it is important to restate the root cause of our enrollment challenges that prompted my recommendation for temporary classroom unit additions and grade restructuring beginning september 2022 based on current enrollment we have used all our elementary classroom capacity additionally we do not have the current capacity to expand special education programming at our elementary schools and this is after we have moved art and music out of their designated classrooms we can accurately forecast that a migration of elementary age students to east brunswick public schools is ongoing and eminent our commissioned demographic study update dated june 2019 forecasted elementary student enrollment growth of over 400 students by 2024.
the the next line which dr smith already talked about a little bit we we had to do an open enrollment for all our employees for our july 1 start date of our health insurance plan and we had a number of people switch to the chapter 44 through the new jersey educators plan so that increased the benefits uh line by 150 900 and then the last change was um we were able to uh incorporate back into the budget uh five more uh paris that give them benefits through the the 2122 school year and that cost is 62 500. so the total revenue changes compared to the appropriation changes came out to a net of zero okay so in pr previous years uh when we get to the final budget we just don't look at the up at the general fund budget we look at all all of our budget the general fund the special revenue and the debt service budgets because they're all they're all separate so um looking at those we do a comparison between last year's budget and the proposed 2122 the first column was last year the second column is the 2122 proposed and then to the right of that you see the differential the increase decrease and the percentage of increase or decrease between the two numbers so obviously our staff salaries are down because we've eliminated a number of positions so we would expect a decrease there employee benefits are down a little bit based on some of those based on some of those reductions the prs contribution which is the third row as i had talked about we had budgeted last year 3.9 i'm sorry 1.39 million this year we're budgeting for 1.4 million and our bill was right around 1.4 actually this year so we were a little under budgeted last year so that's why we added a few more dollars into that budget line uh general insurances and whatnot pretty much steady other district costs they're down and that's to d to do with the um sros uh being now partially funded by the township that's the major uh contributor to the change in that number jumping down a few more special ed is up and that's basically where it was in the tentative budget the increase there and then going down further the operations budget with transportation the main factor why that's up is that last year's budget was under budgeted and we actually uh explained that in the tentative budget uh what we had budgeted and what the actual number was so to get that those to get that transportation budget in line we had to increase it this year clubs and activities minor increase there um and then capital projects last year we had 671 000 in the budget this year 215 and then special revenue last year's 2.1 million this year at 1.7 and then the the last line that you can actually see is the debt service our debt services finally dropped off we no longer have any uh debt in the district as far as from uh bond referendums so um it went from the 2 million last year down to zero now the net difference in the whole budget is 4.2 million down about five percent thank you mr ashanti this slide is a repeat from prior presentations so is this slide um i did add one piece in red appropriately discussion with etea about options for maintaining paraprofessional benefits that's a very positive development as a step being used that's something that really took shape most of all in the last two weeks and um just want to say thank you to finance committee board members for their work in that process thank you to eta for their work on that process um which is ongoing so you know the latest um information shared back and forth was actually just an hour or two before this meeting so i do want to point out that it is um it is a continuing opportunity so the budget tonight what we vote on is adjustable right once we send it to the county office there are always adjustments and so approval of the budget tonight continues the opportunity for further discussion towards options for maintaining paraprofessional benefits and that is a positive that is a point of light and i'm sure that you know given the progress made so far that um you know a positive outcome can be reached and we will make the adjustments based on that outcome at that point so i didn't want to share that positive okay now we're going to look at the other side of the budget we're going to look at our revenues and this is uh you know all-inclusive our general operating budget special revenue and our debt service so looking at that the uh the fund balance is down um the first line going across and that's because we had less excess surplus to move forward into this year's budget compared to what we had available to move in move forward into last year's budget the tax levy is up two percent that's the album amount we can increase the budget uh for the tax levy so we've taken it to the max um and two two lines down the the state a that shows the the reduction that we're getting this year 1.7 million the line below that as i talked about before on the adjustments there's the 100 000 edition on the uh extraordinary aid from 250 to 350.
asdb administers our grant for us and federal funding is the primary source of our salaries and benefits however the limits of that funding can make it difficult for small state projects like arizona's to recruit and retain deafblind specialists who have background and training in such a low incident incidence disability asdb offered these stipends as acknowledgement of this reality so that pat and i would not experience a significant loss in pay when we moved to the deaf-blind project from our positions within the agency their existence reflects our agency's commitment to the delivery of high quality services to the more than 230 identified deafblind children and youth across our state these stipends are now proposed for elimination this evening with a justification that reads an effort to address projected fiscal year 2022 budget deficit cost saving strategies have been initiated to achieve a balanced budget the elimination of our stipends will do very little to offset a significant budget shortfall and it comes at a very high cost our morale please consider what it might be like to see your small stipend referenced as disposable commodity within the scope of a 58 million dollar annual budget consider what it might like to to have your livelihood referred to as a cost-saving strategy while viewing adjacent documents approving new agency positions or raises for other staff consider receiving a phone call informing you of your pro proposed salary decrease during teacher appreciation week and at the end of an already demo demoralizing pandemic school year pat and i are not cost saving strategies we are humans with our own families to support we represent 20 years of combined service to the arizona deaf plan project we represent over 50 years of services to students with the lowest of low incidence disabilities even though our stipends are small they allow us to work with dignity and a highly specialized position we love when we could make higher salaries elsewhere or even in a different position in our own agency we have dedicated our careers and services to deaf-blind students knowing we would be ineligible for future salary increases received by our teaching peers we understand our administration and board have difficult budgetary decisions to make we would like to go on public record as disagreeing in the strongest possible terms with any cut that potentially impacts the services of children who are deaf-blind especially when it when it would have such little impact on balancing our budget we ask you to consider holding agenda item 5.02 from this evening's vote thank you thank you sue k next we have a item 1.04 information item early learning program presentation dr rex hello good afternoon i actually am going to be turning this over to dr kendra benedict and she has a team of individuals that are here to update you on some things that have been happening as well as as we move forward that will be happening so i'm going to go ahead and turn it over to kendra thank you dr x uh good afternoon asdb board members president nigro superintendent reichman assistant superintendent rex and asdb community thank you for allowing me this opportunity to share with you elp's response that to the past to excuse me to the pandemic this past year along with my colleagues lila solston and heidi klemhaus before we jump into that though i'd like to take a moment to pay respect to a truly remarkable human being susan greer susan worked for asdb for over 30 years until she was forced into an early retirement after being diagnosed with als she passed yesterday morning i did not know susan so when wanting to pay respect to a pioneer of our field i reached out to barb shrogg my predecessor with her permission i'd like to share the following back in the late 70s susan single-handedly served the vision birth to three statewide population for several years before other vision teachers and providers were hired susan developed and grew the visually impaired preschoolers program vip that was initially housed in town on black lives drive in tucson before she and barb moved chick the center for hearing impaired children and vip preschool programs back to campus in 1996.
it is awarded to students who are planning to further their education with consideration to students who have exhibited strength and dependability in high school athletics this year's recipients are angelina carrando nicholas dumas arizon gomez william newen and olivia watson so the lcat director's scholarship the lc lcat director scholarship is awarded to a junior or senior at elhs who has shown exemplary skills and dedication to the production community programming as an lcat volunteer this year's recipient is danielle clutier uh the alex cameron memorial scholarship this scholarship is in memory of alex cameron class of 2008 in his award to deserving elhs student planning to pursue alex's dream of video photo video production this year's recipient veronica burnette [Applause] unfortunately veronica could not be here tonight but we'll make sure she gets the award good evening and congratulations to all the recipients the mary lou donahue scholarship is given to honor mrs mary lou donahue former school nurse in the district as well as our nurse leader and it is awarded every year to a worthy student who enters a bachelor of science nursing program this year's recipient is kaylee v gates congratulations and kaylee's not here to receive her award but we certainly wish you the best the brianna c donovan memorial scholarship is in memory of brianna c donovan class of 2007 and is awarded to a senior who plans to attend an accredited college and tonight's recipient is sophie smith who also cannot be here tonight but she's my girl so shout out to sophie um and the next scholarship is um the daniel um federici memorial scholarship this scholarship is in memory of daniel p federici class of 2004 and is it awarded to seniors who are hardworking and who may be pursuing an education in a trade and we have three recipients tonight jason ellison rhys clay and griffin [Applause] wilson coverage of our key foundation scholarship this scholarship and member of corey galwaki class of is awarded to a high school senior entering an accredited university who has proven exceptional community and volunteer work with preference given to students considering a major in field communication this is recipient olivia k watson so the next award the henry and helen johnson scholarship the uh the henry and helen johnson scholarship fund was established upon the death of helen johnson in 1998.
it seems that the only time the media really paid attention to this issue are when deaths started happening rapid change has needed to happen for a very long time the anxiety and depression association of america says that 80 percent of kids with a diagnosable anxiety disorder have never gotten treatment and from to 2012 reported anxiety disorders rose by over 20 percent we are living in an age of anxiety where these rates will only continue to increase if we don't act we are in desperate need of a system where there are affordable care centers specifically for teenage mental health there's already headspace programs in countries like australia you can absolutely use some of our 4.4 trillion dollar budget into both an online and in-person support system specifically for teenagers because i'm envisioning a society where kids feel that they are good enough where the kid who sits alone isn't just ignored or ostracized but gets help where conversations are not fueled by anxiety written thoughts but unfortunately at this rate i know this dream cannot happen because we have been talking about mental health nonchalantly for decades now yet judging by the fact that in the past democratic debates teenage mental health was discussed zero times i know that we need to be our own advocates we need to use our democratic power to advocate for teenage mental health solutions because the platforms that controlled our elections did not care about us thank you [Applause] okay i have a second item here and that i hadn't read yet but this is the rapid response team student representatives now you didn't tell me which one you are are you brandon i'm kenny lee or you're kenny okay i i was hoping you were kenny but i wasn't sure i i thought i had uh i'd seen you before but i i thought isn't your father in kiwanis uh no i'm in i'm in key club you're in key club okay all right and you've done really well in key club too much okay brandon and mai and kenny lee were student representatives selected for participation in the mikvah challenge california rapid response team and brandon and kenny worked with a group of 12 student civic leaders from throughout the strait the state to address the impact of the pandemic on the california youth as he's been telling you the team met twice a week throughout the summer and fall of 2020 to collect data develop policy proposals and to meet with community leaders throughout california to address the impact of the pandemic on the california students and the team's efforts culminated in a rapid response team town hall meeting on november 11th of 2020 where these dynamic and thoughtful students led a series of impactful discussions with leaders in education and public policy from around the state now brandon and kenny are seniors at oxford academy and they look forward to continuing to serve their university communities and use their voices for positive change and i have to say boys that's outstanding that you went to all this work i mean you really felt you know the need for this and the drive and you acted on it and i think that is phenomenal and you know you you're going to go far obviously i mean and this is great now what where are you going next year i'm going to the claremont college's pitcher college specifically what i didn't sur college claremont okay fantastic of course they are but this is an oxford student come on senior thank you very much and and congratulations on your achievement can i ask a question of course thanks you've explained to us or told us about the the um the effects of what's going on but uh you went back to 2007 through 2012 and said anxiety was still or was at that point it was was climbing uh you i didn't hear you say what was causing the exile anxiety or the the underlying factors can you enlighten us some well um i'm not going to speak here as an expert on this of course obviously but there are various causes one would be that the stigma of mental health decreasing could contribute to more people reporting anxiety as an issue rather than just some normal part of their routine that's number one another possible possible underlying cause of this would just be the increased of competitiveness over time that we all experience i think in this room we all know that over time things have just gotten more competitive number three social media is something that i want to be very clear about is not necessarily one of the main contributing causes to a decline in mental health i think we need to be very careful um looking at things in a causation versus correlation of viewpoint which is why i wanted to emphasize that there are many reasons why anxiety or mental health generally could be increasing right now for teenagers but i think the most important fact is we know it's increasing we know it has been increasing and we need to act on that okay thank you and i tell you that you are not an expert but you sure sounded like that and it's it's research it's really important that what you're saying that this is not new this isn't a new phenomenon but it's but at least now we can say that people are talking about it and but your clarification was spot on spot on a lot of it is we haven't learned to cope and so people are calling it anxiety and they're calling it mental health when it's just you have to learn to cope and learning coping mechanisms so but a boy i would love to hear more are you gonna is there anything planned in the future that we could we could listen in and and hear you speak or maybe you should just go ahead and do something because do something very phenomenal i'll try it you've got our ears now so we want to hear more thank you yeah okay we'll have to do something all right any other comments your speech was phenomenal thank you thank you very much [Applause] okay another stellar example of our products here in anaheim union okay we're moving on to reports now we've already had elizabeth's report so we'll move to reports of our associations starting with a asta grant shuster in i should break the person is that you break the desk [Laughter] no she already did it well it is good to see all of you uh back in person uh for the first time in quite a while um good evening trustees district cabinet and everyone joining us through you the youtube channel feed it's good to see you all in person and our protocol with our protocols in place as it outlines the promise just ahead with our graduations at handle stadium our in-person summer school programs and a full return in august that will bring our community back together in celebration of our public schools in the spirit of referencing celebration i want to bring attention to national educators week currently taking place each year at sites asta delivers gifts ptas serve lunches administration organizes a week-long recognition of what teachers do and this is always appreciated this year was obviously going to be different it's also important that we take this opportunity to understand what authentic teacher appreciation what form authentic teacher appreciation comes in it comes in the form of consistent respect and support fully funded schools healthy and safe working conditions decision making power a professional wage and benefits academic freedom an end to standardized testing a culture where principles and collaborating are collaborative and intentionally strive for a universally welcoming work environment on campuses and a campus environment where students have what they need this is the appreciation our teachers and their students deserve i'm happy to say that in a time of upheaval and uncertainty that our association and our district have spent thousands of hours this year doing this sort of work to recognize our teachers and these goals our teacher input group has brought teachers slps and nurses together across every site in the district we have discussed everything from bell schedules to our safety protocols and from learning models to spending priorities our members continue to step up to advocate for themselves and their colleagues and the district has done more than just listen they have implemented policy and programs based on our input at the bargaining table asta and the auhsd came to a quick agreement during an unsettling time that recognized our work with a substantial pay increase along with our exemplary health benefits plans the security provided this provided by this to our members and all district employees exemplifies the appreciation that is felt by you for all of us the district stands in line with asta to promote teacher driven authentic assessments over mandated standardized testing is yet another sign of appreciation for teachers and what they are able to do as professionals we will continue to reach out and collaborate at every turn and have no doubt that the district will respond in kind it will be nice to receive kudos lunches and other recognition again next year but it is far more important to continue the dynamic of respect and support that has been illustrated between asta and the district particularly during the time of the pandemic i would also like to announce to the board that asta has been awarded a safe and just schools grant by the national education association for seventy five thousand dollars we will be focusing our grant around the organizing of teachers parents and community groups around the creation and implementation of community schools and accompanying service programs we're looking forward to building a structure of advocacy that will strengthen our public schools within our community and further highlight the importance and still often unrealized potential of public education in our society i would also like to comment on a couple of items before the board tonight first the lgbtq resolution recognizing what we do in support of students from that community six years ago a handful of teachers including myself took 20 students to walk in the long beach pride parade in march and in may aside from the pandemic cancellation we have attended every year since i can't describe the joy and welcome that our students felt as folks who came out to watch up and down ocean boulevard shouted out the schools and graduating classes that they were part of in the auhsd some alums ran into the route to take pictures with our district banner since then our gay straight alliance clubs have sprouted up on campuses across the district and as of last year our students felt strength and support enough to stand in front of this board in advocacy for their program we stand with our students in support of this resolution as well as the supports and resources it provides the other item is the resolution for an ethnic studies requirement since this topic and question have come up the district has involved asta members in every meeting throughout the process district administration parents students and teachers along with site admin have all had their voices heard and been part of the consensus building that led to tonight's recommendation that 70 teachers have already stepped forward to be trained in any new curriculum and teach the courses is testament to the process and the community's desires to see these courses in our schools we look forward to continuing our work with the district on the creation of these courses and curriculum usually i don't speak from the cuff but at the end here i just also wanted to say that we have these programs and we build this vision for the district but on an everyday basis the things that go on and the support and the the effort that is put out by people working together uh today for an example we've been working with this teacher input group trustee pierce you've gone a few times and i had some concern with some members that we weren't getting enough of the student the voices of special education teachers and students in those meetings and asked for a meeting with jaren and manuel in ed division they immediately agreed we met this morning i had a further call with manuel this afternoon and we've already begun to set up a subcommittee where our special education students and teachers can have the same sort of forum and get the same supports and build the same uh structures that we've done so well in the teacher input group for the overall district later in the morning i was on the phone with hr we've had so many teachers that have been on temporary contracts because of contract language the last few years and now because of one-time money we're going to be hiring you know more than a hundred more and the process of making sure the teachers that have been on temporary contracts get the security of a probationary contract and feel that future in the district before we go out and hire others has been just a real load on the hr department and i was on the phone with scott jensen and i believe it was 31 contracts today were already offered changed from temporary to probationary so teachers know before the end of the year that they are going to be back next year and this is it's such a big deal especially for teachers who have been dedicated the district for multiple years on temporary contracts and then finally um i was on the phone with laura jacobs and yvette robinson from the insurance committee just talking for for close to an hour just about a specific issue with a specific member and an issue with the health insurance and you know it does it may not seem like a lot but to the person it's happening to happening to it is a big deal and for us to sit down and find the time and be able to hash it out those kind of things on a daily basis are what enable us to build the relationships to then implement these visions that we all talk about because of the trust we can have and because of the working relationships we've built together and then i'm just gonna make a personal shout out you would uh mention trustee piercy ivan ayala from magnolia and ivan was one of the last students i had at dale before i took this position and he was in my history class on a volleyball team and it's just so phenomenal to be able to see our students grow from where they started and what they've become and for me in this position to see him speak in board meetings or go to pride marches or you know be involved with the gsa be involved with the student ambassador program it's just another illustration of why we all do what we do so on that personal note i will conclude my report thank you thank you grant any you know i have to go back in history a little bit but now i i see a lot of our teachers involved in committees and they're getting their voices heard and i really love it and it reminds me back when i was teaching and we tried site-based decision-making you remember that we tried it but now we're really doing it a lot better but on a district level with getting our teachers involved and they're giving up of their time i go i go to this meeting with manuel with the you know opening of schools task force and we meet in every week they're meeting and discussing stuff and the teachers have the opportunity to put in their opinions and it's great okay thank you very much our next speaker i'll have brian bannon from the apga sylvia just sent me a text she said i feel sorry because you have to go after grant so thanks man i'm sorry i'm just going down the list this will be the last time i go after grant so that being said um thank you everyone madame piercy and board members trustees and obviously the brain trust that's right here it's been a long time being a apg leader for way too long unlike grant i will speak off the cuff but i do have some notes here i i just wanted to to share my my gratitude to all the students for showing a lot of grit this year they've done an exceptional job and i'd also like to thank the hard work during the pandemic of csea members ask me middle managers principals administrators teachers social workers and counselors and anyone else i forgot i know you're working hard and that includes everyone in this room i want to start a little bit to talk a little bit about where we where we've been and where we are right now with apga we're getting more people which i'm so thankful for we're getting temporary counselors for next year but they're they're permanent in the eyes of the students so i i've long said this the job of counselors is about relationships it's not about your grad rate it's not about people completing pathways it's about the relationships that you have with students so i applaud everyone for supporting more people speaking of people i'd like to just make a personal comment about over 50 years 150 years of experience for past presidents and 20 years of alternative ed experience are the retirees that have happened during the pandemic my good friend steve gonzalez sandy allen sharon hughes lisa rockwell christina gray thank you all thank you guys thank you brian [Music] [Applause] okay hilda alta president seriously well good afternoon everybody i'm adam preston percy board of trustees executive cabinet superintendent matsuda it's hard to follow all of that um it's a little crazy um i i have something written but i was really just taken back by all of our students right and just thinking about the time that we are in and also just being so blessed and honored to be here and to see their growth and the opportunities that we provide in our campuses and outside of our campuses for them to continue growing as citizens and i do want to start by thanking also the work of our teachers right in our sites during this week of teacher appreciation as you heard from grant today their resiliency and their work their care and heart for our students and for their colleagues right uh has been incredible and has really just been phenomenal this year despite what this school year has thrown at us teachers and our sites have persevered and grown stronger together and we are looking forward to all the summer opportunities are going to be happening in person and for the upcoming school year school sites have also been busy with sporting events and with on-site student cohorts ranging from academic supports to enrichment opportunities for skill development and engagement we're also currently finalizing our summer programs and we're starting recruitment for a variety of programs at the junior high and the high school levels at at the end of the year draws near students have also had the opportunity to participate in events that showcase their developed talents such as district ban performances soapbox speeches competitions and virtual performances additionally we are celebrating our students through our variety award ceremony and also through the capstone interview happening at very different sites they encapsulate and demonstrate a student's growth prior to them graduating and heading off lastly i would like to share that we're continuing our commitment to wellness and to student preparedness and have been working digitally and we'll continue to do this work during the summer to prepare and welcome students parents and staff for the upcoming school year and i want to give one last shout out to all of our students right for their unwavering commitment to themselves for their resiliency we are incredibly proud of them and most importantly where we know that they have an avenue to express their needs and if we don't have them at the school sites i know our district ambassadors have been advocating and more and more we are including the student voice and the shared decision process just like we talked about our counselors and all of our staff members so i'm really proud to work in district and it's an honor to be here to give you the end of the year report thank you thank you hilda [Applause] okay i don't see any other [Music] association so we'll move on that's the do we have a parent teacher report at all okay moving on to presentations our first presentation will be school dismissal and distance learning and i'll defer to dr freed on this great thank you board president piercy and good evening everyone good evening uh members of the board executive cabinet and to all our friends families and colleagues watching on our youtube channel as promised at our last board meeting for tonight's presentation we're going to talk a little bit more in depth about our summer programs as you know we're just a few weeks away hard to believe with school being over so we wanted to to upload and up update you on the work that's being done to support our students throughout the summer we'll also talk a little bit about graduation just to give you a quick update on graduation to make sure all of you are aware of some of the changes that have been made and why make sure our community is also aware of those changes and then finally we'll transition in preparation for the resolution that is before you tonight looking at the opening for next school year and what that's going to look like i want to front load a couple aspects of that before you actually take your vote so with without further ado i'm actually excited to have uh some teammates colleagues from our ed division family here with me tonight we're going to talk more in depth about the great work that we're doing to plan for this summer so i'm going to go ahead and turn it over first to mr joe carmona who's going to talk a little about summer programs good evening board guests and uh those joining us virtually thank you for having me here tonight uh so i'm excited to share a little bit about what we're planning for the summer along with some of my colleagues so there's really two sides of what we're going to be doing during this summer so the first part of that is uh very similar to what we've offered in the past in terms of providing our students with an opportunity to remediate courses that they've earned a deer in effin um during the school year so uh we have a few options for for what that looks like our focus is on uh english math and science uh during the summer for those credit recovery courses uh we do have those options will be in person at all of our sites so thanks to our our teachers who are going to be a part of those programs during the summer an additional piece this summer is we will be providing instructional aids in those classes we want to make sure that not only the students have a very smooth transition back to in person but that since this is an opportunity to make up those classes on the path to graduation that they are successful right that they complete the course successfully so providing that additional support this summer our curriculum specialists our teacher leaders have designed special curriculum for our summer courses and that curriculum is really meant to engage and help the students be really active during the summer right it is a long time you're in class for three hours at a time and so the curriculum is designed to have a number of different activities change of pace and so they're not just sitting there doing one thing for three hours right so a great work of our teacher leaders in training all of our summer school teachers who will provide that we will have virtual options that's in person right through our apex credit recovery if a student is not going to attend in person and obviously working with our county partners at pacific coast high school and access to also provide virtual options for those students who do not want to attend in person our other in uh in-person offering is opportunities for students to accelerate and those are offered to rising 9th graders and rising 10th graders the ninth and tenth grade years are typically the most impacted for students because of the number of requirements that they need to complete and so we will be offering health for our rising ninth graders uh and world history for our rising 10th graders so that allows them to access cte pathways vapa pathways avid other programs that they're involved in without having potentially to take a zero period or seven classes during the school year so uh that that is an intentional uh move on our part to allow them to get that done during the summer so they can focus on those six classes during the school year so that's our uh sort of our credit recovery our academic um course component the other side of that uh this summer is uh knowing um that obviously the pandemic has has been very challenging for for all of our students to provide some enrichment opportunities and here we really wanted to tap into the creativity of our teachers so we gave our teachers the chance to design some two-week course proposals right where they could uh tap into their experience their expertise and come up with um these