come and visit us again and good luck okay on over everybody come on over for a quick picture and then you can go down then we'll go down so I need a motion we're going to move out of order to go downstairs motion to move out of order and then we'll come back to Mr yeah and then we're going to adjourn so can I have a motion to move out of order Mr Mr Sher and Peggy Stein all those in favor we move out of order unanimous then I'll take a motion to adjourn Felicia motion to adjourn second second uh car car's car all those in favor okay now we can take the [Music] picture High School can you get us [Music] all yeah come back 8:00 so we're going to go down to the auditori Mr Bishop can leave us down [Music] [Applause] [Music] there 7 and we are back in a session and uh that leads to Mr di pipo to kind of give us a summary on the continuous Improvement plan very much glad go down there so um Dr rman just asked um that I Through summary um to look forward a little bit to um you know our work on our Improvement goals um last week I really appreciate the opportunity to spend some time with MERS Board of Education I thought we had a nice visit um and an opportunity to really uh dig deep into this document there's a lot of words in this document there's six ongoing um continuous Improvement Ro plans articulated um I'd be happy um to have any you come back to school through um you know working with Dr Gman if you want if you didn't get a chance to to walk to the school and you like to try it or if you want to talk a little more about some of this uh some of the information here you have so if I could excuse me Mr dep pipo so we are going to take you up on that so some of the members that didn't get a chance to make it we'll set the date that's convenient for Mr depip and Dr Kidwell and Dr Gman but um there there is a lot of information it's good information um so you know Carlin you weren't part of the board if you I was I was away so I'd like to take part of this anybody else who would like to do that we'll set that time I don't know if you have to uh go through the um the school but I I'd love to go through this in more detail because You' worked hard at it and there's there's a lot of good stuff in here and just like to understand it better yeah it's hard because even the day that the group was here I would spent a good 90 minutes discussing it we we actually got through four and a half in the goal okay so it was great n great questions and and it was dur a conversation but it is hard to kind of pinpoint exactly because I think each and every one of the goals are a bit of a story um but I think what you should know is that in each of the gold plans there there's there's a working plan in place that there's outcomes already that you know what you see here is a blend of sort of things that we're doing and and things that have been done and some outcomes as well particularly proud uh I can maybe just mention something brief about each goal um to kind of go through through the document partners and Partnerships and commun engagement um so proud of some of some of the extensions this year and the the the bullets are blocked off almost into three segments but really the first segment sort of what kids are doing ground um the middle is a little bit about some of the Outreach that the administration does and the third part is people sort of coming in to help and you've heard and um the C friends for the art it's really a parent driven organization but it's it's such a great partnership because we have key people in the building that that work as outlets for them so there's there's constantly sort of a back and forth going on and we've had two or three already excellent opportunities with some of our um shows at night where we have the open m evenings the coffee houses and we'll have the talent show next week or feil 19th so there's great things happening with with the Partnerships um and they just continue to actually grow there's more in there um if you like to ask a question later um the second of the goals is learning environment and belonging and I really do feel it Blends into embracing Equity but in terms of learning environment and belonging I mean I think what you saw demonstrated tonight what you're seeing I mean my kids are invested in involved in the schools I think and I praise the the board every time I can to to you know kind of clear the pathway for that um through you know showing that we have all of these clubs and uh opportunities for students the second of those bullets I think are as important this year um the first bullets kind of talk about things that we do the second of actually talk a little bit more about structure and routine I think um as we have evolved out of the co World some of the some of the steiness pre from preo is sort of been left behind and I think this year more than any we we are um really working with our staff on climate we've worked with our staff on making sure students are feel like a strong academic along Class Connect academically and feeling good about being in in their classrooms and you know some of our policies get really stuck to this year whereas we have to have some um I guess some flexibilities over over the co years kind of coming back in about attendance kind of really focusing in on expectations to se time are are you know a nice outcome that's that you can it's quantifiable is really our our um referrals on the way down and I think that just sort of shows the connectivity that students are back in school in a focused way and again I think that rolled into embracing equity in that um some of the structural changes have created just a more wellbeing environment but I think the key element of this embracing equ is highlighting diversity voices um you know ch's um Camp project is an example of the smoy voice um in another Camp project that actually was highly successful was student Equity team um that That Grew From the camp project that continues to present to our school um trying to Mar that idea in our chat which our is our advisory time um something else we've done is um we brought our ninth grade and our 11th grade chats together we brought our 10th and 12th grade chats together so students can interact in ways that they never happy before answering questions AC mentorships and through that chat time student team volunteers to further support some of their messages so I feel like there's a nice blend of student input and structural emphasis around you know Shing that that students have success in the classroom because I feel like that is also an equitable component um you know looking out for all of our students so I was to move on from there I think the Workforce Development um I'm really proud this year and actually also want to acknowledge the board for the professional development days that continue to be offered in our calendar um this year more than any um we sort of we haven't had a like a district initiative where we we Ser a lot of that time um for for important things it's sort of been left of the buildings a little bit more with some guidelines and what we've been able to do is really tap into our staff and our professionals um to work with our other staff members so we're using expertise from the staff um and this fluidity um about sharing um you know knowledge and um expertise has really been nice throughway you know so really developed um using data in instructional new instructional approaches have really been a highlight to our PD and I have to acknowledge who SE D wey who's our um instructional help literacy coach literacy coach all right I feel like she knows a lot more than that um but she is amazing and again that came out of our budget a couple years ago uh being able to hire that position I mean the dividends that staff has got from her exper is is amazing so that you know so again we're promoting her leadership but also then spreading her knowledge and that's just one example and we have many there the financial sustainability efficient operation you know I I I just I thinkk the board so much for the support of the budget um working through us through Dr Gman and I'm feeling really good about um where we are in and again um J has passed us to to really do a good job in our long range planning and I think that's Healy efficiencies lastly and it's both an achievement and it's hard to say lastly I I you know there's a lot of information here that I think deserves you know much more time than I take but the the the cop letting me down a little bit we had a lot of green and red in here you can see the red but you can't see the green so well and conceptually the idea is that if it was green you're advancing in that place and exactly doing a go for a light and if you might see red in some of the data that's an era that we might have brought short or we're still working on much of this data that's been presented to you is uh really TW fold it's PSAT data which which we kind of monitor yearly so we look at growth over time um and then other data is called star data which is more incremental that we give three times per year and we're looking for growth in that and um basically language arts Reading Writing um and um there's some success stories in here that I'm very proud of um and there's some eras that that need to continue to grow with but I want the board to know that for us we can look at all these numbers and we can maybe you know like point in on the number and asking questions but at the end the most important thing that I say is because of this data we know where every kid stand literally we know this student is below this student is above the teacher know there's a plan for that student there's support for that student or there's enrichment for that student different opportunities so that to me like we can talk about the the goals keep us on track but in the end of the day that data helps us to know where our kids are for most important and then last I'm really proud of the work um it's been a collective effort with Mr Scher uh John Bishop of working with um some of our TX Community College T to try to build pathway opportunities we want our students to be able to do at some point is if receive um either on their way to certification or internship hours or U manufactur ing positions or gain college credit for a dual Credit Opportunity and we have many of those already as we discussed we have PC opportunities we have AP opportunities we're trying to expand that out so I'm proud to be able to say that we'll have EC CH Mandarin 3 next year that we have EC economics next year and those are nice next steps and we're working hard with cons and when I think next October I'll be sitting with with the board sub committ to talk about several courses for the following year we're ready but um to move but but we've been it's been a bit of a SC Cas working with some of universities that are overwhelmed right now with a lot of people asking but when we built a partnership and relationship with the these um institutions this year and I feel like we're ready to pick off so I I you know it's like a two to four year full s through big step next year and then um in into some some some deeper um thinking so Haven answer any questions excellent any questions for Mr pipo Dr pwell I have a quick question um so how long after that um testing date of March 27 do we are we able to get data yeah so you know the ngss is March it's digital now is from last year so in years past we Haven made a present till the next October I think we'll have the information so by the beginning of the school year you'll know that will be our summer work thank you Mr Sher I just I'll share a few comments that I shared with through at the uh the end of the morning uh we were there for 2 hours and we stayed 20 minutes over and we could have stayed another half hour over that was really an excellent discussion and and uh uh and a very impressive morning uh that your goals are clear we knew that from the fall uh your indicators of success are clear uh the areas where you didn't get where you wanted to go that was clear as well um it was uh was very informative and very impressive and and uh you and Ruth did a great job and your staff is a great job the uh uh couple things quickly uh we heard about a math course for uh ninth graders who struggle in math uh and the two gentlemen were quite good and the data they brought was really significant I thought with the youngsters who don't like math and had struggle the math and now seem to be turning it around at least in large part uh that was a program worth worth seeing certainly I think I said it the other day uh you don't expect to learn much in 5 minute visits to eight different classrooms learn a ton uh and the biggest thing I learned was the the level of Engagement across the board uh whether the teachers know we were coming or not you can't fake that uh and uh got joke that I found one student out of the eight classes that didn't seem to be engaged everybody else was in what seemed like very engaging work uh so it was a very very worthwhile uh morning very informative morning and uh a lot of evidence of the great things that are going on at your school uh I uh I think I mentioned this to Jordan before but would it be some board members just can't go you know you have a job you can't go uh but would it be better uh if we scheduled these visits for first thing in the morning for people to get there maybe Bo can let Jordan and know that yeah we're going to work on that next year time like I like I mentioned that day this is the first year that the principal have done that done these visits so we've been we were pretty flexible but when we meet as an administrative team next year I anticipate that the high school and the middle school will go from 8:30 or like 8:00 7:30 till like 9:30 10:00 and then I anticipate Sher Brook and C to go from 8:30 to 10:30 if that makes it easier for folks because it's really really very worthwhile didn't I can't not mention uh a 30 I just did the math a 30% reduction in office referrals it's no small achievement uh it's very very impressive achievement uh for the first what six or seven months of school so that's great thank you Peggy you were there How would how did you enjoy the it was terrific there are a lot of interesting um assignments that the kids were everybody was engaged and um yeah was good ask kids questions they knew what was going on and they could converse with you and it was wonderful Kim you were you were there yeah it was a wonderful visic Drew and Ru always do a nice job being really have a strong w on you know what's going on in their school and the curriculum and the data um but I love seeing you know the different activities the different modalities the teachers are using and then um when you ask it's really the best part of being on the board of B the visits seeing the students getting to speak to them and really every every student I asked questions to they they were very thoughtful and reflective and honest and you know we ask different questions and it's really neat to hear their answers about why they like a class class or you know and it was nice to see that you they were able to be in charge of a lot of their learning obviously it's lends itself to the age group but um it was a great visit and to see the math class which we worked on in curriculum to like you know we worked on in a meeting we talk about it and we present it but then to see it in action and to see the benefit and how it it really creates a you know a thread between the board of and the decisions we make to see it red out and those teachers were fabulous they really I mean they they love their job and love students and and my my takeaway really was that no matter all the stuff we spoke about I felt good knowing that you valued the one of the most important things you spoke about Drew was relationships that the building the relationship with the students and you know really caring about them is is really how you help them you know so that was great I think you both got this back on track I feel the momentum there's a momentum shift even when you come into the building there's excitement again the kids are happy and the trajectory now on a lot of the things that you're doing are going is going in that direction so you're doing great work so thank you thank you for your time tonight thanks for being away from home all right thank [Applause] you okay uh this takes us to the uh review of the February financials Dr Gman super for um this morning the the finance committee met I want to thank Mrs Hur for putting this report to together for us uh with uh Mr Amos um just on the the cover page of your memo fiscal year 2324 end of the year forecast 31 m865 1998 which is unfavorable to budget by $119,000 there is no change in general education but special education is favorable this month by $61,000 so we have from the difference between the January and February were actually favorable from last month I want to note to the Board of Education that we are estimating a reimbursement from the Harford public schools for $541,000 as Mr Daniels said earlier that if we didn't have to lower our excess cost by additional $140,000 based upon the the data from the state of Connecticut indicating that canton's reimbursement rate is expected to be 70.5 if we did not have to reduce the excess cost our current possession would actually be $220,000 favorable that that's a big shift from when we started this whole budget process when I arrived in Canon to where we are now so so we're going to have to really watch that closely to see if we get the excess cost um up there's talk still but we're anticipating 70.5 I do got to commend the special education pupil Services office and Mrs McLean that we are better 61,800 so if you go down to the the the bullets I want to explain a few things with special ed so if you look at the bullet down special education purchase Services anticipated unfavorably unfavorable of $21,000 we're unfavorable $21,000 due to we had to bring in some consulting services for some of our students from outside resources for uh to fulfill their IEPs but if you look down the bottom two bullets transportation for special education is favorable by $29,000 and our tuition is f favorable by 53,8 because Mrs mle uh moved to uh change programming for two students so overall our special education program we've done a really nice job reducing the deficit that we're at so if you just go to page one of the the the statement of accounts you could you could see on the bottom of the first page AG that $21,000 that I was talking about in special education purchase services with outside consultant then if you go to page two on that you could see that the $29,000 Savings in transportation in the middle of page two and then you see the tuition line item where it's 53,800 that's where it Nets out if you go on to the last page I'm page three that's where it Nets out to the total general fund that were $61,000 better than we were last month and then if you look the third line up from the bottom and the finance committee does this we go through this much slow slower that you could see that we're $119,000 in the red which is $61,000 better than we were last month so General Ed is favorable by $144,000 special ed is in the red by $133,000 so that that's where we net out the $119,000 and then the last page page four just explains the the special education breakdown so overall I'm very pleased where we are we'll explain that to the the board of Finance next month of how we are moving along within our financials we'll really spend the month of March in the beginning of April really looking at our regular Ed line items such as substitutes supplies and really see if there's any savings that we may have that funds that have been encumbered that we may not be using so Mr Bush I don't know if you have anything to add based upon the the financials that we went over this morning no I think you covered everything went over a little more detail any any comments on the finance component do you want to mention anything on CIP or Russell do you want to mention anything I Russell do that one we atance report okay thank you for that report um assistant superintendent report Mr Bishop y I have two quick things tonight I want to thank the uh curriculum subcommittee for their support uh through the commissioner's Network um Improvement plan process U Mr Moore did a great job presenting recently and I'll let Miss hay share a little bit more but we're excited to be able to bring that plan to the state uh by the Friday deadline and then we expect to be able to hear more back from the state um May 15th is what we're expecting and that's uh should be when we have um directives going forward from uh our plan from there uh the secondary piece then is uh our our literacy Review Committee at Cherry book Primary School uh we have engaged in some consultative work with Hill for literacy uh through uh straight State grant for us they're working with us to be able to review three programs to be able to um have a goal of bringing forward a recommendation by the start of the school year so that we can uh begin to further Ved into the curriculum committee and develop budgetary requirements around again this requirement for a uh uh a state approved model curricular for we're doing great work with that and I'm very thankful for the leadership of our literacy specialists Cherry Brooke and the uh uh widespread committee that is working to be able to do the work there that's all from for me right now any questions out of my office any questions for the assistant superintend that's good report John thank you thank you thank you okay this brings us to our public comment we'll First Take anybody in the audience and we'll go online for public comment um so uh with respect to public comment anybody online that uh chooses to to speak I'd ask you to keep your comments to 3 minutes uh on anything that you'' like to speak about identify yourself and your address before you uh get into your comments so we'll open it up Kira sure so if you're joining us online you can use that raan feature Zoom um and if you'd like to make a public comment I'll Zoom call on you by your Zoom name okay we'll close we'll close public comment thank you very much um new business do we have anything Dr Gman nothing under the new business so let's go to the board reports and we'll start off with Finance Mr Bush um a couple things you want to mention from this morning yeah so that Jordan covered the financials we went over financials um he discussed be hiring consult a little bit more diing into uh this year get a better handle on everything um in ter one of the conversations short please help me out I'm thing is that the board of Finance selectman is going to be looking for bonding project proposals for us be working on that in yeah so at the last Board of Finance meeting there was a discussion on possible bonded projects and the philosophy what I've learned with the bonded projects is that the Selectmen will put together a list of bonded projects that they need to approve the Board of Ed will be part of that but then it has to be presented to the board of Finance who ultimately have the the final say what they are willing to bond for so there'll be discussions I know the Selectmen are talking about that at their meeting tomorrow night um yeah and then I think the only big thing that we talked about was uh fre a replacement over at Cherry correct that's it any questions uh for Mr Bush second up policy Mr shyler I'll be brief uh we are close to being done with the marathon review of all of our policies all the shipment policies I have to say special thanks to Peggy uh who's been to all the meetings and to John who's become an expert in policy um that what we uh have to do with the April meeting is there are I don't know probably a dozen policies we ask John to get some more information on uh before we move to adopt them uh we'll bring a motion to the board um soon uh which will list the policies the shipment policies that we're suggesting that the board adopt and the policies that the the uh uh we currently have that we we would suggest that we keep and you'll have time in advance to you want to look any of those up but it's been a pretty thorough review it's been a long process and uh it's almost over great thank you Mr sh any any questions on policy curriculum and Technology Mr St so we actually met have met twice since our last board meeting oh you're a Taskmaster yeah we're overachieving um but like Mr Bishop said we um mostly heard from Mr Moore about the commissioner Network turnaround plan um we went through the details of that and um the committee was for Mrs Fox can you just give a brief overview of the Commissioners sure can you do that in a or two um let's see so our Middle School was identified as um being a school that could benefit from the um well they were identified by the state as being a school that would benefit from uh being a part of the Commissioners Network which is which means you get all kinds of services and um money to improve the school so um we well the school has put together this application which is quite Hefty many pages a lot of work a lot of people involved um and so if we get accepted then we will potentially have this support for 3 years which comes with a significantly higher amount of money um staff tutors things like that so it would be it would be a real benefit to campon Middle School um so like Mr Bishop said we have a um we had a deadline of the 15th to submit it so we the committee was able to meet virtually on the 8th and um we voted unanimously to support the plan and have it be submitted great y great and that was pretty much we went over the the assistant superintendance monthly update um let's see in your next meeting is er um 3:21 at 9:00 a.m.

okay great so as far as communication goes again it goes back to the budget I can't emphasize enough of getting out and talking to people about the budget especially now that it's out there it's online anybody can take a look at it I think it's important to answer questions and to give a a complete understanding to where some of the areas of increase are coming from and and how the uh the 5.39 budget was developed so um so part of it is going to be written communication part of it will be electronic communication part of it is good oldfashioned word of mouth talking to your folks when you're in a soccer game or a lacrosse game or whatever bring up the budget and make sure people get out to vote the selectman I don't think have set the date although it's I think it's tentatively set for Tuesday May 7th uh if I have that right okay um any questions for communications uh just as far as cal cal vents goes on 320 that's when we present to the board of Finance so um typically the Board of Education although it's not an official meeting of ours um you're there uh to show support So if you put down 3:20 at 7:00 p.m. I think it's in the community center in the old room that we used to uh meet at that will be the um presentation and discussion of our budget what time is it I think it's 7:00 although I got to check CU sometimes they start early is it 6 yeah sometimes they start early for these because it could be a long long night Dr Grossman's checking um any board member announcements anything you want to bring to the board anything 6 o' thank you very much so it is 6 p.m.

on the dot that can happen um let's take a f minute break and then we'll come back and close out okay all right see you guys e all right so while we're waiting for everyone to come back Joe would you like to give us uh an update uh from staff again apologies if there's background noise I think there's music playing we can't yeah you're you're totally good Perfect all right um so yeah just just a couple is things um so one just let folks know because I know we talked about a couple times but uh we have an approved contract to Begin work with um stantech on geothermal advisory Services um for contexts for people who weren't um or haven't heard about this before this is going to include work to help um us and some of our partners here in Ann Arbor um first by answering questions regarding like the installation of geothermal um and just kind of being on you know on demand to help answer those questions as they come up for both us our partners um in the permitting process as well as conduct a feasibility study on uh District geothermal here in Ann Arbor uh pending the results of that broader feasibility study which we'll again just be kind of looking at overall where could this be possible um they'll they'll go from there and do more in-depth feasibility studies on up to three locations that are deemed viable from that so exciting stuff as we're moving forward and looking at um geothermal here in an arbor um additionally just a general is as always call for solar eyes uh which for those not familiar is our community bulk by solar program um for residents here in an arbor as well as Wasau County uh we have a couple groups that are currently running and a couple that are getting ready to start here in the next um month or so so if you are anyone you know is interested in learning more about solar and coming uh together to bulk purchase solar realizing significant Financial savings um feel free to have them contact me at jng a2gov.org or go to a2gov.org solar uh to learn more and join a group um additionally I know this is uh near and dear to many here um but heard the home energy reading disclosure uh has officially gone live as of today um our uh our city of an arbor home energy score assessors have been performing home energy scores uh I started uh last week on some of those that were getting prepared um as well as um continuing throughout this week and from here on out ongoing uh in support of this ordinance so really exciting to see that come to fruition and exciting to see all of U all the results that come with it um additionally a couple updates on things to be looking out for um another one that I know we've talked about previously and have um discussed a couple different iterations uh the home energy advisor which again some people might have previously remembered as uh called the um you know energy cge but called the home energy adviser will be launching on April 1st of 2024 so just um you know less than a month again that'll be a program where um people within um can reach out and learn more about um their energy Journey getting an energy assessment and learning how they can help um get on their path to zero to help decarbonize their home helping out with um you know Finding contractors getting bids evaluating bids all that kind of stuff as they go throughout their Journey um and lastly just to kind of Mark on your calendar uh be bringing back for our our third annual time uh the home electri home electrification Expo will be taking place on um Friday August 2nd from 5:00 to 8:00 pm at the farmers market um for those who haven't attended that in the past um basically it's a an opportunity for uh folks to come on out meet with contractors installers um across all different um aspects of the home electrification process to learn more get hands-on experience see what stuff looks like as well as just start um you know figuring out again how you can continue throughout your journey or get started on your journey and just get a better sense of how all that together so that's all for me fantastic Joe just one question on solar rise is there something like a a deadline or some kind of upcoming date that people should know about or should they just contact you or yep uh we we offer it on a rolling basis um so you know as like I said right now we have we have two scheduled that are coming up um so you know people can hop in there but um you know we're always um consistently adding new groups um as we go okay um so you know if if right now doesn't work for you or you know you you can always join in a group at a you know a later time doesn't mean or you know if you contact right now and be like I'm interested but then decide eh not right now you're still on the list you'll get notifications when new groups form um so always feel free to hop in at any point okay great all right so we're going to move to uh report from our working group if they do care to share there could also be no news would be fine I share Heart Mike you want to go ahead sure um so uh our uh work group on uh transitioning from gas buildings uh met in person um in early February uh let's see um our attendees were Larry Schmidt and Ken Garber um so it was a small crew just the four of us um but we had a nice conversation a lot of it centering around the city administrator's recommendations around uh incentives and um just kind of some feedback on that um potential ways to improve upon it um you know some questions folks had um and so in particular I think uh one of the next steps you know we were thinking is that maybe it would make it sense to have a conversation about that in this space at some point in the future um but didn't want to get ahead of the process um let's see there was some discussion about benchmarking as well um and you know where the the city stands on that um as kind of an opportunity to build upon as we think about you know electrifying or uh making requirements of buildings or anything of that nature um Vice chair harp uh any other thoughts stuff I'm missing stuff I got wrong no I think I mean I think that that about campur yeah the there was the question about the dashboard dashboard inv venturing of of of building and Commercial um uh energy consumption and also um I think it it served as sort of a first first cut to of also trying to identify a variety of of options that were available and and to try to start aligning them um and prioritizing them and having a sense of of what might be potentially put forward next also um as a as a draft say resolution for example so far that's where we're at though sorry yeah great that's that's great thanks for working on that um all right uh updates from the environmental commission commissioner msky can you share with us sure U maybe I'll address what was going to be the second Point first and that is the Environmental commission actually at the request of the two Council Liaisons asked uh were asked to weigh was asked to weigh in on the memo that was just um referenced the city administrator's um memo on beneficial electrification that was uh put out in January and that was considered in in the last meeting so I think it definitely would be appropriate for this commission to do so um as to what the timing is what we can probably what the best timing is we can probably get direction from our Council the aison I don't know if there's any um imminent action on that but the environmental uh commission was always already provided that memo and uh spent some time in the last meeting um reviewing that And discussing it um the other main issue that we covered in the last meeting was an update from staff on the status of the solid waste Resource Management plan this is a plan that the city puts out um covering five years um the last plan um was to replace a plan that expired at the end of 2017 um it wasn't approved until uh very early in 2020 and um it's running it ran until 20123 so that would 2018 to 2023 um and work has yet to begin on a new plan so we got an update on the status of all the actions basically there's a number of actions that have been implemented there's several that have yet to be worked on and implemented so staff's recommendation is to continue to work on those work on a new plan is unlikely to commence until next year um and the last process took almost two and a half years so it'll be interesting to see um how that goes forward um this is a recommendation to our Council the aison that they consider whether that's appropriate or not because we're starting to get um if you will snowballing delays and um since we know that uh circular economy and waste related issues have an impact on climate and energy issues um I have some concern that we're starting to see these delays but that was discussed those points were raised um so um at least now you know the the the council the aison for both both groups are aware of what the situation is and um if anybody wants more information on that you can check legistar or watch the video or contact me thank you great thanks for the okay we'll move to our update from Council council member breaks do you have anything to share tonight um I think the it was already referenced in public comment the the budget presentation um and I think that's just a big piece for for anybody interested um this is for folks just so you know this is the biannual um we have a biannual budget so this is the year where we typically don't make huge changes to the to the budget that would be next year and so um but there are a number of things underway um that we need to consider um so there's that um I appreciate um commissioner mki bringing up the um incentives uh memo I think that's something that I'll work with staff to have uh brought in the next meeting um there's definitely a desire to try to move um some recommendations forward um with a recogn recognition that they will not be perfect but we should be we can make uh we could we should improve on where we're at um and you know even if we're taking um smaller steps that's better than taking those steps so um I don't want we'll discuss it more maybe next month great sounds like we might have two resolutions to discuss next month okay so we uh are there any more comments on uh on these updates uh okay I not seen any so we'll move to our by the way that wouldn't be necessarily a resolution it's just a discussion of a memo um and give provide feedback to the aison about the memo so it's would be one just resolution from what we talked about with the seu and then discussion of the more of a direct feedback okay thanks John yep you're welcome great okay so this is our final comment a final opportunity for public comment and folks may speak for up to three minutes so if you're watching on CTN please call Triple 8 78899 or 877 85352 47 yes commiss Garcia um I was just curious about the resolution um supporting the advancement of the sustainable energy utility is that something that was actually going to be like presented presented to us tonight or just um I I didn't know if that was part of good point uh yeah so I was my plan was I guess kind of what you saw was to talk about the um the kind of broader context of what all goes into it and I think ultimately the resolution is is kind of simple u in terms of the resolve Clauses and it kind of follows directly from um the staff um memo recommendations so um that was my plan then we can kind of look at it in more detail I was hoping that folks would kind of review it on their own and and bring comments to the next meeting people keep switching around sorry I was looking at your face um yeah bring comments to the next meeting so that we could um kind of discuss it in more detail there has it been set uh published or sent to us I was just looking at the links on it's it's posted on legistar if you click the link it's under the text section it's not in attachment it's in the text okay thank you because I was just there trying to I was trying to get at it but to see it yeah that can get tricky sometimes okay if you don't mind I'll share my screen just so you can see how that works once I get to the correct place sorry two seconds um yeah and just as for in I know L star is not the simplest thing for uh anyone including myself um yeah so either when you come directly like from the agenda or you go on legistar and you look at this section or this this meeting um you know you can go and you can see the resolution here you click on the file um it's the the text is here um similarly if you're coming from the um the agenda itself again if you click on the um the link there the file it goes right to this text section where where it is placed so if you weren't able to find it apologies I know legar and all of its links are um again not the simplest um so no worries at all but that that's where you can find it yeah so it might default sorry just to chime in it might default to the history tab as opposed to the text that's what I had seen and I was not clicking on the text so sorry thank you very much great okay any other comments before we move the B comment oh okay yes I thought there might be one go ahead are we taking uh suggestions for the next agenda or what was uh oh yeah that's um happening after we do the after I'll wait till then yeah great all right so as I was saying uh please enter the meeting ID once you call the number uh the ID is 956 871-8787 this information is also displayed in the meeting agenda and the video feed and City staff will select callers that have raise their hand using the last three digits of your phone number to electronically raise your hand to speak please press star n on your phone and you will hear an automated announcement that the host is allowing you to speak and when doing so please move to a quiet area and mute any background sound so that we may hear you and also state your name and address before you begin your comments Joe do we have anyone on the line nope no calls at this time and I think we had enough time there that we are good to move forward okay fantastic all right so items for next agenda commissioner M you have something on your mind uh yes um I was hoping that um either in the next meeting or uh a meeting relatively soon we would be able to get a status update on the what's I guess called wheeler solar Park solar project or the landfill solar project um the city got um $5 million from the state Council appropriated $90,000 to relook at the situation it would be great if we could get just a brief update on that um we don't get need to get an update until the study is done but once the study is done it would be great to to hear um what what the status of that might be and the other thing it doesn't have to be AG gendi it could be something that addressed um tonight or in the next meeting um according to Bible we have 15 Commissioners um we've had 13 Commissioners for um well basically since the end of April last year and I brought this up before we have two vacancies and I'm a little surprised they haven't been filled yet that's you know almost 10 or 11 months now that uh those are have been known to be to be vacant and I was wondering what the intention is of the commission leadership and Council the aison that generally look at the applications and decide whether or not to forward uh nominations for those openings so you can address that now or in the next meeting that's fine yeah I think I have to get back with the group um I yeah I think that'll be the best way to do it and we can come with a more cohesive plan right any other ideas for items for the next agenda okay great all right well then if we have no more comments uh we'll move to adjournment so it's currently 7:30 p.m.

