with one of those options being one year retirement benefits for every four years of service and capping it at seven years max that would give an individual the option of retiring at 55 if they needed to and give them enough time to plan accordingly as needed and it also wouldn't have it to where you do have to have that person on on the healthcare for up to 10 years but we feel strongly about the age of 55 and we feel strongly about what we've presented and hopefully uh this can be negotiated and i want to thank you in advance and look forward to getting this negotiated in a timely manner thank you very much thank you thank you joel for your comments we have uh two others um and i have a note here from kylie that wants to provide time so we have uh joshua or shelly which would rather go first yeah go ahead josh thank you dear board of trustees of apple valley school district i would like to first thank mr joshua holtz for reading this statement to you on behalf and ask that you please excuse my absence unfortunately due to the covet situation i'm unable to attend physically and truly wish i could be here myself but since a person in my capacity commutes to several different communities and school districts and their sites if we decided we shelter in place for not only our own safety but the safety of others we may encounter hopefully i will be able to attend one of these meetings in person in the very near future as more restricted and lifted however i will say i will hope to do so under better circumstance circumstances my name is grayling eshen and i serve as the assigned labor relations representative of the california school employees associate association of chapter 828 of apple valley which is also more commonly known as the labor rep and or the bargaining agent i provide resources and assistance to five different local chapters and i've worked with couple of dozen within both san bernardino and riverside counties today i would like to discuss the local here csa chapter 828 of apple valley i've been assigned to this local for almost two years and i can say with confidence that i enjoyed working with it and meeting some of the most caring and dedicated people i've ever met the reason why i'm sharing this statement today is because of a deep concern i have for the members i represent that serve this community we are currently bargaining the effects of the minimum wage increase per the law and unfortunately this should be called what it is which is a shameful discussion to having this in the first place the law concerning this has been in place for several years so it has not been a secret that recently became an issue the fact is everyone knew that it was coming and i'm not only shocked but also appalled that the district was not prepared for this what makes us worse is that this clearly shows the lack of respect and appreciation for the hard work and dedication that the classified employees have continuously shown for this district through the years of neglect and lack of planning the district simply views the issues as just addressing it with the smallest percentage of the membership as if other 90 of the people are nothing worth having consideration for minimum wage is designed for the purpose of assuring that the workers have a livable wage regardless of anyone's personal opinion of the law we can all agree that the prices of goods and services just do not increase the lowest income earners but for all of us the mutual agreed to provisions of the collective bargaining agreement set the expectations of the consistency be maintained with such changes like these occur i know this may be portrayed to you as a simple mystic problem that can easily be resolved by only addressing those straddling the poverty line with low wages but this is not true and is insulting to the people the district is purposely trying to exclude and here's why one most citrix to have the this issue because they do not pay that low of wage for those who default just under the requirement amount by law is minimal cost to readjust to become they were close to it for instance out of the five local local districts only two did not meet the requirements for a minimum wage as of january 1st of this year on this on their salary schedule out of the two one is here in alpha valley and the other is a small district that only fell behind less than one percent and did not hesitate to agree to adhere to the collective bargaining agreement requirements of the salary schedule consistency we have an agreement in place with a district that ensures consistency and pay with an agreed to hierarchy structure the district has communicated several times that you as a governing body do not care about it and do not want to honor our agreement which has been in place for several years it has been very frustrating and exhausting receiving repetitive responses providing nothing as if you appointed a representative that does not have the ability to negotiate on their behalf of the district in good faith we will purposely include salary increase to help migrate the minimum wage issues that we are told there is nothing to do out it has been agreed to give something to another employee group being dishonest and bargaining is a violation of the government code and having people come to the bargaining table that does not have the ability to negotiate or to make necessary decisions to fulfill the obligation to the bargaining in good faith is not how this works there is a lot more than i could say but i know there is time or a limit i would like to respectfully of this time mr holtz's voice but i simply ask you to consider the following as public servants of this community does it make you proud that you're as a governing body of this district that minimum wage is ever an issue are you proud that your representative essentially state that you do not want to honor what we have agreed and on the collected bargaining agreement and truly open ambition that you were the district to volley the agreement are you proud that you that this is being done to your neighbors continuants and the people who have been worked the front line before during and will continue after cobin we took pride in being part of the solution and we were all in chartered waters with epidemic that literally stops the world as we knew it it was the classified employees that continued to serve the public risking not only their lives but the health of the lives of their loved ones through the possible transmission while the luxury of the working while others were working from home when this has continued the message from the district was that that it was all not all hands on deck issued but all classified on deck issue was left many feeling as if they were disposable or unappreciated i asked you not only to consider this question i have posed to you today but what is also said by the local csa leaders as well please consider walking in a mile in their issues and how you would feel about all this i ask you the district your representatives to not only bargain in good faith but to do so by being prepared where we are as csa did not represent everything i uh interrupt you there so you've gone about seven seven minutes on that do you have any more to go any other speakers so i just uh okay that they need to check in with you first why send them if they need to check in with you every day we meet if it is not you believe it should not be done in this way please appoint someone who is authorized to make the decisions on your behalf so we can stop the wasting of time and resources and move forward in the process it should not take weeks to get a response or account a proposal with a statement of we need further direction or we do not agree without a proposed remedy that progressively moves towards every reasonable solution we should not feel we are negotiating with ourselves i hope this message as well as others resonates with you and asside you in making the best decision and that serves the entire community not just one or someone i ask that you do not fall for one of the biggest mistruths about dishonest statements that are used with discussing caca negotiation the fact is teachers and classified are not the same and we do not involve ourselves and their negotiations and we would expect the same because of those differences but this idea that caca is asking for equality does not work with as often betrayed as if what if what we ask for is necessary means of dollars for dollars when using percentages who the earliest retirement incentive was primarily for and the discussion about minimum wage on reinforcing the fact that two are not the same because classified is considerably cheaper in comparison approximately two and a half times cheaper if you were comparable to cost of one percent for classified just like it is not the same for teachers in comparison with administration and using this type of rhetoric is not but divisive we had tremendous respect for our unions brothers and sisters and the teachers union but the illogical applies to oranges comparison oranges comparison needs to stop everyone everyone plays a vital role in the success of the district and proposedly trying to pit one employee group against another not only counterproductive but also serves as a distraction to what everyone should be concerning or concentrating on that is the students and our community i thank you mr thank you for your time and mr burholz for only reading the statement on my behalf but also serving as one of the many examples of the hard-working and caring classified employees of this district who has shown nothing but respect and dedication to the school district and community and please remember to like the human body you can have a physical or mental ailment and be considerable considered healthy however neglecting that alien can make the situation more complex and can cause other issues within the overall health of the body the support for this body we can call the district is the classified and the these employees are relying on the governing board the brain of the body to provide leadership by assuring that every part is cared for like the other and it's not if it is not the illness of the frustration and discontent will spread making it harder to treat the cure and please do what is necessary to heal the body before it gets worse thank you rayleen eason thank you josh for your comments okay we have no further uh we do i have a comment excuse me i i do have a comment oh we have some more uh requests to speak if we can get those okay go ahead okay the board would like to direct our chief negotiator to compile data for us to have from districts offering retirement benefits we want you to include all appropriate data points in order to inform us of the potential cost of implementing various retirement strategies thank you mr conrad yeah absolutely i i think that's totally appropriate um the negotiation teams as joel mentioned have been working really well together and um i'll even i think it'd be a good idea i know chris their chief negotiator was up here last time and he shared uh some comparables with other or some other county information and i think it'd be great maybe i reach out to him and see if we can set something up maybe the two teams um it would be very helpful in the negotiation table i think joel i see leslie out there if we could agree on i think the data the assumptions the costs all that and i'd happily bring that back to the board to get some specific direction thank you because we will need direct information um very clear information from the districts that the union is speaking about and other districts around so that will have information to make informed decisions okay thank you thank you thank you good comments okay before we move on to uh closed session um we have um some reports from uh the students from granite hills and apple valley high are they here that's after no no no no they have to do it make them wait so okay with that we will move on to closed session but before we do i want to read uh what we're going to go into closed session four uh item number one pupil personnel annual review they are 36 ar 35 2021 number two public employee discipline dismissal release reassignment transfer leave title certificate certified certificated sophisticated and classified employees number three public employee appointment resignation retirement reduction number four conference of litigation government code section five four nine five six point nine one eight one three nine five two cibds one nine zero seven one seven two c i v d s two zero one one one eight three c i v d s two o two two 2956 cibds 202 3366 government code section 54954 subsection c 54956.9 subsection d two e and one anticipated litigation three cases 2018 1907 2020 2105 2020 20 21 06 conference with labor negotiator dustin conrad employee organization apple valley unified school teachers association number six conference with labor negotiator dustin conrad employee organization california school employees association number seven conference with labor negotiator trene nelson employee organization unrepresentative and finally number eight superintendent evaluation with that i'll ask for a motion to uh go in a closed session here i'll suck on that motion by bender second by opara is there uh everybody uh any opposition to that motion hearing none that'll be the order so at uh 5 51 we'll go in the closed session it's like production in here i know it's kind of weird watching yourself on the big screen now i think so i'm classy well i see you're on the top okay are we good you're good okay we'll call the meeting back to order at 6 25 and with that we'll move on to item two which is reports from student representatives and first up is granite hills and it's aaron is back good evening board members superintendent nelson and attendees even though the school year school year will soon be coming to an end the past month has been full of in-person events and planning we recently began state testing for juniors and ap testing for all of our students in both the online and in-person format ap testing is taken on different formats this year though and will continue into early june in spite of this we are confident that our students will achieve amazing things on these tests and will be pleased with the results [Music] you're welcome not only have we been busy testing but we've been very busy having and planning many events we recently hosted the first successful mr cougar competition in five years mr cougar is a competition for our senior boys that consists of talents like formal wear and showing off their talents our 2021 mr cougar is kumar chahan we could not ask for a better mr cougar and he holds the title proudly we also recently distributed seniors caps downs and graduation apparel like cords and sables the day we distributed these items was also signing dates so our wonderful counselors and teachers celebrated any seniors who committed to continuing continuing their education after high school on this same day we received celebratory yard signs that were paid for by the district on behalf of everyone at granite thank you for purchasing these signs for our seniors in order to celebrate our seniors even more in the coming weeks we are planning a senior sunset senior dinner and senior awards night each of these events will bring our seniors together and provide them with some closure for this year until our graduation ceremony which will be socially distanced at our football stadium we once again want to thank the board for all of the work they put into making sure that was possible as this year is ending though we do have to look to the future so we recently held elections for asb officers the elections went well and i'm so excited to introduce you to the new gc president at the next meeting as for our sports teams both boys and girls soccer won first place titles and desert skyley they will be competing for individual titles today and will begin cis next week both boys and girls oh wait i'm sorry both girls and boys tennis won first place i apologize boys and girls soccer also held titles this was the third consecutive win for the girls and their 15th consecutive win overall our boys team have none won nine overall both of our baseball teams and our sophomore softball teams are currently trying to make playoffs and have a great chance at succeed track and me track and field have their first meet today so we're wishing them much luck even though we don't we know they don't need it our basketball team is currently two and two and about to begin their second round of dsl play even though there aren't as many players on any of our teams this year the ones who are competing are working even harder to make up for it overall it's been a great month of planning playing and succeeding thank you all for your time this evening and always remember maroon and gray lead the way very good thank you aaron good as always good to see you back uh next up apple valley high is it that get it right brazil basil [Applause] who is also one of their valedictorians is that correct yes valedictorian yeah one of them yes how many were there do you know how many there were like 13 oh just kidding uh i am so sorry my speech is not load it is not loading well we'll see how good you are if you just want to win whatever is comfortable speak to this um is it because you're not online does it say i think it's floating right now okay sorry you're fine thank you you sing for us because we know you do that well let's go um erin do you want to come with it now give her a little support erin good evening esteemed board members i'm very happy to be back reporting to you all our first month back in person in person learning has been chock full of exciting events skillsusa and slc awards took place and many of our students received gold silver and bronze our national honor society chapter hosted an extremely high i'm sorry don't worry it's okay [Laughter] our national honor society chapter hosted an extremely successful hygiene product drive this past week they are donating the hygiene products to the victor valley domestic abuse center hosa collected chargers to donate to patients at the saint mary medical center our sports continue to work hard to finish out their season strong our principal miss howell continues to host trivia nights to keep even those who chose to stay in distance learning engaged asb hosted a senior sunrise on campus that gave seniors a taste of a normal senior year yesterday was our tap and gown pickup for the graduating seniors and we were also given um yard signs to give the seniors a taste or i'm so sorry it has been a busy day we also had our asb interviews today as well as last week and next week we are hosting asb interviews um our winners our winners of our virtual talent show receive their prizes and they're very excited to they're very oh my gosh i am so sorry they are very excited to continue to show their talents next week on may 13th we are having our senior sunrise where a movie will be shown on our soccer field next week our sun stations choir will also be having their first in-person recital of the year and the week after we will be having our senior recital we are having our senior awards on may 19th our senior dinner on may 16 and our graduation may 25th overall i am very excited for what we have in store for this lap for this last semester and for my last month of high school thank you for hearing me out today and always remember that sun devil pride is contagious thank you we did a good job like always apple valley high and in granite i always look forward to it so thank you [Music] okay moving right along number three do we have a report from california school employees association ces do you want to excuse the students if they would like to do oh the high school student if they if they need to go for well they know they can leave they're not going to hold you hostage here they will wait to be excused we know this okay you can't you're excused thank you yes we want we want to thank the students and good luck okay you're up hello and good evening and thank you for giving me an opportunity to speak to you this evening i'm hoping to give you a little bit of insight to our perspective on the mandated minimum wage increase in good faith we negotiated our agreement we negotiated and agreed to our contract we do not take this process lightly it is time consuming and requires great deal of effort and dedication in our contract we have agreed to class to a classification hierarchy found in appendices enf the hierarchy defines the salary range placement and separation of classifications on the salary schedule appendix b defines the salary schedule and the pay differential between ranges and steps i am confident you are aware the mandated minimum wage increased to 14 an hour it is no secret this was going to happen this legislation uh was signed into law and has been in place for four years and should have been planned for unfortunately unlike other school districts in our area we have pay ranges and positions that fall below the fourteen dollar per hour threshold when the minimum wage of fourteen dollars per hour is applied to range 11 step 1 of the salary schedule it causes the other ranges and steps to be a non-compliance of our agreement the expectation is our agreement will be followed csea understands compliance may be difficult we come to the negotiating team table well prepared for each solution opportunity we roll up our sleeves and we're ready to find a reasonable and rational solution in this case we are not convinced this subject is being greeted with the same diligence initially we presented a written pro a proposal to spread the burden out over more than one budget year our phased implementation proposal meets the legal requirements for minimum wage while maintaining compliance with our contract we are not willing to ignore disregard or otherwise delete a portion of our agreement because it's uncomfortable again i stress auburn agreement was negotiated in good faith and subsequently agreed to by both parties each time a proposal is presented by csea the response is we will have to seek direction this severely hinders the process there is a considerable amount of time between meetings where direction is provided i'm asking you to please provide direction and latitude to your appointed lead negotiator thank you for your time and have a peaceful evening thank you for your comments uh avuda is anybody here this is from alabama unified school or unified teachers association thank you um good morning uh good morning good evening ladies and gentlemen i am i want to start the day all over again apparently um i'm here to speak on behalf of the buddha's executive board first we would like to address the fact that the elementary school sorry i didn't print my speech out so i have to read it we're here to let's see avuda would like to address the fact that our elementary schools have received a daily planning period and is thanks to the hard work of ours and the district's negotiation teams with the school board's support we would also like to thank the board for the bonuses and the one on the unscheduled one percent raise we're looking forward to the continuing work towards a retirement package as joel lewis spoke to earlier avoda members are looking forward to our summer break and a normal return with full in-person learning with students for the 21-22 school year thank you thank you know okay i'm gonna move on to um i'm gonna read out a closed session here and then we'll be moving forward here so with that the first item uh that we're going to read out is public's employee appointment resignation retirement reduction and that was is to appoint brian goodro as interim principal apple valley high range 16 and on a motion uh by wilson so and the second by dennis bender the motion was approved 5-0 in closed session the board of trustees took action in support of the following recommendation before conference of litigation government code section 549 54.5 subsection c in subsection d and e on motion by wilson so in a second by dennis fender the we approve the contract with stros freidberg llc dated march 17 2021 regarding cyber security ratified may 6 2021. the motion passed 5-0 in closed session the board of trustees took action to support the following recommendation from the superintendent conference with labor negotiator on a motion by cara and a second by blasting game the board of trustees approved the following approved to accept the current pars supplemental retirement program for the certified and classified management employees who have submitted their resignations and parse paperwork motion was passed 5-0 in closed session the board of trustees took action in support of the following recommendations from the superintendent b5 conference with labor negotiator on a motion by so in a second by blasting game the board approved the alpha valley unified teachers association memorandum of understanding regarding elementary preparation period mandatory staff meetings and compensation dated april 20th 2021.
as i understand it that's a red line uh and then if those changes were accepted that would reflect the bylaws i would move the approval of those bylaws as reflected in that document okay so you have uh you're making a motion to approve the redline version as heather outlined its document number 21-0657 correct okay um so we have a motion on the floor yep and we can have debate on that motion now um and so uh alice you had your hand up well i guess i just wanted a second but um but i do i do think that we have received our red lines in and the responses to my my uh suggested revisions were mostly adequate i i just um it's sort of disappointing when you realize what the bylaws are supposed to do and supposed to not do the the um my understanding is bylaws are are they broad picture in that the the group whether it's a committee or commission or whatever develops rules that fit their purpose and activity but it seems like the responses in general said you ain't have no rules you're gonna keep you're gonna obey these bylaws and and i understand too that these are quote standard as the legal advice says and that there really is no not much room to wiggle from the standard thank you uh any other uh questions comments on the motion that stephen put forward i guess i'd just like to add you know this is sort of reflective of many of the other commissions that you know the city has they're very um similar to these with you know slight division differences in terms of how many members and things like that but um yes it's relatively standard across the city organization i have i have to go back with one thing that it got kind of confusing as to how many members we have and and whether we can add members or not because the ordinance original ordinances said we could add members but the bylaws say we cannot because we are formed as such a group and then if we want to add more people to the conversation we establish committees and those can work more flexibly that's where i started to say okay we can probably work with these all right allen or heather did you want to have any response to that um i think that's based on the last resolution that is resolution 210214 that is the resolute resolution to restate the purpose and membership of the council of the commons and in that resolution it defines the number of people and uh right so that's defined by council yeah that's the reason i bring it up is that was the legal opinion at least as i understood it written that we can as a commit committee or commission we cannot change the membership it would have to go through council to change the membership and so we form it as it is as as the bylaws as the as the resolution said to form it the bylaws support that and erica's uh uh amendment is a third part of it where it started with the number of people that we now have except we are missing one so we might have to replace that i i haven't heard whether we have another council member joining us or not we're not really fully performed i haven't heard if if anybody has has put their name forward for that or not um but to your point earlier around committees um sort of on transportation commission for example there are um subcommittees get formed and then members of public get brought into that process so there is a way to include more voices around our table as we start our maybe our work forward yes thank you all right uh alan well again i wish that we would postpone this but short of that or am i making a motion to that i'd like to amend uh for now at a 4 9 that the council of the commons may have additional voting numbers subject to the disapproval of the city council particularly a member of the ann arbor area indigenous tribal community and a member of the african-american community and three others that the council of the commons may determine would add special quality or competence in its functioning so i i want to do a procedural check here i don't actually know that we can we have a motion on the floor right now and i don't know that we can make a motion to amend um while i'm not embracing it as a friendly amendment i guess if that's some sort of procedural thing it seems that changes the meaning of the motion that i've put forward so whether it's vote mine up or down and then we can consider amendments or other things this may help in the conversation i i do believe that uh this group is allowed to create um uh i'm sorry it's late i'm trying to think of the name kind of ex-officio or non-voting members committees not committees uh they can actually i think you can have um um non-voting members added for your advisory purposes so if you have an expert on something you could have them added on to attend your meeting be part of the board get the materials but not be a voting member i think that is you that's you i think that's permissive in council's typical um uh bylaws and that may help mr haber on his amendment yeah i i think that's where committees come in you can have anybody on a committee and they can report out to the to the body but i don't think you can make them members of the body okay so we do have a motion made by uh stephen on the floor um we should take a uh sorry that could not be amended i think we have to do something about this motion before we um before we uh can uh amend the document because stephen's made up prior to your comment ellen stephen made a motion to approve the document and so the the debate is limited to that motion right now adam if i may this is obviously the prerogative uh your prerogative but um uh under the rules that the council works on once in a resolution is on the floor proposals on the floor um you can have a series of amendments each voted up or down prior to the then amended version um being concluded okay all right and that's that's good as long as we're procedurally correct then we're good uh council member briggs yeah i think um my only concern with um allen's proposed amendment is just that i i don't think that it's permissible i mean the the the members are set um by counsel as a body council body and so the numbers and that that this voting membership has been defined by council and so um simply adding it to the bylaws isn't going to i mean i i'm happy to take the advice of the staff on this one but i don't believe that that can override the views of you know the what the the council resolution and so um certainly that could be something that um this group as a whole could could go back and make a recommendation to counsel for at some point um to to change this but i think for right now we're we're at this voting membership that is my understanding as well based on feedback from the attorney yeah so what would happen procedurally is if you passed it with a different level of membership for it to then come to council it would have to come from council for consideration and the legal would not let that likely let that pass where it would come with the recommendation that is inconsistent with the guidance provided by council does that do anything to the rest of the bylaws my recollection is that the bylaws uh once you're adopted here have to go to council for approval and so none of them will be um none of it is valid until it is approved in total okay so um so just to make sure that i'm clear on this if we accept uh mr haber's amendment and um then the document would go to and and we pass stephen's motion then the document would go to counsel or go to legal and say it's not in alignment with the resolution passed by council and they can if they want make a motion to uh change the the uh resolution that they passed to reflect the bylaws in which case and then approve the bylaws if they wanted to um or if we uh pass the bylaws uh that are in alignment with the resolution uh for for this council as passed by city council then um city council just has to accept the bylaws is that correct that is what i expect yes okay okay one of the legal comments that i i received was that uh adoption is approval or approval is the adoption there's it's as far as we're concerned we've adopted them once we vote yes um so but they do have to go to council for final right i think that uh i think that the distinction is definitely that um council will have to take another action uh to um approve not only the bylaws that we've passed but also approve changing their resolution yeah or or disapprove or not doing so yes correct uh frank i hope this is an appropriate comment i i'm looking at the clock uh there are a couple of more really important agenda items uh i don't know how we can expedite this uh at some one point allen seemed to think this we didn't from his perspective we didn't have to act on this now but i also see the importance of moving the bylaws forward but uh i'm concerned that all of a sudden it's going to be june here uh yeah can can can the can the vote be called yep uh definitely can since you called it um so i guess we have to do you have to have a second uh for stevens we have a second that's right councilman briggs the second i apologize and the vote has been called so why don't we take a uh a vote in that particular case heather could you do uh um we probably should make sure that everybody raises their hand party voting on allen's amendment first or we so technically we i i think if somebody wanted to comment what's that sorry stephen there's no i was just saying for tom's comment uh if we wanted to vote up or down to have alan's amendment uh join in just to be clear i i'm not against the spirit behind allen's amendment um i just don't think it's within our purview to change the composition of the council for reasons already described i think once we get the bylaws behind us we'll be able to then move forward with the inclusive conversation that we're envisioning um but so i think the motion before us is alan's amendment but i'm not oh i thought it was for i thought it was yours because all right well to clarify do you think the motion on the floor is uh stephen's uh motion uh per what already got a motion on the t on the floor alan uh now i do want to ask i think uh mr crawford uh given this uh this uh rule that you outlined does uh mr haber need a second for his amendment to steven's motion um he should have a second for the amendment yes for you to consider it okay does somebody want to make a second to mr haber's amendment i'll second it okay okay so in that case um we are there is a motion on the floor the question has been called um uh to uh uh the bylaws that are outlined uh in uh item number 21-0657 um but with the amendment uh alan could you read your amendment just so we have