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uh we had a solid hundred say that they would stay online and between 300 but 300 and 395 are saying that they would prefer online or did not respond to multiple phone calls from our schools so then the with the parent survey at the elementary level there was a really large portion that didn't respond to the survey so if we were to talk in the number of total number of parents who the survey was sent to um what was the percent of what's the percent breakdown um at that point because you guys said you gave us a number um you're in my video um you gave a number that was uh like 70 i don't have the number in front of me of parents that they wanted to go back to full-time but um that's not really accurate um if if there was a large portion who actually didn't um respond to the survey at all so i guess i was just kind of um curious if we saw those numbers um broken down like that the total number of parents the survey went to and then the percentage of the total number of parents to survey went to um for a breakdown and what percentage didn't i saw the number of what percentage didn't respond just to have a clear picture of where parents are at we had a math teacher who had emailed their concern about how the the numbers are being displayed so if we have 5 000 students and we had 38 percent of the fam families do this survey and then 78 of those families wanted to come back that would be 1480 of our families saying that they want to come back in person out of the people that were surveyed i just found um remember dobby i just found the recap of that survey and it said 33 of the parents responded that were sent surveys for elementary 38.7 percent responded parent survey results elementary participation 38.7 percent yeah that's what i was okay referencing the 38 if i may did that help but yes mr lando so i think just to make sure i'm understanding uh what ms dalby is saying correctly if we look at the entire and again one of our uh pb matthew just broke this down very succinctly in an email of the elementary parents the whole breakdown is 61 didn't respond 29.6 would like to go back to full day instruction and 7.7 would like to stay in the modeler inn and 1.4 said they had no preference so the overwhelming majority simply didn't respond uh but 29.6 responded in the affirmative that they would like to go back full time yeah no of the entire population that is really unfair i mean the reason that they didn't if i may continue with this line of reasoning um uh respond is because you had i mean you know you can't lump them all together i i they're not they're not identical situations obviously but you know you have to go track down your student id number or student id numbers if you have multiple children parents are afraid they're frazzled they're stressed okay the school system is not there for them we are not providing the education and the you know the hours of care that we used to and that our society has evolved to uh expect and and have and so um i look at this huge uh pie piece uh of the people among the people who did participate you've got 76.4 percent want to go back to look at the people who didn't respond um and jump through those hoops which we have got a lot of survey fatigue i think over the last year too because there's been a lot of these surveys given out when i look at that board member lando and others i see a bunch of at their wits end frazzled parents in uh families that are incredibly stressed out and need the services that only we can provide and we're being paid untold tens and hundreds of millions of dollars to provide those services and we're not doing it that's what i see when i look at this non-participation rate if i may um [Applause] yeah please no applause mr lando i just want to caution uh anyone from extrapolating from incomplete data we have the data we have to ascribe motives to people who didn't answer survey questions either way is an easy way for us to allow our own biases and wishes to come into play let's play let's use the data we've got and and not try and make guesses about why people did or didn't respond um i would add uh that we all got um many many many emails throughout the last number of months about where parents are and and and a number especially this last week from students and um i i see a representation of all of the issues that we have before us and all of the things that we have under consideration we're all represented in the input that we are getting from our community on a very broad based input platform and so i i too as mr lando indicates and not going to speculate about what the people wanted that didn't respond to the survey okay we have mr sullivan here to introduce his uh his principles so we have mr weaver from mcmanus and we have mrs fuentes from parkview just in case there's any questions you guys might have kind of from a principal perspective view so they are here to answer questions for you good evening i'm heather sue fuentes principal at parkfield good evening i'm chris weaver from mcmanus do you have any questions yes principal weaver um i had uh again indications from some of your not yours specifically but elementary support personnel that the smaller class sizes and the ability to easily schedule the supports for the smaller class sizes was actually providing some good outcomes for students that were significantly below grade level when we started back in october and that they were seeing [Music] you know good outcomes for brimming bringing these students up to grade level and i'm going to attribute a lot of it to the smaller class size because those of us in education know that the smaller the class size the better performance of the students it's just the way it works and in california unfortunately they don't fund for those small class sizes but the am pm has given us a window into the benefits of smaller class sizes do you what is your perspective on the impact of smaller class sizes on students that may be achieving below grade level i most certainly think small class sizes are ideal for students in addition to the regular classroom time we have over 25 tutoring groups at even smaller levels taking place and so we are seeing growth there's definitely some achievement gaps but we are seeing some promising growth dr kaiser okay i wasn't sure all right so um one of the aspects of this is you know we said that we were looking at advantages and challenges so between the two of you you both have very different programs i had an interesting discussion with mine the other day about trees making oxygen and for a second grader you know that's um yeah all right um so what do you see as the challenges that you would have if you were going to be back together and again it would be for six weeks is that seven weeks okay that doesn't count testing though so anyway you both run very good interesting programs what do you see as your challenges so currently i'm working out some recess schedules some aid schedules lunch schedules and so the complexities um are real and as far as you know safety goes that's our number one concern so we just want to make sure that the decisions we're making are supporting safety and they're not expedient and i would just add we've we've lived a complex year this year so i think we've been problem solvers i mean our educators i commend them for the work they've done i was reflecting on how they've persevered through things too it's one of the only professions that physically has changed through the course of this so i think that the challenges of change like you mentioned from one program to another is always a change for students parents staff but i think that we've proven that anything that comes our way we're able to do in our ability to provide the safety we were able to make that happen as needed for our students board member dolby did you have your hand up i did um you you kind of touched on my question for the most part um but my i was i'm curious and um concerned about um something that was brought up in our in our public comment emails about um visiting the current intervention programs um at the elementary level that are in place now um so i'm wondering what the um on-site leadership perspective is of losing that intervention time if we were to change our instructional day model again at this point in the year yeah so in the event if we change instructional models our tutoring services will no longer take place before school or during or in the middle of am pm it'll take place after school and certainly the number of groups will decrease thank you uh any other question yet okay mr shepherd do you want to proceed thank you we have principal mckay from bidwell here i'm sorry can i back up for the elementary uh folks all right apologize for taking my time i i thought mr tennis was waiting to say something and i want to give him the opportunity to do that um i just want to double check and i'm not uh i think this was answered earlier but will there be a longer amount of time needed for testing if we in the am pm model versus the full day instructional model like we need more days um no because they give us the model of the instruction the minutes per test so we've kind of our testing schedule would remain the same amount of minutes that's what i thought thank you very much okay mr shepard okay we have principal mckay from bidwell junior high school and he'll be followed by mr williams from chico high school good evening board members and district administration um my name is david mckim the principal of bidwell junior high school and i don't have a significant amount of information to add that's different than what we've heard already tonight so rather than belabor other points happy to answer any questions from a junior high school perspective and i would like to go on record if i make just one opinion that i'm working with my colleagues pedro and jessica at chico junior march and their teams has been as good as you can ask for during these challenging times i can speak for bidwell our staff has been can-do go-getter student-centered from day one and i really appreciate them i want to thank them publicly and while i don't work as closely with marcin chico junior staff i'm sure that pedro and jessica would say the same thing so just appreciate the teachers and the support staff registrars classified custodial everybody for pitching in on behalf of our kids during this difficult season does anybody have any questions for a junior high from a junior high point of view dr dr kaiser do you intend on re-asking your what to do with the advancing students well yeah that was i was gonna i mean the issue is like advantages and disadvantages so we just heard the drop in the tutoring groups uh i've had contacts from students and from parents really being concerned about their students who are in more advanced classes losing that option so i'm i would ask that question in junior high the way we have it structured i don't think that you would have a significant impact there for students taking advanced classes one of the main ways that students advance in junior high is through math and we capitalize on the oak bridge program for students to accelerate in math and they would be able to do that whether we went back full day or not does oak bridge oak bridge uses edge annuity doesn't it yes sir which is not a very popular uh learning tool is that not correct well it depends on who you ask sir uh the the kids i'm thinking of that are wanting to accelerate in math it works for them but i i definitely feeled in my share of concerns from parents as well but but not from those accelerating students mr lando yeah thank you hi hello um first of all thank you um as someone who's on a middle school campus all the time man um it's rough out there right now so thank you so much for everything you're doing um i think mr trump brought up a really important point which is that junior high students are developmentally different from high school students in a lot of ways and they kind of need to be eked out do you see a lot of differences um or is anything you see that we haven't addressed in terms of how the needs either emotionally mentally academically socially for your kids or different than what we've discussed in terms of overall secondary or the high school it's a great question and i definitely appreciate the consideration for the uniqueness that is the junior high school age kind of hybrid elementary and in high school all in one compact energetic little body and they certainly are unique to me the most heartbreaking aspect of this situation is are the students who have to be online and under the current models that we're discussing would stay online um regardless they struggle disproportionately and the parents with whom i speak that have the most heartbreaking situations are ones that are forced really to stay online and so i think at the junior high age in particular where they are still dependent on their parents but increasingly drawn towards their peers just not being on campus is really a hard hard thing for them and it's just not the same tuning in through zoom although we have experienced uh doubling or more in our clubs that uh we're now with the loosening restrictions able to begin to meet in person a little bit observing all guidelines of course in between the cohorts and that's something that would change or would continue if we went all day again we're doing that right now with am pm also considerations they're very hands-on and so with the 400 students on campus i can't guarantee that there's a ton of social distancing going on during the unstructured times although we try and so it would definitely be a challenge with 800 students on campus with having all that energy there thank you thank you it's kind of maybe unfortunate for you that i'm that this idea that this question is occurring to me while you are at the podium but um i guess you could say i have an agenda so i'm going to go ahead and ask my question to you sir um how do these miracle worker schools all around chico pull it off how is it that these guys out in durham and you know out of the countryside and in our surrounding areas managed to get everybody in there to to have in-person school right now and only chico is left here with this this hybrid model i feel like that's a rhetorical question as i have not been on any of those campuses and i'm not familiar with those logistics the intent behind my responses are to provide a factual operational perspective of what would what we would look like in a return to all day without trying to lean one way or the other or imply one thing or another so i'm trying to just give you the facts making an interpretation about schools that i don't know about i don't think that would be responsible on my part respectfully sir any other questions for mr mckay mr shepherd okay we're going to turn things over to uh doug williams dave yeah thank you from chico high school hello board and community and district employees i'm mr williams of principal chico high school i'd like to echo what my colleagues have stated already before me that i really appreciate the teamwork not only of the teachers but the paraprofessionals the all the people on campus janitors coaches food personnel uh people been through a lot of changes this year and i've really risen to the top i'd like to give a shout out to my colleagues at pv and also at fairview because we're still continuing our work with moving forward with sports with ap courses i just got some good news about a couple students who are accepted into the scholarship program at stanford and so life has been moving on for a lot of our students even though they have been struggling with a very difficult year but successes are out there and are happening and there are struggles out there so i just want to say thank you to everybody for for kind of running a race that is difficult but continuing to put an effort so at this time do you have any questions of me dr kaiser so uh doug i wanted to say that i have really really appreciated the efforts that your staff have made around the emotional support support and mental health for the students at your school and for your staff you've gone through some extremely traumatic times and i haven't heard anything but very positive comments about the zoom meeting you had for that so it's never easy when it happens but i think you guys have made a heroic response i do have to say that when it's pick up and drop off time quite a few students uh don't have their mask on outside the gates and and so i don't know that we've even discussed the option of whether students would be leaving campus for lunch you know i haven't even heard that brought up so i don't know the plan would be to continue with pre-coveted bell schedules which would um include students leaving campus at lunch before lunch so would you like to know the number of seconds that they go before their maths come off having a senior in high school i can only imagine yeah so i i do think that um everyone [Music] everyone in our in our town basically has to make a personal decision on how they're going to deal with um requirements that are put forth whether in buildings parking lots or schools uh i am very proud of our students and our staff i will i will tell you that when they walk in the gates they're masked if they're not we have extra masks for them and i think if you ask the teachers because they're the eyes and ears of the school on a minute by minute basis that the kids are very receptive in the rooms i don't i don't i don't i haven't had one issue with a student being sent to the office or having a campus supervisor called to a room to have a discussion with a kid about why they need a mask on so even though i know our students don't like it and it's uncomfortable for them or they may be feeling it's time to stop they have not showed that time a type of disrespect to the program that we're running so that and that's 2 000 high school students so i don't i don't say that lightly and you're not on friday night um yeah i i think the best team will win mr lando thank you um i was really heartened to hear your comment about the uh students in the stanford scholarship program i know that a worry for many families has been what uh the last two years will do to students who are looking towards college um and i'm not sure if this is a question for you or for uh some of the other people in the administration have we seen a significant uh difference in terms of uh percentage of students applying or getting early responses or being in process for moving to colleges um i can only use um the few students that that i know and i can only use the input from our preparation both the high schools have scholarship nights that will be occurring in the next three to four weeks and the number of recipients of scholarships is is equal to what we've had before and the number of letters that are going uh out to people or in terms of what schools are getting into is is equivalent i think what a lot of people are deciding my own family and child as well are are the colleges going to be open you know is it worth paying the tuition to go to a larger university if you're going to be online so i think those type of questions are happening in every household i have two children in college too so i think that's going on with everybody in terms of where they're going to go but in terms of acceptance rates where our kids are going i believe the success rates are still out there whether or not they choose to do that is is you know something that i don't know at this point it's really good to hear thank you any other questions for mr williams i'll just add a clarification that what the university has seen and what a number of universities have seen is somewhat a drop in enrollment but a lot of that gets conditioned by whether there's housing available and what kind of housing it's going to be so chico state's going to be 50 on campus i think that butte is going to be close to that so i think as more traditional views of college activities open up we'll probably see a return but right now nationally it's it is down not the university saying no but a lot of people deciding that they can't handle doing online i would like to add one more thing that i think is a good piece of information for the board as well first of all i'm going to speak for pb and chico high school right now it's just glorious to see our kids back doing activities and i want you to know in the last probably four and a half to five weeks that the amount of um soft social skill or extracurricular activities that are occurring on our campus have have dramatically ramped up so i know we're often talking about the learning loss or learning gap and we all want to get back to full time as soon as we can but i want you know for students what they really want to have happen is is happening at a more rapid pace and a more normal pace at this time and as the restrictions from the county in terms of their color tiers adjust i know mr shepard and and our ads meet weekly to decide like exactly we have to change protocols daily in terms of the amount of vouchers we're going to give parents and stuff so i really think that our coaches and all our kids have been practicing and also our theater and music groups all our extracurricular activities have really hung in there and are really reaping the benefits of that i also would say that i can't speak for pv because i don't know their testing schedule each school designs its own testing schedule but i do know that our testing schedule depending on what the state decides with ap and s back testing we will be going into a two and a half or with make up possibly a three week adjusted am pm testing cycle uh as as two of two to three of the remaining seven weeks so whether or not we come back or don't come back we will have another schedule change in the next three weeks that will put us into a alternative day testing schedule that will last for about two weeks two to 12 days and then we'll go back to whatever schedule you decide and then we'll have a final schedule as well so i just want to let you know that in the in the gap that we have left there could be potentially three additional schedule changes for kids within a seven to eight week period we'll do whatever you guys want us to do though i think our staff is ready registrars counselors whatever you need mr tennis um thank you mr williams for being here um i met with a group of students on monday who believe that the the state of mental health on your campus in particular but but both the high schools is not good how do you feel the state of mental health is right now on among students at your school and what are the major factors that contribute to that yeah i noticed that i i believe there were some members of the board mr tennis i think you're one of them that um thank you very much by the way because you didn't have to do that for uh attending a training that uh through um the school district we were able to get mr collins an expert in mental health and mental health training and his work has been really great because it's about providing people with resources and how to move through it i think the mental health question is is tricky because you can use mental health is something that's pertinent to the individual so there are some people that are doing very successful right now and others that are struggling but i don't know how many people are struggling in a normal environment compared to a non-normal environment so i don't have data to compare and i also don't know if if making an additional change is going to contribute to more ill mental health or is it going to improve mental health because that's going to be dependent upon the individual and their mental health so even though i might be able to predict the strength the mental health of my campus i'd be guessing but i can't predict what decision is going to affect someone's mental health in the positive or the negative again i think if i did that uh not to quote mr mckay but i i would be remiss to make comments on something that i don't have information on nor am i expert on do you think we should triple or quadruple the amount of counseling and i don't mean academic counseling i mean what would you call it social emotional counseling wellness counseling that's available to students at the high school level uh i think our focus um needs to be on a holistic approach to counseling if i may and my wife's a school psychologist so i've got a little bit of insight on that which is there's three or four different types of counseling and i think we need to be really clear about what the school's going to provide and really what that means a menu i guess is what i'd say and the school district is working on that i believe miss demi trobridge is in charge of that a school psychologist for the district and what i mean is when you say counseling is it check-in check out counseling is it immediate crisis counseling is it long-term therapy and then we def what are you determining is long-term is that is that two meetings a week for a month and then you're you're cycled off is it a check-in every uh other week and then a handoff to an outside mental health professional is it referrals to victor counseling or through medi-cal and so i think there already are these services taking place all the time i thought what we really need to focus on making sure our families and our students know what that menu is so when they need something they know who to go to to try to get the the correct service if that makes sense because we're also partnering with many other agencies in the county and other private sources as well and so i think that's the task is to weave the web of all those connective energies so it's very transparent to the students that need it and um i will give a shout out i don't where's miss olson um hi diane so diane's cutting through some really great i think red tape because the hospitals i know they have protocols with their hipaa laws we have protocols with our hipaa laws and i think there's groups of professionals in the county that are meeting to try to create a significant uh sharing of information so we can get to the heart of this oftentimes when our students have mental health issues outside the school we're not aware of that because it's up to the parent to either tell us or not tell us so that's just an example of the effort not only going to bringing counselors but really understanding what the role of each group in the community is and how to make sure that the the parents see what each group's role is and how they can access that i i appreciate your patience in that that was a long answer but it's i'm sorry it's a it's an issue that's on my mind obviously we have a lot of money you know pouring into the district i mean i i want to say we have at least 45 million dollars coming in is isn't it more than that though i mean it's with the original s or one dollars it's over 50 million one-time money so i feel that that that some of that money ought to go toward direct psychological wellness uh direct benefit to students i think we're in a dark time right now yeah i would agree with you i'd also say that is that is happening so i know on my own campus i was given some funds and i used some other funds to build a wellness center in in my library that's going to be staffed with i believe jay i don't want to misspeak but an extra 50 percent uh wellness counselor with the 50 i have now so i'll have a full-time wellness professional actually in a wellness center a hundred percent of the time next year so i i agree with you those are the types of things we need to do but i i would i would caution that we create a really uh not as seamless but as seamless of a plan as as we have and not just throw people at it but really come up with a plan of how we're going to integrate resources thank you there's no further questions thank you very much for your time that's end of our presentation so unless you guys have any further questions from our directors or myself board member dalby do you have any additional questions um i don't uh i have i think we lost you i think she's making a motion that we go to school full-time questions ms dalby if you could repeat that please you froze on us for a second because that would be out of order yeah i noticed so much but i have quote questions about um sort of um of our suit could you repeat um but they were not enough for me um i wouldn't make emotion at this time because that would be up do you know what she said caitlin i'm going to see if someone else understood what you asked okay my question was mostly answered thank you caitlin president robinson we do have some speakers on this item i keep turning my button off excuse me but i i did gardening again and my back is not happy with me um we are at the time for public input and so mr shepherd you're on president robinson how would you like to handle the order we do have for this item we do not have any students signed up to speak nor do we have staff we do have parents and as on my spreadsheet here they're indicated by in person and by phone okay i don't i don't have the separation between in-person and phone but um i i don't believe we would make a difference between in person and a phone our our criteria was that a speaker card was submitted by 12 o'clock okay so that's the criteria that we will follow if there are no students then we'll move to yeah it's been randomized so we will just go ahead and move through if they are here in person obviously step forward to the mic um if they are not here in person then we'll make the phone call okay president robinson do we need to repeat the parameters for speaking addressing the port i'm sorry again do we need to repeat the parameters for addressing the board time and yes there's a three-minute limit we haven't had a uh a number of speaker card requests that would take us beyond the allotted time that we set aside so we're good there everyone will get their full three minutes we have a yellow card for those that are in here in person i believe you have a a bell for those that are on the phone to indicate 30 seconds left at three minutes um you will be asked to suspend so let's start with the random selection what's first our first our first speaker is joe kidd ah joe kidd is present thank you step to the podium sir hi good good evening my name is joe kidd i have three daughters attending chico schools at chico junior in chico high i'm also a coach on the chico high ski team i'm here tonight to ask you open schools full time and immediately the information and the data available support this decision and override the insufficient reasons that have been given to keep schools partially closed i not rules to comply available covit is also difficult removing chairs from the break room and other modifications is inconvenient yet we've remained open and have a zero spread of cobid within our facility it's also my understanding that we have had little or no spread of covet at our schools due to similarly inconvenient and difficult decisions that have been made at this point our teachers have been vaccinated many of our neighboring school districts are open full time the cdc issued guidelines to make opening schools significantly either easier people are allowed to fly we're allowed to eat in restaurants without masks on agricultural and food workers are producing food that all of us eat safely doctors and dentist officers are open and performing electric elective procedures yet we say it is inconvenient and too difficult to open schools this reasoning is insufficient well those of us lucky enough to have resources have been able to make arrangements to deal with our situation over the past year many of our fellow citizens are not so lucky when food production employees go to work many of them have few options for their children who are cooped up at home with little instruction or supervision many working families and single parents find themselves in a similar situation and yet we tell them that opening school will be inconvenient the answer is insufficient it may be true that schools should not be the place for receiving nutrition and for counseling and perhaps we should have this debate but now is not the time and we're not going to solve this in chica opening schools now will be difficult and inconvenient for some and it will be a huge relief for many others we saw tonight very clear data indicating that 78 percent of parents want elementary schools open with a 40 participation rate that's an incredibly high participation rate in a survey that's real data yes some of our kids need to change will need to change their part-time jobs yes some class schedules will be changed and many of the most in-need children will return to full-time school where they desperately need to be the price of inconvenience is well worth the reward finally to say that we should not open because there are only seven days left in the school year is an insufficient reason it's true that there are only seven weeks left but these are no different than any other seven weeks leaders are called on to make difficult decisions to support those most in need the reasons to keep school closed are insufficient and the reasons to open are overwhelming