to 7:00 there'll be Awards in the pack and a dinner to follow students can bring two people along with them and late buses are going to be provided we had state champion and Regional competition first is elardo melano became a state champion to the 300 meter race representing glts congratulations elizardo then we had Maro Al menar poano qualified for and competed in the girls New England wrestling competition last weekend in Providence Ro Island our glts cheerleaders qualified for regionals and went to States um they completed competed at Wester State University and they had awesome performances they even scored their own highest score of the season um here are some of the boys and girls basketball that qualified for the MIAA tournament we're now holding the preseason um spring training so the house of athletes is back to train with students the goal of this two-e program is to help others reach their Peak Performance by increasing their speed power and Mobility they also gain they also help students gain skills in mindfulness and nutrition with help of the from the house of athletes a strong and confident foundation will be set for the spring 20124 season um we had skills USA the skills USA District competition will be held on Thursday March 14th here at glts approximately 118 reggies will test to qualify to compete in the skills USA state competition in their career areas scheduled for late April greater Lawrence text continued support allows for a safe environment where students can learn and be themselves the gtsg GSA Club sent out an email regarding a tragic death of a student next Benedict in Oklahoma they had bullying during their time in high school and rgsa wanted to shed light on that and also recognize the support that the school has shown lgbtq plus students after giving some background on the tragic death students acknowledge the efforts made at glts um in an email it said with that being said we would like to thank all of the staff here at greater Lawrence for their continuous support of the lgbtq plus students in their classes as previously mentioned mention the world is a scary place for queer people for many students in many places going to school is terrifying but for others going to school is a safe place where individuals feel like they can be their authentic selves at glts lgbtq plus students of all backgrounds have a safe place we have a place where our identities are valued where our feelings are heard and where we are treated as equals to our peers we have access access to resources like counselors and Wind Block programs we also have single stall bathrooms that allow students of all gender identities to use the bathroom in a way that is safest for them with all that you have given us we want to show our gratitude and appreciation for the ongoing support we receive daily we want you to know that none of this goes unnoticed and even the other schools have pointed out how incredibly supportive our school Community is there are also some um quotes um sent in by some students um thanking our staff um for their constant support um we have chess club chess club has had a great start they have had six to eight regular attendees as well as appearances from the school resource officer and carpentry teacher they have taken part in many focused and fun matches and hope to continue this for the rest of the school year please see these awesome matches in the photos rehearsals for the talent show are still going on on Wednesdays and Thursdays in the pack they're opening on their they're working on their opening number now it will be held on 32224 and it should be a great time for everyone involved Memorial Hall library is hosting its annual teen poetry contest do I have to okay today during lunches NHS held a St Patrick's Day fundraiser students were able to support NHS while also showing their spirit for this the holiday um and also another news the induction ceremony for NHS will be held on April I think it's supposed to say 9th um this also took place um during the free book event and some senior updates prom um will be held on Monday June 3rd at Castleton in wiam New Hampshire the theme is starry night um and the class trip is um on Thursday May 30th to Six [Music] Flags superlative winners we would like to update you on the 2024 superlatives these are not all of the winners but we wanted to be able to see some we have winners in topics like best celebrity look like best dressed Best excuses and best eyes we also have winners in topics like best friends best hair best laugh and best sense of humor lastly we hope some have some winners in Best Taste Of Music most changed since freshman year cutest couple and music most um sorry most artistic you can find all of the winners on a slideshow around the school and was also emailed to all students all right that concludes our presentation thank you all for your time and attention thank you very very much thank you well done uh the minutes of February 13th we need a motion to approve them please motion to approve second discussion Mr Jones yes Mr Mahia yes Mr tbox Mr M Gerald yes Miss dla Mr Hayden yes uh Mr distano isn't here but miss Martel is here to do the uh uh cash balance report please yep I have a cash balance report as of January 31st 2024 we had an opening account balance on December 31st of 2023 of 3,356 36 plus deposits in January of $546,000 plus a transfer in of a million plus payroll on January 4th of 1 million 91650 and10 payroll on January 18th of 1,130 46.79 we had a warrant on January 9th of 786,000 , 76164 and a warrant on January 23rd of 1,299 18276 giving us a book balance on January 31st of $594,000 18 with a corresponding bank balance of $99,100 31st 2023 of 6,956 584 the year-to-date interest on that account is $236,700 33240 we had a transfer um actually there was interest of $ 32,45 2017 and a transfer to the concentration account of a million do so the mmt mmdt balance on January 31st is 6,174 37757 with the total operating cash balance 6,768 66475 thank you can I get a motion to approve the cash balance report is presented and any uh discussion please miss dla yes Mr Jones yes Mr Mahia yes Mr tbox yes Miss Fitzgerald yes Mr hayem yes we have uh informational packet on the uh cash Reconciliation Report packet on the revolving fund and a packet on the budget report Miss Martel is up again to uh request to revote the uh 2024 budget so in your handout out you have um the supporting documents in fiscal year 2023 we didn't need our net School spending by 1,139 527 which is well below the 5% range that's allowed by Massachusetts law um so we need to revote our fiscal year 24 budget to include that shortfall recation can I get a second please any discussion Please Mr T Mr Hayden yes M fitgerald yes M Mr Jones yes Mr M yes M Martel you're up again with the approve the budget transfers we have one journal entry that I did in two entries but it was just to cover a shortfall for mileage reimbursement for our Co-op teacher and the total was um was 6 $620 we need a vote on that please second any discussion Miss Fitzgerald yes Miss dla yes Mr Jones Mr Jones yes Mr hayam yes I'm sorry Mr toox yes you missed me yes set donations I see none Communications uh there's a grant uh clean energy jobs for 1.2 1.25 million and that was in the Eagle tribute 217 I think this is the second time we had this is this a different article this is just an article that was in the uh eag Tribune Boston Globe regarding the grant that we received uh that I went over with you the last School uh school committee meeting just wanted you to see the article and uh superintendent goals we have a packet Mr you want to speak on it yes [Applause] so so um you have my uh this year's goals and you packet we never covered it earlier in the year uh with Leo leaving and everything going on so I did want to uh go over them with you uh at this time uh I have two goals here in uh other um areas that um that I've been working on in terms of n school initiatives for 2020 23 24 um so I'll go through them and if you have any questions happy to take any questions and then um if the committee has any other goals they would like me to pursue happy to uh include that as well and uh over the next couple of uh until we are April if there's something that you would like to present at the April meeting open to that as well if you want to add any other goals that are uh you feel as so you would like me to pursue uh that would be uh a conversation we could have as well at our next meeting so go one is align to standard 31a uh element 11a family community engag this is the uh is the uh standard that's in the department of Ed's uh standards uh documentation uh is to promotes the learning and growth of all students and success of all staff through effective Partnerships with Community organizations and other stakeholders that support the mission of the school and the district so goal one is I will improve and increase Community engagement I will accomplish it through a monthly newsletter to a monthly newsletter to all program advisers and superintendent and uh accomplish a uh superintendent workshop for CTE staff on developing and implementing strategies for expanding program advisory membership uh increased membership engagement will be measured through attendance at bi-week by-ear meetings and follow- off responses to ongoing communication regarding curriculum development process for each shop um so I I think that uh it's critically important to have as many advisory members as possible engaged in our uh advisory uh program for CTE uh as they are the uh experts that provide us with the knowledge and uh understanding of where the industry is going the kinds of equipment that we need and uh in reviewing the data of our advisory committees I believe that that we needed to do uh some improvement in that area both in in the quality of our uh of uh the ensuring that we have the best meetings and the constant communication trying to increase the communications we have with them uh I thought was uh some an area in which is critically important for us uh they are the uh heart and soul and leaders of where the industry uh it's what kind of skills what kind of knowledge students need to have to be successful upon graduation along with also our teachers uh experience and knowledge uh but of course uh teachers tend at maybe in the in in the educational field for 10 years and don't participate in the industry as much as your uh advisory leaders so their expertise and uh knowledge is critical for our success uh so the um focus indicators uh will establish ongoing relationships with Community organizations Community uh members businesses individually or through District initiatives and Partnerships engages them to maximize their contribution to school Effectiveness uh next bullet is to engage with businesses in a way that is culturally responsive and collaborative to ensure that all companies are welcome and can contribute to the CTE program learning environment so part of the goal is to um get more com uh minority uh leaders and and corporations involved in our uh advisory committee members as well uh so the action is uh the parent and business new newsletter CTE update curriculum shop projects quarterly uh recognition of long-term service of advisory members at our advisory meetings uh so for the first time this year at our advisory meeting uh we recognized long members who've been with us 10 years plus uh an opportunity for them to uh demonstrate that commitment they have to us by awarding them a plaque that they can uh uh display in their uh place of business um uh continue serving on State and Community organizations Chamber of Commerce Lawrence Partnerships Mass hire the whb uh mas masc and uh maava and those are monthly meetings that I attend um these organizations T tend to have our industry and uh leaders uh business and industry leaders that are both on the um board of directors as well as uh over uh uh membership at large um then uh District init initiatives and Partnerships through advisory committees and Co-op employers as scheduled on our school calendar the uh expect outcome increase program advisory membership and Industry Partnerships involvement to strengthen relationships between all glts staff resulting in continued communication with faculty regarding progress towards recommendations made at bi-weekly meetings I will attend the CT coordinator's monthly meeting to survey progress on the increased Communications with advisory members and the results of improved relationship that's go one go one are there any uh question questions uh committee would like to ask regarding the scal goal two is aligned with standard One D uh comma 1A curriculum it ensures that all teachers Implement and adapt practical and rigorous standard-based units of instruction as needed consisting consisting of well structured lessons and projects with measurable practical in theory skills and knowledge uh goal to is by June 20 2025 there will be an increase in CTE curriculum projects that measure students success and reaching Proficiency in all strands aligned to the project uh I will comp accomplish this by developing delivering two professional development workshop for administrators and teachers providing staff professional development time to include the ability to measure all framework strands within each Pro uh shop project that students perform um so one of uh work that I've believed in a long time with regards to uh vocational uh curriculum and Frameworks is that all projects should measure and assess uh all the strands that are included within the project which includes which can include the academic strands the workforce uh uh measures of uh buil working as team uh um projects by being able to measure the success of that uh and any other strands that fall within the projects uh often uh we have for years we've built our projects around uh strand 2 which is specifically the technical strand um but I think the increase of uh measuring and building um instruction around the actual um other strands at the time projects are being completed is critically important so that's work that I uh will uh participate in helping uh our ad our CT administrators uh develop and Implement over the next two years uh the focus indicator ensures curriculum and instructional materials are high quality standard align rigorous and culturally responsive and sustainable sustaining for students especially black L Latin Latino Asian indigenous and uh multiracial students Provide support to all Educators and teams to adapt as needed and Implement standards based units comprising well structured lessons so that students can learn the Knowledge and Skills to find in state standards local curricula and frequently providing feedback as necessary um actions uh developing assessment workshops to do to deliver during professional development for administrators and teachers May June and September of 2024 um uh work with administrative staff in assessing staff progress regarding updates to the curriculum standing item on administrative instructural meeting agendas uh starting after May um and the expected outcome there will be an increase in CTE curriculum projects that measure students success in reaching proficiency and all strands aligned to the project this will be measured by analyzing all curric uh throughout the school year um and then uh next bullet is student superintendent will report progress on goals at the end of the fourth quarter and uh I have in so as far as uh goal two um I uh decided to engage in uh more curriculum work um as my expertise as a curriculum director for years uh as assistant superintendent and curriculum director thought my uh I would work more closely with the administrative team to ensure that we get the curriculum aligned with our strands at a higher level uh so um any questions on this goal okay uh other superintendent initiatives for school year 2023 24 is to work with the director of facilities to develop a 5-year Capital plan which we uh actually completed today and we'll submit to the committee uh at a later um meeting school committee meeting uh complete FAA and DSC approval process for the aviation program uh pursue the purchase of the Els building and Airport Hangar work towards completing the following Capital Improvement projects field Barn Aviation building 1 and two Airport hanger Landscape Horticulture Barn phase four field completion uh complete renovation of new classroom space uh tennis court lighting hiring and mentoring of assistant superintendent and to increase a diverse advisory committee membership any questions for the superintendent before we move on petition through is it close the purchase off campus oh so you mean for the um um I guess I don't understand what the question is yeah to to buy the property off campus we needed the okay yes did it go through and that hasn't been completed yet no you're talking about the legislation next yes yes yet the legislation on the home rule legislation yes that uh I called uh uh uh representative Moran um the end of last week and tried to reach out to him before the meeting to find out where it sits and uh he hasn't returned my call yet so I'm not sure where we are in that process but I will continue to try to reach them tomorrow and I can email everybody once I get a sense of where we're at with the in the process thank you you're welcome uh the superintendent will update a district committee on the equipment and infrastructure Grant in the amount of $750,000 so you have in there uh document that uh outlines the uh award that we recently received for $750,000 from the Clean Energy Center uh this was submitted way back in Janu January Susan sometime in January this award will uh allow us to uh velop new techn uh work with the students to develop new uh programming in our curriculum uh around uh green energy and sustainable energy um in different areas of technology in our HVAC program uh as well as our electrical program and plumbing program uh which will be built around such projects as uh our solar projects and um go thermal we're putting in as a result of this grant are able to put in a geothermal system for one of our buildings which is about a $275,000 investment for the school uh and also allow us to start training our students on how to uh for the implementation and the installation of uh of this type of a system the geothermal systems uh as well as uh the increase uh technology with um solar systems so we're grateful for the hard work that uh Su Amano and Rich Gonzalez uh provided a lot of the expertise in working with Susan on this particular Grant uh and the quality of the uh pre uh the uh the proposal was really outstanding so it was very competitive and we we were fortunate to get this Grant That'll allow us to continue to work around sustainable energy uh for the near future yes uh superintendent l boy will update the district committee on the Andover board meeting where we presented the Expansion Project so I did meet before the Andover uh selectman um couple weeks ago to go over our plans to to um purchase the uh Lawrence Hangar and its impact on the aviation program and what it meant to the school and also trying to get support from them in terms of purchasing the Elks and what the intent and purpose and use of that uh building would be uh I've got a very fa favorable uh response from them uh and uh and they have asked me to present to the finance board uh as well and then uh we'll be presenting we'll also be presenting at the at the town meeting as well um that uh is one of the steps in uh preparing for the town meeting uh so the process of obtaining a bond uh uh requires first the committee's uh vote which you made that you uh did last Friday uh and then from there now we have submitted um a uh warant article uh to go on town meeting in Andover and North Andover um and I have also contacted met with us mayor of Lawrence to get his support on the bond and uh he also uh we have uh we will be on the city Lawrence city council's next uh meeting agenda I submitted that to the city clerk today so they need to approve the Bond as well they're meeting on the 19th uh to hear the request for the bond and then the following meeting a week later they will vote on whether to approve the bond um the bond is uh about is $4 million and it's broken up with each Community uh having a different assessment based on how many students are in the school so in the case of Lawrence approximately 70% of the students students are from Lawrence so Lawrence would be uh assessed for 2.8 million over 10 years uh so that I outlined all that in uh the communication I had uh documentation I sent over to the uh city um today uh city clerk today um so mathuin I am meeting with the mayor of Methuen on Thursday it was supposed to be last last week and then Monday uh but now we've he's we've moved the meeting to Thursday and have reached out to the city clerk in methan to set up a meeting to get on the agenda for the next uh methan city council meeting as well uh so that'll uh take care of Methuen mathuin uh has about 25% of the student population a little bit under so their assessment would be about a million doar uh which is uh $100 a year for the next 10 years so that's what we're looking for in that particular Community North Andover um we submitted the uh when we submitted the warrant uh there we got a call from them today and uh they would like me uh to meet with the um town uh uh Board of uh Selectmen again I've met with them but they'd like me to meet with them again to give them a little more detail on the bond itself and uh the um which we are trying to schedule that now and that's pretty much the process for the bond once each of the communities approves it uh then we can uh apply for the bond for a bond which will work with our our Treasurer uh Mr DFO and in that process and with our uh Finance director Melissa will be a uh strong part of that helping us make the right decision for the uh best uh rates we can get that covers the bond uh how about the update on the legislation bill for purchasing of the building so the purchasing of the building uh at this point here um have met with the board of directors for the Elks a couple times uh we H we have we hire but we are we have a a um real estate agent commercial agent out looking for property for us through the um South Lawrence area particularly in this area here for the last four weeks I spoke to him again today hasn't had any luck in finding anything yet um so the Elks won't finalize a deal until they know they have another place to go so that'll be one of our biggest challenges I spoke to a gentleman um who owns a lot of property and Lawrence actually owns uh bought the old Cinema property um Juan I'm trying to remember his name first name is Juan I serve on the massire board with him so I've built a relationship with him so I called him today to see if he would be interested in carving out a little piece of that land that he could sell to the Elks and uh um he what he wanted to do was build a building and have them lease it instead I said no no they don't want to do that they want to own their own building so what he's going to do is uh meet with his brother and uh look at the possibility that possibility I told him I explained to him he's a very Community oriented person so I explained to them how much it would mean to K the kids of Lawrence and the community in terms of 300 more students being a medical center what that would mean to the medical uh profession and the and the citizens of the city so I try to make him feel like and he's really good you know to the community I know he is so I was trying to reach his heart and see if I could get him to uh consider selling a piece of the land but in the end he said he'll call me back so it was better than just saying no uh so that would be a great spot because it's still in St Lawrence it's close to the highway and it has a lot of parking space as well so I'm hoping um that works out so if that doesn't work out then uh we'll we'll do what we can we got to find something so because it's so important that's part of without that we can't move forward okay so that's where we're at with that okay Miss Susan Amano director of Grants Workforce Development we'll update the district committee on Workforce Development so for those who don't know Susan suano who's our uh director of Grants and Workforce Development has been doing this job for six years now Susan almost oh four years feels like you've been here forever uh so not nice yeah we did what Susan came from us from Mass higher uh and um so I knew well of how her work and uh how professional how skilled she was but I have to say in four years she's been with us she's done just an amazing job of car bringing us from no Workforce Development programs to probably one of the top schools in the Commonwealth with regards to Workforce Development and the impact has on the citizens and the people she's been uh and she oversees the after dark program as well uh does countless uh projects day after day and um one of our topnotch administrators who has such a tremendous commitment to the to the school to the citizens of the city another Community leader I believe in uh what the work that she does so I'm fortunate to have her and has uh made a huge difference uh not only at glts but in the community and in the Workforce Development community so thanks for that Susan I asked her if she would give us a little bit of update on her work because I don't think the committee gets a chance to really hear uh the uh the the things that she's involved in and the efforts that she Mak today today that are benefiting uh our students and uh the citizens and the community itself thank you so much Sean for that introduction that was very overly generous I appreciate it um but I am very glad to be here today to give everyone an update on the Workforce Development work that we do here at glts and I think that we first want to talk about the why why are we even doing this we know we're a public high school and we do a great job at that but the reason is because we have this tremendous facility and these wonderful teachers and we want to create access and so creating access to high demand occupations on lucrative career Pathways in critical Industries for the diverse communities of the Mary ma Valley and so when we say diverse communities we especially are directing our Workforce Development programs to unemployed and underemployed um English language Learners and all kinds of newcomers um people who have been underrepresented in the past in these technical fields and so I think it's important to realize as well that you know our day school is has a steady flow of dollars from public education support from public education but it's true um Workforce Development is something that needs to be supported with grants and so we are very um it's a wonderful thing that in Massachusetts there are a lot of Grant programs available and so I wanted you to see what that what's out there we get grants from the Commonwealth Corporation they have two main um kinds of Grants Career Technical initiative and Workforce competitiveness trust fund we have both of those grants and and they that's in health care and in the trades and then Advanced manufacturing we get grants from Northeast Advanced manufacturing Consortium Namy and mass higher marac Valley Workforce board and then recently we've been pursuing grants from the mass clean energy center and from the Mary Mac Valley renewal fund um for clean energy careers and preparing people for a clean energy economy and so you can see that our annual budget in Workforce Development went from about half a million in 2022 this year we're at about a million and then we're anticipating for 25 and 26 that we'll have a budget of about 1.2 million each year and you know when you think about it it's that our goal really is to build the workforce um in our area and so we offer about 14 trainings a year classes about 12 to 15 students in each class and like I said we have funds to get us through to about 2026 but there's many more opportunities um for us to keep applying for additional grants so our CTI that's the Career Technical initiative grants you can see that those that Grant supports us for classes in the summer in the fall and in the winter in our construction trades and in Auto technology welding and and autoc collision um then we also just started our first of three medical assistant trainings that we're going to do um that will help our students become certified medical assistants we are just now recruiting and hiring for a solar installer Technical Training um we work with groundwork Lawrence in that particular training and then as I mentioned we do a lot of work in Advanced manufacturing and right now we are operating an esol enhanced Advanced manufacturing training for English language Learners and there again we have funding this is our first cohort we've done two in the past we were Rec contracted to do three more with the workforce board and you know the thing is you might wonder when you think of evening classes and Workforce Development you might say you know this is continuing education short-term classes personal enrichment but I just want to emphasize that Workforce Development all of our work is to prepare people to go to work it's not personal enrichment um it's not just dabbling in something it's actually preparing in every way to help people to go to work and at the same time you know when you think of glts our work our core work is Technical Training and yet to be successful in Workforce Development it has to be much broader and that's why when you look at the different components of our programs you can see they're very comprehensive of course we do the Technical Training but then we do job Readiness skill building that's like resumés interview skills career exploration because a lot of times students can't see how broad their their trades could be you know they might see a very small picture of what it could mean to be a handyman without seeing you know you could be part of the union and make a tremendous living and then job coaching and support services are very important as well to make sure that people are able to persist in training and finish and lastly job placement and retention services are crucial to make sure that people get into jobs and then they stay in the jobs um and so we also want to mention that we do have the after dark program because again what we're looking for here is to create access to Technical Training so as you all know the after dark program is for our Comprehensive High School students those who maybe wanted to come to glts but didn't have the opportunity so now we do partner with Lawrence High School Andover High School North Andover Methuen and Phoenix Academy um and we right now have about 112 students who are in six different shops next year we anticipate we'll have3 32 students um and then you know we'll evaluate and see if we want to continue to GR row and um this program is probably has an annual budget of about 700,000 right now and this is paid for by um our comprehensive schools that support their students and also a grant that we get from Desi and we also do have an apprenticeship program in electrical and plumbing and this is a tuition-based program because uh we want to make sure that there's a training pipeline not just to start in an introductory level class but that members of our community who are already in the trades have a chance to move up and become licensed so we do offer a 4year 600 hour electrical program and a 4year 450 hour plumbing program and that budget is about 100,000 a year again that's private pay they they the students are supporting that and I think it's been important to understand you know sometimes it seems like um Workforce Development well you know how big a staff would you even need for that and so I think it's important to recognize that right now there are three of us who are full-time employees and we have two part-time employees we have um we will have three open positions right now they're not posted one is is posted but that we need three more full-time positions to do all the work that we do well and we also oversee about 40 teachers and Par professionals who do all the work in the classes every day and the other thing is it's important to recognize that Workforce Development is actually helping um bring Innovation to our day school when John was talking before about the equipment Grant we were eligible for that Grant because of a Workforce Development grant that we got um to train in solar energy and building maintenance technician HVAC so that we were eligible to apply for the grant to bring in the equipment for our school to benefit everyone and as well we just received that million dooll Grant that's for um clean energy career awareness which will be for our adults after dark and day students as well as the $600,000 um internship program that really for the trades we'll call a wage reimbursement program um for clean energy employers who hire our day after dark or evening students um for three months we will pay the wage and the the extra 100,000 is there because we do have to hire someone to manage that program it's a lot to get set up but it it will be so important for all of our students because in for our day after dark and evening you know our goal is employment so in general I just wanted to give you this overview of what we do so that you can see that even though what we're doing here at glts is the Technical Training and all the other components helping people go to work but our impact