an accurate reflection of this actually i don't approve of this process i think we should table until the next meeting call calling the questions and it should not terminate debate or other amendments that are appropriate uh that i said at the outset i would i moved to table this to the next meeting so uh alan the the issue is we do have a motion on the floor so we have to take a vote on this procedurally now that you have a second on your amendment i would like to clarify that amendment so that we have an understanding by all members as to what they're voting on alternatively he could withdraw it we only have those those two options i think allen yeah i withdraw it but i disapprove of the process okay so withdraw the amendment so we are back to the original motion um 0621-0657 as written in the agenda and we should do uh a vote of hands uh if you are in favor please raise your hand uh any opposed we will get get to that after we do the hands right so all in favor raise your hand any opposed raise your hand okay motion passes all right okay so other other amendments of this are no longer in order we just go on to the next order of business that's the way i understand it yes we could approve the bylaws per the amendment of bylaws provisions stated in the bylaws if it comes to that you can do future amendments uh with the with a proved and approved set of bylaws there's a process yeah it's it's not like it's totally overwhelming it's just that we do have we have approved a set of bylaws to recommend a council now okay with that we will go on to member news and updates i guess i'll start off i just have a question at the last meeting we talked about some of the planting going forward i was kind of curious uh if i recall correctly rita and tom were gonna have a conversation about that um whatever happened um well i'll speak um we have initiated some work uh in the large garden bed near the elevators we cleared some weeds from the space and it is nearly ready for planting and i want to thank um members of the dda and forestry and um heather for helping um get set up to um allow us some wood chips to be used for mulch that will be delivered tomorrow so um we are also in process of of planning for planting and so you won't see a lot of color just yet but watch this space we're still sort of in the the preparation phase um and um i could say that again this is an issue where it's sort of like uh we're planning we don't exactly have funding ready but but we will move forward in some way or another thank you that's good to hear uh jeff yeah so at the initiating committee we have been uh working diligently to uh respond uh to tom crawford's uh as i said earlier um suggestion that we start looking at short medium and long-term thinking and planning now obviously we are going to be involving obviously lots of other people and perhaps a consultant but i've always found in my experience as a project manager and administrator that over the years that it's useful to have a straw man as we call it uh or some kind of a starting point a model or or or some ideas that are that are you know carefully articulated that people can tear apart or throw away or it stimulates thought and and helps people to uh to consolidate their thinking so we're we're thinking of putting something together as a starting point that people can work with that is much more detailed and much more responsive to what tom was looking for than perhaps has been out there um in particular there's one area which we found uh might be of great interest and that is there is sort of a a coalescence a coalescing of of of important items of concern to the city right now one of them of course is is net zero that you know the whole big initiative there um the other one is uh affordable housing which is extremely important and um the third one of course is is is the whole idea of you know using the space in a way that um you know it's conducive to creating a kind of heart of the city uh giving people uh a reason to interact with each other more and and be be more uh you know engaged in understanding each other and so one of the items that we we've been looking at is the possibility of using some of the space temporarily and maybe goes to a more permanent idea of showing how there are new kinds of affordable housing new kinds of construction methods new kinds of structures that you can work with that are a lot cheaper and a lot more robust and a lot more energy efficient a combination of new materials showing some examples of structures and how a real housing unit would look like with alternative energy and some new ideas about how you know it might be self-sustaining in in various ways so we're trying to put up together a little model of that and we've talked to a number of of organizations and companies that are very excited about that kind of idea and so that's just one example of sort of things we're working on that would be more short-term but you know as i say we want to put out a straw man and that that's what we've been working on thanks uh thank you jeff that's a great update any other uh updates from members alan yeah well we did a couple things we took the initiating committee took an initiative and planted a holiday tree opposite the elevator and it prospered there for christmas uh hanukkah tree of life the solstice and then it outgrew its space and it has been nicely moved by city forestry to the leslie golf course there by a t-17 so the tree is in good health and that red planter is now available for planting and uh we did a earth day gathering uh from the from thursday april 22 to as through sunday to 25 and in conjunction with that they have put together a slideshow on the commons that became part of the a20 several hour program on the restoring the earth for earth day we had a number of very interesting discussions on economic development and on energy uh solar energy and wind energy that we had a a rig come that demonstrated a lot of interesting stuff it was a night a nice time and now yeah we put put up a uh a decadome and you've seen pictures of it and are seeking to have that as a regular information idea pod a ranger station for the park rangers and so a base for information around what's happening with the commons and are trying to figure out how with the dda and other interested parties that could be a regular feature on the on the watch thank you alan and thank you for having uh heather send over some photographs too uh of that event frank um again i guess i'm a clock watcher but um i'm anticipating we may not get into the final item on the agenda that i assume tom and heather helped frame some issues going forward and how to move things pieces of the planning effort forward i don't know if there's a way to authorize our council leadership to be able to work on those assuming we can't wrestle all this to the ground tonight in between meetings there's been discussion about forming some working groups or subcommittees to focus on specific uh challenges uh security and safety in at liberty plaza and on the library lot and you know other other important issues is i just wonder if there's a way to create a mechanism uh to have progress go forward on uh forming some of these subcommittees which would allow other people other expertise in the community to begin to weigh in on some of these important issues that will be key planning elements as we go forward and separate from that is the idea that i'll just surface again without discussion of the the council of the comments itself having one or a series of working sessions to begin coalescing around a vision and a plan and i know we're gonna hopefully with funding from private and public sources have have uh real revenues to put into that facilitation but i don't know if there's some things between now and the june meeting we should be doing to help that whole process along thank you just a question for heather what is the process in terms of if we were to bring up i was hoping as well to have a conversation around subcommittees what is the process by which those are actually formed logistically um i don't know specifically to be honest i think you can just form them um you know that's kind of what the task force did the center of the city task force did um so i think you know if you want to identify the groups and and identify what the purpose is of the groups too you know one thing to keep in mind is the function of this body is meant to be advisory the city council and so i think you know i would just ask you to think about like the function of these um subcommittees and what what role that they play and developing recommendations that ultimately go to council okay maybe maybe tommy has more insight on i think i think your answer is spot on and uh it would be by resolution by this board you can just create subcommittees and it's recommended that as heather said that you have a purpose and there's a difference between a task force and a subcommittee like you know as far as their life or expected life and membership and purpose is is really what you need and leadership okay stephen you've got your hand up and then jennifer just a quick remember update between the last meeting and this meeting uh took a walk through the site together with uh frank and rita we just kind of walked through and talked and thought about ideas and things and it was a very valuable experience so i encourage as we talked about last time all of the council members to get out there early and often and just think about the space and how how best we can activate it just in that in that vein before we get to jennifer here is there an interest in in all getting together in a socially distant fashion uh at the site sometime before the next meeting next meeting of this body raise your hands yeah we will have to notice that yeah that meeting because um we can't violate the open meetings act um and make it um an opportunity for for the public to join if they wanted to so there's like logistical things that we would need to work out that might not if we we'll have to see if we can fit it within the timing before next meeting but we could have we could eventually do it that reminds me as a new committee we should probably have the oma uh briefing for the full group just so everybody understands how the city views oma open meetings act and and the obligations responsibilities that you have we do have a program that i think we can provide to the group okay yeah i think good yeah i think there may be uh other things related to our to the status of the pandemic um not only would we have to be socially distanced but we would as an as a city-sponsored group we might have to uh make sure that we are presenting our purpose and our activities in a way that's coherent with current policy about um covert restrictions and and uh math squaring and stuff like that but frankly i'm pretty pretty conservative about that i'm not i'm still wearing a mask a lot almost always except in my mother's house and what i would worry about in relation to the open meetings act so even if we noticed uh the group is going to be out there on a at a day or time if you're kind of roaming around the space it makes it a little bit difficult to to communicate to the public with certainty where you'll be so they can join but but maybe i don't know we'll just have to think through that it's not that big of a space i suppose people would just see where you're at have we have we ever had information about like there is a sign uh on the first martin property that basically says don't go here unless you have permission and that's the way you get from liberty plaza to the rest of the site and back i mean you can't get there unless you go around the block to do it if you're going to avoid their property but it says get permission first but i i don't think anybody ever does and i i wonder what uh you know what the owners feel about changing that sign or you know is it are we trespassing if we walk through there um you know that's something that i think it's a beginning of the complications that we have to resolve as we move forward and i wouldn't want to exacerbate them before we have an idea of where we're going with that i have some history on that at the appropriate time to share yeah so i think that that gets into another item here uh in a bit and the issues of an exploration i do want to be very conscious jennifer's been very patient uh jennifer uh hopefully we can wrap up the uh the um uh news and updates with yours yeah thank you i i just wanted to i think have a offer a suggestion in terms of there's been a lot of chatter about um having sub-committees or working groups that support um this this group here and maybe for our next meeting i feel like i'm jumping the gun in terms of next meeting agenda items but maybe we could come forward or um i don't know in terms of open meeting act or whatever if we're allowed to have a google doc or something where we just put forward what do we think these committees might be so for instance fundraising um you know pulling together a block party for you know you know the the the neighbors for the the commons area um i think that if we started to think about that now and maybe came forward with some ideas we might we would have a little bit of productivity around that discussion in the next meeting so that was it thank you yeah i'd like to support jennifer's idea um in in part my reading and trying to revise the bylaws it's that committees are usually sort of time limited they're not standing committees they're they're project committees so that allows you to bring in specified i mean people who are specifically addressing one question rather than being fundraising which is a long which is a big long-standing question so i just want to mention that as as the original intention of having committees is to be a little more flexible and focused so i think we've got a few items that seems like uh we're thinking about for the next agenda which is great um do we want to get into the initiating committee role line item um heather did you want to uh talk about this a little bit sorry i was muted i'll just turn it over to tom i think he wanted well yeah heather and i heather and i have been thinking about this and and to be honest it's been kind of confusing about um who's making decisions for what right and if they're are the advisory or are they you know directive um the city itself is is is uh typically interfaces with uh councils boards and commissions by um with their their actions right coming through and then this you know maybe just uh the chair working with the staff liaison or any of the board members could say something liaison um this is is kind of one of those weird ones right i mean it has it has this resolution that was created um that says initiating committee should get things going and uh and accelerate it that to me to me you know wasn't super clear um i i had interpreted that to be to get until the council of commons got going the initiating committee was like it now that we have it i'm really kind of confused because mr haber you know and the initiating committee uh they have he's got a lot of passion around this and has continued to push it which is great but i'm just kind of confused on where the decisions are made so i'm going to say that from the city perspective one of the most productive things that we could do is to identify and maybe i'm going to say recommend a resolution to counsel on how you'd like to how you'd like to have decisions made and how you want guidance provided to staff it's just it's just confusing to me concur i that was not emotion but i second that i think there's also uh something else i'd like to bring up that are that is involved in this too i think i definitely think clarity around around this but i also think there's also some points have been brought up by by both alan uh and then i think frank and rita uh as well um you know around the library green conservancy and i i would like to establish some type of process by which we have uh some engagement with external groups you know i do think the clarity is going to be really important as i understand the intent and certainly the resolution around creating this council this is the advisory uh body that the city is looking to to provide for recommendations around this site and correct me if i'm wrong on that at all tom uh or heather but i i do think that given the passion that uh we have heard and we heard from jeff today about the initiating committee too it seems like it would be prudent to make sure that we're having those connections and we have a process by integrating them into this work into this council to some degree if it's a report out or or whatever well what i find challenging is is um you know so i think it's really exciting the common common commenting um you know philosophy is really interesting and and can be very creative and i want you know i assume you all want to have space for that and yet i sit in a world with structure that um requires you know kind of accountability and direction that's kind of clear and the initiating committee as i understand it and alec correct me if i'm i'm mistaken i don't even know who's on it right there's not an official membership it's maybe email lists it's not a non-profit or an entity of itself which makes it challenging for me to understand that uh um and then the library green conservancy i get that one right i don't know how it's going to fit in all the pieces but it's a thing um so i don't know where i'm going with that but i'm just going to say that's where the source of my confusion is understood uh we've got a few people on deck here camilla you're up first thanks adam um yeah so my question was kind of covered by tom but um i'll ask it um i'd love to know who are the members of the ini initiating committee um because i agree it's extremely nebulous and um secondly um i just want some clarification is it true that alan and jeff were the official initiating committee representatives of the council of the commons yeah yes to the last part okay um did we get an answer for you sufficiently on the uh uh i think you're you had a second question camilla and i want to be respectful of that yes yes can someone please answer uh who are the members of the initiating committee alan or jeff feel free if you're the as a designee yeah uh so um we provided a document uh i made a brief presentation you'll recall the first meeting that we had and then that was submitted uh the powerpoint and then we sent a supplemental and you can find both of these on the council of the commons website um and in the supplemental you will see the names and a brief description of each member of the initiating committee as currently constituted the objective is to expand that but essentially we see the at least from my perspective the initiating committee really tried to kind of keep the flame alive after the task force ended and to uh be the transition point to a much larger involvement in the community and to stimulate that and to in some ways kind of execute on what the community would like and also the council of the commons and so we we we've kind of tried to represent the interests of the community and to encourage and stimulate the community um we're a very diverse group we want to be even more diverse um we you know we put our own resources behind this we we've worked very hard to make things happen uh against great odds of you know the pandemic and other things and uh i think you know it's all very well to say well let's let's have an advisory committee and the council but if you want the community engagement you got to have some group of people that fires up that community engagement and channels it and that's essentially what we see our role as being and being able to execute on some of the things that this this uh council would recommend to the council this is the city council um you have to have you know in a democracy in a community that there needs to be some kind of organizing force and you know none of us are getting paid to do this we we love what we're doing we're trying to make this happen we're trying to uh you know implement as best we can what you know what the voters voted for and you know we don't have all the answers it's great the council of the commons is here and uh you know we're we're we're very cognizant of of our need to respect uh you know everybody's point of view but that's really how how i see it uh allen may have a different view and i would i would request that maybe he could follow up from what i just said well i'd be glad to i got my hand up you know the the commons is not the traditional city government so i can appreciate that tom finds himself in a confused unclear or new situation and all over the world communities are finding ways that various local groups get together to do things that are needed in partnership with the government in partnership with corporations but as a third force in the development of community creativity and initiative and that's what we began with as the commons and the view was that out of community assemblies and working groups in the garden group and the children's group and all those things there would come together groups of people from the community who would coalesce as the working council of the commons the when the resolution for the uh accelerating the development after things had stayed uh inactive for quite a while uh the uh the last whereas of that resolution added the council of the commons that the initiating committee was in the process of seeing how do we bring all these factors of the community together the city council decided that we're going to appoint some people who are sort of supervising this or advising the city council as though the city council is is responsible for creating this uh new endeavor in the center of the city and the commons view is that the new endeavor in the center of the city will be created by the people who create it who actually do it and the the supervision or the advisory to the city council is there that the city council knows what's going on but the initiative is coming from below so there is a mix from that which is directed from above and that's which is coming from below and somewhere in the middle there is a mix and that is a new new thing that is being done and it is not uh fleshed out but in the uh in the uh council of the in the initiating committee website we have a a a model of what is the the various elements that are coming together to create the council of the commons and in the initial uh initiating committee accelerating development resolution that was the sense that we are helping form the council of the commons it was not pre-formed uh and that the supplement resolution that added another person seems to have preempted [Music] or ignored that fact that the council of the commons is something that is developing in process not fixed in membership and coming out of the activities that are actually going on and many of those activities haven't started because as long as the cars are there there's no way that that's going to be a place where kids are playing or parents are bringing their families or so on and so it is an unclear situation because we are still creating it call it co-creation co-production cooperation collaboration there are many factors working together between advisors between what we learn from other parts of the world that are doing commoning and between what the city council sees is important and what you all who are now uh brought into this process uh you're from your own creativity you see how do we really make this uh beautiful and something to fly and and how do we put it into a timeline looking until 2024 in the the bicentennial of ann arbor and between the operating funds and the future capital development these are all things that are kind of out there that we are to create all right well thank you uh jeff and alan um councilmember briggs yeah um to kind of get back to your question tom in terms of how i see this um i can understand kind of the confusion from the city side because there's been a variety of different iterations of resolutions um but i think the the final one sort of clarifies that in terms of who the body that's advising council on what happens around um this public space is this body um this membership here and that doesn't mean that other folks will not have an interest in the community but this is the body that is um that is advising council council on that respect um to make sure that you know some of those key voices that have been engaged in the process from the beginning beyond my cat apparently um is that uh you know there's there's different seats on this um commission we've got two members of the initiating committee two members from the library green conservancy and so from from with my perspective those voices are always at this table and helping to inform and um i'm not sure that we would necessarily need additional time on the agenda to make sure that we hear from those those bodies because they're they're integrated into this group already um in terms of making sure that those voices are heard um i would equate this oh my background is not to ramble on too long but my background obviously before coming to council part of it was my transportation advocacy at one point in time the city um developed a transportation commission now that transportation commission has representatives from a variety of different organizations and and those organizations help to provide feedback on the transportation commission there are members from the advocacy committee on the transportation commission um the washington vice milwaukee coalition has a few members um and even a board member from that group um that helped to provide that voice um but when the transportation commission provides advice to to city council it's it's the advice of the transportation commission it's not the advice of ata or wbwc or any of those other organizations and so um i think for as this body moves forward you know we need to realize we're bringing a lot of different voices and helping to move this forward um and that doesn't mean that all this other advocacy work that's happening in the community that's so vitally important to move this project forward isn't gonna continue to happen and to continue to help activate and energize and and fundraise and do programming and and all the other great things that we need to have happen but i think to keep this group focused a little bit um it's important to think about be very clear about what our scope and purpose is around this table so that we are moving forward on sort of um the objectives that we just adopted in the bylaws which were obviously relatively broad but i think for me i look towards the charter amendment as that fundamental guide so tom hearing council member briggs explanation i feel like that's reflective of um what i was thinking as well but this really is the advisory body this is the one that city council and city staff look to around the advise advice it certainly could be that we have a time obviously for any membership to come and discuss and we certainly can invite in other groups if there were like a block partners group too um is there further clarification needed from you uh from your perspective on this um you know listen to what everybody has said um i guess i've been formulating maybe a structure in my own mind that um uh the way that it's described and what makes this challenging for me is there's an operating element to this committee like a real world that's not like this it's decision making right that that is not going to be conducive to a monthly meeting and yet there's an oversight role uh or guiding role as well which is more structural so i wonder if um the council of the commons this body is kind of the more um oversight board which is advisory gets its guidance from council and provides recommendations but then on a in if i understand the initiating committee and the library green conservancy uh efforts if they're looking to have activities occur um if the rule if this body could decide um what the rules of the road are around that perhaps that maybe that body is the one that is uh the gateway for residents to go through in order to um to have activities so i could see for example the initiating committee or this body saying um uh well we have rules of the road let's say for parks for example liberty plaza you can't do anything in liberty plaza there are rules there are park rules those rules because we're an arbor are pretty expressive they're pretty progressive um but but you do have first amendment rights but then there are some some rules so let's say that that got adopted for this area this body could look at those rules and say this is how we want it run council buys off on that maybe the initiating committee then um is the source that enforces that a group wants to do something they go through initiating committee the initiating committee's got to work with any logistics uh you know with the dda or with anybody they make sure rules are in place it's just an idea i'm trying to figure out how to bring to life what the initiating committee um seems to have the most passion about which is working with the people to do things and yet respect the fact that this commission this council really has the authority to say on a broadway what that is okay that's an interesting idea for sure uh we've got a few folks sarah than alice and frank so i'm listening to all this because i believe that i was and still maybe i'm a little bit confused about the different us the initial the initiating committee the library conservancy i'm like equating this to my experience on planning commission where like we don't you know we are also a recommending body for most things to city council and i guess you know what like you know the this 40 000 recommendation like are we the right body then to be going and hiring consultants should we be working and not really this is really a question this is just like thoughts like should we should we be working with the initiating committee sort of like as a partner that's doing these things like in collaboration like i heard jeff saying earlier that they're already working on short-term plans like i want to make sure that whatever we're doing is is not in silos and i know it really isn't because jeff and alan are here with us but you know i don't want us to be going off and hiring a consultant and then they're already working on plans with the initiating committee i just wonder like if our role is just as a recommending is as a recommending body you know maybe we can designate funds but like we don't necessarily do the work i don't know mr crawford if that's sort of i i was following what you were saying and i think i generally agree with it well as as in regards to it to a consultant i would imagine the city would engage the consultant right the directions done and then yes uh the the city is in the business of engaging people and decisions and so this body would be you know maybe helping select who is the consultant um participating in being having members participate in the administration of it as it goes along you know at all the meetings for example that's really kind of flexible and up to you guys but it would be run by the city and that's what uh some of the staff monies that that i put in the budget would help cover okay this is helping me clarify i think our role i think it would be good to maybe try to clarify for everybody sort of writ large like what these different groups are sort of doing and i don't know that we would come to a consensus about that tonight like you know i'm thinking like you know is it this group's purview to recommend to the parks commission that they look at allocating funding for liberty plaza i don't know if that's something the parks commission has preview over but like can we recommend those types of things to like is that the type of like a recommending thing that you're thinking that we do i'm hearing i'm seeing a nod for america well i think it would go up i mean this this group's role is to make recommendations to city administrator and city council so that i mean that would be the channels that any recognitions would go through and then they would go back down to yeah i think that's how that would work and i think you're on the right track for me you know it's been this confusion about how the parties fit together so how did the initiating committee how does the library green city conservancy how do those two even fit together much less all three of us you know fitting together so i think we do need to carry on this conversation and as far as engagement uh is concerned you know i do want to say a note about that because that is something that is part of my role at the city is to engage the community and i do want to emphasize that it is really important i believe that we follow city standards with that because we have standards about notification um and we have channels of you know outreach um and then of course recording what has been said on that feedback so i don't i don't want that to get lost in any of this i want us to uphold those standards as much as possible when we do so when when i envision us creating a that physical design plan which is what i think where we think i think we're headed next you know that would go through that that process where things are really transparent and recorded in a certain way and having the consultant to lead that work the initiating committee could obviously go to them with their ideas to be integrated in along with the other regular community outreach process right right yeah all right alice i think you're up next uh you're muted sorry um there have been a lot of interesting threats that i'm trying to keep track of but i think we we might do well to go back to camilla's question about who's who and what are the roles um the the main distinction i see is between advocacy and advisory um we cannot as a body advocate um our job is to advise and the initiating committee on their own uh apart from us is advocacy uh and they can they have latitude oh my battery's going down um they have latitude can you hear me yeah i'll go plug in this is going to be interesting um they have latitude that the advisory committee does not as tom crawford had point pointed out with the open meetings act and so forth um however i think that also brings up the important point that any member of this body needs to be the very we're all passionate we all want things to happen but we have to be very clear when we speak in public uh as we begin to make it clear to everyone even members of this body for whom we are speaking or from what platform we are speaking so that when we say i'm alice ralph i'm with the advisory committee they know that's where i'm coming from but i also have to say sometimes especially when advocating i am speaking as an individual and not on behalf of an organization so it's i've heard people say this a lot when they speak to city council but i think we should practice that a little bit more carefully than i think has been done so far uh thank you alice uh frank uh tom i i think was very helpful how you how you framed that because i think it led to some some good conversation here um i'm i'm looking at the clock again uh i don't know uh we we have another public comment uh period here before we wrap up and there's that item 10.
miss khan discussed the administration to with the administration and the committee about next steps for funding the project she provided a timeline for the sale and closing of the bonds it is estimated the bonds will be sold by the end of june 2021 which is uh next month and closed by the end of july 2021.