please do your part as leaders and open our schools thank you thank you speaker number two second speaker is lisa chambers she's in person lisa chambers are you present at the meeting this evening i don't see lisa chambers okay would you like me to call okay i'm calling lisa chambers voicemail okay the next speaker katie vanderwaal cook i'll be calling her hi katie i'm gonna put you on speakerphone you'll be addressing the school board okay if you hear a bell it means you have 30 seconds left okay go ahead katie hi thank you for taking my call i strongly support and advocate the school district staying the course with the am pm scheduling model for the short remainder of the school year it would be incredibly unfair to the students to again upset their schedules this of course doesn't even begin to address the huge upheaval of full-time in-person change would have on the students who have been distance learning for a full year from a staffing perspective how would playgrounds be staffed with supervision on such short notice with qualified candidates this isn't easy to do during the best of situations how will elementary cafeterias work all of the children unmasking to eat and uncle in an enclosed space when the temps are too high in may to sit outside or in the morning during breakfast when they're all in an enclosed area will distance learning students again be shifted into other classes other teachers for the last remaining weeks of school how will a new new schedule affect the students that are receiving additional tutoring and thriving in a smaller classroom environment do we lose all of that newfound success for those students please continue with the am pm model stay the course give our students some consistency and continue and put the best effort into making our new school year in august the best it can possibly be for all of our students to come back in a successful full-time manner thank you very much thanks katie okay our next speaker's in person matthew thomason sure can can all of you hear me okay it's been over a year without proper instruction for our children during that time we have seen a systematic failure in our district to provide kids the learning environment they need what are the facts the facts are we have record numbers of learning loss the grade letter f has quadrupled this school year the kids most severely impacted are those we've warned about for months english learners foster kids homeless minority groups lower socioeconomic status groups there is so much learning loss that the district is having to use funds throughout the summer to help these kids catch up before next school year and kids in lowest grade levels have been most adversely impacted as evidenced by the bpst scores another fact is that at least two children of cusd has committed suicide since the fall scores of school-aged children have presented to inlo medical center emergency department for attempted suicide suicidal ideation or significant depression this does not even tell the whole story because this does not include those seeking help outpatient facilities in reality the crisis is much worse than we may ever know these are the facts and these are the results of repeated poor decisions by this board to keep our kids out of full-time learning we can see in the survey results that two-thirds of all parents are in favor of returning to full-time instruction now these are your constituents you are here to represent them and the students who have no other representation the teachers have their union we have no one else while i'm on this topic i understand that hearing from students about matters that affect their education is a noble idea but policy should not be determined by their opinions as their parents are their legal guardians and would know what is best for their child and their family speaking of students they have struggled with the mental health crisis so much at chico high that they have begun to organize themselves to bring awareness of such what will it take for this board to listen to the medical and scientific community to believe what is happening right under their nose the cdc and california department of public health recommends schools returning to full-time medical psychological and pediatric associations across the country and the world recommend returning to full-time due to the negative consequences we have seen in this community it is not enough to be stuck in cohorts where kids don't get to interact with their peers the same way as if they were full time and by the way these recommendations stand even while variants of coven 19 are spreading so any excuse of not opening because of variance is completely unfounded and fear-mongering i'd like to also remind everyone listening that every single school in our district or excuse me in our county will be open full time by next week except for chico unified while you may complain that we only have so many weeks of school left and what's the point thank you sir i say saving one child from another suicide would make everything worth it and i say that your previous decisions are the exact failure in leadership that we have been mentioning over the previous months okay i'll next be calling katie muff voicemail all right our next speaker i'll be calling jessica gianola hello jessica i'm going to put you on speakerphone you'll be addressing the school board if you hear a bell it means you have 30 seconds left okay go ahead okay hi board um thank you for for taking our calls uh i i wanted to voice my support for our model staying as is for the remainder of this school year for the primary purpose of stability really whether or not cove experiences are emerging or or or not kill it aside just the amount of change that our students and families have had to go through is a lot and a move to full time again means that kids are losing out and some of those services and some therapy services my daughter will have to lose her speech therapist so for the rest of the year all the way until next school year she'll be basically without any therapy because it'll take way too long to get reestablished develop a relationship with a new provider before the end of school and this really seems to be a more of a push almost like a stubborn push from one side against the other let's make this happen before the end of the school year so we could save pride or whatever it might be instead of thinking of the students the surveys i keep hearing the parent surveys quoting what about the kids i looked at the kids the majority of children want to keep the same that's who we should be listening to they're asking they put on the survey please keep it the same they're the ones that are impacted by this so i think it's important that we weigh that we think of the kids the mental health aspect i really hate her that keeps being abused with our school in person not in person situation mental health that exists all the time with everybody and it's important that we have open conversations and that we we commend our schools for putting more resources in place instead of bashing them like there are damn that they do and if they don't and it's not a negative thing that they've recognized more opportunity to add more services i thank them for it we all should be thanking them for it the parents should be doing they can the teachers will do what they can and we really see working together showing our students our families a good role model of how to make it through a pandemic in one piece together everybody's suffering i don't know if that's 30 seconds what but anyway i just support you guys i know this is a hard position for the teachers for the board for the parents the parents on either side it's hard but we're almost there and we all look forward to the fall we really do and we should come together for that instead of more division until the very end they have testing right around the corner let me focus on that oh thank you thank you okay our last speaker is in person arwen funk you hear me thank you so i have some prepared uh comments but i just there's a few things based on tonight that i also need to say i'm here to advocate for reopening for full time in person school really what we're dealing with here is that this board is holding on to the responsibility as if you are personally responsible for every child or staff member or whoever within our district that contracts a virus and it's an absurd premise it doesn't make any sense and it never did it didn't exist before kovid and um and it's an unreachable goal to suggest that you can keep every person safe we've been here an hour and a half and almost every single bit of the conversation was a yeah but yeah but yeah but trying to deal with every little detail and as matt pointed out that every other district our school in our district has been able to find a way around it and when the bidwell principal spoke i mean it's clear that nobody here seems to know why they're all making it work how they're all making it work why don't you know that is something that we should know if they're making it work why don't we have that information of how they've done it why are we recreating the wheel and to the parent who just talked about that we should give the kids a say in these surveys i mean i have great kids i'm sure we'd all think our kids are great i have an eagle scout but if i let him choose his diet he'd do nothing but drink coke and eat salami all day long so i'm not really sure that's a great idea either people can manage the disruptions and discomfort in their lives for a period of time but it's cruel to inflict on them on them on a populist indefinitely it makes no sense at all that everything else is opening safely other nearby schools airlines restaurants the post office sports strip clubs but our schools are still closed it feels like we've got these two choices these two sets of concerns that are warring here and one of them is disruption and upset and and difficulty with some logistics which i get as a thing but on the other hand we've got this topic that nobody's talking about i mean two minor comments from our middle school and high school principals but mental health issues suicidality you guys aren't discussing any of this and i mean the long-term destruction of our town if our children are under undereducated relative to our surrounding communities how are they going to get jobs in the future i mean there's really long-term ramifications of the learning loss here i i hear the word disruption a lot and tonight and i think it's an important point to consider it is not disruptive to return to normal that's an unfair characterization it's the calm after the storm it's the blue sky at the end of a dark tunnel it's an oasis in a desert it's necessary and critical for a healthy existence that you let us go back to normal continuing to do this is what is disruptive thank you speakers mr tennis i'd be open to hearing from more speakers if if if the chair was a minimal or the president madam president if you were amenable to taking we've heard from all the speakers my time's not so precious that i can't hear what these people have to say eileen dr kaiser the only uh group that we didn't get to hear from that we had anticipated were students so that's the only additional comments that i'd be willing to hear do we have any students in the audience we have two could we have a a pro and a con on those students do you okay step up to the microphone please my name is acacia pema felner and i am a junior at chico high school and i am here on behalf of students parents teachers and the community and those we have lost to suicide this year i'd like to briefly touch base on saying that i believe high school students should be separated from middle school and junior and elementary school for going back am to the p going back full in person school it would not be benefit beneficial for high school students to go back in the little time that we have and then i would also like to say that we need to be more supported as students we are struggling and we're desperate with our mental health as you see we've lost many students this year and a teacher and i cannot tell you how many i've lost count that are struggling that i've heard from personally we would like to request more funds go to the wellness center that is on our campus that has been built we need more school therapists not counselors preparing us for college but more on school psychologists and therapists thank you for listening to me thank you thank you next student please um hi my name is kylie krhulis and i am a junior at chico high i'm here on behalf of my peers to give the board a point of view from the students um a lot of us believe that we need more mental health or wellness funding to have someone to immediately talk to when students go to the office they often get told to make an appointment which isn't helpful for someone having an immediate crisis also when we email our counselors we're not always guaranteed a response within like the time we're having that crisis this is why we need the wellness center and why we need more funding i heard mr williams say that we have um half two half wellness counselors if we put more funding to hiring more more kids could feel more um more prioritized and heard and feel that they could go there and actually feel welcome and not that they're wasting someone's time or that they're unwelcome that's all thank you thank you we're still checking the speaker requests one moment so we do have two names that are under um 4.2.1 mary kay benson and danny demio and then katie vanderwaal under [Music] 4.2.3 so were those people that are did someone submit under the wrong agenda item number superintendent stately i did text katie vanderwaal cook to confirm that she wanted to speak to the to the budget item and she does okay i mean it's only a couple of people i don't know why we can't let them be heard i understand sir but we we do follow protocol whenever necessary we have a structure that you know that keeps things flowing and we're double checking to make sure we haven't screwed up to keep someone from speaking is there jordan colby jordan colby yes there is a jordan colby a step to the microphone can you hear me okay i'm jordan colby i'm a parent of three uh children junior high and younger why change now we only have eight weeks left well if my kids had one week of school left i'd want it to be full-time because it would be three times more school in one week every day matters that is why this is important well what about the new variants they might be more contagious and dangerous to kids do we have any solid data on that do we actually know that it's not wise to make decisions on things we don't know so how about we stick to what we know we know full-time school can be done safely because there are scientific studies that demonstrate it we can also see durham moreland and parochial and charter schools within chico offering full-time education because they decided it was important to give these kids a high quality educational experience what is chico unified trading these kids opportunities for nobody knows what we're getting out of this are we lowering community spread by cutting our kids school hours probably not the literature certainly wouldn't support that conclusion can we start making decisions based on things we actually know that's informed decision making here's one thing we know for sure we know the vaccine works really really well high quality peer-reviewed scientific literature shows it we need to stop pretending that the vaccine doesn't matter it matters more than any other modality we've used in this pandemic the scientific data for masking and social distancing pales in comparison to the high quality evidence for vaccination in the pfizer and moderna trials severe covert was prevented in all subjects nobody died from covid in a vaccinated individual that was a powerful treatment effect and that's why unions and educ for educators across the country lobbied to place educators in tier 1b for vaccination placing teachers at the top of the list was the right decision i see teachers working hard this catastrophe is absolutely not on them but saying that their job can be done remotely is minimizing the important work that they do with our kids their jobs are essential to the development and education of our children that's why we vaccinated our teachers in february the families of chico unified have been patient but we are suffering it is a moral failure of this board that we have not progressed beyond the bare bones educational model being offered families are leaving chico unified because this board has created an educational island where the children within our district are being denied the quality education offered all around us the modification of spacing guidelines is a golden opportunity to do the right thing for the families and children of chico do the right thing and place the education of these kids and the mission of chico unified school district at the forefront of the decision you make tonight thank you thank you have we identified another um no we are at the end of our our uh yeah we did have uh one that we're gonna do a phone call on that we may have had the wrong phone number on um i'm not sure if john had the wrong phone number or not but okay we'll try the number again here i'm calling katie muff hi katie i'm going to put you on speakerphone you'll be addressing the board if you hear a bell it means you have 30 seconds left okay hi my name is katie ma i have three children at chico usd i worry about what message we are sending our cusd children when so many things are opening up but our schools don't continue to progress towards a more normal day of school when a child can now go to a movie theater travel on an airplane spend time indoors unmask with elderly family but can't go to a full day of school we send a message to our young impressionable youth that it is not important many children get a sense of purpose from working hard at school and being part of the school community but not returning to a full day as soon as it is safe to do so we take that away from them many children have spent this year feeling they lack purpose and more time away from school only exacerbates this a loss of purpose leads to apathy failing grades depression and suicide i think i hear many argue we shouldn't change for just six weeks but added to 10 weeks of summer and 56 weeks since the shutdown not returning to full that full day now puts cusd students at not seeing a full day of school for 72 weeks if you can remember what almost a year and a half feels like for a child you can empathize with the hope and relief a six-week return would bring this vote to return to as normal as school day as we can currently provide shouldn't weigh on logistical challenges it should be based on claim stating our cusd children's right to a full day of education now that is both safe and possible and as a direct result also children sense a purpose everyone has a constitutional right to a full day of education and you as the board were elected to protect this right for all of our children thank you thank you board do we have a motion relative to this item dr kaiser i like to move that we return to full-time school at the beginning of fall semester i'm still going to rule that motion out of order well you just said a motion yes i did i asked for a motion the appropriate motion at this point would be to suspend the rules in order to reconsider the decision we made february 3rd someone would have to right raise that as an issue nobody has yet right and if no one raises it we move on to the next agenda item hearing none we'll move on to the next agenda item thank you board let's take a five minute break you are welcome to continue to attend the meeting and see the rest of the agenda will take a five minute break board our next item is the discussion action item authorization for external use of chico high school cusd facilities julie kissel facilities construction manager you're up julie hi good evening can you hear me yes we can great uh thank you i'm really pleased to bring this item to the board this evening it's a small step in a positive direction for our community and i'd like to mention that toward the end of the lead sheet we talk about the center for the arts and theater inside theater use and i just wanted to mention that since the writing of this lead sheet over the easter weekend actually the guidance put out by cdc has changed for indoor theater use already so i just wanted to inform you that in the orange tier which is what we're in now capacity first of all indoor use of theaters is allowable but capacity is limited currently to 15 of the capacity of the building or 200 people and that increases to 35 percent of capacity if all guests are tested or show proof of full vaccination so i just wanted to let you know that we plan to open up the theaters in the district for inside use according to these regulations although it seems like there'll be small groups of participants julie uh can you repeat that i'm sorry which part dr kaiser the part about the change and how many can be uh you know allowed in yes in the orange tier uh it is capacity is limited to 15 percent of the facilities capacity or 200 people so no more than 200.
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so the space for the middle schools is about 120 and then the space where the preschools are is about 20 000. so that's a hundred and forty thousand five hundred and two square feet for each facility what would that cost at 200 a square foot because yeah so 26 million let's round up or ish ish you can put an ish on a millions so yeah and i and i think that if you really worked at you know bidding and some other things you could probably get that down to close to 20 uh you know depending upon what you want to do but i mean that's the ballpark or the neighborhood you would be in back in 2013. okay just as a comparison based on where we're at president oh sorry we're all calling her at the same time go ahead i was just going to say that this isn't common practice to lease schools is this mr gad most people we would just buy it with our bond money if that was we would build the school with our bond money correct using a very low interest rate in the form of a bond to do an outright purchase and and it's by god now but we can try to make it better for the future so thank you for bringing that to our attention that it is a savings even though it's hard to look at it that way thank you president reese members of the board one of the things that that our administration began back when we started building this calendar was coming to you with we're going to do some fact-finding and get some information and as you know we've been keeping you updated in status reports that we have been working with attorneys to work with the foundation here to determine if this was a possibility and again there's a lot of work that needs to to be refined but if it is we felt we should explore all options when we make this decision so that we could be diligent and thoughtful with all options what are our needs what are our growths what we have some uniquenesses in hindi that we are going to need to financially figure out how to do so hence when we meet at our next board meeting on the 21st we will go into an executive session with those attorneys with stifl so that we can ask very specific things in that about the option and what could that include and do we want to do that hence why we've got a new photo up there that we'll look at more closely that is an aerial of what does higley boundaries look like right now so that we can make some decisions with all the information the most up to date with what we know at this time so fortunately we have been working all along to get some information we'll be able to talk to them ask specific questions learn more about this figure out what more we need to know so that we have explored every option as a district as thoroughly as possible for these decisions and so we are summarizing a big picture here but we will be able to go deep and and into the details um can i ask you a quick question uh president um so did i hear you say that the 32 was negotiated or was that never mentioned did i miss her that the lender for having built the schools and then the leaseholder will there's an extensive agreement a really extensive agreement like this and some provisions within there if we're going to purchase outright one of the schools requires us to know what direction you want us to pursue because it has provisions all over it i mean they're unique and so anyway um that's the purpose of the executive session is to show you what those things are and ask you to help us determine where to go with that eliminates my second question thank you mrs anderson that was the principal amount like when you ask if it was negotiated that's what's the principal amount it's what he yeah yeah it's it's basically a termination of the current payment schedule and ownership of one of the schools with that 32 million but then there are other things in there that we're i'm sure we're going to have to talk about with the lender and that's where that's where your direction is needed it's clear what the principal amount is we've got a schedule and you'll be able to work with our attorney who has been working with their attorney so that we can understand um and determine so so what and now what okay um slide number 11.
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so ab-992 amended the brownex prohibition of zero meetings to permit certain social media communications so a board member may communicate via social media to answer questions uh to provide information to the public back and forth with members of the public or to solicit information from the public regarding something that's within the board's jurisdiction so it is permissible because the legislature recognizes that social media is here to stay and so much communication goes on through that format that there needed to be some some understanding codified in the law to give some parameters for board members to follow and so these examples that are listed on this slide are permissible however there are some limitations in slide 20 the members of the board may not use social media to discuss amongst themselves official business so it would not be permissible or members of the board say to visit the district's facebook site yeah facebook site and discuss back and forth uh an issue involving something within the subject matter jurisdiction of the board maybe there's some facility that's being considered for renovation and this is hypothetical that would be something that falls within the subject matter jurisdiction of the board and so if a member brought that up or maybe that was a topic that a member of the public brought up in a facebook post and then trustee a commented trustee b commented that would be prohibited because the legislature said very clearly that members of the body may not use it to discuss amongst themselves social business and even though members of the public are part of that it's not a formally agendized and noticed meeting if you will and so other other other individuals in the public are not aware that that discussion is going on and they're not there to participate i hear someone wanting to ask a question yes so let's say one of us uh is on facebook and someone asks the question and responds to their questions others of us as friends we see what they respond [Music] his or her opinion on it is i mean that really gets you pretty like slicing it dead right and that and that's something that the statute doesn't cover so you might be and that's an aspect of social media you might be monitoring or just happen to see that there's some conversation or discussion by one of your colleague trustee members on let's say facebook there's nothing that prohibits you from viewing that comment or thought that's shared but the law does prohibit you as a member of the board from responding to that communication so if that individual that first trustee that makes the comment that's it only that individual can comment by our reading of the statute the law prohibits any subsequent board member from commenting further or responding because again that leads to a potential discussion of an issue within the subject matter jurisdiction and it's not properly noticed or agendized now again all right if the conversation is all about kansas should have won the super bowl or something that's totally different pictures of grandchildren uh that's that's fine the limitation only occurs when it's an item of business or district business okay i'd like to take it one step further and then and then i'll let it go but so let's say board member a gets a question from the public and they respond to it and then that's getting it no one else responds to that threat now let's say either that member of the public or another member of the republic post something to a different program like [Music] board member and he can see [Music] but the difference is the the board members are not utilizing um an intermediary to find out what the other board members think or what their position is on an item would be analogous to a member of the public or perhaps the press interviewing one trustee about an item in the district of district business and then interviewing another trustee and interviewing a third trustee and then writing a story about it and all the trustees read the article and now know at least believe they know what based on the report what other trustees feel that would not be a serial meeting because the board is not actively utilizing an individual as an intermediary and that would be similar to the scenario you share where you know these individuals are going to different social network sites or home pages of trustees and asking the same question to find out what each board member uh thinks about it you may find out about it uh but you didn't utilize that individual individual to find that information out so it would not be a serial meeting but you know this law is new and there's no case law on it it hasn't been litigated yet so i imagine at some point it'll wind up in the courts um can you clarify sorry i apologize can you clarify something um that you had mentioned earlier about serial meetings and intermediaries it wasn't about social media um but did you state that if a staff member or another board member communicates with um individual board members and then shares what they know about that individual board members positions or thoughts or ideas on an issue that gets us into trouble with the brown act potentially yes okay i just wanted to clarify that thank you yes she she uh going back to my prior uh review of uh zero meetings and communication where a staff member shares information with a member of the board that would be okay but it would not be okay if that staff member shares thoughts or positions of one board member with other board members so just to clarify um for the serial meetings that said it involves a majority of the lord for social media even too is enough to make it a violation they have not the the law does not make a distinction of a majority okay um and then one other thing can we possibly get the volume turned up on that with the air conditioner going a little bit here [Music] with the serial meetings that said it needed to involve a majority of the board to be a violation but with social media it does not require that it be a majority so even if it's two board members that's enough to potentially have a violation sometimes we would have a situation where a teacher would come to me and tell me something and i would have no idea that she went to delray and told delray something and said well i talked to nancy and nancy said this so del rey and i are totally in the dark as far as it being a violation and in that type of a situation even if a trustee is not utilizing that individual as an intermediary it could still result in that individual becoming an intermediary if that individual comes to a trustee and says well you know trustee a told me this and trustee b told me this and that's where trustee c should say i don't want to hear i don't want to hear it because i can see in a situation and i hope nobody gets offended by this but when we're in union negotiations and things get ugly i can see where something like that might be set up where board members are totally in the dark is what's being said and then all of a sudden the screaming breath act you know right and we were totally innocent but it's still being put out there right and it's you know any violation of the brown act is always going to be reviewed on a case-by-case basis so it's going to depend on the specific facts but i can see where a situation like that could arise and someone who's not intentionally being used as an intermediary becomes an intermediary because they are sharing information that they receive from other board members with a third board member i can see that i could potentially create an issue that's why it's advisable to always be cognizant of that and to be wary about you know receiving information from others when they tell you they talk to other trustees about the issue okay moving on to slide 21.