is really much larger we are looking to build Pathways to economic stability we're looking to drive economic competitiveness for our businesses and also in the long run creating a much more vital community so thank you for giving me this opportunity today to tell you about what we do and I appreciate your support there we go first of all thank you for the report this was great I certainly have been following Along on this but I did have a couple of questions um the first one being how do we identify or recruit the for the after do program in particular I understand the that are coming from the high schools but in the actual training of the underserved that we are focusing on how do you recruit them I see things on Facebook and social media from um the workforce board the groundwork Lawrence I've seen things from whia that they had received grants and they were advertising it so how do we get that group of people in here so for our Workforce Development for our adults actually we've made a decision that we for almost all of our grants all our programs we are not going to be the recruiter we do some Outreach but we partner with local organizations so the thing is our main partner is mass hire Mary Mc Valley Career Center um and so they do the part which is the recruitment the assessment um and then the enrollment and then the students come over here for us to ask a few more questions do a Corey check and give the final okay to for all the students who come in thank you and then you know for the after dark the thing is that we go out and do presentations at the different high schools for the for our high school program um and also Word of Mouth you know I think that that first year or so it was really hard to get students in but now you know the applications come rolling in because students refer other students one more thing I thank you for hoping to get all this money in so that the job can get done thank you very much yeah the money's available we go after it any other questions Susan thank you oh I'm sorry John I I just want a couple of comments so one of the things that's a real challenge is getting teachers for the evening programs and Sue does a terrific job like sometimes it's really hard to find someone to do the job she calls other schools companies she does a terrific job in filling that Gap and you know a lot of them are our own instructors but that doesn't even come close to filling the needs of all the different positions we could offer more even more training the thing that holds us back is finding instructors to to run the programs that's our biggest challenge in our Workforce Development uh work um but Susan does a terrific job because without that we can't run these programs and so uh that's I think one of the hardest things of the job is to to do that kind of work I mean it's hard enough during the day never mind trying to get night so we've strategized on that and trying to figure out ways to to recruit so we're we're starting to do some work around visiting some of the people that Susan's hiring will be visiting companies to talk about not only do they need Workforce Development training so we can do uh Partnerships with specific companies but also talking about do we can we have the opportunity to talk to their employees about working after hour because they're the they they have the expertise that we're looking for to train our after our evening program uh students so we've been engaging in doing some of that work as well so um I think it's terrific work one of the things one of the things that we do well that we've been doing well is uh placing students who complete the program so it makes no sense to bring in and train people if there's no job after so one of my commitments and Susan understands as well because we have a lot of conversations about this and a lot of strategizing on this is that don't want to run programs for 15 people and then say well we we trained you but sorry there's no work so it's critical critically important that we have an understanding of where the jobs are before we start the programs because we want to make sure we can put them to work and so um that's the job of uh the uh Career Center typically but because they weren't finding the kind of placements that we thought was important we took on that row ourselves and we use some of our money to hire somebody uh because of the work that we've done uh the comp uh uh Commonwealth Corporation has put out a specific grant that now allows us to hire somebody to do that work for us we met with them and told them the problems we were having with placing and so we said we want to do it ourselves which isn't something they typically fund so then uh after meeting with us and convincing them it was the right way to go also the argument was if we can get out there and recruit the jobs we can also build new relationships for our day program as well as our no night program so we have more industry people who understand what we do and what we are can accomplish but also we get to see better get into the these companies and see what is is the work they're doing we want to know deeply know what is the skills they want so we can make sure we train for the skills that they want so that's helped that uh that work in that relationship and so um because of the way Susan's commitment to making sure we have these jobs uh it was recognized by Commonwealth Corporation he put out a grant so that other schools could also do that so uh it just just kind of uh wanted you to realize the kind of commitment that um we have towards Workforce Development and we know how important it is to our community to try to help find jobs so Susan at the end of when they finish a 300H hour program Susan does a like a graduation they have a party and she always invites me to the party to say some words so I go and I and I and they bring their F and everything and the hardest thing I have about when I talk to the the graduates is I have a hard time not crying because when you see the families and it really changes lives it's really hard not to really feel that and that's the kind of work we do right and that's a picture right up there of last week we were over at HRI brother boiler works with our welding class we're hoping that a number will get a job over there thanks Susan that's all thank you Susan thank you very much with that introduction I thought John was going to say you were running for an office I'm just over here doing my job uh building uh construction project updates from the superintendent on hanger one hanger two portic culture and a cafeteria okay so the uh Hangar One building which is the one that's being uh went out to bid uh we got the bid for the subcontractors today came in about where we expected so how it gets done is you put out a bid and you have subcontractors who going to do uh the electrical the plumbing those parts of it separate from the general contractor and the subcontractors uh bids came in at about 2.7 million I think it's about where we expected it now the general contractor will then bid his part of the job and we expect that to come in somewhere about 2.3 million the general contractor then hires all the subcontractors who were selected uh and he adds that to his bid so we get a final bid of so general contractor is responsible for the subcontractor's work and hiring them and all that but the uh process is that they have to bid and we have to select them and then they get turned over to the general contractor who uses specific subcontractors for the project so that we will get the general contractors uh bid next Tuesday and then the process will be finally done and then once we award it we can actually get started on the project so that building was expected to come in at about $5 million we hope to start uh the work on that building the beginning of April and uh we've got we've got a as part of the uh uh the expectation of the project is uh is a five minut five month Pro we expect to do it in about five month which is a little aggressive um but um we think we have a little bit of leeway in uh Sesser 3 we applied for an extension in time to spend that free money because that's some of the money we're using on that particular project so if we can get that uh that would help take off the pressure in terms of getting the building done in that time frame but we're waiting to hear from that anyways hanger two uh uh building or uh building that we're building as uh another part of the uh project requirement I mean the FAA requirement to ensure that we have enough square footage for the program the building that has if you uh look to the right of the garages out there we've started construction of that building the students have been working on that our own staff been working on that so the walls and the trusses are up uh ready to start the roof uh and some of the in the uh all the underground for Plumbing's been done uh so once we put the roof on we can pour the concrete floor and really go to town with all the Mechanicals finish that up that's a hopeful uh completion dat of early May to have that building uh be able to be occupied the Horticultural landscape building which is over by the greenhouse we started that this week framing that this week uh so the students are that's totally the students project so they're doing the carpentry the plumbing the not the plumbing but the electrical the HVAC uh that's where the geothermal systems going in so it'll be a geothermal system that will be used to heat that building and and uh as part of the uh com we have to sub out we got an engineer to do the uh geothermal engineering and a company that will oversee the project but they will work with the students in order to build the Geo system so the kids can learn how to do that that's part of the contract uh language to ensure the students and then that'll be a a working go system for us to continue to train students in hbac on the installation of GE systems um which is very expensive but it's new tech technology that uh we expect to uh start to Skyrock in in in the future because of the uh efficiency and the cost to operate that type of system so those and then the cafeteria all the equipment finally came in so we can now start to install the kitchen equipment that's been hold up down there so we will start installing that uh equipment uh very soon well we've actually already started but um we haven't gone to town on it really really uh which we will do in a couple weeks once we get our uh the uh we're going to have the students and some of the professional working together to to put the kitchen together both plumbing and uh HVAC is putting hva students HVAC students are putting in the walk-in refrigerators and freezers that are going to be utilized in that space um so that project we hope to have that done by the end of the school year and be ready for use next year that's it thank you admissions report Mr Lavoy so the admissions report I'm going to we're going to have our uh assistant uh superintendent do the admissions report who's been uh director of guidance who who has been overseeing the admission process this year uh I asked her if she would do the report so you could uh uh get a chance to hear her so Brenda all right thank you so this is an exciting week we um are planning on sending out our first round of admissions decisions and acceptances this week um targeting Friday afternoon March 15 um so this year we have seen an increase in applications so our priority deadline is February 1st but we'll continue to accept applications through June 1st um I don't believe you have last year's numbers in the the packet but um and there's been even a little bit of an update in the numbers since last week we continue to process applications and complete them as we can so as of today we have 1447 complete applications um 1410 are complete pending meaning we have everything that we need they're scored and they're ready to um to receive their decision um so this right now this is an increase of 139 applications over last year um what's been really exciting is to see um some increases in a couple of our communities so for let's see uh for Andover last year we had 24 applications as of this time and this year we have 29 um Lawrence went from 961 to 1,59 methu andette was actually almost exactly the same so 283 to 282 just down one and north and over that was the biggest change so last year there were 29 applications at this time and this year we have 54 so um this was actually the first year that North Andover when we visited the middle school they had us speak with all of the students and not just students who said that they were interested in advance so that obviously had a huge impact on our applications this this year I don't know if you have the transfer applications in your packet as well um so as of this date we have 154 applications for the class of 2027 which would be next year's 10th graders and we have 50 1 applications for the class of 2026 so our Junior so I anticipate very uh few openings for sophomores and Junior transfers next year so it's nice following up uh these reports about access with after dark and the adult programs and expansion um when you see the numbers like this and how many students will be weight listed so any questions please uh the toal appli you have all the all all the information you need in order to process them it's that's not all the applications total do you know what the total amount of students that applied this year is so we we take out of this number we remove um any duplicate applications applications that were just started and not fully submitted um out of District applicants um um but I believe the last report that I received on Monday it was over 1,600 it might have been like 1680 um so when you take out some of those extraneous applications you know we're we're still looking at well over 1500 so what happens to applications like that where we don't have all the information we need do we contact the schools how do we handle that yeah so um and that's part of the reason why we uh do wait until the middle of March to send out our decision so we try to make sure that any application that's submitted by the February 1st deadline that we try to get all of the records so that they will be um scored and uh they receive a decision in the first round so um we continue to reach out to the middle schools in some cases we're just waiting for them to send us you know additional documents sometimes they'll forget to upload something um sometimes we're looking for discipline reports we might notice that there's a suspension on an attendance record but they didn't provide the discipline report um we also have a lot of stud students who are newcomers um so there are a number of situations where students came from another country um it might have been either at the beginning of this year as in e8th grade or the end of the seventh grade and we have limited um documentation so we we reach out we have Betsy Gomez who works in the office she's our Equitable access liaison and she actually works with the families and she'll even reach out to the schools in the other countries to try to get whatever records we can um because reducing the number of incomplete applications especially for somebody coming from um another country and they don't they don't have access to those records we don't want to keep those as incomplete applications um so we try whatever we can to um to get all of the documentation and then ultimately there are some applications that will score um say if it is somebody coming from another country they have the transcript maybe not a discipline record maybe not the uh the attendance um so we try to complete them as much as possible thank you anybody else Mr Tom B if the student's accepted and then decides to not attend how does that play out in the start of school in septe you know getting other kids to fill the void right so we send out our decisions uh we use an online application portal now it's called go to CTE and when we send out the decisions we initially send them out through an email and right in the email it gives them the option of accepting um the offer and they say that they're coming or they can decline so some students we know they apply to multiple schools they might be going to um a private school or Lawrence High methu and high so um right there they have the opportunity to um say that they're not coming and we fill all of the spots um we have a target number I believe this year it will be 485 and we continue to accept students as the openings become available and that H happens throughout the summer and we'll do that even into um into September if we have openings um so they they get their acceptance through email not a letter in the mail just so initially it's the email uh because of the online portal and then we follow that up with a letter with additional information about enrolling and this year we're actually um doing an online enrollment as well so in the past it's been all paper um which is you know more time consuming easier to to miss things so um it's it's a an online enrollment system that goes through X2 which is our student information system so um families will be able to go in create an account they fill out all the information and then they can upload documents as well so we're hoping that that will help to streamline the the enrollment process this year and we're talking about on our accepted students day in May having um computers and stations set up where we can support the families with that online um enrollment process uh next up is the principles report Miss Linsky please good evening it's tough following uh following all these great reports tonight um I just want to share um some updates um we have um including staff professional learning uh some safe office data a digital Wellness opportunity presentation for our students I want to share a little bit about our literacy AF 1707 book giveaway Early College Planning Grant and um what happened today of course all the freshmen um half of them started their freshman career area selection today um so I wanted to share uh last month on the 14th um it was uh one of our professional learning opportunities that um it was great because it was run by staff it was run by um administrators teachers instructional coaches they were all sessions that um people put together so they were also it was great to have in-house presenters um and um it's just one of the many stops that um we had and so it was probably we received it was well received by staff and um it was great to see some in-house presentations I also want to share just a data point from our safe office um we were looking uh the semester 1 at the end of semester one we were looking at our suspension rate and um so from last year to this year um the the rates for our referrals to the positive alternative to school suspension program um that's what you've heard before P that pass program that has been reduced and also our out of school suspension has been reduced this year um and that is again with an additional I believe 80 something students um one other data point that um was great to see is that um our suspensions for special education students have been significantly reduced and that's really um you know that's something that we were kind of looking at and I will say it's been a great collaboration between the guidance Department the safe office as well as the Special Education team really working together um so we also have been looking at this because last year with the district support um we put to and the superintendent we had um we added two additional positions and one of them is to have um a dedicated Freshman Academy team leader that kind of works with the freshman and works with um the assistant principal and the dean and we also have an adjustment counselor that's kind of assigned to that space um so we believe that these enhancements really um you know kind of attributed to the decrease and so we're going to keep monitoring this data um but I did want to share it because um I think it's pretty remarkable um right now that we are a knock on wood of course that we're looking at um less students suspended um we're really trying to keep kids in school and also that the there was a decrease in one of our special populations so um I believe we shared with the committee we got a cell phone policy Grant like a cell phone Grant at the beginning of the year and part of that Grant was we used for um purchasing equipment to store cell phones but part of it when we wrote the grant was around education so we're excited that on April 4th um we're partnering with Boston children it's called digital Wellness lab and it's through Boston Children's Hospital in Harvard Medical School and the whole idea is to really um kind of educate and have dialogue around positive relationship with technology so we have a presenter coming out and um all of the grades will have an assembly on that we're also looking to partner with the digital Wellness lab um in conjunction with this day to send out some resources to families and the community as well CU it's such an important um topic so today we had um kind of a book giveaway which is better than a book sale um local 1707 partnered with AF mass and they provided every student with GL glts the opportunity to get a free book of their choice um the AFT president Beth Kos came um and um toured the school with the super intendent and we had students that were able to choose from eight different titles and the titles were great the titles um were selected by some of our grade 10 English teachers um grade level very high interest um culturally responsible um responsive and it was um just a great day there were volunteer teachers that worked the table um and um as you can see there were happy faces giving away books so that's always a good way we're looking to see how we can um use this book giveaway and somehow tie it possibly into our summer reading or maybe independent reading here I'm also excited to share that um we were awarded um The Early College Planning Grant this is something that we spoke about um this year in terms of trying to work to expand access to um some early college classes um so we were awarded the 50 $50,000 we got the maximum Grant um um and we're looking to partner with Northern Essex and potentially other community colleges or other partners um so this is really kind of the first step and the grant will be used to kind of explore student interests work with teachers counselors and families to kind of determine what's best and we're really excited because we have the opportunity here not only to provide um early college classes um on the academic side but look for Partnerships um in the career areas um and and especially where Northern Essex is right here in Lawrence and does a lot of medical we're really excited for this opportunity and so really this is a planning Grant so it's really kind of um uh an opportunity for us to kind of take a step back and look at what our needs are and then um should we choose to go forward the next step would be to apply for Early College designation and so we would do that the following year and today I saw a lot of nervous freshmen um I saw a couple walking around taking deep breaths with their teachers um it was um half of the students um the students that were in shop today made their shop selection um and so the next group of students will make their shop selection on Tuesday March 19th and then um it's a Friday notification kind of like the admissions but Friday March 22nd the Freshman students will be notified um via email about their shop placement um we then have a series of days that they're they stay in shop and have special programming until students are actually placed so April 1st all of our freshman will um start in their permanent shops and then um we are following up with a parent career night on Thursday May 2nd and that's a night for parents and Guardians to come in and um meet their students shop teacher and learn a little bit more now that the students have been selected in the shop um so it's a very exciting time um so this year just so you know a little bit of our process um the students will rank all eight career areas that they explored um so they'll be ranking them one through eight um one being their first choice eight being their last and then um we have them enter their first second and third career areas um from the Google form so we kind of have them kind of do a worksheet first to kind of prepare and then they actually entered into our Aspen workflow um so there's a placement formula and um students will be placed into their first choice ranking uh um by overall Rank and then um we just go through it's filled so um it's exciting time and um we'll we'll have some updates on that um so I think um you all know we mentioned it but I just also want to remind the committee that we are um undergoing our department of Ed comprehensive review this week um yesterday it started with some virtual interviews um they're on uh the team is on site for the rest of the week they were out doing observations of classrooms today that will continue tomorrow um and Thursday um followed by some focus groups with students staff and I believe there's a um there was a family group last night so we're excited um to kind of you know have the results of that and see how we can use that to um always continues to improve thank you any questions for the principal Mr M yeah um it says here uh school committee focus group have those members been selected for this review three we're going to have which I was to okay okay we're actually looking for three volunteers your M on oh which I was going to me mention it this good thing you brought it up remind me we need three school committee members willing to uh talk to the focus group that are going to be here on Thursday I mean yeah Thursday at 4:30 I think it yeah and it's via zoom and it's going to be via Zoom so they will give you a link and so if we had four members who were interested in speaking to them so okay so Marilyn Bill and okay and miss Mia what time is that it's uh 4: I think it's 4:30 just send out an email yes so I'll send you out the information email with the link we'll send that out to you tomorrow morning okay y thank you thank you any other questions so just out of interest and you might not know this but uh some of the titles I was interested in some of the titles of the books they picked up can't he I didn't hear you I was interested in some of the titles of the book books that they picked out the kids picked out I'll actually share this presentation out with you all electronically because you can link and it has all the titles in a brief description so um there there's something for everyone there so I'll share that out thank you uh reports of the committee there are none I'm sorry now I just wanted to make a comment that we've had great reports here tonight and it feels good and there's some really good stuff in here and is a good report out night old bu business there was none new business uh Mr M requested some time to discuss District committee regular meetings I'm sorry Marin I didn't know where this would fit in but I just wanted to make a comment I had mentioned earlier John wasn't here when I said it that I um made a trip down to the pool my old stomping ground and um I noticed that there was a new mat right at the initial entrance which was beautiful but then the floor was kind of bare and the tile had been taken up so I went into the pool and the coach in there said oh if you want to see what's really going on and I want to comment on how fabulous it looks in the landing the space between the two gyms the big gym the small gym the stairs that go down that whole floor has been replaced with gigantic tiles I think they're the wrong color cuz they're kind of red and blue and they should be orange and black but they look fabulous it looks so I don't know just it was a wow factor and I this is my pitch right here I'm hoping that same thing is going to be done in that area when you first walk into the pool lobby is that going to happen yes that's we had the we picked up the rest of the tile today actually so they're coming in this week to finish it looks awesome set now Mr M new business please uh thank you I requested um for the district committee to discuss uh our regular meetings based on if I'm not wrong the school Charter we we're supposed to be meeting the second and fourth Tuesday or has that changed that changed last year that Chang okay there there is a new there is a new schedule out and it's on a trial basis and I believe we'll take care of it during reorganization okay if it's going to stay permanent okay so when is that reorganization I'm sorry when is that April 1 okay okay okay um actually I'll ask uh Su to send out a schedule if you haven't gotten one there is a schedule out okay all right thank you anybody else yes sure well while we're mentioning April 1st is our reor meeting for selection of uh committee officers so did we want to select the time and for that particular meeting you that's a special meeting we have I don't think it's been uh I I think the chair would have to call that yeah right I'll have to look at the school calendar keep away from certain dates right yeah we have to have it on the 1 we have to have it on we have to have it on the 1st unless it falls on a weekend other than that it's got to fall on it's got to be on April 1st um Monday that's a Monday so it has to be on that Monday and uh what particular time you if you want to keep it at 6 o' or you want to do it earlier or keep it six keep six o'clock time whatever the committee prefers be okay for everybody o' okay April 1st 6 o' Sue will send out Su will send out the uh invite and do the uh posting and everything for it table matters table matters Mr Lavoy I think you wanted to uh do you want to address the faculty dress code or did you want to remove that uh I'd like to remove it until next year I uh being so close to the end of the year I don't think it's the appropriate time to make a change in address code but between now and the end of the school year we'll uh come up with a new plan so that we can present it at the start of the next school year so you make a motion what's the motion to remove the um from the table postpone or just remove from the table remove it for now remove it from the table oh so we would remove it from table matters we'd put a vote on that and then we' vote to remove the item from the agenda going to remove it and if he wants to bring it back he can bring it back at a later date okay good y can I have a motion second any discussion Please Mr tbox yes Miss Fitzgerald yes Miss dla Mr Jones yes Mr Mahia no Mr hayam yes Personnel consideration report uh this also had a couple updates I told you there were three new ones on the bottom uh resignations Miss Fatima Alam programming instructor of effective June 30th Miss Denise Rosa child care assistant effective March 28th leaves of absence there's none retirements there's none appointments Miss Brenda Richardson assistant superintendent who was effective February 26th in job postings there were six of them I'd like to do three at a time before we call a vote uh Club advisors girls flag football the advisor coach will Coach flag football in a new Flag Football League supported by the New England Patriots the league begins in April and ends in June there are two games one night a week and there'll be 102 practices a week practices a week should be two practi it should be two practices a week two practices a week you can change that uh two coaches 1625 each this is a new position and there's a flyer uh physics teacher per teacher's contract effective date April 2024 it's a new position Matt teacher uh per teachers's contract effective date 2024 it's a new position academic teacher and job descriptions are attached can I have a motion to vote on those three please motion to approve second yes but I want to okay now's a good time okay discuss when I read about the flag football I said wow I wish when I was in high school had head girls flag football my only concern is it is a club and it's something new and I'm thinking that a real lot of girls would want to participate and my only concern is that it would impact the Varsity Sports that we now have for our girls so um Can is this the kind of thing where they can do both um is this under Mia I understand the partnership with the Patriots I went online I looked it up but um I I I guess I'm just concerned with the few varsity girls sports that we do have in the spring that they are not negatively impacted um hopefully there's room for all but has that been discussed or looked at Mr so the the program will be after the regular Sports so it's not going to impact the regular Sports so it will start I think 6:30 or 7 under and know if it gets dark we'll they'll play Under The Lights thank you anybody else bless Mr Mahia yes Mr tbox yes Miss Fitzgerald yes Miss dla yes Mr Jones yes Mr hadam yes uh the next three social studies teacher heard to teacher contract effective date April 2024 it's a new position Ela teacher per teacher's contract effective date 2024 new position Saturday attendance recovery tutor reporting to the administrative Dean and assistant principle of safe responsibilities include tutoring students who are endangering with students uh supporting them I'm sorry enrolled in the attendance recovery program on Saturday starting 41 and engaging with students supporting them in their academic work per local 1707 contract contract Grant funded 4124 615 24 2 to 3 tutors 8:00 a.m.