uh go get them no way to better to end a pandemic when with uh with a high sct score so i'm excited for them uh my daughter's one of them and uh she's excited so there's that and uh lastly i i put uh to the folks and powers that be on this board that if there's a way we can get these back in person with the new cdc guidelines uh i'd like to hear more about it uh these meetings so um i miss uh vicky's face so yeah if we could get back in uh that would be great thank you jeff and i'm gonna send you an 8x10 picture of myself that i just happen to have sitting around along with that gold record that i've been promising you for two years so no problem um yeah uh victor if you could um coordinate uh francis perhaps uh your office will have some uh up-to-date guidelines for us on uh meeting board's meeting in person and perhaps next meeting matt could talk about it or if you you're again we'd love to hear it absolutely anyone else heather and then susannah and then leewoo and then laurie the student student services committee met on april 27th it was really interesting we had the opportunity to hear from frank malta the supervisor of athletics about what's been happening with the ongoing seasons with the covid protocols and how things have been coming along for the teams it's exciting to hear about the spring season being well underway especially as i have an athlete myself well two um we also met with eric meyer the new supervisor of pe and health and discuss community involvement and sports and within the district um we also had excuse me uh paul natalicchio came and gave an interview about the drills and security within the schools during the pandemic there was a lot of information i was unaware of and was glad to have had him there and we had information shared about behavioral support for students and an overview of the autism awareness month it was a really it was my first meeting there as chair and it was just an excellent source of information i appreciated all of it thank you heather you did a good job for your first meeting too thank you i believe it was susanna liberu and then laurie yeah thanks um i i just have a report from the human relations council on may 3rd uh the township and uh the human relations council co-sponsored a ramadan tree lighting ceremony uh the first ever and the speakers discussed the meaning of ramadan to muslims around the world so that was a lovely ceremony um that was uh you know quite well attended and just another event that is going to be taking place may 11th um there will be a facebook live event to discuss the topic of ageism uh so again uh to access um you know these and past programs uh follow east bronzer human relations council on facebook and you can find videos there and that's the one great thing about pandemic is uh the the uh online sessions are a very convenient way it turns out to to reach a lot of people so what we're seeing on a lot of these these events are hundreds and you know hundreds and and thousands in some cases of people have gone on to view um and participate so uh you know very very good attendance and those that's all i have thank you susanna libro last night we had a curricular committee meeting it's so unfortunate that that was the last one of this school year you know i really love this community this community and i'm always be happy to be part of it so i'm so excited to know that you know the three new textbooks were recommended and adapted by the committee so you know it's always good for the community for the teachers to review the textbook they are using and get the newest one to our students because science technology society is developing so quick so our textbook should reflect this new advancement so that we should keep our students you know impressed with the new development so i'm so glad that three new textbooks were adopted uh last night and additionally there was one course was approved by the community that were presented to the board for approval so i want to thank dr bolly and our team did such a wonderful job you know because of their job our student you know is kept uh update and they are exposed to the new technology new development and at the new society and what gets them ready for the future thank you dr bully and your team that's all i have thank you libra it's easy to tell you love that committee you do a really good job too thank you and last but not least uh so tony i just wanted to say i love hearing about the ap exams and all of that this was my first time as a parent uh for the ap exams and i laughed because we talked about the students resiliency all day i kept saying you're all morning i was so nervous so nervous thinking how'd she do how'd you do my daughter gets in the car and said that was so much fun i loved writing this whole response to the questions and i thought wow i'm really glad i'm not a student again so i think it's great that you guys have such wonderful attitudes with your testing i know as a senior this is exciting because you're kind of you know coming into the home stretch but i just wanted to to mention that and i know we gave our resolutions uh last week um and since mark also brought up our upcoming week i was not aware of that but that's a very important week for uh our our law officers um i just wanted to say one more final thank you to our staff and our nurses um i am a parent first so um the pta is a big part of my life and i've had a lot of fun this week telling the staff how much that i on behalf of the pta and our p my pta parents um appreciate them but what i thought was so amazing was that the staff in this district they don't take anything for granted i got so many thank yous and i'm thinking my job is to thank you for everything you do every year for our kids especially this year and these people the men and women are coming up to the pta and thanking us for giving them breakfast or giving them a gift or giving them a power bar and it's just amazing they were actually touched by it and i don't think they realize what an impact they have on the parents and the kids in this district so um it starts with you dr v top down but this is one hell of a place to work and you know how we feel about mr citadino next door i did have one staff member that came and said she's a steel and she said you know what when i was in oak bridge didn't do any of this she said you tell him i said he's my friend and neighbor she said you tell him she said that i say hi but wow she said east brunswick really knows how to appreciate their staff so there you go thank you i i i will not share that with mr citadino but i'm sure you will i definitely will for you anybody else have anything same then we do have a need for a closed session whereas the board of education must discuss matters which are not appropriate for discussion in a public meeting and the board of education intends to discuss the matters as follows those items listed in tonight's agenda rainbow closed session is estimated to be 90 minutes after which a public meeting of the board shall reconvene in action will not be taken can i please have a motion to go into closed session move by laurie is there any discussion all those in favor aye opposed obscene motion carries thank you for joining us tonight stay safe board members please log out and log back into the closed session goodnight tony bye
immediately mid-year now we didn't budget for this we have to find 400 000 to cover benefits for these for the staff that moved to chapter 44 yes to the 950 that it's gonna cost for 2122 we now have to find 1.35 million that we didn't have before yes uh i'm very well chapter 44.
i also would like to make two points one i will talk about 5.03 on the agenda that is proposed to provide a cola or cost of living adjustment for various members of staff who are not teachers and that would be a two percent cola the reason we're proposing that is because our teachers have gotten a twenty percent increase over the course of the last three years this is the third year which would which completes their twenty percent increase for our teachers and our other staff members have not received that much of an increase they've gotten 1.5 percent um increases slowly over time through that same three-year period we would like to propose that the non-educating staff receive a two percent cost of living adjustment our executive director of ms cooper has done a budget analysis she's looked carefully at the numbers and projected that small surplus for next year and the surplus is sufficient that we can cover that two percent cola increase again for our non-teaching staff so that's the first thing i wanted to mention the second thing is regarding 5.02 as the board members have heard from our staff this afternoon and as well as from emails that you've received we have proposed to eliminate the supplemental pay including stipends and additional duty pay that proposal would impact about 30 staff members the reason we are making that proposal to the board is because over the last year we have been analyzing our payment system we've analyzed all of the stops payment system to try to better understand how we're providing salaries and supplement supplemental income across the agency and we have learned that our system is rather complicated it has multiple layers and it is not standardized across the agency and it is not equitable across the agency at all we have found examples of two individuals that have the same job title the same responsibilities and one is getting the stipend while the other is not getting a stipend and we are not able to explain why there is a difference there are several examples of that happening in the agency and we have spent time to try and figure out how we can create a more standardized system a more equitable system in terms of providing pay to our staff the deafblind transition specialists the vocational specialists indeed you are correct they have very specialized and unique skill sets their skill sets contribute greatly to our students and they are able to provide support in a way that other professional staff are not able to provide and i do want to recognize that skill set the question on the table here is how can we improve our system of pay can we sometimes provide supplemental funds and at other times not provide supplemental funds to staff individ to staff members our proposal is that we begin eliminating the supplemental income and if we have professional staff who do something that is specialized and unique a unique skill set or service provided to our students that we look at the base salary and pay an equal salary based on their skill set and contribution and how they support our students so that is our goal at this point we effectively communicated that with our staff obviously we have not we did not i did not take the time to thoroughly consider [Music] how our leadership team could effectively inform individuals after being informed themselves so that they would have the opportunity to provide us feedback and figure out the most equitable way to move forward addressing this issue i know that the board members will want to discuss this more and i'm sure that you will have questions i welcome your questions i welcome your feedback let's figure out the appropriate next steps here the final comment i wanted to make is that while we are getting ready for the july board meeting we have asked you all to look at the decision to go to sedona for that board meeting we want you to consider your commitment for that meeting and we will have a discussion about that later on the final thing that i wanted to say is that the july agenda will look a little bit different the agenda in july will follow the strategic plan and those four pillars as well as the priorities in each pillar that we've identified for the strategic plan so when you see that july board agenda be ready to see things formatted a bit differently we will start providing information according to the pillars and priorities of the strategic plan and also some beginnings of the data and metrics that we've established in the plan and that concludes my reports i'm happy to answer any questions you may have there any questions for the superintendent uh su k i do have a question so um in regards to the agenda 5.02 item and the removal of that with the comments that you've made about looking at the payment system and how to make it more equitable across the board in that regard um would those individuals that would be losing that stipend be part of those individuals be in that group of individuals that would be um receiving the two percent cola increase yes okay and comparatively if they lose that stipend and receive the cola increase how i mean are they going to be back to where they are with the stipend or does this give them a little bit above that as well without looking at the math i can't say for sure but i think it about evens out um what they're currently earning in addition to the cola should about even out the statement so um i will stir the pot here um so is there a way to take another look possibly at that cola increase so that it actually feels like a cola increase and doesn't feel like we are just giving them to appease them for what we are taking away to look at the implementation of a better payment system we can go back and review those specific positions that will be impacted with this decision we can look at those special skill sets and their additional duties the work that they do in supporting our students and including their job description um and ensure that they're receiving an appropriate salary adjustment that it would be separate from the cola so i just in my very humble opinion here i i think right now perception makes it look like we're borrowing from peter to pay paul at the expense of qualified staff in a very specialized niche area and i don't want the message to be that we don't value that specialty um and that we don't see the absolute need for that specialty um and i don't want to make it look like smoke and mirrors either i want us to be as transparent about this with them as possible and that's my two cents and superintendent reichman um just to follow on what you just mentioned um when we're going back to look at some of these uh uh classifications uh and looking at the job description and looking at the people who perform those functions um what you're telling what it sounds like you're saying is we're gonna look at the the pay grades and they may those individuals while they may lose a stipend their pay grades or steps may change some based on that analysis is that right it is a possibility um each pay grade has a range and so it may be that we say within that um it may be that the pay grade itself increases um but if not then we need to take another look at those additional duties and the purpose of that increased payment in terms of the functions they perform for our students um or that stipend um and the purpose for which they are in that stipend that may be something that we need to add to the job description or it may not be but we would need to analyze each position okay um in order to it and it would have to be on a case-by-case basis for per job description sure but that second part hasn't been done yet so what we have on our agenda today in 5.02 is to eliminate the stipends but that other assessment hasn't yet been done yet we do want to go ahead and eliminate the stipends for those classified staff um that is our proposal today to the board we would like to eliminate the stipends for the classified staff and again we would also like to increase the duty pay excuse me eliminate the increa interpreter made a mistake we would like to eliminate the increased duty pay okay uh okay that sounds uh thank you for clarifying are there any other questions for superintendent reichman all right seeing none um thank you superintendent right for your report we will move on to uh section 2.01 action item approval consent agenda consistent with war policy to include items 3.02 5.01 5.02 5.03 and 7.06 um i will open discussion uh to to this although i i will express my intent to to i would like to pull 5.02 from the consent agenda is there any other discussion on this pv yes this is pv jans i i do have a question because the consent agenda includes um the teacher pay increase do i need to um abstain from that vote or should i propose to have that as a separate item as well um if you believe that there's a reason for you to recuse uh then you can recuse yourself when we pass that we we could pull a specific one from the agenda and when we get to that item if you believe that you should recuse yourself you can recuse yourself if you uh would like to abstain you can abstain um recusals and again this is probably a good refresher for the board uh recusals are when there's a perceived or you believe that there may be a conflict of interest we have a conflict of interest policy uh that i hope everyone has reviewed but typically when there is a conflict of interest or you believe there likely would be uh you can recuse yourself the importance of recusing yourself is uh or the effect of that is that you leave the quorum for purposes of that vote uh so if someone were to recuse themselves and we had five people in the meeting five board members in the meeting uh we wouldn't be able to have that vote uh we couldn't take that action uh because the recusal uh if we were in person you'd step down from the dais uh an abstention uh it means that you don't vote um but you are still there for purposes of making quorum so if there were five people and and you were to abstain uh then uh you know that you're still there for foreign purposes we can still have the vote uh but uh you know you're just not voting so if you believe that you will need to recuse yourself from one or more of these items then we should consider you know you should consider asking us to pull that from the consent agenda yes i would like to make a motion that we sent agenda number 5.03 i would like to have that as a separate vote 5.03 okay is there any discussion on that on that motion uh linda can you please repeat the motion uh pb i want to clarify before i make my comment i apologize president nigro oh sure sure pv had had uh and i wanted to make a motion and now i'm a little bit lost so if you wouldn't mind emotion uh sure pv has has um made a motion that is unsecondary at the moment uh to remove 5.03 from the consent agenda 5.03 correct not 5.02 he he said 5.03 okay and i'm sorry what is that 5.03 let me i'm trying to find it real quick here 5.03 is the proposed salary increases okay okay um i would like to well um that's okay do you have something to say i think you're on you yeah there we go just second yeah i was going to second the the pulling of 5.03 i i uh i would like to make a if i could make a cross motion to remove 5.03 and 5.02 i would second that you would second that yep uh thank you is there any discussion on that okay okay so we have a seconded motion uh linda hey president nigro that's what my intention was i had missed the uh talk the discussion of polling 5.02 and i wanted to talk about that i thought it was only 5.03 i didn't hear the [Music] discussion of 5.02 so who was the one who brought up polling 5.02 if you can clarify that with me that was me i i i i made a cross motion to add 5.02 uh to that okay great um and and that was seconded by sukay uh if there's any discussion on on removing other items let us know if not we'll take a vote on removing uh 5.02 and 5.03 uh lynn do you have would you like to know just okay okay great uh all in favor of the motion to remove 5.02 and 5.03 from the consent agenda um please uh again be a zoom you can hold up your hand you can give a thumbs up we'll take a count and i believe that that's unanimous i don't see dean i see dean there you go all right so we're all that all opposed none okay uh so now if what's left what we would need is a motion uh to approve items with what's remaining on the consent between the 3.02 5.01 and 7.06 so i i move that we approve the consent agenda items remaining um minus 5.02 and 5.03 right okay and lin seconds okay 10 seconds okay all in favor all right pve and all opposed all right um then that passes so the consent agenda 3.02 5.01 and 7.06 have been approved and we will move on to 3.01 action item adoption of social studies curriculum dr rex good afternoon president nigro and board members this is our adoption of the social studies curriculum and i have oren catch off that will be giving you some background information to help you with this action item this is oren good evening board president superintendent and board members if you recall about three years ago four years ago when our day schools were deemed to be in school improvement each principal did pull a group of people together their improvement committees we looked over assessments and assessment data and then we brought teams of people together including the teachers in the day schools and asked them what were some of the biggest barriers uh to instruction two of the biggest items that came up were materials were outdated our curriculum in some cases was 15 or more years old and they also asked for time to collaborate together we continue to work on the time issue to where they have a lot more time to collaborate than they did three or four years ago the first year that we were in school improvement we brought together teachers from both campuses they looked over the english language arts curricula that was out there and made a decision as to which ones they wanted we presented it to the board and the board approved it the following year we did the same with math we brought educators from both campuses together they looked at all the curriculum that was out there they made their suggestions we brought it to the board for approval and the board approved it last year we did the same with science and this year we did it with social studies there were approximately eight educators representing both campuses that were on the committee all of the curricula that they wanted to look at we'd have available for public review for 60 days per board policy as the case with every adoption we've done so far there have been no comments if there were i would report on them but there have been none after we started this process on february 1st on february on april 19th my apologies the group came back together and gave the recommendations pdsd would like to adopt the history alive curriculum for middle school and high school the tucson campus would like to adopt savis s-a-v-v-a-s formerly known as pearson for middle school and high school and both campuses would also like to adopt is called students of history as a supplemental resource the supplemental resource provides a lot of supplements for history in much simpler language which they believe will be crucial to a large population of our students at both campuses the elementary schools did not want to adopt a social studies curriculum the ela curriculum that they adopted uh was up three years ago has quite a bit of social studies within that and they feel at this point um that that's good enough so at this point uh same in previous years we i can answer uh any questions if there are any and if not we would appreciate the board adopting the curriculum we have everything uh ready to go so we can hit the send button and try to get these materials to the teachers so they can start looking at them before the school ends and start scheduling the training that they'll need on the materials as soon as possible okay thank you um do we have any questions uh for oren or on uh any of these uh curriculum that have been discussed uh seeing none would anyone like to move that we adopt the social studies curriculum as proposed i'm moved that we adapt the social studies curriculum as proposed thank you leonard is there a second sue k okay uh all in favor okay looks like uh all opposed and it looks like no one is opposed excellent thank you next up we have uh 3.03 action item approval of new district agreements uh dr rex yes we have a request from the board that whenever we bring on new stakeholders from school districts to join our asdb team that we let the board do that formal adoption it lets the board see who is coming and joining us so action item is for the approval of the hopi junior senior high school joining our asdb in region one and it is an action item are there any questions for dr rex on this agreement do we have any uh motions to approve this lin i move that we approve the new district agreement okay is there a second the we have a second okay um all in favor or i there we go all opposed okay great that motion passes and we can go on to 4.01 information item finance report shaina cooper anna cooper executive director of business services good afternoon board president nigro superintendent reichman assistant superintendent rutz members of the board and the asdb community our most recent finance committee meeting was held last thursday on april 29th with board member gordon and our assistant controller gillian wetstein in summary we reviewed in detail and discussed the march 31 2020 and 2020 budget to actual comparison reports the available cash balance student enrollment student-teacher ratios and filled full-time equivalents along with our grant revenue and expenditure reports with the third quarter basic financial statements provided to each of you is the same financial data that was provided to the finance committee but just in a more condensed summarized version and before i discussed the financial data as a part of our budget development process the leadership team has continued to identify cost-saving strategies while at the same time ensuring we continue providing a strong education to our students and not putting the students and staff at a disadvantage unfortunately some of these strategies have included looking at payroll which includes evaluating staffing and the various payment mechanisms since those expenditures amount to over 80 to 85 percent of our agency's budget and as with any cost saving initiative it includes overcoming the culture and the politics to get to the fiscal savings i have been transparent with our fiscal position the last several years and over the last year there has been concern about some of the loss of our recurring funding with that our revenues and expenditures have had to be re-evaluated to slim down yearly costs and to ensure our agency goals and strategic priorities are met we have to be able to make tough decisions by looking at efficient ways to streamline our operations and save money trust me i know it's easier said than done but we need to be able to continue to find a happy medium between balancing the desired impact and learning goals for both students and staff with the realistic budget as it relates to our financial data as you can see on page one for enrollment as of april 1st 2021 we have had 2210 students as opposed to april 1st of 2020 there were 2 186 students so a decrease of about 76 from this year to last year you'll also see that since march 2021 enrollment our enrollment has increased by 29 students from the 2181 to 20 to 10.
so that way there is continuity across the district and then as we talked about with the professional development or professional learning we can bring the teachers together who are going to be teaching those courses whether the standalone or integrated so we have a shared experience in the way that we deliver that that implementation that's also why the timeline is important so it gives us time to do that work because it's not done overnight right it takes time i'm glad that you're bringing that timeline aspect of it because i think somebody who's looking from outside in they might probably say like you guys took a year to discuss this and then now you're saying that the graduation requirement is not until 2026.
the motion passed 5-0 in closed session the board of trustees took action supported the following recommendation from the superintendent d2 public employee discipline released reassignment transfer leave certified and classified employees on a motion by so in a second by blessing game board approved the last chance agreement between apple valley unified school district and employee number 8548 the motion passed 5-0 and finally in closed session the board of trustees took action in the support of the following recommendation from the superintendent v3 public employee appointment resignation retirement reduction on a motion by blasting in a second by opara the board of trustees approved the following the point steve in cala niche i'm sorry if i got that name spelled that says a dean of students academy seven column one on the management salary schedule 90 duty days to be effective seven one of 20 21.