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okay um that capacity can be increased to 35 percent if all guests are shown to have be fully vaccinated or are test negative for the covent virus thank you you're welcome thank you for asking so this is a lengthy lead sheet and i won't go through all of the items i'd open it up to questions um if the board has any questions about any particular facility and how it will be opened up for external use julie this is president robinson on the elementary school sites um when you talk about reservations is that for the the schools that have gymnasiums or other classrooms that could be used after school or is that for field use is the field used still first come first served with no reservation at elementary sites yes it is and um miss robinson this is only for ex outdoor use so that would apply to the elementary school fields and blacktops that they're open first come first serve unless a reservation is put into place so outside user groups can reserve elementary school block top areas and elementary school field spaces if they desire to thank you if i could just i'm sorry i was just going to add that the focus here if you look the the out the available times for outside use are are very diminished from now through june 30.
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this is goes back to i don't think i'll spend any time here goes back to that school site that i mentioned that we might pursue it's a a 15 acre and that would give you an adequate amount of acreage for an elementary school and then major maintenance you can see the categories that are anticipated to spend money on they're pretty much those every year that you would contemplate you need money to keep up with roughing and eating cooling and and painting etc they're here and and this really is a schedule i think that very adequately addresses you know school appearance and school maintenance and all of those things that taxpayers would have expected us to have done automatically president reece dr foley i just had a quick question i've read that um a couple of the home builders recently are putting everything on hold because the cost has went up so high for different things does this play into that at all i've heard plywood went up roughly 10 times what it was before so i don't know if this accounts for that or if we need to make some contingency fund for that and that might be more of a dr fowler but dr foley i'll let you pass that out president reese vice president wilson yes and you'll notice that one of the things is is a contingency plan in there because that has actually been one of the things that we've talked about was even the purchase of land or construction that that that is something that's only continued to rise and when you're when you're anticipating a budget today for something that you're going to construct upon two and three years down the road you've got a placeholder but that that may not be enough hence we do have that contingency identified as part of that and obviously we'd have to prioritize at that time if it extended upon or beyond a contingency but that is a very excellent point in a very real that's one of the real very real things that we will deal with in this is you've got your best plan for what you will do and how you will how you might attack that but what the cost will be at that point is obviously an unknown this provides for a 20 percent contingency you know you just do the best you can with what you think is going to happen it could be very short i mean construction is simply so difficult to estimate now it changes overnight and i think that we've all lived through this before and how things ended up were very different and now we're here again so it's kind of funny how history repeats itself and we'll just watch and see yeah yeah good question and that can bring it out see that contingency ought to be adequate for some period of time maybe a year or two then it may become inadequate and there's other contingencies in here there's two other ones that will could come into play if you needed them to make sure that you can complete this list and this list is really important because it it's the appearance of our schools especially in a choice environment and it's an obligation we have i think to taxpayers to make sure that we're maintaining their investment and that's what this plan needs to do and mr gas just to clarify they don't have to stick to this exact dollar amount per year under the bond correct it's just the dollar amount for this is allocated it's up to us how we spend it but it's still great to see kind of a chart on how that could be done because i think in the past we just kind of had a dollar amount and then we just kind of plucked when we need it wasn't so clearly stated and so i appreciate the dates and a plan by the year okay moving on to slide 13.
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a new law also prohibits you from using emojis right so you can't even utilize or make a comment through a digital icon that expresses any type of reaction a thumbs up a heart a smiley face anger face or any of those can't even use even use emojis because that would be enough to uh to communicate trustee's position on an item all right moving on to slide 22 talking a little bit about legislative bodies and members so there are other legislative bodies within the district uh that could potentially be subject to the brown act as well so if there were a committee let's say there were a committee that was created by resolution or some other formal action of the board that body could potentially be subject to the brown act that would require those meetings to be noticed and agendized and so on moving to slide 24 to talk discuss that a little more detail so an advisory committee that's composed solely of members of the board less than a quorum so if there were an advisory committee that involved only two members of this board and it was purely advisory that would that type of a committee would not be subject to the brown act so an example of that would be setting up a committee to assist with reviewing applicants to fill a trusting vacancy that would be an example a standing committee if the board were to establish a standing committee that had continuing subject matter jurisdiction over some item or issue that type of a committee would also be subject to the brown act requiring their meanings to be noticed and agendized all right moving on to slide 25 now that applies specifically specifically specifically to committees that might be established by the board if the superintendent however were to establish let's say a blue ribbon committee to review some issue of interest that would not be subject to the brown act unless unless the superintendent were solely acting to create this blue ribbon committee really at the urging of the board and so if that were the situation then it would that committee that blue ribbon committee would likely still be subject to the product but if it was purely something that the superintendent wanted to move forward with to assist him in providing some direction or or information to the board that type of a committee would not be subject to the ground all right moving on to slide 26 some other examples of of meetings involving district players with other individuals that are not subject to the brown act would be your general union negotiation so a district's negotiation team meeting with the the teachers or the classified union team those those meetings are not subject to the ground along the lines there is a along those lines there is an era exception and it's in the government code section 3549.1 a and that basically allows the board to convene an executive session to give direction to the negotiations team about negotiations and those types of meetings are not subject to the brown act so to illustrate that give you an example of how that comes up if we are in say mediation having difficult negotiations with the union and we're in mediation with a state mediator and we want to get direction from the board on a specific item maybe salary or compensation is that issue or or some other provision in the contract and if we want to get direction from from the board that era exception would allow the superintendent to call the members of the board to convene an executive session maybe via telephone conference where we could receive direct direction from the board specific to negotiations that type of a meeting does not require an agenda it doesn't require prior notice it is a very limited exception in era which is the educational employment relations act that governs all negotiations for school districts it's a very limited exception but my advice to clients is when you use that exception to make sure that the conversation or communication is limited to negotiations similar to a post-session meeting where you're limited to what's been agendaized for close session any questions on that one i find it to be very useful in negotiations when you're when you get to the point where mediation or maybe you go on a fact finding and you're trying to i've had to use it numerous times with other clients uh trying to reach conclusion that you need a quick answer from your board uh so it's a very convenient exception to have is that yes that's the only that's the only exception specific to negotiations [Music] uh it's it's similar in that your closed session uh meeting to discuss negotiations could give direction to the negotiations team about a specific item the only difference is that in closed session you are actually agendizing that meeting or that closed session as part of an agenda's meeting and it's subject to the notice requirement whether it's 72 hours for a regular meeting or 24 hours for for a special meeting this era exception it's useful in the situation where we're in mediation or we're in fact finding or we're really close to reaching a deal in regular negotiations and we and you know we need to be able to make a decision or a proposal right then and we're really close and we know that we're close to reaching a deal that era exception allows that executive session to happen without the the necessity of posting a notice and having it agendized but again it is it's very limited uh to just giving to discussing the the positions and to give direction to the negotiations team well that's where we could get into people right no it's very specific to we're in the middle of think of it as really tedious negotiate negotiations and it's timely that we need to make a decision we would convene only on as it relates to the negotiation piece we would talk with the board get direction at that just like a closed session where you guys give us direction this could be if we were in really tenacious i guess you'd say negotiations and you need the answer right now you don't have to agenda that wait 72 hours you can be in a meeting right then or you can be a call right then there and get the direction from the board right yeah and and again the the prime example where it comes up most often is if you're in mediation right you've got a state mediator helping you and that state mediator has gotten you as close as that mediator can get you and it might be a little bit more than maybe we were authorized but we need immediate we needed a green light from the board right away we can utilize that exception and not have to wait 24 hours for a special meeting or 72 hours for regulating um [Music] it would be an executive session where members of the board can participate telephonically uh typically television if everyone wasn't available together okay moving on to slide 27 public meeting procedures and public participation slide 28 just some of the key requirements that the brown act imposes or or obligates the district to comply with for example specifying that all agendas and any other writings that are part of a board meeting they are all public documents and they're all subject to being provided to the to members of the public now there are exceptions under the public records act regarding certain types of documents so there might be an example where a document might not be subject to disclosures if perhaps you're meeting in a closed session on a litigation matter and you're provided a legal counsel provides advice for some memo or something that's attorney-client privilege that would be an example where that type of a document would not be a public document so to the school okay moving on to slide 29 before you move on one question we had come up in the past was whether or not we should report closed session what you're doing on that i don't advise uh there's no obligation to record it or take minutes and i don't recommend it okay so slide 29 dealing with public records if it relates to an agenda item for open session it has to be provided or made available to the public at the time at the same time it's made available to the board sometimes situations occur where perhaps items are agendized on the agenda for a meeting but perhaps the document related to that agenda item is not quite ready yet in that type of the situation the brown act does allow for that document to be provided at a later date so long as it's made available to the public at the same time it's provided to to the board i've had that occur in a couple of situations where a resolution was still being worked out on a specific issue and there was a placeholder in the agenda about a resolution but it hadn't been finalized yet and and at the meeting there were copies of the resolution made available to the public at the same time that the resolution was provided to the poor if that situation arises and we try to avoid those kinds of situations but from time to time they do arise the brown act does allow for that there is an allowance that that would still uh make it possible for the board to take action on that item as long as that item is provided to the public at the same time the board gets it [Music] from time to time individuals or third parties will bring documents to to a board meeting you may see this a public comment where an individual has some kind of a white paper or something they want to distribute to members of the board and it's interesting under the brown act even though it's not the district's document or created by staff or any member of the district brown act requires the district to provide copies of that third party document to members of the public if they request it so if someone comes to a board meeting during public comment and says i want to share this document with the board and someone in the public says hey i want a copy of that veronica requires the district to make a copy of it and provide it to them after the meeting okay all right so moving on to slide 30.
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and that is is really simply because of the um really extensive use of our own facilities for our own programs for the remainder of this year so this is a stop gap it's for implementation from now through the end of the through june 30 through the end of the year and then hopefully we're in a position where we can fully open and be back to normal but just again as a focus this is really for that short period of time where we're really going to be very impacted for our facilities for our kids and our programs thank you dr kaiser i know we are we're not going to have any playoffs in football but do we have other spring sports that might actually be competing for playoff time surfaces no okay now the cif has not supported any playoffs right that's what i thought but when you said competition i was okay thank you mr tennis would it be premature to make a motion um do we need it says oh okay because we are approving the guidelines so yes it is appropriate to make president president robinson made interruptions yes we have two we have two uh community speakers oh i'm sorry thank you i'm going to call mary kay benson hi mary kay i'm going to put you on speakerphone you'll be addressed in the school board if you hear a bell it means you have 30 seconds left okay okay go ahead hello school board i'm calling on behalf of north state shelter for all and we wanted to be able to present a proposal to you all having our spokesperson charles with yoon presented and this would be in conjunction with some of your unused property in having it be used for sanctioned campgrounds for homeless children and their mothers and families if needed on some of your properties that you have control over and i believe charles with yoon has sent you a proposal about that and unfortunately he couldn't be uh here tonight but i thought i would just try to ask you if you are open to that if he could make a short presentation at your next meeting and that we could tell you all about it we would be providing all of the services the porta potties the hand washing stations the trash bins the pickups monitoring it that kind of thing so it would just be a matter of if you've been following the news we have a homeless crisis even if the city doesn't believe it and we just need some land use and so that's basically what i wanted to ask if you would just consider listening to a presentation and putting it on the kate agenda thank you i think i would um suggest referring you to mr baltimore um so that you can discuss with him um your issues about um availability so that you have accurate information in order to proceed with your request mr baltimore you we have her phone number would you be in contact with ms benson yes i will certainly call miss benson thank you thank you mary kay thank you okay i'm calling danny demaio hi danny you'll be addressing the school board i'm going to put you on speakerphone if you hear a bell it means you have 30 seconds left okay okay go ahead danny yeah thank you everyone for your time my name is danny demaio and i'm the president and head coach of the local non-profit running club it's ecostriders it's our mission to introduce the sport of running to our youth with the focus of track and field and spring in the spring and cross country in the fall we primarily serve kids from the age of six to fourteen years old when our oh sorry my computer sorry i had a little feedback i apologize um when our kids graduate from pv and chico high they're directly um i'm sorry about that when our striders entered high school they graduated from our club and they joined the high school programs both pv and chico high are directly seeing the positive influence from our club on both the number of athletes and developed talent kevin gurt and vince phelps ara can attest to this track is a spring sport and set to kick off april 12th simply we can't have a track without a track season without a track i'm very proud to say that i want you to know that our coaches are 100 volunteers and committed hundreds of hours to our striders we have also raised funds over the years to pay for operational costs and are in order to remove all barriers for our kids to enter the sport of running in chico unified school district continues to leave the fields closed we will need to utilize both paradise and the durham facility this presents a significant disadvantage to the kids who do not have transportation additionally running presents a low exposure of health risks to in our current covet environment and liability for the district chico striders is a fully insured with the district as well as an additional insured in the policy please help us by changing your policy allowing external use of facilities to not only baseball fields but also the track please remove the only barrier left in the way of fostering an equally and equally healthy lifestyle and love supportive community i appreciate everyone's attention to this matter and consideration for this position thank you thank you for your input mr tennis i believe you have a motion to be made um i move that we i don't know exactly how to craft my motion but that guy that just called in danny de mayo it's a great program and all they would do you know is want to use the track to run around you know i mean it's a great program it's we like cross country we've discussed um informally i don't know if we've ever discussed it formally but you know it's a it's a less expensive uh activity sport and it's really popular nowadays and a lot of kids really benefit from that strider program it's a really awesome program and i think that we should figure out a way to to to enable them to use some used tracks so that kids can participate in it because right now the program's kind of shut down i have a question if the activity that mr tennis is speaking up this was in the guidelines we're about to pass that would uh make it available so that was what i was going to ask julie mr bulma can jump in as well i believe there were some reasons from based on internal use that the tracks in particular were not available until at least late in the evening julie can you clarify that please yes certainly um we would love to be able to open up the stadium facilities for external use but as you all know we have multiple sports for our high school students on top of each other we're doing fall and spring sports all at the same time so the stadium is in use every day monday through saturday all day long and in the guidance that we've provided for your review tonight we would only be opening it the stadium which includes the track uh between the hours of 8 and 10 p.m on weekday evenings and saturdays and sundays when available so i guess the the opportunity for the striders would be on saturdays and sundays if available um mr landau i'll see you mr dr kaiser you'll be next a question oh i'm sorry sorry a question for julia or kevin are there any other we've talked about the stadium are there other tracks i'm not sure exactly what the strider's needs are are do we have other facilities at uh other sites that might we won't be able to open to them um without talking with them i'm not exactly sure what um would be required uh mr ness i can speculate um my son my oldest went through strider's great program um but basically i can't speak for him i'm sure he'd be available if we wanted to call him but um no they meet and they go through running drills and stuff like that i mean i think weren't we talking about some old track or something like that on some some campus like within the last meeting or two i mean those might be viable you know possibilities if there are any old julie kissel are there any old older tracks non-stadium running tracks out there in our in the chico unified school school system our chico junior high and bidwell junior high as well as some of our elementaries have uh granite tracks so they're not running tracks that are you know surface like our high schools but they're utilized for elementary and junior high pe it's across oh sorry it's a cross-country focus then that's something we'd want to speak with them about and see if those are options that would be viable the challenges julie mentioned is on the stadiums with just the number of our own students but those other facilities may if they fit their needs be available per this guidance so as a university uh cross-country and uh track coach um most of the universities use i mean chico they do use the park and use that running surface because it is there's no traffic for periods of time and it is flat so i think it's very clear that we can't interfere with our own groups uh who are i mean we pull up here and there's five different teams out there you know practicing but um certainly um the goodwill park we have had all kinds of meets there and cross country has their meets there so um it may be that they're just unaware of some of the other areas that happen those tracks aren't measured and that's part of the the sense of it you know so anyway i think what's um i would encourage you regarding this guidance this guidance would allow us to engage these outside organizations and have a conversation if the times available to them would fit their programs and allow our staff to then schedule them while also maintaining the time for our own programs so at least it allows us to have those conversations with our outside groups because it's not completely closed it just means that we have earmarked some time that effectively we can manage dr kaiser i would like to move 4.2.1 do i have a second second thank you is there any further discussion i just would like a quick point of clarification yes tom so i think i heard you say that passing this without any changes will allow us to engage with uh with the group that spoke to us and see about using our other facilities for them correct correct thank you okay um i'm going to call for the vote member dalby are you out there are you ready for vote caitlyn yeah i'm here okay we're calling for a vote on approving the um facilities use guidelines for the rest of the year until june 30th i believe uh how say you hi dr kaiser aye mr tennis tennis eye lando eye robinson eye it passes 5-0 okay next up okay we have the chico high school architecture career technical education project yay team julie kissel thank you is this an exciting project over at chico high school one of our career and technical education grants and as you know we have already um completed the first phase of the project which is the greenhouse over at the ag department and the second phase is to modernize the two agriculture classrooms and to add a shade structure outside for the welding program at the time that we put the lead sheet together the project had not yet bid however it did bid on april 1st and the we got five impressive bids and the low bidder is hankins group for 450 000.