short courses that are not what you might typically see during the school year so there we have uh we have just about 65 different enrichment courses that will be happening across our sites during the summer just a few examples we have courses that are focusing on civic engagement where students will be designing a project and a call to action over the course of the two weeks we have students who will be working in their campus gardens focusing on not only the the science part of that but then also some of the um the sort of sociology behind that around food deserts access to fresh foods how that impacts certain communities so they're really going in depth with those pieces we have many visual and performing arts opportunities right [Music] one example is uh you know for those of you who are familiar with uh a singing competition right it's sort of like a the voice light a two-week version of the voice where students will practice a piece perform it and sort of have a a fun uh you know cooperative but competition uh sort of piece and then several courses that are focused on on health and wellness right how to manage your own stress um physical activity type of uh programs and so uh it it varies across all of our sites because it really was left to the teachers to come up with ideas and propose it for their uh for their school in addition one of the really exciting things is we are offering for our junior highs sports and fitness programs and so this is really intended to to help get those students out of the house um off the couch away from the screen and to engage in some physical activity at their sites you know we we know uh that that activity is not only good for their physical health but right the science around your improvement to your mental health is strong right when when you are engaged in those activities and the endorphins are released right it improves your mental state uh and so uh we're very excited to to be offering that for our junior high students um including our incoming seventh graders so you know many of our elementary districts are uh their school year ends a little bit after us uh but the great thing about this program is it's not uh you know you have to show up for a certain amount of time right as soon as their district calendar ends they can join our programs right there there's no like show up by a certain date right it's an open entry uh because we know that our elementaries do end a slightly different calendars than we are on and then the last thing is uh the return of our summer musical two years ago this was a fantastic collaborative project of vapa teachers from several sites who put together a full musical it won't be quite um as luxurious as uh two years ago but we will be uh performing in an outdoor venue in one of the city parks and it'll be a series of sort of one-act pieces because it's a little less intense to get those uh prepared and ready to go uh considering the uh the conditions with the pandemic and and bringing our students together so those are um the credit recovery pieces and the enrichment pieces and i know my colleagues will be addressing a few um others so i don't know if there are any questions at this time or we'll wait till the end and can answer some questions joe question on the enrichment side you mentioned there are 65 enrichment opportunities how many hours per day are they so the they're they run um in three hour segments so there's an am and a pm session and so some of the teachers are doing both am and pm some are only doing am some are only doing pm um and uh that depended partly on the teacher but then also knowing that they would be working with certain students perhaps right they kind of communicate with their students around what worked best uh for them and so uh but there are the the possibilities of two sessions within the day the am and the pm and the limitation of 20 students per per session like it is on the credit recovery if they're using an indoor space yes the 20 many are potentially using outdoor spaces and so then they can accommodate a larger numbers of students thank you all right awesome thank you so much okay one other question um joe the credit recovery for how long is that um all our programs are running for four weeks four weeks uh it starts uh june 7th is the day the students begin and that will run until july first okay we will have two weeks of enrichment in july so i believe that's july 6th to july 18th the first two weeks of july we will be offering enrichment only the credit recovery portion of summer school will have completed okay thank you joe how how are we reaching our kids how how are we getting this message out to our kids that we're doing this so uh that's really there there's two pieces there um our our counselors uh have done a really impressive job right so they obviously knew some of the students were going to need credit recovery right so they were kind of working towards getting them signed up already but with the enrichment pieces they are are promoting that as well as our teachers right so that was kind of part of it like let us know what kind of students you're thinking about um you know serving with your project and so the teachers are also reaching out to some of their own students some of their incoming students to be a part of those programs and opportunities and all obviously all of that happens with the support of our administrators you know helping facilitate the use of our our mass communication systems to uh to all of our folks right it because um each site has different offerings right so they have to kind of tailor those message messages to the students that um that they're going to serve during the summer so i have some good news it's reaching the elementary school district already so they're already the teachers are they're telling the incoming 7th graders are pretty excited uh from the feedback so far that they uh there's a lot of interest um for those rising seventh graders to come and be a part of the programming so um so that's very exciting uh in terms of you know welcome welcoming them to our district into our campuses uh and i mean if that's really going to be the first time we're doing something to this scale i mean i've been here 20 years so probably in 20 years uh so you know it's a pretty uh exciting opportunity for for our students and thank you for clarifying um you know to the public that everybody knows because uh they were concerned about the time frame and that we were still gonna be i work for elementary school we were still going to be on and that that the secondary was starting so thank you for clarifying the time that they can just jump in absolutely thank you all right exciting stuff and turn it over to my colleague talk about extended school year yeah so now it gives me great pleasure to introduce our coordinator of special youth services amy maya and she will talk about the work that's being done with our extended school year thank you good evening board of trustees superintendent matsuda and executive cabinet and all of our family and friends at home thank you so much for this opportunity to share with you what we'll be doing through extended school year so during the school year all of our special program students will have the opportunity to work on iep skill maintenance and have opportunities for structured social interaction as well as support in small groups we're very fortunate this year to have three sites to offer extended school year so hope will host all of our current and incoming hope school students grade seven through adult transition we also have lawera which will host seven through twelve and then savannah which will have our adult transition programs one of the exciting things about extended school year this year is that all three of our sites were offered both in-person and virtual instruction so the in-person classrooms will have no more than 14 students and those 14 those students those class sizes will depend very depending on how much adult support is needed so it could go up or down no more than 14 and they will also have excuse me i'm sorry they will also have a variety of the adult support so hope will have a lesser amount of students and that just depends on how much the need is in their class so just to give you kind of a picture of what how many students will have at each site um the current projections for hopes attendance is about 171 they have about 70 percent that have committed to in person and 30 percent committing to virtual lawyers at 236 with 62 percent committing to in person and 38 percent competing committing to virtual and then for savannah it's 150 students with 64 in person and 36 percent virtual so we are very excited we have a great team of teachers who are ready to go want to see their students very happy to be back on campus we have a great uh set of classified people who are also ready to go and excited to see kids my amazing school psychologist and program specialist will all be on deck to support our site admin so celeste and i are really excited about the opportunities for the summer for special programs i don't know if you guys have any questions regarding questions uh just clarification the students that are coming to lower and savannah they're from across the district correct correct okay from all the special programs but yes from all all of the sites and so we've got busing correct oh and i would be remiss if i didn't give a shout out to matt thomas and his team who are currently working on transportation as we speak or yes why very good the students that were that said they want to do virtual decided that they wanted to do in person is that an issue no no no we have the staffing that's needed for both all staff will be on campus to provide that instruction whether they are conducting a virtual classroom or in person so we were very happy to make that happen for our families who requested that all right thank you any other questions no thank you amen amy thank you all right last but certainly not least it gives me great pleasure to bring up our director of english learners and multilingual services dr renee bryant who will talk about the great work being done to support our summer language academy yes [Laughter] i'm so excited to talk to you i forgot about the cleaning all right so board president piercy board of trustees superintendent masuda executive cabinet thank you for this opportunity to speak to you about our summer expanded learning opportunities for english learners also known as emerging bilingual and multilingual scholars this summer we are excited to welcome close to 85 emerging bilingual newcomers to our virtual summer language academy for the second consecutive year during this four week academy for emerging scholars they will engage in an innovative asset-based multi-literacy enrichment program affirm one another's linguistic and cultural identities explore multiple perspectives and diverse experiences while increasing their language acquisition we are also excited to announce that our virtual summer academy curriculum will in integrate civic and project-based learning so our emerging bilingual scholars can earn the seal of civic engagement and beyond that we're also excited to announce that if our scholars need recovery credits that they will be able to earn them as elective credits and also english language development so we'll have three classes that will offer for summer language academy from june 1st to june 24th from 9am to 12pm so please mark your calendars in advance and save the date because we will be hosting our virtual summer language academy celebration on thursday june 24th from 10 to 11 a.m so just a reminder that our summer language academy is a california school board association go golden bell award winning program because it empowers our students to explore the intersectionality of their identities as well as our voice values beliefs and now civic engagement so as if summer language academy was not enough we also have thanks to a partnership with cal state fullerton dr allison dover dr faram abrigasvez and a generous grant from the spencer foundation we're hosting one class of project learn which stands for language equity action research with newcomer students project learn is specifically designed for scholars who already attended summer language academy in previous years these 10 scholars will participate in action research which will also help them to earn the seal of civic engagement here you see the youth participatory action research ypar cycle our 10 learned scholars will attend classes virtually during the same dates as virtual summer language academy and these scholars will present their research at a culminating celebration and if you are available we hope you will attend on wednesday june 23rd from 10 to 11 a.m this concludes my portion of the presentation and are there any questions okay thank you very good fantastic sounds great so as you can see dr bryant miss maya mr kimono are there to be commended for the great work they're doing to plan for our summer but it also goes beyond the three of them and their great leadership to our curriculum specialists and a lot of members of our sf team and the site leaders who are making this happen for our students this summer so we're really really excited for what's to come this summer what i want to do now is i want to just give you a brief update with graduation and we've been keeping you updated i think this is also for our community who's watching you may have seen as you know our transit our graduations thank you have transitioned to where they're all at handel stadium and i just wanted to share um you know when when we were working with glover stadium which is city owned there's there was a capacity limit which made it difficult for us to honor the plus two commitment we had talked about remember we had agreed that we want our graduates plus two people who the student chooses to be in attendance to support them as they graduate well having the ceremony at glover would not have allowed that to happen so as a result of our commitment to have that plus two we needed to move all of our ceremonies to handle stadium which had the capacity to be able to support that so that's why we needed to make that shift before you and i know for those watching online you can see the the schedule that's been set up where we have our smaller schools cva and hope on the friday may 21st but then the remaining schools will take place at handle stadium what's important note if people are wondering why there's a separation between the different graduations it's because we were required to create at a minimum a two-hour space between ceremonies so our maintenance and operation team who has been doing also a masterful job working with our our team of joe saldana and vidal valdez to build these graduations to make sure they have time to disinfect it also gives time for the fir the beginning ceremony and the parents to leave the facility and make time for the new ceremony coming in to be able to park their cars and be a part of the next ceremony so i want to make sure you're aware of those changes and why we needed to do that obviously in a perfect world we'd be able to do the way we would normally do it but that's not the circumstances we've been dealt so we're making lemonade out of the lemons and this will be a phenomenal experience for our seniors as we move forward so we i've been meeting just so you know with mr saldana other districts who are very interested in the work that we're doing with graduation because we're one of the first in the county to go through this so a lot of eyes are on us and a lot of other districts are wanting to know how we're handling this because this is something all districts are beginning to wrestle with so i'm excited for what uh may 25th 26th 27th 28th will look like for our seniors and again this is an in-person ceremony at those venues uh questions on graduation i know we've been updating but i want to make sure i just want to commend the team on how fast you know you pivoted and you made these arrangements because this wasn't something that was expected and you know we always have the anaheim graduations at glover and so we thank you for pivoting and making this arrangement to make it work for our families and unfortunately it wasn't anything that you could you had control over we had control over absolutely i just want to make sure that we emphasize that this is not what we wanted because you know it's tradition to be at glover and we know um you know that's that's the place where a lot of our our alum have graduated but um i i commend the team for for creating this uh very very quickly on the dime and um you know you guys are fantastic so thank you thank you and the feedback we've gotten from families have been really appreciative put that of appreciation they of course you know the plus two whoever that is with its mom dad mom grandma they're excited to be a part of the ceremony so the fact that we were able to make that transition still support uh family friends the who are the two are to be a part of the day was was appreciated so uh so yeah thankfully we have not received a lot of resistance we've been getting more praise and are you gonna talk about the video and yeah so just as a reminder uh on that day we will have a filming crew there to live stream it so for any uh because obviously only two members of each student's family can be able to be there uh for those who are not it'll be live stream so they'll be able to watch it uh just like they are this board meeting on our youtube channel they'll it'll be recorded where they can see it long after the day has happened we also are embedding for those students who for a variety of reasons may not want to be after graduation maybe they have a medical condition don't feel safe being there maybe um they have things going on where it's just it's just too difficult they will be integrated into the ceremony so we're getting those students uh who we know that are not planning to show up for graduation for whatever again those variety of reasons and we will have their photo and their name will still be announced and be on the live stream so as you may recall last year with the virtual graduation for those students even though it'll be up in person ceremony when their it is their turn to be called their their picture and name will be announced so it'll feel like they are part of the ceremony even though they're not physically there oh that's great so yeah so we're really trying to be really inclusive in this process so that way all students regardless of their circumstance get the experience this process and can i just make you know a statement again you know we're sorry but we can only accommodate two people per graduate and that's because we are limited in the number that we can have in the stadium and i know that i've already spoken to some in my district who were saying can't we just get one more and i had to explain we just can't do it and we are live streaming it so you you know if you are having somebody fly in from back east for this graduation one of you is going to have to stay home and watch it and so it's it's tough but at least we're having it live so please remember there's only two tickets that's it per student graduating and it doesn't do any good to call and ask for another one because they're just not there so at least we're having a live graduation and we're like dr fred said we're leading leading the field here because we're graduating before many of the other districts so work with us and we will all have a good graduation and one of the questions that i got asked is well can we can we gather afterwards to take pictures and stuff and i said not really because we you know we have to worry about gathering correct so we're asking you to leave after the graduation and take your pictures at home you know or if you want go back to the school site at a different time and take a picture there but there's no time or place really for you to try to take pictures when everyone will be trying to leave so please help us by not loitering afterwards i know get your congratulations and hugs and whatever and and then move on to the car and take it home to continue so that we can get you know the the cars out so that the next flood of cars can come in because even with two hours in between it it makes it tough it does or yeah and i appreciate bringing that up so what we're what we're instructing our graduates is when the graduation ceremony is actually over uh those in the stands will remain seated uh and and we have a whole process for for which they're coming in and entering the stadium but the graduates leave first we're telling the graduates to go to their car so that way when the parents leave they meet their graduates at the car and then they can leave and like you just said they can take their photos in other locations we do have to clear the premise pretty quickly because we have to disinfect and prepare for the next ceremony so as you know from experience our ceremonies typically about an hour to an hour and 20 minutes in length depending on the size of the school right so we should have more than enough time but because of this new dynamic we have to make sure our graduates get to their car our families join them at the car and then they leave so that's that's been part of the process and the sites are communicating that to our graduates and their families along the way and then they're also going to be a rehearsal for our seniors at their site so that's going to be reinforced with them when they do the rehearsal and they pick up their cap and gown uh and whatnot so okay good that's a lot of work i i hope we make sure that they get the message out to the families you know what that that's what happens there'll be reminders in this in the speech that the principals or the mcs give as well okay very good thank you okay and the last last update that i have for you is as you as you know tonight uh i think in fact after this presentation you have a resolution before you which really talks about the um the method in which we're going to open our schools in the fall and just so you know in the in the in the resolution it does call for and i want to stress this so for those watching they know the intent of what you're voting on it is for a full full five days of live in-person instruction in the classrooms it's going to appear as normal as normal can be right so so that is what is what you are voting on before you tonight um that is going to be the model that we are pursuing right now as i think you heard from grant about the teacher input group well we also have an opening of schools task force that we started last march that is still in place and they are regularly reviewing guidance and still prepping for the opening of schools next fall right now that is the plan that is the model that we are pursuing so unless there's a catastrophe and something changes that is where we are headed and that's what you're being asked to vote on tonight the other thing i want to share is after you take action tonight a survey is going to go up to our families tomorrow and that survey is going to be asking for families to confirm one of really two options and i'll explain what those are in just a second the first option as i just mentioned is the in-person model it's asking them to confirm and we really do believe the vast majority of our families are going to want that in-person model there's a lot of excitement our schools are doing a lot of great work and planning for the reopening we call it the care opening is perfect to rios to really celebrate their return you heard about what mr carmona shared in terms of summer programs and miss maya and dr bryant there's a lot of work being done to really engage and generate that excitement to come back to school all of the work that diana guyeta has mentioned previously in terms of the safety and the protocols are still in place we monitor that guidance regularly and then again as things may change mr clone this guy after they meet with our admin regularly i think it's every friday they meet to go over any changes if there are any and what the implications might be for any adjustments we need to make to our procedures and protocols so so we are looking for that in person return however for those families with unique needs and they may need an independent study option and right now i want to i want to stress that the state is only pushing ada the attendance daily rate that we get the average daily attendance there's only two options right now that are on the table that we know of in-person or independent studies the hybrid is not an option moving into next year at currently as it stands so to get ada students have to either be in person or be in an independent studies program so for us if they're not going to be in person and there's a unique need the option is going to be independent studies we have a couple of options within that umbrella one is cva cambridge virtual academy if students want to apply to go to cva they can go through that process and that is one of those options i have a video that's going to be going maybe already went out but it's going to be going out that explains those options in the survey so parents know exactly what they're going to be selecting when they do that it also gives them access to the links or the websites so they can do additional homework if they're considering one of those independent study options the other independent study option under that umbrella is our more traditional polaris catella high school and kennedy high school's independent city programs as you know cva is a course-based program whereas the polaris catella and kennedy are a seat-based program so it's a little bit different in the way that they approach their work all three are outstanding independent study programs and offer tremendous opportunities for students all three the high schools aspect have a through g courses that are approved so students can still go to a four-year university if they want to be in that that program so those options will be detailed in that video and also in the survey they get there will be descriptors of those three programs so before they make their selection they know what what it is they're confirming but again we believe the vast majority are going to come back in person questions limitations on on cva well right now and we're gonna have to wait and see what the what the numbers look like uh we have we have more capacity but again it's an application based because it's it's connected to e-learning or what i said course-based learning so it is it is a different model than than what polaris kennedy and high school offer and i want parents to understand that when we say independent studies please do not confuse it with distance learning what we did this year it is not the same schedule it is not the same method of learning where they're seeing their teachers synchronously or ac it's a very different process you know in cva they see their teachers typically once a week they typically have discussion boards chat rooms help forums office hours so it's a very different format connected to our e-learning process and there is teacher-line curriculum that they've generated they've created that are connected to the standards obviously and to also the five c's polaris has done similar work but again it's through a seat-based approach not a course-based approach they get credit along the way whereas at cva you get credit after you've completed the course so it's a little different process in terms of the independent studies and what might meet the needs of our students is it possible to send the board a survey yeah absolutely i was just going to say i would hope you'd send us absolutely as well and i believe you'll get access also to the video so you can see what is being described right now absolutely is currently on our youtube channel oh it is the message will be sent down tomorrow yeah yeah okay we didn't want to send it out until after you take action okay even though we think we don't want to jump the gun that's good yeah yeah we wanted to wait and not put the cart before the horse yeah okay any other questions or comments here so real quickly the survey will go out may 7 through may 21st so it's a short window two weeks but the reason why it's going out and it will go out in multiple languages the reason why it's a short window is because there are implications based on the data we receive knowing that we believe most families are going to want in person and that's going to meet the vast majority of our kids needs it's not going to impact staffing in a significant way but if there are more requests let's say for the polaris katella or kennedy is we may have to do some adjustment of staff so that's why we need to know that information so then we can work closely with brad and his team to look at the staffing aspect and if we need to make any adjustments based on the request to be able to meet their needs so that's why it's the short window so we can make those adjustments in the master calendar master schedule aspect all right okay and then the last thing i want to just kind of reiterate is the site planning that's being done right now for the care opening as you heard eloquently our student kenny speak about mental health that care opening is just that that we know that many of our students even i would argue many of our staff are going to be out of school shape right i mean we we've been at home we've been even though we've been working incredibly hard it is different i know when i came back to the office five days a week i went home more exhausted than i was when i was working at home just because i was out of shape and we're gonna see the same thing from our students and from our staff so this care opening is really taking that to heart and really easing that transition where we're gonna it's really a celebratory return you know we don't want lots of homework in the beginning we want our students to gradually get back into school shape get back into the excitement and love of learning being excited to be on campus we have to revisit building school culture the expectations in terms of how we conduct ourselves in a locker room versus how we conduct ourselves in the library versus how we conduct ourselves entering and leaving a classroom those are all going to be really critical and elements that we need to build in and as you know for our junior highs our seventh and eighth graders have yet to be on that campus it is gonna be a completely new school for our kids because they've never been there and the eighth graders exactly and then 7th and 8th and then when you think about high schools the senior class were last on the campus when they were sophomores the freshman and sophomore class have never been on the campus unless they've been an athlete or a vapa student who maybe came back and part of athletics or these small pods small cohorts so it's a tremendous opportunity to reset rebuild school culture for those schools who've been through capturing kids hearts as example i know there's two more schools on the agenda tonight um that's a chance to make that just the dna and this is how we do things at ball this is how we do things at luera so there's a lot of excitement in this this this care opening that we're talking about and again we don't train for a marathon running 26 miles on the first day we got to gradually get our students back into that shape where they can be really promising rigorous students uh engaging the way we would normally uh engage with our students good okay very good so that is the update in terms of the the the opening of our schools and you brought up a different point i wasn't aware of that the state will not give us ada for hybrid well right now there's nothing on the table that allows right now if they're pushing in person or an independent study that's right so based on that guidance this is these are the options that we have got you because as you may recall this year and last year we were held harmless with ada right but not next year we're not so it's and there is no true method to account for ada in a hybrid because we did the second period check-in but that was under a different model where we had to do the remember the learning continuity and attendance plan so it's a different aspect so right now based on the guidance we've been given could change but right now that's not on the table it's in person or independent studies okay very good all right exciting well i appreciate presenting you tonight thank you i know we have two more presentations i'm not going to go too far but um okay i appreciate that anybody have any questions of dr fred about this before he moves on to the next item okay then having completed that presentation let us move on to 9.3 um 5.2 9.2 i'm sorry not well we this is 9.2 is the resolution number 2020 21 dash bot-14 reopening of schools for the 20-21-22 year do i have a second second okay with some amendments right pardon me okay um this is the resolution that will determine what the 2021 year will look like including following all public health guidelines to ensure the safety of our students staff and families the anaheim union high school district intends to return to a live in classroom instructional model five days a week when the 2021-22 year begins in august along with providing options for those families who prefer alternates as permitted by state law um so on the resolution we have some amendments to make yes i was bringing to bring that up here um would you like to make a motion for some amendment here i like to make an amendment to a couple of uh whereases the one two three four five the fifth whereas or we could say uh the feedback from the community favor return of students to a live in classroom instructional model five full days a week when the 2021 school year begins and then go down to now therefore be it resolved to state the student trustees the board of board of trustees of anaheim union high school district of uh the the superintendent administration to provide for a live in classroom instructional model for students five full school days a week beginning on the first day of school and then be it for the resolve that in recognition that these are difficult and uncertain time insert the word including with the emergence of coven 19 variants and that plans may change subject to local state federal guidelines that's all my amendments are uh with those amendments i will second amendment okay you have a second all right any comments questions we're going back to full in live school in the fall okay if if we all agree okay any other comments or questions all right roll call vote mrs randall trejo i vote i mr o'neill aye mr jabbar aye mrs smith aye and i vote i we have full agreement here on how we're doing next year okay fantastic moving on 9.3 studies task force i will defer on this to dr freed to go from there the division is busy tonight so again it is it gives me a great pleasure to introduce the team that that we're gonna bring before you tonight as the board knows uh and i know they're going to talk about this in great depth but but um we were we were charged with developing an ethnic studies task force we're based on feedback we were receiving from the community we also had that same interest but as a result of some direction that you had given us we put a task force together to really look deeply at ethnic studies to find what we believe it to be and then make some recommendations to whether or not it should be a graduation requirement and what that might look like i am really proud to bring up first carlos hernandez our director of curriculum instruction and just the great work he has done to lead this task force uh he'll introduce the team that is with us here tonight but i'm just really really uh super humbled and proud of the work that he and the team have done we have a a pretty very very bright a powerful group of stakeholders that represent a variety of different groups on our on our campuses in our community and they've done just great mind work and i know trustee randall trejo and we're present pearson you've had opportunities to be at the meetings occasionally so you've seen firsthand the great mind work that they've been engaged in to get us to this place so with further ado i'm going to turn over to mr hernandez who's going to lead us through this presentation yeah i didn't touch it thank you very much dr frieden good evening board uh good evening uh superintendent masuda and cabinet members thank you very much for this opportunity to take you through a journey of our ethnic studies task force that we began in august when given the directions uh back in august of 2020.