i'm just looking for a way to bridge ourselves to the next meeting is there some way i guess this is directed uh to at adam and alice is there some way we can facilitate thinking about uh the formation uh at the next meeting i guess of some some working groups and how that might play out is there is this a moment for some kind of bridging resolution to get us uh started on thinking and planning uh around some of the the issues articulated in item 10 which we're probably not going to get to unless we're going to go over time and i'm not opposed to that but i'm just trying to think of how do we productively uh transition ourselves on on working groups and subcommittees to the next meeting well i i think we could uh could we table an item that is on the agenda um until the next meeting if we wanted to yes of course well you haven't taken an action on it so you you really can just discuss it at this meeting and you you have the ability to put it on for the next meeting it doesn't if there's no action no motion on the table it doesn't have to be tabled so i if it's the will of the group we can certainly skip to sort of next agenda items i know at the last meeting it was uh expressed that folks would like to make sure that we have a discussion around where we're going to go and that certainly is reflected in the development of agendas so if we'd like to move forward on to that discussion item i think that that would be totally fine is is that the desire of where folks would like to spend the next uh little bit here before we do get into public comment and and wrap up just a nod of heads okay okay that sounds good so um i guess with that we've had a discussion around the role of the initiating committee it seems like we've gotten some clarification um uh i guess uh unless there is any further discussion on that item um why don't we move on to development of the next agenda so uh i took some notes uh today uh based on conversation uh and certainly there are some things that folks would like to do in the in the interim for the next agenda um i would just like to before we get into suggestions around the next next month's agenda i would just like to say if there's a way that we can really start to take this steps that we talked about last time building um a short an intermediate and a and really that large vision i think that will really help us that will help us gather our thoughts and it will help us with the community move forward so uh with that in terms of next month's agenda where uh where do we want to where do we want to go and then certainly we can do things in the interim as well as time allows especially if it's a public thing there might be some constraints that's how they're outlined eric has had her hand up she might have something she wants to say about that oh yes sorry erica quinn that's okay just um with regards to the next um agenda items i guess i heard a lot of discussion today about interest in in subcommittees and working committees and i guess for my part i would hope that before we um rush to develop those that we um i think that there may be i definitely want to have some of those discussions you just suggested around kind of short term midterm long term envisioning that we have as a as a group um because i i think that um i think there's a lot of different perspectives in the community about what those what those might look like and i just want to make sure that before we um before we sort of move forward that we're we're all in agreement or you know we have a as a body determine what direction we should we should go in terms of focusing the energy of this committee and making progress on items this next year um so you know i've heard in earlier meetings we should focus on liberty square plaza first i've heard and i've i've heard we should focus on activating the the parking lot space first and so i think we need to come to a little bit more clarity around um around some of that because i think it there's a lot of ripple effects from from those decisions um i'm also hoping by next time that we have um you know money in the budget that is moving towards um long-term um you know moving towards planning and design and so i think there's a really active role for this group in that and so we think we need to discuss that um and um trying to think that's it for now uh so council member briggs if i could sum up uh maybe an item for the next agenda based on what you just said um maybe it's a proposal that we uh all come with some uh ideas that we that we feel would fall into in each of those three uh bucketed areas uh what our visions are individually for uh the short-term use of the space the intermediate and then how we transition to a long-term mission is that an accurate reflection okay definitely add that on are there other items that folks would like to have on the agenda certainly subcommittee development we can put on on the agenda as an item thank you um jeff just to clarify um so i i would think it would be helpful if we all sent in sent to through heather to to each other you know our perspective on these three items in advance of that meeting so that people have had a chance to digest them and then we could have a fruitful conversation this straw man concept everybody could put up a straw man or what have you i think that gets sent to a deliberation though um so i so i would be able to send that out uh you know which is a violation of the open meetings act to kind of deliberate not in front of the public so i could send that i could compile it and then attach it to the agenda beforehand so you'd maybe not get it necessarily in real time when people are sending it out but once i get you know we could maybe set a deadline when people can get it to me and i can compile that and attach it to the agenda so the public's getting it at the same time you are sure but i just want to make sure there's enough time for people to digest everybody's ideas so that we can have a really fruitful and focused discussion because otherwise we might be you know run out of time and and people are not prepared so if we could do like a week before or you know people would will get something that they can they can have time to absorb is that fair yeah and and jeff i think that's actually quite reasonable i think we can we can shoot for uh at least a week before um and heather to her point we can um that's when we were trying to post the agendas anyways and so uh to heather's old maypoint that would that would certainly keep us in compliance right if we just shoot to get the agenda out early we might be able to get it out earlier than that um and and attach all those documents that way the public has at the same time that we do so i think that's reasonable so our next meeting is june 3rd so that means that people need to get their comments in by the week of what may 24th at the latest when you tell me heather what's the most reasonable deadline if they're into you by by may 21st yeah i mean i would say let's shoot a little bit earlier so we can get the agenda out and so that you you all will have time to look all of this over so the 21st if everybody's okay with that that gives you a couple of weeks to thoughts together so friday may 21st may 21st yep so short middle and long-term visions or goals for the space okay cool and i would also add you know please do go back if you haven't already and look look at everything all the comments that were received during the task force effort you know we don't want to really start from scratch we did get a lot of feedback during that process so please please go back and look at those documents if you haven't had a chance to definitely you indicate where the where those are accessible all those amazing questionnaires that were put in i i've seen them in your office but are they all is that all uh scanned and on an internet site yeah it's all compiled yeah as part of the task force report and the appendices so but i can send a link out again to that thank you thank you i actually think that was in uh in our agenda packet from last time too in the task force report if i recall correctly um sarah thanks first alice i think dropped off because she's now in the that for some reason have the attendees panel up oh no oh thank you for catching that thank you um so i don't know if my brain quite works right yet with this in like a short medium and long term and i really like the issues document that i know we did not get to discuss tonight so i wonder if there's you know maybe like a couple different approaches like if people feel like they're comfortable thinking like short medium long or like i think i would be more comfortable sort of taking that issues document and like responding to it or redlining it or like there's some things that i think are missing so i don't know if folks would be open to that or you could do both um but i think it would be really good to keep that issues document um up for discussion next time as well and then i don't want to put extra work on you heather but i wonder if we're sending it by may 21st like maybe you're thinking of doing this anyway like trying to bucket or like theme what we've said you know rather than just like here's what sarah submitted here's what frank submitted like try to i don't know like group them so that we have like different topics of discussion otherwise i feel like it could be all over the place yeah my hope is that everybody does organize it in short medium and long term um and then i could do subcategories based on that i'll try i mean what do we mean by short term like a year yeah two years interpretation of that frankly um not to throw another wrench into it but but i think maybe maybe that could be a request you know if there is some definition that each member applies to yeah that would i think that would be helpful put a time yeah um let's see here uh and and uh sarah to your point around the document i do think we should put that back on the agenda there is some important information in there that that we should just be conscious of as we as we talk about this um and um and i know that uh that came up previously too if adam if i could just uh okay seconds probably the wrong word but um uh while you're when you all are thinking about the activities and what you want to do to sarah's point the importance of that document is is is going to be the framework in creating allowing us to do them and we have to have that whole stream of work going that's like really important work if you want to see progress like that's where my brain has been with it's like i just keep thinking like what is the path forward and like what are the obstacles in our way and like how do we solve those obstacles rather than just like i want to see a picnic table on the side that's what gets the obstacles out of the way is that is that track yeah so i think i think this is actually uh frankly these are good ideas to correlate into one meeting um and if we focus our next agenda uh our next meeting on identifying those obstacles and then talking about visioning those actually seem very linked doesn't mean that we're we're going to then arrive at a conclusion right at the end of that meeting but certainly they are they're connected and i'll i'll see what i can do about tying the two documents together the two documents being that issues document and then what i compile from what you send me um i'll see if it can fit right but i think that i think that's a great point because it is it is about trying to like figure out the logistics basically of how we make things happen definitely um and we have the doc do we have the uh the uh the one uh document already uh because we've got it for this meeting uh i do want to recognize alan um and um then i did want to ask about how we wanted to fit subcommittees into that next agenda but ellen go ahead well i guess i just want to underscore that this uh center of the city issues exploration that tom did i think that should really be our kickoff point looking at looking at all that and maybe that's the the initiate the the first part of the meeting and then we uh share what our uh long short and medium range views are you know but i think those really look at the short range how do we get this thing in motion on the various fronts and how is it how are we working together so i don't want us to lose lose track of the work that went into that and the problems that it identifies unless we deal with them we won't get to the next stage i would agree with that thinking totally um you know i we have had this discussion on the creation of subcommittees it seems like uh frankly that is a good ending of next week's meeting is to get if we talk about the sort of things that are that we have to deal with in in the present document we talk about the visioning that we have individually and then we can identify where we need to go on the committees does that sound that seems logical to me um in terms of it seems like a lot for one meeting but uh it does seem logical um so maybe we can try and shoot for doing that next next month um that sounds like a pretty good agenda to me um we ask you in the meantime as well to investigate what uh we need to do um to actually physically get together and obviously be prudent around safety and also public notice jeff you had your uh you had your uh unmute there for a second go ahead no i just said i agree with you i thought you're right okay um okay um frank i i i sense we're about to move to other public comment but i just wanted to come back to uh you know acknowledging uh erica and and what she's prepared to do in my mind that is uh a really important step that's going to facilitate all of what we're going to bring forward at the next meeting in meetings beyond uh that that's going to give us the ability to move beyond conversation to actual planning and uh my my hats off uh to erica for stepping forward in such a important way um thank you definitely um in that case then um why don't we move on to public comment and see if there are any uh folks that would like to say anything we do have somebody with their hand raised that's on the phone so i'm gonna unmute you or allow you to talk uh the person whose phone number ends with six four four all right you should be able to talk can you hear me thank you my name is kathy boris and i'm speaking only for myself and thank you for allowing me to speak and i want to talk about the short term like this summer when it will probably be very hot and people will need some place to go especially downtown among all the cement and there's a very nice area by kerrytown and the farmers market and it has tables and chairs and string lights above and it's very popular and it's very attractive and it's very simple and i wonder if that area could be used as a model for funding i wonder who's funding those tables and chairs and string lights and who's funding the cleanup of that little area and who handles misbehavior if it goes on all those little things but i wonder if we could use that very nice area near kerrytown and the farmers market as a model for setting some setting up something very simple for the center of the city so that the public can start to use to enjoy the center of the city just as soon as possible and that's all i wanted to say thank you thank you kathy thank you for your suggestion as well heather do we have any any other folks we do um all right so the person with the phone number three four five uh you should be able to talk now hi um can you hear me yes hi this is kitty khan and i'm kind of disappointed that you skipped over item 10 because the whole short term things are so important right now and i can see where long-term planning is important but we just have to get those cars off the parking lot and it seems like there's been a lot of talk around and around and around and i know how bureaucracy works but just get those cars off the lot and as the previous caller said there must how expensive can it be to string up lights put some you know just like the farmer's market just like she said let's just do that and also i want to thank erica very much as well for agreeing to bring some funding issues before city council i had one question though when erica was talking about that she mentioned the expenses of the construction on the y lot somehow related to the funding for the center of the city but i thought the y lot was being funded by proposal c and i don't think that has anything to do with monies for the center of the city so i'm kind of confused so maybe erica could send me an email and explain that and also i sent the resolution to erica and alice and adam that was passed by the city council in december of 2019 and i'm hoping that was shared with everybody i'm looking did you guys get that yes no i i'm looking at my screen i can't see any so i'm hoping that was shared with everybody because that resolution that was passed in december of 2019 by city council talks about funding and in fact there's one um resolved clause that says that the um parking revenue from the surface lot back to a date in 2018 a certain amount per diem six days a week would be used for funding the commons and i was hoping tonight to hear some discussion about that resolution because that would add up to quite a bit of money the revenue from the parking so anyway and then i had one more thing to say you were talking about trying to decide who could take some really good minutes so it would be easy to find things and i'm a little confused about heather's role i think you're part of the staff is that correct so why why can't heather take the minute so i can't help her be the one to take detailed minutes that just seems logical to me but maybe i'm not understanding her role correctly i think that's all i had to say get those cars off a lot thanks to erica because we really need the city council to keep their promise as was stated in the resolution that was passed by city council in december of 2019 and if you haven't all read that resolution i really hope you have i sent it to three people and asked that it be shared with the whole council on the commons so okay that's all i have to say thank you get the cars off a lot okay bye thank you kitty uh and and just for any callers if if you could send uh documentation to heather for the open meetings act she can distribute it amongst all members and i think that is an important uh important point to make uh given your request kitty other folks there are so robert black you are up next allowing you to talk thank you heather um and thank you all i just want to congratulate you and in two meetings you have made major accomplishments i watched from as in my work in facilitating groups i watched your first meeting and this one is qualitatively and quantitatively different and you guys are really on your way to doing something here uh more will be revealed right and i just want to underscore a couple things real quickly um i think rita said something about interest action momentum i turn him around into the word aim action interest and momentum and i really applaud tom crawford for setting the structure for you because it's really important that you understand even though alan's comments about people uh are the grassroots of this you know the commons is all about the people kind of leading things which is important but turn the model on its head put the people on the top and put the city underneath as the foundation of the structure for those people and you heard it tonight you heard it very well i worked a lot with financial officers and money and you heard the foundational framework that you need to adhere to for the city the council doesn't typically have a checkbook the city has the checkbook and there's other um this idea of steward of the public resources is a critical foundational piece to understand so you can write that down and stand on it next up is the city council which has authorized you as the council of commons to be the protectors of the common good and so you are the decision-making group each one of you is the salient and strong member that will speak that voice no one else will or can make that decision the initiating committee can't do it the dda can't do it for you um the library green conservancy can't do it for you you are it and i'm watching you start to gel as a group um i love the idea that you have a structure for next meeting that you work on issues first then you do three separate things short term medium term long term and don't i advise not to have heather collate those things or sort them in any way that you need to sort them together and you need to see everybody speaking as it was written and then there's a process in facilitation called commonalities and differences where you will see what works and what doesn't and you will know what is the short-term horizon you will decide very easily next time what that is is it december 31st calendar year 2021 what's medium term you know you will know that and you'll decide those things really really quickly and easily um there's a million other things i could get into but the last thing i wanted to say you were always talking about getting to a plan or having a a plan so that we could design something it's like no it's too soon for that it's like biodynamic gardening you don't grow the flowers that rita has without tending to the soil first you guys are making the soil of this thing and so um this idea of your homework to go back and review what was done before under you look on page 26 of the center of the city task force and you'll find urban spaces preferences survey that talks about fountain sculpture grassy paved walking sitting areas look on page 27 of the activities preferences survey and you will find sit with friends visit library listen to live music public restroom you've got a lot of work that's already done and then if you want to talk about physical structure which i don't think you should until you talk to the partners in the block meeting you can look on pages 23 and 24 where there's a description of the civic commons building but i think that's even too premature for that until you have this larger meeting and uh and just to underscore what frank was saying um you create a vision for this this is what adam's term was to create a vision create a vision for this and the money will start to line up and the people will come in there so the last thing i want to end with is three three points make tangible small steps earth day was a shows progress you can build public awareness the initiating committee can help do that for you and i think you should put a report to council to show the things that you have done to say we are doing it second one is get that block partners meeting up this summer and three um have a working session amongst yourselves to really get this grounded and in your own framework because you are it and you're doing it and i really applaud you thank you thank you robert heather any other folks there is so the person with a phone number ending in 464.
the first payment of the principal and interest of the bonds will be due in 2223 school year budget which will have no effect on the clifton taxpayers in a 21-22 school year the district will receive debt service from the state in the 22-23 school year when the first payment is due mr inverso discussed the current bond market interest rates with the administration and the committee and benefit to the district trying to sell the bonds as soon as possible in order to benefit these current low rates um also i think is important i'll just add one other comment um once once the bond referendum has been certified as being passed uh we can expend money so we you know obviously we're not going out to bitter right right now it's going to take some time but we do have the ability to spend some some of that money on on our workups so if anybody's got any questions i know the superintendent also spoke to this earlier any good anybody has any questions i'll be happy to feel them all right thank you mr daley uh next the uh hsa meeting and chats with the superintendent uh mr passford yes good evening everyone um the hsa meeting had uh was held on may 4th it was called the chat with the superintendent we started at 6 30 it was virtual present from administration was dr roberto all elementary school principals mr healey from woodrow wilson middle school from the board of education was uh president smith myself and uh mr canova um mrs kenoba rosekova is the actual chair of the hsa um committee's uh group if you whatever you want to call it she she basically facilitates organizing the hsas so she called the media to order um this first the second thing on the um the agenda was the referendum with dr roberto talked to the hsas and executive team for the outstanding support of the referendum and with helping spread the word regarding the vote dr robert has briefly touched upon what will happen next and the timelines of the upcoming projects the third thing that was discussed was a fifth grade graduate uh promotion ceremonies and fifth grade uh celebrations dr robert has discussed the district's plan to host an in-person fifth grade promotion ceremony although they will have um it would be a little different this year from the past he expressed that the principles have come up with a plan to have the ceremonies with everyone's health and safety in mind dr robert which has to be further discussed granting permission for individual school hsas to hold their fifth grade and the year celebration on the last day of school guidelines for uh what is appropriate were discussed along with facility usage and approval from the board of education yearbooks number four the various ideas fifth grade yearbooks were discussed and shared amongst the agents say principals and parents presidents that were present um fifth was new business under new business dr robert tells you sought some feedback from the parents regarding a possible change in the future to me all schools mascots mustangs a discussion ensued with feedback from various members and no action was taken the media adjourned at 7 50 p.m do i have any questions cnn thanks smith i think mr smith is getting feed from um my computer all right any other questions any questions from mrs pass from miss vice president abu dravo yeah thank you i had a question uh for the committee uh ms bastford so um uh fifth grade graduation was discussed was the kindergarten move on ceremony this test as well that was uh it was not discussed at the hsa meeting no it was discussed previously in an education committee meeting okay so then hopefully i'll hold up for the uh report so it was um mr driver it was i think last month uh mrs kusulevich correct me if i'm wrong or might even been longer than that yeah within last month's the um kindergarten and preschool um are going to be holding class by class uh virtual ceremonies um as described in a previous education committee meeting from i believe it was two meetings ago so if they so if a school individual school decided to go beyond the the i apologize that my case in the background um so if individual schools wanted to have um uh go beyond the the virtual and actually said they want to have something are they allowed to we want we want to keep it uniform all right wait for me i'll tell you i'm sorry okay uh next uh we have our uh residency security committee um mr awad are you back on may 4th uh oh mr ginger will may the fourth be with you 2021 uh we met for the residency and security um committee which took place on the google meets platform at 5 pm president of the board of education was commissioner president jim smith committee chair which was myself commissioner joe canova commissioner frank casper dr uh superintendent danny robertosi mark gingaro district administrator of climate and security and mr uh vincent uh the dimensional investigator mr gingaro provided the committee with a brief overview of the security in the district including compliance with new jersey school drill laws types of emergency procedures in the district's response to varying types of emergency situations the district implements security measures and procedures based on guidance provided by the office school preparedness and emergency planning mr gingaro uh further explain clifton public schools continues to utilize scenario-based training in an effort to identify patterns of actions and reaction identify areas that need improvement gain more experience in dealing with various types of emergency situations empower the staff by increasing both situational awareness and confidence mr jinger also provided the committee with a brief overview of the district's registration and residency procedures and processes including information about the enrollment and registration process how to determine eligibility based on age and residency the criteria for attendance and enrollment the process and procedures of seizing a student from the roster when a requested documentation is not obtained the committee reviewed the monthly amazon investigation report that includes information specific to the number of themselves investigations conducted the results of the investigation specific to the numbers of confirmed residents and non-residents also the number of bounties awarded to citizens for providing information that leads to discovering that a family does not resign in clifton the committee discussed the following items that will be added to the agenda for the next residency and security committee meeting the possibility of conducting uh re-registration for specific grade levels verifying residency for out of district students who attend pcti in charter schools approved private schools for students with disabilities mckinney-vento students and others mr jingura also explained the domino effect that exists on and for the residency security team specific to the amount of available staff that is able to conduct investigations to determine student eligibility to observe emergency drills and provide authentic feedback to the building administrators and school safety school climate wellness teams across the district as such mr gingaro requested the committee consider bringing forward to appropriate committees the possibility of creating additional positions to work with mr jaguero as part of the security and residency team committee chair which is i for us awad with the full support of the committee schedule dates and times for the future residency and security committee meetings that is all any questions nope uh dr robertosi uh and mr awad just uh if we can ask mr jane garrow to provide the uh the board um with the um uh the the monthly domicile investigation report it's not attached to these minutes and uh the full board should see it we'll do mr smith we'll have that too tomorrow thank you thank you mr smith for pointing that out mr daley yes uh thank you mr president um mr awad thank you for the report um i found it very good the the what was the committee was discussing uh i've always had a concern about students who go to pcti or other charter schools or out of district schools that um we don't know if they've left town or not because the prior to this uh they would just you know they could just pack up and leave and we're still on the uh paying the bill uh they can move out of town so i was very happy to see that that's being uh continually addressed i i brought this up with the superintendent uh you know early on um and i have full faith that both the administration the committee uh will have the appropriate controls because there was a time uh prior to the superintendent where that follow-up did not take place and we had no idea uh somebody could be going to pcti moved to another town and we were never aware that that that the family had moved yet we were paying the tuition for that person so with those proper controls um you know i'm looking forward to making sure those controls are in place and being adhered to i do i did request a copy of our registration form and edit some language i will pass my comments back to both the administration and mr watt for his committee's consideration if i have them but i i was a little tied up with budget and some other things the last couple of days but i'll have that to you within a week and thank you for your report thank you mr daley i also just wanted you know to uh say a lot of thanks and honestly he's been uh really on top of it and working extremely hard mr uh martin guerrero you know he's always you know honestly just being around him he's always he's always full of energy and you know he's extremely hard working and he has a really a great vision and also he really takes this extremely seriously when it comes to you know the students security especially the residency and hopefully you know we will get a lot accomplished this year it's especially you know as for uh clifton taxpayers and for the students in our district you know we do want to make sure everybody is following the rules that we do have and i know uh superintendent danny and the rest of the staff they're doing a phenomenal job and hopefully this committee could be you know a positive you know part of uh our district all right uh thank you mr awad next we have um education and special education mr casper certainly okay clifton board of ed education special ed committee updates for may 6 the education and special ed committee will be meeting on may 18 2021. the committee is in receipt of request to consider options for in-person instruction on wednesdays the committee will review the many variables surrounding the virtual date rolling registration for summer programs will begin opening during the week of may 10 2021.
i i know exactly what it means and i just want to make sure that that everyone else knows the under on the the severity of the budget cuts that we are that we are that we are receiving so now with all of those budget cuts i mean we're talking over four million dollars if i'm not mistaken 4.1 4.2 million dollars so we're receiving nester 2 grant which is pet will pay for our ionizers we are receiving sr3 grant which is bringing us back a half of a media specialist three related arts teachers and a guidance counselor we are selling land which i know we don't have the money yet but i believe that's going to bussing on our end or on on on on the board's end you've eliminated two administrators 17 teachers through attrition and 23 other employees through attrition if i'm not mistaken i think these numbers are correct um so when you say through attrition so um i'm looking back at the slide that has the uh professional versus um non-certificated staff and um let me pull that side up on my here we are yeah so so uh so 45 positions total 23 of them professional 22 um paraprofessional or support staff not including four already from the prior year so and there was one administrator it wasn't uh not two but one administrative position which we cut that was actually one of the first ones that was um a curriculum supervisor position which was eliminated when kelly cam went to become principal of rice elementary school thank you dr smith i just wanted to just to make sure that that that everyone that has been emailing us realizes that we are working our our tails off to try to number one stop the bleeding from the cuts stop the additional bleeding from the covid and and chapter 44 losses there really is no money and we're but we're still working very hard our finance committee and is working with with um you know the union in order to make it to try to make this work my last thing is tonight we're voting for the number if i'm not mistaken and how we get to that number is still on the table correct correct thank you can i add one thing to what mr lanzalotta said absolutely miss null jeff i agree with you as far as yes many many emails and i want to apologize to everybody because i could not answer everybody and and you know i i'd like to answer but i was very overwhelmed by all of the emails um you know parents teachers the paraprofessionals so many and i just could not answer all of them however i wanted to say that jeff this reduction has been going on before dr smith um you know people say well you knew this was coming you should have planned for it we had been planning for it and mr physic everybody who's here mr meegan knew um mr bolin left bieler what did we do it was that his name i'm sorry yeah we got we took um mrs schroeder got rid of the demacy elementary school principal or vice principal whatever mrs romanelli took on extra work that's one thing that comes to mind and then miss cam curriculum supervisor at rice now we have been doing and thinking and then covet hits the public doesn't know we were hemorrhaging money we had to return money to parents for full day k this all adds up my point is when you say you knew this was coming you didn't plan for it no i'm sorry i could tell you every last little detail if you want to reach out to me so i reject that notion i'm going to switch gears for a moment i i just i just want to say that i personally am very happy um with the the reinstatement of the three related arts teachers i'm very excited about that and i'm also i'm also very happy that we were able to find a way to keep that guidance counselor at demacy i thought that was incredibly important um and i know that others thought the same thing too to see that being able to be reinstated is incredible i think that'll be helpful for the uh for the the load of kids uh that that in in this building in this physical building in itself so i i do applaud i applaud everyone here for getting that work done and i'm also thankful for the uh the sr3 grant and allowing that to to actually happen um so i want to take that positive out there for a moment because i know that was something that was kind of on the radar for everybody i was on my radar as well uh and i'm i'm very happy that we were able to reinstate that and uh as in terms of related arts teachers and and maintaining and keeping that that's always near and dear to my heart i always feel like that's like the uh that's the first thing that school districts always try to pick on and i it always drives me insane so i was i was very happy about that as as well um our kindergarten program with the full day and i think that number's increasing that's actually incredible news for us i believe in terms of coming out of him pandemic all right and we're having the uh the confidence in parents to bring their kids in full day that's that's doesn't just speak well for us but speaks well for everybody out there as well uh that that the confidence level for that so that we're able to do that speaks volumes of all of us everyone in this room uh and their ability to have parents feel confident for their kids to come in full day and that ultimately helps us that ultimately helps us so i'm very confident about that as well i'm very thankful for that uh also for the half media specialist um and i believe in their uh there was a half special ed as well all right but i just wanted to throw that out there for everybody it's a good job on that any other questions or comments mr fisa cara miss fleming yes thank you i just uh again um i know the committees and the union have been working very hard uh i love to hear that there has been open communication and that's what it will take to get us down this long long road but thank you very much to all that were involved and i know the past week has cumbered many many hours of your time so thank you again anybody else all right um at that point i am going to close that portion of uh of the of the meeting the presentation part and questions from the board members um and i will be opening it up to the public for agenda items only i just want to make a note before i i read this and and set up all the the ground rules i did get one email here that i i will be reading and i'll read that in a moment um i i'm looking over it and i i just want to say to the person that's that's online i am not confident i can get through this in the allotted time i will do my absolute best but i don't want to be the micro machines guy if anyone even gets that reference anymore that i don't want to speed read through this thing so um but that's you know i just want to say i want to do my best on this um so with that being said the meeting will now be open to the public referencing agenda items only however your discussions or comments pertain to litigation student or personnel items or negotiations we'd ask that you see the superintendent after the meeting since we do not discuss these matters in public please limit your comments to three minutes per person uh i also ask make sure your your name and address uh very important that you say that to us i will be as respectful to you for your three minutes as possible if i feel that you're coming into a wrap up time i'll i do that i will try as graciously as possible to tell you please to to close up your statements if you're if you're pushing beyond the limit and i will uh we will do our best to answer your questions but we'll try to answer questions after you're done uh so that uh we're not in a in a back and forth and we don't we just quite frankly don't want to waste your time okay so first um i want to read this email this is from jennifer alkowitz i just want to apologize to ms alkowitz i did not have a chance to truly read this i got this right before the meeting started so i will do my absolute best i apologize in advance thank you for allowing my letter to be read i'm writing because this body has chosen to not make their meetings available to public comment and conversation except in person but individuals explained that they could not attend the meetings in person as they were quarantining because of letters sent home from the school or they uh they could not leave their child alone or other situations made it possible for them to attend in person you ignored their request while other boards are allowing virtual engagement even boards you sit on and letters regarding positive cases from the school were sent out just this week i mentioned this because it is behavior like this that has created an unnecessary layer of distrust and concern over the last six months concerns have been raised regarding the impact of cutting these powers benefits and we have not heard a response regarding any of the concerns raised one what was the promise made how did it come to be and why you have all access and means to obtain the details of this promise you created suspicion by not investigating or addressing it your ethics are also called into question on this because the first opportunity after john security