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again this will be this will be a program that uh dr fowler has some details for you at the on the 21st but as you can see it's it's kind of categorized in a major way for additions it's it's enrollment driven facility standards if we find that there are needs somewhere that we need to address renovations especially if we can do some renovations that would help us with more capacity or we need some remodeling done in some spaces that's what that's all about and then there's also a contingency here uh of another 2.7 million so that could be something we could shift easily over to the maintenance category if we needed it and so there's plenty of opportunity to find some other funds in here to be able to accomplish whatever we thought the original plan should be and then on the last slide it lists for you all of the contingencies that are contained in this bond package there's 8.7 million dollars spread across three categories it's 9.2 percent of the total which seems i think in the scheme of things about 10 to be you know a reasonable number to have and we have not only the 3.5 million as an overall then you've already seen the 2.4 and you've seen the 2.7 so in addition to those two there is an overall contingency for every subject in here whether it be technology or whatever of three and a half and so there's a total 8.7 million so that i think that puts you in a good place to be able to deal with whatever you might have to deal with in the future and then the last page is a calendar we want you to be especially aware of the the due dates that we have this is the first review of the bond this evening and we need to hear from you if you need some more information that's what we're here to try to provide for you over this next couple of months the april 21st is a second review and that also will contain that executive session where we can discuss real estate and may 19th will be the third review again with an executive session if necessary it may not be dependent upon how our discussions progress with the lease the lender and then june 9th that would be the date in which we would have to ask you do you want to proceed with this package and have an election in november as a form of approving of a resolution so i really think the packet is balanced again you know balance to the needs the district really has long term i think everything generally speaking is addressed in here in some way if it's a really major capital expenditure that we need to do and so um you know i think it's a good plan anyway any questions you or the board might have try to answer nope i think we're good so thank you for the details and um that this is just our first review of it so we have plenty of time to review and talk and come up with questions so yes i'd just like to say thank you thank you for taking the time to explain it very simply and very detailed that way we feel comfortable and then the community is more understanding i appreciate it all the work thank you thank you all right well with that we will move on to our action items i move that we approve the tentative or i mean that we tentatively approve the proposed fiscal year 2021 2022 capital outlay budget second is that you i just heard a little all right and dr foley just going to take a moment because we did have questions that came up when we tentatively approved our m o i've significantly received less so this is wonderful that this year to be able to match that same percentage and you know i think we can all acknowledge that our classified five percent is a lot different for them than five percent for our certified um so the fact that we were able to get to that same number was wonderful even though the calculation overall is is in terms of budget impact very different i make that miss president reese i'm very excited to approve this tonight tentatively if everyone approves this is really exciting for me to see that number be the same i know mr glover he spoke of this a lot to make sure that we were honoring everyone when he was here at that seat but i'm really excited to see this and i'm just thankful dr foley and to your whole staff that we could make it the same and we can honor those people and again just it's good to be higley right now this is a good moment for us and i know as we continue to hear and it it breaks my heart what's happening around us i'm just so thankful for this leadership and this board and our students and our teachers that have worked so hard this year to get where we are so again it's good to be higley tonight yes very well said and it's been very important to try and like you said we we acknowledge five percent is not the same for each class of employee but at least um we're able to offer the same percentage so thank you everyone's worked really hard so it makes it makes this one much better so i appreciate that yes for sure all right anyone else have any questions or comments nope all those in favor aye aye aye that motion carries five zero all right for future agenda items oh and miss martens if i recall when i read that these are um to go out electronically uh is it tomorrow or friday no um president reese they're going to go out electronically on monday april 12th so um it's a a little bit different and challenging for this particular employee group because the system that we do use electronically they typically don't access very often so we need a little bit more time in terms of the preparation but as i've said before our wonderful team of hr individuals in payroll have done such a great job to where i don't know if i've said it in this arena but i felt as though our certified contracts went out fairly smoothly in our administrative ones so i'm crossing my fingers for the same thing here and i think the ladies in the department would have probably argued a little differently but i said you know with everything new there's some hiccups but overall um really great job perfect thank you so that can be expected to be out rolled out electronically come monday thank you all right for future agenda items we have um quite a list and any thing we want to add i'm sure we'll after our retreat on saturday there'll be some other different focuses i think so all right so we'll leave this as there as it is and with that uh i move that we adjourn second all those in favor aye aye motion passes five zero have a good evening you
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as far as uh with regard to um uh okay i think i may have gotten ahead of myself yes i did get ahead of myself all right so documents that are prepared by any other person must be made available after the meeting okay slide 31. so talking about agendas the agenda for a regular meeting must be conspicuously posted at least 72 hours prior to the time of the meeting in a location freely accessible to all members of the public so moving on to slide 32 an agenda must specify the time and location of the regular meeting uh ab-2257 passed several years ago requiring as of 2019 that if the school district maintains a website that it has to include a prominent direct link on the home page so that members of the public can very easily access that agenda it can't be buried prior to this prior to this law going into effect it wouldn't be uncommon to look at a school district's website and try to find the board agenda and it's just buried you'd have to click one spot and click another and click again before you finally and then click a few more times before you might find it well the problem with that is members of the public have become now in this age very reliant on accessing web information from websites and so if the district maintains a website in order to promote or enhance the public's participation in the process it's got to be easy for them to find that agenda so they can make a decision as to whether or not they want to show up at that meeting and discuss some public comment and get involved in the process i'm happy to say that center gets an a for me the the link is very prominent easily accessible it says right there on the home page and current board meeting agenda i can tell you that there's still some districts that i wouldn't give an aid to so that [Music] you're still required you're still required to make those those those uh old school uh physical uh postings um what the law does requires if you do have a website you're obligated to make it available on your website as well i think at some point there may have there may have been districts that still didn't have websites i don't think that's the case now all of the districts i work with have websites but at some time there were some that still hadn't made that investment okay moving on to slide 33 talking about regular meeting agendas so a regular meeting agenda may not be changed within the 72 hours preceding the meeting so if once an agenda gets posted within that 72 hour period it cannot be changed there's very limited exceptions to that one would be where a majority of the board determines that an emergency exists during that board meeting the board determines there is an emergency and we need to add an item to the agenda an emergency might be a work stoppage maybe there's some crippling activity maybe a terrorist act something like that something that's so far out there that couldn't have been foreseen in that 72-hour period when the notice got over when the agenda was published that a majority of the board could take action this slide lists a few other situations where two-thirds of the board members determine there's a need for immediate action or when you're post when you're continuing a postponed meeting in those type of situations i always recommend consult with legal counsel just to make sure that you're navigating the requirements because the last thing you want to do is take some kind of an action to amend an agenda and then it turns out that you didn't really because sometimes it's like threading a needle you don't want it you don't want to take action to revise an agenda discuss an item take action on that item and then it turns out you didn't thread that needle right and it's invalid so if that kind of a situation arises that's when you ask the superintendent to text the lawyer and they'll respond and help out another thing that we do and i haven't listed here on this slide is if something happens between that 72-hour period and it's important item of business it's not uncommon to tack on a special meeting special meeting only requires 24 hours of notice so if something comes up you know 48 hours before that next meeting you can utilize a special the special meeting notice your 24-hour notice requirement and add a special meaning either before or after the regular meeting i don't recommend inserting it in the middle that can be confusing to the public okay moving on to slide 34.
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uh you see that the construction budget that we're asking you to approve this evening is for 700 000 and that includes the portion that you previously approved for the greenhouse so tonight we are asking you to review and approve the project to move forward with hankins group as the general contractor thank you julie have we had any additional staff fall through the roof at the greenhouse at chico high no we have not oh good i'm i'm i'm going to move approval of the uh awarding of the the bid second any further discussion board julie can you spell the name of that uh contractor yes it's h-a-n-k-i-n-s hankins and we have worked with them previously that part of their group is an electrical company and they've done many projects for us in that electrical capacity however they are a general contractor and this is our first project with them as a general thank you board member dalby are you ready for vote and how say you i vote i dr kaiser oh robinson i i'm sorry i'm still giggling from uh for those of you that don't know we had a a staff member at jaco high fall through the roof of the old greenhouse facility he was hurt pretty badly okay our next item i'm sorry that passed 5-0 thank you thank you thank you julie um the next item mr baltimore yes so we're bringing forth a document and we're really calling our planning document related to the covid one-time funds and in the top right hand corner we've summarized the available new dollars and again as a reminder these are one time in nature we have the s or two dollars at 10 million the ab-86 in-person instruction grants at 3.7 the ab-86 expanded learning opportunities grant at 8.1 million both of those ab-86 are state dollars and then now the s or three dollars additional 22.
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so the key requirement with regard to agendas is that they reasonably apprise the public of matters that are going to be considered or before the war we need to provide sufficient details so that a member of the public can make a decision as to whether or not you know what i'm going to miss the game tonight and i want to go to that board right there's got to be enough information there that they can make that decision i i include a citation to this carlson versus paradise unified school district that case crazy case in that in that situation the school district agenda said continuation school site change that's all it said continuation school site change that's all it said what the action involved though was the board considering and ultimately taking action to close or discontinue elementary education at an elementary site and moving the continuation school to that elementary site and that agenda was not descriptive enough to let the parents of that elementary school know that their kid's school was going to close and was going to be replaced with this continuation support so families that were affected went to court and they were able to get an injunction to stop the bor to stop the board of the district from moving forward um and so as a result we have this sort of this generalized 20 this 20 word uh uh rule which means if you can get it all within 20 words then you're probably okay your agenda doesn't have to be 20 words long but if but if you provide a general description and it's within 20 words you're probably okay if you have an issue or you're not you're not not absolutely certain as to what you should or shouldn't uh include then it's always a good idea to reach out to the legal counsel to help out with that we do that regularly because again the last thing you want is like what happened in paradise to have an agendized item action was taken and then it turned out it was improperly agendized now you've got to do a redo and potentially face legal costs depending against an action like this all right slide 35 we're still talking now we're talking about special meetings so special meeting only requires 24 hours notice a special meeting may be called by either the president of the board or by a majority of the board the board may only consider business that's on that specific notice the board may hold a closed session as part of a special meeting so you can have closed sessions during special meetings as well there are some things that you can't do at a special meeting and i'll talk about that here in just a second public speakers must be allowed the opportunity to speak during a special meeting so you have to have public comment on this during a special meeting but public comment can be limited in the special meeting only to items that are on the agenda now the board does have the discretion to allow individuals during public comment to speak about other items as long as they're within the subject matter jurisdiction that might not be on that agenda but the brown act does allow the board and the agenda to limit public comment to only those items that are agenda during special meetings all right moving on to slide third and six these are this is an example of something that cannot be done at a special meeting so the law was changed to prohibit action being taken on on salaries or compensation including fringe benefits of any local agency executive and this was a result of the city of bell fiasco that happened maybe a decade ago it's been some time but those revisions to the brown act were a result of what happened what happened in the city of bell where they were passing these really generous compensation packages for executives of the city that that weren't subjective to public scrutiny so as a result anytime you're going to discuss compensation or approved compensation or salary schedules or fringe benefits for an executive of the district the board can only do those media can only take that action at a regular meeting and why is that well with a special meeting it only requires 24 hours notice it's very small window of notice where members of the public might not know that hey they're going to talk about this great compensation package i want to be a part of it and so a regular meeting requires 72 hours notice so it's implied that 72 hours will give the public more opportunity to decide whether or not they want to skip that ball game and participate in the meeting all right notice of the special meeting must be mailed or delivered to the media and posted 24 hours in advance of the meeting the notice must also be posted on the district's website okay moving on to slide 37 there is another exception to the regular meeting requirement and that allows for emergency meetings so an emergency meeting can be called by the president or by majority of the board at a minimum you have to provide at least one hour notice to the media except in a dire emergency where perhaps maybe you can't even give one hour an emergency is defined here is work stoppage crippling activity that impairs health or safety this one actually came up quite a few times for several of my clients when everything happened the last year in march i had a number of clients that called emergency meetings when we all learned that schools were going to be shutting down and so on in response to the pandemic that's totally fine permissible and fell within one of the authorized reasons for an emergency meeting i advise clients though to still put it up on the website call the media give them at least that one hour notice and also to post wherever you physically post agendas so that we've got it all covered even though it's short notice we're still going forward with the process of trying to make uh individuals aware of it in the in the situation where you're trying to give this one hour notice or give notice by telephone and if telephone service for some reason is not working uh then the brown act requires the district to still try to make that notice as reasonably possible or soon thereafter all right moving on to slide 38 diving into the rights of the public to participate so members of the public must be able to address the board regarding items on the agenda before or during the gary board's consideration of the item moving on to slide 39 every regular meeting agenda must provide an opportunity for the public to address the board on any item of interest to the public within the subject matter jurisdiction of the board so it's not limited like a special meeting what typically happens in my experience is a board will set aside a specific time frame at the beginning of the meeting or public comment and then quite often they'll set time aside under under individual items to allow for public comments specific to that item and that's totally permissible moving on to slide 40 so the board within the board it's within the board's authority to adopt reasonable rules and regulations in order to ensure uh proper uh functioning of the media and these types of rules and regulations can regulate time place and manner but they cannot regulate viewpoint they cannot regulate speech i've sat through i've sat through a few meetings where i felt really bad for members of the board and members of administration as i listened to members of the public just unload just unload i remember sitting in one board meeting where this was a topic of huge community interest so much so that the regular board meeting was moved to the high school auditorium and it was packed and there were news cameras there and i actually had to present on the item but i remember sitting there and watching members of the public get up to the podium and just unload on the superintendent and unload on members of the board about how much they dislike the decisions that have been made and so on and the language got very colorful yeah yeah you know that it happens people are they want to they want to let you know how they feel and brown act respects that and and there's very little that the board can do when that type of dialogue or those types of words are being thrown at staff or administration there's very little you can do the only thing really that the board has the discretion to do is to perhaps recess the meeting to let to let the you know temperatures cool down a little bit or if it's becoming a disruption to the meeting then it might be it might be sufficient where the board could exercise authority to perhaps have that person removed but that's very limited and i i have never seen that happen because nine times out of ten if you recess the meeting temperatures cool and then people come back and they continue to vent meetings where we anticipated that there was going to be perhaps physical altercations and so we had beefed up security present just as a deterrent against those kinds of things happening um sometimes those types of issues come up i think a question yeah first of all during our you know business [Music] right um i would say she does i would say she does but what she could do is perhaps spell them out instead of actually saying the word [Music] um that that in my opinion is fine i think the board presidents that the board president or whatever trustee is presiding over the meeting can certainly make that request i in my opinion you don't have the authority to enforce it but you can certainly make the request as a courtesy to ask that you know and i've seen this happen especially when children are present i've seen a board president say you know in the interest because we have so many children present i would please ask that that individual of the public please be mindful of the words that you're using because we have so many children present and that seems to work and that's totally fine but if you know if you've got a knucklehead at the at the podium and they don't care and they want to throw those words unless it's becoming entirely disruptive to the meeting you sort of have to just deal with it regarding the public policy if carol were uncomfortable something would it be acceptable if somebody else read it for her yes yeah everybody can read it yes yes those comments need to be made public yes so for instance miss carroll is receiving 26 comments via email or however she's getting them those need to be public they need to be read in public but do they need to be presented somewhere in public so for instance would it be attached to a board package like an amendment to a board packet or is it fine just saying them out loud what what's required is and these are all in response to the executive orders that were issued which basically requires that the public still be allowed to communicate at least electronically to share their uh share their thoughts or comments electronically so what a lot of districts have done is set up this arrangement where you can email your comment and your comment will be read to the written board that's all that's required is that the email is read to the board during public comment that allows the individual to participate in the process and to communicate their thoughts to the board that's all that's required doesn't have to be part of the packet or anything like that now those words become part of the minutes those words all get captured in the minutes maybe we can issue that warning regardless in the beginning and say there are children watching this meeting because i know my grandson watches sometimes and have you heard scott say those words oh boy scott would be in trouble okay uh [Music] um [Music] is what that individual has said and so is that permissible for the board to attempt to censor any public comment in any way [Music] following the rules i i would suggest we remember we only had i think we've had of all the public comments we had one that had some words and i'm sorry i'm not happy to read it but i i i will do it because i agree i think we should read it as it is i just think that's above board that's the right thing to do i will i'm happy to read that again we've had one out of the last year but we're trying to communicate the public's wishes and their comments so i think it's appropriate that we we unfortunately do because otherwise i do worry that we would be considered now are we putting our emphasis on it or trying to take away from their meaning again it doesn't come up that often it hasn't so if we do do that and plus we're transitioning meeting in public so hopefully that will be behind us until the kids find out they have made you say that i i think that virtual meetings are with us for a bit as we're still in a global pandemic and i agree with you uh scott that we shouldn't attempt to censor any public members um then we're getting into subjective um you know um measurements of what is a profanity to whom and how and i think that could just get absolutely absurd yeah and i i agree with you [Music] it sounds like the superintendent is the designated reader of colorful comments you're not going to read them all no problem okay continuing slide 40 uh so the the board does have the authority to establish clear maximum time limits uh subject to extension or reduction uh this is typically in your board bylaws not it's not uncommon for either a two or three minute public comment limitation to be in place and those are totally permissible i've also seen boards where there's a lot of interest in an item but to ensure that the meeting can be conducted in a timely fashion i've also seen boards in my opinion within their authority to do it to set maybe a block of time limit under a certain item like i remember dealing with a a charter school petition where there was a lot of public comment anticipated and in that situation they said i believe a one hour a one hour block for public comment under that individual item and so that that would be a reasonable regulation in my opinion for the board to adopt as long as the public is being allowed to comment regarding the extension reduction we typically have not been enforcing the time limit you don't get many comments that go over it and when we do it we've just been kind of enjoying engaging with the public my concern is that if somebody isn't granted the extension when somebody else is that we could be accused of giving preferential treatment to some and not validated yeah you know it's it's um that's why i think it's better for consistency to stick to your three limit or whatever your limit is for public comment if it's too limited or two minutes or three minutes uh because those issues can arise or there might be that perception even if it's totally unfounded there could be that perception that why is that individual being allowed more time and i've seen this pop up where an individual during public comments says oh and i also would like to read a comment or or or they'll come up and say well you know um mr smith has given me his two minutes you know to expand that individual's time and those kind of issues can pop up i think the best practice is to stay the course if you have a three minute or two minute time limit that applies to everybody and i've had some uh boards where they actually cut the mic when two minutes or it turns off there's someone that's monitoring the two minutes that turns the mic off it doesn't always go over well sometimes you're just agitating the crowd that way right we've always figured that it's better to let them get it out and you know say their peace if we have time to do that it's kind of a case by case and what's the issue and who's up there speaking and now i've seen i've had trustees that i've worked with recognizing that if an individual speaks slower and has a hard hard time you know speaking that they they might be more inclined to give that person a little more time um but i think the best practice is if you can try to stick to your limit and apply it evenly and consistently with all of your speakers but again very often it's going to be at the discretion of the board president that's presiding over the meeting or whoever whatever trustee is presiding over the meeting it's typically going to be that discretion and and if the president or whoever's presiding can ask the board do we want to extend public comment do we want to extend the opportunity for individuals to speak for a longer period of time there might be something of interest there it's not the easiest thing to navigate it just depends [Music] uh so i understand what you're saying scott i also understand what i'm answering about trying to make sure people are able to get things out so maybe maybe what we do is we extend the time a little bit harder and take a very clear account that we're doing that to keep things equitable and that they will be limited to whatever the amount of time says yes i agree whatever you can do to maintain consistency is the better practice is the best practice okay um and then the last the last bullet point there on that slide 40 just talks about you know how the legislative body should not prohibit public criticism of policies procedures programs or services of the agency or the acts or missions of the legislative body that comes right out of the brown act so there is a recognition that you know the public is allowed to make those criticisms if they have them can you draw a line between that and the public criticism of employees i would say no no no no one so we can let him stand up there and tear a teacher apart it's true or untrue yes wow okay you can regulate time manner and place but you cannot regulate viewpoint or or content of the speech is anyone that's speaking during public comment from the podium has the first amendment right to say what they want to say okay and that's i i'll share it i sat through a board meeting where i heard and it looked orchestrated to me but there were half a dozen individuals that got up to that board that podium and just unloaded on the superintendent and it was hard to sit there but they have that right and there's as much as the attorney working with that district wanted to stand up and take some of the arrows or you know slowly there's nothing there's nothing you can do about it you have to allow that process to play out uh okay moving on to slide 41.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
almost 3 million so for a total of 44 million dollars just in the new money that's going to be coming into us at our last meeting back in march march 3rd specifically the board took action on the items that are grayed out the furniture for social support distancing at the elementary level class size reduction the mtss coordinator and then elementary counselors for two years what's included in this spreadsheet also is we're still categor categorizing the expenditure through the mtss categories which is consistent to what ed services is doing is it's looking towards its implementation of the educational program and then we've also added the number of years in which we would use these one-time dollars and we have the current year next year 20 22-23 and then we've included 22-23-24 because there is some federal law that allows an additional year of expenditure so we do believe for the federal dollars sr2 and sr3 that we can spend those dollars out through the 2024 year so we've included for planning purposes the benefits of these dollars over multiple years so the list we understand this is a very long list and very broad and quite frankly maybe not fair to bring this to you tonight and ask you to vote on all of these items because you may have certain questions and it takes a little bit of time when you start looking at there's actually 50 million dollars of budget allocation here but our intention isn't to ask you to vote on all items what we are asking you this evening is to take a look at these certainly ask any questions we intend to bring this list back to you on april 21st however there are some items here that if we want to start addressing some student loss and some of the conversation we had earlier we would recommend to the board consider taking action this evening to approve these allocations and an example would be the one point full-time equivalent intervention teacher for all the elementary school sites for an estimated cost of 2.5 million the reason we might ask you to approve this this evening is allows us to start recruiting for these teaching positions right away if this is something in fact we want to implement so we identified those items that we felt have a time imperative that you might consider taking action on this evening in green and most of them are related to staffing and anything that has a longer timeline for purchase and just the total of all the items in green are is listed at the bottom at 12.831 million dollars repeat what you just said please the last little line yes uh the total for all the items listed in green which we would ask the board consider taking action on this evening for allocation totals twelve million eight hundred thirty one thousand dollars and that is all the items in green do want to point out that we have in there the additional counselors to support mental health we have mtss as well as wellness counselors and tcm extra assignment to increase student support so some of the themes that we've been talking about this evening are included here mr landau dr kaiser you'll be next in fact i wanted to address exactly that i understand that we want to fill these positions as quickly as possible so when thinking about the mental health support positions and intervention teachers uh if we approve this today are we looking at uh hopefully filling these positions are we looking at summer next year or right away i mean what's the timeline for getting someone in these in these positions so that's a good question so and that's why it it is impera important to approve them as soon as possible because we're competing with all the other school districts in the area for the same people um if we get approval tonight we open the positions we typically will open for two weeks and then have interviews shortly after that we can move fairly quickly so it's potential that we could increase staffing at the wellness centers and potentially increase some of the uh so i potentially offer some of the uh immediate uh crisis response counseling that the our students are talking about well unknown um a lot of the people that are in these positions are under contract for the remainder of this year so we will at least be hiring starting next year i couldn't guarantee that we could get the quality of people that we need immediately for this year because they're typically going to be working somewhere else it's possible if some of them have already graduated and they're just looking for that that first position and we do hire some of those folks but um but especially important for hiring for next year because this is the hiring season that we're competing with all the other school districts for i understand that i don't know if there's a way within the hiring process i presume there's not to emphasize people who might be available now i really think we need to listen to the uh students who spoke here earlier about an immediate need for a ramp up in in crisis services i understand that um it will be a challenge a lot of school districts are doing the same thing and the the folks that are properly credentialed in the counseling areas are going to be at a premium so that's important for us to be hiring now before or at least during the same time the other districts are so on that note um are we only looking for pps's or are we or are we thinking about social workers and lcsws and mfts and that kind of thing yes definitely the latter at the current time we have our properly credentialed teacher i mean counselors for academic areas and they're only required by law um at the high schools they're not required by law at the elementary and the junior highs because we're they're not advising for college preparation and that type of thing so we're definitely looking at for those those other areas licensed social workers and mtfs mfts thank you um member dalby has her hand up sorry dr kaiser that's okay you can go to dr kaiser first kathy she's i want to move uh 4.2.3 and if i get a second i'll speak to it point of order yes i remember dolby we're still in dece yeah we were still in discussion um uh madam president has not asked for a motion yet um so i'm gonna ask my question yes we also have speakers waiting oh you have online speakers waiting okay thank you member dalby if you could yeah um just a friendly reminder for the board that we should be waiting for madam president to ask for a motion and raise our hand and then i'll and then present our motion my question is on this document um uh is this whole list um i'm assuming it's all totaled at the bottom um and shown like how much is that is it still within the amount that we will have to spend are there things on this list that we're going to have to pick and choose to take off the list because we can't spend all of it that's a good question eventually yes that is a good question there are actually there is almost 51 million dollars of ideas and programs listed here and as we noted above there's only about 44 million dollars of available revenue so yes there is some prioritization that would need to occur but what we would specifically ask for this evening and again noting that this is a lot for the board to take in at one time i would recommend that the board target or focus in on those items that are in green that we believe have some timeline imperative to implement and then bring this back on april 21st to then have that further prioritization conversation to whittle this down to fit within that 44 million dollars of available revenue okay thank you mr lando one more quick clarification question i see one of the items in green is a pbis lead in the amount of five thousand dollars is that a stipend thank you ah yes does it um any board member have any questions about any of the items marked in green i do yes mr tennis how would you propose working at kevin um i'm hearing mr lando sort of have favorable things to say about the idea of maybe maybe increasing what we're looking at for for wellness therapy he's free to whack me or something like that if i'm reading that incorrectly um how would we do that if we wanted to to take a stick a toe in the water there well certainly the board has the authority and discretion to um you know direct and provide allocation amounts that may be different than this what i might suggest since this is a lot of information at one time um one i would focus in on just those items in green if you felt that those were appropriate to approve to move forward and we could get started then and then when we come back on the 21st and really have a