we feel strongly that this benefit should be able to be utilized at the age of 55 for several reasons although most teachers do not retire at the age of 55 it is important that the benefit becomes available at that age with the appropriate amount of years of service which is currently being negotiated 25 years we want our teachers to have that option so they feel they don't they do not have to hang on for health care benefits only or if a teacher is burned out or they're just ready to go and they're just coming to work every day just for health care and hanging on for five or six more years it's also we also have teachers that may have circumstances beyond their control such as health issues or have to take care of a significant other currently most districts in california do offer this option with yet less years of service and at the age of 55.
oh hello can you hear me we can thank you um linda burauer i just want to say as you know that city council will be voting on the budget at their next meeting and the draft budget right now doesn't allocate any funds at all to the center of the city and i would encourage you any council member can bring an amendment at the next meeting before the final budget is passed so i would um ask that you send a recommendation to city council asking for that kind of amendment and specify a specific dollar amount that you think is reasonable to allocate for this fiscal year i think it's really important and i think um for the successive eventual success of the center of the city i think we need a modest amount to get things going this summer um now that some pandemic restrictions are lifted i i think it would be perfectly safe and reasonable to put some outdoor furniture and spruce things up a bit and make it more inviting so people can start using it you know socially distanced is necessary but i think it's really important you show some progress um this summer and without a little bit of a budget that probably won't happen so i'm hoping that you will do that also i want to remind you this is a charter amendment and it's been almost two years now since it was put in the charter and i it doesn't seem right at all that um you know there's nothing visible on the site yet so this i think i'm hoping this is your opportunity to get something going by getting a modest um cash infusion as soon as possible thank you thank you was there one other hand raised heather or is that it's not another hand raised um but there's somebody else um on the on the phone so i just want to remind you that if you hit star nine if you did want to comment you can do that [Music] okay and then there is another opportunity for public comment at the end wonderful all right with that we will move on to the next item on the agenda which is uh the budget discussion now i i think there's a this uh could pertain to a couple of things uh depending on on where folks wanted to go i know that there were some questions that were written in uh to staff regarding the budget uh of uh our council and so um you know heather as you fielded some of those questions um could you uh fill us in uh on on or or tom uh on um where we're at with the uh twenty thousand dollars and all of that so i think uh heather if you would like to uh you you're more than one to we do have both tom and councilmember briggs have raised their hands too so um however you'd like to handle it i i say let tom and councilmember briggs go first and then i can fill in any gaps if there are any left okay very good uh can uh can you hear me um heather okay thanks yeah i'll do this by my phone so it's a little different sorry uh councilmember briggs do you mind if i start out go for it okay um uh thank you you know there are there were a number of questions about the budget i know we talked about last time and i was hoping to take a couple minutes today to um to share with you kind of the calculation i made and what is what is in the budget and what is not in the budget and why so so um mrs brauer linda linda i can't remember her last name exactly wrong um had called in and asked um wasn't there 20 000 in the budget and how much of that has been spent and you know what's left over and what happens if it doesn't get uh spent and there was twenty thousand dollars uh budgeted twelve and a half thousand dollars was spent and what is unspent uh and that twelve and a half thousand is is primarily for staff time so um uh our budgeting process is kind of complicated because most of our funds are restricted so heather for example if she's going to spend time working on this she she she charges to this and then so to the extent that people are working on something affiliated with this they can they can charge to the project and and uh had it could correct with them wrong but i believe that was the major expenditure but um she's the one actually looked at that what i was would share is that um uh at the end of the year um when we allocate funds at the end of the year if they're unspent then they just like it's your home checkbook it's just stays in your checking account for the next year if we're not going to do that if we're saving for a big project there's a different way that we would budget for it so right now whatever is unspent at the end of the year would go to go go back to fund balance now for for me and i i don't want people to think that um that i'm unsupportive uh or the city's not supporting this effort um let me take a step back for a moment and explain just briefly where the budget was as i was preparing the budget about a month ago you know we're still not sure how quickly we're going to come out of this thing the covid and um the city's recommended budget shows that we're we have more more expenditures than we have revenue to the tune of about two million dollars a year and so we're already spinning out a savings just to basically you know do the things that that are in there and um so as i looked at the different things that were in the recommended budget you know i looked at the ones that had plans and um uh approved plans or or plans well developed and funded those prior to the ones that did not have plans um the main thing of course we find is is a lot of the work we're already doing in in supporting the council of commons one thing i did do is add what we call an fte or an employee the an equivalent of an employee which allows um heather and others to charge to support whatever the commons uh needs um so so for their time this is personnel time so there is an fte in there that is available to support the the council of commons and we haven't had that before um i also uh checked with our broadcasting group and i don't think they're going to charge us but i i um i made sure that they're able to handle the media the normal media coverage that we would have for our board meetings i have not put anything else in the recommended budget for any any you know picnic tables or um you know running plumbing lines or anything like that because as i was saying earlier um you know uh you know so so well let me say this uh i was sharing a name in an email that i wrote mr haber earlier i shared i said mr haber i think we're looking in the same direction we're just coming from different vantage points and that is truly the case um as a person who's very advanced and moving the commons forward you know it's very creative and you know really i think mr haber's really you know moving quickly and wanting to do different things from my vantage point as we look forward it's not just throwing a picnic table up there out there right i'm a steward of the public resources and as a steward of public resources we have to be once the rules the road are set up the creativity can come but for example if there's a table out there or there's going to be a congregating you know who's who's responsible for cleaning it what happens if there's damage what happens if somebody gets hurt these things actually have to be worked out um for us to be comfortable in the activities and once that framework is set up then uh you know what you want to do there becomes very creative and you know within the limitations that are there so so um we are looking the same direction um and it's a creative direction i i just um wanted to say that you know from the recommended budget perspective you know having a plan having some sense of what we're going to do really helps me put something in and the other aspect of this was if i put money in for the commons i'm taking it away from somebody else and so you know i had to balance uh where that would go so it's a trade-off it's i realize everybody comes to different conclusions on this but that's how we got to to where we are on the budget as the as we talk about budget for for this activity it we don't really as i think about it i don't really think of advisory councils as having a budget themselves so i want to draw a distinction as you consider and think about how funding works i want you to consider the difference between having a budget yourself that you have a checkbook that you're writing and basically doing and having the checkbook at the city so when funding is established at the city it has to go through the city's procurement process we have as public funds where where we just have a lot of rules and policies and they aren't really super fast um but they are effective at ensuring that uh taxpayers are getting um an appropriate uh uh service for their dollars and so when we do that you know you should think about the funds being held at the city and having um if if something's going to be done the city would be a part of that process with you we need to do this together we really do need to do this together and um i want you all to know that the city is absolutely willing to do that and is happy and excited about doing it it's just we need to get some of this framework in place so that's where my head was at when uh the budget was being developed um i i think that addressed most of the questions that i saw if i missed some happy to take any additional ones heather did you have anything else or councilmember breaks um i just kind of add on too to what you said um so i appreciate that i think i and that's i have completely understood kind of how the city was developing its budget and understanding the all the different things that would come at you with so many different priorities and um the challenge of being able to craft a budget that addresses all of them um you know as i look um as i've sort of debated how the the next coming budget should look and and think about what it should include and um how we can kind of advance our priorities particularly as it is practicing in background if you can hear it um you know look at um how we advance the priorities of this commission um obviously we've got the structural budget deficit that um that makes finding funds challenging um and i think the charge of this commission is obviously to figure out um we're gonna we're gonna be thinking about this sort of short term uh guided by the the chartered amendment and thinking about sort of short-term what we can do um in this public space as well as sort of long-term um as i've been kind of coming back and thinking about the budget i think um there may be uh based on previous discussions i think there's maybe not a solid vision about what the short the short-term work might look like on um in this public space but i actually think there's a fair amount of um uh coalescing around the long term vision that we you know the goal is to advance the um making sure that we move towards park and civic space on on this land and so um to do that it seems like we're going to need some money um to be able to work towards public engagement building and design work so i know that um the conservancy has been busy fundraising over the last couple of years and has certainly acquired um a nice um set of funds that i'm hoping might be able to be used as matching funds towards um with city funds to be able to to do this work so i'm still trying to figure out exactly the dollar amount um that i can um sort of put forward a budget amendment for to be able to do this work um but based on sort of discussions with heather and also reaching out to jennifer hall who's been doing work at you know the um division and william um in terms of the affordable housing there you know i i think that i'm hoping that that uh work around sort of planning design might be around 70 or 80 000 kind of at the at the low end of low low end but that's those are sort of the numbers that i keep hearing over and over again so i'm going to do my best to be able to put forward a budget amendment for forty thousand dollars um for this for this next um budget cycle so still working with um uh folks to to make sure that that's possible but i i i think that it is based on on some of the the answers that i'm getting so that's where my personal thought is and i i think that they're i'm happy to take questions around that and also i'd love to hear sort of feedback from from folks here any uh any questions stephen i think you had your hand was that your hand up no that was me just trying to operate the mutant functions so any any questions at all for councilman briggs or uh administrator crawford jeff can you hear me can you hear me yes yeah uh i just wanted to uh say uh thank you to uh to to tom crawford and to uh council member briggs uh for being so thoughtful about this and uh and i'm very impressed with the the seriousness of which you're uh you know attempting to do a positive um initiative here for everybody and uh i think your points are well taken and i appreciate very much the council member briggs that you that you're willing to consider seriously putting forward an amendment and i think we have actually quite a few ideas that are coalescing even short term that uh myself and others would be happy to share with you and others at your convenience obviously the the whole process with the covet and all the rest of it has made it a little bit difficult to kind of disseminate clearly what what our coalescing thinking is on the short medium and long term we took seriously what what um uh tom crawford proposed to us last time which is that to start thinking in those sort of that tripartite terms and uh so uh you know be very happy to uh to talk about that with anybody that that would like to discuss it thank you thanks jeff um i think alice is up next um first of all thanks jeff um i i i just listening to all this i get a few things in my head that i wonder how we can turn them into less less barriers and more avenues i guess and uh because what i hear is if we don't have plans we don't get money but we can't get plans without money it's we're stuck in a kind of a conundrum here and i'm i'm not sure what to think about that but that's that's what two meetings i've heard that you know kind of have to have already get a budget line item but we can't get a sub shovel ready without money to hack to uh fund planning and maybe the word planning or plans are different means different things but we need to need to understand what we're talking about um and the other other thing is well just erica said something about the work at division and william and i'd like for all of us to be aware of what that is referring to um i if i said division i i believe i met fifth um fifth and william in terms of the the affordable the old y lot with the affordable housing there okay and and and i think that basically highlights uh the need to to have uh interaction with all of these things there's at least some kind of way to knit all these things together just like we're beginning to use sustainability and climate response as the first priority in anything that we do well maybe we should start getting information from all of the organizations who are doing work like the dda with the street uh the two-way streets we need a lot of information from that we need to know if we can tie in to those projects to enhance them and to enhance our work because apparently we have no plans and we have no budget so i don't i'd like to know how we can move forward with recommendations as an advisory board if we don't have the information that we need can i just respond to that real quickly and i think that's why i'm trying to [Music] based on sort of the feedback we've um i've been hearing and you know hearing from members of this group as well is that we should be we should be working very tangibly to um invest in in making that that plan um and and having real designs for that that the public can react to for for what will actually be built on this site that we can go through a public engagement process and come up with some different pieces and i would hope that this group would be able to inform that process moving forward so that's really trying to take away that barrier that kind of plan that you're speaking of requires money to hire a consultant to do the planning and the public engagement but we have no money so so you this is the conundrum i'm seeing i don't hear any alternative point of view that sounds like forward moving uh mr alpha or adam you don't mind if i jump in no that's fine um uh mr off i think what uh councilmember briggs is uh indicating is that she's pursuing a strategy to get funding to do that so my recommended budget doesn't have it but my budget goes to council a week from monday and at that meeting um council members consider it and then make amendments that's what happens is a bunch of amendments that night and so she's telling you now that she is looking for funding to to do just that planning that you're talking about yeah i i would like to have more antecedents to pronouns like to do that what is that you know the planning the planning the plenty of effort that you referenced as far as having uh developing some kind of plan and you said you wanted a plan but there's no money and so she's trying to get the money so that we'd have a contractor that could actually lead the development um and engagement of a plan with this group and the community all of that i appreciate all of that i think there is uh some thought we have in common about who does the planning um and i think this is really based on community involvement and so when you say to get someone to do plans for us we don't want them to do plans for us we want to be part of the creation of the plan sure sure yeah and actually heather um who is professionally a planner might want to take a second to uh just describe a little bit of how that process might work yeah how what i would imagine happening is um going to a consultant hiring a consultant to lead us through a process that would get to the physical design of the space at least that's what i'm imagining because we have a general idea based on all the work that the task force said about what people want there it's just a matter of how we can figure that and what the priorities are because there's a lot of things that people are imagining for that space um to how we physically do that and how we work with the structure that's underneath the space um and so going through that process and it definitely being a highly involved process with the public uh to get to that so that people have agreement on how to move forward with the space that really serves the community does that help answer your question alice i think we're getting somewhere but we'll see how things move from here okay we've got a few more a few more folks that have the had their hands raised jennifer's up next and then frank and then rita i believe i just wanted clarification or to confirm um when tom said that you know any any money from the city budget that he was able to allocate toward this project when council member briggs mentioned that you know she was also seeking additional funding i assume that any funding that would be allocated towards this project from council sort of follows along what tom said in terms of um if we don't use it it kind of ends up in a piggy bank um you know it's not a user situation regardless of how the allocation is um awarded for lack of a better way to phrase that yes not not to over overcomplicate because i could spend all night talking about budget but but there are there are two broad uh ways that we budget one is an operating budget which means it's like um you know what we get in in a year we spend in a year it's our activities the other one is a capital project type thing where the dollars are bigger and the effort takes more than a year those we we would so if you're going to build something let's say that's a million dollars then that would go in a different kind of budget it's called a capital budget and it it it lasts beyond a year but um almost all the activities in our general fund which is where this um asset lives is um uh is is an operating type thing so we can we will manage with whatever your don't let the budget structure be an impediment right figure out what you want to do we'll get the budget to work that out um now finding the funds we'll need some help on but we'll make the structure work for you we're back to figuring out what we want to do without any money to figure it out we'll keep going here uh frank i i want to first uh thank uh erica for for this effort this this is uh this is this is an important move i think the the the symbolic nature of this with the city stepping forward hopefully with a budget amendment is very very important um i think we i've been saying from the beginning the beginning being i guess the approval of proposal a that we need a strong public-private partnership and uh i think this is the the public part of it uh the private part at the moment is partnership between the initiating committee and the library green conservancy to raise private money and we are uh currently at uh forty thousand dollars in in uh commitments and actual deposits and i'm i'm hopeful and i'm i'm confident that if we can bring the public part of the equation forward in this way that this will stimulate uh additional private giving uh in my conversations with people um in organizations uh people are uh really looking for a signal and i i'm hopeful that this is going to be an important part of that signal that we that we can move forward uh in important ways here so thank you very much erica thanks frank uh rita i think you're muted rita i needed um i i want to thank erica as well um and i have to say that i think i have my nearsighted vision on um in asking for some input on how we deal with this short term this summer i absolutely want to have a plan that we can move forward on and recognize the need for money but in the short term the very minor things we have planned um are improving the the look of the site with plantings and and the question is just how do we get beyond you know how how do we manage um kind of the the pent-up demand um during this short-term time phase okay so i'm trying to respect what what you said tom in terms of that short medium and long-term view of things and and asking for how do we show that that there's still um interest action um and momentum of some sort on this project in this short term time thank you rita um i think we'll go to allen next and then stephen good you know there are a couple things on my mind i think there there are other sources of funds that we should at least have in our uh perspective that i don't i don't think the coming money from the government to deal with uh civic support and con the consequence of the pandemic has really been allocated and there's money coming in some share of which could go into the a fund for the development of the commons however it is identified for consultants or whatever also as i understand the green belt fund as it was passed as a bond issue is both for acquisition and maintenance and it's only a city council resolution that has restricted that multi-million dollars now only to acquisition and the city council could just as well say in this case some of that green belt fund could be used for the development of the commons and in addition that would take a a city council resolution to free that money which now isn't even considered in the budget and part of the commons is within the framework of the parks department that has its own budget and we should know you know what a plan or funds the parks has in terms of commons development so those are three areas and then we do have neighbors particularly the first martin company that has a considerable investment in in the liberty plaza they pay somebody to take looks at that and in some way that output into the uh the multiple private parts of the public private should be seen into our picture i think it would be very helpful if we would get the block group together so that we could see what all the neighbors have in mind and i think many people could participate in the getting the resources needed to develop their things so that they are well planned and i appreciate tom's vantage point uh you know but we need to see who are who are all the players here and what everybody can contribute together as a collective effort um adam may respond to a couple of those things now or would you um uh uh a couple things if i could just describe and and um heather mitt perhaps you and i should actually uh have a faq thing we start doing so that we don't we get these answers out there to people as we do this on the stimulus funds uh or the funds from the the federal government i'm expecting to hear from the about those next week but i'll have to tell you because of the deficit that we have and the projections that it's actually not expected to improve um over the next five years in fact it might get worse we i'm if it's in the neighborhood of what i'm thinking which is 10 to 13 million um i've indicated to council there's a good chance that i'm going to be recommending that we keep that in the bank so that we spend it through the five years and try to grow back into grow out of our structural deficit it would not be monies we'd be able to have if it's more than that um then it becomes a conversation that i i feel like that we could have with council that's just my thought on that there's nothing beneficial officially given to council but i wanted to share that with you since you raised it in relation to the green belt uh um funds that was a voter approved millage and so the restriction is on by the voters the the council um it would not be appropriate for council to um change that from acquisition to maintenance in fact i think um i would certainly run it through legal but but um historically they hew pretty closely to what the language language was and it was really intended for acquisition and then on the park side this may not make a lot of sense to people but i was referencing earlier about how we work with restricted funds a lot and this parcel is actually not a city park and and if it were a city park there are millages and there are things that can be done to support it this is this is uh open space and that's that's i mean where you're there's a difference for us between public open space and parks you're in what we call the pros plan if you're a park uh you're subject to uh pac oversight our parks acquisition a parks advisory commission things like that so it's um there's just a distinction there that's really relevant for us for funding and um i just want to highlight that and as far as the uh private parties uh working with the block group um you know what i can say since the time i've i've been in this role is um you know that is on the list to advance um there's just um a limited amount of of of management's uh capacity for focus and and uh that one is coming but it's not yet here we're still working on our other issues so thank you all right thank you tom and i think there are there's a lot of uh a lot of um good commentary i think that there's also some commentary that we're going to want to bring up and make sure we tackle and tom hit on some of those things as did alan around uh different uh potential budget sources uh for funding sorry uh and certainly engagement of outside groups i think that's another item on our agenda here i do want to just be conscious of time because it's 7 48 right now um and we've got a few hands raised stephen's been waiting patiently and then sarah and then alan um and um so steven take it away uh my remarks are just from the perspective of the parks advisory commission um at least they're my remarks in terms of how i i see it from that position as well um kind of echoing and following along other sources of funding if this were a park this is one of the kind of the theoretical questions i've been pondering if this were a park if we're talking about you know picnic table funding we can make that happen i mean the park's budget is as stressed as any of the other budgets that we're discussing but i would certainly advocate for that i anticipate that the parks commission would advocate for that and we could probably convince city council we don't spend money we try to convince city council to spend money but so far what i've heard doesn't suggest to me that there is immediate needs in the city budget right now for this parcel beyond what i've already heard described for maybe some planning money the other topics that we've talked about so far involve like discussions with the dda about that surface space i don't assume that they would think that there's a money transaction coming their way sometime this year with regard to that uh if there was such a transaction again if this were a park we would look at that from the perspective of probably the land acquisition committee is that some sort of easement or other thing that we're obtaining similar to kind of with these adjacent parcels and we're talking about connectivity and other issues the land acquisition committee recommends purchases to city council for parkland or for you know space adjacent to parkland and so forth for those kind of purposes and so i don't i didn't see some reason to be baking in that kind of money uh into the the city budget for this year i would certainly encourage council member briggs to pursue whatever funding uh is appropriate uh in the circumstances but just from the view of the parks commission hey if this was a park we could we could get a picnic table in there i think we could make that happen and if we're talking about trying to access other other uses of the property from some of the other land owners or interest holders in it then that seems like a land acquisition committee topic uh thank you for that stephen i definitely appreciate the uh filling around the uh parks uh commission perspective too um sarah thank you um okay so i might say something potentially unpopular so i want to preface this by saying that i'm very supportive of this i think there's a tremendous opportunity on this side i think that it could be really cool if we really get you know especially connections to liberty plaza someone say that so one thing that's been kind of like nagging me at the back of my mind and maybe mr crawford you have an answer for this for me but when prop a was approved there was no money tied to it so i struggle with i i i do think that the city should be showing like good faith and putting money in but like i struggle with like what is that coming at the expense of if we put any money towards this that wasn't approved by the voters i don't know if there's an opportunity you know you said this wasn't a part we can't do a millage i don't know if there's another opportunity to put this to voters to get more of like a steady funding stream or maybe you can assure me that like this forty thousand dollars that commissioner briggs is is going to pitch there's there's flexibility to do that this is just something that's been nagging me a little bit that i don't know like this was not approved with funding i think we have a lot of opportunities i would love to get this blog group going i think that we can show surrounding businesses that there's value in this there might be opportunities to have naming rights to things et cetera but it just this this tension between we have a deficit so what is this money coming at the expense of is something that's like been bothering me a little bit so i don't know if that's something you can respond to or well i'll just say councilmember briggs and she's communicated with me some started to communicate with me some of her thoughts but this is the hard part of budgeting is where do we take it from right but you know i think you know she's indicating the desire to find an answer to that and uh you know it's a week or so i wouldn't spend i would not suggest you spend too much time on that you have a council member working on it uh let's see where it goes this is part of the process it's a hundred million the general fund is a hundred million dollar fund and that sounds like it's easy to find forty thousand dollars until you have to take it away from somebody to your point um everybody needs more than they have um but uh i would say we should have this conversation next month perhaps and save some time okay thanks maybe just real quickly to respond to you sarah i think one of the things that we're struggling on is um in terms of what would be the cost to build on a you know kind of the park or the civic center you know what this ultimately what the space is going to look like we really don't understand what the full cost associated with that are and so um to get past um to have a productive conversation in our community i think we just we need to do the work of doing the public engagement planning design understanding what the public wants and then we can understand what does that cost and where does how do we fund that and so those conversations going to happen next but at least at least we can have forward momentum of you know getting past this sort of this problem that alice is talking about okay that's good thank you this kind of switches my concerns thanks thanks sarah alan yeah that's my last comment this is both the library uh lane parking lot and liberty plaza and so the liberty plaza park does is part of the park system so uh that is part part of our our picture i just wanted to keep that we keep both of these elements of the comments together in our mind and that's just i wanted to add that in thank you uh alan and i just wanted to add one thing too i want to echo something that frank said and just say thank you to councilmember briggs i do think you know when when uh we looked at the state budget always we talked about how a budget was a reflection of your values and i do think that the the action that uh councilman briggs is is uh thinking about putting forward forward here is a reflection of some of the values uh that that she has on this uh issue and um so you know if there is anything that that folks can do you know um in terms of the the city council meeting or things like that i think uh any uh anything to support council member briggs in in the uh the effort would be helpful um the other thing i think you know one thing that was talked about at the last meeting a lot was around the vision and creating something that was exciting and that would help build momentum and that's definitely something that i agree with as well is that you can catalyze forward movement on this uh by uh by uh really outlining that vision and getting the community excited uh uh to share in it mutually and i think that the planning uh that council member briggs is referencing and that the funding that would be uh could be used for really is a critical part uh to uh enacting that vision and so i appreciate that she's thinking along those lines in terms of the funny news um because i think that'll help us get us to that long-term goal unless there is any discussion more on on the budget item i'd like to be able to move on to uh bylaws discussion there are three uh documents that we did receive um uh very very uh much immediately before the last meeting so i think we did the right thing by postponing this a little bit um i did want to ask heather if if she wanted to highlight anything new or additional on this and then open it up for any questions it would be nice to to adopt some bylaws this evening so we have some rules to do our business by no i don't have anything new or additional to speak to nothing has changed since they were presented at the last meeting any any questions at all i i see allen's hand raised or anna alice i'm not sure i i glanced away who had their hand up first alice why don't you go ahead just briefly um by this time i'm rather seems like an avalanche of revisions of agendas and and bylaws and i i know that i got responses that weren't clear and i don't believe i've seen a document that actually i think maybe i have but i think it's buried among some other things of of the second draft rather than the first draft there there were a number of conflicts in this in the bylaws that still hadn't been resolved so i wonder where we really are with this and i got a lot of i saw a lot of responses that there are no rules and we will have no rules and so all of it has to be in the bylaws but that leaves us with a very inflexible document by which we can but we have very little chance to adapt it to our our particular prop um area of our purpose um so that's kind of a concern i have that generalizes my my concerns about the whole document actually to alice's point um what is the uh can we clarify what the specified title of the revised bylaws are the ones that incorporated uh responses i think that would be helpful all right sure it is um it is the one that is the council of the commons bylaws draft for 121.