left his position is when you immediately raise this proposal two operation and student safety concerns concerns have been raised which of you have observed to pick up and drop off at the schools within the district which of you observed their day-to-day operations so that you could understand the concerns raised in this forum by those who actually work in those buildings every day i'm asking who stepped out of their own school to investigate any point over the last six months what is the turnover rate of powers without benefits again we've asked this question over six months and has not yet been answered i think we're all smart enough and have been living and working for enough years to know what happens to businesses when their tenured employees leave and those who replace them have a high rate of turnover what i will add to this is what every hr manager is thinking who watched these proceedings don't be shocked when after you take the decision to strip these individuals of benefits not only do they resign but the powers continue to turn over at a higher rate additionally you can expect recruitment for new powers become exponentially harder because really why would they choose to come here to a district that doesn't value them or understand by their promises to them fiduciary responsibility number four you are in a tough position no one envies the position you are in the issue i take is that this budget cut wasn't a surprise coven and its impact was a surprise budget cut was well publicized years ago the amounts of the cuts each year were well known to you all when you look at the budgets and they were passed in previous years you took advantage of various opportunities so you did not have to cut much at all then we've all done what you've asked we brainstorm ideas on how to address budget shortfalls we've offered ideas small and large phone calls and letters have been written have been written cuts have been offered and every idea that has been raised as being used to pay for something else not all the money you have and will receive is barred from being used to cover these power benefits five iep delivery multiple teachers i'm going to wrap up with this with this portion right here iep delivery multiple teachers across every school district have reached out to you to explain the negative impact parents have reached out to you to explain the successes seen and the negative impact what is the impact of not being able to execute the ieps next year like you did last year special education budget line item increased by five point five four percent this year and dr smith will tell you that it went up to pay for students being educated out of district all right i got to stop there because we're well over time all right there is uh just there's another section there's a basically there's a closing here i want to say that this again is the comments of gender gender for alkowitz um sakowitz i apologize to not be able to read the whole thing um but also please uh bear in mind uh that uh you know we have have read it too okay um that is the last and only of my emails that i have is there anyone who wishes to come up and speak good evening debbie vancuren etea president i speak tonight on behalf of the entire etea membership for the last official time as the president of the etea i stand here tonight in solidarity with the et executive board for the last four years i have been the voice for over 700 members when i started this position i told my members that i am the oldest of five children and i am in the business of standing up for others over the last four years you have heard me speak boldly on numerous topics and i know that we haven't always seen eye to eye as the president i've stood for my members as as an educator i have stood for what is best for my students not always an easy task as i was jotting down what i was going to say tonight i really had to stop and think are we happy about the guidance counselor being added back at demacy of course we are are we happy that there won't be as many positions being cut at once as once predicted of course would we like to keep our two sro officers at demacy of course i've never felt safer in this big building as i do with officer d and officer steve but there's still this situation with the paris let me ask why don't you want to keep our paris and and with their benefits this situation has caused many sleepless nights for our paris and those of us on the executive board and i'm sure some of you as well you've shared that before the last time i stood at this mic i asked you to have this para situation resolved before today this situation with our powers is still ugly dr smith i have a question why did you want us to have the paris vote on those options before the meeting tonight if we weren't going to resolve this before the board members took a vote this situation has done nothing but help to destroy our district we are not moving in a good direction we have now pitted our paris with benefits against those without benefits and now etea members with medical coverage against our parish who will not have benefits just thinking about some of those conversations that we have had when we got together i don't understand how you can offer the choice between benefits for a member and their child versus a member and their spouse how can you put someone in a predicament where they will need to pay so much more to cover their whole family do you guys realize that this will leave some of our parents with only a few hundred dollars in their paycheck we know that dr smith presented other options to the etea however a pay freeze was never an option that the etea could even consider for those of you who don't know how that went down the last time let me remind you we took a pay freeze the etea took a pay freeze to save jobs and guess what the following years our members were still let go do you guys realize that a pay freeze isn't a one-time hit most people do not realize how that works it will accumulate and affect our pensions for the rest of our lives so you can see why that was not an option even though it was brought to our attention a few times we still think there are other options some of that emergency relief money could be used to save our paris benefits the sale of the properties that's going to come through could save our paris benefits we are also hopeful and i don't know if everyone knows about this but the 55-44 if that gets approved eastern township won't lose the 1.7 million so are we going to be able to stay status quo like this year we are still disheartened that you won't consider the savings that will be available by switching to the state health plan we've heard you voice your concerns that the state health plan rates may go up but let's face it we don't know what the rates will go for our current plan they could go up as well so once again we stand here in solidarity urging the board members to vote no on this budget i'm sure there's at least one of you who sees our concerns and could potentially vote no please find another way i know jeff said we keep asking find another way to save our paris benefits board members i thank you for listening to me one last time as the president of the etea i won't be going away i will continue to stand here with our newly elected president russell bowles congratulations ross [Applause] just first uh mrs van karen i want to thank you for your service as eta president although i didn't get to overlap with you for most of those years um it is a a very important service that goes above and beyond your already important duties as a classroom teacher and i know that um you know you've left and as you said you'll you'll be around but you've also left a model for the rest of the leadership to uh look to in the future um i wouldn't i don't want to go into too many details regarding uh the communication back and forth because that really is a form of negotiation but i do want to say to the the the timing of it um just so people understand so you know it was only two weeks ago that the conversation about adjustments specific to para benefits was able to begin and we were waiting for months for that moment so well i'm very glad that it came and and that's the most important thing the timing of when it came was completely up to etea that's the first thing uh second thing what was voted on today and what was offered back to the board were two different things so if what had been offered back to the board after the vote had been exactly what the board had offered in the first place it would have been an easier situation this evening potentially but what was offered back was a counter offer which out of respect for your offer it would behoove us to discuss it internally which we have no chance to do when it comes right before a board meeting so i think those those background facts are really important to giving the larger context so we're all working from the same reality if that makes sense so that's that's my comment thank you mr megan yeah i want to reiterate also thanks for your service but one thing you said when did we you said we offered an option as a pay freeze i've been part of all the exchanges on what we offered as solutions to this and to me a pay freeze means a zero increase so did did we i mean i have it in writing what we sent you did we really say zero is a pay freeze as an offer in one of our options all right well let then let me clarify what we were trying to accomplish as best as we could in a short time frame so chapter 44 as everybody is aware maybe the public may not be as we're aware of it as much as much detail as the school board and the union members are chapter 44 a state mandate allowed union uh benefit members to opt out of the contracted plan design that we had which we budgeted for and provided better financial incentive for those who made the option so as miss knowles had mentioned as we showed on there one million three hundred and fifty thousand dollars of unplanned expenditures left our checkbook and went into collectively not individually because i know everybody benefited differently by electing in chapter 44 but i want to make this clear 1 million 350 000 left our checkbook and went into the pockets of the unions and the participants in the benefit plan so no no well it's my turn you said it was a pay freeze i'm gonna explain that a paid decrease is a little bit different so i'm sorry i didn't hear you are we talking about 2010 or are we talking about today okay you know what up on that chart in a budget and what we have to present to the district has nothing to do with 2010 it has to do with today so let's stay focused all right this is this is not a back and forth mr meagan so let me clarify again let me clarify what we offered for everybody's understanding mr mr megan just focus focus back over here i don't want to get into a back and forth here that's what we're trying to do here all right so let me clarify what we what we offered for those who are not part of that we did ask for a little bit give back of the 1350 1 350 000 we needed 500 000 we asked for that to come back not the whole 1 million 350 000 that left our checkbook and went into the member's pockets we asked for five hundred thousand dollars back to allow the paraprofessionals to keep their benefits in full to me that's not a pay freeze the three percent contracted rate increase wasn't going to be in as a whole was not going to be impacted in fact when you add the 900 950 000 to the already 1.4 million dollar pay increase puts them almost at about a five percent pay increase all we asked for was five hundred thousand dollars back i do not look at that as a pay freeze i just asked for a little bit of the money back to share among those people who are going to be impacted why because we lost a lot of state aid and we needed it in order to effectuate the coverage for the paraprofessionals so that's my clarification did i get back my paycheck all right okay i'm not asking for paychecks let me clarify i i know you're saying i'm over my three minutes i'd like to speak please my name is mary madewell i'm a second grade teacher at field elementary school and i came up here to speak very nicely and mr meagan there's not a lot that makes me angry but you have made me angry because i actually led the effort to get that law passed in eve sham township school district and i'm going to tell you that all but two of your schools sent me paperwork that i baxed over to offices so those laws would get passed because people could not pay their bills you talk about an alternative source of revenue i listen to don adiago talk about an alternative source of revenue revenue comes from somewhere it comes from people's pockets and i'm sorry i don't i am not okay i am here for those people who aren't able to pay their bills because you this board negotiated us to pay some of the worst premiums than any other school district in the state of new jersey okay i went to people i listened to them i met with them face to face so you know what i'm not going to say these nice things asking you to save their jobs you should save their job they work with these children every single day i've got pictures that i've sent me to profit or any other people on curriculum showing you the work they do and it is not your face mr meegan i have seen miss earlhart come chill schools and a few other come to our schools come see what we're doing every day you have us overworked and underpaid i listen to a woman sobbing stopping at sweeney's california town hall meeting sobbing because eve sham township school district put her daycare out of business we now have an empty building sobbing they could have cared less they could have cared less okay you seem to think that this is just dollars and cents these are people who have mortgages to pay sick children to take care of i know people who sign and ask for that law change because their children could not have their medicine the way their doctors prescribed it they had to wait five weeks instead of getting it in four so please do not sit there and say we have not given i have sat here and i watched you come in here i have been sitting here since at least 2015 watching this board bank cap bank tap expire cap i live in medford metro i pay 15 000 a year and a lot of it goes to letter p regional i don't know why we cannot pass the k to 12 budget i don't know why everybody seems to think that it is such an hardship to have a 30 increase put on your taxes in a year so that these poor people can keep these benefits so that when your child comes in your autistic child walks in the door they need to know who that face is that's going to greet them and it's the same face it's the same stakeholder who buys into our eve sham mission we're here for every kid okay so don't sit here and play this argument i i'm so sorry i know i'm out of time thank you very much i appreciate it if you give these people the consideration they deserve you don't know what it is i i want to i want to reiterate something because we're getting you don't have you gotten the emails from people telling you the hardship that the insurance is let me let me reiterate something i want to reiterate something and i apologize no go ahead um and i have to give others a turn obviously um i want to reiterate what i said earlier today because i feel like we've suddenly gotten lost in the weeds out of nowhere here all right there is an interest on both sides to fix this problem there is a clear interest on both sides to fix this okay so why wasn't this but why wasn't this net right this this cast out of a net for collaboration put to all stakeholders why why was it just kept internal why was it just kept to the negotiation process we're not sure what that means miss made well um yeah just because we've gone for misses thank you oh yes yes okay thank you um there will be another public comment later in the board meeting so thank you hi my name is anna maria forte i am a parrot at feeler and i would like to make a few points that i hope you would consider first of all i'd like you to see all these faces with these faces there are at least at the minimum right now 14 children standing with them understand that two you have brought up the fact that you have not hired for positions that were moved for example kelly cam i understand that and i think that was a great idea but us losing our benefits is not equal to that moving someone from a one position to another good paying job with benefits is not the same as us losing not to think and these are all and don't get me wrong these are wonderful employees even the ones that the ones that you kept i have been in their presence they are amazing my other point is i know we are still negotiating we are negotiating because our backs are to the wall we are not happy but it also goes to show you how important it is for us to keep our benefits and how important it is for us to stay in the schools that we work in we are when you think about it we are contemplating giving up a lot of our paycheck to maintain benefit we are contemplating and i will give you the figure i am coming out with maybe a hundred fifty dollars a paycheck if if understand right now today if this negotiation keeps going i don't even get benefits i am one of the five to lose i am cut off my whole family will not have benefit even if you agree to it i don't i am losing mine there is five of us that are losing ours if you agree if we negotiate five faces that will lose them understand we are part of this community we are small business owners that are struggling that have been struggling for a year and a half now due to the pandemic and you are taking our benefits away thank you for listening that's all i have to say i could ask thank you next question and i thank you for your comments um did you the the option earlier the the the pay freeze that's really was pointed out it's not right i'm not a freeze have you seen that yeah you know that option there are two yeah i need a family plan i have children no no the the options that involve the the decrease in the rays oh yeah did you see that one there were two of those nothing benefited okay okay okay all right hold on hold on you don't have to answer if you don't want to uh it could be rhetorical but the the reason i ask the reason i ask is because the reason i ask is that there's a lot of finger pointing and instead of continued discussion wait wait wait wait wait hold on hold on she she still has the floor give give her one sec mr balls you can have your turn okay mr bulls please go ahead russ bowles vice president i work here at demacy so the plans that dr smith's referring to the one that he's trying to get everybody riled up over are the ones that we had mentioned debbie had mentioned in her speech that was the pay freeze so we didn't even entertain them because it was due to a pay freeze would you like to elaborate well i'm just you said the word freeze but i think debbie walked that back right well mr meegan said it wasn't technically afraid i view it as a freeze so he called it a reduction call it what you want you know what it is it was a break in the contract anything else okay [Applause] okay i just i would just like to say that this is public comment so make a comment but let's not have any shouting from the audience so that we can focus on the comment being made okay if you have something to say at the microphone get in line and say it at the microphone so we can focus we want to be able to hear what everyone's saying we want to be able to hear what everyone is saying so please be respectful to the person at the microphone please be respectful to everyone in this audience and at this table so that we can hear and focus ladies and gentlemen i just i'm so sorry i i'm so sorry i i i have tried my utmost at every meeting to give you every amount of respect possible i allow you to go over time i allow you to project your emotions towards us i give you everything that i can all right there this is intense it's intense for everybody i i am i understand that i understand that but i i do want to hear the person who's at the microphone that's extraordinarily important to me it's important to the board it's important to dr smith and ultimately very important to all of you we all have the right to be heard and i do want to hear that person it is very difficult for myself this board and for everybody else to hear that when when we're all shouting at each other and this is towards all of us in this room all right we we need to be able to refocus ourselves so that we can hear this dialogue because what you say at that microphone matters it matters okay and i want to be able to hear it and i want to be fair to the people who are speaking all right so please let us all afford each other that i think that is only right i'm sorry please i'm joy being i'm the computer teacher at buehler elementary school i just wanted to point out that mr lanselot had asked if the budget passes tonight the conversation would still continue by reason if the budget fails to pass tonight the conversation will still continue the reason you're cu you feel bad about that the reason you want the conversation to still continue is because this is not sitting easy with any of you nor should it it is wrong to take the benefits away from these paras they work really hard those benefits they're not something that you're giving out of the generosity of your heart it is compensation for services rendered and they render a very necessary service so please i urge you to vote no tonight and still have the conversation continue thank you hi joan mclaury 53 marlborough avenue i work at jagger elementary i'm in para really bringing me to my shelf i know as you continue to debate the numbers we are forgetting that we are human beings and as though i truly don't feel like you think of us as that right now we all of us will go to work tomorrow and we will continue to greet those beautiful children every day with a smile with the help they need anything they need and we will do our best to show them respect i wish you would afford us the same as i look around i see words that we should all live by every one of us i see signs saying respect we do not feel respected i may speak i'll speak for myself but i'm sure most here do not sacrifice we as the powers are willing to sacrifice but you had us vote on the hardest thing i've ever had to vote on today disgraceful determination well the determination that i see is is from you not all of you some of you you're determined to divide us and all we are all we are trying to do is make an honest living make a difference in these children's lives help these children to be the best that they can be every day the only reason we are all every one of us in this room is here today is for the children we show them we care every single day do you take the time to even go and say hello do you go visit the classrooms do you have any idea do you know any of their names please practice what you preach thank you yo i'm not gonna address anyone specifically but i just want to make sure because a lot of people emailed as well questioning have we been in the classroom so on and so forth but so the public doesn't always know but i just want to point out there are many of us on this board who have little kids in the schools and yes we're in the classrooms lanzalotta right how many kids lancelotta three two leah yeah and trish did raise kids here joe so i i i will yeah miss noah i'll let me take you back off that on a second um many many board members do make an attempt to go into the schools more some more than others based upon their availability i have attempted to come into the school several times but my situation situation's precarious because for me to do it i have to literally take a day off from school to go to school which is feels weird doesn't even say that out loud but i've made my attempt several times i've taken tours of schools walked into different classes um you know with classrooms uh i've been to bieler to demacy marlton middle uh numerous so we have been in there but listen listen it just just shh just to just reiterate i i want i want you to know that now i mean again a lot of people up here just just like you we we have we have jobs sometimes it's extraordinarily difficult to do that but what ms knowles also trying to say is that we also have kids and we sit in our kids rooms and get to see that as well as they grow up so we get to know our home school extraordinarily well i feel like i know every nook and cranny of dimasi i feel like i know every little bit of it all right and i'll be the first one to admit that i maybe don't know rice nearly as well i don't get to go there as much as i want to but i i would also say that many board members here including myself if we have the time we'd love to go into these schools it's actually a highlight for us that's actually a benefit for us we enjoy we enjoy that we love that we love being in your rooms and sometimes the the ethics of of being on the board of education does prohibit us from doing some things too so i just want to put that out there as well i'm so sorry i know you you want to speak sir please quite all right i i'm not doing you're addressing my wife's letter i'm mark alkavich thank you for reading part of her letter i apologize i couldn't finish it i i understand um i have some other points to make um because i am a father of a child in the autism program here for some backstory we moved here in 2010 just before my son was diagnosed as being on the spectrum early intervention came in we sat with them we were living in a rental apartment at that point and because we were in a rental apartment i did the simplest thing i could do i turned to the woman from early intervention and i said what town do i need to be in she said don't you dare move don't you dare move if my grandson was diagnosed i would tell my daughter to move to marlton holy sh whoa that's a rave my child has attended preschool at rice miss candy the speech therapist there is probably the reason he speaks today these women work so hard with these kids and they are the backbone of the program but let me step back again as a parent we go to all kinds of outside therapies run by by groups i have seen advocates come and speak lawyers come and speak and i have turned to them and said i have not had a problem what's going on they say oh you must be an ipshim so yes you guys this district has run a blue ribbon special education program for 10 years in 2013 i believe this argument came up once before and i came to a board meeting and looked at the budget and i went aha that's why you had the last line item being a payout for a multi-million dollar lawsuit in special education of course you have a great program you wanted to avoid another lawsuit and these women are the backbone of that they make the iep's possible these teachers have told you a speech therapist gets half an hour a week with a child if they're lucky it's up to the paris to carry on what the speech instruction is these women are the people that make it possible for my son to go to chorus to do after school programs to do any of these things they are the lowest paid and yet they are the backbone that is probably keeping you from lawsuits they make sure the children get on buses safely they make sure there are no issues with elopement they make sure they're clean for god's sakes what's going to happen there are lawsuits coming up all over this country because idea is recognizing that special education has slipped during a pandemic the parents in this district have been very very forgiving but when you lose these women who have so many years of experience and put up with so much and make sure these children are healthy and safe and don't and there aren't allotments mr smith again my wife's statement was there's an increase in the special education budget this year why because students are being sent out of district when their ieps can't be met more students will be sent out of district this is a these are cuts depth of a thousand cups you're lucky and i say this as a parent wait one more thing sure just so you understand i did not live in marlton this whole time i moved to medford and fought to have my son go to jagger i made medford pay for him to come here and then as soon as medford was like oh no we're going to rebuild the program i scraped together all the freaking money i had and bought a house here to keep him here please i hold nothing against any of you my wife holds nothing against any of you rejected your thinking you are about to make a horrible decision that is going to lead to liabilities and problems and that is one part of this equation that i don't think you consider one more thing in authentic where we're way past sir i understand one more thing before i think sir are you still planning on moving the md students from their home schools to i believe here to mesa is that still a plan so yes sir you were over five minutes there i understand that no so i think you're confused i think you said empty but i think you mean tr i i when you're talking about programs so we have a we're consolidating we're merging our ld programs in elementary and middle so the children will be taken from their home schools and bus to a different school before you do this i want you to think about one thing this is just to address you if any other demographic was told that they would be taken from their home school and bust to another and basically segregated out what would happen that's my that's one other question i have for you please before you think about taking children out of their the schools where they're with their neighborhood kids consider that thank you very much and again please i hold nothing against any of you i just don't want to see a horrible disagreement again reminder for people we have to cut these things off near three minutes and i and i i'm trying to be as delicate as possible with this but please please be mindful of that i'm sorry please continue on hi i'm beth fisher i'm a marvelton resident i live at 16 palm road in marlton i'm also the second third fourth fifth grade autism teacher at jaggard and i'm not here to talk about the paris i'm here to talk about my students i have six students with autism in my class and let me say again second third fourth and fifth yes in one classroom and they're wonderful children i love them but they have a lot of needs and there's one of me i can't do it by myself let me tell you about some of the things that they need um several of my students have devices to help them communicate because they are non-verbal and i can't communicate with them all by myself oh the peres those paras take care of that i also have kids with feeding protocols because they have a tendency to stuff so much food in their mouth that they're going to choke themselves paris take care of that they're in charge of that we collect a lot of data if you don't know about kids with autism they don't develop the same way that other kids do they do develop but we have to really collect a lot of data so we can see those things the kids are not as obvious as they are with typical students the paris do that uh my related art when my kids go to related arts that's my prep period like with these other teachers the kids don't want to go oftentimes the paris take care of that i have a kid who won't come in the building every single morning because he doesn't want he wants to watch the buses go by those paris take care of that i have kids who don't want to leave at the end of the day because transitions are so difficult for them they don't want to go anywhere one or two or three of them don't want to go anywhere every single day those paris take care of that we have kids who can't take care of their care of their own toileting needs those paris take care of that we have children who run out of the building and try and run home or run wherever it is that they're going to run we have paris who have chased them down and been able to bring them back in the building and the paris do that the paris do so much i ca there's no way any of us who work in autism or in sbs where i worked before that or any of our self-contained programs we can't do our job without our paras i need them the school district needs them the students really need them and really that's what we're all here for is for the students so i just want to take a moment for everyone to think about what we're really here for and thank you for your considerations [Music] corrine halabira 13 olympia drive eve sham resident rice preschool teachers aide i'm here again to talk on behalf of all the paris behind me um this has been a fight since september 29th it's been exhausting it's been absolutely awful from day one you guys wanted to cut our our benefits and yes there are options on the table and we did discuss them yesterday we asked for more time because things weren't clear they were very confusing to us and so we didn't get the extra information until after lunch today needless to to say the anxiety of all the people behind me since september 29th has been through the roof it hasn't been fair people are crying people are having health issues over this people were worried sick about their families their jobs their health insurance during a pandemic there is money out there my question is if that 1.7 million isn't taken away would you consider putting our benefits back as they are to have parents decide whether they're going to put their spouse on their insurance or their children or to actually be working for benefits only and come home with no cash in their pockets is horrendous i have never felt so unappreciated undervalued disrespected i don't feel that way from my teachers that work with us and i don't feel that way from the people in my building but i do feel that way from all of you we work hard and so i ask if that money goes back will you consider keeping our benefits intact as they are now [Applause] thank you ms halibur i would just in response thank you for your comments um we are open to all considerations you know as things move forward that is why you know when we go back to the presentation this evening we spoke about it being a point of light that the discussions are still continuing between um and again these are discussions that just started a couple weeks ago so a lot of ground's been made up and covered to get to this point they are continuing additional changes whether it's legislative changes or any other option well is it possible for you to go in executive session now and discuss it because we have waited since september 29th we have waited a very long time and it is not fair so i i just if one one piece and because it's a we want to hear from everybody it's a very big room but it is a public comment it's not it's not true we treat it as a public dialogue because that is the heart and soul of who we are as a district in a town but at certain points like it is meant to be public i will respond but i just want to point that out um what you would be asking us to go into executive session to discuss is something that isn't even a reality you know so so what you're saying is no no to the uh um what i would like to point out and take the opportunity is that that word reality is probably the most important word this evening besides the word paraprofessionals it's the word reality and it's very important that we operate in the same reality okay it's why our board members ask questions it's why they offer comments you can to try to articulate that common reality we're all living in it's not a happy reality right it's a reality of reductions coming from all directions it's it's not a hollywood reality you know it's not it's probably not a reality where there is like a magic solution at the end it's a reality that requires a lot of hard work very difficult choices putting taking our emotions which are very real because we care about every person and still having to make hard choices so dr smith i just want to say one last thing if you decide to cut all of our benefits and and that's the way it goes and you need to hire more classroom aides to bring in for the reduction of all of us you can't hire people if any of you have watched the news places are going out of business because they can't hire people people aren't working they don't want to work you can't hire a classroom aid before covid if you think you're going to hire them now you're not my name is linda sutter i live at 326 stony brook lane i've been at para at jagger for 17 and a half years and i look at you all of you and i really i really plead that you think before you void us of our benefits we're the ones that were here the longest we were the backbone we started a lot of the autism program i started with the autism program we have worked so hard you with all this going on and all this stress every morning we have a smile on our face when we go to the buses it's all about the kids i have to actually listen to this song carol king you're beautiful every morning driving to work that you have to have a smile on your face it's been so hard and the children would never know it we go in and do our all and that's all we've been doing we made such a wonderful program the md program was already in effect and doing well autism is doing that program has done wonderful just like andre's dad just said um please remember us don't just cast this aside because we're the ones with benefits and why us i don't understand we we did so much and we still do so much we're here for the long haul we've been here we we love the children i've lived in this town my whole life our school district is is phenomenal and i'd like to see it stay that way the special ed program is a big program and us keeping children in district is saving you so much money and we're the ones being targeted please please please just remember what we do thank you [Applause] merrill schindler nine dominion drive i've been a paraprofessional a jagger for 21 years seven months um i listen to the mission statement every time we come here you know the the mission statement and you talk about respect and um i don't and trust i don't know how how are the parents supposed to trust when you can't take care of your own staff we are here working for the kids and try ours our program is huge it is a large portion of your district jaggert alone i think has something like 11 special needs classes that's a large portion in addition to the typical classes um why are we being treated differently to me it's it's just pure discrimination why were we targeted why are we the only ones that are being asked getting our benefits cut it is pure you know to me it feels like i am being discriminated against we are here trying to keep the district the way it it has been its reputation has been and um on any given day there are tons of failed to fills i think there were like 93 people out on friday in the district so how are we going to um be able to comply with the ieps if there are so many people out i'm asking you to please consider i know it's a money thing too but you also need to consider why we're here and what we're doing it is a mission to keep the school district strong but if you but our program is a large part of your district so when you're thinking about cutting the benefits think about the people that are going to walk away and what it's going to do to the program thank you hi i'm cindy carey bortons road in little mill section of marlton um i just wanted first i just wanted to say with dr smith i'm thinking back to the first day you came to rice in september and a lot of us paris were in the cafeteria having lunch and you we introduced ourselves to you and i said cindy carey tim carrey's mom oh tim carey great kid audrey gillen you knew her children you knew sue beck's children you knew dawn dravacy's children all because you taught them at cherokee and you said to us it is such a great feeling that the parents that raised good kids are now working with our preschoolers at rice and i want you to remember that because i for one will have to leave because my husband is a retired endodontist on call all the time um and he's disabled so i carry our benefits so i will have to leave if i don't if my benefits are ceased um i want to talk to you about um everything that uh the paris did we came to the meetings with you we discussed taking um paying more towards our premiums at those meetings we contacted the state senators the governor we called numerous people um to try to to try to raise money to try to get our money back for our benefits we had flyers made and we um and we went door to door in our neighborhoods to let the parents know what was going on that our hours were being cut we were going to spend less hours with their children at rice alone we have 14 12 full-time paris which would be six hours a day less in the school for for paris because we would be cut a half hour every day to be reduced to to um to part-time hours so we were do we were willing to come in the middle to meet in the middle with you to do we did our we did everything that you asked us to do in order to try to to to get a resolution to this situation and i just want you guys to know that we really did make an effort and this was very very stressful for most of us and through it all we remained a family we will remain a family at rice whether no matter what the outcome is because that's who we are and tomorrow i'm going to get a little three-year-old boy or girl off the bus and i'm going to have a smile on my face and that whole day is going to be just about those children and not about any of this and in closing i just want to say mr fizzy caro we do not we work on columbus day and lenape regional does not so columbus day in october would be a great day for you to come to writing unfortunately i do work i have an in-service that day so i i actually do work on that day they give the day off for the kids but they don't get the day off for us i would i trust me i would but that's unfortunately not an option for me i'm so i know that was like a moment and i feel like i just spoiled the moment for everybody but that literally is the case but we're there until 3 30 every day too so any any time you can come have snack with us come any time and when you get you're offering me a snack goldfish i'm game all right i'm there i'm there i'm there thank you hi can you hear me okay my name is rebecca depersia i'm at 7 sandwood drive i actually spoke at the last meeting i don't know who remembers but i'm that mom that uprooted the my entire family so that my kids could get a better education