better idea of what you think the priorities are or if you want to add to a certain item we could do it at that time one recommendation i would make to the board is that we don't allocate all 44 million dollars quite frankly i actually might recommend that we shoot for something like 35 to 38 million dollars holding some of those dollars back for things that we are are not seeing yet and quite frankly getting more feedback as we go down the line from our school sites so i'm taking a long time to answer your question mr tennis but i think from a program standpoint if you want to change the amounts in green and felt comfortable in that area that's what i would recommend for this evening and then we will bring this back on the 21st really for kind of a full review so i should propose a number change on that is that what you just said maybe i think that's true okay so so i'd say um maybe to triple what's in place now which is a half of an intervention counselor right now at each at each high school site we're also adding we put on there adding an extra counselor um above the wellness counselor two on there so you'll see secondary gets a we're proposing another counselor above the halftime wellness counselor like an academic counselor right it does not have to be no just like we said we're expanding what we're asking for our counselors to be able to do there was also the um one of the speakers one of the students brought up the issue of uh the wellness center there was a in that person i was in a meeting with with her on monday and um they weren't of the opinion on monday that there was a wellness center at cheek ohio they called it the back back room they called it but they said that they thought they needed a wellness center so i think maybe we're thinking we've got one thing but they at least monday they weren't thinking we had that so is there money in here that could i mean one thing also that she said or one of them said was that i've heard this is like they feel like they're not in a private environment right so so they feel like maybe they've heard staff talking about other students in a way that they thought was inappropriate you know i mean who knows exactly what transpired but i imagine a perfect little place where where a student goes to check into a you know like a conversation with a chico unified staff member and it's a private environment and maybe they're known by name and if you really had a crisis you know it would be a place where you could go to have a conversation with somebody that you could signal you know yeah absolutely and we have heard that loud and clear in meeting with our students during our student lcap meetings this year that they really want a more confidential way to reach out to help from their counselors and so you know that is certainly something that we're working on now the wellness center at chico high is designed to do exactly that and mr williams has money to do that it is still in development it is not done yet it is still under development so that's probably why the students you know aren't familiar with it by that term and mr tennis i just i haven't run this by mr shepherd but i was talking to a person from county behavioral health one of the things we got started on this one students told us that they needed that as miss staley's saying but we have a few of us have visited a wellness center at down in fresno clovis north has a beautiful section where they have their academic counselors one area then they have a wellness center so we're going to be planning on taking some assistant principals and counselors down to look at their their center so we have a baseline because again they have a center where the kids can go in where they have a counselor they have interns from the universities nearby and then they also have pure seniors that work with the younger ones and again i really want people to see that i've seen that in person and it's pretty well and so we'll be taking people down there to make sure we're developing these centers the proper way and if i could just add if you look at the spreadsheet under line 51 it references whisper rooms the idea is that these are rooms and we have already installed these in a couple of our locations at some of our elementary schools they are enclosures that can be installed in classrooms or in office spaces and they do provide a confidential space for counseling so that has been a consideration it wasn't listed here as a time priority because they're readily available so if we bring this back to on the 21st and that is still something that the board would like to support we can easily get those before the net start of the next school year okay i'm following mr tennis's inquiry in what we have in in green um do we um could we make an increase to that line item without uh presenting it it wouldn't present any difficulties because the you know it's within the parameters of the money that's available in this first approval tonight do we need to do it in order to begin to accomplish what mr tennis and other board members are asking for staffing we need to if if we are hiring physicians we need to be out looking right now and interviewing now dr kaiser so i want to caution us about putting too many structural implications on this especially in terms of the services the city has run into this behavioral health has run into this it's very very complex and what we provide as somebody i think it was doug said you know it's a it's a check list of potential services but it's not what someone might perceive as full-time or in-depth counseling that takes over a long period of time i um i think everybody is drawn to the same issue of the kids that are struggling that we know about but i do think that in this context and kevin's kelly both referenced it time is of the essence we are an extremely situation with very limited professionals available to us in this area and i think all the high schools and junior highs around us are having some of the same consequences so i'd rather see us think about moving this forward by approving it and then as as you find more contextual frameworks that you can explain to us i mean jim's already said it's a two-week we have to post for two weeks so we can't do anything you know we get that out there then we would have a lot better idea of the kind of people available to us but also if we can go see something that appears to be very successful in the high school environment that would be also really good so i i just feel like if we start to try to fine-tune this too much now we're losing really valuable time but they say that we need to get out there and start hiring if we're going to do it and if some of us look at this line item and we feel like it needs to be a little bigger we need to let them know tonight and so it warrants a you know a conversation about upping it thank you mr lando thank you uh perhaps then instead of uh getting into a big debate over what number that should be um that when we uh we instead simply authorize staff uh to make offers beyond the amount here if we find the candidates instead of saying hey you can only spend another hundred thousand and say here's a you've got this much already if we get find three great candidates who are extra go ahead and you have pre-authorization to just make those offers as well i would second that motion i think that flexibility helps us there's no guarantee that there's quality candidates out there in the numbers that we need hopefully there is but if they are we don't we don't want to lose them either so i think that that's great flexibility and the other challenge with this is that um these are one-time dollars so we're going to be creating a service that we will not be able to continue past three years so it's a challenge we certainly know this is an issue to address cova that's what these dollars are for i just want to continue to point out that there is a point where this will end because we just do not have the ongoing resources to support this type of program and also what we're looking at right now is possibly 17 to 18 counselors that we'll be looking to hire just on what we've approved already we're not at the point to call for a motion yet board we have speakers waiting to address the board caitlin did you have a an inquiry um just really quickly um uh with that topic um just one last question about it um would it be or maybe i missed this in the discussion um with clarity um possible to fly those positions for next year um and stay you know leave it open to possibly sooner if the right candidate fits or something like that with the idea that we can fill that that wellness center position sooner than later or you know wherever it may need to be if we can do it you know in two weeks rather than wait until next year along with that flexibility is that something that's possible yes i see heads nodding that yes if we have the right person you can modify the start date okay um and i'm not sure if that's something that would need to be like board directed or approved i just wanted to clarify that and then um just a friendly teacher a reminder mr baltimore we love growth mindset around here and i would love to think that if we establish a really good program wellness program wellness and mental health program in our schools that those programs aren't going to go away we're just going to have to find um different funding for them in the future so i'm gonna think positively about those programs and and assume that we're gonna get to work and find out how to fund those fund those um further into the future thank you we're good you call for a motion no we're we have speakers waiting dr kaiser yeah no i was putting them on hold okay i'm calling katie vanderwaal cook speakerphone if you hear a bell it means you have 30 seconds left okay go ahead hello again uh concerning the budget i'm um asking that funds be allocated to support our distance learners that will be returning to school campuses in august i would like to encourage the school board and superintendent to plan an early return uh for uh to school of a couple days uh for the students who have been distance learning this past year they are going to need a bit of additional time to adjust to being on campus with large groups of students and working in collaborative environments again this time could be used for team building social emotional outreach as well as campus support and working as a team such as doing a group mural at school or a library project as well as team a team building sport to help them all adjust to being together this will also help to forge some new friendships as many haven't seen their school friends in a year or more thank you those that's the only speaker i have on this item i thought we had two thank you okay now board we are in a position to ask for a motion dr kaiser i so moved the passing of 4.2.3 mr tennis i'd like to propose a friendly amendment that we point of order um well completely with the spirit of what you're doing i believe we need to have a second second to put the motion on the floor before we can amend it okay so either you and i can second then we can amend it um i'll second the motion and then i'll ask for a friendly amendment and that amendment friendly amendment would be to um uh increase authorization for staff to hire above what is listed here in the category of student wellness up to three times the amount shown dr kaiser will you accept the amendment i don't see that as friendly i think it puts us where we don't really know what the rest of our financial resources might be since kevin just encouraged us to think of the actual amount committed right now is in the 30 30 million right what 30 35 well the items listed in green total 12.8 million and we bring it back to you we'll probably ask for you know an allocation up to around 35 37 million so i would really encourage us to wait till we come back and we start having an idea of where the these money barriers or money issues might arise okay i'm going to call for a vote then on the original actually i'd like to propose an amendment as well oh yes mr lando this is not going to be a friendly amendment i don't think apparently so i'm just going to ask to put the amendment up for a vote i would like to amend the motion on the table to allow our hiring our staff to hire any qualified candidates to meet our immediate mental health wellness needs and given the limited pool we're pulling from i don't suspect you guys are going to go spend 20 million dollars on counselors so i would like to leave it to their discretion to hire any good candidates they can find even if that does uh exceed the line item there i'll second that yeah i see that as a substitute motion with a second is there any discussion on the substitute motion did you ask if there was a second on the substitute motion yes yes i'll second that it has been seconded oh okay my my question and i don't know about caitlyn my question to kevin would be i'm not sure we got greater clarity about this we've already indicated we want to take care of social emotional needs so actually i think based on what the discussion i've heard from the board and if it's recorded in the minutes our understanding is that we will go out and try and recruit as many counselors as we can and if that 1.5 million dollars is not enough we would bring back an estimate of new cost associated with that and increasing it at the time i here's here's where my clarification is as many as we need not what can i mean right we we know we have a specific framework that we have to operate in but then yeah that would be a good clarification thank you the only um clarification i would request is related to the motion it just said pass but was it specific to the items listed in green only yes yes if i'm uh that i believe that's the intent of both of them if i'm making a substitute motion instead of an amendment then the motion would be to approve funding for the items listed in green on this spreadsheet with the change as previously mentioned to the amount we're authorizing for mental health and wellness hiring so just for clarification for hr i'm essentially doing a dual recruitment one for the short term and then one for starting next year because those may be different pools or groups of people that are available so is that correct okay okay um i'm going to call for the vote member dalby hey dr kaiser yes mr tennis uh tennis eye dr eric mr lando hi i almost promoted you to a doctor robinson he's got that green shirt on with the surgical mask there we go that passes five nothing thank you members um where are we on our agenda elementary secondary schools emergency relief are we on number four i'm i'm sorry yes thank you mr baltimore uh yes and this is really a perfect example of how quickly things are changing when we brought the line items to you that were listed in gray that you approved for expenditure out of s or two dollars it wasn't until the next day that we received s or three and the state a b 86 as well so what we're requesting is that um at that time we earmarked that those five expenditures specifically to sr2 and we're asking that the board would consider unlinking those five items specifically from as her two dollars because there are different timelines associated with these dollars and now there's almost kind of a we're going to have to do some accounting work to make sure because we included the crosswalks in the other to to prove that these items are addressing covid19 we're just requesting that we eliminate that direct link to sr2 and allow us to spend this within esther 2 3 or the ab 86 dollars wow i understand that the only last thing i want to add is i did mention on the last item but we will be very specific in the accounting of this related to the state's standardized accounting code structure usually utilizing what they call goals and functions so we'll be able to report how these dollars are being used bring that back to you as the board and the community so when you talk about wellness we'll be able to report how many of those dollars based on the allocation you made we've actually spent and how those dollars were used so we'll be very specific in the accounting so that we can do accurate reporting for you this is the fun stuff hey um kevin on a somewhat serious note i want you to sort of remake a speech that you made a couple weeks ago we have a lot of money coming in right from covid relief there's a state source of money and then federal sources of money um and you said something like you had an interesting turn of phrase like like i almost want to say you can have whatever you want but but not quite that much or something but but what how should we be thinking about this money that's coming in is there is there scarcity that we should be concerned about when we talk about hiring counselors for you know for the kids in the midst of covet or should we not think in terms of scarcity for for that purpose well i think the challenge is these this is a large amount of one-time money but one by its nature it's one time so how do you effectively use the dollars one to address the learning loss and the social emotional for those kids that need it because they've gone through this experience and then how do you also leverage these dollars to give you multiple years of benefit because there's an opportunity to really create schools that we want to have and we never really had the opportunity to do before and so we're having conversations about outdoor shade structures and and you know the concrete picnic tables that are going to be there for 25 30 years it really can shape what our schools look like in that way hvac systems we'll bring more information about this but we can really move our district in a much more forward advancement towards air quality which is going to be an issue in the next year five years 10 years related just simply where we live so i think to answer your question is i typically use the term we can be anything but we can't be everything because there's a limit and i do appreciate trustee dalby's perspective wanting to grow out of it but there is a limit on the budget typically in any given year in this case might come would be we can be anything and we really can be anything as long as we do it thoughtfully permanent infrastructure is is is a really logical thing to invest in you know so the wellness center i mean i don't know how much i don't i don't know how much exactly we're pouring into that but that seems like like something that could be a really good use of this one-time money and i would really encourage the board to go through this list and we'll bring it back to you on the 21st and uh from a private prioritization standpoint but some of the things you just mentioned getting many years of benefit out of these one-time dollars would be just a very i think effective use a good stewardship use of these dollars we have had several reports now about the very high uptick in pollution due to the fires very very significant in our area and with the mega drought we're in likely to continue so i i think that issue about thinking about our air systems much more bigger or longer term than covid but you know this is a really critical issue for a lot of people so anytime something that addresses an immediate issue can be extended long term that's that's a huge benefit we may have to do the same thing with our water systems with what they're talking about so yeah i agree cable do we have any public comment have come in no none then we are at a point where i'd ask if the board has an emotion motions associated with this agenda item dr kaiser i moved 4.2.4 is there a second i'll second that i have a motion and a second is there any further discussion remember dalby nope she's shaking her head no i'm going to call for the vote all those in favor of approval signify by saying aye hi passes five nothing thank you board okay we have the approval of the student calendar under the human resources approval mr hanlon okay thank you so each year i bring to the board your approval of the calendar that is three years out and this just happens in april of the of each year and we're looking at the 2324 calendar it's there's no significant changes or anything even minor changes it's very much very traditional start and end times with the exception just a reminder we have two new board members last year we adopted the first calendar that ended on a friday rather than a thursday give you a little history that dates back to us needing to share the stadium at chico state because chico high did not have a stadium to have a graduation in so it always kind of ended on a thursday and that that set the tone for the whole district well that's not any longer necessary we have a great stadium for to hold a graduation and it's much much more friendly to our families who invite their family members in from out of town for the weekend rather than on a thursday which is is much more difficult so um other than that everything is very traditional holidays holiday breaks spring break all those things are very traditional so if you have any questions i can answer those and if if for some reason you see something on this calendar that is not acceptable you can certainly bring it back at the next meeting member dalby you have a question yeah just um for for clarification because i feel like i remember voting on calendars before does this get does this get passed by staff um to discuss it all or is it just something that gets kind of done internally and then and then and then shown to us so i do run it by both of the unions and ask for input we we also i also run it by ed services for input so there's a lot of eyes that have been on this and input um on the uh for example uh student conference days at elementary and and those types of things so um it's not just uh just me putting the calendar together we have a lot of people that that have input and opportunities for input on it mr moretti uh are you asking for input well actually um our contract says that the district will consult with cuta but since my wife and i don't agree on the on the calendar to have cuta come up with a consensus so the way the district does it where you know they put it out ask for input from everyone that is the consultation so just so you know that they are following the contract thank you mr moretti members any other just caitlyn were you finished okay members do we have any more discussion uh if not i'll we'll entertain a motion mr landau all right i moved the adoption of the 2023-24 student calendar as presented i have a motion and a second any further discussion seeing none all those in favor signify by saying aye aye aye opposed none it's unanimous thank you oops yes board member request to agendize items is number five before we adjourn to closed session i don't see any hands going up oh mr landau this is not so much request to agendas as um we heard from mary kate benson early and i just wanted to know if we had uh received that proposal from who charles was within i think white people so i don't believe the district has received a proposal from charles i believe it went to dr kaiser and we have reviewed that um we have talked about whether or not that would be appropriate or not to agendize that item and i think we're still doing some research with attorneys looking at whether or not that's even something feasible to do i'll leave that to that you guys and thank you okay then i move that we move into closed session do we have any comments from anyone wanting to comment on closed session okay see none we are recessed to closed session we will announce any actions when we are finished yes we'll need to move into the room and then miss dolby will make sure erica gets you the phone number to call in um is there any way to drag a chromebook in there and just let me zoom in on on that too or does it have to be by phone i just don't know how good my phone's gonna be okay i'm gonna guess the answer to that is yes i'm looking at mr vincent okay we'll see you in the other room caitlin all right thank you uh you
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so uh ab-1787 went into effect back in and this really revised the brown act with regard to non-english speakers so if there's an individual that requires or uses a translator they're allowed twice the amount of time so if your set time is two minutes and an individual is speaking at the podium and is usually using the translator by law they're entitled to twice the time so they would receive four minutes now this doesn't apply if you use simultaneous translation equipment so that additional time doesn't apply in that type of situation it's it's interesting the brown act has these obligations for more time and so on with regard to translators but it doesn't require districts to provide translators it's a common practice for districts that i work with especially in communities that have a lot of non-english speakers to provide translators but it's not a requirement in the brown egg okay moving on to slide 42 so there's specific rules in the brown about responding to public statements made during public comment so what the law does allow you to do as a board when you're sitting at the board is to briefly respond to a statement made or a question posed by persons making public comments it doesn't allow for engaging back and forth conversation or discussion with a member at the podium but if uh it does allow for example um uh sir i can't hear you can you repeat yourself or sir uh you made a comment about the school site which school site did you make a comment of i mean that kind of minimal type of interaction is permissible but i would say anything beyond that is not permissible and the reason is because what that what that results in is possibly conversation of an item a conversation or discussion by the board of an item that this member of the public brings forward during public comment that has not been agendized and has not been noticed and so other members of the public who might have an interest in this topic didn't have the opportunity to be aware of it and decide whether or not they wanted to come and participate in the meeting so the brown act was very clear that that that interaction is very limited typically i advise clients consistent with the brown act is if if there's something that requires or maybe warrants follow-up uh you know if a member of the public is sharing information about an item maybe reporting something that they're aware of that is of interest to the to the board the board can give staff direction please follow up with that individual let's get their information we can decide if it's something that needs to be dealt with at a future meeting or perhaps that individual can be provided contact information of the correct staff member to bring their issue to so that staff can work through the issue within the policies or procedures of the district if it's a complaint perhaps okay uh moving on to slide 43 these are just some of the typical practices or requirements so minutes are required to be taken minutes are public records of regular meetings uh there is no requirement for me for minutes and closed sessions no action may be taken by secret ballot the board must publicly report any action taken in the vote for abstention on the action of each member present for the action the board can excuse me the board the public has a right to record any meeting my motion picture camera or video audio tape i've been in meetings where relatively well before before a covet but i've been to meetings where individuals were actually live broadcasting on facebook that's permissible what you can do is you can designate an area for example if there's a matter of huge public interest and there's a lot of news media cameras there what you can do is you can designate an area in the meeting room where all the cameras can situate themselves so as to minimize the impact or disruption of others so you do have that authority [Music] and the board members are also allowed to speak on the item and then they have information from publicly making sure that they think is that correct well i guess it depends on how the board member received that information from the public i'll share with you an example i don't know if it answers your question or not but i recently had a client where they were during a meeting one of the board and i can share i won't show you the client but i can show you the facts because it was a public meeting where a member of the board received text messages from the union president and and it was responding to a public comment that was uh read in during public comments and the text message was basically disputing what had been read during public comment by some other individual who had provided this public comment and the board member shared what was in that text message and i got a call during the break and in my opinion that is not permissible because that is creating even though that's a union president it's not permissible because that's created that created another mechanism to allow a member of the public to communicate with the board which was not consistent with the mechanisms that the board had put in place to allow for public comment which was electronic email within the by by by a date specific submitted to the to the district which would be read my advice would be that that would not be advisable one of the board members saw the email [Music] would you recommend don't have time to do in that situation i would recommend that there be an individual staff member that's designated as the primary person to receive these these comments and then if or however the comments are being submitted by email and that if a board member receives a message from a member of the public saying hey there's a problem with what was read or something then that board member should relay that person back to that staff member that's responsible for coordinating the public see the public comment and have that individual communicate with that staff member and if they're in that staff member if there's time to receive but i didn't get a chance to look at what your requirements were for uh submitting electronic we allow them right in the moment in the moment if that's the process then that staff member can relate to that individual you can you can submit a correction or or submit a statement that i will read during public comment if public comments still open if it happens within that time frame but i would recommend that that the board the board members funnel those types of direct communications to the designated staff member let them deal with it otherwise there's an appearance that there's another mechanism for members of the public to communicate with the board which differs from what's been established there's going to be a few changes [Music] right uh okay so moving on to slide 44 uh board may not prohibit or restrict the broadcast of its proceedings the only exception will be if it's creating a persistent disruption any recording made by or the direction of the board shall be subject to inspection as a public record so if you record your meetings they are public records inspection of any video audio recording shall be provided without charge on a machine made available by the district moving on to slide 45 so the brown act does permit teleconferencing for all purposes in connection with any meeting teleconferencing means a meeting of the body of which the members are in different locations connected by electronic means through audio or video or both however um moving on to slide during the teleconference at least a quorum of the members of the legislative body must be within the jurisdiction of the local agency i had a situation a few years back where trustee was in maui and there was an issue of importance and that trustee needed to participate and participated from maui and that was permissible because the rest of the board were all at the dias at the board meeting room and so that person patched in but what that but brown act also requires that the agenda identified where that individual is going to be telephone conferencing from and that individual i kind of chuckled when i found out about it i didn't share this with them after but that individual was in their hotel room and participating and the individual didn't realize that if by chance there had been someone else from the community in maui and wanted to participate that board member would have been required by law to let that public member into their hotel room to participate in the board meeting so i always advise clients if if that happens ask the hotel for a conference room a meeting room or something like that so that if by chance and it's a very remote chance but you never know if by chance a member of the pub just happens to be there they're not in your personal hotel room it has to be posted on their door yes and the agenda has to be posted outside the door even in maui even in maui fortunately for is that what you're saying not under not under the cobit orders right right but prior to covet or if at some point these orders are lifted um and and if a board member were to telephone or to teleconference into the meeting and it happens that that location is your home uh then by law a member of the public if they wanted to would have to be allowed to participate in the entire meeting from your home in your home and you have to post the agenda for 72 hours yes yeah so they just say you know i'm homeless guy but i'm here for me and while i'm here i can use your wristband all right uh moving on to slide 47 so i'm going to go through the kogit 19 orders i've been going for about an hour and a half here would you like to take a break or should i continue to move forward please continue continue okay no i'm fine okay uh all right so i'm going back for one second i noticed on the last slide he said all votes taken during the teleconference meeting must be by bowl call so would that even include like the vote we did at the start of this meeting to approve the agenda we should have done that as a rule though what you're operating right now under cobit 19 executive order so a lot of the requirements shouldn't say a lot many of the requirements have been relaxed okay these these specific requirements apply prior to prior to the orders being in place and so if there is a member of the of the board that's teleconferencing in that vote should occur to ensure that their vote is part of the process okay all right slide 48 so these are some of the brown act changes that occurred as a result of some of the governor's cobia 19 executive orders so the legislative body is authorized to hold public meetings via teleconference without having to provide a physical location from which members of the public may observe the meeting and offer public comment as long as members of the public are allowed to observe and address the meeting telephonically or otherwise electronically so a lot of clients have done or districts that i work with have done as you have which allow them to participate or observe the meaning uh via zoom or whatever platform you're using and then submit comments either by phone or by email to be reread but i also have clients that have figured out that the technology is such that they can actually allow individuals to give public comment virtually and that's created a host of other issues with individuals not showing their uh you know what's the word not showing their video or their visual and in my opinion that would be permissible that would really be no different than i might be running attention but that might that would be really no different i don't know if i would probably date myself but if you remember the unknown comic i mean if someone wanted to show up at a board meeting a regular board meeting with a paper bag on their head and address the board there's nothing you could do to tell them to take that paper bag off of their head and so i analogize that to the issue of where the district is allowing is permitting uh public comment virtually and that individual member of the public doesn't want to show their video and just wants to keep it you know with maybe their name or whatever some other visual i think that's entirely permissible and you couldn't prohibit them from participating just because they didn't show their visual for the same reason as they are normal comedy okay local agencies but still ensure that they comply with ada accessibility requirements and any notice requirements so again this is just a temporary relaxing of the brown act they're eventually going to end that might be june 15th we're still waiting to get i mean there's still some contingencies with june 15 of that announcement that came out from the governor's office and from the california department of public health but we'll see slide 49 notice if each member's teleconference location is not required so that was relaxed agendas do not have to be posted on on all teleconference locations that was relaxed and the requirement that at least in form of the members are located within the territory of the jurisdiction that's been relaxed as well all right slide 50 these things still apply the legislative body must have and advertise each time so the meeting notice requirement is still required uh requests for reasonable accommodations are still required to be adhered to or honored a legislative body must provide advanced notice of the time of and post the agenda for each public meeting so your posting and agenda requirements are still required that hasn't been relaxed and the means by which members of the public may observe the meeting and offer public comment that has to be included in the notice all right slide 51 this was a subsequent order n3520 which basically allows that more than a quorum of the members of a body can meet with federal or state officials regarding cobit 19 without the need of calling a special official board um to allow the free flow of information during the pandemic uh and so on and then members are allowed to ask questions in that setting uh without any formal agenda or noticed meeting okay slide 52 the orders though do not relax the requirements that members take action uh the requirements as to what a meeting is that subject that to a to the brown act have not been relaxed so you're still not authorized to you know take any action or discuss amongst yourselves any item of business or within the jurisdiction of the of the body those requirements have not been relaxed they're still in place let's see slide 53 again okay so the executive orders are applied only during the period in which the state and local officials oppose or recommend measures to promote social distancing including limitations on public events so it's plausible that it could these orders might be lifted on june 15th there's still a lot of uncertainty there because there's a couple of triggers that need to be met if they're met we anticipated the met and if if the direction is to move forward for example the department of public california department of public health issued a publication on the sixth i believe uh effectively it was just yesterday they issued a notice that basically amongst all of the information that was in that notice said that you know consistent with this governor's action would be that the expectation that all schools return to full in-person instruction by june 15.