the debt service levy has been historically decreasing from prior years as a result of no new debt being added and the annual maturities on the one outstanding bond decreasing so the total school levy is about 135 million 191 260 dollars in this year's final budget the total decrease of 37 400 from the current year budget of 2021 next slide so the second factor that impacts the taxes for the residents of clifton is the net taxable valuation the net taxable valuation is the total assessed values of property including residential commercial industrial public utilities etc that is on the tax roll of the city in which the budgeted tax levy gets applied to this has an inverse relationship than as i explained with the tax levy as the total net taxable valuation increases it will result in a decrease in taxes on the average assessed home the total net taxable valuation for 2021 pertaining to the 2122 budget is 5 billion 334 million 50 063 dollars this is an increase of 11 million 563 200 dollars from the net taxable valuation um in 2020 that pertains to the 2021 budget so this slide uh goes over the overall tax impact comparing the current year uh the 2021 current year to the final budget which is for the 21 22 year and the change so the proposed tax rate for the 21 22 school year is 2.5345 percent which represents a decrease of 0.0062 percent from the actual rate for the current year uh the 2021 budget of 2.5407 percent this decrease in the rate will reduce the average assessed homes school taxes by 11 compared to uh the 2021 budget the annual tax amount on the average assessed home in clifton will result in a decrease of the eleven dollars bringing the bringing it down from four thousand five hundred and twenty five dollars a year to four thousand five hundred and thirty six dollars a year that concludes the tax impact overview i'll turn it back over to mr lucy thank you very much eric so as you see we with doing a zero percent because of debt um maturing it's actually um a little bit of a decrease in tax levy on the school side um and that actually concludes our presentation um as always it's a great day to be a mustang and um if there's any board member comments or questions we we could field them and then after this we're going to have a public recognition on just the budget um and then we're going to call the president is going to call the motion just for the for the adoption of the budget and then move on with the agenda after that and i'm gonna stop staring my screen uh president thank you thank you mister uh are there any board members who have any comments president smith if i may um i just want to personally thank uh uh michael and eric for you know their hard work on putting information together i mean it's not it's not easy i'm here and i'm shy and i'm just trying to and i'm a board member and i'm just trying to stay along with what they're talking about which of course i know but you know for somebody who who who wouldn't know it it's like okay you lost me at hello um you know their hard work daily for this district working with the finance community working with the administration um for this district is i just want to applaud their efforts and and what they're doing every day for this district so thank you guys i appreciate that mr vice president thank you mr casper uh yes i'd also like to thank you both and numbers aren't my thing when it comes to budgets like that so thanks for your hard work uh my only question would be um with all of these student athletes that we do have was there ever any mention of adding another athletic trainer in our budgets um the short answer is it has not been brought up um i could address that in the future i guess hey i just figured i'd ask if any and if there was any ever any mention of adding another athletic um trainer or two all right thank you welcome mr daley yeah um yes uh thank you mr president um i'd just like to also thank uh mr uc and mr thomas savage and the superintendent for on the part of the administration of uh working so hard on the budget to the public if you look at our budget every year the presentation has a little bit more detail so in terms of transparency i don't think you're going to find any district or maybe even a municipality who lays it out as quickly as you can with a budget uh and making the public understand where the money comes from and where the money goes all the information is there in that presentation which is obviously going to be on our website so not only to putting together the budget but the presentation and the slides you have there and the information in those slides is is is a great amount of detail and so if anybody has any questions where your money's coming from and where it's going to and how we get there it's all there it may take some explaining for those who are not that familiar with budgets but it is all there there's nothing that's been hidden or or anything else of that kind so again congratulations to the entire team in putting this budget together and the excellent presentation any other board members before the superintendent seeing none superintendent thank you mr president commendations to my amazing business administrator and assistant ba the amount of time that goes into building a budget i don't think can be understated um you guys do an amazing job a 210 million dollar budget so thank you that there's so many little details that that many won't ever see but just know that it's appreciated because you make me look good and sometimes that's hard and i'm going to ask a question that i know the answer to when i'm asking it for effect did you say that the taxes are going down that people are actually going to pay less taxes than they did last year is that accurate that is accurate um i mean that's unheard of in new jersey that that just doesn't happen so uh for that this whole board should take a bow um for for for that that's that's incredible so great job team thank you sir uh yeah i can just echo uh not only uh mr uc and mr thomasevich um but your entire uh department uh your wonderful secretaries who do a fantastic job of putting all these documents together for you um and i must commend our um our finance committee uh who works on this from start to finish uh they'll be starting i'm working on next year's budget right after this so um uh with our our chairman mr daley and mr canova and miss beltran i commend the finance committee for a job well done and again to our business administrator assistant business administrator on a great job of not only putting this together uh helping the board to understand it helping the public to understand it and um putting together a document of this type getting it uh to the county for approval and here for the board approval so great job all around and i think the public will be very uh satisfied with it so with that said i would like to uh open the public portion of this meeting um public portion of this meeting for um budget only this portion of the media is open to the residents and non-residents of clifton for purpose of addressing the budget only uh there will be another public session where you could address any other topic this portion is for the budget only anything that is directly related to the budget and the of the clifton public school district residents and non-residents are requested if in person to sign the register provided for this purpose all speakers are asked to state their names municipality and subject matter before speaking comments are limited to five minutes per person issues raised by members of the public may or may not be responded to by the board all comments will be considered and a response will be forthcom mr smith if you can't hear us you cut off hopefully it comes back it kicked in before by the board students employees have specific legal rights afforded by laws in the state of new jersey the board bears no responsibility nor be liable for any comments made by members of the public members of the public should consider their comment in light of the legal rights of those affected or identified in their comments and be aware that they are legally responsible and liable for their comments so mister is there anyone that wishes to address the board on the budget uh mr smith there is nobody in the waiting room right now you know mr smith closed the public portion of the budget only okay close uh motion to close by vice president abu drabo second second by mr daley okay we will move on to the next will be our um the actual adoption of our 20 20 21 22 final budget which is um number 11 on our agenda do i have a motion so moved second irwin yes miss password yes provided in second who did spell um mr casper uh mr smith yes i'm sorry i didn't second miss beltran yes mr canola yes mr daley yes mr danny yes mr casper yes mr abedrabo yes mr smith yes okay next we have our board committee reports um again uh our committees were very active in uh working hard so there are quite a few uh reports here so we'll start off with our um athletic committee vice president abu drabo yep all right there we go all right good evening everybody so close to the world next committee minutes of april 29 the flex committee meeting began at 3 p.m the attendees were myself as chairperson board president jim smith commissioners lucy danny and pharaoh saw what uh administrators dairy doctor danny raptozzi and the a.d tom malahi for the winter review the athletic director provided a brief overview of the winter season and explained how various programs navigated the kobe 19 season overall our winter programs were successful spring updates the athletic director explained our spring sports were off to strong starts and provided dates for major track meets we are hosting 429 and five and five one is the say invitational on may 26th is the big north divisional championship may 29th state county championship meet june 4th and june 5th is the njsia north group 1 and 4 sectional championships the timeline for the wwms and stadium weight room committee discussed the possibility of going to bid on these projects early instead of waiting for all the projects including the historic referendum committee generally agreed that these projects are easier to draw a bit start and complete administration will explore our options tennis of course the committee discussed the state of our tennis courts everyone agreed that they are in very bad shape and resourcing has been years overdue dr robert harzi and the board members present committed to getting an architect to look into adding a fifth court which is ideal for high school tennis whether a fifth is possible or not the committee is committed to resurfacing the courts renaming facilities currently the district doesn't have a policy pertaining to naming rooms fields buildings etc after former contributors to the district dr roberto will provide the committee with samples from other districts and the board will determine how to proceed state of ice hockey the athletic director discussed issues with a lack of students coming out for the hockey team explaining that the numbers have been declining over the years not only in clifton but statewide he explained the co-op he lined up with nutley several years ago that would have averted the situation but it was the decline after parents and players spoke against it at a board meeting the committee directed the aed to explore similar opportunities with leaving schools as nutley is in a co-op with colombia summer programs and camps board president smith asked us about some programs and youth youth camps run by our coaching staff excuse me the athletic director explained the great jobs our strengths and support coaches do over the summer with their strength and conditioning sessions hundreds of athletes are trained over the summer by coaches who volunteer their time the aed named the sports that provide camps for the youth president smith said he'd like more sports to offer camps the committee discussed the possibility of sponsoring sports sessions over the summer the aed was directed to look into what other towns do mustang's name and logo to be used throughout committee discussed the possibility of making all school mascots must stand in the spirit of one clifton the committee agreed it's worth pursuing live stream sponsorship the ad discussed how the department was contacted by a company that wanted to sponsor our live stream he was directed to ask the company for a proposal that would that could be reviewed by the committee and the board attorney and that is all i have are there any questions on the athletic minutes okay 16 none uh next we'll move into um finance uh you have quite a few of them here there's there's two and one attachment okay right okay um finance committee for april 27 2001 uh meeting was from 3 30 to 4 10.
we all have our own personal stories about loss and change during this global crisis and most of the change we experienced was immediate and unavoidable i want to take a moment to speak directly to the parents who sent emails and who spoke at the community interactive forum we held this past tuesday i am empathetic to your concern the impact to our students i clearly heard that some of you want to delay the implementation of this plan and i assure you i'm not trying to introduce unnecessary change in spite of a pandemic i am making this grade level recommendation change tonight in response to the pandemic and i am confident that by doing so we can be immediately responsive to the social emotional mental health and academic needs of especially our pre-data for learners in smaller class size environments relating back to my initial comments about how our past successes have been rooted in preparedness i am concerned that delaying this grade level restructuring proposal for even one year will place us in a position of not being prepared to support and educate our elementary students at the high levels that have become a standard for east brunswick public schools the migration east brunswick has begun to accelerate along with housing sales and enrollment into our blue ribbon school district which by the way recently earned recognition by advancing on the latest u.s news and world report high school ranking like we have consistently proven before i simply want our district to be prepared i would like to highlight just some of the opportunities afforded by this proposal in pre-k to 4 the smaller elementary enrollment results in more student contact time and individualized attention from esl teachers reading math specialist and student assistant specialist and then from there we'll continue to use our response to intervention model to diagnose and remediate learning gaps for all students smaller class sizes will allow teachers to differentiate to meet the needs of all learners in the class the child study team will have more student contact time student assistance specialists will have greater frequency to push into classes and do more work with students groups and individuals elementary clubs will be open to and designed for younger students and as an aside by moving fifth grade from elementary schools to amershold vehicle and pedestrian traffic flow at elementary schools for arrival and dismissal could be lessened and become more manageable and then moving on to hammershow what are the benefits of hammer shoulders in upper elementary school learning opportunities will be strong at hammer shoulder but they'll be paced for fifth and sixth graders to elongate the transition to seventh grade our fifth grade students will benefit from science instruction and dedicated lab space environments it's education in subject design art in music rooms cross-curricular instruction taught in a media center for skill development researching and technology integration access to stem labs and classroom kitchens enhanced character development recognition [Music] the opportunity for preschool buddy readers social events geared specifically to fifth and sixth grade students and clubs and activities geared specifically toward upper elementary students all of this while maintaining an atmosphere of an upper elementary school for our fifth and sixth graders thank you okay thank you dr valeski okay next we have a public hearing on the fiscal year 2022 school district budget in a minute i'm going to ask if there are any members of the public who wish to comment on this i want to remind the public that for this part of the public hearing it is on the school district budget only if you wish to speak of other matters of the good of the cause we will be having the regular good of the cause right afterwards but when i call for anyone wishing to speak to the board now it will be only on the school district budget again bernie do you have the screen to show um our url meeting an id in case anyone wants to join to speak about the budget just a moment no problem thank you so much if you wish to comment on the 2022 school district budget enter the url meeting id and password you see before you on the screen in order to be recognized use the chat feature select the zoom meeting host then enter and send your name to the host you will be recognized as speaker your name is called and individuals will be invited to speak in the order in which we have received your quest is there anyone wishing to speak to the board about the 2022 school district budget mrs becker point of order we have to first we have a presentation initially on the school district budget which will be followed by the opportunity for individuals to speak okay please present thank you so let's begin with uh district facts and many of these are our uh items that we have presented in the past um but they bear uh repeating and reviewing first of all the district as an operational entity we do function as a business as a business we are the 30th largest school district in new jersey that's as of 2019 fiscal year we're the largest employer within east brunswick in terms of our population the school population we are larger than some municipalities and you can see just a couple of examples and how we compare to the township on the whole so we're kind of a town within a town almost that is excluding the number of staff that we have employed we operate a major transit system now some of the data i'm reviewing is from the prior year because the pandemic had impacted um some of the data but we will be bouncing back to uh the levels that we were at we operated operates 570 routes traveling over the course of the entire school year 3.42 million miles and if we look at the number of passengers in the uh course of every day morning and afternoon and uh multiply that out throughout the entire course of the year that's 2.4 million passengers which is quite extensive a major food service provider and certainly dr valeski mentioned what our child nutrition folks how they've supported us during this past year but we are a major food service provider uh in uh the prior year we served over 564 thousand lunches 266 000 a la carte meals 92 000 breakfasts we maintain a substantive amount of building and land you can see some comparisons with regard to the square square footage of our facilities and the square footage of our uh acre or rather the acreage and compares comparison to some other locations we also have always strived to control our costs and we participate in a variety of shared services agreements we have worked diligently on an energy program and as a matter of fact we are coming to the close of our energy savings improvement program uh which has affected every single building within this school district uh and currently the tail end of that program includes the addition of solar energy uh at uh several several of our locations and that is at churchill junior high school at central school lawrence brooke school and at memorial school through our in-house transportation services and multi-tiering our bus routes we have created efficiencies which translate into cost savings we utilize the educational services commission of new jersey to also support a variety of services from transportation to special education services and so on we work with the township to seek opportunities for cost savings through financial arrangements and services as well as through the county of middlesex and we're always keeping an eye on the long-term debt and refinancing whenever those opportunities arise and those opportunities have resulted in many millions of dollars of savings over the last several years alone as a revenue producer our community programs operations and our facility use has produced a substantive amount of revenue for the district through the various programs and services that we provide and those revenues have been very key to supporting the school district budget they've provided millions of dollars to help support the programs and services of the school district and the excellence that the district has always strived for really goes without saying i think the community is well aware of what we have done and the achievements of our students and staff and the excellence is not limited on the achievements of students and staff but also with regard to how we manage our finances and over the last uh seven and five years consecutively and respectively the district has been awarded uh certificates of excellence in its financial reporting and management from the association of school business officials international and the government finance officers association so let's review some budget facts and these are facts that were reported during the presentation of the tentative budget firstly on state aid we can see that we're only just recovering from a substantive cut in state aid that occurred between the 2010 and 2011 school years where we were reduced uh roughly uh six point pardon me 6.6 million dollars at that time and then subsequent to that period of time you see that state aid relatively stayed flat while costs to operate the school district continue to rise last year in the last year's budget development we started out with a 22.2 million dollar state aid level we had struck a budget and then subsequent to having struck a budget and moved forward with implementing the budget due to the pandemic the state cut state aid and we had to scurry to make some changes at in a very fast pace in order to continue operations and yet continue to provide services as well for the fiscal 2022 year our state aid is 25.8 million dollars so uh what are the impacts because there have been questions with regard to uh the impacts as to the increased aid levels and part of it is that the savings that we had applied to the current year uh from custodial and transportation services that was a one-year savings because those services were brought back into place for the current year so those were savings during the period of march through june of 2020 because of the pandemic because we were fully shut down but those savings do not continue moving forward since the services are in full force again our enterprise revenue so those are the revenues uh from uh the early morning programs uh the facility use our our enterprise revenues were substantively impacted as well because the use of our facilities and the services we provided had to be curtailed so there was an impact in terms of our revenue we did tap into our retained earnings to help support the budget uh during and close the gap from last year however that was a one-time issue so in order to continue to sustain uh the budget going forward as i mentioned earlier we'll we will be recovering on our enterprises but the uh the enterprise revenue impact that sustained that needed to be uh filled uh is for the current year our collective bargaining and contractual base salary commitments nearly 2.6 million dollars and our health benefits uh projected increase net that's after employee contributions will be going up approximately two hundred thousand dollars transportation services will increase roughly 340 000 and facilities maintenance approximately 560 000 our charter school obligation is increasing roughly four hundred and twenty thousand dollars and our insurance costs other than health benefits and that is uh liability uh errors and emissions property uh automobile and bus insurance that is all increasing roughly 100 000 so all told those amounts come out to almost 6 million dollars which is uh equivalent to the state aid increase that we are seeing let's take a quick look in terms of the charter school impact since 2009 2009 and 2010 were very very small levels of charter school obligation but in 2011 is when we were initially hit with a substantive impact to the school district budget requiring major changes in how we operate and since 2011 there's been a steady increase in the amount that is uh funded to operate charter schools now these funds come directly out of the budget the district does not receive any additional resources for this state aid comes into the district and the district must pay out vis-a-vis state aid and a certain portion from other sources to operate the charter schools this is not a voluntary aspect this is a mandatory pursuant to the law and our current obligation for the fiscal 2022 school year is three over 3.6 million dollars so you can see from fiscal 2011 to 2022 a period of 11 fiscal years that that obligation has gone up approximately 2.4 million dollars in that period of time so we're here with the public hearing on the budget and uh there are a few revisions for final adoption and this is a period of time when um this is the period of time during which revisions to the budget uh may be made prior to final adoption uh they have to be presented during the public hearing and so from the tentative budget we'll review now what some of those revisions are firstly on the revenue side there's the use of banked cap that was something that had been foregone last year if you may recall that we made a decision not to utilize bank cap due to the pandemic but as we're coming out of the pandemic and to help support the objectives of the district bank cap is being utilized on the appropriations side making changes in terms of the flex program the relocation of the program from churchill to the high school will result in savings of approximately eighty thousand dollars we also have a reduction in salaries and benefits for four vacant positions uh in the facilities management area and so that will result in a reduction of 325 000 and an offset for property manage maintenance that will be required and thus that area will increase approximately 222 000 and then the net uh for capital improvements oh pardon me the net for capital improvements which will go toward a preparation for tcus and other site work that's necessary uh is at 1.7 million dollars that will leave us with a balanced budget our balanced budget will be at 172 million 263 393 dollars for general fund tax increase will be offset by a decrease in the debt service fund for a net tax increase of 3.8 million dollars roughly 2.7 2.8 percent following the budget hearing and opportunity for public comment the final budget will be adopted at the board of education meeting to be held next week on may 13th and any information with regard to the budget will be posted on the district website currently the district website does have all the materials and details pertaining to the tentative budget the final budget and user-friendly budget will all be presented on the website once the final budget is adopted and that concludes the presentation with regard to the public uh hearing on the budget thank you bernie now that the budget presentation has concluded now i would like to invite members of the public to speak to the board about the fiscal year 2022 school district budget and that topic only is there anyone wishing to speak to the board about the budget we have no one in the queue who has requested to speak on the budget okay see no one i will close a public hearing and now we come to the good of the cause for the public members of the public may provide comment at this meeting through zoom by entering the url meeting id and password we have been showing throughout the meeting and one more time here it is in order to be recognized use the chat feature select the zoom meeting host then enter and send your name to the host and you will be recognized to speak when your name is called individuals will be invited to speak in the order in which we have received your request participants will be limited to three minute duration is there anyone wishing to speak to the board tonight uh yes we have uh peter de sienna okay good evening peter yes good evening um my name is peter de sienna i'm a father of three children within the district um i spoke oh sorry one currently in ninth grade one in seventh and one in fifth and i spoke tuesday evening at the public forum raising my concerns against the proposal to acquire the temporary trailers at churchill junior high but i felt it necessary to voice my concern again tonight to you the members of the board upon learning about the proposal and hearing from dr valesky i've only seen information on demographics but there's little information as to how this is going to impact the educational model as well as the social and emotional development of our children now i do understand that as a school district you have to consider the amount of students entering the district but feel like gold cannot and should not be achieved at the neglect of the educational and social developments of the students furthermore the timing of this project both in the rush to get something done as well as coming off of more than a year of covet restrictions further makes this decision a little hasty as a parent of a fifth grader coming off of an inconsistent year of structured education i do not see the wisdom in sending our fifth graders off to hammer school for one year according to this current plan um that'll be one year of learning a new school adapting to a new school schedule of changing classrooms for each individual class maybe the use of lockers maybe not depending on the state and cdc guidelines for next year and there's also a new level of organization and independence that will be placed on the student some of these students have not returned to school in over a year some of them have been hybrid however it's still on a modified school day schedule and as as resilient as dr velasquez feels these children are i don't feel that this will action will set our students up for success the following year when they transition to churchill which will be another new building another new class schedule one that is now on a 84 minute block schedule a new level of organization as well as a whole new social change of being with ninth graders who are developmentally who developmentally do not relate to the seventh graders now i've watched my my two daughters transition during normal school years through hammershold and churchill and i can tell you that the first year is not a sufficient amount of time to adjust to that school environment uh furthermore after looking into the proposal i'm just still unclear as to the actual impact upon class sizes of the elementary schools i see as projected that the school district will increase by about 372 children in the pre-k to fifth grade age range by 2023 and i know that this number is not going to be spread out amongst all elementary schools however if you do some quick math that 372 students spread out amongst all eight schools averages out to roughly 47 children per school and that could possibly be if you divide that even further amongst the sixth grade levels that's about eight children per grade level smaller class sizes [Music] that was time thank you is there anyone else wishing to address the board tonight we have marcela betzer okay hello marcella hi can you hear me yes we can thank you thank you thank you for allowing me to speak tonight i'm a parent of twins in fifth grade at bound monroe elementary and i really appreciate the board decision at the april 22nd meeting to delay the vote on the proposed grade configuration plan i also want to thank you for allowing us to have a forum two days ago which i attended along with nearly 200 other parents i do have some concerns i want to share about the proposed grave reconfiguration plan in the current plan as implemented in the proposed timeline our fifth graders would have at least three continuous challenging years the current year ending in june in which they effectively lost their fifth grade year during the pandemic along with many if not most of the activities and milestones that usually take place being sixth graders at hammershould under a pandemic recovery year in which they may still be wearing masks and dealing with a somewhat abnormal year as they try to adjust and adapt to in-person learning in a brand new environment then moving to seventh grade testing again to a brand new school including a very concerning earlier school start time for one additional earlier year instead of being able to start 803 starting at 725 and they'll also be really impacted by a phase two construction potentially attending school in a construction zone for years um i am a public health professional i currently direct a pediatric mental behavioral health program at the new jersey chapter of the american academy of pediatrics from what i've seen in my own family my friends through my work significant increases in families seeking mental health services for their children across the state i think our kids really need two years of stability to transition from this past year's experience of the kova 19 pandemic um dealing with our children's emotional grief from losses of this past year has been extremely challenging and some of us just got our kids in school five days a week last month so thinking of them having only one year at hammershould is honestly extremely upsetting one of my concerns is also regarding school start times moving fifth grade to hammer shoulde moves students from a grade in which they have a 9 10 start time to an 803 start time about one hour earlier and moving seventh grade to churchill moves the adolescents in that grade from 803 start time to 7 25 a difference of 38 minutes this is a significant concern for me and other parents and sleep is one of the most important factors in our health and well-being our adolescents are already chronically sleep deprived i just feel they really really need to educate our community about this and move forward in a meaningful way on implementing healthier school start times there were some studies conducted during remote learning last spring when some schools automatically changed their start times to 8 30 and even 9 because there was no need for transportation showed the immense benefit to teenagers physical and mental health and improved cognitive effects i know about all the challenges to making this change of the late school start times and there's many innovative approaches we can do that won't impact athletics or the budget i think we should start and we should start now our children's physical and mental health depends on it fine thank you marcella is there anyone else bernie yes we have shannon searle hello shannon hi um good good evening dr valeski and members of the board um i just want to really um echo what some of the other parents have been saying and said the other night this has been such a crucial year uh over a year of change for all of our students all of our children uh this is something that has never been seen before next year my i have a son in fifth grade let me just start with that my son is in fifth grade and he next year for most students the change from fifth grade from elementary school to hammershould middle school is in in of itself a huge transition so now we're dealing with a move to hammer shoulde after over a year of being many of the students have been completely virtual my son did just start last month um doing the hybrid because i i did that purposely so that he would have some um getting used to being back in a classroom before he switches to hammershold so that in and of itself going from being virtual almost uh over a year and then starting a middle school in a brand new school brand new environment brand new teachers brand new routine i would like him to have time to adjust to that and not have to get used to that for a year and then end up moving again to another school um they unfortunately the students were not able to