and that my son with special needs could get the support that he needs now i moved here because the reputation for eve sham of marlton is amazing i said this before therapists doctors that i've met with go to marlton go to martin go to marlton and here we are i feel like if you're going to take the benefits away from the pairs that you are going to ruin the reputation of yves sham schools people said it they are the backbone of this of this program and without them i think it's going to diminish the possibility of having new residents like myself coming into the district um because they're going to go to that other district that's better that all those parish just went to left here to go there and potentially you could use lose residents that have been here for many years because of the school district they may go follow the new school district that has all these wonderful paras and i want to say i feel for the paras i really do i mean especially the ones that have been here for their entire careers and maybe for the last year or two are going to have to leave and go to another district that does offer them health benefits and it's terrifying to think about having to pay for benefits for your family especially if you're the one that's carrying them for your entire family it's very expensive i personally we pay our health benefits it's ridiculously expensive um but to be honest i'm not here for them i'm not here for the paris i'm here for my kids i'm here for my son i'm here for my daughter i'm here for the kids in my son's class and those parents that cannot be here because they can't leave their kids with anyone else be for fear of covid and other things i am here speaking as a parent i'm here supporting the children they are the bottom line what's important to to us this is why we're all here and especially for kids with special needs um transition something different new faces is terrifying for those kids i can't go into how much my son has done better here because of his para she welcomes him every day he looks forward to seeing her every day he adores her and it's because of the work that she does with him that he is doing so well here so the idea of her not being here or the other paris not being here next year is terrifying to me as a parent to see what next year is going to look like we need these people they're they and i by my heart thank you all so much because i could never do what they do they have the patience of a saint and they make no money and the best we could do the least we could do is give them benefits for what they do so please please please vote for what is right vote for my children vote for all the kids that go to the school and the kids the special needs kids i can't emphasize it enough how much they need to see the same para day in and day out i just hope that you all vote for our kids thank you good evening my name is lana kubo i'm a resident 103 cottonwood drive i've been at jaggert school as a paraprofessional for 23 years and i'm also the power rep for etea i just want to say that the point of light to us are our paras and we work tires tirelessly every day we give hope to our students our teachers we wear many hats we we talk about guidance counselors and we talk about nurses and and being a parent we do that that's what we do every day all day we it would be a true disservice to our community to our schools to our parents to our teachers our students if this budget doesn't pass and you take away the benefits i will say most of us a lot of us have been we're talking 20 years 23 years 25 years 18 years 15 no matter what that says a lot for a district a lot that we we are willing to to be here that long and do this is it difficult absolutely but we love it and we love the students so i also want to leave you with a quote uh an article i read back in august in the um marlton sun and this is a quote from you dr smith all of my experiences that i have accrued are part of who i am and how i think today and i am grateful for every one of those stops along the way if i were to write a book i'd call it something like everything i need to know about being an administrator i learned as a teacher i would hope you would stand up to that i'd also like you to leave you with the other quote that you ended the article with the schools are embedded in the town here they're not separate from it it's a dream honestly to get to come and work in a town that has meant so much to my family and me and to serve a community that i care a lot for we care a lot for our community as well i hope you look at us i hope you see i hope you understand what goes on remember we're a school we all work together it's not just a building it's who's in the building the heart of the building that's us the paris everyone maintenance it's everyone secretaries teachers we all come together and we work hard and it really will be a disservice so thank you for listening and i hope you reconsider and this budget and vote that we will keep our benefits in our hours thank you i just um this is cooper thank you for those comments and um thank you for even spending a few seconds from the three minutes on words i would have said um it's it's very meaningful to me to hear you share those uh in some ways they echo to me what mrs curry said about um the students i've had over the years because again that comes that goes back to teaching right um and it is um even as we see here now even as difficult as this is the challenge and the challenge of public service is to do make hard choices you know make hard choices for the mission which has come up and i'm we started reading that again at the last meeting i'm very glad for that the mission is focused on students and that's at the heart of of these conversations and there are some difficult truths and i'm going to come back to that word reality some difficult truths in there you know um and for anyone watching at home they may not be aware we have more paraprofessionals without benefits than we do with benefits and and that's been a reality that's become more and more so over the last 10 years um it is so you know when we talk about paraprofessionals i just want to make sure that people are aware there are groups within that okay um it is it makes it it makes it all the more important for me personally hearing those words to be able to you know that the emotion is real all those names and there are so many more names you know that that came to mind as mrs curry was talking epic names beautiful names of kids that were students and families that sent many kids through cherokee fantastic families who were part of our district and at the same time it comes back to the mission and cutting over four million dollars while trying to maintain as effective programming as we can for our students and that makes it incredibly difficult and incredibly important and that's why we have three budget presentations and that's why we're listening all tonight and we pro you know we won't ultimately agree on those decisions we stand in different places we're in different roles but that's ultimately why a board exists and why an administration exists um and it doesn't you know again we'll hopefully we'll come to an understanding about the the um through the eta discussions regarding the prayer benefits for this coming year but what brought us to this moment is because of that harder bigger picture of reality um despite all the emotion of those names going back many years um and i just want to share that as a follow-up and again thank you for sharing those words of mine good evening you probably remember me i've spoken at the past few meetings um i'd like to share a little story with you if i could a personal thing that happened this weekend to me a very happy occasion as many of you might know my i have a son justin beck who is now on the united states coast guard i hadn't seen justin in 16 months he had been on two date somewhat dangerous patrols and he was just recently in the bering sea in alaska well he came home and paid me my husband and i a surprise visit this weekend i was so happy to see him as i'm sure you can imagine as my husband was however i had looming in the back of my mind what was going to happen here tonight and just thinking of what i could say you know to to make the board change their mind and vote in a favorable way for all these people behind me who work these powers work tirelessly every day and i just had to tell you that story because in all my happiness this weekend i had moments of where i was just so worried about what was going to happen here tonight and i really really hope i was hoping when i came here that this would come to a resolution i was hoping for an answer tonight and i really hope that you seriously consider everything that everyone has shared with you tonight and please reconsider save the paris benefits and let's put all this stuff behind us because it's going on way too long thank you very much for all of your [Applause] consideration very well thank you for letting me back wait wait wait no we can only do one per per this round though let's make sure everyone who hasn't spoken has an opportunity to speak first okay lucia millington ate bancroft road and i'm back again um you know it's been i know we've all had a really difficult year i know y'all have had a difficult year i'm weary i'm tired they're tired and i know you all are tired too so you know i'm i want to point out maybe positives instead of just uh the negatives because we've all had enough negativity this year so basically i want to just say thank you for the efforts that y'all have put forth i know the board has worked hard it might not be everything that we want it to be but when we started this i remember talking to you joe outside and he's saying there's just no way so you know maybe we're not getting everything but i i just want you all to know that i i recognize and i think a lot of us recognize that you have been working hard so thank you for listening to us and for considering us and for fighting for us even if even if it doesn't work out the best way i still think you all have been a good quarterback thank you thank you tracy brown from arlton middle school sorry putting emotions aside you've already heard all of that we could go on and on about how wonderful the powers are um but truly if did you you just mentioned dr smith the whole idea of like the powers that with benefits and the powers without benefits and i'm not asking for specific numbers i don't need to put you on the spot with that that's up to you but i know at the last meeting i asked did you look at turnover rate did you look at retention did anyone because i know pretty confidently the powers with benefits are about the most loyal people you could ask for and if those 55 i don't even know what number we're at right now lose their benefits the majority are going to quit if if i had the magic power to have them all not show up to work one day and let you see honestly what that would look like and what that would feel like because in reality you keep talking about reality i don't know how you're going to hire people to replace them not just like because of the good human beings they are but some of you are in business you know that it's really hard to hire people my husband has not been able to hire a person in his job he's the owner in a warehouse competing with amazon and all of that has not been able to hire someone in months has raised the rate higher and higher people don't want to work they want to stay home they're making more money sitting home that is a reality the true reality right now i have no idea how we will replace these 55 ladies and our schools will be a hot mess without them it's just a reality so again i i've been in your seats we've said this many times i've done that for six and a half years now i'm on this side you'll be seeing a lot more of me starting monday i'm the official vp and i'm going to keep coming here on behalf of everybody here but again put the emotions aside and talk about the reality these people stay the retention rate is high and they are reliable and i think you're going to have a really really hard time replacing them we could really be in a really bad position for september because a lot of them will quit reality so i really again hope we find a way i know that the money's not falling out of the sky but we've got to find a way reality is going to stink and it's going to hurt the kids and all of these people's families thank you for your time uh i i will uh follow up on that um mrs brown the uh so the the budget that we presented tonight just several understands does include benefits for all of our paraprofessionals who've had them the year prior through the first half of this year that's built into the budget okay um so you know when you say september they will have benefits as the as it currently stands all the way through to january first okay so and then again we're working with eta on conversations but i'm just i'm i think it's important okay um the uh okay at this point we are going to be closing uh public comment for agenda items only miss ryan did you have something that you want to ask yeah i have a couple questions and i'm not trying to be obtuse i'm just really i have a couple questions um someone mentioned that the board wanted this i don't think there's anyone on the board that wants this i just wanted to clear that up especially myself but someone else mentioned september discussing power benefits in september versus power benefits now i think that's apples and oranges if i'm wrong please correct me i think in september we were talking because of the hour reduction versus now it's budgetary so if i'm wrong please stop me i'm just clarifying for myself to make sure that i understand and following along the home schools i know that some people are concerned with moving programs to a different school so that they'll be in different home schools but i think that that's already happening in some cases too so just stop me if i'm wrong just i just want to make sure that i have everything i was trying to listen to what everyone was saying and the woman i'm sorry i don't remember your name but you're the power rep for the eta um thank you for your words i was just curious and i'll ask the administrative staff and the finance committee and the eta was she involved in the discussion process because i think it would have really helped if the para representative was there as well so i don't know i mean when your talks with the eta i was i'm sorry i don't remember your name i tried to write it down but no oh okay okay sorry i was just curious if there's if there's a conversation you wanna have afterwards that's perfectly fine but we just can't do this kind of back and forth um that's okay miss ryan i i apologize all right um all right at that point we've closed this so now this card just just so a clarifying question in terms of the budget that we're voting on tonight how much this money can you save that question for when we get to the motion of it sure let's let's do that let's get into the motion process because i'm sure we have questions and comments that we're going to want to say there so let's let's try to let's try to hone this back in into uh into the parameters of our of our agenda i apologize miss farming but i promise i'll get to you first in that comment section okay uh at this point in time we're gonna move to item four which is the adoption of the 20 2021 2022 school budget i need a motion to prove item 4.1 the resolution to approve the adoption of the 2021-22 school budget do i have a motion motion by miss no second i have a second seconded by ms all right at this point we have questions and comments uh miss fleming i give you the floor first thank you mr fiscaro i just wanted to be clear in the current budget that is we just made a motion for before we vote how many paris will be losing benefits and how many pairs would be cut from salary sure sorry um how many paraprofessionals in terms of their position be gone at the start of september 21 22 and then in terms of saying that all of our current paras will have those benefits till june 1 2022. is that correct okay so they would lose them june 30th yeah thank you thank you mr plumbing i'll there's a couple questions there the first question so we are eliminating para positions but there are no pairs who are losing their jobs so the positions that are being eliminated are due to retirements and other vacancies okay okay okay as far as benefits the existing budget the one that we presented here uh continues the benefits for all paraprofessionals who currently receive them through to december 31st 2020 2021 2021 this year okay thank you and and that's because the uh eligibility is based on the six months prior of what they've worked so um and what we're discussing what we've been discussing the last two weeks and you know the options that have been put forth are ways to um ensure the continuation of those benefits for the second half of this year yeah thank you for the clarity yeah any other questions or comments can i ask a question related to what miss fleming asked and um or clarification because you're discussing miss fleming the health benefits and dr smith says through december 2021 because there's a six month look back period to clarify though dr smith in this budget how many paras will be um how many pairs will have reduced number of hours beginning september of this school of the next school year do you understand what i'm asking because the benefits are delayed so to speak because it's the look back so in this budget how many paras will be told basically that they are going to be part-time in september that's what i'm unclear in them i'm very embarrassed that i have to ask this i'm the chairperson of the finance committee like i shouldn't even be saying this out loud but you know i have learned a lot and know a lot but you know so many changes at the last minute so the uh to your question thank you for your question because every question is an opportunity to share more information so um there are eight pairs that so that the eight who have the years of service 23 years or more in the pension system as of july 1st those eight in the current budget have their benefits carried for all of next year okay any other paraprofessional their hours would have to drop below 30 hours a week starting in september and the distinction there is so we have um kind of a couple different groups of paraprofessionals based on the hours that they work per day there's a group that doesn't receive benefits works 5.75 hours per day and the groups that do receive benefits work 6.0 or 6.25 and then there are three that work 6.5 hours per day so when we say so so part time and this is the former english teacher in me but part time kind of implies like half and half or what we're talking about is a difference from 6.0 to 5.75 or from 6.25 to 5.75 hours per day on average and if you take that 6.0 hours per day times it by five days a week it's 30 hours compared to about 28.75 hours a day for the 5.75 employee so um it's it's it's not you know it's a meaningful reduction in the sense that every hour is important but in terms of um it's not 30 to 15 it's it's 30 to 28.75 or somewhere in that range so there there are 52 pairs who receive benefits currently who don't who opt into benefits and we're saying that eight are currently accounted for and the in the budget that's presented tonight which leaves 44.
on page two you'll see that as of april first we had a little less than 543 filled ftes and 804 staff members there were approximately 67 vacancies actively being recruited for which include our teachers instructional and residential service assistants interpreters bus drivers and other various positions page three begins the financial summary where we compare the data from march 31st 2021 compared to march 31st 2020. the budget 2021 collected revenues of 22 million was 2 million higher compared to last year's of 24 million primarily from the decline in our federal and state grants medicaid revenues rental as well as gifts and the donations that we have received our total obligated expenditures are 1.1 million higher when compared to the last year's amount of 42.4 this year the amount is 43.5 most of that increase is due to the equipment and that's because most of the vehicles purchased for the agency fleet replacement relates to the one million dollar allocation we receive from the governor's office and there also has been an expenditure decrease of about 240 000 mostly to the decrease in travel because of the covid pandemic and the travel moratorium page six shows you some of the same budget to actual expenditure information but just in a different format looking at the remaining balance looking at things by object class by object fund and by program and then on to page nine the report actually shows you our march 31st expenditures where we have spent our day-to-day functions or activities you'll notice for the month we spent 67 percent of our expenditures providing instruction and student support and 11 percent in agency administration the remaining 22 of our expenditures are in the area of facilities transportation food services as well as our deaf and blind program statewide services on page 10 you'll see our budget to status report showing a current deficit of 1.3 million when you compare the actual revenues of 39.2 million to the actual expenditures of 40.5 million again i say the same thing for the last several months but this is of not any particular concern since we do have a month-long delay of when we receive our voucher revenues when we receive reimbursement for expenditures incurred for the instructional site-based campuses our preschool program as well as our itinerant cooperatives we're also still waiting on reimbursement from expenditures incurred on several of our federal grants and as a reminder we do not receive our appropriated funds from the state up front that's received on a quarterly basis also included in the months board report are the third quarter basic financial statements as of march 31st 2021 and 2020 which begins on page 11.
but there is a reason for it right we are deliberately making sure that we develop something which is tangible which is good meaningful thoughtful so that students will have the experience by the time they graduation it's just not a requirement but they come out of it stating that they learned something and they are their stories have been addressed right and their issues are being addressed so right thank you number two we already have the the course is a part of our work so it's not like 2026 is when you're going to start to see ethnic study courses as soon as we are ready we can start bringing these courses to the mix so if we have the curriculum that's already been developed and we have teachers that have gone through the training and willing to start teaching it we can start doing that sooner rather than later but in terms of it being a requirement where all seniors get that out or by the time they graduate all seniors have gotten that access that's why we need that time but we can start rolling this out as we develop the process of training our teachers i wanted to ask about this one slide here it says from chapman university if you could explain to me why this is here what the heck it means ethnic studies as parax praxis stories from classrooms and communities dehumanizing math classrooms through ethnic studies pedagogy and the fists down bonds now explain that to me yes so this is a chapman university's ethnic studies summit well two of our teachers from anaheim union are actually presenting in fact it just took place today this afternoon the the flyer represented simply that we have teachers already working on embedding ethnic studies content into their current classroom so two math teachers one from oxford one from anaheim um shared their experiences of how they reflected on their own um work experience to uh bring in those ethnic studies the content that the flyer simply is them sharing that at the the ethnic studies fl uh task force excuse me ethics studies summit at chapman carlos earlier you had mentioned um dual credit how how would that work so dual enrollment credit is college college credit that already is um taking place so classes schools excuse me students are taking dual enrollment classes that give them both high school credit and college credit um for a course like the ethnic studies in fact um i know i was waiting for that question is that project who took it with okay share your experience yeah um so i took chicano studies 150 at cypress college in the summer and it's also offered um during the like regular fall semester and um spring semester of high school and when you take it for like during the school year it'll be a semester long or shorter so for me it was five weeks because it was a summer course but it'll all depend on like what class you take and what your school offers but since we're implementing it um in different ways like a lot of campuses at oxford already have dual enrollment classes like at on campus in their classrooms and so that'll always be an option if we're going to implement it that way but yeah dual enrollment is always an option and it also gives you credit if you're going to go to a community college or i believe a cal state and some ucs and you'll get transfer credit for after you graduate you just mentioned the word chicano studies right but but that's a very narrow study when you talk about ethnic studies yeah so cyprus college offers cyprus and fullerton college offers various forms of ethnic studies the one that i took was chicano studies but it also offered american ethnic studies which my friend took in the same period of time and that one is more general and it's more inclusive of like every ethnic group in the us okay so to fill our graduation requirement the chicano study would not be appropriate it would not fulfill our requirement because it's not studying a broad brush of ethnicity is that a correct statement it does if today was the ethnic studies graduation requirement and the way it's currently stated it would meet the ethnic studies requirement for graduation it's one of the uh has you know one of the options for ethnic studies for our stupar students but that's such a narrow window of life um can i i took the class and actually taking it when you take like a single ethnic studies course like no matter how narrow it is like i took chicano studies but if i were to take african-american studies or arab studies asian studies etc it talks about intersections and like the impact of different movements so for chicano studies i was able to learn about the civil rights movement and the black liberation movement the involvement of arab americans and also the asian american civil rights movement at the time because it's all like historically intertwined so that's why taking one course will give you sort of access to another lens and a lot of other perspectives well said uh that's great i think it's something we need to keep in mind when we develop our criteria of what does the district really want to have our students learn and why are we doing this but but i think the key is to understand that even chicano studies like ann said it it actually incorporates everything so that's why it is a requirement i mean it could be a requirement so it's kind of i'm trying to grapple with i'm fasting today so i can't come up with a faster um example here but maybe you could help but at the end of the day it does fulfill the requirement of ethnic studies because it encompasses every aspect of it and it's actually um identifying and going through the process of it right it's i guess that's what you say go through the process of it it's a great question mr o'neill because like when you take asian-american studies they generally start with the immigrant experiences of other groups italian like irish other groups that have been that have come to america and have been discriminated against even though they're white right because then you learn that it's kind of this sort of a pattern right because you come here and you come here to work and then oftentimes you become the other sort of minority right and we've seen it with the irish and the italian and catholics and other groups and then you go deeper you know it gives you that context and and then you end up focusing on the waves of asian american immigration starting with chinese and chinese railroads and mining and all of that so i think it generally and it's a great question and i think that's something to look at because we do not want our kids to come out of our district uh with without an understanding that we're all interconnected right i know exactly we're headed with this we don't want to tap into because that's that's really where it takes training of our teachers of the college teachers to really have students understand the history but also appreciate their own identity as you know part of the american salad law i have a question just for instance if you just i'm trying to clarify in my mind how much depth you are going to go into because if you're going to talk about asia you're talking about many different cultures within the asian world community you go to africa and you go from egypt down to south africa are you planning to envelop all of that those cultures i mean yes but this is about the american experience so i'm sorry but another great question the question has to do with do we like in asia if we're studying asian american history it's really the american experience of people who are asian here it's not about studying history of japan or history of china it's it's here and i think that's the big difference and that's one of the challenges because so many uh and of course you guys know my history too you know um you know my parents my mom was a citizen here yet she was in put into internment camps because of the bigotry right um and and thinking that and even now i have people come especially during this anti-asian hate that we're going through um attempt to scapegoat me as being non-american right and that's what oh yes and had to deal with that so i know um it's a very sensitive matter but this is an opportunity to heal this is what i i think all of us understand i'm really proud of the board because you have been supporting this more inclusive education that we're trying to build with ethnic studies and i think it's really a pivotal juncture for the in the history of this district to have this and and to listen to the students and their parents and families shared histories and mr jabbar your point about ensuring that there is you know local context you know because we do have a lot of refugees from um the middle east here and they're starting they're they're they're starting their journeys as future you know americans trying to find their way in this very complex society that we live in so um you know that's my two cents here so i'm really proud to hear the questions the inquiry here and i assure you though that this task force here here's your concerns and we you know we have a few years to work this out and there will be other updates to the board in terms of where we're at but i i think with this young ladies and all of the students um who have spent so much of their energy right ensuring because she's graduating this is about future anaheim union high school district students so we thank you and the other students who have spent so much time and energy on this emotional issue so thank you thank you thank you mike for clearing that up i think it's really important to really talk about ethnic studies and what it is not just as much as what it is because i think people have this narrow view of what they think it is and so um i just want to commend you on and cristela for coming here tonight i know you have other things going on in your in your world but i think that you you can hear um how important this is and how important it was to take the time to um to and do you have something to say you could you can go ahead and adjust you look like you need to say something but it it it's really important like i said to hear from you because you took you took you took a chicano studies um you're clearly not chicana but uh that experience that you had empowered you to to want this and want more of our students to get the exposure more so than than a summer course and i remember you saying that very loudly and very clear that you would like all of our students to feel the emotions and to understand and what it did for you it brought you closer to your classmates it brought you closer to the to the world it didn't divide and i think that's i think that's what a lot of folks think that the studies are and it clearly took to divide us and it's really not right um and i wanted to add on to what superintendent matsuda said about um like the various cultures being all monolithic in terms of the american experience because i know that with the rise in anti-asian sentiment um anti-blackness in the u.s and like hate crimes that we're seeing emerge when you look at me and you look at christella you're not going to see like a person who sees us on the street is going to see the same race or the same image of like an asian person right and that can vary from south asian people who are indian nepalese etc but the point of ethnic studies is to understand race and race revolves a lot around phenotype and how you're perceived in the world and so your experiences are kind of include both your culture and how you're viewed in the world and that's why ethnic studies sort of gives a universal learning experience i guess to students of all cultural backgrounds whether or not they have like a distinct cultural background i know for some students who i've taken ethnic studies with they didn't really have like a distinct culture or like anything at home but what they took away from that class and what the conversations we had in class were just so valuable and it's sort of a learning experience and an exchange between both the teacher the professor and all of the students saying yeah so this is why you take ethnic studies you are the prime example of it bravo thank you yes thank you excellent you are amazing all right any other questions or comments thank you all very much for a great presentation and thank you for months of work too because you've been involved for several months all right okay 9.4 that was 9.3 and now we're moving on to 9.4 this is resolution number 2020 slash 21-e-22 ethnic studies oh i've got a lot of emotions that's great does that show enthusiasm or what yeah that's great okay um any questions or comments i i just want to make a couple of quick comments first of all officially i want to thank the students who advocated for ethnic studies in auhsd it was great to see former students actually coming in and taking the time to advocate for ethnic studies for their future uh you know for their brothers and sisters i also want to take the opportunity to thank all the task force members i know you put a lot of time uh to come up with the best way to implement this in a thoughtful manner rather than just implementing for the sake of implementing i want to remind that auhsd is a very diverse district racially ethnically and culturally we have students who speak 49 or more different languages and 90 percent identify as students of color auhsd is in the forefront of our democracy schools and introducing ethnic studies as a grad requirement only empowers our students to address injustice that negatively impacts them and their communities it really speaks to our mission and vision as a district it's preparing our students to be great citizens out there according to experts it also is going to close the achievement gap reduce torrency reduce dropout rates and increase graduation rates and they're more likely to be more engaged as well so mostly i'm interested that it's empowering our students and actually talking about student identity that's very important for our district especially with what we have gone through in anaheim this is great that we are doing this so with that enthusiasm i support this so okay anyone else have a comment um very good uh i invite anyone to read the resolution are all our resolutions are online and please take the time if you're interested and read it so that you are fully aware of what all our aims are because the task force spent a lot of time putting it together and putting a lot of information into this resolution so please do so okay any other questions or comments all right seeing none this is a roll call vote mrs trejo because this gives us an opportunity to practice our mantra which is to know our name of our students and to know their stories my vote is i mr o'neill i mr javar aye mrs smith aye and i vote i we have a unanimous acceptance of all their hard work thank you very much [Applause] and we will be kept up with what you continue this is great you guys have done a great job so far okay nine point five our math tasks give me sorry sorry um madam chair can we get a copy of this resolution to our two students that came tonight please thank you sorry all right while we are transitioning uh mr hernandez is bringing in our math task force okay presenters is it gonna take a couple of minutes i would like to yeah yes we yeah we can we can certainly wait if it's okay this has been a year too yeah uh where did paulina go it's getting warm in here isn't it we're gonna take just like a minute break because um connie and if okay so i think ah haven't tried these what's that bronze we're still also on but we're waiting have you tried the brownies oh i'm like sitting there going like what am i doing mad all right we just miss him well they took one we're falling apart here where'd cathy go now we lost out i'm thinking of school you have our viewers watching i can sing a song but i don't wanna [Music] i'm afraid if i start entertaining they may leave right so we're just missing mrs smith what are you waiting for yeah that's fine do you want us to start do you want us to wait yeah let's let's go ahead okay should be back shortly okay well similar to the great work we did with our ethnic studies tasks you just saw we have equally done just as great work with our math task force as the board knows not too long ago we were given the charge to put a math task force together because of some of the challenges that were brought forward regarding the current math textbook we were using at both our junior and senior high schools so again i'd like to acknowledge mr carlos fernandez our director of curriculum instruction and the great work he did leading our math task force and i have to also acknowledge all of the great work our math teachers across the district have done those who served and will continue to serve our math task force have done just a really outstanding job leading and really collecting the the voice of our teachers across the district so they're going to share a little bit about the journey they went through and then obviously leading up to the the textbooks that our teachers came up with as a recommendation to you in terms of what they'd like to use for the next several years while we wait for the frameworks to be revised so without further ado i'm going to turn it over to mr hernandez who will then introduce our team uh to present to you tonight all right thank you dr freed and again board good evening thank you for allowing us to to be here again superintendent cabinet and uh we are talking about our math task force uh we i want to introduce our presenters as they come up you'll see from them but uh quickly i have two math teachers that represent our math task force uh one being um sue carlson a teacher junior high teacher at uh sycamore junior high and we have jairo aguayo a math teacher at lower high school i have a third teacher a math teacher that also was teaching a long time taught me math at anaheim high school she currently serves as a curriculum specialist for math teacher lead julie speicherman and she's also going to be sharing with uh spending some time with us today all right so we um back in july our board gave us direction to direct us to create and establish a math task force the math task force included one of the requirements was to ensure that we had well representation from every school and that is across junior highs and high schools and we did just that as you can see from our math task force members we have our junior high school teachers listed there that represents all junior highs we have high school high school teachers and we had administrators also many of them with math experience which is wonderful also to help us ensure that our students with disabilities our english learners were represented as we initiated and established the math task force um you know initiatives the objectives of this group um as you can see from the next slide these were the recommendations given to us to establish a math task force these were specific objectives and one of them was to review and adjust the the execution the implementation uh plan of math to ensure professional learning uh and monitoring progress was taking place in the teaching and learning of math the second was to address concerns about the teaching and learning of math via the adopted textbook and this again was july of 2020s excuse me not 2021 it hasn't taken place yet uh 2020 so back in the summer the third objective was to build capacity around our math framework mathematical practices across both from the teacher side the administrator side and of course that impact students and our fourth was to review resources many wonderful resources that our teachers have curated that they've put together they've prepared and to share that wealth of knowledge and learning to others and i'm gonna turn it over to julie who's gonna continue the work good evening um in august 2020 we had our first math task force meeting where we reviewed our objectives and were introduced to the anaheim union map implementation plan as you see in the bottom right and the teachers selected their work group preference in september consensus was built around the priorities for the work ahead we reviewed the work group selections and the general instructional materials adoption timeline with key california department of ed dates by october the math task force determined that all anaheim union high school math teachers should be part of the decision of keeping the current instructional materials or beginning a new math materials adoption process for 2021 22.