and we will be doing textbook updates and Mr DM I believe is scheduled to be there for us as well okay so we'll get our technology meeting in great anything else no any questions from Mrs Hayes Communications Mrs Jordan um yes so we met on February 27th uh we went over we also had we had another meeting right after that oh that was the last one sorry that's the last meeting um we went over our newsletter that was just published we have um upcoming newsletter which print date will be April 5th it's going to be a combo with the town on like a budget Edition really great um and then our next meeting is March 25th at 1 p.m.

um and I believe we're the only thing on the agenda I think the select and go another night but in any event if you could be there at 6 p.m. on the 20th that' be great Lou I just have a quick comment on the calendar of events for the um musical the times I believe 7 7 and 2: p.m. not 7:30 7:30 and 2:30 oh that's a good point cuz I think it is 2 p.m.

okay great so as far as communication goes again it goes back to the budget I can't emphasize enough of getting out and talking to people about the budget especially now that it's out there it's online anybody can take a look at it I think it's important to answer questions and to give a a complete understanding to where some of the areas of increase are coming from and and how the uh the 5.39 budget was developed so um so part of it is going to be written communication part of it will be electronic communication part of it is good oldfashioned word of mouth talking to your folks when you're in a soccer game or a lacrosse game or whatever bring up the budget and make sure people get out to vote the selectman I don't think have set the date although it's I think it's tentatively set for Tuesday May 7th uh if I have that right okay um any questions for communications uh just as far as cal cal vents goes on 320 that's when we present to the board of Finance so um typically the Board of Education although it's not an official meeting of ours um you're there uh to show support So if you put down 3:20 at 7:00 p.m. I think it's in the community center in the old room that we used to uh meet at that will be the um presentation and discussion of our budget what time is it I think it's 7:00 although I got to check CU sometimes they start early is it 6 yeah sometimes they start early for these because it could be a long long night Dr Grossman's checking um any board member announcements anything you want to bring to the board anything 6 o' thank you very much so it is 6 p.m.

cuz I have Saturday I'm pretty sure it's 2 p.m yeah there it's 772 yeah okay make that note please excellent catch any other announcements for the board uh action items that we have to come back to other than policy I don't think there was any action were there the last time just get questions to you no from this meeting I think there's anything from this meeting n okay let's go right to the uh consent agenda Dr Gman anything so that you have the approval of you have to do the approval of the minutes and then you have on here the approval from when we went over at the last meeting that Mr Bishop went over the increasing educator diversity plan which is in your packet as I told you that you'll um I'm tabling the trip to Peru the high school wants to come with a another proposal um so you would have to do separate motion I have to okay so let's take the consent agenda uh can I have a motion that the camp board of education approve the consent agenda is provided thank you Joe thank you Erica we have first and second any discussion questions all those in favor I opposed extensions one exstension Mrs Fox Okay so we're tabling the trip uh uh so I need a motion to we move the Canton Board of Education approve the Canton increasing educator diversity plan first and a second please thank you Kim thank you Felicia first and second any discussion on that all those in favor I opposed extensions Mrs Fox all right at this point um uh I take a motion that we go into executive session for the purpose for inviting uh Dr Gman you and uh Mr Bishop uh for the purpose of District safety and a collective bargaining discussion we have a motion thank you Erica second we'll get Mrs fox in so Mrs Fox on the second any discussion on that well favor I unanimous do we have nine members here 1 two 3 4 5 6 she we should take our picture we never got we never had okay uh so thank you so we'll uh I don't I don't expect the executive session move more than maybe 10 or 15 minutes I suspect okay what you think yeah we're going to go into the science room oh we're going to move okay so we're going to move so you guys can stay yes we're going to move we're going to move where they have pizs

um and I believe we're the only thing on the agenda I think the select and go another night but in any event if you could be there at 6 p.m. on the 20th that' be great Lou I just have a quick comment on the calendar of events for the um musical the times I believe 7 7 and 2: p.m. not 7:30 7:30 and 2:30 oh that's a good point cuz I think it is 2 p.m.

in room 229 and a public notice will be posted on the legislature's website I'd like to take this time to remind our testifiers that due to time restrictions on our hearings we will be limiting testimony to 1 minute per testifier per bill for people participating remotely please remain muted and video disabled until shortly before it is your turn to testify when I call your name unmute yourself and your time will begin after your minute is completed staff will mute you so that we can move this hearing along in an orderly and efficient manner members please hold any questions until testimony on all measures is heard thank you and we will begin with item House Bill 2242 HD2 two relating to education and this appropriates funds for full-time equivalent career foundations certificate program teachers for McKinley Community School for adults House Bill [Music] and so this bill um appropriate funds for four full-time equivalent career Foundation Foundation certificate program teach teach for the mckeny community school for adults um okay so to testify we have anyone here to testify Kashi yeah is there someone here for ke yes please Aloha Cher kidani and members of the committee and Terry usima testifying on behalf of the Department of Education the department stands on its written testimony which provides comments on this measure thank you for the opportunity to testify on this bill so Terry can you come forward please so can you provide the committee for the sake of the audience uh de's testimony you're in support of the bill but yes um we're we're in support of um having the additional Personnel for the Community Schools um however our Our Testimony is comments because um we we're following some guidance from the Ways and Means Committee as well as the department of budget and finance and this wasn't included as part of the governor's budget okay and do you know what that amount was uh 380,000 for four positions Senator herard do you have any questions no thank you Terry thank you okay is there anyone else here to testify on this measure please lello chair Senator also to HS president I just wanted to mention that uh the heal draft 2 I believe blanked out the position so if you can restore it back to four that would be greatly appreciated all who blanked it out Finance house finance and house finance yeah thank you um anyone else here to testify on this B area okay any questions no good thank you moving on to item number two House Bill 2074 HD2 Kayon positions this is for a total of 13 positions three full-time equivalent curriculum Specialists and 10 full-time equivalent classroom teachers for a cost of 1.44 5 million okay to testify k [Applause] relists aloh chair Senator Richards kit uh I'm the director of advocacy with the office of wi Affairs and we stand in strong support of this measure we just want to note that being able to support the growth of kapuni is important not just for the language which is vital for our Hawaiian people but is also vital for the state's obligations um to native Hawaiian Mahalo and we're here to answer any questions Mahalo thank you next testify Felicia vus good afternoon chair kadani and Senator Richards my name is Felicia Vios I'm the executive director for the Hawaii teacher Standards Board uh speaking on behalf of the board we submitted written testimony and strong support of HB 2074 HD2 and we stand on a written testimony I just would like to add that oay has been been and continues to be a great partner with htsb we continue to utilize their expertise when it comes to teacher lure in the Hawaiian licens Fields I'd also like to add that htsb is looking to develop teacher apprenticeship Pathways for Hawaiian language immersion or kaiapuni teachers and the support and knowledge from oay is going to play a vital role in building that pathway we appreciate the committee's consideration of funding O's positions thank you thank you Felicia OA did you have testimony please well chair Senator OU hsda president same thing with this one house finance blanked out positions so we would really appreciate if you could restore the 10 classroom positions and the three specialist positions they're vitally important as we continue to grow our kapuni throughout the state Al thank you sir next to testify Kyle nakasa um my name is Kyle Naka I think that um you may have heard from me already I am a former Kum ha American teacher I was a science teacher at um I am here to remind you about um some of the testimony I gave the last time when the Senate Bill version of this bill went through uh this committee um and at the time I talked about the unique challenges that kumuk kayuni face um in these small schools uh when I was a science teacher the um I was in charge of all of seventh to 12th grade science I was also a part-time teacher at where the one science teacher was in charge of all of uh High School science so that's all the subjects biology chemistry Fant anald of and physics um these are burdens that uh other kumu at any other school any you know ordinary school don't face so you might have a science teacher for biology and a separate science science teacher for chemistry these teachers can share curriculum materials talk about their challenges and things kumu Kaki Hawaiian emercy School teachers do not have that luxury um and as a kumu there I had such a hard time because of that um and perhaps that's part of the reason I'm not teaching anymore um but I'm also here to urge you um so beyond I mean this is ordinarily something that I think would be very urgent and important to pass but I think I want to urge you to pass it this year because um as noted in the committee notes from the house finance committee um the funding for these 133 positions um that was previously federally funded through pandemic a funds will disappear that's 13 positions that'll disappear um 13 kumu who will no longer have jobs and if they find other jobs at the many other option they have they might move to they might move to many other things I mean if they like me move to the military they might find that they can make more than they ever would have made as a teacher um and with the loss of that that's the loss of so many jobs uh so many kumu so much training that went into building up these kumu um so please do not let this pass I know there's so many other urgent needs but um you know I've been sitting in the hearings for all of the other ones there so many bills that I want to support myself despite that I think that this should be made a priority this is something that needs to pass this session mahalan for your support mahalan for passing the other version of the bill unanimously last time um I ask that you please make all of the whatever concessions whatever compromises need to be made to pass this bill this session M thank you Kyle is there anyone else here wishing to testify on this measure Al chair and Senator sang with the hoi Department of Education Office of ha education we apologize that our testimony was submitted late um excuse me um the department stands in support of this bill and is available if you have any questions Mahalo do we have for Testimony is there anyone else here wishing to testify in this matter so um are you saying that the department does not have the funds or did not fund it um the for the 10 positions that we're asking for those are School level positions that the department has um been either intends to to fill because we have new schools or has been funding to other sources um based on the growth that we've experienced the there are three uh educational special specialist positions that um were funded using eser monies which will end in June um and so we want to be able to sustain those positions as well um particularly as we look forward to the work that we have ahead of us in um working um on one of the action items that is established in our the department strategic plan strategic implementation plan so I'm Tammy Chun deputy superintendent I just want to add that these positions um were requests in the Board of Education approved Department budget the teacher positions are included in the house budget so in um HB 1800 HD1 they did include the 10 teacher positions do you know what the amount was Tammy was about 1 1 million we can get the exact amount yeah okay thank you any questions no good thank you okay moving on to House Bill 1903 HD1 relating to Early Learning expand the access of early learning programs to other State properties and public lands besides using uh public school campuses do we have anyone here to testify on this Mission I'm sorry if you don't have my testimony I Cher kidani and Senator Richards I'm Yuko Ado across director of the executive office on early learning thank you so much for hearing this measure we stand in strong support of this bill the intention of this bill is to expand current pre-plus model to also apply to existing underutilized spaces on other public properties in addition to what currently exist on Department of Education campuses this measure has no fiscal request nor requires any operational fundings that would provide e the authority to contract early learning services on existing underutilized spaces uh thank you for the opportunity to testify you um so how many more classroom spaces are you guys looking for um so we're not necessarily looking for something we just want to have the ability um so when we look at uh different communities that have different needs depending on um population or um the amount of of seats compared to the population then maybe we can take a look at um spaces that might be in different areas and see if we can contract out for a provider in those spaces correct but at any given time that could be different you might have it they might have it available today but if you wait 3 months from now it may not be available so this is kind of a something that you have to keep track them all the time yes absolutely so what we do because there are Community shifts as well and um according to where people are looking for early learning and Care question yeah um is this Dove tailing with what the lieutenant governor her Initiative for Early Childhood yeah so you know one of the things that um that has come up to EOL is that there are a lot of people who are looking for spaces um to operate uh in terms of um community- based providers and so right now EO currently contracts out through what we call Pre Plus contract um it's designated spaces on doe campuses um and so what we were thinking about is if we have the capability of Contracting out so right now um Head Start grantees utilize those spaces on doe campuses um but we also know that there are other underutilized spaces and if EOL has the capacity to be able to do that on doe campuses could we also do that on other bacon properties um to help people look for spaces to operate okay um thanks chair so this bill would give you the opportunity to go out and look at those spaces yes and then negotiate with whoever it is that owns the land because there's lots of different people that own land and see if um the spaces um of course we'd have to work Department of Human Services because the the sites need to be licensable so but are you only looking at State Properties so that you don't have to pay rent or we're looking at all kinds of vacant properties so it could be cting County could be State um and even within the state there's different um I would call it like portfolio holders within the state and so we'd have to work within their um guidelines and see if they would be amendable to actually hosting contracts on their campuses or properties okay but you don't have the revenues to to uh rent the spaces so you're looking at spaces that you can do rent free is that correct um not necessarily rent free so right now the Pre Plus contracts they do um ask the people who are occupying the space to take care of the space to be able to clean this space to be able to pay for utilities for the space so it I wouldn't say it's necessarily free okay thank you yeah thank you anyone else here wishing to testify on this measure Sher thank you Sherry thank you anyone else thank you thank you anyone else thank you if there are no more questions we will move on to next item this is House Bill 2620 relating to the Department of Education procurement exempts doe and purchases of local edible produce and packaged food products less than a certain amount from the electronic procurement system requirement requires at least three written quotes from doe purchases of local edible produce and packaged food products between certain amounts is there anyone here to testify on this measure Miss Audrey good afternoon chair and Senator Richards Audrey Dono inter term um assistant superintendent we are in support of the measure and we'll be here if there's any questions or comments okay so this is for products that are less than $100 000 right I'll have Lindsay the director for um Food Services she can confirm hello chair Senator Richards yes so this would be um to allow us to procure um up to less than $100,000 for certain products such as for our monthly meal events and whatnot for products that are not on a formal bid solicitation okay those questions um chair yes Bri M moto in the back think he wants to tesy shot here the F we did submit testimony if you don't have it make sure get it but we do stand on our WR testimony in support thank you Brian yeah I do not have that testimony further questions thank you it's good yeah question oh well no I was just thinking through I think this this will help streamline things which government is not real good at sometimes so it's a good deal thank you try hard thank you good luck Audrey okay moving along the last item on our agenda is House Bill 2683 HD1 relating to access to learning repeals the Sunset date for the exemption of laboratory School programs of the Hawaiian language college at the University of Hawaii at Hilo from State English medium standards assessments performance ratings staff qualifications and staff training requirements is there anyone here to testify on this measure Richard um I'm kuk Kimura on behalf of the University of Hawaii uh I first of all want to Mahalo you for hearing the Senate version of this bill and passing that out and for scheduling this hearing of the house version uh we mollow your time um and consideration of this bill I'm available for questions if you have any [Music] um thank you very much um you AR cross please stand thank you you stand thank you Sher nak thank you my name is kuchi takam I live in wh on the big island of Hawaii I strongly support Bill 2683 relating to access to learning due to its immense support of the continued success of the Laboratory Schools under the Hawaiian language college the Eraser of the sunset data of this bill the exemption of all Laboratory Schools of the hawaian language college from State English medium standards assessments performance ratings and so on is beneficial to the performance of these programs it is because of the uniqueness of the education at these schools that act 46 will no longer serve a beneficial purpose if there is a Sunset date the impact on these schools will be negative this is the reason why I strongly urge you to support this bill your support will ensure that these schools will continue to provide quality education in the language of Havi Mahal no thank you for your consideration thank you members questions very much appreciate your testimony thank you Solomon Kaa Kuli Senator K Senator Richards I am here to show my strong support for Bill 2683 that appears a sensed date for the experation of EX the exemption of laboratory school programs of the hawaian language college at the University of Hilo at the University of h under Hilo I am the last of five children who have graduated from punan oilo and I am currently a junior in kulo navil Colon pool being that I'm from being that I am a graduate of punal Hilo and in nil I feel that this me me will ensure the continuation of the Hawaiian language and the Hawaiian language program for future Generations I would like for future generations to have the similar opportunities and experiences that I've had just last week I had the opportunity to come visit the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration and spend a few weeks learning more more about the marine biology about marine biology o oceanography and issues concerning our atmosphere this is one of the many opportunities that has this is one of the many opportunities that has been presented to me through my school which would not be able which would not be possible without their support again I strongly support bill 2683 because I want to ensure that the future Generations have the same benefits that I have thank you very much Solomon members questions thank you next testify Al Alani Ken Richards Mahal for this opportunity to give testimony on House Bill 2683 my name is Kamal kuip and I'm a proud parent of the puno and a teacher at both pun and nav are Laboratory Schools of kakaa college of ha language I have been an educator at Kola navil for 7 years now and have witnessed firsthand the value and positive impacts of loh on the lives of students and Ohana alike now as a parent of a child attending P oilo I have immense responsibility to ensure that my child is educated within a highly qualified and deeply rooted Hawaiian medium education program I support this bill which seeks to repeal the sunet date for the exemption of Laboratory Schools um from State English medium standards assessments performance ratings staff qualification and staff training requirements that were established um by act 46 in 2020 I'm not against assessments and training but I do oppose the requirements of Hawaiian medium schools to follow English medium standards and assessments assessments which have little to no relevance to the education delivered within our schools i instead support Hawaiian medium education programs access and usage of rigorous Hawaiian medium measures and guidelines that align with the educational philosophies in which it was found uh I urge you to support this bill in order to ensure that schools like puno and Navi continue to provide quality education through Alo Hai and that Hawaiian Focus assessments and standards are created to support the mission and vision of these schools Mahalo Mahalo is there questions question come on back okay that was my question coming for the the students and you just answered it you're not object to assessment just not in a standard that really doesn't fit exactly I I cut off a whole bunch of minds but um if the assessments don't align to the way that we're educating our students we're setting up our children to fail Within These assessments and I feel that it's um unfair to measure their intelligence through assessment which is irrelevant to the way they are educated so yes we are not opposed to assessments assessments is needed within schools but we are opposed to English medium medium assessments that do not align with our education within our schools yeah and that's actually something that's been well known for 50 years so um and I've run into that before but that's why I was looking for an answer do you have thoughts on how this assessment should be put together and I don't want to take a lot of no I would love to answer that um so I've been working at navi for 7even years um I do recognize that a lot of the the Hawaiian medium schools are a little bit different in what they focus on so I feel that creating one assessment that addresses all schools may not be 100% appropriate um but pulling from within the schools and having teachers be a part of creating these assessments that align with the way that we're teaching is probably the best way to go as opposed to having someone outside of our program come in and tell us okay we're going to use this assessment and this is how we're going to measure um the fluency of reading in such and such and such standards um so I believe that creating within for our program would probably be the best um option okay yeah um chair I don't want to take any more time I'd like to further this conversation because I'm concerned about assessment and I want to make sure we don't leave our kids Behind yes so oh got another comment I know I know no no Mah for your question um because just your name again my name again Aloha Kimura with the College of H language at uh Hilo um Mahalo for your question because like um our kumu here mentioned assessments are it is a part of the rigor um that we put our teachers and our students through it's more the mode um and the the structure of that assessment that will accurately U measure the progress or non progress of our students and our teachers as well so for years our faculty at the College of Po language and partnership with aapa and our Laboratory Schools including Nai have been working on strategies and methods to assess the progress of students throughout the year so it's not just done once or twice even it's done throughout throughout the year to measure where they are whether it's literacy mathematics um leadership there's there's many different layers to the rubrics of measuring the progress of our students and so I'd be happy to have um a fuller conversation with with you and others interested on that specific um assessment tool that we deploy in our schools okay so chair I don't want to pursue this because this isn't actually gerain to the decision of what we're talking about here but it's a reason why we want to get rid of this provision so can you stop by my office set up a talk story know okay in addition I do want to mention too um act 46 um this is also seeking to align with act 46 which the implementation plan that was created to implement um the measures in act 46 actually states that as a priority to ensure the Perpetual um exemption for Hawaiian medium education from from the English medium standards um and assessments so we're also seeking through this bill to align to that um implementation plan and act 46 we need to measure but we got to use the right measuring absolutely yes okay do you guys have that um measurement or assessment do you have a form of it already we do that's being Deo I would like to be involved in the conversation and if you would please bring the assessment with you I set up can top story okay thank you Mahal for your time further testimony on this matter thank you J say ala reconvening the committee on education um for decision making um on house the first one house bill 2242 we are going to defer this measure as there was no one here from uh McKinley Community School to discuss the issue with us on House Bill 2074 my recommendation is to pass with amendments and the Amendments would be to uh insert 13 positions three full-time equivalent curriculum specialist 2 and 10 full-time equivalent classroom teacher positions in this measure for House Bill oh you want to vote as we go along all righty Madam Madam Vice chair okay go ahead okay so House Bill 2074 house draft two to amend to pass with amendments the chair votes I Vice chair votes I Senator Hashimoto I Senator Richard Senator faella I five member five I the recommendations adopted mam sureair thank you for House Bill 1903 recommendation is passed with amendments and are we defecting the date on this L defecting the date to July 1 2015 okay House Bill 1903 pass with amendments uh chair votes I Vice chair V anyone on the me voting with reservations anyone voting no hearing none all members in the affirmative recommendations adopted thank you for House Bill 2620 HD2 relating to the Department of Education which exempts department of education for search and purchases of local edible produce recommendation is to pass with amendments which are Technical and non-substantive chair okay that's 2620 with amendments any member voting no any member voting with reservations hearing none five members present all voting I recommendations adopted thank you and the last item House Bill 2683 HD1 relating to access to learning recommendation of the chair is to pass with amendments that are Technical and non-substantial chair v i okay hearing the chair uh pass with amendments any me member voting no any member with reservations hearing none all five members in affirmative recommendations adopted thank you members that concludes our hearing

and this meeting is being recorded by gctv if any other persons present are also recording you must notify the chairperson at this time I don't see anybody great um our first item is to enter into executive session pursuant to mgl chapter 30A section 21 A2 to conduct strategy sessions in preparations for negotiations with non-union Personnel or to conduct collective bargaining sessions or contract negotiations with non-union Personnel the committee will return to open session may have a motion to enter into executive session for that purpose so moved um motion from um member Martini is there a second second and the second from member ston um any discussion all right member uh secretary genive will you please uh call the vote um secretary genive yes Vice chair Martini yes chair Johnson mad yes member P yes member seon yes member Charles yes all right uh the motion carries so we will go into executive session and we will return to this meeting um after a brief executive [Music] session [Music] to uh vote to approve the contract for the assistant superintendent of teaching and learning may I have a motion so moved motion for member Martini is there a second second second from Member seon discussion all right I'll just say we we're very pleased to be able to offer this contract and let's vote to uh accept it is there um let's see um why don't we do it by Roll Call Secretary den den yes Vice chair Martini yes ston yes Childs yes fre yes mayor toer yes all right passes unanimously and I'm a yes oh I'm so sorry that's okay I'm typing and talking this same time and assistant superintendent patad wanted to say a few words if I could ask Steven Sullivan to join us at the public comment table that would be great like to offer congratulations Steven Sullivan will be the next assistant superintendent of teaching and learning um we're very excited to have you in green field you come to us with many years of experience as an English teacher a principal a superintendent and you have a wealth of knowledge and curriculum and um instructional strategies and development so we're so excited to have you as part of our team and we really look forward to having you in Greenfield and working together so congratulations thank you so much I'm looking forward to the opportunity it's been great to work with Karen and Christine to this point and meet members of the interview and search committee um so looking forward to transitioning in in the next couple months and look forward to the work ahead and being part of I think Karen called it the Green Wave [Laughter] Nation wonderful would you say a few words just to introduce yourselves to the community who might be watching from home and just tear a little bit about your story and how you came to us sure um so my name is Step Sullivan um I've been in education now for about 20 years I started um as a teacher at Dean Technical High School in Holo um I was there for eight years I did take a year leave of absence I um taught abroad in Madrid Spain for a year and um when I returned from that I started to working on my administrative license um I earned that and was fortunate to get an assistant principal job at hoyo high school I was there for four years in that role transitioned into the principal role uh I was there for three years and um at that point I left hoyo where was hoyo is my alma moer as well I graduated from hoyo high school uh left hoyo to go to Granby as the principal uh of the Junior Senior High School I was in that role for three four years sorry um and our superintendent left in March well I think it was April of 2020 there was a lot happening at that time and um I I pursued the superintendency I've been in that role for the past three years um and I see this as an opportunity to get into a bigger district with uh focus on teaching and learning um and look forward to the opportunity to continue to grow and learn um about Greenfield and all the great work that's happening here and um like I said I'm just looking forward to the transition over the next few months and happy to answer questions if people have them thank you so much do members have questions well I'll just say we're very very happy that you you're joining us and um very excited about the opportunity to start working for you and we're all very very dedicated to our student outcomes and so I hope you know that we we've got your back and we're here for you for um what let us know what you need to do your job and make the you know and improve the student outcomes for Greenfield students and we everything we've heard has been so wonderful so we really look forward to working with you I appreciate that and share the sentiment all right thank you thank you have a good night and look forward to working with all of you and continuing to to get to know you superintendent did you want to should were you going to say something or no oh okay all right you're good Stephen thank you excellent all right um we'll move on to our report from the student representatives to the committee all right so as per usual we'll start with student council um last week we had 13 student Representatives attend the annual state leadership conference in hyanis um in total we raised $1,513 for the special Olympics of Massachusetts for the Polar Plunge fundraiser um as a council for our theme we dressed up as Care Bears um and jumped into the ocean alongside 900 other students from across the state um while attending the conference students heard from two keynote speakers attended four student L workshops and a banquet dinner seven of our students led a workshop um once again we retain the status of gold Council of Excellence by submitting our book of Excellence document documenting the activities and events we have held throughout the past year a special shout out to Quinn Mass who served over the past year on the State student board we also want to congratulate Carly Blanchard for receiving the unsung hero award for ghs in all of Western Massachusetts Key Club just received a generous donation of clothing for the secret layer keeping us busy organizing our food pantry is available to any student who would like to take non-p perishables in February we made Valentine for the entire school to share created and sent Valentines to St Jude's children hospital patients as well as helped to serve dinner at the Elks Club St Jude's fundraiser they helped the Greenfield Kanas serve a community meal on Tuesday March 12th winter sports have wrapped up um congratulations to Amber berson for scoring 1,000 points she'll be heading to F Framingham State University next year um the girls basketball team ended their season uh 10 to 11 and boys basketball ended 15 to7 League champions ice hockey ended 11 to 8 to1 also League champions girls track 6 to7 and boys track 8 to7 League champions so we want to congratulations to all teams throughout the winter sports season uh spring Sports start March 18th so get out and watch a game um you can find the schedules on arbiterlive.com um last Friday March 8th uh ghs held the second annual College and Career Fair uh the event was attended by all grades 10 11 and 12 and there were over 25 employees uh employers colleges and trade schools on display the event enables students to bring resumés and share their interests with potential Employers in colleges thank you Mr bostom for hosting it um right now French and Spanish club are hosting the 28th Annual Taste of world cultures from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. um the event is free and open to the public and will feature music and dance performances and an international Feast donated by local restaurants French Club also looks forward to their trip that's coming up in France next month ghs is drama club play uh myth Adventures will be performed on March 22nd at 7 p.m.