see hammer shoulde in fact my son said are we going to actually see the school before we go in and i don't know if during the orientation um over the summer they'll be able to do that i hope so so i know he's concerned about you know what this new school will be like it would be nice if he could have another year at hammershow before he has to um pick up and and move to another school and i think uh many of the parents or all of the parents would agree with that we they had a presentation um that dr gaskell gave and other students gave from hammershaw just explaining all about hammershold and it was they were wonderful presentations the students talked about and again this was made before the pandemic so things are much different obviously but all of the students that spoke and dr gaskell explained how wonderful hammershold shoulders and it is i i actually have an older son who is a freshman in college right now so he's gone through all of the schools i'm familiar with with olive with obviously hammer shoulder churchill the high school and 30 seconds ma'am 10 seconds okay i just really think that this is not the time to make this change give the students time to adjust to um it's time thank you sherman bernie do we have anyone next we have no one else waiting in the queue okay see no one i close the public portion moving on to tonight's agenda before accepting a motion on the board of education items is there anything needing to be separated out by anyone mark can we separate out item number three item number three policies second reading and approval that's with regard to uh that's what you want to separate out mark could you please make a motion for that we don't need a motion to separate it we can uh simply pass on that one until after the other items are voted on okay then we'll just take them one by one we'll just make it easy okay first item on the board of education agenda the minutes for april 22nd can i please have a motion move by laurie second by mark is there any discussion all those in favor aye opposed abstain motion carries item number two policies for second reading and approval can i please have a motion for that move by laurie second by mark is there any discussion all those and uh will will the secretary please follow the rule mr corrangelo yes mrs chu yes mr sismar yes mrs gloss yes mr hong yes mrs lax mr winston yes president becker yes motion carries item number three policy second reading and approval can i please have a motion for that move by laurie second second by susanna is there any discussion mark yes just to remind everybody this is the policy 152 which is the election of board officers i had brought to the board the simple notion of allowing a candidate for the board officers position to make a statement of what they would bring to the board and what leadership qualities they would have i also suggested that we have questions that could come from the board in a public setting to anybody who wished to be a candidate to lead the board i'll give it to mrs becker it's a very tough position but i think the board members should have an opportunity in a public setting to ask questions of potential leaders how they would lead this very important board it was it did not pass on the first reading again i wanted to remind you of how i feel on that about transparency and you know maybe suggest reconsidering it thank you thank you mark any other discussion jeff yeah without repeating a lot of what marx said a lot of this was discussed at the may 22nd meeting and in that meeting um you know a couple of things came from that and one of the questions i had asked and you know i'm still having trouble understanding the answer actually i understand the answer i'm having much trouble accepting it so i would ask put this back to the policy uh committee chair um ms chu when this idea and proposal uh where that mark had brought up uh when mr sismore had brought up explain to me what exactly is the objection at the last meeting you stated because no other districts did it was your primary reason i was wondering if you want to expand on that or is that essentially still the motivation there we follow best practices of what districts are doing and none of the board members at the committee mem meeting felt it was necessary by the time you're there you know you you know each other pretty well you know you've been there you've run for election you've made lots of public statements so by the time you're there you're you're very well known okay so so it's the familiarity well they may and and i think that's a reasonable answer as as board members but we're also elected officials do to represent this township uh i i absolutely agree with mr sismar when he states this reoccurring uh virus that that comes into this board and has existed for far too long is a lack of transparency the public i understand miss true that you believe that people on this board know each other but i think the public more than us we are not the stakeholders we represent the stakeholders deserves to hear from their leadership that leads the largest budget allocation in this township with their taxpayer dollars and it is just so disturbing to me that once again we've defaulted back to lack of transparency which continuously gets us into situations where we have to over explain to the public i am very upset by this there is no motivation best practices according to whom uh very very disappointing once again hiding behind the shroud and reducing the transparency that this public needs mark mark crenshaw i believe he has your hand up um with all due respect ms chu uh strongly disagree with you saying that we all know each other i am a perfect example of why we should have a little speech or a little something uh to understand um because i didn't know president becker before i don't know the other board members other than mark and jeff so you're you know i appreciate you i respect you but i you're off base on that one because we don't know each other i didn't know you know miss lax or mr i don't know anybody and as a new board member it would have been appropriate to have a little discussion as to i'm going to be president i'm going to do this i'm going to do that and whoever was running for each you know the vice president things like that it would have helped me a lot as a new board member to have that opportunity to hear people you know speak um publicly not phone calls or not emails whatever you know texting that which is fine i don't mind that that's totally cool but publicly come out and say i want to talk the board this way i'm going to do this this way um and i do support president becker obviously but as a new member it was very challenging for me so that is the reason and best practices for other uh boards we're not that other board we're this and to be transparent it could be a little bit uh handled with a different explanation so i respect you susannah did you want to reply uh sure i just wanted to add that um remember that board members are on all the board meetings for someone who runs for the board of education i certainly hope that one would have you know watched uh many of the meetings that are open to the public um also in order to be on the board um there you run right you're running there are statements made throughout that time when the board of education member runs when the candidate is um nominated the person making the nomination is making uh assessment based on having worked with that person and making the statement and summarizing their reason for why the board candidate deserves to be uh considered for um for the for the role uh so there's lots of transparency with regard to uh board members being on these public meetings uh regularly over over a period of time a long period of time before uh you know certainly it's not someone who's just elected to the board nobody knows them and then they're suddenly running for a leadership position so there's lots of reasons why there's plenty of transparency and when we talk about best practices how many hundreds of school districts are there in the state of new jersey um so you know i think there's there's something to be said about you know there's a standard approach and there's a good reason for it from my experience on the board over the past few years the process has worked um i wanted to add that um i understand what jeff and mark and mark are saying but i also feel that as it has been brought up by susanna that board members go through an election by the public in november it is very transparent board members have a lot of exposure a lot of opportunities to let people know about themselves either through public debates or social medias or community events this is not an election by the public it is simply an election with board to elect a president and a vice president for the year i don't feel that that process equates into a lack of transparency for this board and i guess i'm disappointed to hear that others do because i feel that we are a very transparent board and the fact that somebody doesn't make a statement before the board is voting on a leader of the group does not mean that we are not a transparent group also with the nominating process the person nominating the board member brings up an awful lot of reasons why that person should be considered for the role of president or vice president and as mark had mentioned the last meeting which i thought was a really good idea a board member can nominate themselves and make a statement so it's already built in i feel and that's why i wasn't supporting the recommendation mark laurie one more angelo yeah i just wanted to make um jeff i appreciate your passion and i love the fact that you have been someone who's been a champion for transparency and when you ran that's one of the things that you said that you felt this board wasn't and i'm hoping that now since you've been here for a bit you can see that there's a fine line between transparency and confidentiality because one of the things that's very important as a board is confidentiality and i really truly in my heart of hearts don't believe that we have a lack of transparency on this board as evidenced by the fact that every time you look what happened on tuesday and the meeting tonight we invite the public into whatever areas we can because we do represent the public and our job is to make sure that this district is run well for the public so i just want i just wanted to say to you board member personally as i said i applaud what you're saying but i don't think a lack of transparency is a problem i think that we do and and again what vicky said simply board leadership is board leadership it's it's it's running meetings and you know it's things that you should see the leadership skills in your fellow board members and for mark you're new absolutely you come into a meeting but the reality is we have turnovers at times when you have a meeting and then my suggestion would be to a new board member coming in abstain on the leadership for the first meeting if you don't know who the players are because everybody else has served on that board for a period of time and gone to know their colleagues and this is a hard year too mark and it you know we haven't met face to face none of us with you because unfortunately this is this has been a strange year for us so usually we don't we don't live in a pandemic thank god and we do have meetings and a lot of time together so that's the only thing i wanted to say but jeff i'm not trying i don't mean this as a debate with you as i said i applaud every every time you've come out and said you know we're here to represent the public i just wanted to just clarify that one point for me because i i do take transparency and confidentiality both very seriously i just wanted to distinguish the two or credential um if i abstained it could be four or four so i don't understand that kind of thing um in my personal opinion um i do own a school federal financial aid accredited the whole nine yards i've been down in education before i've been through things and i am new here it would have been beneficial if i could have had the person that ran for each position make a statement and that's all i don't you know i don't have the biggest pony in this horse whatever i appreciate the president and she knows that so um it's just the person that nominates you isn't you they can say you're this you're that blah blah that's cool i've been nominated for plenty of things but i still had to go up and make a speech to show everyone who i am or what i'm into so in my opinion and finally skip by this i suppose uh it would have been beneficial if the person can speak that's all and um yeah but i appreciate everyone on the board and i would love to meet everybody even it is a tough time i would like to you know thank you mark i'm trying not to take this conversation personally mark sismar and i'll i'll start my comment with mrs becker president becky do you do a good job i'm not taking that away from you thank you very much as board members and like i said your position is very important board members never take cold questions from the public and this is even something where board members in a leadership role are saying they don't want to take a question from a fellow board member in the public i'm i'll limit the transparency to that i'm not saying you know i'm not going to go with the widespread we're focusing on this policy and i just can't understand somebody that wants to be in that type of a leadership position is refusing to take questions from the fellow board members in a public setting that's that's where i'll limit my transparency uh discussion to so thank you for listening to me and again i don't i i guess we'll have to agree to disagree i don't look at um voting no on your recommendation as refusing to address other board members questions so we'll agree to disagree anyone else wishing to speak on this did i see anyone's hand i want to make sure i get everybody okay see no more discussion with the secretary please call the role mr carangelo we're voting on the sworn item item three right no high law zero one five two no this is true yes mr sismar no this is guass yes mr hong yes mrs lax yes this is um sorry if she's not here uh mr winston absolutely not and president becker yes motion carries thank you good discussion can i please have a motion on item 4 regulations first reading and approval hello move by laurie second by second by mark ii is there any discussion will the secretary please call the role mr carangelo yes this is true yes mr sismar yes mrs gloss yes mr hong yes this is lex mr winston yes president becker yes motion carries before accepting a motion on our curriculum and instruction items is there anything needing to be separated out scene none can i please have a motion for items one through two on our curriculum agenda [Music] moved by jeff second by laurie is there any discussion this is not a roll call vote all those in favor aye opposed obscene motion carries moving on to our facilities agenda can i please have a motion for item one approval to proceed with acquisition of temporary classroom units and grade reconfiguration move by marc angelo second by laurie is there any discussion jeff thank you just a question really for dr valesky i i appreciate i appreciated everything i've heard regarding this issue and and if there's one common thread amongst all especially from the parents who have been uh forthcoming with their concerns it definitely surrounds itself with the mental health issue and as i've been an advocate for mental health of our students uh since joining this board two and a half years ago i want to revisit that as a priority beyond many of the other uh issues but i want to really concentrate on that so before i vote on this and i hate to put your you put your feet to the fire i need you to talk to me very specifically and you you touched on it in your superintendence report how are you going to address the mental health issues at in in every nuance of this the fifth grader concerns which i heard uh the gentleman speak about earlier uh being one year in the school i mean there are a lot of great points that parents are bringing up uh my kids have passed on uh the grades that that this is impacting so so really simply tell me about what you're going to do what you're going to put in place and what you're willing to commit to to address the mental health carve out this plan thank you mr winston um the um obviously this has been a focus of this administration and our discussions with the board before the pandemic uh the the public may not be aware that this board approved funds in last year's budget to engage effective school solutions it's an outside company that came in to evaluate our district for a variety of supports but mental health and um having uh supports through our psychiatric supports that were available to the district was really important to us we had been watching for years uh through our hiv process through our our different professionals within the district um about the you know certain certain students that needed supports within the schools and their families too and then we had a pandemic so the commitment is that we are going to focus heavily on the elementary schools pre-k to four but that doesn't mean we're not going to focus on everyone else because literally every student that touches our door every family that supports a student that touches our door may be impacted by some mental health aspect resulting from the pandemic so having smaller class sizes in the elementary schools allows our professionals in those schools to engage with those students more frequently and in a more clinical way every single day then they can refer to the professionals that we have through effective school solutions and be able to provide supports one of the things that we discovered was sometimes we would identify that a child would need support but the family for a variety of reasons wouldn't be able to engage that support outside of school it might be transportation it might be financial it might be insurance a variety of situations so that's why this board supported having that resource available to our students in the school that's a huge impact but having smaller class sizes at elementary schools is going to have a substantially larger impact but then you mentioned about hammershaw and as our students our fifth and sixth grade students move to hammershould as an upper elementary setting uh they're going to have access now to two full-time student assistance specialists instead of one at the elementary school they're gonna have access to four school counselors they're going to have access to two school nurses and the child study team they'll have access to a case manager five days a week we want to minimize the referrals to special education and in this kind of environment this is what we're looking at we're trying to provide supports to students so we can eliminate those referrals to special education and support our students so they can continue their career path in east brunswick with all the supports that they need we may not be able to remediate that student within one grade level setting but we have the supports in place throughout our continuum to support that student to graduation all right thank you uh that's i really appreciate that answer and just as a follow-up to that then uh one of the comments that were made tonight uh by the public and one that i read uh consistently in the threads of the emails that have been going back and forth it's something that didn't exist when i went from uh elementary school up to churchill i'm i'm not sure my parents knew i made a move but but i know things are very different today so there's a lot of rite of passage that takes place uh with the moving up ceremonies um so there's a lot of movement in that that i think has the potential of being lost what are your thoughts around that and if you've thought it through how would you help mitigate uh what seems like a loss and is a loss where it comes to those specific opportunities for these kids absolutely you know so that came out clearly in the public interactive forum about the loss and about the these moments that families and their children were looking forward to and i'm committing to the community that we're going to reinvent those and may not be at that grade level but we can we can recreate those circumstances and and and make that significant at these changes during the transition obviously and one of the things that came out not only tonight but in the interactive forum the in one of the greater impact is going to be whatever year the board supports this to move forward that if it happens in 2022 that's going to be the year of impact after that everything begins to restabilize again for every subsequent year but making sure that we meet the needs of every family member every student to ensure those memorialized these significant ceremonial events can be recreated for those children because they have lost them we haven't been able to have them and in fact you know you you know as a parent of a graduate when we moved to the football field for four ceremonies that graduation ceremony was nice but it wasn't the same as having the entire class together and you know so you got to see firsthand that that impact as a board member as a parent so we as a district we try our best every day to make sure that we can celebrate our students we provide opportunities and in fact we're working hard with the pta to work to provide the fifth grade field trip for this year to make that happen after the governor released his restrictions so as those restrictions become less and less throughout this year and into next year we might still be wearing masks but we're going to take those opportunities to try to make this transition as minimized in terms of the the emotional impact of it as we possibly can by recreating those events and i think we have unlimited opportunity to to do that in even in new and creative ways all right good and lastly if this does pass tonight i did hear loud and clear in terms of the orientation and having the opportunity uh for these kids to see the new school uh in the event that this does pass tonight and i do hope that you're thinking that through and uh giving them the opportunity before the bell rings absolutely orientations are so important because especially even before the pandemic moving to an unfamiliar space is it it creates anxiety creates anxiety for students and for the parents students adapt well they move into the building within a couple of days they learn to navigate the space and they they get to understand the route they're going to travel one of the advantages of hammer shoulders for parents who have not had the experience of having a child there is and i use the term in the interactive forum is it can be compartmentalized so it can be made more intimate within a larger structure and the house model design that it was created under really supports that for our fifth and sixth graders and that but the introduction the orientation is a critical piece and what's also more powerful too what um one of our you know our residents alluded to was a student run orientation and hearing from the students themselves and having that tour from the students and and having them speak to their peers about what it's like to be in that building that's impactful too and dr gaskell does an excellent job with that at hammershould and i anticipate that mr hannas will do an excellent job at that at churchill as well thank you thank you jeff good questions mark mark one just a comment um dr velesky you took some of that working in hammerfelt for five years i saw how the older students student ambassadors they called them stepped up and were helping the children and with the house settings that they have at hammershould it's almost like a an elementary school or a couple elementary schools within a large building the students help each other they're all in the same boat too which which is good for them and the last point i want to make is the staff seeing the staff work and and how much you know from from your position dr volesky to every employee in the district they don't stop at the door when that last school bell rings i see how much the staff cares and especially in this year the craziest year anybody's ever experienced how much more effort the staff has put in this year and you know the the sweat and the tears you know they're they're a dedicated group of individuals to the last one and i have a lot of confidence in our staff in our students and even the parents in this district to get this done for the benefit of all our children so thank you very much very well said mark um i have a few comments but i see heather's uh hand up i just had a comment and a question my comment is as an educator for a very long time i can't stress enough the importance of maintaining small class sizes for educational reasons in any year but coming back from the pandemic and in the immediate years to follow maintaining small class sizes to be able to really keep a pulse on the students develop those meaningful relationships i think it's not just the greatest indicator of their academic success i think it's going to be a huge indicator of their success of adapting back into schools and feeling positively as we go back into the classroom my question for dr valesky is he was talking during the forum the other night about creating an upper elementary school rather than hammershield maintaining the identity it has right now and i was just wondering if you could expand a little bit on what the difference will be thanks uh mr ross the um the the difference is going to be a shifting culture uh and and dr gaskell actually has experience uh in a grade five through eight uh environment before he came to east brunswick so we've had discussions about how we can bring that fifth grade to hammershould and a lot of the concerns that came from the interactive forum i believe were um we're going to take our fifth and sixth graders and put them in a middle school model and mold them into the middle school model and that's not what we want to do what we want to do is we want to we want to bring those elements of what fifth grade is about and be able to tap into those changes that our fifth graders are having and let them explore where their interests are and not force them to do certain things but give them opportunities to investigate uh and to to create their own path or at least begin to experiment with that in a very limited way and we we believe that we'll have the opportunity to even provide electives at the fifth grade so this would be new opportunities for our fifth grade but still maintaining this culture of you're still young adolescence and you need to be treated that way and given the flexibility to make mistakes and to correct those mistakes and not have a rigid structure where there's intense self-independence they're still going to need guidance they're going to need support they're going to need somebody that will listen to their concerns and they're going to have to have somebody that will help guide them and we're going to have to give them time to adjust and so this should be a gentle phased approach and i mentioned it in the remarks in the beginning we want to elongate the transition to seventh grade and so that's five six continue at hammer shoulde and i understand the concerns that some parents are expressing tonight because during the transition some of their children will only be at hammershow for one year but during after we establish consistency that five six continuum can have that elongated transfer and and preparedness for seventh grade and i think that shift to seventh grade as a middle school grade um will will provide greater benefits for our students in terms of being prepared not having anxiety at seventh grade not that's not to say that's not going to exist but our job is to minimize that anxiety that they are prepared to learn at that level and i think this gives us that opportunity but yet treating those students as elementary students does that answer your question it does thank you i appreciate your answer you're welcome melissa i had a few questions for you yes ma'am um so i'm a former pta president um proud that i was in the pta board and then pta president at lawrence brooke school when my kids were there and um i i heard a lot of people talk at the forum the other night and and just other things i've been reading and things that have been sent to us about the fifth grade experience and not wanting their kids to lose out on the fifth grade experience that they want recess they want that halloween parade they want room parents they want that sense of still being in fifth grade so first i want to know have you reached out have you been speaking to the pta president's council to get their thoughts on taking that fifth grade experience and replicating it in another building but still having it be fifth grade and what are your thoughts about the other elements that i just asked about and that other parents asked you about the the parade the parties the room parents the moving up ceremony field day recess so answer to your first question yes we have reached out to the pta president's council and we've had discussions about should the board support this grade reconfiguration and how do we create these experiences for the fifth and sixth graders at hammershow and you you realize now that our sixth and seventh graders as a middle school environment our sixth graders begin to lose things and in this transition we have the ability to dial that back a bit and to give not only our fifth graders but our sixth graders some opportunities for other events that they wouldn't have normally had in our current configuration as middle schoolers so as an upper elementary school student only fifth grade but sixth grade we have that potential and pta president's council is on board with us about being able to explore and being able to implement a lot of these and recreate a lot of these one of the things that i do want to share with the board and with the community and i and i hear passionately from some parents that came in the interactive forum and those that spoke tonight there is a a faction of parents though that will report to us that their fifth graders are changing they're not the huge fans of the class party anymore they like going on the playground they may not want to play on the apparatus they want to talk to their friends might want to just walk around so it you know this is the time that some of the students do change and i think this opportunity allows us to explore what the students need to and hear clearly from the parents we have heard from some parents but this is an opportunity to hear from the parents in the recreation of something for the future that would meet the needs of our fifth and sixth graders at hammershow and we we invite parent involvement and in fact dr gaskell has a very active pta and one of the the reasons he does is he began live streaming his pta meetings so using technology even before the pandemic to involve the community uh paid big dividends because a lot of parents are busy uh and they don't have the time to just go to the school for a meeting but as you know from many of your experiences they multitask they're driving someone to an event they're taking someone to to a game or a practice or they have a meeting themselves they have to to be on or they have to go run an errand and they're able to actually engage with the pta uh and we've dr gasol reports his attendance and his interaction with the pta is dramatically increased that way so this is an opportunity to bring more parents in and include their involvement in the the planning and preparation of symbolic events and celebration events for the students so um you have given a lot of thought and are coming up with a lot of initiatives to provide that fifth grade experience so i'm glad to hear that uh somebody mentioned before about um a tour and orientation i'm wondering do we need to wait until the very end of the year or the summer before just to start that transition i know we used to have a pen pal program i don't know if we still have it but i know that um fifth and sixth graders were partnered up so that the fifth graders had a pen pal at hammershowed and the hammer shoulder sixth graders had a pen pal at the elementary schools and it it created a connection and i know that um remember my older son was still going on my older son he loved it because so many of the questions he would have during the year about hammershould he had a a a peer to reach out to about it and um could we think about something like that you know like i said earlier that that's a that's a great idea because student-to-student interactions and student-led uh orientations and inductions are very powerful in fact i i don't know if the board recalls i think we played the video from hammershow middle school the student-produced orientation which was quite entertaining some of the students were were pretty candid so that that is an opportunity uh to have that student interaction in terms of allowing students in the building the one thing i would caution the board is as we begin to wrap up this school year we still have you know pandemic related restrictions that we have to to worry about but i believe that as we reach memorial day that some of those restrictions state want to begin to be released and i think that we can legitimately begin planning you know orientations to the building but um and that's why we wanted to have this decision by the board because we are looking at 16 months before we make this first change and i believe and the team believes that we that 16 months is enough time to recreate these these elements that the public feels are going to be lost to be able to showcase some of the events that we haven't even thought about we as a community haven't thought about we've thought about a lot of things but we'll have to bet those with the board but be able to share those with the community as we start to approach the end of this school year and throughout this summer and especially as we we move into september and i i commit to the community that we are going to have and you know fingers crossed that we can have face-to-face forums and not zoom forums but we'll have a zoom form if we have to um to be able to keep the community up to date as we approach september of 2022 and so we can answer their questions alleviate their concerns and provide that introduction to students who are going to be making this transition so they feel they're prepared to go too thank you um and i i really believe you've given this a tremendous amount of thought with with lots of great input from your team i was envisioning something not so long along the lines of visiting the buildings but again establishing a connection perhaps after we would get back from winter break in 2022 setting up some kind of a pen pals obviously wouldn't be like when my older son was in school and be done through aol and i am but um i think that the kids figure out how to stay in touch and i think we we should do anything we can to encourage that kind of interaction we had explored for a while uh having sister schools in other countries and perhaps doing videos and sharing videos of daily life in their school perhaps we could do an exchange like that anything that could help bring it a little closer we have um we we have already had exchanges among our elementary schools so that elementary schools in one school have been able to visit with another school we've had physical visits but we've had um actually chats online uh between some of our elementary schools right our architect teachers showcase that at one of their um board presentations dr bully it was chitik and warren store for i believe that that had a relationship at one point yeah last year right so so now i think it would be really good to kind of um think out of the box with that and expand it and think about having that relationship with um the kids who would be in hammer schultz with the kids coming out of elementary school moving to hammershould in 2022 as fifth graders um i did want to ask about one other thing um i know that parents expressed a concern the other night that they didn't want the 21-22 school year being about getting ready for this transition in september 2022.