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if that plays out then i suspect or anticipate that there will be some uh subsequent order or confirmation that these orders were lifted in which we would go back to pre-cultivated brown act obligations and requirements and so on but there's still a lot of uncertainty there's still a lot of other things that need to happen okay moving on to slide 54 and close sessions so there are very limited exceptions in which the board can meet outside the public eye in closed session so those involve threats to public safety or security personnel issues if you're going to confer with or receive advice from legal counsel labor negotiations and issues involving real property transactions and student discipline so on slide 56 probably one of the most common proposed session items that the board will meet under would involve personnel and that would include that could include the appointment employment appointment evaluation of performance or discipline or dismissal of an employee now the employee does not include a board member so that exception cannot be used to discuss some closed session maybe an issue with a board member i actually had just last year a member of the public filed a complaint against a board member and so we had to investigate the complaint and we're trying to figure out how do we have how do we how do we talk about that complaint with the rest of the board uh because you can't use the personnel exception which you would typically use if you were dealing with a complaint against the employee but because in that situation there was the potential for litigation because of what the complaint was alleging we were able under that exception to discuss it with the board but but the general rule is that that exception the personnel exception does not apply to members of the board okay let's move on to slide 57 so one of the exceptions is specific for labor negotiations and so in that context the board can discuss in closed session with its bargaining team for either represented or unrepresented employees and those closed sessions can include discussion of the agency's funds available funds and funding priorities but they cannot include final action on any proposed compensation so you can't take any actual closed session even for negotiations regarding the compensation of your representative unrepresented employees for your representative is that typically going to happen in your 80-1200 process where the superintendent and the district's ceo is going to certify that the district can afford the compensation that we proposed that has to happen in an open public session okay slide 58 employment contracts so any contract for superintendent deputy superintendent assistant superintendent or other similar chief administrative officer or chief executive officer shall be ratified in an open session of the governing board which shall be reflected in the governing board's minutes and this has to happen at a regular meeting so anytime you're dealing with compensation or contract of a of an executive it needs to happen in open session now you can discuss the contract in terms of the contract in closed session but you cannot approve it in closed session that actually has to happen in open session to allow the public an opportunity to participate in their process uh copies of contracts any employment contracts settlement agreements those are all public for a settlement agreement it wouldn't be public until the issue was resolved and settled but those are all public documents employment contracts are all public documents moving on to slide 59 so sb 1436 in 2017 also created this responsibility or this obligation of the board to early report the summary of the recommendation so as a result of this change in the law for example if assistant superintendent's contract is going to be proved the board has to precede that action by orally reporting out the provisions of the contract with regard to compensation fringe benefits and so on to again give the public another opportunity to participate in the process and be aware of what what is being contemplated with regard to compensation for that executive okay uh page 60.
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these are examples of some safe harbor safe harbor agenda descriptions so the brown act includes a number of safe harbor agenda descriptions meaning if you agendize it this way you're good you're golden no issue with improperly agendizing an item for closed session so you've got the public employee discipline dismissal release conference with real property negotiators in that situation you have to identify the property who's the agency negotiator who are the negotiating parties and what's under negotiation price terms on slide 61 uh conference with legal counsel existing litigation uh there was a case that came down recently fowler vs city of lafayette that basically held that the board agenda packet violated the brown act because it didn't it didn't provide sufficient information about the case so you do need to provide the name of the case and if the case name is unspecified uh you have to identify that why it's not being specified but when you have this type of issue it's a good idea to consult with legal counsel and the other thing about using the uh the conference with legal counsel is technically legal counsel should even be there or you should be reviewing or receiving uh perhaps an opinion from legal counsel so it'd be okay if the superintendent shared a legal opinion provided by council it would be okay under that exception uh if that were the other thing that we we do sometimes is being available on standby in case a question arises by the board in a phone call we'll wait for a phone call if a question arises okay slide 62 prior to closed session the board must disclose an open session of the items to be discussed in closed session so technically before you convene into closed session you're supposed to either briefly discuss or say what's going to be discussed in closed session or you could very simply refer to the items that are listed in the agenda so you could say the district is before you go to the closed session the district will be competing in the call session to review the items listed on the agenda identified under closed session something as simple as that can you verify a point for us should any item be discussed in closed items in closed session that are not uh agendas or that do not fall under the uh the agenda the agenda item i will say that for example in my opinion if if the if the agenda view has the personnel the generalized discipline dismissal release if that is part of the agenda and if if the board was going or the staff we're going to discuss with the board the termination of employee a and sometime between the the agenda being posted and the actual meeting occurring within that 72 hours there was now an issue with employee b being totally unrelated to employee aid in my opinion it would be permissible to discuss employee b as well under that agenda item because it it it covers anything that would deal with uh dismissal or release of an employee you raise a great question and my advice to to clients trustees is we all we all benefit by helping each other reminding each other about the limitations of the brown act because it's not uncommon and i've been in closed session meetings regularly but it's not uncommon for a conversation to go lateral and you're talking about one topic and then another item that's just very loosely related on the periphery uh comes up and as a lawyer i have to diplomatically remind the board uh you're going beyond the agendized item i have to advise you not to discuss it but you don't always have a lawyer there in the meetings and so it's it's i think it's a benefit to all trustees to help each other and remind each other you know um of the limitations of the brown act and your superintendent uh is there as well to assist with that uh or whatever other staff is present but it's you know it's it's it it happens on occasion it does happen on occasion and it's it's a good opportunity just to remind an individual uh about the limitation yes so very often we will have the superintendent's annual review on the agenda for uh you know several conversations if there are goals on the superintendent's annual review that relates to an issue that is currently happening let's say there's a communications issue and that's part of his uh goal then we do to discuss those things in relation to his annual review um are we are we getting into dicing water at that point i mean to me it seems like it can get dicey if the intent of the conversation is to focus on that issue or item and how the superintendent handled it or is handling it consistent or in the context of his evaluation or in areas or goals of which he is being evaluated then it's likely permissible but if the intent is to use the evaluation closed session exception to just talk about items carte blanche and that would not be uh permissible so it's you know it's it's it's it's an issue that needs to be uh finally navigated um because i'm about to get into the enforcement piece of of a post session but anything else on that question the intent of the law is to ensure that the public is part of the process and it's transparent and there's very limited exceptions where the board is allowed to meet outside of the public's purview right in closed session and one of those being personnel and within personnel an evaluation of an employee and so you know i could see the issue arise i've never i've never observed it here but i have seen it with other clients where i'm sitting in closed session and a topic comes up and it's loosely related and that might be okay but then further dialogue then it becomes more apparent that yeah we're we're pushing over uh and we're now going outside of the bounds of what was agendized and that's well that's where i will make a reminder so it's something that you you know there's no there's no brown act police sitting in a meeting and you're really obligated on your own as trustees and employees of the district that might be in closed session to help each other navigate what can and can't be discussed and errors occur you know it's human nature for error to occur but when errors become common practice is when that creates issues which may be subject to sanction as well can you touch just for a moment on what happens in closed session stays in procession and the violations yes i'm just about to get to that so that's a good segue um actually that's my next slide so 60 65.
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so the law is clear that a person may not disclose confidential information that has been acquired by being present in an authorized closed session to a person not entitled to receive it so board members discuss an item in closed session the sanctity of closed session is it's not permitted to be pierced um there's very limited exception so whatever you learn in closed session stays in closed session um and and you know there's there's there's great value to that because again the general rule is everything happens in open session public as part is is a part of it but the legislature has concluded that in limited exceptions there should be an opportunity for members of the body or the board to discuss an item of important of importance to the district to allow for the free flow of discussion about a very important item and there has to be this understanding that in that little exception the sanctity of that closed session cannot be violated it has to stay there the only limited exceptions to that are if perhaps there was some perception or belief a legitimate belief that perhaps something that was being discussed was inappropriately discussed during closed session that wasn't within the confines of what was agenda or something illegal was being discussed or perhaps you know there was some business being contemplated or or discussed in closed session that triggered some whisper whistleblower obligation so there's very limited exceptions where the sanctity of closed session can be pierced i mean defined by law and if and the law also it's clear that if a person or a trustee or a member of the legislative of a legislative body that's subject to the brown act if they willfully violate closed session and disclose information willfully that's a that's an item that's reportable to the grand jury and then the grand jury can determine uh what discipline or or sanction or legal action should be imposed against that member of the board so it's it's it's a serious thing my advice to clients is to whatever said in closed session stays in close closed sessions you don't want to risk information being disclosed or being subject to something like that where there's even an allegation that a trustee willfully violated it because then that goes to the grand jury you potentially have the d.a district attorney involved and those things don't always stay confidential those are the kinds of stories that the media just loves to run with anytime they can put a public official negative light it seems they seem to revel in that so it's something to be mindful of we have had on occasion parents who have wanted to come in and speak to us in closed session over discipline of a child or teachers who have wanted to speak to us for various reasons and i think that's one of the catch 22s of closed session is if they come in and speak to us about something and then later whatever they said in possession is out there for whatever reason they could turn around and come back and say well that came from closed session when it may came yeah that's that's one of the risks of inviting and the board has discretion to invite someone into closed session they have that discretion um but it's one of the risks of inviting someone who's outside of the agency in the closed session because you can't necessarily ensure that they're going to maintain the sanctity of closed session my advice is if you're going to do that is to remind them that you are in closed session by law anything discussed or disclosed a discussed in closed session is confidential and may not be shared outside of closed session but even that is not always enough to keep them from sharing information right okay slide 66 so there are enforcement remedies of civil remedies such as injunction in that paradigm case that i shared the families were able to get an injunction against the school district also violations of the meeting notice and agenda provisions may cause an action to be null and void such actions may be commenced by the district attorney or by any interested person so moving on to slide 67 there is an opportunity to cure and correct so if a violation does occur and i've had this happen where a client reaches out to me and says hey you know turns out we made a mistake i said well you're incorrect it may not look good for the district but you know errors do occur and there is an opportunity to correct it so if you're incorrect basically you're redoing the action making sure it's properly noticed and agendized and redoing the action if that doesn't occur if the current correct doesn't occur then there's the opportunity for the for the interested person or the da to come after the district and come after a district for violating the brown act if an individual does it and they're successful they can recover attorneys fees and that's one of the limited exceptions one of the limited instances where attorneys fees can be recoverable against the public agency and that can be costly so if a if a mistake occurs my advice is always pure incorrect we don't want to take the risk with some type of litigation and then having to shell out uh turning schemes to the to the filing party all right slide 68 under enforcement uh the brown act also allows the district attorney or an interested person to follow an action regarding past violations they have to do within nine months of the alleged violation starting with a cease and desist letter but there is the ability for members for members of the public out there to also try to enforce the ground act for past violations all right now slide 69 the q a stump the lawyer lawyer is there is there any questions that i can try to answer that you might have i cannot tell you what's in marie's cake recipe i have no idea i can just tell you it's delicious for me and i would just say i appreciate scott i like the level of detail too and i like the examples because you read the slides and you you hear but the examples bring it to life so thank you i mean i don't know questions if you're going to speak nancy speak into the microphone they're they were high but that's okay you don't need to i'm sorry it didn't he didn't know what i was talking about anyway so it's okay i asked if he was around during the date of rivers days and he didn't know dana all right i actually had a question concerning that uh [Music] a lot of good information and um [Music] thank you thank you [Music] i just want to clarify that we will have a virtual option available um [Music] yes that was the plan you have the virtual option yes thank you [Laughter] miss anderson and dr lee seconded i actually dr lee and trustee anderson both of them simultaneously it was not bruno for the second so take your pick from dr lee or miss anderson for the second to adjourn i think we're all getting tired i am yes all right thank you
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okay good afternoon everyone i'm gonna call to order this friday april 9th 1pm uh uh 90 minutes how uh senate health committee agenda i'm senator jarrett with hello later on the committee uh we're going to open on our 1pm agenda which is a joint committee hearing between the senate committees on health human services and education to consider house concurrent resolution 162-81 requesting this department of human services department of health department of education uh collect information on the sex sexual orientation and gender identity and gender expression of respondents including respondents who are under the supervision of the court and the hawaii youth correctional facility in the unlikely event that we must well actually you know we're gonna open and get through this really quickly it's called we can't receive things from deadlines uh for testifiers again your audio and video will be muted and disabled until it is your turn there's a two-minute time limit that we ask you to kindly respect we've reviewed your submitted testimony it's been provided to the members so in the interest of time i'd like to encourage you to stand on your testimony rather than reading it verbatim or you can use your time to augment or clarify your remarks and if there are technical glitches or we lose you temporarily we may have to move on to the time constraints but we'll try and see if we can come back circle back to you to allow you to testify okay so hcr 162 uh first up we have um michael goldiew jr the lgbt caucus of the democratic party's hawaii support uh good afternoon senators happy aloha friday on behalf of the lgbt caucus my name is michael galloway jr we stand in full support of the uh resolution presented to you um and we thank you for hearing this resolution um and that's it mahalo thank you very much next we have shayna alexander in support do we have her on not present senator okay that's all the testimony we've received from individuals uh from the public who indicated they would be present is there anyone else on the conference who would like to testify on this revolution okay none i'd like to note the written comments on this measure from the department of human services and supporting testimony oh and and also late comments from the department of health and testimony in support from the office of blind affairs the boy youth service network the lgbtq plus rainbow alliance planned parenthood alliance advocate pride at work hawaii rainbow family 808 the trevor project members any questions for mr goliath okay seeing none shares with your involvement unless anyone wants to break out i i'm ready to make recommendations is that okay i i have a question of the department of health but is anyone present they don't appear to be so we can reach us if you like oh actually lola would you like to take the question yeah i just want to know if the the report that they talk about in the resolution was made available to us or or like and the doe that we actually publish 2018 and 2019 thank you senator kadani i really appreciate that question so if you look at the testimony i have live links on there i don't think we published enough um to hand them out at that time individual copies to legislators but we certainly can deliver them to you if you'd like printed copies it is online so on the testimony if you click on what is seen in blue under on page two you can actually go straight to those pdfs okay thank you little i did not see your testimony oh i'm so sorry we'll pull it up but we'll pull it up thanks okay thank you you know what why don't we uh why don't we reset and then we can go over the recommendations i said okay we're going to reconvene on this 1pm join agenda to vote on a hvr 162 hd1 so the recommendation is going to be that we amend this resolution taking into account the testimony and remove references to the department of education and the department of health surveillance system and instead we're going to urge the department of public safety and the department of human services this is what we're going to amend the title accordingly is to urge the department of public safety and the department of human services to work with the department of health department of education and judiciary to submit a plan to account for gender identity for incarcerated and court involved youth and work with the department of health gender minority working group to address the incidence of lgbtqi youth in the juvenile and criminal justice justice system there are also some technical non-substantive amendments members any questions okay being none uh voice chair hcr 162 passing with amendment chair both eyes uh chair votes i vice chair votes i senator morawaki senator favela right thank you members uh chair your recommendation has been adopted thank you very much okay for human services same recommendation senator missa lucha for the vote for hcr hd1 share recommends or same recommendation chair votes eyes vice chair ihara aye senator acostro hi senator misalucha votes aye senator favela i share your recommendations adopted thank you very much for the committee on education chair recommends uh with the same recommendation pass and mints chair boats eye senator kim for the vote the chair votes i vice chair vote side senator de la cruz excused excuse senator kanu yes birthday boy votes yes and senator [Music] former president voting i recommendations adopted thank you you very much to all the members of the joint committee we're going to adjourn this 1pm agenda and members of health and consumer protection be done by uh we're gonna go into recess and stand by for ic to give us to go to open up on one of the five okay good afternoon we are reconvening i'm going to open this 105 pm joint agenda between the senate health committee and the senate consumer protection committee to hear two resolutions the first is hcr 80 hd1 this requests that the united states fda promote transparency and enforcement by providing individual free markets tobacco product application applicant information of hawaii sellers to the attorney general's office for law enforcement purposes first up we have the department of health offering comments thank you senator the department of health stands on his testimony offering comments and um because of the millions of products and thousands of manufacturers that have submitted their applications we do not think that the fda will complete the review of the applications by september 2021 so therefore in terms of what h080 is requesting um we don't find that this would actually address the primary issue which is to provide protection for our youth and foreign keiki from the marketing of e-cigarettes so we do offer up our comments and the reasons why i'm in our testimony thank you for the opportunity to testify thank you very much next in support we have the hawaii public health institute aloha chairs vice chairs and members of the committee uh jaylen murakami with hawaii public health institute we stand on our written testimony in support because we support the enforcement of federal regulations on tobacco products but defer to the departments on the implementation of this mahalo that's all the live testimony we've received is there anyone else on the conference who would like to testify okay being none i'd like to note the written testimony and support from the hawaii copd coalition forest bats and late testimony from the attorney general's office offering comments that's all the testimony we've received members are there any questions we have the department of health and department of health and so on okay seeing no questions we will move to the next resolution on the agenda that's hdr 123 hd1 is requesting the convening of a working group to determine the gaps in assets to healthcare and the potential role advanced practice registered nurses may play in addressing those gaps first we have uh the board of nursing offering comments thank you um we'll stand up and some questions you may have thank you thank you very much next we have the hawaii medical board offering comments good afternoon chairs vice chairs alanine keoki with the hawaii medical board the board will stand on its written testimony offering comments thank you very much university of hawaii university hawaii we also stand on our testimony recommending the how the resolution one two four which we prefer that charges the legislative reference bureau to conduct the assessment thank you thank you very much next we have the hawaii state center for nursing offering comments hi this is laura reichardt the director of the hawaii state center for nursing and we stand under comments and are available for thank you very much that's all the live testimony we've received is there anyone else on the conference who would like to testify okay i'd also like to note the written testimony and support from all of here of queen's health system doctoring comments and yvonne dc in opposition members are there any questions okay seeing none i think we can move right into decision making so the first recommendation on hcr 80 this is the fda request to provide pre-market tobacco product application information after reviewing the testimony especially the testimony of the attorney general's office it seems clear that this resolution one may be necessary at the beginning of the session uh now it doesn't look like it's necessary because the fca appears to be already on on its way towards providing this information so i'm going to recommend we defer on the last resolution on the agenda hdr given the testimony by the different members of the community including the members who would have worked on the proposed working group i'm going to recommend that we i'm going to recommend that we accept the recommendations of the testifiers and amend this resolution tremendous resolution so that we can go asking for the legislative reference bureau to do a study as noted in the pencil members are there any questions can we break into recess for a short discussion and visit things okay uh read that i said it okay we're going to reconvene for decision making on it's 105 pm april 9th agenda as noted before on hdr 80 we're going to defer on hdr 123.