thank you all for being here

thank you e for e [Applause] you ready okay all right good evening uh we will now return to regular session the board was in closed session uh in the last hour um so we are now reconvening to open session for the regular Board of Education meeting for chica Unified School District for March 13th 2024 um and with that we um will move on to the flag salute no action was taken in the Clos session and so with that I would ask that uh you all please stand for the flag salute pledge allegiance to the flag the United States of America and to the Republic which stand one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all I know it all right we will move on to student reports please well i' love having students in the uh gym when we are doing the flag salute you guys make it that much more exciting and uh we have Emma Wilson in the house tonight and I'd like to invite up Courtney connley to uh tell us a little bit about what we're going to hear Hello thank you so much for having us uh we'd love to come and present to you this is these are some of the highlights at our school and I just am not going to say many words except for how much I appre apprciate our second grade team they do yes they're wonderful teachers and student teachers both work really hard to do this presentation and then we also have our wonderful Holly Taylor music teacher who is making magical things happen at our school and without more I will hand it over to her so much you guys ready guys ready [Music] I'm eating Taco [Music] Bell are you there I'm at rare air here [Music] we are you there yes awesome so our special guests for this song we've got Ryan on the Wolf Part ramani and brigata and basically I wanted to bring the second graders this is the first time in years that we have had music classroom music and the primary classes and we are so excited to have that happening and right now all of the elementary music teachers are working together to uh to we're all using a similar teaching method called Kodi and basically we're teaching Concepts through games and you saw an example of text um improvisation I had no idea what she was going to say she made that up on her own and that's just kind of part of part of meeting the standards and and also just helping our young kids learn about music in a way that they can relate so thank you so much and um yes let's take a bow Take a Bow you guys stand up and you guys can go ahead and go back in line and next I want to introduce um the second grade team Emma Wilson I don't know if you know this is um a certified kindness school it's something that I think we've been doing this for three years and it's a whole program that is uh basically we track the number of kindness acts of kindness on campus for about a month I think and it's been pretty fun this is my first year at Emma and this is it's been pretty fun just to see those acts of kindness happen and our amazing second grade team has put together a presentation with their students as part of that celebration of kindness week so come on out [Laughter] [Music] you [Music] to a stranger to a [Music] friend to be humble to be kind mind it is a giving of the peace in your mind to a stranger to a [Music] friend to give in such a way has no end we are love we are one we are how we treat each other when the day is done we are people PE we are War we are how we treat each other nothing more and to be bold to be brave it is the thinking that the heart can still be Sav and the Darkness can come quick the dangers in the anger and in the hanging on to it we are love we are one we are how we treat each other when the day is done we are peace we are War we are how we treat each other nothing [Music] more and tell me what it is that you [Music] see oh world it's full of endless possibilities and heroes don't look like they used to they look like you [Music] do [Music] we are love we are one we are how we treat each other when the day is done we are peace we are War we are how we treat each other nothing more we are we how we treat each other nothing more we are how we treat each [Applause] other thank you Emma Wilson that is so impressive you got a bunch of us teared up over here okay we're gonna let Emma Wilson have a couple minutes to move their things thank you all for sharing tonight thank you parents we know it's a big challenge to get here but we appreciate it so with this point we're I'm going to go ahead and move right on into the superintendent report and uh we do have some people that that we would like to recognize and I would like to invite Christy tacha up to the podium christe is our principal at Chapman power on got it good evening my name is Christy taaa and I'm serving in my first year as principal at Chapman Elementary School as a new member of the Chapman team I am grateful for the support of my staff as I have navigated a new campus School processes and the logistics of running our school luckily my team at Chapman is one that is grounded in a culture of dedic teamwork and support to provide the best possible experience for our students many of whom are here tonight we give a round [Applause] Applause from my first day on campus one member of our team has consistently exhibited all three and that's our day custodian Jeff Thomas lovingly referred to as Mr JT Mr JT was one of the first people I met after accepting my new position at this first meeting he walked the campus with me shared a variety of tips and finished the conversation with whatever you need I got you I love this school and I really care about our students a statement that runs true every day that I work with him okay have to stand here so I can stand there as the summer ensued JT worked furiously to make sure my office is ready for me to move in in July and he made sure our school was sparkling in August despite how busy our campus was last summer staff made mention that their classrooms and the campus had never been so clean every day he continues to do the same ensuring the multi-purpose room is ready for assemblies or dance parties even when his new principal tells him last minute he's assisting in the cafeteria during lunchtime and serving as a mentor to myself and multiple new staff members who've taken on cafeteria supervision roles he's always open to problem solving safety concerns and serving as my partner in the facilitation of fire and safety drills reminding me no worries we got this of course JT is also beloved by our students who he kindly greets every day and high fives when they visit his PBIS station to remind them of our Behavior expectations staff will also attest to his dependability and willingness to show always show up to help even in the messiest of situations tonight I I'd like to publicly honor JT for his dedication to our students and staff his willingness to work with others and the support he provides to all of us on the Chapman team it's my pleasure to honor Jeff Thomas or Mr JT for the superintendence award for classified staff congratulations deser appr all right picture I'm sneak in on this picture you deserve a love having your own cheering session that's right so we're not going to just stop there I'm going to invite Heather sentes up to the podium all right good evening everybody I'm Heather sues I'm the principal at Parkview Elementary School and tonight is my absolute honor and privilege to stand before you to celebrate an extraordinary individual who embodies the true essence of selflessness dedication and unwavering commitment to education she is magical in her work with students and inspiring to everyone she comes in contact this award is not just a recognition of Excellence but truly a celebration of a remarkable educator who goes above and beyond the call of duty every single day I'd like to welcome the recipient up and share a few more things and I'm really hoping to surprise Lynette Ford we may have told a couple fibs to get her [Applause] here all right so um Mrs Ford is truly one of a kind I joke often with her that she needs to wear roller skates at work because she is buzzing around our campus non-stop all day carrying her B basket and is really truly a guiding force and inspiration in building an environment for students staff and families that is a sanctuary where everyone is valued nurtured and encouraged to reach their full potential I took the liberty of asking my staff and some families to give some feedback to so I'd like to share a couple of the the quotes from them I always like when she cries it's great uh in a good way having your uh so here are a few comments from staff and families Lynette is one of the most selfless caring and kind individuals she cares for students and motivates them to learn not only is she an incredible support for students but also for our whole staff one word Lifesaver she is supportive and a wealth of knowledge she is a walking library of resources she has impacted my teaching and taught me how to build an inclusive classroom that is different differentiated and supports all students no matter what level they are at Mrs Ford has shaped the educator that I am and this type of teacher is what I strive to be one day she is passionate about her work positive and uplifting for our whole team Mrs Ford has made a positive impact on our site and we cannot imagine a Parkview without her from a student I like that she has snacks for me she does great things she listens to me she talks with me and she makes me feel happy um parents have shared that Lynette is often one of the main reasons that they choose to come to Park View because of her inclusive classroom and the ability she has to spread that across our whole campus um this parent shared as she was explaining the code teaching program at park VI that she's running I was both amazed and overwhelmed and wondered if it would be the best fit as I finished our conversation not knowing what to do she told me you have to trust your guest and I did and that continues to be the best piece of advice she's given me as we've na navigated some decisions she listens and values the input from parents and does not let ego get in the way when a parent says we need to change some goals she genuinely cares about her students the success of a student is a priority to her and she is always willing to brainstorm Mrs Ford is definitely a hero she never seeks recognition or praise for for her tireless efforts and that's why tonight is so special to honor her please join me in appreciation for her exceptional dedication unwavering commitment and her profound impact on lives in countless students and families great mom I think we have to move this way flowers are G yes and I just want to very quickly thank all of the park viw and Chapman staff who came out to support your teachers it's amazing in custodian and you guys can stay with us or go it's completely up to you we'd love to have you stay but you don't have to hey Park View I just want to say you guys are looking good out there peace out we know how to clear a room there still I didn't want to embarrass him more but JT was also at Marsh when I was there and he always told me to go home because I was always there too late um um no such great people in the district I watching the kids and just hearing the stories of our staff makes me really proud to still be part of the CH unified team even if I'm up here instead of in the trenches different kind of trenches I guess um all right well with that we're moving on to announcements um does the board have any announcements that they would like to provide at this time regarding upcoming events or Awards or schoolside accomplishments besides just generally being [Music] awesome all righty well we'll move on to items from the floor did we have any signups for items from the floor at this time we did not have any items for signups from the floor okay then we will continue to consent calendar um is there anybody that would like to pull an item from consent U I don't want to pull any anything but I would like to make a question of staff when we're done okay I'm seeing there's no items to pull I think that now is appropriate to ask uh questions from staff I I just had a question when I was going through the requests for field trips and things on our consent calendar I noticed that we have three requests from Chico High softball for trips to tournaments and none from Valley so I I was just wondering if that was an oversight I know we have a new softball Pleasant Valley person probably two factors I think one of those is that some some of these may have come in previous board meetings because they start scheduling tournaments like you know last fall to be sure that they can actually get in because they're highly competitive and the second Factor may be that um if they have scheduled those um some schools prefer to have home tournaments where they can charge admission and have you know make some make some money off those so I think those two factors probably impacted this uh this consent agenda thank youn all right do we have a motion on consent I'll move passage of the consent calendar second we have a motion from Mr tennis and a second from Mr Lando uh any further discussion seeing none we'll uh do a roll call Vote with uh starting with Mr tennis tennis I Conan I Dolby I Lando I Robinson I he passes unanimously excuse me thank you board um moving on to our discussion action calendar uh Educational Services 9.1.1 is a discussion action item for potential for adding a Chek Unified School District student board member I'll turn it over to you staff P Mr good afternoon how we all doing all right we're we're gonna have a great discussion today all right so uh today we get to talk about students as uh potential school board members we got the clicker over here so um this was brought up as a um as an interest as to Let's explore for this and let's see what we can do with this so with um some guidance from board members and from staff and uh we went through uh what we felt um is to gain a picture and understanding of the history and then what it would look like and then some potential steps that we can do to move forward okay so let's go over the history so Chico Unified School District had student Bo board members from 20 1 through 20 uh 2005 um the last time cusd student uh board members participated in board meetings though was on 216 of 2005 please notice a difference there uh as we go through the slides because what you're going to see is that there's going to be some discrepancies as to attendance so just a heads up on that uh because of attendance the cus uh D board suspend Ed board bylaw 9150 and the administrative regulation 9150 related to student board members on 1116 of 2005 due to inconsistent attendance um just want to give you guys a heads up as to why the inconsistent attendance it was roughly we had students involved in a lot of activities as you start going moving through the calendar we're talking about sports Athletics um a lot of students who were I believe involved as uh student board members were also involved in a lot of leadership activities and they tend to um participate in anything and everything so um also uh let's see we believe because honestly this happened a long time ago and as I did some research to try to find some exact details of what it looked like let's just say that uh there wasn't Personnel here involved with this and so that made it a little difficult so we believe that students were appointed as duties of elected ASB officials so that's how they got to participate as student board members on 116 of 2005 students from the high schools gave student reports uh at the board meeting so that was the last time all right legal aspects and so there's two things that we have to consider here so if we decide to move forward Andor explore this one is the first one that California law requires school districts with one or more high schools to appoint at least one student board member to their school board when petitioned by The District High School students so meaning it's coming from the students and they need to get 500 signatures or 10% of the high school students in the district question sorry is that 500 signatures or 10% whichever is higher or lower correct whatever is higher whatever is higher okay uhhuh and that's as per California Education Code 35012 now if it's something that our school board is looking to go through there's also this little caveat and the caveat says the following way student who is elected to serve as a member of the governing board of a school district must be enrolled in a high school or of the high school district or Chico Unified School District and be chosen by the pupils enrolled in high school or high schools of this District so just want to throw that out there okay so what happens if we do bring forth students as school board members what do they have the right to do Andor participate and so the first thing is they have a right to attend all meetings they have to a right to receive all open session materials they have a right to ask questions during Open Session um they can also be appointed to subcommittees they can be briefed by staff be invited to attend other function uh functions of uh that require board pres um make motions on matters upon which the board can act that is key they can make motions attend trainings and conferences it is a oneyear term that begins in uh August and goes through July so um and they can also Express their opinions and perspectives through preferential voting what that means is they can vote however it does not count it is just a strong opinion or an opinion depending how you take it and so just want to make sure that everybody's clear on that part school board members uh student school board members may not do the following uh participate and or receive Clos session materials so they're not allowed in close session uh be included in determining the vote required to carry any measure before the governing board of the school district and then be liable for any acts of the governing board of the school district and not to be uh considered members of a legislative body of a local agency for purposes of the Ralph m brown act so we'll go with that so another thing that was asked of us was to or right let's just say that we do have student board members what does the compensation look like so I'm just going to throw this out there that as board members you would have to direct us to say okay Hey listen uh you uh we going to create the 9150 and then we're going to have to dictate whether or not we're going to pay them okay so that's a piece and the way that it works out in our school district is because we're over 10,000 students it would be equal to 4,000 four sorry 4,000 can you imagine that 400 that'd be expensive so $400 per month per student and that would be optional it would we would choose whether corre comp if we is it like a go no go like if we choose to comp if the board were to choose to go this route and then choose to compensate the student board member it would either be that or nothing or is there well the uh there is a compensation piece and that's the next component which we do they are are entitled to these transportation services so uh we would have to pay for their transportation to be here right so at least pay for mileage reimbursement correct for example and and training if there was training that anything beyond that it would need to be written into the bylaws of 9150 okay yeah so us paying for their transportation here what would that entail um my guess or uh not guess but they would need to fill out a mileage sheet and document uh my from their home to here and then from here back and so whatever mileage that is and they'd be paid accordingly per mile what are we at now six 67 cents per mile all right which I think we're also entitled to but I don't know that any of us submit for that well maybe great yeah I can only tell you that that end code applies to students so all right so um want to now talk about how we have gotten input in the past because before we did have student board members and then that went away so then how is it that we got student participation input and information to our Schoolboard members and this is how we have done it since then the first part is presentations and reports from students um and they could come here and they could talk about like for examples the CTE programs that have been going on so that's an example of how students come to this place and they present their information um in regards to the programs there's also they can come up here for public comments as we have had students come up here and express their concerns Andor opinions um there's also student forums panels surveys uh the ASB input and and elcap meetings um which are extremely important at least for us in our elcap plan and so and of course you the school board approves the lcap plan and we make sure that all the information and input that's um presented to us by our student groups is included in some way shape or form and that we take everything that they say in a serious matter and so I do want to show The Following to you and so here are our uh lcap meetings the ones that we had in the fall we meet with Elementary alternative Ed the junior highs high and high schools about how many students from those meetings so approximately two to three students from El every Elementary School site uh from alternative Ed you're talking from two to three students from every alt dead campus uh junior highs it could be anywhere from from three to four students from each Junior High and then high schools same thing anywhere between three and I think our last one was seven uh students from each high school and then um they represent um a let's say just a a huge difference in terms of populations of students and then in the spring we do it again and so we have elementary alted junior highs high schools and we Tred to bring in a diff a different group of students so that we get a bigger understanding and then we ask the same questions or similar questions that are in the LC cap and make sure that our goals are meeting and that we're meeting the needs of our students we also do the following we also give out the uh send out Kevin secondary pulses um I'm curious to see how many of our school board members know what Kelvin is are we yeah okay so it is an umal uh questionnaire that and what it it is it sends out to all our students and it comes across an as a little dog popup if you will that pops up on the screen and it tells all our students Hey listen there is a Kevin pulse there are two three four five questions or more that that we are asking you to answer and that those surveys if you will uh can be about seal social emotional learning things that are happening around the schools Andor campuses safety so on and so forth okay so I also want to provide some we I just showed you how we have student input now I want to provide some additional ideas here are some additional ideas participation in policy discussion we can always do that we can always bring students together invite them and get input on some anything that the school board deems that they want student input student feedback School boards May seek input from students through feedback sessions uh allowing our students to you know Hey listen this is what we did what's your feedback on that provide us some details and then we could also do workshops with students so here's some extra ideas now let's just say that we do decide to continue to pursue the idea of having students come in or vote them in so on and so forth uh students from all high schools once again May nominate and elect their representatives through student government elections and so this Democratic process allows students to have a choice in choosing their peers to serve on the school board so if our school board board here wants us to continue uh to um I guess see if we can get some student board members then we would have to go through an election process board members how many would there be at the same at once well that would be um a direction and a discussion that would need to come from uh the direction of our school board whether they want one representing all three sides or one from each secondary site yeah and what that would look like in terms of voting well it could look like this we can do one vote for three maybe one from each or or every single site does a vote for their representative but there's also I'm going to um well let's get to this slide in order to do that the school board um working with us we would need to have a uh discussion a discussion about what those requirements look like so for example uh GPA um classes that you would see them want to be in uh maybe uh they need to be a junior maybe they need to be a senior maybe they you know any of these uh qualifications that you feel um are needed to be on the board now um just want to throw that out there I also um actually not just myself but Mr Maran and I we spoke with our leadership teachers and before I go on uh with this information I think it's important um for you to understand that there were certain things brought up by our um Student Government teachers from Chico High MPV one of them was Hey listen we live in some contentious times where sometimes our public um can be very difficult what do we do to protect student board members how would we protect them knowing that there are issues that sometimes hey this is this is going to become pretty hot topic are they going to be safe afterwards so they wanted the school board to consider that there's another issue uh students sto participating and start coming because I hate to say this Schoolboard meetings were kind of long and so they were here for a very very long time and so is there a way that the students can participate for a maybe one hour two hours or whatever our school board deems necessary and with that I am ready for any of your questions thank you yeah um anticipating that this was going to come up as a topic for discussion maybe six months ago uh a former PV student visited from Europe and while we were having lunch I asked about because I knew he had served as a Schoolboard student rep I asked about that experience it was not positive experience for him according to um his recollection and so I asked why and um it was after the first couple of months the other schools did not provide him with the input that he expected that he was going to have in order to share with the school board um the fact that his vote was advisory and didn't carry any other weight was sometimes frustrating [Music] um and so he said to me it was not a positive experience period so then last week happened last week I attended an lcap um meeting with Representatives that the three that we were outlining the elementary students the junior high students and the senior high students oh my gosh I was so impressed with the amount of um input from all of the student levels um and at the senior high level um well let's in include the uh the middle school too but especially at the senior high level very forthcoming sharing there was certainly no hesitation at all to discuss issues that they chose some of the stuff you prompted them for input on and you know they followed through with that but other things they volunteered in in areas that were of concern to them and um so between that experience and tonight what I was contemplating was using the model that we already have established and you outlined you know how we we do it several times a year and set um guidelines for say a quarterly um Gathering of uh students we do it twice a year now that is correct once in the fall and once in the spring maybe adding another one might you know might be advisable obviously some of the topics that they brought up were not on your list you know what's interesting is when you involve students in what I call a democratic process it empowers them oh yes and they feel free and you know we create we try to create an environment where the students feel free and open to express themselves and their concerns um and uh I I'd like to say that you know we we do that um of course we can always improve we can always make adjustments um but I'd like to say that I think we do a pretty good job they definitely were engaged and involved D and no hesitation whatsoever to share what their issues were as well as responding to what you were asking them to share so here's my suggestion um the process to do the elections the you know all of that other stuff you outlined is arduous and it doesn't guarantee because again as my friend who served as as a board rep uh pointed out there's no guarantee that input from any Source other than the one he was providing was going to reach the board so here's my suggestion is that we on purpose ask at the end of these lcap designed forums asked the um the students to do a um say a bullet point um for input to the board um something simple that can be brought to the board and say Yep this is what came out of the conversation um I think that would um eliminate some of the concerns about student safety you know uh they're on camera it's not Tick Tock but you know something they if they're in person at a board meeting you know it lives on forever um and I I just think it accomplishes what our what our goal is um I certainly feel the input from students was um one of the more valuable things that I um participated in as a board member this last year so that's my suggestion that we have a say three meetings a year use the two lcap ones that we are um already designed to have and then a a third one where the board suggests Maybe um topics for that discussion and and leave it as an open Forum when the students meet with with there were three administrators I think at that meeting and different administrators depending on the grade levels um I don't think we need to get any more um constrained shall I say than that and yet accomplish what we need with which is to hear from students and I know that some of what they brought forward we're not going to have as a topic here but boy was it there were two that were really important to those students so I'm done um in the last couple months have youve been as you've been kind of uh data Gathering and pulling the presentation together I know know that it's been recommended to reach out to Shasta County Office of Ed Shasta Union High School and I think Paradise also as Regional um folks or districts who already have student board members what has been the general feedback that um the district has received from those um programs that have this going now rather than 20 years ago my conversations have revolved around two things they do get one students input I will be very direct that I was looking for more Global input from a wider body of students so they don't have a process from where those students are meeting with a broader range of students and bring Gathering that and bringing that forward yes um that the topics are would need to be directed much like um Mrs Robinson said and then brought forth to the larger audience and have that discussion and then return so um I'm not sure if it's we're we're talking school size differences and different amounts of high schools and so while we uh we able to reach out to Paradise it doesn't necessarily reflect uh the feasibility um and also the um not only the feasibility but the um the data Gathering or the information gathering that we would need at our size of schools right but other districts are doing this that are similar to our districts in the state and we don't really have anecdotal information from them no okay thank you yeah so I think that this came forward from the board um specifically to address I think the need or the identification of of or recognition of the need to have more direct input from students we get the the data that's been gathered and analyzed and put together and packaged really nicely um and it feels sometimes you know synthesized and it would be great to have a a stronger student voice that gives that feedback directly to the board and frankly same from from the staff from teachers and class classified um coming straight from school sites you know there's um I think that there has been a a consistent message that has been conveyed From The Trenches um that the board feels kind of like a a a degree removed from getting that direct feedback besides what we get in our email inboxes which frankly is usually you know Advocate types and that's not always the general consensus or people who you know are just having these conversations in these types of meetings and like the lcat meetings are important but only two happen a year so I think that the the big question is is what what are some solutions that we can move forward with to get that direct student voice and student board members is an official program that has been um it has been uh what's the word I'm looking for uh utilized implemented yeah more or less or um championed is not the word but it'll work um by csba and other you know types of um entities that are Consulting with districts for for that purpose specifically and I'm not saying that like I'm here tonight to definitely move forward with student board members but like what are what are actionable things that we can do to ensure that we are receiving meaningful and genuine feedback authentic feedback from our students especially secondary students middle school and high school to help us drive decision Mak as a as a as a as a board if that is a question that you're asking me uh I would uh it's for the UN go back to the vehicle of student elcap meetings and then utilize that as a way to get information on Direct topics that the school board feels they want input from the students and have those person person oners conversations and and understand and and I always say that you got this is going to sound horrible but you got to go straight to the horse's mouth anything that's secondhand or third hand it can get misconstrued and or misinterpreted the best feedback is that politics Pedro that is politics but the best way to get student information is always to have those conversations with them or to have a student right up here as we were talking seems like you can't get much closer to the horse's mouth than having someone up here so I hear that there is an argument to be made for just having more lcat meetings but if we're just looking for anecdotes from students having a student on the board is a way to do that um and I do think that we need to work really hard to have every one of the items here that especially about ed services that directly affect students I mean we may bringeth up things that students didn't consider before but still will end up having an opinion about um I also wonder about whether students feel like they would benefit from that voice and I would like to um at some point reach out to our high schools and just say hey do you guys think you'd benefit from having a student up there during these discussions as well when we talked to the both um te uh teachers at PB and Chico high they said they could get that information out they would just want to know what the purpose what would you know um I think some of the things that the scope of what what we wanted from them um so they could get that information out talking to Kathleen Bishop who oversees uh the Civic um seal for them she said that we could obviously bring it to the students that are looking for that at both both schools to see if they want to be part of the um part of their civic duty um but they said they would need to know that the scope and of what we would want them to be how they we want them to participate so we could bring it out to see if there was an interest or not they said that they could get that out um but they would just they had just questions you know um when that they share and they're going to have more fors but they said what would be the purpose of role of the student rep to provide feedback to give the polls to the campus provide updates on what's happening on the campus uh would you want updates or what's the pulse of the three different campuses and students importance of having three R reps would you want them to rotate would you want just one three um uh what is the level involvement the board desires of the students and so those are some of the things that they were asking and I said that we would this was a topic on the agenda item and then um if we had more clarification we would bring it back to them and I feel like I need to jump in here because uh I let Pedro answer a question that actually I had information on and that was talking with other districts I do have the opportunity to meet with um other superintendents both in our County and outside and I did bring this up at a recent uh meeting just asked you know how many districts did have them and what the experience was most had them either elected as a specific office um and that was they ran for that office and were elected at their School site or it was part of another office that they ran for most commonly vice vice president their class as be a vice president then part of their duties was to come to board me meetings and be a student board member um when I asked what the experiences were were they positive or not this won't shock anybody it really varied from year to year and it really depended upon the student um that there were some students that were all gung-ho you know they were all in they read all the documents and they were up on it um but there were you know years in between where that was not the cas case and you know when things were heavy reading or not um topics that maybe were of Interest specifically to the students then the participation and attendance waned so um that's probably not a shocker to any of us uh do you know if those particular districts that you talked to had an appointed board member um Mentor for those student board members I just know that that was a the thing at the presentation that I had I'm sorry I did