um then going down to the bottom the federal grants which is our special revenue we were 2.1 last year this year we're at 1.7 based on what we're allowed to but pre-budget and then the debt service is the last two lines obviously in next year's budget there is no debt service so like in past years this the slide should be familiar to people obviously our tax levy is on a fiscal basis and the uh taxes are actually on the calendar basis so half of our budget from last year was the first half of the 21 tax bill and this budget will be the second half of the 21 tax bill and then of course the tax rate it's a functional number of things the general fund tax levy that service fund tax levy and the assessed value property tax properties which is called raidables um they all impact the actual final outcome on the um on the uh excuse me the increase in the taxes um for this year what we have presented as the increase for the tentative budget in march it's still the same in the final budget presentation so on this slide here we're actually looking at the calculation which the first column shows you the uh 2021 budget the uh the uh part that's the the second half of the 2120 20 21 budget which would be the first part of the tax bill for this year for calendar year 21.
susan was passionate about her work with blind and visually impaired infants toddlers preschoolers and their families she was an expert in her field and knowledgeable about assessments curricula and pedagogy she was a stickler about details and doing things right she was a strong advocate for parents and was loved by the family she worked with she mentored and trained endless new early intervention and preschool vision teachers susan made the world and our field a better place thank you for allowing me those few minutes to do that i appreciate it i'm going to move on now to our presentation i'd like to introduce lilos olson of uh of arizona eddie director of arizona eddie um that for those that are not familiar the early hearing detection and intervention um that is a nationwide uh uh project and every state has their own coordinator for that and lila's luckily is ours and then heidi the executive director of arizona hands and voices and the three of us had the privilege of presenting at the national eddy conference um a few months ago via zoom of course and we'd like to share with you a bit about that presentation so i'm going to turn it over to lila's oh you're on you lylas you would think a year into this that i would know how to unmute myself but um i did know susan and i had the utmost respect and admiration for her so thank you for that i appreciate hearing about her i have been with the newborn hearing screening program with the eddie program as we call it for 26 years already almost 27 years where we've gone from from not screening more than a few handful of kids to screening all kids along the way we've had partnerships with asdb the ele elp program in its many different names and iterations over the years with the parents which are represented by the arizona hands and voices and the ear foundation which is a non-profit um most recently and what's most relevant to this particular project is in about 2015 we received some funding from the community found arizona community foundation to do a pilot project in tele early intervention and that was um ahead of its time but but so important to what kendra's going to talk about next um that pilot was funded for a couple of years we then kind of extended it with some federal grant money that that i receive and that we're um i'm the lead on and then um when comet happened we had a little bit of carryover money from from the end of my federal grant that we used we beg borrowed money from the year foundation of arizona because we were a little bit short we had hersa supplemental grants that's our eddie grant and then the amchip cares grant this is the covid money that came out we were able to apply for that um and between those multiple funding sources and our different resources and different strengths as organizations and agencies we were able to really kind of pull together all of the stuff that that has happened since then and i'll turn it over to kendra all right thank you lilas so i'm just going to share a little bit about that pilot that she mentioned um earlier you heard me mention barb shrogg and she was critical um in working with lilas um in that pilot and it was before my tenure here but it was really that pilot that allowed us to move so quickly last spring as everyone was scrambling to figure out how to educate children in preschool kindergarten through their senior year in high school we had families with babies who had just been identified as deaf or hard of hearing or blind or visually impaired and we needed to find a way to reach these families all over the state we serve around 600 families or so in that population and some in very remote areas so we are very fortunate to have not only that pilot to have learned from and people that have been trained in the provision of telehealth because it is different than in-person services um we also had new practitioners to our program that had come from um from university programs that had specific training in um in tele intervention we call it in the birth of three population so um just very grateful that we had had that experience or we would not have been able to move as quickly as we did um i'll share just on a side note real quickly that um i'm not sure if everyone's aware but it's been what 14 months or so since the pandemic hit and everything shut down and while the rest of the world has started to open we are just now for the first time being allowed to enter into homes again and on a very limited basis so our birth to three providers have really i just want to commend them for everything they've done over the course of the last year and continuing to hang in there and get everything they can to families um so back to last spring um we we really had to figure out how to provide services to families in unconventional ways um azip the arizona early intervention program um is is is is the overarch is the part c provider under idea for early intervention and we um have to follow by their policies and procedures and there was no um uh hold in the provision of services we had to of course continue to figure out a way to reach families and one of those ways was was thank goodness with lilas and heidi and their folks we were able to provide tablets data plans um distribute equipment statewide provide technical assistance personnel coaching and training with that technical assistance that heidi's group provided that freed our teachers up to do what they do with families um and we're just so grateful for that we had purchased about 109 tablets 70 with sim cards to provide internet access lilace's group used furloughed air foundation staff parents and elp staff to distribute we accelerated training we created along with jennifer hensley's group with the deaf program some incredibly professional videos that were used to train staff in the delivery of these services along with the deaf mentors as well so that we did not leave families alone out there during this last year all right i'm going to turn it over to heidi now thank you kendra this is heidi i am first i'll introduce myself i am a parent first and foremost i have three children my oldest is 25 years old today so happy birthday to her and then i have an 11 year old and a soon-to-be eight-year-old my eight-year-old is hard of hearing as well as myself and i am the executive director for arizona hands and voices as well as the program coordinator for the guide by your side program that we provide parent guides and deaf and hard of hearing adult guys to families moving on to what our role was within this collaborative project we really wanted to ramp up and utilize the support that we were already providing parents but also just changing it and seeing how how can we stepped up to the plate and so after the initial distribution of some of those tablets and devices that were being sent out our guides kind of took on the role of doing some of that distribution and then connecting with parents and ensuring that they understood how not you know because it's one thing to hand them a tablet and expect them to know how to do it and how to use it but some of these families have never even had basic knowledge or use of equipment so we were responsible for educating them on the use of the devices that they had making sure they could connect well to them if they understood what the app was they understood how to do the updates if needed um so we did provided ongoing support uh every about four to six weeks we were reaching out and touching base with families uh just checking in ensuring that they were still utilizing the devices and knowing that they could use that not just for their visits with their early learning program providers but also to use that with our program as well and any other resources and any telemedicine visits as well so they were able to connect to some of our online um events that we were putting on and just really making sure that they were getting the full use of it and ensuring that they had access to resources information education from all all agencies involved wireless you're muted again lilas all right i had a birthday recently and i'm not learning very quickly anymore um i'm incredibly proud of the whole team parents early learning program ear foundation in how quickly we were able to get tablets out we had tablets out by mid april um all over the state and and so we moved you know being on small non-profit it's very easy for us to purchase things and to get them out so we're incredibly happy about that however um we didn't know what we were doing in some cases we certainly didn't know how to deal with 109 tablets we didn't know we didn't know lots of things and so um you know as we went along we were able to find additional funding and that additional funding let us fit in fill in some of the gaps that we created incidentally as a learning process in this particular thing one of the things we found is it just wasn't feasible for for that month-to-month renewal of the data plans we also found out the data plans didn't work in many places including tucson um i had no idea i've learned so many new terms 3g 4g 5g all that kind of stuff and it turns out that what we had didn't work very well in a lot of different places there also are places that don't not one single internet provider provides internet across the state and so we had to have multiple internet providers to cover the entire state they're also information technology needs as i've already proved today my own technology needs are vast and i was the person that was setting up these tablets and these laptops and obviously i needed lots of help um parents and technology challenges all of the the problems of you know we're providing providing technology to people who don't have smartphones who don't have tablets and don't have internet and so they haven't learned how to do zoom they haven't learned how to connect to an internet they haven't learned a lot of that and we really needed that parent support to figure that out we also found that for the deaf mentor program that a 10-inch tablet screen just wasn't really large enough for the teaching of sign language that was necessary and so we were able to purchase additional laptops to take care of that we also needed help with the the tracking and the inventory management so we really did need to make some changes as we went along so um heidi i'll talk a little bit about distribution and kind of the populations we're working with as well thank you this is heidi so when we came to distributions it wasn't limited to any one area we were able to deliver um in all parts of the state um from supai at the bottom of the grand canyon to various reservations um and really just making sure that all of those um families that needed it and we you know put in a request for it and the providers that made it known we were getting it out to them whether it was being delivered through the mail or personally by one of us and we were also making sure that some of those families that really needed that support when it came to language barriers we have somebody that speaks arabic and then we also have bilingual spanish speaking parent guys and there are several families that have benefited from that support from those guides and getting that direct communication and then one of the biggest things too is just you know thinking about the times that we were in and facing you know families were losing their job they were losing their home they were couch surfing or they were moving from one member of the family to another and so that meant that we were meeting them essentially where they were whether it was a hotel room whether it was a family member's house whatever it was we were meeting them where they were and sometimes we were delivering in person and we were troubleshooting in person sometimes they couldn't um connect well they didn't understand it we you know following all of the social guidelines of course we were going to the home home and being outside but talking them through the steps and then if able to if they could get on a zoom through their phone parent guys were also holding the zoom session on the phone so that they could show the tablet and say you know walk the steps of what the tablet looks like and we're saying okay push just buttons go ahead and do the update that kind of thing just making sure that they really understand understood what what steps were needed and if we weren't able to troubleshoot we made arrangements to pick up the device and then swap them out if needed yes so when um the cares grant when the federal money start started coming out um there was uh uh health and human services had made some money available and because we had a federal grant already we were we became eligible for that and so we were able to apply for about a 70 2 000 grant to really beef up all of the different services that we were provided at that point we were able to buy laptops with much larger screens we were able to through consultation with the i.t department at asdb we were able to figure out the internet issues um and and do it in a safe way that eventually could transfer over to asdb so we purchased um 45 of what they called the khajiit hot spots um that are very locked down hot spots and that's what the the rest of your agency is using for school kids um they have a one-year contract although the money expired in april we we purchased the one-year contract in december so we continue to have internet access for 45 families through the end of the year we made sure that we had had ability to monitor the use and the access and to make sure that we knew what what was going on each one of those hot spots gets about 30 gs per month so we're able to expand what they use the tablets for as um as heidi alluded to part of the fact that this was a health and human services grant they were very happy to see that we allowed families to use the hot spots to meet with their doctor or other therapies or even if they were doing early head start or some of the family visiting programs they were able to use that in fact we encouraged them to use the hot spots and the tablets for anything that could benefit their kids and their families and so we had families that for the first time ever had internet access and and you know all of the the tools and all of the opportunities out there so heidi's going to talk about the new opportunities thank you this is heidi so when we talk about enhanced parent support we really had to evaluate what we were going to do as from hands and voices guide by your side perspective and so immediately after shutdown we went into obviously the virtual platform we opened it up to families to kind of jump on and talk about what their concerns were what their needs were what were they frustrated with whatever it might be and it happened to fall on a wednesday and we started dubbing it what's up wednesday and we did that for about seven weeks in a row just having an open agenda just letting parents come on and talk and then when we we took that conversation and listened we talked listen to what they needed what they were what concerns they had and we turned that over into topics focused uh events and started inviting special guests many times we have kendra and and her staff on to talk about what services were going to look like what they could expect during this time and anytime changes were happening what what to expect next or what the new changes might be just recently we in february we had them on when it talked talked about unilateral uh services for unilateral hearing loss just um and we've had speech and language pathologists we've had different awareness type things different hard of hearing adult panels things like that and the biggest thing is we provided a family camp back in february where we had 28 families that participated and three of those families were tablet receivers so we had families from from oh gosh cells and i i'm blanking on the other reservation i apologize but uh we had so two families from two different reservations and families that you know normally wouldn't even get in-person services just because we don't have guides in that area so this has been a really i hope a really great eye opener for what we can do virtually and like lila said is just really meeting the family where they are and letting them use these devices for not only you know parent support not only early learning program but their their doctor's appointment their visit their tele audiology home visiting programs any of those resources and services that they needed now going into the um last section talk about some of the funding that we just to give you guys an idea of the funding that actually went into this over the last year or 14 months as kendra pointed out um the initial investment carryover was as i was mentioned from the previous hursta grant uh was about twenty thousand dollars for the initial investment to purchase the tablet and start that and then there was a ten thousand dollar supplemental piece of the first year which just ended this past april that was also uh put into this collaborative project and as we've mentioned very many times the amp chip funding which was approximately 77 000.