motion pass five zero congratulations isn't he still in here yeah he isn't he's not yet okay okay with that uh that was what we approved uh in closed session so i'm gonna move on to item number five adopt agenda the board may approve the agenda as is or add or pull items from consent agenda is there any opposition to the motion no hearing on the map motion passes five zero okay moving right along we have no present recognition presentations discussion information presentation local control lcap update uh by patrick saucer yeah i i appreciate that i would respectfully um just ask the board if they would like to hear first from the students and families here is that something we is that is everybody thinking that it's item two in the same area the sandia let's do that move on to the sandia academy mascot and uh i'll just need the board streaming um mr buchanan didn't be able to hit that there it is samantha haskell you're up thank you she's from the sandia student leaders give me just a minute to get reset up here okay lost the last stream i'd like to see this screen okay we'll turn you to the screen and then um mr mckinnon i still have um the wrong screen up i can't see the code got it thank you [Music] it's happening okay don't cross the streams this is what i this is the advice i've been told [Laughter] you know okay while we're waiting this for queue up i'll just say that um this presentation uh you're gonna hear everything you need to from our uh young lady samantha haskell but they're super excited about this presentation and been working really long and hard on a careful process to reconsider the mascot at sandia school so so am i able to present okay okay take it away samantha okay good evening school board members mrs nelson district administrators and families my name is samantha haskell and it's my privilege to present to you tonight next slide the first sandia mascot was the sidewinder from 1988 until approximately 2000 then we became the hedgehogs when we first became the hedgehog sandia was a k5 campus but in 2015 we added middle school students the staff has been working hard to create school pride in all students from pre-school to eighth grade however middle school students still struggle to have sandia pride no matter what we did to mature the hedgehog to align our vision we want a mascot for all ages our current pbis hedgehog slogan is this is how we roll be safe be respectful be responsible changing the mascot lets the middle school students be able to feel pride in our school it's hard to be excited about the hedgehog especially if you are going up the falcons or the bears we want the community to see us presented by a strong mascot that makes a statement about our students loyal committed and family pack focused representing leadership characteristics in preparation of this request these are the steps we have taken to rebrand our mascot in october the staff agreed to survey the stup the school to see if there was support for a change in january the students voted for a change of mascot and submitted their mascot suggestions in february students and staff voted to request a change to become the wolves in march students submitted artwork designing our new logo here are a couple of quotes from students on why they believe the wolf is a great mascot choice personally i believe the wolf is a great mascot because wolves are complex highly intelligent animals who are caring playful and above all devoted to family next slide next one we worked with local artist grace bateman who took components of several student designs to create our proposed logo if you approve our change sandia our sandia family can be represented by a wolf pack our elementary students would be the pups our middle schoolers would be our strength and the staff would be the school would be the wolf elders thank you so much for this opportunity and your time and consideration the sandia staff and students hope hope you will grant our request to change to the wolves thank you so much well done [Applause] good job thank you samantha good job thank you for the little mascot here appreciate it excellent well done and i'll we'll pause for just a moment if there's those of you here for that presentation you're welcome to stay for the next one but we're also uh we'll give you a moment if you want to go out and study good job samantha thank you that's awesome too yeah that's not for mister nevermind so great to have students presenting in front of us again it's so good to see that's right i'm going to step us through just an update for our lcap which will actually be coming back to you shortly but i wanted to give you a note on the progress we've made so far um we are in this moment of we are always in the process of either developing or implementing our el cap where we are right now is in the space that's i've left between april and june and we don't actually have anything we have to do in may but may is a good time to check back in with you we have done all those steps um the fall was tough because we didn't get it we didn't have a lot of data this fall because of the kind of the way school year ended but we did meet with our district advisory committee throughout the spring and in june we will be bringing a plan to you first for a hearing and then approval and so the way we engaged our stakeholders this year we actually met with them four times all virtually and we did lots of surveying to gather ideas input and information and all those meetings across january february were presenting data and information and then march and april had to do with draft plans and bringing proposals back to them for consensus the surveys just a look over time at the number of participants in the various surveys parent surveys were about the same as a little bit down from years past which was good students a little bit lower as well um but classified and certificated engagement was way up and that was a a testament an appreciation to the csea and avuta leadership they did a wonderful job of getting that word out which means that the lcap reflects more accurately their desires and the kind of data that we did have to share because of course we had no test data from the california exams last year we didn't take them but we do have graduation rate um we had data around college and career readiness suspension rate from the year before we did look carefully at subgroups and really dove into that work in in that in those meetings and of course we looked at the survey results on a variety of topics and took a careful look at coaching impact our instructional coaching efforts and then we asked them this question the this was in the third meeting after presenting quite a bit of information we asked given the data they'd seen what what did they want to see in a plan and we got 60 of the participants to give us 79 different thoughts with almost 2 000 interactions with those thoughts meaning they ranked them you know with a kind of one to five right giving information about that and just to take a look at the ideas that came out this wordle represents the themes that were most frequently mentioned and you can see that this isn't this a reflection of this year right this what did they think needed to be in the plan and paying attention to emotional health uh a need for counselors and counseling addressing the trauma and making sure that we were paying attention to the needs of the children as they returned to school full-time i got to tell you um another way to look at this is this slide here and what this is is the parents the various constituent groups across the bottom parents site administrators teachers and other community members who are in the in their meeting and on the right-hand side that axis is the topics that were of most importance to them and mental health and mental health supports was number one and so when i go through the changes to the various goals you're going to see action items focused on mental health because it's in in response to this desire of our community to attend to those needs and so on down the list and so um drafting the plan of course you have to pay attention to the students the unduplicated count of students who generate these supplemental and concentration grant funds for us that is about just you know over 70 percent of our students who qualify as uh economically disadvantaged english learners or foster youth only counting in one area or one time we have to balance the ideas and themes from the stakeholders we want to keep items from the previous plan that made good sense to keep and then we have broad goals five broad goals and then action items within those goals so goal one the changes here are in blue we've always had this goal about making sure we had a focus on essentially professional learning professional development for teachers and all actually all instructional staff including para educators so to continue to focus on that with those changes right we want to consider the students in greatest need want to be inclusive of educational technology was the number one request for educational training from teachers was ed tech training and of course as i mentioned the delivery of social emotional learning and attending to those needs and so what changes for us in gold runs really some we're adding some stipended support positions um or rebranding our edtech effort run actually by mr buchanan's department where they work alongside bethany thompson as the teacher on assignment as the coordinator of educational technology and each site will have a digital learning specialist to support teachers in that effort to be a stipend to position and then we're also asking the instructional coaches to shift their work slightly to include a focus on educational technology as requested for goal two um this one for us has been about making sure that our curriculum provided access to a high quality um 21st century experience but we wanted to add that sentence there in blue that this is what we proposed to the district advisory committee to make sure that we had research-based programs that had an impact on the students in our unduplicated account so um let me skip to the significant changes um we did consolidate all of the college readiness action items into one area you're also going to see things like we're adding our name to a list for a grant called gear up where uh kind of makes a tight link for students to san bernardino our cal state university san bernardino starting with our seventh graders next year if we are granted the funds we did add um using the expanded learning opportunity grant we're going to be adding our instruction along with music in the before or after school setting and then we wanted to make sure to bridge the access gap that is always present when we try to deliver either instruction virtually or even for homework and so we continued to do that with things like access points but actually reaching out to develop a wireless network an lte network that would be for our students and staff across apple valley goal three is really about student support it's where you'll see the most of the items we mentioned in that world that really show up in item three the significant changes here aren't to the language of the broad goal but to the specific items so we will be having targeted reading programs at all sites we many have them already not all sites are able to fund them however with their categorical dollars so we're going to make sure they're able to do that we're going to add two full-time therapists or clinical counselors actually the job description at the comprehensive high schools this is in order to bridge the need from an immediate um kind of critical care need until we can get them into a long-term situation with a counselor perhaps through the self or through their insurance apple valley high school has been kind of piloting that this year and found a real need for that and i know that all the high school administrators support this this need we'll be hiring social emotional learning focused staff members to make sure and lead that effort um so that we have a focus on that and so we'll be posting those positions as certificated positions additional classified staff behavior intervention technicians it was approved last year we now will use funding in this focus goal to bring those on board get them trained so every staff every site will have a behavior intervention technician at least one uh classified staff member to work under the bcbas to work on student intervention and for behavior and then we did the group did elect to maintain class size reduction um goal four has been completely changed to being a basic services goal to be a family focused goal another real need of the group and so really what we're going to do there is we'll be adding a family center coordinator we move some of the goals into one area what we have for the fifth family center coordinator is someone who will be staffed here because the kitchen here actually in this building has been sort of taken over and remodeled the child welfare attendance office has won a grant that has allowed us to have this remodeled to be a food pantry for the community it's just awesome we'll um figure out a way to walk you through there uh maybe before the next board meeting while it's still light it's it's quite a quite a work in progress they've done a wonderful job and finally goal five is focused on our english learners not much changed there other than we are proposing another stipend to position at each school site english language development specialist who will be charged with being a champion for the english learners at that site in addition to the certificate or the classified staff who already work in that capacity to make sure teachers know who the english learners are and what the needs are of those students and to help with the testing requirements so what we did is we proposed the plan and we asked the group to vote you see the rubric up there we asked them to give us either five four three two or one as described a five being what we were hoping for and of course if there was any one we would we would come back and we would discuss so we put it to a vote and i took a screenshot of the consensus kind of small there but we had um all five fours and a few threes and only one two so we had consensus just just about the best consensus we probably had for an lcap it was a great group when i put a thought exchange up about what they thought about the plan we saw things like thank you for hearing us it was a good process so that was the lcap quite quickly just a couple of slides to give you a preview of the expanded learning opportunity grant i do have a thought exchange running currently on that so you can join that um there and anyone here will post this for the world and we're getting uh so far we've got a 114 participants and as you can see lots of ratings and interactions with those thoughts this is a expanded learning for the summer to come the next school year and the summer after and so this is what we're hearing and is that's no surprise is it do fun things this summer and so you should see the kinds of offerings that are happening this year for summer school it is not your typical summer school offerings there's all kinds of camp-like fun activities being offered to students to bring them back to school and kind of enjoy school again in a positive way the plan has these seven requirements i won't read them to you i'll be bringing a plan to you in this exact template on the next meeting because it's due to the county by june 1st however we have great flexibility in the in moving things if we need to adjust for our um art students reminder is for this summer and next and all of next school year there is a specific set aside in the elo for paraprofessionals so it's a 10 of the grant and so we will be making sure to um put those funds as intended and starting right away in summer we'll be adding uh pair educators into the summer school offering so we can get that ratio of students to adults down so a quick glance at the elo and a long glance at the lcap thank you for indulging me that's all i have thank you mr moorpat that's it okay well this was just uh an update um no action needed so we'll move on to public comments we have a couple of uh requests to speak cards so first up is rochelle areas you're up you good evening my name is rochelle aries i am the mother of two students in apple valley unified school district i'm here today to ask that you consider making masks optional for the upcoming school year i know this school year has or was full of a lot of unknowns and i'm glad that we were able to get back to in-person school even if it was only hybrid but with the upcoming school year being full time and our county very close to reaching the minimal yellow tier i believe it is time to remove the mask kids need to be able to see their peers and teachers excuse me they need to be able to breathe properly while learning and playing by using masks we are training our kids to detach from normal relational and social skill building the negative impacts of not seeing your teacher smile when you solve the hardest math problem is devastating to our kids children are not carriers of this virus and wearing the mask for a six and a half hour full day of school is harming to them in more ways than one i read this quote from a school psychologist the other day and i want to leave you with it quote the psychological damage of teaching school kids that other people and kids are dangerous to them unless they are masked and distanced from them is a ticking mental health time bomb the loss of a year of normal social socialization and future impact will be enormous end quote this really hit hard for me and i hope it opens your eyes to the fact that we need to make mass optional for our kids i also hope that this opens up a discussion on this issue between you all and that we can see it on the agenda at an upcoming meeting these students are counting on you thank you for your time [Applause] thank you rochelle for the good comments there appreciate it we have another request to speak and that is jessica cooley sorry i guess i should have chosen to sit closer so when i was my name is jessica cooley i'm a high school english teacher at apple valley high school i'm also the high school segment director and when when i volunteered to speak for a buddha for christie i misunderstood her instructions and so i wrote a kind of happy and happy we're back kind of speech and it's good enough i thought i'd share it anyway so that's what i'm sharing now um this is from my perspective as a high school high school teacher and um in march 2020 on friday the 13th no less we took extra breath as we left our classrooms it felt like it feels like we've been holding our breath ever since waiting to exile in relief as we're able to take steps closer to normal there have been bumps in the road this last year due to the covet pandemic two steps forward one step back many of our professional conversations have broken down into tears more tears than collectively we ever shed as first year teachers when the elementary school started working towards return the in-person return i know the high school middle school grades were watching enviously and with hope that we might get to do that too two steps forward one step back with the holiday spikes it felt like the ability to return was slipping through our fingers and many of us began to consider what the end of the school year would look like if the second wave continued to grow much like the first one did over summer then suddenly in february we were able to take a collective breath and exhale superintendent nelson i want to thank you for your leadership in getting avuda i'm sorry apple valley unified school district employees vaccinated and back on site watching other districts it is clear that you were committed to get our students back in the classroom once the vaccinations were complete the entire vibe within the district changed there are no more tears everyone i've spoken to is excited every day it feels like the first day of school again you get to see people everyone's eyes light up you can't see their smiles but you can see them through their eyes there are stories about students the teachers are excited about their work their lessons they're talking about them collaborating it is so good to see everyone again thank you [Applause] thank you jessica okay moving right along um do you have any uh comments you'd like to make yeah thanks jessica um there's still cheers um i'm crying right now but thank you um and i i want to talk for a few minutes um while there is uh public here because if we go into second close the comments afterwards we should do it yeah so um first of all i'd like to thank miss okara and um jason for working really hard to be able to bring her into this meeting um she is in texas with her grand for the birth of her grandson that was born on 4 29 so um she's there being grandma but took the time out to be at our meeting in this fashion as mr schlosser indicated we have the food pantry that was put together through no kid hungary california a grant that was supplied and tomorrow may 7th is the annual school lunch hero day and now more than ever i i can't express um what heroes they are they have been non-stop um through the pandemic feeding our community not just our students but our community um and so i wanted to let you guys know that tomorrow um there's a huge campaign by no kid hungry california um they sent every food service director in the state of california uh a little thing for their desk that indicates that they are meal heroes 2021. ms stark knows that it's here tonight she knows that we were going to talk about it i told her she could watch it streaming they will do a campaign showing all of our nutrition service workers with a hashtag that follows so that it gets tagged with the entire state of california celebrating these people we have been out on campuses all month doing longevity awards because may is staff appreciation month and um we have indicated that most staff should all staff should be getting a seven year award this year because of the one dog year they just finished or about to finish um it's been rewarding to be out there to see them in person and as we're out there we get to see students as well um i was overjoyed yesterday as i was driving past apple valley high school although there was traffic um there were students picking up caps and gowns and i know it was happening on the other side of town um ap testing has students competing to get college credit during an exam that takes place once a year and you heard our students talk about it when they were doing their reports granite hills high school has earned a 2021 california exemplary arts education for their great academy this has happened in a very short time it's a short list from the state and they are overwhelmed as is our county um this will was sent out as a press release and we're just so proud of the the group there that had the vision to put it in place and then went after the different credentials they needed in order to make it happen i see miss stewart in the audience and she was one of the ones that championed this and likewise on the same day we were notified about students that were being highlighted for valedictorian and dominic cumo while we were in the meeting i got a text message from our town manager doug robertson who was telling me that the nbc um news had covered dominic cumo he has um lou gehrig's disease was i think the youngest person ever identified with it and has just done major accomplishments so he's one of the 13 um at apple valley high school that has earned that accolade and then i just want to point out that it's hard when we do a readout from closed session and their staff is in the audience finding out that there is a change of leadership um but i do appreciate um that mr goodroi will be moving to apple valley high school ms howell is in the audience we appreciate her dedication to the school for the last five years um and we celebrate um your next steps um mr kalanich moving to dean so there's going to be lots of moves over the course of the next several weeks we've got three board meetings left and i'm hopeful that we can get all of those dominoes in place and then finally miss arias with the comments about the masks i appreciate the comments we will continue to advocate for the most normal setting we can have as you know the the laws come from a different location we follow what we are dictated by the state of california and by the county of san bernardino and so we are following those every single day to see if there's going to be a change and we will continue to be to update you and i would love to have your information to be able to provide to the supervisors down in san bernardino county and i can get you in touch with them as well because they actually have a little bit more pull on pushing on the the regulations okay thank you okay thank you thank you um board member comments uh adeline um first of all i'd like to say thank you to all the teachers and staff this is your week and um i have been privileged to attend um the longevity presentations with cabinet and i just my hats are off to every one of you especially in these times to put forth the efforts that you have to make sure our children get the best every education that they can possibly have i'd also like to thank the young ladies on their reports this evening i had the privilege of attending av's um recital their last recital and i just want to commend the instructors that put that together because if you haven't seen it you need to watch the next one or the next two or three that are coming because that it is just outstanding how they are able to put that recital together through their homes you know it is virtual so um my comments to the instructors that have have to put in a lot of effort and the students who put in even more effort to get such a perfect perfect program together so good thank you wilson well i i have a couple of quick comments and i was i superintendent shared with us about the interview by nbc and and i did share with her i was touched by this student because many many years ago i watched the movie by gary cooper and teresa wright on the famous yankee with the famous this terrible disease but i think we should be sending a congratulatory note to the parents so the outstanding job they did and i think that that i watched on tv recently is that that there are a lot of negative comments about education overall in the united states and it is tragic if indeed we are falling behind you know there's concerns about reform behind even on reading and on math particularly math to china and russia and some of the other countries countries and so we whatever success we have and i was going to say we need to con i'm sure the county superintendent has worked closely with us i have been serving on the county association for 26 years now on many committees so we need to kind of spread that positive thing note to all students in california we want everyone to be successful and and then the comment from my parents about mass and in fact i've been watching a lot of uh show i mean a comedy tv news from different doctors you know like this morning i watch my own a doctor from my school stanford university medical school about hey he doesn't say we don't really if if the kids are vaccinated if the teachers are fascinated maybe their mass is not necessary because it creates not a negative impact on students you saw on tv that news that that high school girl because the mask didn't allow her to breathe properly she felt she had to dash the last 10 yards to to to just to achieve the number one position he probably saw it on tv these are the concerns that we have that we as the board members our parents and grandparents were concerned how how does the mass impact little kids so it is a valid concern i just want to point that out thank you that's all i have thank you dennis yeah i'm going to extradite this i'll make this short i enjoy the input from the association leaders but i especially enjoy the input from the young lady there let's get our kids out of halloween every day get rid of these masks and that's what we want to do i agree with that seven grandkids that i don't do in 30 days it's not working good thanks dennis uh maria are you can you hear us yes yes i can yes i can hear you okay um i like to take the opportunity to to state how appreciative i am of the teachers since this is the teacher appreciation week once you're a teacher you're always a teacher so i have been a teacher most of my life and i do truly appreciate the work they are doing and how resilient they have been through this whole year of pandemic i also like to appreciate the classified staff for rolling up their sleeves when they were needed and they gave us very best for the graduation graduating class of i must say i am truly proud of all of you for holding down the court and doing the best you can and congratulations to granite hills high school for the award of excellence at a time like this you still stuck it out and gave us excellent work to be recognized uh outside of above school district uh to the valedictorian i have to say you overcame obstacles my background is in special education so i am truly truly proud that you did not let any disability stop you from reaching the top of the of the pole i miss how i have to say i wish you nothing but the best you have given us your best and all we can ask for is the best for you thank you so much for your years year of service with us uh sandia school you are the school of choice for me my five children went through my actually my three children went through sandia school um from 1988 and then they went on to upper valley junior high then apo valley high school so i'm truly proud of the work you have done to create a mascot that envelops every part of school thank you so much miss nelson for keeping us up to date on what is happening in the district and i wish you all the very best thank you thank you maria just real briefly here as we move into you know full-time in the next year it's going to take the parents that come here and speak and throughout the county throughout the state for that matter to really make a change in on some of these school districts um going to take political pressure to keep the schools open and to get rid of the masks if that's the direction that the parents want to go so i commend you know rochelle for coming here speaking about this it's not an easy thing to do to get up in front and talk we know that and uh it's it's it's heartwarming to see that there are parents out there and that i think this entire board agrees with you on that and uh because we all have either children or grandkids in the school district and it is psychologically not healthy for the kids with that said too i'd like to thank the school uh teachers association because you we've all heard and read where other districts the teachers are pushing back very hard to just go back to full time in apple valley we had none of that and we had uh cooperation which made it a lot easier for trene and her staff to get things open so um with that um i just everybody have a great rest of their evening and we'll move on so we have no special meetings at this time so we'll move on to approval of uh consent agenda one through eighteen actually we're on um we're on discussion action session there each have to be motioned individually and then um because there's individuals yeah yeah okay i'm sorry i jumped yeah that's okay you turn the page too fast that's right you're kicking me under the table you're saying move the darn meeting off [Laughter] it is recommended that the board of trustees is supposed to take action on the following items approve the certificate and classified personal actions that's listed so moves second second okay we have a motion by so second by blasting is there any any opposition to the motion hearing then motion passes 5-0 number two approve the recommendation of the administrative hearing chairperson on the following discipline matters effective immediately annual review are 36 2021 to be readmitted to the alpha valley unified school district will be approved okay bender we have second maria okay okay is there any opposition to the motion hearing then that'll be so order 5-0 hi okay number three approve the request of leaves as noted adopt a resolution did we mr ollie did we we have to do a vote separately on each of the ars did we only did one hour correct no i did uh it did all the i read it out 35 and 36.