not ask that question I will say I'm just going to keep rolling um I I do think there's a a variety of ways that we can do this you know we we certainly can have a student board member um we can have one from each school because we do have three high schools that attends I mean those are options um we can also look at getting specific input into agenda it items by having uh each of our existing student government classes um each of the schools already have them we could ask that they go through each agenda and submit information to us and if there are items on those agendas that they feel strongly about that they come and present to us that would be one way uh we could go back to something that we did literally a decade ago now um when I was in Jay's position and we would meet me on a monthly basis with our ASB president and vice presidents from each school um and go through very specific at at that point we had a strategic plan and we asked student input on the different points of the Strategic plan uh probably not that different since our elcap is now our strategic plan it was just more frequent and with a set group of students um so there's there's a multitude of ways to go about getting student input so just those are just a couple I'm not seeing any additional questions techical questions for clarification from the board um so Pedro thank you for your time and putting that together um I certainly think that there's more context we could probably dig into if we if the direction was given by the board to you know pursue this idea or these sets of ideas so that we can maybe come to a a a conclusion of what may fit best for the district so you know coming out of this discussion this board probably has the opportunity to to um make a motion or recommend some suggestions of of how to take a next step forward in exploring certain um uh Avenues of getting meaningful student input for um our board meetings I think that the ultimate goal here would be um to get meaningful feedback on items or what they think is important to maybe potentially place on a future item or agenda um for that are coming from the students uh so um you know if we can continue the conversation and brainstorm on on some of those Avenues and and give you Direction um to pursue do that um if that's where we want you to spend your time and energy then then that hopefully will come out of this discussion tonight thank you very much yeah thank you so much thank you thanks Pedro stay close yeah don't go far um with that I don't think we had any public comment signed up for this but I I will ask if anybody has public comment at this point after hearing the presentation um that wants to address the board on this particular topic all right seeing none um is there a particular motion anybody would like to make so that we can have a discussion around thisen thank you madam president um I would move that we um receive a report from the two scheduled lcap student input meetings provided in the form of a summary by administrative staff that have I don't say run but facilitated there we go those meetings can you repeat that please that we request a report from the student input lcap meetings Prov provided in the form of a summary by staff facilitators don't we kind of get that in the in the lcap report like I recall seeing a little box saying students at this meeting said that blah blah blah blah there is yeah you'll get a summary of of what the students say through the elcab who would you say like within a certain time frame you know so and so you know at the next meeting after an elcap student meeting it should be easily well I'm speaking for staff but I think it should be easily provided the meeting following the elcap student input meeting um where's Tina there you are um what I'm looking for because off the top of my head I don't remember how um specific the lcap uh Recreation of the student input meetings is so in the lcap we do list all of the input from elementary students Junior High and high school sometimes they you know we don't put every single entry the student says we find that they oftentimes will say similar things but we we get all of the themes in there oh as well as all of our uh groups that we meet with we include that uh input as well that basically would be what my motion would recreate we don't need now when are they um that would come to us in June right huh that comes to us in June yes and the first sets of meetings are in they were they'll be collected from last fall and into this spring that just happened right so I think that to that point would be that we would we would have received the the first sets of meeting input in the fall before the end of the semester right after those had taken place good good point that it would need to be we wouldn't be waiting six to eight months to see student view back from the fall is that is that kind of where you're going without any yes thank you that that is that point is is pertinent because we don't want to wait the whole year to not knowingly address what the students have told us and after attending those meetings the students tell us a lot I I can I'm still wanting to recreate the energy when Mr Sullivan asked the question at the elementary student input about science and did they want more science I've never seen a group of what was it 37 elementary students respond and M instantly the arms shot up and you knew immediately that that room full of students wanted more science so Eileen can I um just sort of friendly amend your motion because we don't have a second yet to say um that the board would give direction to receive a report from the two sets of student input lcap meetings to provide a summary within four weeks following each set of student meetings I'll accept that as a friendly Amendment okay thank you um I'll I'll I'll second it just so we can discuss and you know see if there's any other direction that we want to go in particular just to move the conversation forward and I would just add that could report could come from staff or um we could ask for student volunteers to come to the board meeting to present that information so that it is clearly coming from them great thanks for clarifying that all right the floor is open for discussion on student input to the board I would just observe that uh the lcap part people uh students who participate in the lcap uh meetings um by definition are are in most cases uh part of a unique you know um demographic or or or just otherwise designated category and not necessarily a generally from our targeted students right they're not they're not sort of like a a broad assessment from the student body they're they're sort of a kind of targeted group of people targeted is a good word to to use because that's the word that the the code actually uses right do you want to provide clarification on not that they said there their perspective is not valuable I mean it is it just should be noted that that I think if we're looking at the IDE the concept if you will of a student board member I think that maybe this person is kind of representative of the of of of the student body as a whole not necessarily a narrow sliver that's part of one of the target categories I can't say that uh a lot of our students are represented many different um I guess for lack of better words right now categories can you repeat repeat that please our students are very representative not just one but many different categories that represent the lcap and others can you name the lcap meetings for me please that student that that use utilize students they were I'm not sure of the question what do you mean by that there are a variety of lccap meetings that occur right can you please name the different Elementary okay Junior High mhm high school and then all dead so for high school elcap meeting it's like hey high schoolers come on come on down we want to hear from you our administrators um what the process goes like this we reach out to our secondary administrators and we say we want a select group of students um that represent um all all these different demographics please send them and that happens at the first one and then we try to get a second set for a different of different group of students for the second one so you said all these different demographics can you fill that out a little more yeah so for example if you are looking for um one specific one I'm going to give you a great example our students fit more than just one bill we have for example Spanish speaking Latino who also D who are also taking AP classes who are also low sces we have bipox students in many different categories um and we have I mean it's and we have white and so we do have a strong representation I don't know if that's what you asking you almost had me thinking that that that it was a general just kind of a cart blanch come on come all but then you did that one little thing you said sort of tip me off no that that we are targeting then we do AC that people over over we're all intermixed yeah okay perfect so to to answer your question um we do have to be I guess purposeful to get a broad range of uh understanding and also representation okay I hope so I would say from my vantage point it's a little bit opaque okay you know uh how somebody gets in the position where there there'd be a special you know mouthpiece to the board look I mean I can take it okay whoever wants to come in here and give me their opinion I'm ready actually it's available to anyone anytime they come anytime and they can give their opinion no matter who they are whether they've been to an lcat meeting or not you know and and I'm totally fine hearing the opinion of some member of the public whether they just walked in or whether they were specifically chosen by administration because they represented a variety of different uh Target categories so thank you okay you're welcome Madam president go ahead please um having been at those meetings I watched as the cars pulled up in the parking lot and the principals got out with their student reps at the elementary level I think there were three to four students per principal that walked in and then after we got um gathered um students introduced themselves and then during the discussion because we were there an hour and a half to talk with these students you had foster children you definitely had representation from every ethnic group um you had and there were the the the principls didn't stay in the room principals dropped their kiddos off and went back to the parking lot in their cars so what you had in that room were all of these kids three administrators and they didn't know the three administrators before they were introduced so you had an amazing representation of all of our kids at the junior high uh same thing you you couldn't have created a more diverse student group same thing at the senior high level you had students that were in honors programs you had AP students you had special ed students you had um bipo students um an athlete two athletes actually that were competing at this at the uh senior high level um the divver University was um a parent and their input was also diverse because of their specific experiences with school with their homes with their programs with their desires for what they wanted to do when they got out of school I mean you name it there was a there was a diverse input back to us from those kids I don't know how you could have gotten it any better I um I is this the time where we're just basically sharing uh Kelly mentioned one idea that um to me I don't know sort of jumped out as um what I think might be a good option and that is the one the idea where um the already existed student body um leadership classes from from all the schools would have the opportunity ahead of time to have access review the agendas and um have the opportunity to come forward and share on topics that may be of more interest to them um I feel like maybe there's such a wide range of topics that I hate to use the term are over their head but quite honestly I mean one year in there's quite a bit on my that I find I'm still learning and it may just not be of interest or um really relatable for them some of the things we're talking about although I think some topics certainly are very interesting and and they um most certainly would have um opinions on so just maybe providing an opportunity um for them to review the agenda um they can be heard um in a designated time in the meeting but then also have the opportunity um respecting their their time commitments to exit when when necessary or when needed to be able to fulfill you know School other school obligations and I mean we could see possibly how that went for a season maybe a year or less and if it was well received and um students were really loving the opportunity I mean it could expand maybe more into a a position um on the board I I don't know that I love the idea of um three students at one time you know I mean at that point um and they're obviously not the majority but it may just change a little bit of the Dynamics that already exist not that I don't want to see change but I just maybe see an opportunity for them to have their their say but also respect their other commitments yeah I think that there's strengths with a lot of different models um you know I like this idea I my cons like I feel like I maybe um aspect of it that might not be as strong is that you may be getting a narrow a narrower representation by just having input from leadership classes you know we may be missing some of those voices from those groups that aren't necessarily represented in a leadership class um and that's that's not a bad thing as long as you're also capturing input from those other student groups so maybe there's a an opportunity for a combination of that we could look at reconfiguring our elcap student input meeting schedule and increase it to three or four and get a another like smattering of of students to make sure we really are getting representation from from all um you know or capture as broad of a a background as we can and I think to the extreme if you know we go from from kind of just making what we're already doing more robust which I think is a a not as heavy as a of a lift right as like implementing a whole student board member position um not that it can't be done but you know a student board member if we had it be one person who maybe was elected across all schools that person just like we are are there to represent their constituents which are the students right so it would be on them and they would need the guidance to be able to hear from their peers from the middle schools and high schools and even elementary schools if possible and be able to know what what um their constituents concerns are on certain topics on the agenda and I think that you know figure navigating that a would be a challenge um but also could be really meaningful so I I excuse me I agree that you know any any of these options are accommod of these um will be more than what we're getting now right so I think that that's kind of um where I'm at right here uh I don't want to cut ourselves short and you know miss an opportunity at this time to get more robust input um I want to make sure that the input we're getting is Meaningful um and that we're setting everybody up for Success so that we're not overburdening any one particular person or staff person um or student um to be able to obtain that information so you know just keeping those things in mind um I I wonder if there's um a secondary motion or if um we want to you know vote on the this initial motion or if there's any changes that we want to make or if we want to add more to the discussion um just to keep it moving along well I did hear uh that our leadership teachers before asking if there was interest in this because again my qu my big concern is do do the students think that the things we're doing are good for students um and I would like to get that feedback from so I think after this I'd like to add a second motion onto this item it's not related to this one about creating that scope document for those leadership teachers gotcha and I I would add to that I think my my interest there would be um to it would be nice with our with our meeting packets to you know have an attachment of student feedback you know on items that matter to them so if they think item 9.2.1 is not really something that care too much about they don't have to spend any time on it but if 9.2.3 is something that's really important for them or they have something to say about it or they have feedback they want to give they can synthesize that in that space and have it attached to the agenda packet for example as as a a potential like way to give input on that point uh you know um how often does a high school student come in here and get up and talk in front of us how often do they know about what we're talking about to well I mean um uh very rarely and the reason why they very rarely know is because um well I mean I've known all manner of young people I have known all manner of high school students including some who you know are are uh Head and Shoulders Above the Rest in terms of their civic engagement and their knowledge of current events and what's going on the a lot of these kids are focused on things that that you know maybe are classically loom in our minds is the things that they're into um and for some of them I know this might shock us uh with our values and priorities that we have up here they are not burying their noses in Schoolboard agendas twice a month you know they're not into it a lot in a lot of cases you know so you know I mean I I'm nominally against this you know I mean like I said I'm always open to hearing what some young person has to say no problem but I think we might be creating a sort of an apparatus that's going to uh I don't know it's just uh we have an open process to the public and and students have shown up here when they've been interested in doing so I just kind of feel like we're uh you going pretty far out of our way here to create an infrastructure whereby somebody might latch on to it and decide that it's a way for them to to to have a platform which is not the end of the world I just I think things are are complex enough around here and there's enough opportunities already for members of the public including our student constituents to be heard Madam president please please free speak freely in this uh I did want to let the board members know that um at all of the Gatherings um Mr Caldera or Mr Sullivan uh let the people know what the the students know what the purpose of their Gathering was that it was about things that were being done for them at their schools because of the money that was awarded by the board through the lcap that provided services for them and then they were asked we want to know what services are working are going well and you don't want us to take them away and what things can you see that aren't being provided for you that you'd like to see happening at your school site so that was the prompt that you know input what's working and what isn't working and if it isn't working give us some ideas of how we could make it better so they did they did provide input along those lines um Eileen could I make another just friendly amendment to your motion and increase the number of um student lcap meetings to three as you had originally recommended or is that too different uh increasing it to three i' asked staff does that work is that a problem I would say like a fall winter and you know early spring yeah not four but you know one in the fall I think would be appropriate but then one in kind of the early you know semester second semester and then maybe even later in the after most of the LC cap has been put together kind of towards the end of the year to get that final like input from students going into the next school year yeah we can we can add we we can speak to them as much as we need to speak to them I mean we ask our administrators to bring them it would have to be a case if you want the same students or different ones each time which we've been doing different ones so we could get multiple um students giving us their input um but we clearly can add more meetings if the board wishes yeah we don't even have to necessarily call them lcap student meetings they just are student input well the one in the fall is just student input um before we used to just do one in the in the spring to get student information but we decided we were going to add another one in the fall um to get more input um so we just it's just a student input meeting okay I don't know if that's if that's necessary now we can maybe talk about it more later too but and I do think if we're going to go this route um and it is truly for I mean obviously ly both staff input but board input then we should have some questions from the board for each of those three meetings that are important that the board wants input on that we can specifically ask and then by all means board members up to two could attend as well if this is the direction which I don't know that it is I would consider increasing and adding an additional meaning a friendly Amendment would support that okay so that makes this that makes this a little bit more robust because it's not just a report at the end of the what we're already doing it's adding a little bit more um to what we're already doing um it's getting more more feedback um three times in the year instead of just to but um yeah I would be happy with that change if we could add that to this motion it's a motion to increase our student input meetings to three and get feedback within four weeks to the board as a summary from those meetings and the caveat of the board will also we also give out three student surveys during them to go to that goes out to all the students during the year three different times during the year too if you guys want that um the information that we get back from those um surveys also to give you guys more clarifications because um um again that's available for the board also okay well I'm I'm not seeing any further discussion from the board so let's just go ahead and vote um we'll start with member Robinson since this was your motion we'll do a Voice vote starting can we repeat the motion please yeah do you want to repeat it or do you want me to say what I think it is we need to have the clerk or secretary you go you go ahead with what's what what you have recorded I think is what's most important yeah and just for clarification it's not a report from each individual student meeting but it can be a a cumulative report from the groups of students right because you don't have just one meeting with those four groups you four meetings of those four representative groups right yeah you don't have a room of elementary school kids and middle school kids and yeah yeah yeah so so it'd be a report that is that is combined of those four not four separate reports three times in the year I've got a point of order um is it uh what's the word germine to this uh agenda item to be talking about uh getting an lcap report as as a as an action item here because I think we were talking about whether to add a new board member a student board member so I think it kind of evolved from uh how to get a student board member to how to get student input and um if we're talking elcap specifically probably not but since we're talking about student input and I think there was the recommendation to not call it not call it elcap but to call it student input meeting I think it ties back to that okay not to nitpick but this says that um potential this is a discussion action item on the agenda potential for adding a Chic Unified School District student board member right and um I'm just and I'm going to assume we're going to get to eventually whether or not we're going to to do that or if there's more information that you need for us to do that no more information to bring back I don't want to nit back you know um I mean it seems like this conversation might be more appropriate if we're going to get an lcap report seems like that might occur under an lcap agenda item not under this one you know yeah I think that the in you know it can be subjective the intent of the student board member is really to get more student input to directly to the board and so this is um a potentially alternative idea to get more student input that's not necessarily NE going full student board member but I also see your point that it may be you know be considered step it's not like somebody's going to sue us over it you know probably yeah and and truly like it to me it doesn't have anything to do with the elap it it is writing the coattails of what we already do for lcap but it's really just to uh make our our input process from students more robust to the board so we're getting more frequent feedback directly from students to the board and seeing as the meetings at least wouldn't take place until next year if we wanted to move this particular motion to a whole new agenda item at our next regular meeting I don't think that would mess anybody's timing up and then we could put in spe I mean if it make you more comfortable if we had a I don't want a nitpick oh I know absolutely but saying it's easier to just put on next agenda and say uh options for getting more student input I don't think we're breaking anybody's time table by doing that it might not matter you know because um I I'm I mean I I'll going give you a preview uh crystal ball here I'm not going to vote for this you know I just uh the lcap thing I mean it's it's the law it's it's a fine institution I think for helping us identify the ways that we need to reach the target categories uh of students um but it's not like it's uh you know um having your finger on the pulse of what the whole of the student body once I also recognize that if we were to handpick you know or or somehow from the student government crowd there you know there's those age-old criticisms of student government and how that comes together you know the words popularity contest come to mind um yeah I mean hey we're living in an imperfect world and there's always going to be flaws in any system we come up with for for hearing from our students I like the uh the mechanisms that are already in place I guess you know and I think they've worked really well I think that when students came in here to talk to us about issues that were important to them I think it was very powerful and I think it it it changed minds and and swayed things so anyway that's kind of just where I'm at so to your point Mr Lando go ahead and send it up now I don't think anybody's going to sue us I just wanted to make a point that we're a little off here so do we want to vote or is there a secondary motion okay we'll start with we'll start with you Miss Robinson Robinson I on the motion that was restated by Erica tennis nay Conan Doby I Lando I all right um thank you we can probably figure out um the logistics around that but um um providing a report sounds kind of nice to hear or see what what's coming out of those in real time or relatively in real time thank you um any any other additional motions for this topic yeah I'm not sure whether it needs to be a motion or not but um I would like to put together or have someone on the board put together that scope document because I really do want to know whether our students think having a board member would be valuable so if I need to move that we that board members work with staff to create a potential scope document for a board member student board member position and I guess I'll make that motion don't it has to be a motion um so let me can I restate that and maybe just add a little bit um so you'd like to direct staff to put together a student board member scope document to present to teachers to get feedback whether or not there's interest in having a student board member from students yes whether or not students are interested yes okay so just for for clarity um let's get it Crystal Clear yeah what would what would go in what particular Parts would be in the scope document well we need to go back to what were the questions Mr marant that uh the leadership teachers want an answers to what's the purpose um what was the purpose role of student provide feedback to give the plls to the campus provide updates on what is happening on campus would you like three different campuses um representative um um if you are going to go three will they rotate or will they come every time what is the level involvement of the board desires of the students so so we would ask those questions of our Student Activities advisers and probably frankly other student groups as well to get input from our students if they would have I'm I'm just confused as to what we're we're doing here yeah are we giving a survey or are we going into certain classes I'm just trying to figure out how we're going to get the input from from the two different high schools and the 4,000 kids I think the way that I'm seeing this and Mr Lando can correct me if I'm wrong is basically we'd be putting together like a one-pager job description of what a student board member is and what's expected of them and how long they serve and how they're selected why we are asking if if if this is something that we want to move forward with and whether or not there is interest from student body to have that go forward yeah and so that's why I'm not sure it needs to be a motion because I'm not sure whether it's we want staff to do that we want to generate and then may present some options to staff or to to the board next time saying hey which of these looks like if we were to have a student board member which what does that look like and thank you that's kind of what I was getting at because there's some key decisions in there that the board would need to make do you want them here for the full time do you want one from each high school or just one um there's a cart horse issue going on here yes there is yes there is and is there going to be some type of criteria grade point average attendance rate grade level those types of things too and we could make someone I mean we can certainly do some drafts for the board to look at I just wanted to be clear what it was that we were doing I don't think it has to be that I don't think it has to be that specific if we're just wanting to gauge how interested students even are to have a representative sitting up here with the rest of us for this really what would that look like we don't have to really lay out the decisions that the board would still need to be would need to make whether or not we would have one or three or you know how they would get selected just what would be a student board member's role if they were sitting up here with the board and ask them them if they have interest in having a representative sit up here with the board don't you think um yeah oh I'm sorry Tom I didn't realize you had the floor I I was just going to inquire because the presentation tonight outlined what the Education Code sets up in the way of framework for student board members so you know we'd have to comply with that it's still I mean that all the things we're talking about are still flexible yeah big it's big if if the student body took the initiative and got 500 signatures from their peers on a petition and brought it to the board and said we want to have a student board member representing us then we would have to comply with that and then we can select we can come up with all of our selection criteria they wouldn't even have to go through an election process if we're the on saying we want this whereas students might turn around and say nobody asked for this um then they would go through the election process um and and select their representative or numbers of representatives if we decided to go that route as a board am I summarizing that well enough okay just repeat what you said um if a student out there in the public right now listening or watching right now was like yes that's 100% for me they could advocate for themselves yes yes a student in our district right now could go and get 500 signatures from their peers and bring it to the board and we would have to comply under Ed code so a motivated individual could find in that very role yes if there's anybody out there listening right now they could make this process a lot more clear-cut for us don't know everybody rush at once but maybe I mean I like to think I I there are students that I worked with that I that we've seen lots of times come to board meetings and and present that that were also in my classroom as students that I think would have been great student board members like they they exist in our district there are amazing students who would be great sitting right up here with us in in these discussions and I think that they would give good insight and feedback to What policies we're making here translate into in the classroom or give us that foresight too like if you make this decision this is how it probably will play out on my campus um there is to that right now because it's late and they don't want to be here right now but if there was some way that they opted into that responsibility or we could get that from them from in in the classroom um you know in a in a happy medium um scenario you know that that would be that would be beneficial I think for for our consideration um I also think you know if if we eventually did go the route of having a student board member it's important to recogn iiz to that they would have the ability or would would right they would have the ability to request an agenda item you know just just like we can they can make a motion to request to agendize um well as a board we have the we the five of us would make the decision whether or not it went on the agenda but I think that that's powerful for students to know that they have and their constituents the students that they that you know they they know that that's their representative can go to them for that so I think there's a lot to still explore there I think that we all probably it sounds like agree that that we could get more input that that we're doing good things but we can make it more robust we can definitely make improvements on what we're already doing and still see if there interest is there right Tom and just for the record I did second Tom's motion um if it's a motion which we hadn't really decided yet but that's why we're discussing it um yeah uh so do what's our what's our path forward here how about I just make it a formal motion and we see if it carries any it doesn't it doesn't that's fine okay um I would like to move to direct staff to create um a couple of more than one sample uh job description for a student board member that we can then forward on to leadership and government teachers at the secondary I'll second it um because I already pretty much seconded it it's um I'm just more than one sample I'm just a little worried about workload um and and timeline so um yeah what's what's the product we're expecting for clarification discussion because I was thinking something way more simple like just one thing to blast out there and see if there's interest something simple to gauge interest yeah we could just we could do just one just because again the idea is just to get something out to students quickly to see if there's interest so can I I will amend my own motion I guess okay to say a sample because again doesn't have to be perfect we can take feedback we get and we can respect the the the considerations and will you or we work with staff to massage that out before I get sent out certainly can I don't want to do any like I don't want to pulling that deliberation away from the board as a whole but happy to look at that just to make sure that whatever they're sending out is going to give us the feedback that we're looking for yeah is that appropriate so the the general thing that we're voting on here without um using all of Mr Lando's words is uh to solicit feedback from students whether or not they're interested by providing some information about what a student board member position would entail yes yeah okay thank you um any further discussion timeline wise monish is that may Workshop is that reasonable for staff okay thank you very much thank you uh Mr Lando would you like to start our voting Lando I Robinson nay okay good tennis nay conen nay I'll be I it fails two to three um any other motions for this item okay hearing none we'll move forward thank you everybody um gosh what are we even on 9.1.2 mtss yeah mtss update on the multi-tiered system of support mtss in chica Unified School District Al righty good evening shifting gears a little bit we've got a crew here behind me to give you an update on our multi-tiered system of supports uh which really in a nutshell supports our students academic achievement as well as their social emotional and behavioral uh which does add to that smoother uh academic achievement that we want for all students I have a question Tina before I get started was the last time we had an mtss update was it a year ago about a yearo yeah Christie um I believe it was spring maybe fall spring or maybe early fall maybe early fall I guess time flies when you're having fun time flies when you're having fun Mr tennis yes we actually have some cool new things though that I want you to pay attention to that she's going to show you because um that we're not in the fallish presentation that have been created quick reminder you've all seen this before what is mtss it's that multi-tiered system of supports it impacts every student every day it's proactive it's preventative and uh it involves all of us all right I'm going to pass this on to Christy bankson she's our district mtss coordinator who works directly with our ele level Junior High and high and high school level teams for her to uh continue this up update all right good evening um so as Cena said when we think about multi-tiered system of supports um you