the fund's investments are administered by the first niagara bank nas trustee mr henry johnson was a lifelong resident of the east long meadow an award shall be made annually in their memory to assist in the further education of an esau middle high school student who has demonstrated good character and has had a positive influence on others and on their community provided the award recipient remains an academic standing at his or her chosen institution of higher learning it is intended that an award will be made to the student during each sub subsequent year of enrollment uh there are four recipients tonight the first one is natalie r connor then lily q hellyer douglas c macphail and the fourth one olivia k watson the brent kelly memorial scholarship established in memory of brant kelly class of 1996 this scholarship is awarded to a student who is planning to further their education at a two or four year college or university consideration is given to students who have exhibited stamina and dependability in high school football we have two recipients tonight they are ryan delaney and antonio malave rodriguez [Applause] antonio's not here tonight but congratulations antonio [Applause] the sioux c nichols makrowski memorial scholarship is awarded in memory of sue c nichols-mccrowsky class of 1983 to a senior pursuing dreams in animation or comics at an accredited college this year's recipient is giuseppe c [Applause] kapwa i'm here hello i'm here tonight to present the heather a quinn memorial scholarship which is a scholarship and memory of heather aquin a very beloved special educator this scholarship is awarded to a past student of heathers or to a student who's passionate about special education and this year's recipient is catherine l [Applause] monroe oh i'm here to give out the susan a ross memorial scholarship this scholarship is in memory of susan a ross who was an islam medal high school math teacher he was awarded to seniors for both commitment and dedication for the learning of mathematics this year's recipient is julia ferentino so so the next award is the ralph schindler memorial scholarship this scholarship is in memory of ralph l schindler usa middle high school principal from 1964 to 1979 is awarded to a graduating senior planning to enter a technical trade program or community college immediately following graduation or a four-year institution and this year's recipient is olivia k watson [Applause] the brian sumter memorial scholarship is awarded to cross-country team members with consideration for the candidates commitment and dedication to the cross-country team experience their leadership abilities dedication dependability and love of the sport we have two recipients tonight elizabeth laughlin and william nguyen the knights of columbus number 4306 scholarship is awarded to a student who has demonstrated high achievement participate in co-critical activities exemplified community service the recipient lilly q hellyer good evening i am presenting the knights of columbus council 9960 scholarship tonight to daniel cloutier um i made him stay after oh boy so now i the next award is the 2021 tony marquez markowski book award this book award is given to students for outstanding community service through st michael's parish and tonight's recipients are daniel clutier and brianna conant [Applause] so the next set of awards uh are connected to the esau medal scholarship foundation there's a number of them the first one is the mofat scholarship in memory of head i'm sorry memory of howard moffat the first recipient of that award brianna l conan then we have natalie connor [Applause] paige davis camden rodriguez shaw [Applause] julia vivenzio and last but not least giuliana zemba the next you saw metal scholarship foundation award is the lewis beach scholarship for engineering and applied science uh this is a re by request of uh ellsbeth i'm sorry is it b oh i'm sorry uh by this is by request of elizabeth b in memory of her father the recipient of this year's award is olivia k [Applause] watson the next award is the christopher v donos memorial scholarship by request of his family a member of chris memory of christopher class of 1979 to a student pursuing a music related field this year's recipient is nick nicholas q dumay the final scholarship from the east london scholarship foundation is the kelly fardet lumber scholarship this year's recipient is anthony m [Applause] kocovia i have the pleasure of presenting the business department award for this year the business award is given to a student who has excelled in business coursework is a self-starter and has shown a strong aptitude for the various areas of the island mental high school business curriculum this year's recipient julia belushi [Applause] the english department awards are awarded to students who exhibit outstanding achievement in all aspects of english including literary interpretation writing skills discussion leadership project originality and oral presentation facility this year the awards the junior book award goes to delaney barrello [Applause] and the senior book award goes to ariel alladore good evening the family consumer science department awards these awards are given to students excuse me who have excelled in culinary arts and child nursery management this year's the recipients for culinary arts are madison edwards and kylie fox [Applause] the child nursery management recipients are alyssa cafaro and olivia robb [Applause] i'm happy to award the fine arts awards for outstanding achievement in the fields of music and visual art the art awards go to sophia arlata and giuseppe capua [Applause] giuseppe is also an excellent drummer you may not be aware very talented and the music awards go to kaden bean and emily paulinek dead it is my honor tonight to present the foreign language department awards ora boya predendara preview de espanol the spanish award is given to students who have achieved an outstanding recorder in the advanced study of spanish tonight's recipient is elizabeth laughlin the latin award is given to a student who has achieved an outstanding record in the study of latin tonight's recipient is arielle alidore laura the math department has two awards to give out tonight first one is the computer science award this award is given to a student who has demonstrated a high degree of proficiency through class work in advanced computer classes and through active or through active involvement and computer-related school work this year's recipient is charlie moran unfortunately he is not here with us tonight uh the second one is the math department teachers award this award is given to a student who has demonstrated excellence in scholarship throughout well in this case her four years here at east lawn meadow high school the recipient this year is margaret ryan good evening i'm here to present an additional two science department awards the first one is the um the bashing llama award awarded in recognition for outstanding academic achievement good character and superior intellectual promise in the field of science this year's recipient is nicholas cassidy [Applause] congratulations the next award is the oh the reno sorry i'm sorry rensselaer medal it is awarded to a member of the junior class who has displayed outstanding achievement in math and science this year's recipient is aaron hamilton congratulations good evening i am here to present the social studies department awards the history and social studies department award this is a book award and is given to an outstanding senior who's excelled in his or her history and social science courses throughout their four years at the high school this year's recipient is arielle elwador [Applause] the academic achievement award this is a cash award that is given to a senior whose average ranks among the highest in history and social science courses over four year period in a minimum of three full semester courses this year's recipient is reyna k plevia the frederick douglass and susan b anthony award this is a recognition award winners are selected on the basis of scholarship in humanities or social sciences leadership and community service this junior winner will also be eligible to apply for a scholarship to the university of rochester this year's recipient is attica n awan the george eastman young leaders award this award is given to a student who displays strong leadership has high grades and challenging courses and is involved in extracurricular activities the recipient is eligible to apply for a scholarship to the university of rochester this year's recipient is katie ewan social studies department recognition awards these are recognition awards for those students who have shown special interest initiative and intellectual curiosity in the social studies the juniors are hayley m brown and aaron s [Applause] hamilton the senior winners are elizabeth m laughlin and olivia k watson civics and community engagement awards these are recognition awards by the teachers of the history department advisors civics oriented clubs at elhs to a senior who has consistently demonstrated commitment towards improving the world around them by making contributions to local national or global communities through civic engagement and leadership this year's recipient is miranda k rotellakis and i didn't spill the beans in class and last for me for tonight the academic academic achievement in psychology award this is a national recognition award by the teachers psychology and secondary schools a division of the american psychological association to a junior or senior from the advanced placement psychology who has consistently demonstrated outstanding performance throughout the course this year's recipients are caitlin gibbons and sebastian [Applause] park hello and now i'm very pleased to present the technology engineering department awards these are given to two students in the department who are self-starters and consistently demonstrate a commitment to excellence and achievement in technology engineering courses the recipients madison maloney and charlie [Applause] mraz the muriel brown award and the red steward award are awarded to a female and male student athlete who have represented elhs with outstanding sportsmanship sportsmanship leadership scholarship athletic performance and integrity i'd also like to thank these two student athletes for the way they've represented elhs the past four years the recipients are ailee weiss and brady mckechnie [Applause] the marilyn baker scholarship is a monetary scholarship given to members of the boys and girls swim team who have demonstrated team leadership and spirit there are two recipients emily conrad and douglas macphail [Applause] looks like they're not here tonight but congratulations to emily and douglas good evening tonight i'll be presenting the virginia d schindler citation this award is awarded to a senior for citizenship through services in memory of mrs schindler spouse of former principal of east long meadow high school this year's recipients are alexander p adamo and ariel olidar congratulations the next awards i'll be presenting are key club awards the first one is in memory of mr richard baby he this is awarded to a member of the east long meadow high school key club who has gone above and beyond expectations this year's recipient is reina plebiac [Applause] nice to congratulations the next award is our achievement award this is in honor of miss marilyn burke the long time key club advisor at east long meadow high school this year's recipient is abigail j haller okay this is our last award of the evening is the student council scholarship this year's recipient of the student council scholarship is ariel [Applause] aldor so first i'd like to say congratulations to all the recipients tonight if we give them one more round of applause [Applause] and also uh just a quick round of applause for all those who were able to make tonight possible both those here and at home [Applause] and i'd like to acknowledge the uh isla meadow education association the elea for their generous financial support to various academic scholarships this evening so thank you [Applause] and last but not least even though she asked me not to say anything i feel a full obligation to do so um i would like to say a huge thank you to miss teresa hellyer so [Applause] so i'm not sure if everybody is aware of this but over the last 20 plus years she's coordinated orchestrated and planned this entire event without her this night would not happen so thank you so much miss elliott we're going to miss you this is her last year of running this event and as she heads into retirement so we just wanted from the bottom of our hearts today thank you so much [Applause] so that brings us to the end of our evening again thank you guys so much and have a good night [Music]
i'm going to introduce the presenters this quickly so we can get to the meet in the heart of this presentation with us is on ha she's a senior at oxford academy she will be joined by cristela cristela avandano she's also she's a sophomore at oxford with us also is jacqueline dolarte one of our teachers activities director us history teacher at south junior high and uh one of our curriculum specialists a leader a teacher leader uh with social studies and many things civic engagement reuben pitino is also here with us so i'm going to turn it over to on to start us off on why ethnic studies good afternoon board of trustees my name is van gaan hao or you can call me anne and my pronouns are she her her and hers mr hernandez actually asked me to share something personal so before i begin talking about ethnic studies i wanted to mention that i am a first generation american and a child of vietnamese immigrants i'd like to share a story that my mother told me not too long ago prior to immigrating to the united states my mother lived in a village in vietnam after the vietnam war the country was in shambles and the government was offering compensation for citizens who could find pieces of scrap and other useful materials with ambition my mother and her friends traveled all the way to another village where they stumbled upon a large block of scrap left from the ruins of the war out of excitement she and her friends each gathered around it and carried it all the way back all the way back home what they didn't know is that that piece of scrap they had found was weighing down on a mine of explosives left by troops during the peak years of the war not until they got home did they find out that the mine had exploded killing and destroying half the village when my mother told me this story i nearly cried seeing that she had to carry all that weight on her shoulders for decades i share this story not because i seek empathy but because the extent of cultural representation i've had living in the western world is limited by what is pleasing to the eyes the classroom in the classroom conversations about cultural awareness only cover lunar new year cultural dances and eating pho and while i love and cherish these parts of my culture there is no mention of the generational trauma and disparities that come with racism war and assimilation according to the 2010 census bureau the southeast asian american students had the lowest high school graduation rate of any other group in the united states i've been a student of auhsd for six years and i will be graduating this month however as i reflect on my educational experiences from kindergarten until high school it is evident that i did not feel represented in the classroom during the summer of 2019 i had the privilege of taking an ethnic studies course at cypress college through the dual enrollment program i can say with confidence that the principles of ethnic studies goes beyond just an academic check mark but offers historical truth to the students who have faced adversity and underrepresentation under the confines of the public education system last year after leading a group of students to advocate to make ethnic studies a graduation requirement i was asked to join the auhsd board of trustees task force through this experience i've learned about the power of student organizing and the importance of educational equity a majority of students at auhsd don't have the cultural representation that they deserve i've spoken to dozens if not more students who have experienced microaggressions blatant racism and marginalization throughout their academic academic career many were called racial slurs mocked and isolated due to their appearance in race the ethnic studies movement has been around since the civil rights movement where educational equity has been landmarked through black liberation leaders desegregating schools the work of chicano activists who fought for ethnic studies and indigenous people fighting for land sovereignty and educational rights the resurgence of the black lives matter movement has brought justice to the forefront and ethnic studies at auhsd will pioneer generations of critical consciousness community engagement and educational liberation as a leader of a student group called diversify our narrative my peers and i have committed ourselves to the ethnic studies movement with the mission to commit to anti-racism mobilize student power to reclaim education and and uplift auhsd's black latino asian and pacific islander middle eastern north african and indigenous communities with that being said i would also like to acknowledge that i hold immense educational and socioeconomic privilege that allows me to be here today these privileges that others do not have were necessary for me to come here and represent students at auhsd and although i am the voice of students at auhsd here at this meeting today there are thousands more students with unimaginable unimaginable struggles who need and deserve empowerment empathy and amplification thank you next slide please and i just wanted to present some of the names that you can see on the presentation of these students and admin that worked with us on the ethnic studies task force some of them were from the same organization that i was a part of and some were student ambassadors and working with everyone on the task force was really an interesting and learning experience because i was able to work with adults and just people who i never thought would be at the same level of respect and value our opinions in the same space but yeah next slide please and then thank you so much anne all right well that is why on is here representing others um so as you see on this slide who we are that this is who we represent and this is who we are so as you see we are sons we are fathers we are products of the district we are teachers we are coaches we are proud sisters and students and as we started the task force that's where we started with who we are who we represent who we are advocating for those that can and cannot and could not uh be with us um you know we're building a community and that's what we've built a community that trusts that has a relationship that can push each other to say we we can do better we've done great in certain areas but we need to improve and so we need to be reflective we need to be assumed positive intentions we need to be real and we need to be able to listen so as we built that community we designed first and foremost through the ethics studies task force these guiding principles that empower students that's what we believe ethnic studies can do that create awareness that connects to students student identities that addresses history that are not really discussed in history classes that fosters the five c's that's what who we live how we live by here in anaheim union that improves student engagement right and civic engagement included provides a framework uh to allow for that deconstruction of those systems that that on reference and others will talk about and then adheres to certain structures to make sure that we uh work through an interdisciplinary multiple department opportunity for for all staff and students and families to be a part of so first we want to highlight the importance ethnic study has on students when looking at the data we see that there are many benefits for any student enrolled in a ethnic studies course benefits include higher attendance an increase in their gpa and more credits are completed throughout their academic career in addition to that additional studies that are referenced in the ethnic studies model curriculum also highlighted that students feel empowered in an ethnic studies course so this slide just highlights what we were able to accomplish throughout this academic year so the board of trustees directed superintendent mitsuda to create the task force and when we first met in september we wanted to make sure that we didn't rush into this process we wanted to do our due diligence and our biggest goals i would say is to analyze the different models that exist assess whether or not they work for our district and most importantly create a definition for ethnic studies so in our task force we looked at different definitions what the ethnic studies model curriculum suggests we've also looked at higher in higher education institutions other local school districts in what they've developed and through a process of consensus our definition is as follows ethnic studies is the interdisciplinary analysis of race ethnicity class gender sexuality and language through the sharing of ideas information opinions and emotions this course provides a framework to allow for the deconstruction of established systems and their effects on people of color and marginalized and disenfranchised groups students will be empowered to address injustices that negatively affect them and their community i do want to quickly add that when we were developing the definition we wanted to highlight the five c's as well as opportunities for civic engagement hi so thank you for having me here today again my name is cristela and you uh speak more into the life and kick that clue this okay oh sorry okay um hi again everybody my name is cristela i my pronouns are she her hers and i am a member of the teacher collaboration group within the ethnic studies task force as a work group we decided to develop a survey in order to understand teacher interests throughout ahsd which we have done so and we have sent it out to teachers within the school district so the purpose of the survey was not only to understand teacher interest but also to understand staffing implications as well as the potential that ethnic studies has so you can see the information that we've received through that pie chart over there on the very bottom the largest wedge which is what you can see in green represents the number of teachers who were interested in the teaching options that were available to them stand-alone and integrated course and the other two the orange represents the number of teachers who are interested in center one course which is 22 and the number of teachers who are interested in the integrated course which is 25.
this will also be an attractive feature in recruiting teachers into our district we want our district to be the district of choice when new teachers are looking for a job it will also make the current teachers feel valued and secure when it comes time to make the decision to retire or not we feel that we have presented some strong options that would be beneficial for our teachers and our district that would exercise the option of retirement benefits that begin at age 55.
so the other two documents um the one that says ajr that's the one that alice marked up so that was her um her suggestions that and that was passed along to the attorney and then the other one was a compilation of suggestions that i received through email and so those two documents those last two documents were passed along to the attorney and those were turned into the draft bylaws that's labeled 4-1-21 thank you alan well i do have some changes but actually i just like to postpone this again because i think we have a fun we are functioning okay i'd like to see the time is three minutes rather than two minutes i'd like to see the role of the initiating committee having regular reports i'd like to see us adding to the membership to have a tribal person part of this a number of those questions that i had raised but i think it would we're functioning okay and i maybe we should have an informal working committee that's one of the uh elements there who put forward a integrated thing with what are exactly the amendments that might be uh still pending but i don't know if this is the with other things on our agenda this is really what we need to spend our next uh bit of time on okay stephen uh earlier i had a question but adam you asked the question and now i have the clarification so now i have a proposal uh that this the draft for 121.
uh board members president we're mr kenova ms beltran president smith and myself administration was uh dr robitosi mr yusi and mr thomas savage and also in the attended was patty perry labrador dear our general counsel for part of our general counsel team concerning the charter school potential charter school expansion mr robertosi discussed the letter attached attachment one which is in your attached to your minutes the district received from the commissioner at the new jersey department of education relating to a request for a charter school uh charter amendment from i learned schools sake arts and science charter school with the committee and general counsel the sake arts science charter school is requesting to increase the number of school facilities from four to five the fifth building would be located at 154 east first street clifton the additional building is a 31 000 square foot building with 20 classrooms and a multi-purpose room administration will be taking next steps to appeal and submit comments regarding the amendment requested and requested a commissioner at the new jersey department of education administration will follow up with the committee at a later time just a little embellishment there um if when you see the letter that was sent in they just mentioned leasing the building there is no plan that they submitted about students where they would come from and all the other necessary things which you would do if you were occupying a school building any questions on that uh particular issue mr daley not a question just a comment to you and board colleagues that i had passed on to uh superintendent last week so i happened to be at city hall last week for personal reasons and whatnot and who pulls up is somebody from the state architect murder school with permits asking for that particular location on health departments and whatnot um and they and they listed the mount prospect over that campus as their main site in clifton um besides saying brenda's now the question to you is um do we foresee or do are we aware of besides saint brendan's and saint andrews any other discussions that we're having obviously that they're targeting private schools so are we speaking to other private schools to see if if they've been uh approached in a sense that there may be other buildings that are being bought in the city uh i i can respond and also the superintendent can respond um we are aggressively uh barking or reaching out to uh private schools mostly the catholic schools uh in the city of clifton who are no longer in operation uh so we may be aware and we may have a potential interest and that the reason for that is to really ask just what you've you've spoken to and that's where they may be moving to they just are seem to be uh ilearn which also is uh the say charters uh the state science and arts is a part of ilearn it's a big corporation that specializes in this and there's a number of issues that are not addressed but one of the things we need to do proactively is to do exactly what you you question is be aggressive about finding out where they're headed and so we could address those issues the superintendent can address that board as we get our knowledge curve up um this was not done in the past um uh but uh we are on top of that and and the superintendent has also uh experienced with this uh with this uh institution in his former district thank you sir the the other stuff may be explained an executive session because there might be litigation involved okay anybody else have any questions on that okay i'll read the uh finance committee from may 4th convened at 4 pm turned at 4 55 a board member's president with mr kenobi mr beltran mr smith and myself administration was dr robertosi janina levitz excuse me too much soda uh michael youssie and mr thomasevich uh also attending this was mr watkins it was the architect andrea khan who was our bond council and um and anthony verso who was a financial administrator with phoenix i believe there was danielle i can't think of her last name was also on there although she didn't participate in the in the discussion uh items of discussion was referendum projects and funding issuance of bonds timeline mr watkins discussed the timeline for starting and completing the referendum projects with the administration and committee now that the referendum has been been approved the district can proceed with putting the the various projects out to bid and awarding the contracts some of the projects are estimated to begin in the spring of 2020 to uh most of the projects being completed by the fall of 2023.
i i know you said 16 months and it's a good point to make but they wanted assurance that it wasn't going to interfere with your team spending time and necessary effort on planning for the reopening in september 2021 that we're also looking forward to so i was wondering if you could just elaborate on that for a few minutes well um number one priority as i said tuesday night was to reopen our schools and as i mentioned to um one of the parents who who weighed in um they were i mentioned that we were not going to be able to move to a full day of instruction with lunch for this school year and the reason was that we looked at a variety of models we looked at a different uh structure for serving lunch at every one of our schools we went through an enormous and laborious task to figure out all the variations and permutations of doing that safely and we didn't have the manpower by spreading people out and maintaining six feet of distancing because that's the requirement right now when you take your mask off um the requirement is mask off 15 minutes or less within a 24-hour period so that means consuming food uh six feet apart having a lot of people spread out having a lot of supervision and we didn't have we didn't have the the person power the person staff male or female to do that effectively or safely so we are focused on september uh returning to full days of instruction uh the word from the governor uh as of wednesday of this week is that remote instruction will not be an option except in very very um identified uh areas where students might need services through this through services of a technology or some technological support but it is not going to be an option for school districts to be remote so we are planning our return we had our road back document our restart and recovery document we've constantly been revising it we've been meeting frequently with the team and we have a solid plan to return in september and it our plan to return in september was actually solidified before um we started to fully complete the packaging on the plan i'm putting together tonight and presenting to you on the grade restructuring we made sure that our energy was focused on that first but as i mentioned in a couple of meetings for the public the actual planning began for this grade restructuring in 2019 immediately after the demographer presented to the board of education and this board of education began destroy our discussions about facilities in 2017 and it's been continuing since then uh which really primarily focused on options for a new high school or not a new high school or do we look at new facilities do we look at land how we have available land there were a variety of options just basically um for lack of a better term we were spitballing trying to figure out what options we had available and what resources it would take to accomplish those different things at different levels in time when that opportunity presented itself but one of the things as i shared in the interactive forum and um you know one of the one of the individuals speaking at the good of the cause tonight uh made reference to it i think was making reference to the demographers report which was completed and updated before the pandemic but what we're seeing on top of that pandemic is a layering so now we're seeing is the projection from the demographer but also anticipating that that is going to be layered on with the pandemic effect of migration to east brunswick and when i say the migration effect we now have individuals who were tied to a physical office say like in the city who now no longer have an office they have to be tied to their office disappeared their company said you're not going to report to an office your environment is now your office at home and so people have made decisions to make that migration somewhere and east brunswick is an attractive place to be because of the school system this board created and administrations well before me created and our blue ribbon status has been an attraction for our realtors been a selling point for the realtors and our national ranking both nish.com and u.s news and world report certainly pays benefits but that also brings individuals to our school district therefore creating this problem that we're dealing with tonight that we know we're going to have class sizes and elementary schools rise and the i i guarantee you that we are seeing people in the office today registering in right now in peaks and valleys that are starting to flatten out but at higher levels than we've seen before and we're also starting to see people who took their children out of east brunswick schools put them in private school for the pandemic but are now returning to east brunswick schools in anticipation of our return and probably more to return as we open in september thank you dr valesky uh suzanna yeah thank you i i just wanted to to make a quick comment and that was you know i appreciated the questions from the board and and the responses from from dr holskey i appreciated the forum that was held in the the time that the parents uh took that night and and tonight um to you know to express uh you know the challenges and concerns um and and it's it's important it's really important feedback because these are things that we're going to need to watch out for and you know as as discussed earlier there's lots of ideas and and ways to address those issues and concerns and and i know we've spent we put a lot of focus into the um social emotional health of the kids and knowing you know what a challenging time it's been for uh for families and for kids so i i just wanted to say how helpful it's been to just hear this you know this discussion the prior discussions the feedback um because that helps us kind of formulate the full picture of of you know the issues that have to be tackled and um make sure that we stay focused on on addressing all those concerns um because you know every child is important we want to make sure that we address all the concerns and there's a lot of good ideas on how to um how to mitigate some of the some of the issues and you know i i really um appreciate uh also the efforts that the administrative staff team has put to you know to to putting uh ideas together and there's certainly still a lot more work to be done so just you know really good information it's been helpful to hear from everybody any other discussion okay seeing no other discussion will the secretary please call roll to vote on whether to approve dr valesky's recommendation to proceed with acquisition of temporary classroom units and grade reconfiguration mr angelo yes mrs chu yes mr sismar yes mrs gloss yes mr hong yes this is yes mr winston yes president becker yes motion carries thank you everyone that was a good discussion tremendous effort parents we need to keep hearing from you we need to keep helping you we need to be able to make this work for everyone and i know we can i have tremendous confidence as susanna and the other board members have said mark brought up a terrific point about a house structure being very conducive to small to more intimate thank you everyone for the tremendous effort this took for the rest of our facilities agenda is there anything else anyone wishes to have separated out seeing none can i please have uh a motion for items two through five on the facility agenda so heather moved by heather second by laurie is there any discussion all those in favor opposed obscene motion carries before i accept a motion on tonight's financial services agenda is there anything needing to be separated out seeing none can i please have i'm sorry was that someone saying something or feedback okay feedback uh can i please have a motion for items one through eight on tonight's financial agenda move by lori second by heather is there any discussion this is a roll call vote will the secretary please call the role mr carangelo yes this is true yes mr sismore yes mrs guass yes mr hong yes mrs lax mr winston yes and president becker yes motion carries before i accept a motion on tonight's human resources agenda is there anything anyone would like separated out scene none can i please have a motion for items one on two on the human resources agenda i'm sorry moved by laurie second by lee woo is there any discussion will the secretary please call the role mr carangelo yes mrs chu yes mr sismar yes mrs guass yes mr hung yes this is lex yes mr winston yes president becker yes motion carries before i accept a motion on the student services agenda is there anything anyone would like second separated out seeing none can i please have a motion for items i'm getting tremendous feedback is anyone else yes okay is everybody muted bernie laurie isn't okay lori it was you i know it was you i needed to motion okay um was there there was a motion in a second correct i'm not sure who who moves or seconded okay move by laurie and i believe second by leewoo and was there any discussion if not will the secretary please call the mr carangelo yes this is true yes mr sismar yes mrs ross yes mr hong yes mrs lax mr winston yes and president becker yes motion carries there's only one item on tonight's transportation agenda can i please have a motion for item number one move by laurie second by jeff is there any discussion all those in favor opposed abstain motion carries is our student rep with us tonight good evening hey there you are hello am i how's it going i'm good you can hear me fine right i've been having a lot of we can hear you great i thought i thought you'd be in your college sweatshirt and have bumper stickers for all of us oh i probably could have won my college year that's okay it's okay i hope i told you guys last time that i was heading to illinois so yeah that's wonderful wonderful wonderful thank you um today i wanted to quickly tell you guys about how ap exam fever has been taking over all the students in terms especially the juniors and the seniors um normally in a normal year it's about only two weeks but this year since they're being administered in multiple forms and in multiple time periods to account for any technical difficulties uh it takes about a month so it's a little bit of an extended stressful period but it's okay because it's a part of the high school process and you know it gives kids an extra time to study if they need it but um i also wanted to thank ebhs and the administration for being not just now but even earlier in the pandemic a complete pinnacle of excellence in terms of being a testing center and this is one area where he just literally stood apart from every other high school in the surrounding region where last august especially when every single testing center closed down ebhs was still there to give the opportunity to the students to take the all-important sats and subject sats and any other standardized tests that they wanted to take so not just for ap exams where i've been reading up stories about people who don't have the in-person option and they have to take it digital where the exam actually isn't the same uh in some cases the digital exam is only a multiple choice only version of the regular exam so there's no real response so they're quite a is there is a large difference if you choose to take the digital exam um i was reading stories about how people who don't have the in-person option are kind of forced to take that and you know we have the luxury of choice here at abhs because you're offering me in person so thank you for that on behalf of the students and i just wanted to acknowledge the fact that you know vhs was always great with being a testing center at the pandemic um as you mentioned decision day and i guess college commitment decision day happened may 3rd which was this monday so it was nice and exciting to see all the seniors not just verbally say where they are in person or on the camera but to see them all on their college gear in person and uh the map was created where you can see that some evhs students are heading far and wide even across the atlantic so that's always fun to see and across the country to the west coast so it's very exciting to see where everyone heads up um in terms of events that have happened national honor society actually had a combo drive the last last last saturday april 26 or april 24th and the donations that we received actually filled up an entire office worth um yeah we were actually able to give donations to one of the organizations that were supporting us which was the central jersey diaper bank and then we were also able to give to elijah's promise which we coordinated with and from that point on elijah's promise took the donations and were able to make and we folded and packaged the bags into about 400 to 500 snack bags and elijah's promises using that to feed homeless people in the new brunswick area so it was a very large success especially considering that it was only a day and for three hours but we got a great turnout and we're having another donation drive that's going on concurrently and that's the food drive for mcfoods if you remember that from last june that's going on right now the first weekend was um or the first opportunity to donate was last sunday and if anyone is watching and has extra food to donate no class items but any extra food to donate the next opportunity is may 8th at the heights at the mall from not from 10 to 1 so though that will be going on throughout the rest of may and uh yeah it's just that's that's the bulk of my report for tonight just want to tell you about ap exams and the events that have been going on thank you thank you it is always wonderful to hear about the actions of our students so unselfish so generous with so much heart no matter what they are going through in their own lives they find that time and that energy to reach out and donate and create a fundraiser or volunteer often led by our staff and certainly by the parents everyone has just got a lot of heart and it's it's wonderful to hear about it so thank you for bringing us those stories no problem at all president becker yeah if i could uh tony thank you very much for giving the shout out about the uh high school as a testing center we appreciate the acknowledgement but i want to pass on my extreme appreciation and support for not only the high school administration uh for formalizing that testing center but for every single proctor that that was part of that and every one of our security force who was there for crowd control and making sure people were socially distanced and this was during a time when a lot of people were apprehensive about going out in public but yet as tony alluded this was an important event in many of our students lives and there were very limited spaces for students to take those assessments so by i appreciate the acknowledgement but the credit goes to those people who organized and supported and staffed those events so i thank them absolutely great point dr velesky security under the best of situations is always a very tough job but maintaining that during the pandemic and maintaining the integrity of the event and showing the kids how much they care that's just a key to the success of our security staff oh and i forgot to mention our entire maintenance staff who and aramark who did all the cleaning to make sure everything was sanitized after the fact awesome i have a total team effort uh anybody else from the board committee reports information i'm mark sismar i have two things tonight uh first of all this sunday's mother's day um i could probably speak for weeks on the importance of honoring those that i feel are the true saints in our society our mothers protect us they teach us they heal us they support us and moms out there sacrifice so much for the benefit of their children my words cannot express the emotions that i feel from the bottom of my heart i want to thank all the moms not just this sunday but every day of the year and my second is this sunday is the start of national police week i ask you to thank a police officer or a whole police department that has helped you or the ones you love the officers that protect your children in our schools every day are all former law enforcement officers and all of us can take comfort knowing that if you do need to call 9-1-1 there are dedicated well-trained men and women that risk their lives at times to come and protect all of us so god bless our police thank you thank you mark two very lovely very articulate sentiments uh anyone else wishing to say anything i see jeff winston hand up yeah uh first i want to wish all the students who are taking the sad saturday morning at 7 30.