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here we go i'd like to call this meeting to order due to the covid19 health emergency and in order for the board of education to conduct its business this board meeting is being held via video conference and streamed live on youtube on the district website at www.ebnet.org in addition members of the public may provide common at this meeting through zoom by entering the url meeting id and password you see before you on the screen upon joining the meeting your participation will be muted to ensure there is no disruption to the business being conducted by the board of education what the secretary please call the role mr carangelo here mrs chu here mr sismar here mrs guasts here mr hong yeah this is lex here this is reese here mr winston here president becker here we have a quorum please rise to salute the flag i pledge allegiance pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all [Music] the new jersey open public meeting law was enacted to ensure the right of the public to have advanced notice of and to attend the meetings of public bodies at which any business affecting their interest is discussed in accordance with the provisions of this act the east brunswick board of education has caused notice of this meeting to be published at the board of education offices also written notice was provided to the sentinel the newark star ledger the whole news in tribune and the municipal clerk of east brunswick all board of education meetings with the exception of executive executive session discussions are videotaped for later broadcasts and individuals who speak at the board's public meeting should be aware of these videotaping rules good evening thanks for joining us tonight we'll start off with the superintendent's report thank you president becker good evening everyone yesterday the district ran a covet vaccination clinic at hammershould middle school under the direction of deborah millar director of community outreach and engagement for penn medicine princeton health together we successfully administered the first dose of the vaccination to over 80 district employees and 50 east brunswick residents in under three hours we are grateful to team brunswick nurses sso's custodians all who provided logistical support ensuring a successful clinic our second dose clinic for those individuals takes place on may 5th i also want to say something that something of this magnitude was not achievable without the terrific support i enjoy i want to give thanks to daniel ruggiero director of human resources and her hr coordinator stephanie podobiki as well as my secretary janet angeline and my executive assistant karen mandler they were on site with me greeting managing coordinating and finally soliciting replacements for anyone who didn't keep their assigned appointment this event was formalized in only a few days and every available vaccine was administered and i'm so proud of these ladies they never hesitate to be on the front lines of anything initiated from my office and no one could have ever forecasted that we would be in the vaccination business but yesterday we were and these ladies along with all those from penn medicine did it with eb excellence we were notified this week that the new jersey department of education or by the new department of education that the new jersey student learning assessment also known as the njsla will not be administered this year east brunswick public schools will use alternate assessment measures to comply with njdo's requirements so that's good news for us because the management of administering that assessment for both our in-person and our virtual learners was going to be a massive undertaking in terms of resources manpower and safety the churchill junior high school drama club is having a virtual spring performance entitled whose kid is it anyway this comedy improv show features songs skits games and tons of laughter it is a family friendly content that everyone will enjoy performances will stream april 15th through april 18th at 7 pm and tickets are available for and fifty cents and can be purchased at cjhs.book ticks that's b-o-o-k-t-i-x dot com and all proceeds are being donated to elijah's promise of new brunswick a very worthy cause third quarter report cards can be viewed online through parent access on friday april 23rd hard copies will be made available at the request of anyone without internet access thank you thank you dr velesky now i believe that you have a presentation for us we do um we have uh mr giuliana and i have a facilities presentation and um so if you will um i'll do the introduction and um if you'd like we'll go ahead and get started the pandemic interrupted our state of the district address that i normally deliver to our community each may before the conclusion of the school year in tonight's presentation entitled building our success is an abbreviated version of some of the elements i would have presented to the community in our district's efforts to remain transparent about planning for critical and time-sensitive projects that are focused on improving every student's experience at east brunswick public schools additionally tonight we are going to address the additional state aid we receive this year because it too is time sensitive we will explain how much discretionary money we actually received and how that funding is allocated to a variety of operational expenses this year secondly we will also talk about our elementary class size growth and elementary classroom capacities we revised our recommended facilities approach to address the immediate intermediate and longer term problems we need to solve we concentrated on layering sequential facility solutions in a timely and methodical way that affords the highest impact for every student's educational quality and experience these solutions need to be implemented within a reasonable time frame while still maintaining a strong focus on efficiency and cost containment tonight's facilities portion of the presentation is about what we need to do how we are planning to do it and when the community can expect for it to be done and this is actually surrounded by three distinct priorities one is to build sustainable elementary classroom capacity in all in all elementary schools focus on equity across elementary schools and contain costs to minimize the tax impact burden on township residents and so just to provide a perspective on march 18th 2020 when we closed our schools because of covet 19 we immediately re-envisioned what instruction could look like and what it would need to be because we didn't have a choice we were motivated by external circumstances we could not control our success was evident because we had invested years of thoughtful planning and preparedness into how we would and could virtualize teaching and learning so in many ways that scenario is about to replay itself we know the migration of families to east brunswick is real resales of existing east brunswick properties are bringing more families with school-age children we know they are coming for our schools and unfortunately the window for planning and preparing for our anticipated increase in student enrollment especially at the elementary level is quickly shrinking it has been over a year since the beginning of the pandemic and virtualization of academics health and safety in our schools and now vaccinations have been our priorities but we have never lost ground in our facilities planning that began many years ago so taking you back to one year ago we were about to implement a board approved plan to install temporary classroom units also known as tcus at warren storefor and irwin elementary schools to address elementary classroom capacities enrollment growth projections from a demographic study that was presented to the board of education in july of 2019 tonight's presentation represents the culmination of our past year of replanting involving six essential but negotiable elements first is space how much of it do we need second is placement where do we need that space and other facility features third is integration how does this plan that we are presenting tonight fit into our existing facility structure and future facility needs then communication that is what tonight is about and many of you have gotten to know me but you probably recognize my voice more than my face that is part of our communication this board of education is committed to being transparent and i'm simply the mechanism that gets to deliver the messages to our community but that communication about our facilities planning is so important it's important for every community member it's also intended to solidify the trust and partnership we have and continue to build among the schools the township and of course our greater community we have to worry about the environment that our teaching and learning will occur in and even athletic spaces how will they support our students real world preparedness how will our facilities support daily occupancy and something we didn't think about a year ago but what post pandemic facility issues will we need to address with any temporary or future facilities and finally security something that this district has worked very hard at we're very proud of the security force that we've created but what security design opportunities present themselves with any new facility or newly added additions to existing facilities so to add more color to each of these overviews that i've opened with i'm going to turn over to mr giuliana who has a presentation aligned with this thank you dr valeski firstly i wanted to address part of what you mentioned with regard to state school aid this is an excerpt of information that i had presented during the tentative budget adoption so there are selection selected uh aspects that i think are important for the community to understand this first slide represents the history of state aid going back to fiscal 2009 but a particular focus is fiscal 2021 and you see that there are two numbers identified there firstly when we adopted a final budget that budget was adopted with the states having state having notified the district that we would be receiving 22.2 million dollars in state aid everything was in place we were moving forward with that budget implementation however due to the pandemic and subsequent to implementing the final budget the state reduced the state aid levels to 20 million 500 000 in order to continue with the plan we had to bridge the gap of that lost revenue the budget was already struck everything was in motion and so while there's been discussion with regard to the increase in state aid what's been publicized has been that increase in state aid from the 20.5 million up to next year's 25.8 million but it's important to note that while we had to bridge that gap in the current year we had continuing costs that were would carry forward and could not be eliminated so what comprises those amounts with regard to state aid so we had a custodial and transportation savings from the covid uh closures that amounted to 94 940 000 we had enterprise revenue that we were able to tap into retained earnings of approximately 790 dollars those two components alone were one-time impacts we had those sources of revenue once they would not repeat themselves now looking forward collective bargaining and contractual base salary commitments that amounts to approximately 2.59 million dollars our projected net health benefit cost approximately two hundred thousand dollars transportation services will increase approximately three hundred forty thousand dollars facilities maintenance five hundred and sixty thousand dollars charter schools it will increase by four hundred and twenty thousand dollars and insurance will increase by approximately one hundred thousand dollars those budgetary impacts alone are 5.94 million dollars we can't talk about state aid and those cost effects without reminding the community of the impact that the charter school has had upon the district's budget you see historically where we've come since 2009 when our levels were at under ten thousand dollars to now where we are budgeting for next year 3.6 million dollars that's a substantial portion of the district budget that comes almost entirely out of the base and is an amount that we are required to budget and pay out to mostly to the charter school in town so with that i hope that provides a little color with regard to state aid let me move into the facilities discussion having a minor technical difficulty here so just bear with me please there we go so building our success let's begin with reviewing our enrollment for pre-k to five historical and projected this is precisely out of the demographers report that was presented in july of 201 2019 so what we have here are the actual enrollments from 2009 10 through 2018-19 you see that the high point was back in 2009-10 we had a slight decrease over a number of years and then starting to move back up in our enrollment projections showing that our enrollment would continue to steadily rise from 2019-20 on through 2023-24 to a high of 3935 students and this is strictly at the elementary level the projected enrollment increase would be 372 students when we look at the high point of 2009 to just next year in the 2022-23 school year when we look another year out that projected enrollment increases 400 411 students from 2009-10 to the 2023 school year this is the equivalent of one entire elementary school so what are the issues and the considerations that we've had to deal with and address in our planning firstly we currently have no available classrooms at the elementary schools we have limitations on meeting additional special needs requirements we have no space for adding additional self-contained classrooms or spaces for supports our art classrooms are now relegated out to a cart in some instances and music classrooms no longer are available in some cases need to address school security with any plan that we put in place we looked at expansions to existing elementary school buildings and how that would impact the site configurations because not all of our elementary sites would be able to support additional classroom spaces being added in addition the impact to neighborhood traffic is a key issue by adding uh space onto each of the elementary schools we're bringing additional traffic into that community and how would that then adversely affect the community of course we want to minimize the fiscal impact and come up with a plan that would uh actually be the best cost-effective plan and the durability of any expansions meaning that anything that we do would need to last a long time we don't want a band-aid approach we want something that's going to last be durable and address the needs for an extended period of time into the future so as we look at our school structure our elementary schools are k to five hammer shoulders six to seven churchill grades eight through nine and the high school grades 10 through 12.
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we are live good afternoon everyone uh now is the time set for the work study session uh of the arizona state schools for the deaf and the blind board uh i begin with item one the roll call um sue k can you take the roll call sure can linda both uh i see her i see her on the zoom okay i'll move forward and come back around okay brittany buchanan president uh lynn davison present mike gordon is absent pv chance i see him on screen too dean howard president sue k knightful david nigro oh prison and then aaron wonders president and i'll go back to pb jams so this is leticia i just got a text from linda saying she can't open her picture her camera okay i don't know but she's she's present she you got a text from her so we're good okay um great thank you sue kay you're welcome linda we could we can work on that um i hope to to open that um open that up and and let us know when uh when you're able to do that um moving on to uh number two um we have the uh review of strategic planning to date uh so and again we have some some new board members i think this is the first work study session for for three of the board members and we do have a new board member that is a new for today and we'll go through a more formal uh you know introduction uh at the next board meeting this is a recent change uh but to you know review this to date you know this is the strategic plan is really the work of the board uh that's that's kind of what the board does it's a primary uh responsibility of ours uh to do long-range strategic planning to lead the agency over time and to build institutional stability the staff is charged with running the agency day-to-day implementing the various things that we would direct um you know but our our job is really to uh to lead the way and to provide the vision so so this is really the work of the board and and i'm really happy that everyone's participated uh in this in this project over time uh you know we've worked on this for several months now we've got delayed a little bit due to covid but you know if you if you've stretched back and again for the new board members you can view all of our work study sessions online if you if you look back uh you can see that we took a survey and we did some brainstorming in one session then we kind of went out and we studied a different strategic plans from all different sorts of schools and school districts so school districts in arizona schools for the deaf and schools for the blind in the western united states in california and colorado and utah and texas and some other places new mexico and you know we got an idea of what the landscape was i think there were a couple of dozen or so that we actually pulled and reviewed in detail and we were able to draw from that and kind of come to what what really mattered to us and and what mattered to asdb in the unique role that uh you know this this agency uh plays in in arizona we were able to again in prior work study sessions uh build some some pillars uh that these are really our our core values uh of the agency we were able to get some consensus on that uh and then we moved on uh you know to some some other uh the you know the priorities um and these are the the high level priorities that advance each pillar and under each pillar we develop some guiding principles uh and each of those guiding principles uh support um that particular priority again that's i think what we've referred to informally as the the top of the page so that that's been our work thus far um and you know that's that's kind of where we where we've been in this process again for the new board members um i'll move on to point to point three where we talk about today's task but i do want a reminder as a housekeeping matter if you do if a board member does need to drop off of the call please just send leticia an email so that we can properly record the time of your departure for the minutes we want to make sure we get you know an accurate record for that so number three explanation of today's tasks you know today we're focused on the objectives we've already had one work study session uh that's that's based on on looking at these objectives this is the again the bottom of the page as we formally call it and you know we've looked at these uh at the most recent work study session we had you know quite substantial feedback for the staff uh back in february early february they've they've gone and they've made some some substantial improvements i think to this plan which we all now have and we've had for over a week now so that we can uh review it in this work study session and provide some input on on each uh one of these sets of objectives and and you know to kind of again to orient yourself you know these are specific you know often quantifiable metrics by which we're going to judge the agency's performance uh in the future so you know today is not a discussion of tactical choices we're not going to discuss a particular action or we're not taking a particular action um we're going to be talking about setting the the groundwork or setting the metrics by which we'll know we have you know we have achieved or we know we've achieved progress when you know x happens when we see some metrics move in some direction and when we develop these metrics and start looking at them because you know frankly for many of these we don't have baseline data so we want to develop that um you know that that progress isn't going to be shown for a number of years for some of them because we just don't have uh baseline data for some of these metrics but the idea is that it's not that we're we're going to take a particular tactic or not or take a particular action or not we want to talk about you know what the what the strategic objective should be uh and then you know the rest of our work in in you know the coming uh months and years is going to be uh working on those tactics to achieve those those strategic goals and strategic objectives for each of the objectives uh again we're going to look at the the objective what it is what we're trying to measure what we're trying to look at the methodology by which we're going to measure it so we can be consistent over time and the potential limitations of that methodology because you know we know there's you know limitations on any piece of data that we're going to gather the frequency if i wish we're going to measure it this way we're applying these measurements consist consistently over time and we understand the limitations of each one i don't think there's going to be a particular metric we're going to look at and say you know we're going to judge the entire agency's performance on this one metric it's really you know how all these metrics performing as a set uh you know on a holistic basis we're going to monitor these continuously so we're going to match our agendas in the future for our meetings uh up with these uh with with these pillars and priorities we're going to be able to to very specifically track our actions in the future that will support different areas of the strategic plan and we're going to be able to monitor this data continuously some of the data is only going to get updated every every year some of it twice a year some of it every month or or every couple of months they're gonna be at different frequencies but we're gonna be able to see this and monitor it on a regular basis uh likely every board meeting maybe maybe more frequently than that but at least every board meeting will have an idea of where we're going and if we're not making progress that we want we can we can all talk about it uh and talk about what we can do differently uh you know to start moving the ball forward there so again that's that's why this uh you know today is pretty important um and uh you know again it's it's we want to hear all the board's uh input on these particular objectives uh now before we move on to the next point in four again just to remind the new board members uh you know this is a more informal meeting than we typically have uh you know a regular board meeting um we you know our agenda isn't as structured we still have an agenda we still have we still have to stick to it uh we can only discuss things that are reasonably related to the agenda items and what's already been put up on board docs so we can't stray too far from that uh but you know in terms of the discussion uh it's a it's a pretty open discussion feel free to jump in when you can or you know when it's appropriate uh you know that said please be respectful of other people's time we have no time limit for this meeting um and so there's plenty of time for everyone to be heard i'm not going to be the moderator in terms of you know calling on people necessarily i will kind of sit back and try to make sure that everyone has time and that and someone's trying to get a point in that they can be recognized but uh you know for the most part i think um if you just observe typical rules of civility i think we'll be okay um you know but again there's there's no reason to you know raise your hand or something like that to be called on you you can talk when you when you when it's appropriate and when someone else is finished uh and again we do want to hear from david this is linda if you don't mind can we start with introductions as far as who's replacing mike manley oh yes linda and maybe um i'm not sure if your the connection didn't didn't work but in the uh uh in the roll call um uh aaron wonders has replaced mike manley uh as the representative from superintendent hoffman and that was just a recent change we'll have a more formal introduction and we'll recognize mike mandeling more formally at our next regular board meeting but aaron wonders for the purposes of you know this of the board really but for this meeting in particular uh is is now on our board as of uh i'm not exactly sure the date it might have been yesterday uh and uh he'll be you know he'll be in mike manley's seat uh we'll we'll also have to replace mike manley on the on the finance committee but again we'll take all of that regular business up at the next board meeting in may is that does that make sense linda um could we maybe talk a little bit about him i i feel more comfortable since he's here in our meeting i'm not sure familiar with aaron wonders what's your background and how are you coming to the board with us because that's typically a cultural thing we do in deaf cultures we want to know who are we working with so i'd definitely sure know aaron a little bit more as a board member sure i guess as we're here um to be honest i i don't know mr wonders either so uh uh mr wonders if you uh uh would like to just maybe come on and uh say a few a few words about yourself absolutely uh thank you mr president and uh members of the board uh aaron wonders here on behalf of the department of education i'm the deputy associate superintendent for legislative affairs at the department of education my background is really in the legislative affairs so prior to working at the department i was a staffer over in the house of representatives in the state house i staffed the house education committee uh for seven sessions succession somewhere around there uh and then have joined the department of education since the beginning of 2019 um so in my capacity as a board member here serving on behalf of superintendent hoffman and very much looking forward to getting to know everyone um and working with the board excellent thank you thank you thank you mr wonders and again i think we'll have a more formal introduction and now that we uh understand that you've replaced mr manley we'll we'll uh be able to do that i guess as we typically do at the next board meeting uh so now that we've we've gone through that we've kind of set the the scene and just i'm sorry to interrupt but i from a deaf perspective i think that's important culturally speaking since it's a representative of our board uh just to give you an idea of who it is that's here now on our board and i think others can hear his voice and in deaf speak we see your voice now so thank you thank you linda um so uh with with that said the the next item uh which is gonna be the core of our meeting the pillar presentation and discussion um there are four pillars uh we're gonna take them up in order um pillar one is superintendent reichman uh fortunately uh she is able to join us we weren't sure if she would uh but she is here uh so we're and we're happy about that certainly um so uh superintendent reichman if you could take us in on just maybe a couple of minutes to talk about your section of objectives and then we'll open it up to discussion uh to the board members to discuss those objectives i know we've you know we've had these for uh over a week now so i'm hoping that we all have some good input for you thank you president nigro i'm happy to be here so members of the asdb board my part is the first pillar i'm focusing on communication and relationship building that pillar has three priorities if you read our report for our performance measures you would see that there are seven metrics under pillar one the first priority is first-rate customer service that has two performance measures one is a survey to parents asking their satisfaction with the school and the programming and asdb the second is a satisfaction survey to asdb employees there are satisfactions with their jobs and with the superintendent and my work so those two performance measures when we're thinking about communication and relationship building how do you measure performance as you know asdb is successful at communicating with the stakeholders and how do we know we are being successful at building those relationships so we will be doing these performance measures to try and elicit data for you to be able to review and to see if asdb is successful at building this capacity for communication and relationships the second priority is building capacity with school districts that has two performance measures the force the first is special education's director's satisfaction survey asking about their satisfaction with asdb school programs the second measure is enrollment of students if special education students are satisfied with our school and our programming they will refer students to us so that would be the second measure for that priority in that pillar the third priority for pillar one is engaging the community that'll be a new survey conducted annually asking the community about their satisfaction with asdb to other performance measures we'll be looking at our web page how many people actually look at our web page and the second measure will be targeting our social media platforms such as facebook twitter and how many people are actually engaging in those posts monthly so we will be uploading those numbers that would give us some guidance on how much we are engaging the community so that is the first pillar back to you president nigro uh thank you superintendent reichman i appreciate that that introduction um you know i think from here um we can start i don't know that i necessarily need to go through objective uh 1.1 1.2 1.3 individually but i like to open the floor to board members who have any any input on on any of these objectives and this is pv i think so far it looks wonderful i do have two questions first being how do you plan to measure engagement of students and family members such as parents and the community themselves that do not have access to the internet so they will not be able to participate like in social media engagement and that's typically a challenge for those that do not have that excess access especially in those remote rural areas second just based on the involvement