know we are thinking about that from a a large District level and at the school sites I really we really want to emphasize that it's really a team approach so on our school-based intervention teams uh there's a wide range of staff that have a wide range of perspectives um that can bring their knowledge to help support students with the varying needs so that includes our site leads right now we have a uh point2 site lead at every School site um our site administrators the counselors our Wellness counselors Title One teachers um other teachers our educational Specialists um they include our targeted case managers uh speech language Pathologists and our psychologist so really a team approach to looking at uh the data and supporting the students at our school sites uh one of the big pieces that we've really been focusing on this year is using data to uh make decisions and through the platform educ climber which I think we've shared a little bit about before um tonight I'd like to give you just a very quick live example of what that looks like we um so educ climber is a platform that we can um house a lot of information from a variety of other platforms so if we think of like attendance we can get attendance data in there the students academic um growth um and their current academic um standings at um at their school sites and for their grade levels um their behavior social emotional um data points interventions that they're currently receiving and we can also use a combination of um many of those metrics to to look at students in um in different ways to support them so for example one of uh the metrics that our secondary sites have in common this year and I'm going to try to log in very quickly uh one of the common thresholds that we have for all of our secondary sites is something um called academically disengaged so we want to look at students who are coming to school have really great attendance but their academics may not show that so they're coming to school but in this instance they have three or more failing grades so um staff are notified in a variety of ways but um just to show you a live uh demonstration of what this looks like um so I'm going to search so here's all of the students in in our district at a school site level it would just be their School site and at a teacher level they would just see at the elementary level the the students in their class and then at the secondary level students that are in any of their courses or that are rostered to them for any of their courses um so if I am um and if I'm on this team of um our esit team or our intervention teams at our school sites one of the ways that I can look for this this says 23 24 right I thought yeah okay so we can quickly look and see okay who currently is you know in within that threshold who is um coming to school grade attendance but has three or more failing grades so at a school site level this is graded information that we can act on and say okay and then from those variety of perspectives we can say oh I know this or how about we try this or what can we do to support this group or this student um so that's just one quick glimpse of how we can use the data that's coming into educ climber um to support to to support our students um another way that we've uh recently um just done with some of our teacher leadership groups was uh working with them to determine as students go into junior high and high school um using different multiple data points to determine who might benefit from extra support in reading and or math and also who would benefit from being an honors or accelerated math um and then this also allows for that realtime achievement monitoring as you just saw that number will change every time um new data comes in so this week there might be a certain number of student next next week there might be less um so it changes as the data is coming into educ climber um so when we think about our our system of supports um this is a graphic from the state of California where we think of all students what do all students on our campuses get um we know some students need a little bit more than that and we know few students need even more intensified support so on our school side um and we TP we in here and I think uh with you before we refer to them as tier one tier 2 and tier three and so some of our tier one supports uh those are the pieces that every student has access to so um I Exel English and math our academic success classes um Second Step toolbox Ki those are social emotional curriculums that are used at our elementary school sites uh positive behavior inter interventions and supports um are used districtwide um all of our Core Curriculum and coursework is tier one students have access to that um it's our K5 reading and writing instruction and then also you know that's for our students but also um making sure our staff are getting professional development on supporting students so this year we've had Grace Dearborn talk about behavior supports for all students as well as Dr Derek Greenfield um working with staff for bias awareness and then if we think of the next two um uh tiers there isn't a fine there isn't a a direct line between tier two and tier three it's really student dependent and what the student needs um but for academic behavior and social emotional interventions I just put a couple of examples of some of the pieces that we have available for our students um again using that data to inform what intervention might be best to support that student so for academic interventions that might look like a small reading group or small math group at an elementary school site it might include Afterschool tutoring Andor an alternative education program for our Behavior interventions we have um interventions called checkin checkout that's one where we're uh supporting students individual students uh with behavior and really building that connection uh between the student and an adult on on campus as well as we have our behavior intervention and coaching team as well as opportunity classes and then for social emotional interventions we have um uh interventions such as friendship groups or small groups that might have a very specific Focus Andor students might be recommended or get helps um set up with some outside counseling and then as always we're thinking you know this is a very big systemwide process so how do we keep um what what are our next steps and so uh really looking at our tier one practices we think of tier one that's what all of our students have access to and are receiving so really building that Foundation um and some of the the pieces we're looking into our you know bringing um Universal Design for Learning so that is um it's not it's not a curriculum but it's strategies that teachers can use to engage and motivate um students and provide provide different ways for students to respond to engage with the content um for the past couple years we've been doing a lot of work with our tier one literacy instruction in the elementary so continuing on with that again building that foundation so that um we have that nice and strong and then um uh we have some secondary math teachers who are interested and who will actually be going to a um professional development called building things thinking classrooms where it's all about enhancing math engagement thinking and strategies um another next step is continuing to monitor our foster student achievement and their needs we have many resources for them but we know their academics um aren't where we would like them so we want to make sure that we're monitoring and supporting them with the the tools and resources they need so that they can be um successful with their academics as well and then um always a longterm always continuing to refine and support our school sites our process in the district as well as using that data and documenting uh what we're doing to support our students um in educ climber um so thank you that's our update for for this point in the year and if you have any questions uh we're all here to answer and um give you give you our our thoughts um how so building classrooms is that new this year or new going into next year where is that implementation at that's an approach um that a number of our Math teachers have been um pursuing on their own um it's kind of gained popularity in the secondary math World particularly I would say at uh Chico Jr and Chico High um they got started um it was brought to DLC by um some of the uh folks that were already practicing it um one DLC member in particular um and so we um discussed at DLC and we're sending uh a representative from each um secondary site to a conference in the end of June okay so it doesn't trickle down to the elementary level at this point no curious this is not a discussion for here but about what what what math and science is looking like at the elementary level come back to that later but yeah okay thank you reading and writing is great I don't think there's any more questions well thank you so much for allowing us to share some of the updates that um we're continuing to put into place and improve upon always um at our school sites so thank you thank you thank you all right moving on to business services uh 9.2.1 is a discussion action public hearing resolution number 1635 d24 acceptance of the use of State construction grant funding to construct new facilities at Pleasant Valley high school thank you good evening thanks for your time this evening um we actually have two um resolutions and two public hearings uh this evening backtack and they are related to an item that I brought forward last month uh regarding uh new construction pupil grants for the construction project we did at Pleasant Valley High School for the new multi-purpose room and the two culinary arts and Hospitality classrooms that are on the back side of that new building at Pleasant Valley high school so we are pursuing State funding uh in order to leverage our measure K dollars that we're spending on these projects as we work through our master plan um the first resolution in front of you this evening is for the cafeteria multi-purpose uh room in that building and it is a a formality the State Office of Public School construction requires that the board um review and approve a resolution uh seeing that you will utilize K through six pupo grants that are available under new construction eligibility for use at the high school level the first one is um for 19 existing k6 grade level classro classrooms loading them at six pupils beyond the state loading standard the state loading standard is 25 and grades four five and six are 30 to35 already so this is a a formality um in order to uh satisfy the Office of Public School construction for our application for funding are there any questions I don't see any questions for clarification um see seeing no technical questions I'll open the hearing do we have public comment on this resolution I's see no public comment I will close the hearing and with that do we have a motion Madam president I move approval of resolution number 1635 d24 seconded all right we have a motion by Miss Robinson and a second by Mr Lando any further discussion board um seeing none uh we will do a a Voice vote uh you will notice that a member did step out um and so we will have to do a Voice vote as long as she's not present um and it'll just be a a vote with one um one no vote so with that we'll start uh just with you Mr tennis can we put the vote off until the end or does it have to happen now according to the rules I don't um I don't know that it's going to be a short a brief um exit I don't know how long she's going to be if she be back yeah yeah we're okay but thank you for the consideration sure uh tennis I okay Doby I Lando do I Robinson I all right it's four um four yeses um no Nos and one not present um also she Al just said go ahead without her so um but thanks for that and then we'll move on to the next the next item next resolution please thank you so very similar to the resolution that you just approved and this one is for the additional classrooms that are in the same newly constructed building at Pleasant Valley High School for the culinary arts and Hospitality program and again it is requesting the use of the pupil grants at the K through six level to be utilized towards the high school construction uh again it's five existing k6 grade level classrooms with six pupils beyond the state loading standard of of 25 students per classroom which we already are doing so do you have any questions about this resolution all right seeing none I'll open the public hearing the hearing is open do we have public comment on this resolution hearing none I'll close the hearing uh do we have a motion sure I'll move adoption of resolution 16 3624 I'll second that motion we have a motion by Mr T Mr Lando and a second by Miss Robinson uh we'll start our Voice vote with myself this time Dolby i l i Robinson I I all right moving right along thank you so much passes four uh yeses zero Nos and one absent moving right along uh we are on 9.2.3 discussion action resolution 1633 d24 interfund borrowing between funds good evening board um every year we bring a resolution to you that um involves our possibility of being able to interfund borrow um so as a school district we have two different programs the nutrition services program and the California state preschool program that operate outside of our general fund so this resolution just gives us the capability to potentially borrow between funds should the need arise um per Ed code we're required to maintain positive cash balances as of the 3D Monday in April through the end of the year we haven't needed to use this but it's really just there's a a precautionary measure just in case okay simple as that quick told you we didn't know um okay so seeing no technical questions um and it's not a hearing this time so um no further public comment we can move on to a motion did you say you're accepting a motion yes I'm I so moved great I'll second that motion okay we have a motion by Mr tennis and a second by Miss Robinson um any further discussion board fantastic uh we'll start with Mr Lando Lando I Robinson I tennis I I'm gonna obstain perfect H DOL I uh so it's 4 z uh with one abstain um since we just got our fifth board member back in the room fantastic let's move right along thank you so [Applause] much uh 9.3.1 discussion action resolution number 16 34-24 elimination of classified staff due to lack of work for lack of funds is that the right one no did I skip one second interim budget second budget was trying to move us along come on just kidding okay budget go I'm like you're still up there like I'm in the right yeah my bad I'm not talking about layoffs um okay good evening board tonight Jaclyn shes and I are going to present to you second interim budget um so the major themes tonight um funded average daily attendance utilizing um current year data concentration dollars via local control funding formula federal and state grant funding um and a multi year projection including a decrease in Cola all right so this slide shows our actual versus funded average daily attendance using the averaging methodology um you guys are really familiar with this slide at this point oh gosh it's a little funky um so can you see it on your your screens better yeah okay so anyway um I one thing I wanted to point out is at first interim our estimates for 2324 were um 12276 enrollment and 11515 Ada uh using the actual P1 data we ended up a little better than that at uh 2316 enrollment and 11577 Ada and that puts our attendance percentage at 94% which is up from our estimate of 93.8 um so that's good news and we'll talk about financial implications of that later in the presentation okay unduplicated pupil percentage um this is the percentage of students who are either free reduced meal eligible Foster homeless or English Learners um this is how the district receives concentration dollars so the district needs to hit um 55% in a three-year average in order to be eligible for these dollars if you look at the fiscal year history under threeyear average you can see we didn't hit this until 2223 um and if you look to the column on the left of that you can see we hit the peak percentage in 2122 but we've continued to decline so if we continue at um to be below 55% we will no longer receive concentration dollars um and we'll talk about fiscal implications of that as well later okay this slide is just a snapshot of funding from our major grants right now um some years ago most categorical programs got eliminated in favor of local control funding formula so now we're trying we're seeing more and more grants creep back in which is good news for the district um about halfway down you see the covid relief funding that is expiring September 30th of this year so a lot of these other grants were using to um keep the supports in place that we had after covid okay major assumptions um lcff revenues based on the cola of 8.22% um 8.22% is a really high Cola we do not expect to see that in future years um funded Ada again based on current year actual data of 11576 75 and then the unduplicated three-year average is 56.8 7% so 1.87% over that 55% cut off um and salaries and benefits reflect pos position control as of February 1st right I'll turn it over to Sharice uh question the uh average daily attendance that's our current year is 11,576 yes what is that number that is a dollar amount or that is the number quantity so students quantity that's the number of students it is the number of students who attend every single day on average so our enrollment is 12,000 plus but not every student attends every single day so this is roughly 94% of that value it's kind of who's there on a given Dayo yeah yeah yeah is it just it's confusing because of the comma yeah okay okay so this is a comparison of the budget that we brought to you in December otherwise known as first interim and the budget we're presenting tonight um this is our UND or our unrestricted general fund comparison um and this is a summary of all the different categories so I'm going to go into the details of what the differences are between when we spoke with you guys last time okay so this is all of our revenues from the unrestricted general fund side um you can see that there was a change as Marie mentioned um our average daily attendance went up uh since the last time we presented uh that was the biggest swing so that gave us about $400,000 more which is fantastic um and then State revenues increased due to unrestricted Lottery at a higher Ada because of that ADA change as well and then we actually got a lot more interest um a little over a million dollars more than um or or we're anticipating getting a little more than a million dollars more than what we presented to you at first interim um as everyone's seen interest rates are increasing so that's helping us a lot right now and then we also received a one-time eate um payment from um from reimbursements that it uh files for okay so this is a chart yeah sorry guys all of our formats are a little funky tonight um but this is the basic information so uh as you can see on the unrestricted side our local control funding formula that orange part of the pie came at at about 94% um so that average daily attendance our unduplicated count that's what drives that and that is as you can see the majority of our unrestricted general fund dollars okay so this is a compar some of the expenditures that we brought to you at first interim and where we're anticipating Landing now um so the the big differences um were on the certificated Side Lower sick time uh the last few years we've seen an increase in sick time um due to covid and you know just people taking better precautions and staying home more when they're sick um but that seems to be changing this year so it actually dropped from when we did our last budget um as well as unfilled vacancies so we are trying to we're working very closely with ad Services um to just discuss what positions we're going to refill so that we can make sure that we're getting our budgets as tight as possible um and then we also had a little bit of an increase on the books and supplies part um and that was due to Warehouse vehicle uh we had had to replace one um and then as well as it equipment okay and then this is just a pie chart that breaks down the um unrestricted expenditures as well as our special ed contribution so all of the green pie slices add up to about 88% of our general fund unrestricted Budget on the expenditure side and then this one discusses our transfers in from other funds um so we get Redevelopment agency funds that help to fund our um routine restricted maintenance or otherwise known as our maintenance and operations Department um we're an ating that being about 3.7 million this year and then the developer fee admin support that's 3% of the total fee or the total revenue we um collect as a part of our developer fees and then the contributions to restricted programs our special ed contribution went down from the first time or from when we presented to you guys in December uh that's due to a couple different changes we received more revenue from the state and federal um dollars due to our Ada increase so that's fantastic helps to fund our special program a little bit more um and then same thing as I was discussing on the filling vacancies in the other slide so we're working very closely with our special Le Department as well um just so that we have the best information possible for you in the budget all righty and I'm going to pass it over to jacine so this time of the year while it's important to look at the current year budget to make sure we're on track it's really really important to start looking out looking out it next year and even the year after that so so that's why we bring forward to you our multi-year projection so I'm just going to hit a couple of the key assumptions here um our enrollment when we look at the cohorts matriculating through um it looks relatively flat on 12,000 couple increase next year and and the following or couple decrease increase next year and a couple decreases the following year um the big piece here that I want to point out is right now the Department of Finance has the Coler projection at 76% for next year um which is significantly lower than when we here in December um around 2 or 3% uh right now the following year in 2526 it's it's slated to be 2.73 um I don't think it's going to be that much honestly um given the economic um situation with our state and the greater economy so um we'll play that by year and we'll get those calculations from the Department of Finance as we move on um we'll plan accordingly um to know that if we get full funding at 2.73 what one budget looks like and then if it is a lesser amount we can certainly adjust yes thank you will the May Revis um give us any indication as to whether or not that 2.73 is even remotely possible probably not in may they use eight data points in order to determine Cola um so it's usually four from the current year and four from the prior year so we won't have that data quite yet for 25 26 um we are still implementing our transitional kindergarten program prr so we are um looking at one additional class for next year um so we have that in there um as we've talked about with the concentration dollars um last year received a little bit this year received a significant amount of concentration dollars um so we use some of those dollars for professional development um knowing that we're not going to be in a position to receive concentration dollars next year um those dollars related to professional development have been backed out one other major change our retirements typically we estimate about 20 certificated retirements every year um that's been really consistent for many many years um unfortunately this year we are not seeing that um at this point in time so from a budgetary perspective um I reduced that um in our projections so these are the numbers behind that multi-year projection so um we have the current year we have a projected for 2425 as well as the projection for 2526 so I understand there's a lot of numbers on the slide but if the most important is if you look at line four it says net increase or decrease if it's in parentheses um in fund balance um you'll notice that all three of those values are in red and they are have parentheses around them so we are spending more money then we are bringing in um so we have reserves reserves are like a savings account you can dip into them once but you can't dip into them ongoing so when we fast forward to next year and we're looking at about a $2.7 million deficit um Now is really the time to start those conversations and we have been having conversations with ed services um and certainly HR about what can we do to tighten our belt to make sure that we're living within our means and so um that's looking at all aspects of the budget um both people and materials and supplies and services um you'll see it just compact pounds as we go out further into that third year so for every dollar we can save now that's $2 the following year and $3 um the third year so just really important um aspects there so one thing that we are seeing um are the stirs and purs increases or should I say purs increases so at this point in time stirs has not increased the employer contribution so what this means is for every dollar that a stirs member earns the district kicks in 19.1 cents if you will into their pension and for Pur for every dollar um that a Pur employee earns in the current year um would' be 26.68% the ability to um as they look at their actual areial reports of their Investments increase or potentially decrease that percentage so as Sharice alluded to earlier we are seeing higher interest rates at the County Treasury um because of our large cash balance and I will say I am not afraid to have a large cash balance um cash is King cash is what pays our bills so while we may have a reserve that's high we don't always have cash um so it's important to keep cash in the bank um one of the mechanisms that the state legislature um and the governor have um in their back pocket is to do what's called Cash deferrals um which is essentially um checks in the mail so they'll take the money that they owe us for example in May and June and pay us in August and September um we still have staff to pay we still have bills to pay so it's important that we have cash in the bank to be able to do that and essentially float the money until we get our money from the state so it's a mechanism the states used in the past and I would not be surprised if they use that in the future um as a mechanism for um budget reductions so we have to self-certify you guys hear this three times a year have to self-certify positive we'll meet our obligations qualitative we might not qual qualified we may not meet our obligations and negative we will not so I am very happy to say with myself and my team that we um are here presenting a positive budget um for second interm we can make all of our obligations in the current year as well as the two future years so where does that lead us so next steps um we are actively reviewing our enrollment for next year because we're looking at Staffing um to really dial in how many teachers we need how many support staff we need um to really tighten that budget tighten that belt a little bit as we move forward um we're continuing to participate in meetings with head Services related to as we alluded to earlier feedback um from our elcat meetings to figure out what those priorities are um moving forward into 2425 um and I think from from my perspective um waiting for the Governor's budget will be very interesting to see how budget negotiations occur at the state level over the next couple months to see um what is being proposed as as funding or not um going into next year and then we'll be back in June um in collaboration and correlation with the lcap um to provide a budget for the next school year that's all we have for you unless you have additional questions this evening all right seeing no questions um we also have no public comment signed up for this item so we will roll right into uh a motion um I move that we accept this financial report second all right we have a motion by Mr tennis and a second by Mr Lando to accept the second interim budget um we'll do a roll call vote uh we'll start with Mr Lando Lando I Robinson I tennis I Conan I Dolby I thank you for that update um we'll move on to Human Resources 9.3.1 is a discussion action item for resolution number 163 44-24 the elimination of classified staff due to lack of work or lack of funds thank you madam president I'm actually going to introduce uh invite to the podium executive director of classified Human Resources Mike Allen to introduce this uh item good evening board so unfortunately we here in this budget time of you know um tight budgets and um normally we bring our resolutions or our our items and these positions are usually not filled with people but unfortunately this time we have um 12 12 U positions and six of them are filled with people um I've met with these folks very fine folks very nice employees they've done nothing wrong but unfortunately um just in the situation we're in we're looking at at reductions and so um I'm bringing forth this resolution um to eliminate classified staff do do the lack of worker funds we've worked with um you know the union worked with the district we really try to do this um through attrition and um with with not filling positions but at this point we're at a point um where um we're bringing six positions to you that are filled with people um so did you want to did you have something to say have a technical question um what's the um FTE um total for the positions being eliminated oh that is a great question um I did not do the math on that I do believe it I'd have to do some quick math here um I just didn't have the the total with me yeah right around seven two three yeah about seven and a half eight I do believe FTE and next question um are uh you said six positions were vacant and six were not made are the behavior Specialists positions both vacant they are not vacant the instructional PA professional position that is vacant that is vacant so the others are part of the IIA computers that is correct thank you I will say um so the process that goes with this is that um they have rights and they have what we call Tucker rights and with those rights they um go on what we call a re-employment list and that Reemployment list lasts for 39 months if they were to take a uh voluntary demotion or take another uh another position which um we will offer them when they're on the list they will be offered um positions that they are qualified and Order and they are they get preferential um treatment for the before the people from outside and so um with that um they will be offered other employment um with the district and that would increase their time on the re re-employment list to 64 um months yeah 64 months and with that if a job comes open if uh IA computers or behavior specialist position comes open they are the first ones to um receive that that position back um again fine people nice um it's just very unfortunate um Mr alen thank you on on uh the case of a an employee who has not previously served in a lower position yeah um they would have the opportunity to file for unemployment while they're absolutely and actually we will give them a letter to um the Ed office stating that they held this position for so much time and that they um were you know let go due to LS due to lack of funds or lack of work um we'll give them that letter we'll also give them a letter um to Future employees saying that you know explaining the the the layoff process and that they have they were in good standing at at the point um when they were employed with us um so we'll give those that to them and um help them in any way that we can um move forward with future employment I had my mic on for a second for too long and then I forgot I turned it off um with the behavior Specialists are there are there other Behavior interventionalist positions in the district or are those are are those are there more there's only two in the district um so um this is a whole classification that is is being eliminated MH but are there other there other other positions or other staff that are providing behavior um support yes so we do we we have um we have what we call intensive behavior interventionist it's what we call IES and they do um provide Behavior Support okay and uh are those how are there like is there one on each site or there is one on each site um that is the goal there one on each site and they would go inside the classrooms and and support um teachers and students um in terms of collecting data helping them um helping them manage some behaviors in the classroom and giving them the support they need and also helping the um instructional pair of professionals actually helping them gain skills okay how are those positions different from the behavior Specialists position that are on this list that's a that's a great question um well I I know Dr SCH could probably explain this a little bit better than I can um so the behavior Specialists they um they go into the classroom and they do do kind of the same thing they they can um they can collect data they help um teachers with you know behaviors um finding the the cause of the behavior an aedans things like that but then um the behavior Specialists um they can also write Behavior plans um technically I I don't think ours can right now because they're they're not quite certified um so they can't um write Behavior plans but that would be a function of the behavior specialist set that iby would not be able to do and so sorry um so there but there are other staff like certificated teachers that can also write Behavior plans um our school psychologists can can write behavior and so they would work together with and they do they they currently do also and these are our only two Behavior specialists in the whole District that's correct is there um can you just give a like a brief maybe explanation this might be more for M Scala but um about how it came to be that it was determined that those those those positions we could kind of dissolve and rely more on our behav our the behavior interent the other Andes it's kind of confusing and so for just for people out there I this is something that I learned better today I kind of had to grasp this myself so I'm just kind of asking this so that anybody who's listening in or has this concern we can kind of better explain these two positions versus what is still going to be happening in our on our School site all right so um my my understanding and Miss SC could um jump in anytime yeah she can totally is that it's just it's kind of a redundancy so um the behaviorist the behavior Specialists are itinerate and they go everywhere within our new system with IES out at every site um it becomes kind of a a redundancy of that that yeah ex exactly what Mr Allen was saying so um when districts bring in behavioral specialists or bcbas that's the the licensure that they fall under what we're hoping is to alleviate some of the pressure from school psychologists in doing functional behavioral assessments so all of our psychologists are trained in doing those and that is the precursor assessment piece that's required when we're writing behavior intervention plans for really intense difficult behaviors that we're having a hard time um changing over time so the school Psych in order to assist the school psychologist there are behavioral specialists that can come in and work alongside that team to conduct the FBA or the functional behavioral assessment get that piece going support the team and in in putting a behavior intervention in place a behavior intervention plan in place and then moving forward so given that they have kind of that specialty their assistance in coming in helps that process flow fast because that's all that they do and psychologists kind of have multiple responsibilities off campuses so it is a little bit of a redundant piece in that nature so I guess could could we expect this the an impact to be seen for from this or are our psychologists and other staff going to be able to just kind of maintain Uh current practices and and hopefully we won't see any hiccups in in developing those Behavior plans I don't anticipate that we'll see any additional hiccups currently our our psychologists do functional behavioral assessments um we had kind of sized up with adding these positions when we were creating our behavior intervention and coaching team and so you know just trying to figure out and creating that big team and what that was going to look like districtwide now trying to determine um what's in need and the functional behavioral assessments or a requirement that psychologists are already doing so identifying this work as redundant is kind of where we're at thank you thank you y any further questions doesn't look like it thanks for being here Mike thank you we do have public comment on this item fantastic all right so then I will invite up public comment I don't have a a name list in front of me um while you're walking up here I'll give you the little Spiel yeah you get three minutes to speak um you'll see a timer on the board um you'll hear a sound when there's 30 seconds left of your time um you're here to address the board Bo it's nice to know your name and you know what who or what you represent not required but um yeah please feel free to to address the board my name is Cassie kajes and I am here to talk about the behavioral specialist I'm going to try and take emotions out of it because they have saved my sons School future so sorry the behavioral specialists are so different from anybody else that works within our classrooms my son is in a mod severe program he's non-verbal and aggressive um can be aggressive I