then the next column is the 2122 budget the numbers half of those numbers which make up the second half of the this year calendar year so when you add the two together that gives you the actual 21 tax levy and the next line is the ratables they're up a little bit over last year so that's a good thing um and then we look at comparing the um 21 tax rate compared to the 20 tax rate and that gives you your tax increase set 0.0175 um one and three quarter cent so in the average home this year which is up a little bit which is um at 271 900 the increase to to that household would be 47.50 on this slide we do a breakdown to show you because not everybody's on the average number you could be above or below it so you can go across and see approximately you know where your house falls and then all the way to the right would give you your actual uh tax increase for for this year and that was our presentation mr vasquero thank you dr smith okay at this point in time uh this is where i open the floor to the board of education any board members who have questions or comments pertaining to the presentation please laura's yours ah mr elizalata thank you thank you mr pittsguard uh dr smith just to reiterate or just to make sure i heard things correctly if this budget passes tonight there is still a possibility of ongoing talks between the union staff and the board of and the board there's continual talks so that the powers may be able to save their benefits yes so we've had pretty much i would say daily discussion over the last two weeks um and the uh latest the most recent communication came in um in those communication today so by the time that latest communication came in it will need more discussion on our part you know on the boards part um so uh in fact i would say it's it's a um it's even more than a possibility it's a guarantee that there will be more discussion going forward thank you very much dr smith can i just add into that real quick i felt like we've had some extraordinarily positive movements uh in the last couple weeks and i'm i'm incredibly grateful um for the the dialogue between the etea and the board of education in particular for the board um i'm i really am very thankful for how well uh the the finance committee has worked together on this and vice president everhart has worked on this um we've at some points in time have kind of been on-call doctors uh getting paige to come in and meet at various days and even weekends and i'm very thankful for that and i'm also thankful for for what the uh for the eta and their their constant dialogue and i think it's really important for all of us to realize that we are having a vote tonight and it feels like everything gets tied together tonight but there is still time and we're we're we said we said very positive all right and that means we're we're getting close but it's not tonight but we're gonna have some more positive conversations and we feel like we're in a better place than we were just a month ago far better place you know the uh miss no my mic i had a couple of questions mr rashenti the i was wanted clarification and uh i'm sorry i'm trying to find it on the ionizers the sr2 funding i know we're using that funding to pay for the ionizers can you please refresh my memory the cost of the ionizers and how many years we were going to be paying for that yeah sure the the ionizer cost was around 430 000 we had at least purchased it over four years so we would had to build into our budget 111 000 for the next four years so we were able to remove the lease payment out of the current budget for the 2122 year and we're we're putting the whole cost of the ionizers into the grant so the um the least the least going forward will be removed from our budget okay from this current year and that won't come back in because we're going to pay the whole thing off correct okay and what about the thermal scanners did we uh are we putting you know the grant application in for the i'm driving at we spent you know a significant amount of money on getting our buildings ready to open so then the s or two funds would help with the cost of those that one actually so actually uh those thermal scanners we were able to pay for that with grant money over the summer okay so um we won't need to use as your two money for that we need it for a lot of other things but but uh that those are covered i hadn't i'm sorry i didn't print this so i'm trying to scroll through there was one um other slide here and i apologize for not having time to print this out but there was the slide about oh here it is other impacts to 2021 22 budget the first line chapter 44 loss i understand that uh the second line percent substitute slash higher spent over budgeted amount can you please talk ab talk about that sure um so i'll give you one example of that so when we started the year our daily substitute rate was 90 and then we raised it to 105 and then actually 120 and then we we currently are at 140 a day for our substitutes um and that was basically market-driven you know um some districts had to close this year and go full remote because they literally couldn't staff their schools we that was a primary goal for us was to not let that happen and that that so that increase in daily submarine enabled us to avoid that that fate um we do anticipate returning that sub rate down to a more historical level um you know in time but um at this point it's probably going to be the level we're at for the rest of this year at 140 a day um and then there were other uh so other costs within that um just um we have we've had staff out for different coveted related reasons over the course of the year um on medical leaves related to covid and so we have to fill those spots with substitutes along the way okay and then the miscellaneous revenue loss yeah the uh the reduction in the miscellaneous revenue in the 2122 budget is mainly because of the impact of covet on our enterprise fund on our ecc program the before and after school program and the teddy bear academy for the last um i guess a year and three months uh the the program has not been running very well because obviously the participation levels are way down which affects the revenue and we've been trying to keep the programs going and the costs are not in line with what the revenues are so i can't budget monies to be brought back into the budget next year until we make up for the losses that we that occurred uh during the durham cove okay and then the the very last question is that the loss due to decreased fr enrollment can you please refresh my memory what is the f slash r enrollment that's um so that stands for free reduced lunch enrollment um a wonderful program by the u.s department of agriculture this year that enabled all students regardless of their free reduced lunch status to get free meals and um not a cost to our district no cost to our district but um what it did do is it depressed the it decreased the um urgency or value uh for completing that pre-reduced lunch application and so districts statewide are seeing um decrease anticipating decreases in free and reduced lunch enrollment as a result for next year and i did say that i read in the paper that they're continuing this program in the fall is that correct did you see that that the the free lunch for all students is for the whole 21 22 school year oh okay not just the fall the holes okay i knew i i saw a headline recently about that okay that's all i have thank you thank you mr snow mr lancelot you had a question uh just a few questions um so i wanted to get some just some numbers out there i i feel like i've been answering hundreds of emails over the last couple of weeks with people saying find another way you know make it happen and i'm looking at the numbers that you're that you have up there and it looks like there is huge losses from the teddy bear academy huge losses from the lost revenue from kindergarten and preschool 1.7 million dollars in state budget cuts all the the the charges and the things that we bought for to make the school safer during covet and then on on top of that is another nine hundred thousand dollars uh from chapter 44 losses 44 enrollment mr lanzalata chapter 44 was rolled out in december so there were there was that option on the table in december for open enrollment you're a teacher possibly it was presented to you absolutely okay so we had i don't know 200 and something employees move at that time so in january 1 that was 400 000 is that my number correct so since so december they opted for chapter 44.
and then moving forward you know the for guide by your side for our organization we don't plan on stopping our services and we will continue even though the funding has ran out and we're not purchasing any new equipment we are continuing to support those families and we will continue to reach out to them and check in on them make sure that they're still utilizing the devices they're still connecting um and then you know until we make the full transition to back in person you know we with not knowing what that looks like if it's a hybrid mode that kind of thing but we'll we'll still provide those online opportunities for families and our support won't won't end and we have additional funding that continues support to support guide by your side from the hersa grant and it is 16 sorry the existing uh equipment is still out there so as it's still usable we will continue if somebody transitions out and if it's you know still a good device we'll get it back out to a new family and so those things will continue to happen and we'll continue to provide the support and be a support not only to families but to asdb elp providers and joining with them and servicing and supporting the families thank you so heidi i just wanted to add one more thing as you can imagine giving a tablet to a two or three year old um our equipment doesn't last very long so so um we we say as long as the the equipment's still working it doesn't have cracked screens it hasn't been stepped on and all of that but we currently have about 115 tablets out there and 15 laptops as along with the 45 hot spots right thank you both very much i so appreciate our collaboration and everything you do for us uh president nigro i will turn it back to you and again i want to express my gratitude for allowing us to uh to speak today and share with you all the great things that uh elp is doing so thank you very much and thank you for that presentation did any of the board members have any questions seeing none um again thank you for all for that presentation we can move on to uh 1.05 information item executive team reports uh as we've done in recent meetings we have the reports that were made available on board docs for us to review prior to the meeting are there any board members have questions for the executive reports in this thing again this is for human resources information technology and operations i see superintendent right when your your video is open do you have something to add here i just wanted to say that if anybody did have any questions at this time to just go ahead and ask okay i don't see any board members asking questions uh for this item so we can move on again thank you to those who prepared those reports we can move on to 1.06 information item assistant superintendent report dr rex good afternoon president nigro and board uh you have the submitted reports from the directors and principals uh as our year-end closes you know it's a very busy time if there are no questions with regard to the report that i submitted what i'd really like to do at this time is give the board an update on our asdb tucson student that truly has an amazing miraculous happy ending a couple weeks ago we had a student collapse in class at the tucson campus the student was unresponsive and if it were not for the fast action and teamwork of principal kelly creasy and daniela franks who administered cpr then this story might have a different ending i want to acknowledge some of the people that made sure that in a time where fast reaction and quick thinking was necessary these people truly are part of this happy story i want to acknowledge donna lambert for relaying the instructions from the 911 operator and and offering comfort and trying to provide comfort to the student i want to acknowledge danielle barnes for contacting the student health services as well as security finding and copying all the health student record information so the paramedics would have it soon as they arrived and was able to keep the area clear during the emergency to our teachers our marvelous middle school teachers susie mckenna um marla coke melissa brown who immediately supported the other students during the emergency and made sure that things were happening smoothly for the other students safety and for our staff that came over to cover classes sarah gaines bain sarah allen shelly shipley bill paresa for alexis viscara for directing the paramedics to the area and our nurses who contacted our parents mary pick morris and cynthia bibi without the training and the teamwork and just the quick reaction time our student maya would would not be here today maya was taken from our campus to banner hospital medical center in tucson and it was determined that her pacemaker had failed and that she would need emergency surgery at the phoenix children's hospital so on the evening of april 23rd maya was then airlifted to the phoenix children's hospital and had surgery to replace her pacemaker on saturday april 25th maya was removed from the ventilator and was able to sit up and walk to the restroom on tuesday april 27th maya was then moved out of the icu intensive care unit to a regular room and was able to take a shower and wash her own hair by wednesday april 28th maya was discharged and sent back home to tucson maya currently is at home and will be doing intensive cardiac physical therapy she is still working with her cardiologist and will be hopefully cleared soon to do online school with us as we finish up the school year and she'll be online for the remainder of the school year and today principal kelly creasy had the opportunity to go see maya in person and visit the family and was able to check on her and asked mom if we could share this report with you all today and she is doing well and she is recovering and that is all i have for my report uh thank you that is some excellent work there um on behalf of the staff to to keep that student safe we certainly i would give you guys a standing ovation if we weren't on zoom um but really that was just excellent work and and uh i'm really happy that the staff was able to work together uh and ensure the safety of this of that student uh did the board members have any questions for dr rex either um the report that she gave orally or any of the the written documentation that was provided in board docs all right seeing none uh thank you dr rex uh for that uh we can move on to 1.07 information item superintendents report superintendent reichman good afternoon president nigro and members of the board assistant dr rex and the asdb community i am happy to see you all here may 6th 2021 i do want to highlight several different topics first i'd like to acknowledge our new board member aaron wonders welcome erin to our board we are very happy to have you here second thing i would like to acknowledge are all our teachers professional staff who have helped to save the life of our student maya that's a truly wonderful relief that she is home and she's safe i would also like to recognize our current 2021 school year this year we're coming up on the end 20 20 21 has been one of the most challenging academic school years that we've experienced for our students as well as their parents and our teachers our professional staff our administration leads our teams truly has been a challenge we've worked hard to make sure that we continue to provide the best education and support to all of our students and to their families i just really wanted to take a moment to recognize all of you and your hard work i cannot name you the board members to let you know that we are here situation upon us we have a graduating class from may 2021 and both of the tucson campus those students and their academic careers all have had that opportunity to recognize the far and that they have persevered thus far 19.
however i'd also like to um address the tiny little slide pie pieces so these are teachers who although they did write that they were interested in standalone integrated or both they also added additional subjects they were interested such as anthropology and aive cultural relevance asian studies and online course right so these um are this is going to be a more of a breakdown about the numbers i just presented earlier so here we have 67 high school teachers who express interested and interest in implementing ethnic studies into the course work so again you can see the numbers on the right hand side we have cypress high school with 12 teachers who express interest oxford with eight anaheim laura and savannah high school at seven magnolia catella and western well magnolia with six catalan western with five cambridge virtual academy with four john kennedy with three cattell independent studies gilbert and hope school with one and finally we have 24 hd junior high school teachers who express interest in implementing ethical studies into their coursework so again a south junior high school with six dale with five but chris with four orange orangeview and sycamore with two walker junior high school and lexington with two as well and finally ball junior high school but also fine i'd also like to address that while there were 91 teachers who were interested there's still going to be a process in order to determine whether the teacher is the right candidate for teaching ethnic studies with the delicacy and the respect that it serves so taking into consideration the conversations we had in the task force as well as the teacher interest survey in march we determined that the best model that would work for our district is a multiple options model so this includes obviously making it a graduation requirement but giving students options of what would work for them they could take it as a standalone course it can be implemented within a required course or they have the option of taking it as a dual enrollment course even though teachers a majority that did participate in the survey preferred a standalone course based off of students extra extracurricular commitments as well as any other responsibilities they have outside of school we think that this model works best also for teachers depending on what courses they are going to work and develop the curriculum we just thought it would be best to have a variety of options all right and these uh next couple examples just gives you and one of the concerns is well how will students take that well will there be a conflict right so here's a student that is an a through g student completing uh all recommended subjects uh what's highlighted is where this ethnic studies elect of course that um again it currently is an elective course would would be able to fit and that again is if they need to take that elective course in the future as we are thinking about how how things will be embedded into content areas across uh the spectrum but in this case this is a student needed to take an elective course this is a student that is a through g also an avid student also a vapa pathway student so as you can see there is a spot there where a standalone elective could be placed if that is the choosing of the student and then this one is very complicated yet opportunities still exist a through g student cte pathway vapa pathway an athlete right we threw everything in there and yet there is an opportunity for the student to take the standalone elective course ethnic studies good evening later on this evening the board will be looking at this ethnic studies resolution and taking action we wanted to highlight the three items on the slide because we had received feedback in the task force that these are three areas where that were of particular concern to teachers but we believe through the work of the task force this year that we have currently met some of those concerns and will be meeting them going on into the future so what you see there are our current implementation plans first of course is that ethnic studies the task force recommends be a requirement for graduation beginning for the class of 2026 that means our current seventh graders at the same time as we move forward there will be a great deal of professional learning that will have to occur for teachers and administrators in the district additionally curriculum will need to be developed or revised as ms rodarte shared with you the multiple option model currently we have an ethnic studies course in our course catalog we need to again that's about seven years old at the same time in march so the california department of education approved an ethnic studies model curriculum so again we'll need to look at the new model curriculum and see how we can mesh that with our current standalone course at the same time the integrated model again what courses will be integrated with ethnic studies have yet to be determined but of course for that to happen we'll have to have teachers who again want to be trained want to be part of that curriculum development we will also be reaching out as ms rodarte touched on as well to our neighboring districts who are going through the same process we are going through or who have already started such as santa ana unified which had made ethnic studies a requirement a year ago higher education institutions as well we'll reach out to them again i'm reminded of a lot of our partners we already currently have and then at the same time local county boards of education to help us as we move forward okay [Applause] all right well that concludes our presentation i again want to thank our ethnic task force members here presenting on behalf of the rest of the ethnic studies task force members and i want to thank you all for uh very much for the support and the guidance and the direction that we have uh moving forward lots of work to do but we are open for questions well and yeah very good let's give them a round of applause especially for our students and and being involved being a part of this task force i wasn't ever there each day but i know there was a lot of work put into this a lot of homework put into it as well it was not just the meetings but they were asked to go home from the meeting and do some stuff and think of things and you know it was really well done and i i remained in the background i was there but i didn't want to i didn't want to put my two cents worth into you know i don't want to sway anybody any different way so sometimes quite you know silence is the better solution but i listened and i really thought there was a lot of good work going on and i'm really happy that they have come up with this suggestion to make it a requirement that is met with variety of ways because there are so many graduation requirements already and so adding more the state keeps telling us we have to do this and we have to do that but we want to do this but we want to make it so that every student will do it but at their pace or at their weight so i'm really happy that you put this forward like that and my only question it'd be like it'll be sort of like civic engagement it'll be something that'll have to be checked off for their graduation so but it will be recorded so and i and i know that there's a lot of work to be done so your idea of having it requirement for this year's seventh graders is good because it gives us four years to get everything ship shaped and the curriculum all you know gone over and whatever so that if we do get a standalone we'll have teachers ready to teach it and students who may want to take that standalone then we'll maybe have to do a zero period or whatever but it gives us time to get totally organized so pardon questions yes questions yeah i was just making my comments and then i will answer ask for questions i don't have any questions i'm just complimenting them you know because i was involved okay mr o'neill yeah um i'm all for ethnic studies i think it's very important because i think we've been lacking or the educational system has been lacking uh not just us uh if you quit and obviously i think the the easiest way to uh fulfill the possible requirements if we vote for it would be a standalone okay but i also see that taking away from the students ability to take electives and we keep chipping away at the uh elective ability where uh soon down the road as miss piercy was just saying there may not be any luckily available because of all the requirements that are that are put up on our students backs so at what grade level will this ethnic study begin or be available does it start in 7th grade 8th grade 9th grade at what what level that's my first question yeah currently the the plan is for the class of 2026 which our seventh graders to begin to um open up expand we currently have ethnic studies happening right now but for those seventh graders once they become ninth graders they'll have a chance to take it in ninth or if it fits better in the tenth or in the summer or an eleventh or in twelfth but it's a high school okay level okay so the answer is it's high school level correct okay and then you just maybe answered another question was is it going to be available during the summer months so it doesn't impact their normal education throughout the year it could yes it could we currently have other options that they can take in the summers to make room for uh it to take be taken in in the fall or the spring okay correct so we have world history we have um health and as options to take over the summer currently and we and we certainly um can expand those that's if it's a standalone correct now if it's embedded in other courses how would that work in and how it work how do you monitor it how do you make sure that this the student gets those courses to fulfill the requirement correct so so you can take a a course like an english literature course that you know doesn't necessarily exist or or doesn't exist that could count as an english three class in english for the juniors you can embed the ethnic studies content along with the you know literature standards and count that as the english three course uh not in it not in addition uh to the current english three course so it would it would have a new course number so the english three is a regular english three course number it would have a new course number that gives the english three credit and it gives the ethnic studies requirement okay compliance credit so so point is is a great example of course that uh you know at that point the english course that looking at the curriculum to see what what is included already maybe adding a few layers could become a requirement that meets the english and the ethnic studies requirements so the requirement is that the course is is it a one semester is it one year or what what does what what are they going right now we're not giving it a a a credit maximum of 10 or or we're simply saying it it meets the requirement it could be five credits currently the elective credit that exists is a five credit course that would give the ethnic studies credit um and it went the english class that it's all year it could it could also as well so it's not necessarily tied to number of credits it's that they took the experience uh you know in the anaheim union whether it's elective or embedded content okay right so so what you're saying is that this could be embedded in in any one of our courses uh band yeah vapa course uh i mean it just seems like we could there's like i think map too right today that's the right to see today we missed our presentation today to be the rub yeah to ensure that let's say if it's embedded in dance okay i can see it mike i cannot hear you well in many of our bachelor classes i think that it can be embedded because we have a lot of teachers already teaching a lot of multicultural performances but you add a reflective piece of writing and reading into that then i think it would map it up a little bit we could qualify that right but possibly even okay here's my other question though can it be done like over two years let's say if it's a dance teacher that wants to invent this can it be done over that's one of the concerns uh let's say evapo teachers uh that we don't want to lose sight of that it's of apple course as we embed additional pieces it'll take some time perhaps time away from the the content so if it if it can be done in two years then you know it makes sense then yeah absolutely keep in mind this is the work of the task force once we get your approval then the task force will start to work on the process to integrate into into current courses or to develop these standalone courses so that's that's the work right the curriculum development and it's not just oh let's just do this one unit called ethnic studies no it is integrating this into the course so they're getting it throughout the the semester or throughout the year depending on the length of the course so that's the work ahead with the task force so i wanted to first of all thank you um trustee o'neill you actually asked many of my questions that i had here my one of my questions is related to that in terms of building the content right that's up to obviously we're not standardizing it but that's up to the teacher it'll be filtered through the the ethnic studies task force the subcommittee of teacher leads that that know the content that have been teaching it that have experience in ethnic studies that know what it needs in order to be able to meet the ethnic studies requirement so we can't right we're not leaving it up to one teacher while we value them we need to filter through that so which leads me to ask a couple of questions that um well before i do that let me just go ahead and say what a powerful story on i just wanted to thank you for sharing that story number one number two if you are the caliber of students that we're going to produce at auhsd our future is bright so thank you for taking that lead i know we met with you i think i met the backyard uh on zoom uh talking to you and the group so thank you for taking the lead and being involved and seeing through all the way through from last year to this year being part of the process and advocacy and actually now you feel probably satisfied that you came up with something tangible that you could see before you graduate right so thank you very much for that um my question that i was going to ask is in terms of i i think you're probably familiar with the uh controversy that occurred at the state level when they were actually trying to prepare the whole ethnic studies bill i want to make sure that we address arab-american studies and arab american issues within the ethnic studies context right because i think that's one of the things that came out of it is that they didn't want to touch it at the state level but they wanted to give the option for the district which is actually doing it to address it and i think given the fact that we have a number of middle eastern students in our district and we need to address that we need to make sure that we are thoughtful in the process of addressing that when we are developing curriculum so that's something that i wanted to mention and hopefully you guys will highlight yeah and now to that or trustee javart to that point um one of the things that task force has wrestled with is is one of the elements when we're defining ethnic studies is that when we're looking to develop the content and the curriculum that it's loca that part of it is localized so we're we're bringing in the stories the narratives the the um artifacts right that are a part of that course that that represent the different students that we serve so it's not just uh one group in particular it's going to be a variety of different ethnic and racial groups that you will see in embedding these courses so it's localized and and just as on talked about when i'm in that course i can see myself represented in this content right that's what we want so it's a power empowering aspect for our students so that's something our task force will wrestle with when we begin developing the curriculum and we'll likely have to get teachers our teacher leaders to be a part of writing that curriculum so we have a curriculum that we can say this is what we're teaching when we do ela 1 or ela 2.