the current numbers appear to predict a specific go so do we have a current target number compared to predictions have you compared that will that be part of your measurements to answer your question we have been performing parent surveys for the last several years we have collected that data but we didn't have the board involved with our parent satisfaction and reviewing that so we already have a system in place for that networking with parents to elicit their feedback on their satisfaction with our schools and our programs i'm not sure about those who do not have access to the internet i'm not sure how we handled that in the past i know that due to kovid we've had to work with parents to figure out how to get internet access to those students so that they are able to receive their education online so we have been addressing some of that thank you [Music] hello superintendent this is linda that's a good question that was brought up i really appreciate the the layout you'll have to publish this and get it printed it'll be called the bible i'm curious more about the community how are you going to be able to collaborate and engage the community i feel like there has been a gap there again how will you draw them to be engaged how will you have that measurement do you have kind of a vision for that or is that am i jumping ahead too early this is actually a new area we have done special education director surveys parents satisfaction surveys but we have not done a community satisfaction survey so we're not sure exactly the details of how it's going to be implemented and what it looks like but it's like a typical written survey that sent out we might not get a lot of response for those so how are we going to elicit and perform those surveys we haven't determined that as of yet we're just proposing this to you that we can do satisfaction surgeries to the community and if the board is interested in that and thinks it's a good idea we would figure out how to make sure that the blind community as well as the deaf community take that survey and get our responses back and we wanted to make sure that the survey itself is accessible and convenient to answer thank you it seems that there's no other questions i'll turn it back over to you president nigro okay i have a few questions and again if any of the board members uh have anything else to say they can jump in after after me um thank you superintendent right then for these uh objectives i think i think they're they're great they're um this whole document i think is a just a really substantial improvement from what we looked at last time uh and i'm really happy with it overall um in terms of uh your section uh there's just a couple of things i had here i mean you know one the um in terms of the you talk about in section 1.22 some you know some methodologies or the description of obtaining this data from children that we serve in the early learning preschool the campus-based schools and on the itinerant services through the co-ops um you know in terms of the the early learning program i know that we have uh some you know private um organizations that serve some of the children in the preschool and early intervention um will we be tracking the the performance of those agencies as well i mean in particular fbc and desert voices and i think zimmerman is the other contractor um are we going to be able to break it down by you know by that in that level of detail we can do that i'm not sure that we've done that with parent surveys but as we gather surveys in the future we can break that information down by where the student or the child is located and where the parents are receiving services okay i think that would be helpful uh for us to have that information um you know in terms of the the the number of students survey i know we have the number of students on campus and in the co-op um you know there's you you bring up some good points in your limitations that you know the the the co-op serve students that uh you know may uh age out of or move from that district right their you know child isn't necessarily in the same school district um you know their whole career academic career uh they may move um some of the districts have their own internal resources and they use the co-ops as kind of a you know a safety net so they'll use uh the co-ops to serve some students but not others uh and so and other students may age out or graduate um and then their numbers will be lower so i was wondering if we could have some more specificity on on trying to obtain some of that data because i think it's it'll be helpful for us to understand uh you know why is there more or less engagement with one particular school district um and is it you know is it because of performance or is it because of you know just other you know other reasons um you know in terms of the children that we're serving in those areas i'm not sure how to respond to that we obviously have a student count of enrollment how many students within each school district but how to figure out why some parents respond to the survey versus why other parents do not i'm not sure how we would get that information and i guess i should clarify you know the the the reason i brought this up is not that we'd be hearing from those parents in a survey you know because the one weak point that we have those surveys is you know the participation rate right so we're not going to get 100 uh we'd be ecstatic i think to get 75 um and again there's you know there's some limitations there which we reflect in the document uh that sometimes we'll you know look at people who are really satisfied or really not satisfied um you know unfortunately but again that's a that's a limitation so to to hedge that to offset that risk or that limitation in a survey i'd like to see some other objective data that we can obtain uh to get a better idea of what we're seeing so so it's not that's i guess what i'm saying is if we move beyond the survey data and and track the number of students that we're surveying uh in in the in the co-ops per district we can see that change a little bit better um i think we already tracked that i think it's just a question of aggregating it but we can see that that change and you know when i say you know serving in the district it's um you know students that were serving uh you know on a year-to-year basis we can see that that trend going in and out um you know more than a a school district dropping out of the co-op i think that happens less often i think what happens more often is as their population that has needs grows and and contracts that's what we you know we see the student accounts go up and down we could track a ratio of parent responses to the survey by school district we could do that annually that's a lot of school districts we're talking about at least a thousand different school districts so to break it down specifically to the number of students in each school district that we serve and then we can send out the survey as we collect the responses from the parents we could calculate a ratio a percentage of each school district we could do that that's going to be a significant amount of data yeah in terms of of school districts i mean i um i mean you're right that the drilling down to that number is uh and i guess that number sounds fine to me but uh in drilling it down to that level might be difficult but without separating from the survey um we know all of the students that we serve in the co-ops and we know what district they're from if we can track that over time now you're right if we have a little we have many hundreds let's say in school districts that's probably too much to put in our uh you know in our in our metric but maybe there's some you know maybe we could track the the the ratio of change from year year and pull out ones that are greater than a certain target amount i mean can we could we do that so in other words if a school district has to serve 10 children in one year and three in the next that'll at least allow us to take a look a closer look at that situation [Music] we could look at the ratio change annually okay we could break it down to the regions we have that three regions and we can see what kind of information that provides us thank you i think that would be helpful um because you know this way we're getting some data that's not not a survey we're getting data from other sources so we don't know the limitations of the survey and we're able to and i don't know what that that kind of threshold will be if it's or something like that but if we see a large swing we might want to note that i mean and i think that's that's we might want to look deeper into why that is and again it could just be natural you know children getting older but it might not be and we want to we want to take a a closer look at that kristin i think you were next oh we have about 207 districts and um students go to different schools we can this is i feel like we're tracking a different kind of data but what we could do is we know what districts they are in we know what schools they are in sometimes they jump districts and move within especially in like the metro areas as families move we can kind of keep track of that if that helps you i'm just trying to figure out what data we already collect that i know we can pull from like right now if that would help yeah no i i think that would i think it would help and just a side note on this when we are looking at parents filling out surveys there are probably many parents that don't really realize that these services are coming through asdb they go to an iep meeting there's their hearing impaired teacher or their vi teacher to them they belong to the school they they can't make that separation so you know we'll get information but it's it's not going to be you know directly related to asdb it's just you know we're getting services from this teacher who sees my kid you know twice a week anyway just a thought this is linda president niagara i think it would probably would be best if maybe we can moderate the meeting a little bit because i'm not sure if uh we're getting recognized as far as who pops in first and so for housekeeping purposes the sake of everyone if who could raise our hands that way we know who entered first uh the reason i wanted to come in is because i'm i would like to hear more from lynn davidson who does represent school districts and so what type of metrics we can use lynn if you can review what you just stated i'm sorry i can we can you repeat your concerns in how school districts work in tandem with asdb as far as metrics how do we measure whether they're an asdb student a school district that we offer services to and how will parents view that and again it's service provider providers how do we clarify that for parents as far as metrics go it's pretty clear on at the brick and mortar campuses um that the students are attending an asdb school and the district should be represented at those iep meetings because those are their students um where it becomes more muddy is uh in the co-ops and the co-ops serving the schools the parents i've sat in on on many of those meetings and the parents are happy to have the services but they don't understand that that these services are coming from outside of their school district that asdb is providing this these services because to them it really doesn't matter they just want to make sure that their child is being taken care of getting the services they need so they don't make that connection to asdb some do and you know if we make it clear but you know in the long run you know the most important thing is that the the student is getting the services they need their goals are being met uh things are being provided what else can i make money for you linda no thank you lynn thank you i appreciate that pv yeah just to put a thought out there a word of caution i want to make sure that we're careful with not skewing the data or dividing the data too much otherwise it would be incremental the increments would statistically not prove where we're going and so if you see patterns i think yes at the same time like you said president nigro we don't want to make the numbers too big but too small so that you can't recognize the patterns where do we find that fine balance i think most importantly uh for finding what mistakes or what errors we encounter so in comparison what would probably help if we were to compare let's say a student enrollment decreasing or increasing in a specific school district and the ratio in a school district for example if we're looking at a public school district where the enrollment has gone up or has gone down because maybe there have been some relocation and families have moved either in or out we might see a pattern that parallels with our deaf and hard of hearing and visually impaired students within that area as well so maybe two things to correlate there the school district in general and the deaf and blind population so just more of a geographical location a geographical measurement in comparison to data that we get from surveys for example the department of education those numbers are based off of relocation we can compare that and we can draw from that and listening to what lynn mentioned you make a good point i think that probably is something that we do need to address with first-rate customer service and then building capacity in those two pillars i think that's how we can effectively approach that how do we better identify and brand ourselves to parents that they are receiving services from asdb how are we clearly stating that asdb is included that parents are receiving those services from our providers and that way they can better answer those surveys all right uh thank you pv um for those comments um i think uh superintendent eichmann can take all of those comments into consideration uh for future revisions um if there are no other comments on pillar one we can move to pillar two uh and that's gonna be dr rex uh dr rex if you can give us just a very brief kind of two minute overview of these and then we can get into the discussion pillar two has and continues to go under edits and revisions as we look to provide outstanding student development this pillar focuses on our effort for student growth and development from our early learning program which is birth to five our campus programs as well as our statewide itinerant services and the objectives in this document include us participating in national programs and gathering data using state assessments to gather data monitoring our own benchmark assessments which we have done and continue to do together data are post schools outcomes data our student enrollment and completion of their career and technological coursework data as well as our students that do work experience in our high schools we have that type of data and in preparing these tables for this plan we discovered we have a lot of data and we gather a lot of data but the information that is included in this pillar to report back to this board annually or maybe quarterly depending on on how it fits is really to help the board as well as our stakeholders know what we are doing and how we are serving our students statewide thank you dr rex i can open the floor in and out any comments for for dr rex on these objectives i will open the can of worms i know that um the bill the lea bill is out there and the where we're at with that we'll see but i did notice in um 2.2 i guess talking about the pso the post-school outcomes and that that information currently goes to the school districts if and when and however this all works out and i don't know that anyone is clear at the moment and we do become an lea will that information go directly to asdb rather than to the districts fantastic question to which i answer i do not know but um and i know it's so but just so you know we are preparing um jay johnson is doing advisory council meetings throughout the state i think we have four or five we completed our first one this week and we shared our we shared that our board is currently going through a strategic plan and we are eliciting information from our special education directors because they are truly our partners and they're very important and um post school outcomes is one thing so is our statewide assessment the ela data the math data this is truly a partnership if if we have to give and take it's gonna have to be conversations it's gonna have to come sitting around the table because we can't improve if we don't have this data to share with you and to help us grow and learn so to your answer i do not know but also to your answer um we are preparing to punch in lean in or or try to gather the information with our partner districts because it is important to us yeah lynn this is david uh you raise a great point we it's gonna be hard to monitor these if we don't have the data but i think that uh if you know for some reason uh you know we end up without access to this data for some reason for a period of time we can try to go get it um i would think that some of our igas that we have with districts um would allow for some of this data sharing to occur you know without their being you know in compliance with you know with the education privacy laws um so that we can obtain it and and better manage our agency with it um i suppose there's a risk that we won't get at all or we won't get it as easily but that's uh you know that's that's certainly a risk um so i i understand that but we'll you know i i think from from my perspective in terms of you know from a planning perspective we should proceed as if we're going to have access to it one way or the other i agree these are wildly at audacious goals but this is what's going to help move us in a better direction so if we don't if we don't aim for the fence and using a baseball term then we're not going to we're not going to grow and improve so we need to have some wildly audacious guess goals and let's go for it pv did you have some some comments i'm curious what areas will be significantly impacted with lea or not lea um it's it's about the partnership if there are students pv then we fill out the post school outcome information and we get that information directly from the department of ed if it's if we're not the lea then sometimes there can be student record information that some districts may not be comfortable sharing even though we share kids we push into them in the itinerant world right now our kids are in our schools but they're also registered in their home districts so we will have the opportunity to work through all of these issues maybe i could add an idea to this or add to that can of worms sorry if i do so with the data some of the things that might be clearly impacted lea versus non-lea maybe we need to consider discussion establishing a strategic plan maybe developing for both cases if we are determined to be an alia or if we are determined not to be an lea and what recourse we have it would be similar that development but it would only be impacted by the lea non-lea label so i don't want us to become kind of stagnant with our process and our data collecting if we are unable to proceed with whatever labeling that we acquire so i want like us to continue on that trajectory and i don't want to have to go back and reimagine and redevelop if once it is determined and i think a lot of this data we can access we are currently looking at other ways public records is a way to access the information it doesn't drill down specifically always to our kids but it could get us close so we are looking at as you call them i think different pathways we're looking at alternative pathways to try to get the information so thank you great idea uh dr x this is uh david um you know i think from you know on that point i think that the data that we're gonna be looking at is gonna be to me it's gonna be the same you know no matter what the lea issue how that resolves itself um you know we have to keep in mind that the lea issue really affects the students in the brick and mortar schools which are hundreds of our students it's it's a large population and we serve all their educational needs uh but you know we serve a couple thousand in in the co-ops um so you know we do serve more children in the coops than we do in the brick and mortar schools we are we do not act as an lea in those relationships we act as educational service providers uh and we're able to access the data there uh right i mean we have access to data certain data from uh the students that we serve in in the co-op so you know to me i don't think it's gonna be as as i mean it'll it'll be more work certainly but i don't think it's going to be as large of an obstacle if you know for some reason uh we move forward as a not an lea for uh the students in the brick and mortar schools from again referring only to the perspective of data collection um i think that we can get to it uh in just as we do for the itinerant students um although it would probably be easier for us to get to uh if you know if we were an lea or or are an lea again you know being agnostic to whether or not how that issue resolves itself and then in terms of the coops are we requiring or mandating information when that collaboration with the current school districts that we are with we do share information and and they work very well with us it it is some i don't like david said i don't think it's going to be a problem but we will find ways of gathering that information so we can update you okay um dr rex in um 2.1 2.
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[Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] i called to order the workshop for bullet city elementary school board on thursday uh april 8th 2021 at 5 30 p.m um roll call corey burgess here amanda amen here all right um dr stewart okay well we have a bunch of policies for you to look at and um if our if our screen person can keep up with us tonight right i thought we did this last time we did this one last time so sorry about that folks okay uh so this is the policy about having a quorum oh no we did we needed to do this one again because we had to add on there oh you're right uh yeah we put it back on here because uh we had to put the minutes back in even though uh everything we do is recorded on board docs now we still have to note that there are minutes and uh that they're in the that they are in the minutes kind of thing so sorry that's why we that's why we brought this one back so that's the only change all right thanks kim for remembering that this is just the one about the quorum having to have a quorum uh this one has to do with rules of order and um i don't know if anybody's ever looked at it but it simply gives the guidelines for how you operate the meeting and um and when the meetings are and first and second motions and those kinds of things so it's uh as long as i've remembered board meetings in this district it's been kind of a modified robert's rules of order um so i'm guessing that that's what this is all right uh i the policy said the current policy says votes on all motions and resolution shall buy shall be by a's nays or abs abstentions and since you all have added the um proceeding with your name for the purposes of the recording i thought we better include that so i'm recommending that when you approve this next month that we include just that phrase all right this is the policy that led us to put in the agenda it's very much just about how the how the minutes can be taken and it does say they can be written uh or recorded or done digitally like like we do with board docs the one change that i'm recommending to you is the superintendent will provide access to recorded executive sessions to board member you know on request as opposed to that you come in and see a written version or that we distribute any kind of typed version to people that that strikes me as being just a little dangerous not you know leave them lying around or anything but um so i was just recommending that change okay so there will be no tight minutes just the recordings there no there would be typed minutes that kim keeps well we still have to have the minutes in a typed a very short version in the typed version yeah there's a summary version that's available if anybody wants it you know and they can see it or they can listen to the entire meeting but for the executive session yes there would be uh there would be a uh typed version and uh and then there would also be the recording for for you all to listen to this one has to do uh this is is this not a regulation kim yeah it's a regulation okay so it's simply saying the things that have to be included in the minutes for meetings or advisory committees or those kinds of things you know it's fairly typical standard stuff but it's also recognizing that any committees that you appoint um those kinds of things have to follow the same rules you know they have to follow open meeting rules and they have to have minutes and all of those kinds of things you can go ahead kim this is simply talking about the minutes of a public meeting and it's similar to how we post but usually what we post out on the out front and on the website is that you know are the actual uh is an actual summary of the minutes as opposed to specifically following this form this is an exhibit so we don't have to do exactly what it says but it needs to cover those things this is the one about the executive session and it's about the minute specifically about of the executive session and gives general information as opposed to specifics public participation in board meetings this simply outlines the process that you all do for call to the public and that kind of thing and this is the form it's always back there for people to fill out good uh simply welcoming media to our meetings uh this simply uh talks about reviewing board policy there's a policy for a new policy there's a policy for reviewing policies yeah exactly it's on a page about 104 or something and then about adopting the policies and the fact that there's a first reading and a second reading before it's actually voted on and uh talks about keeping records up to date administrative decisions those kinds of things and then that the superintendent develops the procedures that permit the district to utilize the policy consulting service uh in which we do we you know we call asba and ask for advice and uh or for updates and those kinds of things and this is simply the regulation so these are the steps that we go through to do all of this one of the things that i can't remember if it's in this one or one of the other policies this is talking about producing an item j producing sufficient copies of the new policy as received to each person who has assigned the policy manual somewhere in one of these is talking about policy manuals and we used to have a copy of the policy manuals at every site and you'll see that i'm going to recommend some changes in how we do that it's a huge amount of paper it's a huge amount it's a huge task for people to keep them up to date especially now that they're all available online all the time 24 7 and but we will be keeping one master copy paper copy here um it'll be in kim's i was gonna say i office i'd always see those at the schools and they just collect dust in a corner especially since you can search them online and find what you're looking for yeah and and you know that's in scheme of things a fairly recent thing that you could get them online but it was a it was a task for somebody at each site to update every time new policies got got approved and make sure that they were correct in all of those manuals not not to mention the expense so good we're good okay so regulations of course are the pro the procedures that we use to make sure that the policies are carried out and that's those are the things that always have the r after them um okay so once again to kind of bring us into the 21st century i'm suggesting that we uh correct that we not necessarily have a paper copy everywhere that we have electronic copies and then you see that the manual it shall be considered a public record and shall be open for inspection through a link from the district's web page facebook page and board docs and board docs has two d's by the way it's board docks b-o-a-r-d docks not bore docks is it linked right now through facebook i'm not sure that it is i think that it should be you want that to be i mean you got it at the web page that's just one more thing we have to keep track of okay that's all i'm saying i'm okay with that got it on board docs and we've got it on the district web page we're maintaining those well i have one more okay um there's already two i think you're good that's just one more thing we have to keep track of okay we're good with that just take it off facebook okay and then you notice the uh the thing at the bottom a copy of all outdated pages is maintained bridge for historical and reference purposes um uh i pulled that from i think i did this a month ago so i think i pulled that from a regulation or an exhibit that we're going to ask you just to get rid of because it's not needed but we wanted to be sure that someplace it says that there are old copies copies of old policies that are recorded somewhere for historical purposes i started to try to make some changes in this and then i just thought let's just leave it alone yeah you know there's not really any reason to change it yeah because we're only keeping one copy anyways right this used to be the document that when the new new policies went out to the sites that they had to notify back to district and let us know that they actually had changed out those pages so this is going to be one that i'm recommending that you just delete since we're not keeping those paper copies anymore okay and this is the process you go through to repeal a policy i had been using the word delete and when i got to this policy i realized oh i better be using the word repeal simple as that all right okay there won't be many on your list next month well on your agenda okay so uh i wanted to share with you information about uh where we are with budget and uh the various grants and i decided probably the best way to do so was visually so very short powerpoint here but to give you kind of a the picture from the 40 000 feet so you can look at all of these pieces at the same time so um regarding the m o budget uh on the left side you'll notice um uh the budget that was approved in july was 17 680 000 and change and then we made a revision in december to 15 747 and our current revision or the revision that i will bring to you next month based on current data as of april 1st will be 14 507.
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