i'm gonna allow you to talk hello can you hear me thank you starting to feel like a groupie i spoke earlier this is lindsay hour i want to thank chair zemke and tom crawford and heather safart for their answers to my questions regarding the balance of the current fiscal year budget for staff and cts which they provided both via email and tonight thank you so much and i'm happy to know that there will now be a portion of an fte to support the council of the commons and that charges from ctn will be none or minimal that's good news i also very much appreciate council member briggs's commitment to bring a budget amendment to council to allocate a very modest amount to the council of the commons this year thank you council member briggs i very much support mr crawford's framework that he presented a couple meetings ago of short medium and long-term planning that's a very very helpful plan uh planning framework i understand that additional community engagement sessions that you guys have talked about in design work can be expensive and more than a modest amount will be needed for that i would hope that eventually the dda will commit to support this effort by contributing funding for the more expensive mid and long term goals i so much appreciate the member i didn't catch his name i think it was when i didn't catch his name jeff maybe who suggested that you all send your ideas for short mid and long term goals to heather to compile and send to you before the next meeting to make your discussion more productive it was a very very efficient suggestion now i really want to address the short term goals i think it's wonderful you're thinking about mid and long term but it's may you know and your next meeting is early june in my opinion and i don't think i'm alone in this the shortest term goal is what you need to focus on now and the shortest term goal should be having something happen this summer like basic furnishings and whatever is needed as com tom crawford questions to support that in terms of maintenance and security and some string lights to make it welcoming in the evening and i hope that if council member briggs's budget amendment is passed at council that that money can be used to implement some of those short-term goals this summer and i urge mr crawford to work with the dda to remove cars from the surface lots at least on weekends i believe the previous city administrator had a plan for that and that could be followed it's been about two years since the charter amendment has passed last summer can be given a pass since we were still learning how to function in a pandemic but the space needs to be made welcoming and some activity has to happen this summer or this project is going to lose all credibility if you all brainstorm short-term goals over the next couple weeks and send them to heather i hope at your next meeting in early june you can pass the resolution come to a consensus on some short-term goals and pass a resolution on what can be done immediately and hopefully by then because the council is going to vote on the final budget at their second meeting in may by your early june meeting if you pass a resolution on short-term goals the money will be there modest amount and use that to make something happen in june i really thank each and every one of you for your commitment and enthusiasm for the comments my only question is you you need to work on implementing some short-term goals and getting something happening this summer and after you do that next month you have the whole rest of the year to work on midterm and longer term goals thank you so much for all of your commitments to this thank you thank you for your comments anyone else other um uh the person with the phone number three four five raised their hand and i think that is kitty did you want to speak hi this is kitty khan again can you hear me yes okay good um i cannot find any contact information for heather i would like to send the in fact the council of the commons doesn't have um i couldn't find anything on the city website for council of the commons with any contact information for the group at all and i when i sent that email to adam and erica and alice nobody erica wrote back to me and said thank you but nobody told me that i had to send things to heather in order for them to distribute it to the meeting i don't really understand how that would be a violation of the open meetings act if i sent an email to three members and ask them to distribute it i don't get that but anyway i would gladly send to heather what i sent to those three members but i don't know where to find heather's contact information so my email is k.con kkahn at comcast.net and i would appreciate it if heather could please send me an email with her contact and you know so then i can reply and send that letter with the resolution and what i wanted distributed to the whole council sorry if i'm a little frustrated but it's hard when there's no contact information listed anywhere um and that should be no brainer any commission from the city should have contact information so that residents could contact you okay sorry i'm cranky sorry that's okay no my my information should be up there actually i'd thank you for pointing that out i actually thought it was up there so i'll get that up there uh tomorrow but i have your information for the time being that well actually there is if if you go to the ann arbor uh city website and you put in cancel the comments it'll it'll show up cancel the comments you click on that and there's a whole thing there with the members of the council of the commons your information heather is there as far as you know i'm looking at it right now in my information i think maybe in the last update of the web web page maybe my somehow my information got removed because i'm not seeing it up there right now so um i think it was an error that it was removed so we'll get it back up there any other commenters uh no i'm not seeing anybody else with their hands raised i think i accidentally lowered a hand um so if you did have something to say i don't know if it was somebody that had already spoken but please do raise your hand if you do have anything else to say i'm not seeing anybody else from the audience it looks like uh miss khan has has exited the meeting but i just want you all to know that um she's not subject to the open meetings act she does the residents don't have to send everything through heather um they can all email you um uh that would be quite a burden for heather to be in the middle of all you all of your emails um she is there she does you need to send to her but residents can are free to write you all right well i think uh since uh is there another hand raised now heather oh there is yes number 464 the number ending with 464.
ic programs and nresc program registrations will be posted on the district website the extended school year title one middle three and summer acceleration student support programs will be advertised through schools respectfully submitted mrs janina kusalevich so um because of um changes in schedule we had to move the uh the education meeting to may 18th all right uh we'll move on okay next we have our uh public recognition this uh portion of the meeting to the residency sorry sorry mr cashman we don't want to forget mr smith our student representative yes i'm sorry you're correct i didn't see him popping i just saw him pop in now um max always nice to uh see you and uh the floor is yours always great to see you too mr smith all right good evening everyone um i have a few updates for tonight's meeting uh first for those who aren't aware there's a vaccination drive uh this saturday um it's for um they're delivering the pfizer vaccine and anyone 16 and up is quite is able to take the pfizer vaccine no appointment needed so it's a walk-in you don't need to schedule an appointment in advance you just walk in and get it um it's saturday may 8th 2021 which is this saturday from 10 a.m to 5 p.m it's in the shoprite parking lot at 985 paulison ave in clifton new jersey and for those who are 16 and 17 you do need to bring a parent with you you need parental consent on site to get the vaccine if you are 16 and 17.
that's been the magic number that we've used in our communications with the eta throughout the last two weeks including weekends including evenings all for the great cause of trying to come to an understanding which we took good steps today again and that's the number so you know if we can find and i believe we will um a solution for those 44.
and as a reminder these basic financial statements show our balance sheet income statement and statement of cash flows for the fiscal year not the budget year and in summary based on a review of the financial data there are no immediate material concerns based on what is known for the remainder of the budget fiscal year and it does appear as if we will end this year with the surplus similar to last year if there are no questions on any of the information presented that concludes my report for the fiscal data from business services thank you thank you so much are there any questions for ms cooper all right uh seeing none on to 5.02 approval of pay schedule changes uh for fiscal year 2021 2022 anita pyatt um so we're in that now uh i want to take a moment and we're almost at 90 minutes um so and i and i think if we don't let this go we'll go over 90 minutes so i'd like to take a break for the interpreters we'll take a 10 minute break we'll come back at 5 32 and resume then on 5.02 all right thank you okay everyone it's uh 5 32.
this was the first pivot from the original plan in november we used jam boards to share observations and inferences from the october math teacher survey all teachers in the district math teachers were given the opportunity for option one to wait until next school year to begin reviewing curriculum or option two immediately begin to review curriculum this jam board exercise gave voice to the math task force members they discussed the broader trends in the observations and inferences from the data in a large group setting and they made together the recommendation that anaheim union high school district should begin the process to adopt new math materials immediately so 12 junior high and seven high school math material publishers were contacted in december these publishers were the only ones with instructional materials that claim that were set to meet expectation from ed reports nine junior high and three high school publishers responded to our request and were scheduled to present on one of three dates january 25th february 26 or march 8th all math task force members signed up for three publisher presentations for either junior high or high school materials depending on the level at which they work hello i'm hiro and i want to begin by uh giving my thanks to the administration for their guidance and time throughout this process and i also think my fellow colleague uh teacher colleagues who dedicated much of their efforts and their time to complete this comprehensive review of instructional materials as you can see it was a very long list and i also want to share my purse i personally felt like a valuable member of the team because the administra the administration team uh really facilitated a textbook uh adoption process that was a bottom-up and inclusive uh approach um so thank you um and what you see here is uh in december 2020 and january 2021 the mass math task force uh developed and came to consensus to 63 uh criteria uh uh within the five categories of mathematic mathematic content alignment with standards program organization assessment access and equity an instructional plan and support we evaluate the instructional material materials prior to the publisher's presentations and after the presentations we independently completed a criteria based evaluation form we're cultivating in our individual recommendations and then we met with our colleagues that evaluate the same publishers so that we can discuss our findings and came to contest consensus about moving our program forward or not as you can see in this list we three of them were not recommended good evening so after all of our group recommendations were made we met as small two teams so the junior high school teams met and the high school teams met separately on march 18th to make our final recommendation but we had invested so much time that one meeting wasn't enough for any either of those groups so we both asked for more time the junior high group actually asked for time all the way through spring break and the high school group asked for one more day that was really just a testament of the effort that we had put in and we wanted to make the right decision and so after um so before spring break the junior high school group came down to those three that you see highlighted there and the high school group asked for more time for the two that are on the screen next yeah that's okay but good news we were able to come to consensus after that extra time which was awesome and the junior high school team decided and chose on the hmh into math material and the high school team decided on mcgraw-hill reveal math integrated we are super excited about both of these choices both at the junior high and the high school level and i know for me personally that this was an amazing experience for me to have a voice in looking at curriculum and discussing it with my colleagues and taking it back to my site and i think the buy-in from teachers is going to be huge because we were part of the process and we had a voice and we got to see a lot of different materials which was so great to compare and they were all amazing you know and um but i'm just excited about i'm excited about the new curriculum looking forward to it and i was very appreciative of the opportunity to be on this journey and to have a voice in the curriculum so thank you all right thank you team and so we are at the point we're talking talking now about next steps and again our math task force met every month and and a lot of time as you heard lots of next steps happening what i what i'm excited about as you see the recommendation to you uh today to uh instructional materials we're already planned for and scheduled for training for overview training for our teachers over 177 junior high teachers and 140 high school math math teachers that includes gen ed special ed specialists co-teachers sdc teachers are all signed up ready to be trained right so they're bought in they're ready to go they're excited to get trained up before before they leave so they can look at and understand the material and we're also going to be specifically targeting specific math practices i'll talk a little bit of exciting news about our teacher leads in both junior high and high schools about them helping us with embedding the five c's across trainings alongside the publishers to ensure that our mathematical practices and our skills are embedded um through the lens of anaheim union and and of course we it's critical that our math framework knowing that it's it is what it is right now it's going to be adopted we're looking to the future to ensure that we're ready for that when when that day comes you will see two board items um two math instructional material items um one for the junior high which is as described hmh into math and junior high which is mcgraw-hill and that um you will find as you read through the agreements uh i've done a few times and i've highlighted a few times to understand really what it does it include and i want to again a huge shout out to julie for spending on seven days a week understanding what you know is included in the agreements having brad minami look at through look through it and ensure that what our teachers need what they're advocating for what our students need what our families need is included in those instructional materials i'll talk about that in actually now so you see to the right what does this agreement include it includes student materials it includes professional learning it includes teacher support materials and digital tools now to go deeper specifically for for the junior high knowing uh that our junior high uh it is going to include textbooks right for students and we'll it will include also spanish language textbooks i know that that's important for our friends in the dla program our students and our families it will include online and digital tools available to them you know knowing that we have computers and we've done a lot of work there that will be available to us if we need that support looking at the high school we will have for mcgraw hill we will have student online supports in uh and that's a platform that will be available translated into spanish and again i'm saying it intentionally because i know our friends and our students and our families and our community our teachers obviously need those area and those pieces our teacher online platform also will be available to them our teachers again online and then assessments that can that will be and can be translated into spanish to to assist the teachers in that workload teacher materials will be uh available for them and translated and then the digital tool alex that's connected to the mcgraw hill alex will also be available for translation into spanish so a lot of work a lot of work into the agreement and and then if there's gaps as we move forward in the training our teacher leads and our teachers will ensure that we can mind those gaps and and address those so a lot of professional learning happening starting next week starting next week with our with our training we're ready to go queued up um to ensure that we start with professional learning for as we prepare for next year we have i know i wrote that down a whole bunch of them trainings nine not over nine days in may we have instructional materials that our excuse me our professional learning teams will be helping and assisting and i mentioned that we have our lead teachers you know teachers or leaders specifically there's some teachers that are math learning lab teachers at the junior high that are helping that are coaching that are helping deliver professional learning that are opening their classrooms as labs to help assist our junior highs and so they're going to continue what is new what is exciting about this coming year we will have high school math leads also being able to help with with coaching and to open up their classrooms as well we know that it's critical to protect some time for professional learning if you ask the math task force members they would say that came up multiple times last week if i'm not mistaken so yes we need time and to have teachers say we need more time to collaborate and to build our capacity it's awesome to hear right so we need we want to figure out a way to honor that and to protect that time and as we mentioned the focus of the five season mathematical practices will continue throughout the professional learning so as we close here we we are going to continue with those math task force objectives they may need to be tweaked we do have some that we will continue that we didn't necessarily hit this year one of them was to address the adopted textbook we did that complete we want to continue with the others as needed along the journey for next year and um and beyond and so you know we mean as we talked about we may need to address it or adjust those objectives we may need to enhance them we may need to um update them but we will certainly have our uh math teachers represented uh across the school and across um the community and with that we want to thank you for your time and and uh and we are open for any questions if there are any thank you okay we'll start with mrs trejo well first of all uh kudos to the entire task force bravo i just want to highlight the fact that you know we were going to adopt a textbook and a lot of the math teachers said no that they didn't want it they didn't like it and you know we listened to them and we said okay you know what do you want and we we kind of put it in their hands and this is just incredible work but we have to highlight the fact that our teachers were felt safe enough to do that they felt safe that they could come to the board they could come to cabinet and say you know we want something different and um in that spirit um thank you for ex for saying that you felt that you were heard and you know bravo this is i don't think anyone else is doing this and and it's not i say this because i want to brag i just i wish people would hear this is the way to do this this is the way to go you know put it in the hands of the teachers that are teaching the material you know this is the way to adopt textbooks you'll love it you'll be excited about it you'll excite the kids about it um i wanted to ask the two teachers um i didn't really hear what where some of the i heard some of the highlights but what did you personally like about these about these uh math programs first thing i like about the the structural materials yes oh the availability for our students to have access to the uh the online online platform with the able to translate to their language because because uh i think a lot of our students need that and for me for for math uh it's an awesome tool because you know i do know how to speak spanish and but it's very difficult to translate all the time uh so by letting them do that and i still accept their work in spanish right because because i can read it but also it helps students that i don't know how to speak they don't know how to speak spanish or english or they prefer another language so they can use that language as well uh because i think i think that i i can understand their work and also when when they do things uh with the online platform i can myself also translate it back to english you know if they turn it in in a different language which is really cool um also uh the book the textbook is really well laid out and clearly states the standards that the students will be addressing and the objectives and i think that really help our students especially at home when when our parents really want to help out and that's one thing that came in and they came up in the past that the parents would really like helping out and and and this is this textbook really supports that um so i really i really appreciate this textbook being able to allow parents and students to work together in in this in this new text that's absolutely very thoughtful to think about the parents at home that are struggling trying to help their their children and and especially the translation part that's amazing how many different languages anybody know i can tell you that when i first went on came on the board there were 72. you know how many languages will they translate for i know how many we have that they're they've re-evaluated it how does that all because there's only two languages you're teaching in right me carlos no uh the platform how many languages will it convert so we have unlimited languages almost then between okay yeah the publishers uh demonstrated that they could use google translate uh to to translate all their content online that's great good can i answer a question for okay one of the textbooks is a usable textbook right it's like a workbook is yours like that in high school was it the junior high one in the high school we we we have that option i think every member it'll be a printable option uh from the from their online resources uh but it's not an actual book that needs to be purchased from what i remember it's not a con not a consumable no high school it's not a consumable high school is not a consumable is junior high yes okay well i read the junior high i thought was a consumable i wasn't sure about high school right thank you so are these two for junior high in high school are these textbooks ready to go for august we will have them in the classrooms uh deliver there's a delivery meeting in fact was that today or tomorrow julie yes we're like we're as soon as it is signed they're shipping out well soon soon after uh first for sure i mean that's why we work so extremely hard that's why the teachers work extremely hard because we wanted to get the teacher additions here you know to have in front of the teachers before their training and of course like like i mentioned julian brand manami and jaren helping out getting everything ready so that our students have them for sure ready to go there's a lot of work to be done to stamp them to get them ready to you know to get them into the will have theirs imrc they leave and that's part of the training so that way they have this summer if they choose to interact with the techs and start planning yeah i'm just going to ask it i was going to ask about the training is there any formal training or is it sort of is it it's okay now do you want to tell us about the junior high book i want to hear about the junior high book so i actually enjoyed that we were able to pick two different publishers for junior high and high school because we definitely know that their needs are different and the junior high curriculum some of the highlights is that we really focused on how it was laid out visually it needed to be attainable for our junior high kids right not too many pop-ups you know they get distracted things like that i also really liked all of the options to differentiate my instruction from what i saw i can reach my kids that are struggling and i can enrich my kids that need that challenge um the third thing that i really liked about the junior high curriculum is the digital piece that comes with that it's a program called waggle sorry it starts with a w you know and um currently with our carnegie curriculum we have mafia i don't know if you heard that go by so it's a sim not similar but it's an accompanying program that will support our students and i really feel like it's going to do a good job in helping us enrich and intervene for kids that need both of those along with extra practice for the middle of that so those were the highlights for me but i mean there were just so many things that were great about it and um yeah that those were the three that stood out to me very good you're excited about using it and teaching with it yes that's good and i and i and i haven't really gotten into it but already excited about it good that's great that is really good tonight that you're able to teach in english and spanish what about asian languages when i hear so many other languages i remember asking dr billings that question years ago what we do we do have dla um anaheim high school that represents spanish sycamore and if and not specific to math and magnolia we have vietnamese the vietnamese dual language right that they don't include the math content that was going to be my question right they don't um they've decided not to take the math strand um you know if it were at some point in the future where we have an additional language being taught through math then that's something that we would ask our publishers to ensure that you know that would be one of the criterias to assess as we're going through the math i'm adoption so the spanish is for our dual language academies and right now that's the only language that our dla accompanies with our math comp with our math books right so yeah the children the youth that do not speak english but are in these programs do not get mad in their language uh i think i think kathy's probably talking about before so we'll need to talk about really clearly that it's for the dla program and not right right so for our students that are in the dual language academy uh program at sycamore they are taking math they're taking all classes math in particular is taught in spanish so instead so other students take that same math class taught in english they're learning uh to be proficient in the language of spanish so they're they're using math to learn not only the math content but the spanish content and becoming proficient with that language at sycamore and it continues into anaheim and when i refer to vietnamese there's a dual language academy being taught at in in magnolia with vietnamese and i'm not familiar with what content specific they're learning the content and learning the language of vietnamese i have a couple of questions okay wait a minute mr o'neill i think i've seen his um what levels math are we talking about with this math book adoption okay but you and when you get into high school you have calculus you have trigonometry it's a where is this what level math are we talking about you want to respond great yeah so so so it's an integrated program uh for that we have for ninth and tenth and eleventh grade and then after that uh uh if you're in the honors program you you go to a new a new textbook which would be like precalculus or calculus or statistics uh or um so for this new textbook it would specifically cover for the integrated program that we have in the high school level so it'll be the honors courses for like 9th and 10th graders and also the uh the other courses that are not honors for ninth tenth and eleventh grade as well okay yeah thank you okay mr javari all right so i know carlos you presented this in your uh presentation but i want to kind of reiterate in terms of representation at your math task force you had wide-ranging representation from throughout the district absolutely you had and you said absolutely that was your answer that is yes absolutely yes and then and i know the answers but i'm asking so that i could make sure that the audience knows you had representation from dla we had yes we had juan alvarez from sycamore junior high dla correct what about high school dla at anaheim we had jessica alvarado the department chair for math uh we had ryan kyle another another teacher from anaheim high school uh not from dla but jessica represents her math department so i would say she's representing her dla program as well so she's representing the dla program and they have the opportunity dla teachers would have the opportunity to give input on the curriculum and the and then the the selection of it yeah yes first question from the beginning from their site absolutely right yes my other question is does i know that so the question junior high gives resources for dla program in terms of for students and teachers and you know parents want to use it right yes high school level math same thing for dla they're getting resources they're getting resources they're getting online they're getting the digital digital support through alex the digital tool and all this is basically addressed in our contract it is okay so we don't have to worry about coming back in another three months or four months and saying like hey it's not being addressed and we got to go back and amend the contract correct that's that's that's correct okay so having said that now i want to go back to the the issue of why didn't we have dla math books in the past well to be clear we used carnegie uh and carnegie included spanish language uh textbooks um so and they did have it that's correct okay so we wanted to address those questions for you just so that i could put it now i like to bring uh dr jared freed this is not related to math but i think you know the question that i'm going to ask i do what about science why don't we have science textbooks again so science is transitioning to the next generation science standards and ngss and right now we have an integrated approach just like we've heard in math which means the biology chemistry earth sciences and integration physics and a lot of the textbooks that were developed previously are not integrated they're biology or they're chemistry so we do still have some of those older textbooks that teachers can use as a resource but in terms of getting a new textbook and spending the money on these textbooks there's not a lot out there right now that has that integrated that is fully aligned to ngss and what a lot of um parents myself included if i wasn't connected to education i was used to using textbooks and classrooms but now there's this concept called open resources and with ngss or the next generation science standards it is really more about the skill based learning the inquiry and the discovery of learning so a book can sometimes box you in where it's very rigid whereas the open resources give teachers a lot more autonomy to really expand their learning so that's really how we've been shifting as a district with with the ngss while we're waiting for these textbook materials to really be developed and aligned and in speaking with jessica our curriculum specialist who is connected with other curriculum specialists in other districts they're also kind of in a holding pattern as well because they're seeing the same thing that if they want to be integrated which is what ngss recommends um the the books that we've had are not integrated they're more siloed based on their content not only auhsd but all districts around they're the same i can't speak for all districts but many of the districts that we've reached out that are nearby are in the same holding pattern surrounding this yeah okay all right well thank you very much and with that i want to thank the math task force i know that you know this all came about a year ago but you guys really put your time into it i've got a lot of communication back from task force members who thanked the board for doing this i think you know this is what auhsc does right so having said that callers i want you to take a extra step in communicating to our dla program and making sure that the misconceptions are you know clarified and right information is given because there is a little bit of rumor out there that this does not address certain things so i want to make sure that that goes out to all dla parents at least the dla booster group thank you okay and i'd like to say one thing i want to thank the teachers and thank all of your teachers that were involved that's phenomenal and i'd love to see it because you're teaching it you should be involved in deciding what you're using and i think that's great that you gave all of your time to do this and are still giving so thank you and all the teachers that were involved i mike would like to say something yes thank you and again thank you sue and jairo for that work this is really you know the purchasing of our textbooks is also creating what we all know is an unfunded mandate we have i'm talking about the technology and the access to the internet at home right because you talked about the digital support right this is a really important piece because we know that this is going and we you know we're going to be challenged in the coming years to ensure the digital support both at home and in the classroom so um it's it's just sort of a point of information for the board and for the public to realize and we call it an unfunded mandate because the state of california does not fund the digital support on an ongoing basis so that's something i think we're all aware of and it's going to be a challenge going forward thank you okay one thing i am elated for this group that they have the input and the ability to find something that they will be able to enjoy teaching math is a very difficult subject to teach and to have something that you're comfortable with and enjoy it'll make it better for everyone and i'm grateful for you and your work all right very good thank you any other comments or questions from the board thank you all for this presentation and we will be considering the uh textbooks later but it's a chewing okay okay okay moving on we're to item 10.
okay okay i apologize that's okay i'm just okay so we are at uh number three approve the requested leaves as noted we have a question i move you give the request okay number four adopt resolutions 2021 authorizing issuances of 2021 2022 tax and revenue anticipation notes for the alpha valley unified school district and requesting the board of supervisors of san bernardino county to issue said notes so move second okay now on to consent number j letter j it is recommended that the board of trustees consider approving consent items one through 18.