should say um earlier this year they had talked about sending him to point Quest because of his behaviors which I'm not sure if you guys know okay we're spending a ton of money sending kids to point Quest um there's been multiple kids in his classroom that were talked about being sent the behavioral specialists came and stepped in they made behavioral plans for these kids they trained the staff they trained the teacher and our my son is doing amazing he's having no issues and it's all due to the behavioral specialist and there's many cases out there where this is happening um they again are training the IES the IES don't replace the behavioral specialists we have a iby in our classroom and the behavioral specialists train the iby he did not come up with any of the behavioral plan which by the way is also written into his ie his behavioral plan and his behavioral specialist hours are written into his IEP so what would happen you you're just going to go against the IEPs and take out all the behavioral um our school pyes do not do behavioral plans I have been with Chico Unified my son is in sixth grade and the behavioral specialist is the first one to ever build a behavioral plan and they just we need them there's so important um I just can't stress this enough they've actually saved you guys so much money from not sending kids out to point Quest because of the work they've done so when you're thinking about your budget think about the money they're saving we have two of them they are amazing they are working so hard in all these different classrooms um the classroom my son's in right now hasn't had a teacher all year he is in a mod severe classroom that has had Subs up until about 3 months ago and they stepped in and just totally took over trained staff they're just so important so needed and I just urge you guys to think about that and think about the kids that they've saved from being sent to pain Point Quest building these behavioral plans so sorry for my emotions but this is so important you took a kid from loping off campus every day and having self-injury every day to thriving because of them so please just please thank hello she's going to make me cry um my name is Julia rogov I also have a mild a mod severe student here in this District who has benefited from behavioral specialists and I want you to completely understand that a behavioral specialist and the licensing a um that they hold bcba IES that's a high school diploma do you honestly is a district honestly telling me that a high school diploma can do what a bcba is doing that has spent four six years in College learning school psychologists when you talk about them they don't have the first they know very little about creating Behavior plans they have a large um information about a lot of different topics but when we're talking about Behavior bcbas are the experts like she said if you want to talk about what these people do bcbas have taken my child from banging her head on the floor making herself bleed getting concussions to now thriving in school this is not a high school diploma position this is not something you can just switch out for somebody who doesn't know what they're doing these are vital positions that are saving students lives it's not just we're going to save money which which we will by not sending students off campus cuz you don't have the support you don't have the people in place here in this District to support violent behaviors and that's what you have let's not mince words our students can be violent they can be violent with themselves they can be violent with other students and other teachers and who saves us behavioral specialists it's not high school graduate IES who don't know what they're doing it's not school psychologists who sit behind a desk it's the people in the trenches who are with our students and know what they're doing and know how to mitigate behavior and know how to help our students who are trained in autism who are trained in non-verbal communication that's what you need and once again you're taking the two that support your most severe students the only two that you have out of all the people in this District that you could lay off you take hours what does that say how many other positions are there that there are hundreds of that there's 20 that there's 30 but you take our two that supports students with the most severe behaviors I I I cannot understand how you possibly came up with this list it's not redundant IES cannot do what Behavior Specialists do and neither can school psychologists and if you took a moment to see their licensing you see the training that they needed to go through you see what they had to learn to graduate with these degrees you could not compare that to what na does for my student for every mode student here in this District we need to keep those thank you I have a question for staff um could you kind of explain the relationship between um these uh Behavior Specialists and people going offsite or to another location uh is there something unique in them making that decision to send somebody away Would we not be able to do that is that resource not there and then my second question is are they actually in uh to use your words in the trenches are the they they uh consistently you know day after day with the student um or are they I I got the impression they were kind of in a decision-making role relative to the and a Consulting role but not necessarily right there day in and day out go ahead so I'm going to ask JY as scholet to come up and address that and I'm also going to ask JY to talk about uh the requirements to be a behaviorist as well as how long we've had these positions in place so these positions are new to the district um we've had them for um one for not even a year yet we're just this this school year is the first year for that position the second one we brought in about this time last year so relatively new positions for our district and so when we talk about um I'm sorry can you ask me your question again first on was what's the the relationship between the behavioral specialists and and a student going to another treatment option like um Point uh the name of the school yes okay so we had a really challenging situation in the fall we lost a teacher right away with a a special or sorry an extensive support needs class with our students who have our most intensive needs and so we scrambled and rather than looking at sending students outside of the district to um non-public agency schools um we pulled together our our finest team that we could so I had a project specialist Morgan dar who I pulled her out of that work and she was assigned to that classroom so she was in there all day every day we had um instructional pair of professionals we had both behaviorists in the classroom working with that student under Morgan's Direction ensuring that all of the plans and supports were being provided to meet the needs of those students still in November we were having staff being hurt so the decision was made at that point we had more than given it a lot of time and effort and support to keep students on campus in our communities the decision was made that we needed to move forward with a couple of students who needed more intensive care and see if that made a difference in keeping kids safe and healthy in the classroom so that decision was made um for one student and it has essentially calmed down the rest of the so in that one scenario um that decision could have been made without Behavior Specialists also to send the student away correct um and so for a a certain period of time prior to that decision being made which which in that in that case sounds like it was a it was a solution that people were happy with uh you said for a number of weeks you had both Behavior specialists in that one situation correct and we had them there for sorry to interrupt Matt we had them there for the entire semester so one semester both Behavior Specialists were in with the one student correct and then there were other staff with that one student also so we had four students and we had six to seven staff at all time in order to ensure that that students were safe and supported and that when students needed additional help there was a backup staff MH to ensure that breaks could be taken that if if a student needed to go somewhere that two adults were doing that um just given the level of need of those students which semester was this fall semester this year but the solution that made more people happy was going off site ultimately oh it's not about making anybody happy it's about making decisions about are we starting to see progress in goals are we seeing student Improvement in behavior in safety um and those things were not happening by happy I meant were uh achieving our goals it was more effective in achieving our goals I would say it was more effective in meeting the needs of the child because we were not even though we had put together the best that we could possibly put together on a on a comprehensive campus like that we were not able to keep the to keep that one particular student safe on a regular basis and it was causing difficulty for the other three so I guess it doesn't seem to me like there was a unique role that the behavior Specialists played um ultimately they are highly skilled and they do have additional training and they were using those skills to support this classroom um that there is no doubt about that but using their behaviorist position no they were not thank you you're welcome there was um a lot of comments about um the high School degree and things what additional um training do the I'm going to say it wrong Ipsy Abes get in addition to their high school diploma so in addition to meeting um I'm going to call it wrong because my brain wants to go NB and I know that's not true what is the requirement the minimum requirement competency okay in order to meet they have to meet the compe exam so it is more than just a high school diploma in order to progress to an iby role um there is experience that's required years of experience working with students with disabilities and part of the program is that Gina Peyton meets with our iby staff every single week and they do two hours of training with them every week and so it is a much more intensive role they're learning all of the concepts of supporting Behavior they're learning how to collect data for data management of behavior plans they're learning how to consult and collaborate with other team members so that's what's occurring for our iby staff the the behaviors training does have a college degree and so um school districts don't have a credential for a behavioralist and most frequently um districts hire behavioralists through outside contracts as non-public agencies most often and it's because they have a license called a board certified Behavioral Analyst or bcba license in order to practice fully under that license you have to have all of the college credits completed you have to have the hours of supervision and all of those pieces completed so our folks didn't didn't have all of that completed so that's how they were hired um as District employees this I'm an jump in here and ask a question because I don't know um it might be a question for Mike but do we have a mechanism in place on our classified side that would allow behaviors to get a special ed credential to go back to school we do um so um we have a few programs that one goes to Chico State I think there's four programs that allow um um classified staff to go back and become specialized teachers or teachers so yes we do it's on our website so I just want to clarify um do the people currently in these positions have the full bcba certification no they don't and so we actually contract out with a bcba who supports them yearly um they meet regularly with her and she supports them through any of the aspects that they're still working through and do we have a mechanism in place Mr Allen ory for them to uh to help them get that certification should they desire to do so I'm not sure on that exact uh certification um I know we have it to teaching but I'm not sure about the bcba yeah because bcba doesn't have a credential in the state of California there's not a specific credential for them for that so that's why there's that outside license but if we had someone in house who had that license we would not need to contract out for that we don't have anybody in house who has a bcba finished license I hear that why yes oh I had a question are the um Behavior Specialists currently the ones who are um providing the training for the IES are they the ones who are leading the workshops what you said two hours every week week okay are they the ones who are providing that role no they they don't so they May um step in and help from time to time but the training comes from Gina pton and so Gina creates um some weeks there are online modules that she monitors that they've completed the online work that's required other times it's direct instruction with her um sorry can you clarify for everybody who who Gina pyton is sorry Gina bton is one of our special education coordinators who um coordinates all of the behavior and intervention coaching model um there was a very important question that was raised by one of our speakers um will um removing these positions uh put us in danger of violating IEPs no because this the way that we have our IEPs written we don't have them specified that a bcba is the person providing that service and the way it's written we can have any member on the IEP team providing that support service so it does it wouldn't violate an IEP to change a provider in this case can you clarify just a little bit better for me the timeline again of these two positions the the first be behavioral specialist That's not a true bcba correct um was hired about this time last year so they've been with us for about a year about a year and then the second one was hired after that at the beginning of the school year towards the end of last school year I mean less than a year ago but yes so they were hired during the summer started um at the start of this school year so start of 23 24 and then so March April May June so the first one was in the classroom or was in and out of classrooms doing their role for those first two and a half months of their their position yes um I'm not going to account for summertime but I'd imagine that they were doing something in the summertime um and then in the fall they both were in one classroom doing very important work I'm not going to disc that whatsoever okay that's that's helping me in my timeline now if we didn't have those two people um in those positions in the last year and less than year um where there was a need for that skill set would we just be contracting out with a bcba um through uh through a third party uh or other organization kind of like what you mentioned it depends um part of hiring them was part of an initiative to really expand behavioral intervention and coaching and so it was part of that big team that Gina put get Gina pton put together for us and explained the intention of this is for teams to come together and support teachers coach alongside teachers and support staff on how to effectively support behavior that occurs in the classroom and so that was the original intention of that the or the first behavioral that was hired was brought in kind of at that ground level of creating what would this support system look like for the district and so she and Gina were working very closely in creating that process in the spring of 2023 and then we started this school year with all of the intention to run that process and that program as Gina had defined it and unfortunately found oursel in a situation where we had a classroom with our our students with the most amount of need and that was what we did to try to support behavior and make change that was necessary to keep those students safe and on a comprehensive campus um I don't know this question is a little uncomfortable to ask for me but um because it's March 13th right and March 15th is the deadline that we are legally allowed to do layoffs and M that you can't do that type of thing um so should the board move forward with adopting this resolution as is and and doing away with those two positions laying off those those two people but then then this is not going to happen but in some idealistic world where the governor comes back and says never mind the budget's flush we're good to go our budget's better than what we are anticipating by a long shot we could hypothetic Ally reinstate those positions and those two people would be in line to be offered those positions first absolutely okay right okay if we if we could we could put off this decision if it wasn't for that March 15th that is correct deadline that is a a law okay yeah have ahead sorry I um would a motion be in order I I have not called for one yet because we still have been asking questions questions okay yeah um I'll wait until you're ready okay yeah I thought that we did have more public comment though I do want to keep asking CH questions as well um I'll I'll accept public comment we will um so my son as well is someone that benefited from the work of a bcba Behavior specialist um when we transitioned to Parkview it was really a big struggle and I saw behaviors in him that one we had never seen before and I had never expected to happen with him um and it was it was kind of a dangerous situation um I feel when my kids come to me and they want something that's outside of our budget I never tell them no I tell them let's come up with a plan of how we can be able to afford this how can we make it work I understand there's deadlines that we have to meet and this is probably I don't know who knows how long we've been able to discuss it and look at the budget but I feel a lot of times that's the approach we need to take that I don't necessarily feel happens maybe it's behind the scenes stuff that we as a public don't get to have access access to but I feel that's a really important question to ask yourself how can we make it work is it possible for us to make it work it's never to me I'm I'm of the perspective it's never a flat 100% no there's always wiggle room and there's room for flexibility these Behavior Specialists do play an important role in our schools and it's extremely unfortunate that they are going to be taken away yes there is the opportunity like you mentioned for them to come back and to step into those roles if the budget looks great but what if it doesn't how can we ask ourselves how can we make it work is it possible or are we just going to flat out tell ourselves no I again I feel that's a really important question to ask ourselves because it does benefit so many students across our campuses and the way they Implement my personal experience with our uh Behavior specialist that we worked with was amazing she they even asked me questions that I had never thought of or like even put in any real thought of my son's behaviors and how things were impacting him um so I mean sorry just very SP the moment but that's it is how we can ask ourselves how can we make this work thank you uh Justin kajes my wife spoke earlier about our son Mason um so just to add a little color to the classroom that we were talking about that kind of extreme behaviors um so transitioning from elementary school to middle school is hard for any kid right you can imagine for a non-verbal autistic child another challenge right new environment bigger kids you're learning um the reason those behavioral specialists were in that class the whole semester is because they didn't have a teacher they didn't have AIDS you've got IEPs with one to ones and you have to have people so it it wasn't a design thing I I believe to say okay let's take a specialist and have him here or her here all day every day that was a necessity when you don't have AIDS and you don't have teachers it's it's next person up right um and I I heard a lot about redundancies and uh I struggle with that one a little bit because it's not a redundancy so to to clear up what all of these positions are um you know these behavioral specialists are like your teachers so your teacher is teaching a student when that student learns a criteria learns a skill you don't tell the student to teach the other students and on the same side you don't tell the principal to teach every class so the behavioral specialists right now contrary to what we heard they are the ones teaching the Abes they're in the classroom they're seeing the behaviors every child is unique my son's issues are different than her son's issues or someone else's daughter's issues and so you have to see that in real time understand what it looks like understand what that plan needs to be formulated to make it work you know you don't call a mechanic and just randomly say I think this is what I got going on and my car did this here that time and that and can you can you write me up the plan and I'll fix myself right so if if the plan is to have the school psychologist who probably didn't go in the classroom or Gina is just going to write up a plan and we're all going to execute it that's like saying hey I'm going to read a Google Document and go fix a diesel tomorrow it's not going to happen so I I think we really need to understand the the the specialized role that these two positions play um to to really understand what we're talking about the other piece I I this is more of a question I don't know the systems and processes but do you is there a way to break out the the the computer support and that layoff apart from the two Specialists or they all have to be combined together I guess that's one question um the other one I have is just you brought up a a comment about a dollar becomes $2 becomes $3 are we going to invest in these behavioral specialists to teach AIDS teachers staff and let that compound or after one semester and another two semesters we're just going to say it's out so thank you for the time good evening I actually wasn't going to talk today but I'm actually one of the behavior specialists in the district currently and we worked hand inand with school psychologists with the teachers the teachers are coming to us with behavior questions Behavior concerns we are the ones running the intervention we are coming up with the plans we do contract with the bcba we require a master's degree we're both Master's students we one just finished her degree in December I will be finishing this December and then we set for the board exam in the spring or summer we are in the trenches with these kids we are itinerant we go around to all the schools we work with the parents the psychologist the speech pathologist the OTS we are in it with them if we're serving our students the correct way this is something that the district is dealing with in a serious issue is behavior there has to be somewhere else to make an impact behavior is a huge impact for this District right now we are specialized in this this is what we go to school for we are we can write be the FB we can take the data we can do all these things and do assessments so when it comes to time for for us to sit for the bcba exam yes we will not need to be contracted anymore with a supervisor that oversees our work but for right now oh that's where we're at thank you um I just kind of want to Echo what the speakers before me have said these positions are very important um you can tell from Cassie who is a friend of ours um and we know her personal struggles that she's helped her son overcome this year as a result of these two positions being in place when those positions aren't filled the classrooms can become very um not just disorganized but they can become very um unsafe and it's important that we step back and realize these positions are supporting our most vulnerable population in our school district these are kids that have extensive needs that that need these interventions to be able to remain in the school District by eliminating these positions even for hypothetically a temporary period of time until the funding comes in to rehire them that's still a gap these kids um my son included don't do well with transitions transitions are a huge trigger I know that our kids from the parents that have spoken even just moving from the library to back to their classroom can be disregulated imagine having finally just like Cassie and her husband said finally having the support that their son needs and then pulling the rug out from underneath that imagine the impact that it's going to have on those kids in that classroom even for a temporary period of time can be extremely disregulated and I just urge you to keep that in mind as you make your decision tonight there any other questions from board members I guess I would just um Echo the gentleman who spoke is there options to separate out these as he mentioned like the computers versus the behavior specialist is that even an option yeah okay do you have a question no I'm waiting for you to run the flag up the flag pole okay all right seeing no other questions or public comment I'll call for a motion thank you thank you um Madame President I move that we strike the behavior Specialists positions 41434 and 41435 from the resolution 16 34-24 I'll second that um with the with the assumption that you mean to pass the resolution without those ORD yes that is exactly my intent okay so the motion is to um pass this resolution uh minus the two Behavior specialist positions listed on there um that's what's on the floor now for discussion oh I I'll speak to the motion you know I have been on the board a while and one of the um most um significant issues that we have dealt with over the past number of years is keeping our students and our staff safe while we attempt to um move them along and and and broaden their their skill sets so that they can you know be independent in their school contacts I heard for the first time that we have two positions that are making great Headway toward making that that happen that don't involve sending our students out of district and expand tremendous amounts of dollars to put them in private non-public um circumstances so that's why my motion is coming we have something that's working I want to find a different way of funding it and not lay those positions off in two days all right thank you um first I want to acknowledge the work that staff does there a question about how do we make these decisions um it is never easy to even have to make these lists about about where we might make cuts and we're only even considering this because as we saw in the budget presentation um we need to tighten up everything around our core services and I hear that um that said um I want to Echo what Miss Robinson said in that we hear every year um about both safety in our special education classrooms and about the difficulty of retaining special education teachers and I'm uh concerned about removing more supports from those and having even more of our teachers choose not to come back uh in the special education classification that's hard we already can't fill those positions and I know people already looking I know especially teachers who are looking elsewhere because they feel like we don't support them enough um I also know that when you guys look places to make cuts the mant the Mantra is always make Cuts as far away from students as possible um and I just think I think we missed the mark on that one this time I don't I don't know where else we make cuts to make up the money and the fact that we do need to make cuts and everyone needs to be aware of that like speaking just to the public General we are entering a time when CH unite is going to have to pull back on a lot of things to stay solvent and avoid much worse Cuts in the future so we are going to be making some hard decisions up here um that said I I can't see um a way to to pull these two positions away from the work that they're doing um I would Echo much of what you said I think with um the fact that we have quite a few people who are are leaving um and not wanting to be a part of um or we're having a difficult time uh retaining some of our special ed staff and we have two qualified people who want to be there and are excited about what they do um I did hear the mention of the redundancy so um I wonder if there's like a way that we could and I'm sure they would already they already believe they're maximized um and pushed to their limits but maybe redefining or um considering ways to make it less redundant and maybe have their role be maximized a little bit more and it sounds like maybe with the opportunity with them graduating um we'll have that um within the next year if we end up deciding to keep but anyway just maybe addressing that um redundancy and and expanding their role to make sure we were utilizing them to their fullest potential I'm going to um tail off that because I was thinking similarly um that it may not be when the program is re reaching more of its fully fledged status that this that it it is redundant it may just be that this program hasn't even been in place for a full school year and we haven't been able to even see the potential that that just having two Behavior specialists in District you know building rapport with staffs and students will pay off I think more than what we've even been able to see just what we've heard from tonight um and really just to keep it short it goes back to the concept of our district standing for every student every day and if we get rid of these positions that have made a significant impact even just on one student and it's been more than one but even if it was just one then what are we what are we standing for if we're not if we're not standing for our own our own slogan well the all you know you could be standing for the all not just the one is that a throwback to two years ago um may I speak yeah please so uh I'm going to take a a dissenting view I have spoken to staff and I know that that they're not indifferent to the needs of that student that we're talking about or any of the kids that we're talking about these guys are not like cold calculating uh mathematicians who just sit around you know looking for uh the juiciest piece of uh you know loow hanging fruit that they can snip off of some Branch somewhere um I mean I don't know their whole life story but but uh they're not that you know they've committed their lives to education and the way that you know we all have on some small level and that we pick a a vocation because we we like it and we want to do that um and um I want to thank the staff I want to thank you guys for the difficult decisions that you make day in and day out you know um we are facing tough Economic Times and we're at the like tip of the iceberg of it so U be happy that this vote is going to go your way uh because it sounds to me like a Time's coming when uh when votes are maybe going to not go people's way because we'll been in a more necessary position but I want to ask a bizarre question I heard that uh if if school boards can't figure out how to cut the budget that the state or somebody just sends somebody here and that person just sits there with you and they just cut the budget for you yep so really that's kind of um pretty lame I think and cowardly system because it enables us to just sit up here and say you know oh you're so valuable in that situation it's all so valuable and every single person as staff tries to like send up you know proposed cuts to a budget that's got to get cut we could always have the comfort you know to just sit up here and say well I just can't I can't possibly cut that incredibly valuable thing you know and we can look good and feel good and then we can complain three years from now if some auditor type person is sitting up here with us saying well you got to do this this this and this because uh otherwise your books aren't going to balance and we can just say that's just just you know a totally terrible Injustice that they're that they're making us do that you know and then I I guess somebody could go to sleep at night feeling like they had always stood up for people who deserved you know that service and it wasn't their fault that it got cut you know that's that that seems to be the world that we're living in and I think that exact thing has happened here and that's why Kevin Bola your predecessor actually came to work for Chico Unified School District because he was that person who was here you know making those difficult decisions because nobody else you know had the guts basically to do it you know so why should I stick my neck out now for staff who've just kind of identified what they thought was a a responsible decision to to make that would bring our books into balance over the next few years so or it could be that no one's being a coward and instead we have a principal disagreement um for instance a lot of people have spoken about up the fact that when special ed goes arai it costs us a lot of money shipping students to nps's uh loss suits and uh uh hearings regarding broken IEPs but haven't they thought of that haven't they thought through those sure they have scenarios I'm sure they have yeah yeah I won't belor the point yeah I hear you and I do worry a lot about the expenses we already incur um on the special side and I think that again maybe we are if there's possibility that we're missing the mark in terms of of the overall expense in cutting these down the line as well I think it's a I think it's a premature decision um before we can see how it it it really is run fully fledged I would like to see it for at least another year and then I won't won't be up here anymore but you know if Cuts come harsher and faster then you know we might be right back here and like that's that sucks and that's the reality but I think that at least for me philosophically in an equity stance versus an equality stance I think that you know the handful of students that are going to benefit the most from this are are are worth the struggle that our staff are if this board decides to to um approve this motion um staff's going to have to go back to the drawing board and it's going to be tough and they're going to be a little bit upset about having to rework numbers and everybody is worried about cuts in other places that also are going to impact students but um there has to be Solutions somewhere in my opinion and that's what we're up here for and I'm just going to jump in here for a moment um this is you know obviously not about two individuals or really even um about saying that we don't value or need these positions This truly is we are looking for ways uh to get our budget imbalance but that said absolutely I mean I think everybody we have in this district has value and I need to address something that was said earlier that really bothers me and I just I I need to uh set the record straight here we had some very disparaging comments made about our uh IES and our school psychologist and I just want everyone to know we have outstanding School psychologists we have outstanding individuals that serve in our I positions and um you know I'll stand those up against anybody anywhere and I'm sure we can do exactly the same thing like you said it is a new program so we don't you know we don't know yet how well that is going to work out but I'm I I know these are wonderful people as well we've never heard anything bad about the individuals it is just um is there redundancy that we can eliminate we've heard no from some people we've heard yes I agree that it is you know there's just may be a difference of opinion but I don't want anybody to leave thinking that we don't have fabulous support staff in our IES and our school psychologists they work very very hard every single day with really difficult students thanks for thanks for saying that as I had the same feelings um with that let's move on to the vote um let's start with uh Miss Robinson since it was your motion Robinson I tennis nay Conan I Doby I Lando I okay so the resolution passes uh with the behavior specialist Struck from um the layoff list thank you and thank you everybody for uh being here and speaking tonight including staff um with all these difficult conversations um we have a few items left I could use a break but also could try to power through is there anybody that's like really really needing to take bre and I think we should use our desire for a break as a motivator to move more quickly and ask fewer questions and make fewer comments okay just making sure that nobody's hurting um okay so we are moving along to 9.3 two discussion action resolution number 16 37-24 non- reelection of probationary certificated employees thank you madam president so before you is a resolution it's it's an annual resolution as most of you know by March 15th we need to notify our and and uh any non- reelected probationary staff and as you can see here we have three staff on our non- reelection list who have not submitted resignations hence the the three uh student or uh staff ID numbers um um president uh SN U Charlie Snider isn't still here but I wanted to thank him for the the uh participation the conversations we've been having with staff as we've been making these very difficult decisions um before you as I said um California Education Code 449 29.

good afternoon welcome to the senate committee on education today is Wednesday March 13 2024 3:00 p.m. and we are in hearing room 229 this meeting including the audio and video of remote participants is being streamed Live on YouTube you will find links to viewing options for all Senate meetings on the live and On Demand video page of the legislator website this Zoom meeting and YouTube live stream event will include the 3:00 p.m. agenda for this committee on education in the unlikely event that we must abruptly end this hearing due to Major technical difficulties the committee will reconvene to discuss any outstanding business on Friday March 15 20 24 at 3:01 p.m.