Reader
Browse passages, annotate evidence, and export with full provenance for citation.
I don't think there's questions Hemphill yes Nolan yes denar yes raid yes a thief yes Gorman yes next motion on second I needed to discuss and approve the three veterinarian affiliation agreements so moved second so there's three new uh we have two new clinics that are come on board and one that we had from last New Hampshire Animal Hospital the two noisy Animal Medical Clinic of St Charles in Fox Valley same process we go through annually so our I mean monthly pretty much now is getting a lot of good business partners so any questions for me all right okay Nolan yes dinar yes Rabe yes a thief yes amp Hill yes Corbin yes all right finally a motion a second I need to discuss and approve the purchase of the mobile classrooms for each Royal Elementary buildings second we have um director Holloway with us as well who've worked with um the various vendors our architect for the bid as long as our as well as our business manager manager um Dana flute you have questions related to it they're waiting in their wings to start building it allegedly [Music] all right go ahead okay um 10 hour yes Rabe yes Buffy yes Adam Hill yes Nolan yes Gorman yes all right athletic diverse uh director diversity is here you can update us on the sports and homecoming activities foreign so it's been a busy month so far we've had a lot going on in uh our Athletics and activities World um the quick overview in regards to participation numbers uh from a registration standpoint numbers are up across the board from middle school through high school which has posed you know many issues so kind of before I get into all that you know I want to kind of thank you know transportation and buildings and grounds because the extra buses needed with you know trying to get all of our athletes everywhere and get keeping our facilities top-notch both inside and outside and I know those two departments are struggling to stay staffed and it's it's amazing what they can get done so you know shout outs to them and I know they don't they're the behind the scenes group that don't get a lot of Kudos so figure out start there um first off sixth and seventh grade uh we're up to 32 kids playing football uh numbers are up from the past years and they're undefeated so far so that's that's a great start for seventh grade football uh volleyball they're in the top three in the conference and from what they're telling me is they have a shot to win the ncjc and cross country is doing well and they're going to host uh their meet on October 1st did not get a recap from the middle school but I do know their numbers are up and they're very competitive across everything they're doing as well the only sport where their numbers kind of fell short is cross country and I think a lot of that is due to not having that season you know last year to get those kids drawn in as 7th graders but uh we'll bounce back there uh from the high school standpoint we're off to a great a great start all of our teams are very competitive uh we're either you know top half in the conference you know football's two and two you know we were one yard short of of beating Huntley Friday night very controversial but you know it was one of those moments where we had about 180 kids there and as they're driving down that last 50 yards all the kids came out of the stands are moving down the fence screaming cheering doing all the you know it was just a great atmosphere and just to kind of see that it's uh it's been awesome volleyball attendance has been been great um you know everybody's doing well there across country you know we have probably one another top male runner in the state went down to Detweiler you know last week finished first and right now there's only uh one kid that he's chasing Statewide to be a state champ so a lot of great things are going on there uh before I get into the craziest week in a high school setting uh we had two other big events go on in this past month uh two weeks ago we had our Kells Angels night Friday night but it's kind of a gold week and throughout that entire week you know just the high school alone brought in about ten thousand dollars just with t-shirt sales and everything else which is pretty awesome you know and of course as our community knows you know we lost three of our own to Pediatric cancer and all three families came back out that night and you know it's just a great teary joyous night to you know raise money for a great cause and celebrate lives um then this past weekend we had our 19th annual Jacob Frazier golf outing sell out as always um kind of and Todd's been at it in the past so this year we had 12 12 guys from Jacob's troop comeback which is the most we've ever had so that that was huge um his dad flew back in from Florida just another outstanding evening um you know remembering and doing things like that so the last piece um I sent it I gave you guys a copy so I won't read the whole thing to you but as we know homecoming is kind of a lifelong standing tradition in high school last Friday the kids stayed after decorated the hallways they chose uh the Disney movie theme which is kind of interesting you walk in and one Halls of neemang we got jellyfish hanging all over the place so it's kind of it's kind of awesome to get back to that um we don't really have anything major festivities besides as you can see the slew of athletic events throughout the week but they got their crazy dress-up days each day and then Thursday we get back to what we know you know kind of his homecoming we've got our big Powder Puff Thursday night and then our our bonfire you know to follow so that's Thursday and then Friday due to covid We Can't pack you know just shy of 1400 kids in the gym so we're gonna go out to the football stadium and we're gonna do it outside and I've been working with the uh the games kids and the exec board who emcee on how we're gonna get this done and they're excited for it I know we tried this years ago and the weather wasn't Cooperative because we were the second week of October now being September I think it's going to be uh very favorable uh then of course we got our game and then you know as everything else we're transitioning to you know homecoming dance outside in the parking lot behind vet tech after walking with uh you know deep from the board helping with their event I'm like well we could do the same thing so we got some tents coming um gonna make it an awesome night we have three different food truck vendors coming an ice cream truck vendor coming and you know gonna turn it into you know as big of a gal as we can outside in that sense to try to make it memorable and it's not just being in the parking lot um I do know everybody in our conference has been doing outside either a barbecue before a football game or some sort of a dance and uh you know so we want to give our kids the best that we possibly can and you know help them create you know the memories that they can so that's my update for this month oh and the last piece is um since our teams are doing so well we graciously decided to accept we're hosting girls volleyball regionals boys soccer and boys and girls cross country and I don't know if that's just the fact that I don't know how to say no either [Laughter] so any questions awesome thank you thank you next we'll go over Public Act 97-256 all school districts are required to post on a district website annual administrator and teacher salary benefit report [Music] no these are just annual things that we have to get onto our website so okay all right uh Public Act 97-0609 um just another annual this is just the imrf instead of the TRS group so it has to be on the website six days after approving the budget so just the timing of it gotcha all right I'm going before this um we received three four years um since the last board meeting one was um a foia related to her to any salt Towers any leases of cell towers but we don't lease any antennas we do not lease radios we do not leave such space on our tower on central campus so um there were no records to reply to that request uh the next poem uh dealt with with um any data that we had in our policy regarding usages of mass and our coveted policy we're able to send the most frequent um FAQ from idph uh directed up into the school reopening plan some Mass guidance on the school website and then some research from CDC and then the last one was requesting substitute pay um pay rate going all the way back to 1995.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
i do have something i'm sorry i didn't hear you really i couldn't do your turn do you have a report okay um we had a workshop pull the mic up closer go ahead should i wait till everyone leaves no go ahead okay um for the foundation we had a workshop on our on how to function with our google docs because not all of us were familiar enough with it so we we we did that and then um i don't know if anybody uh mentioned it before in the meeting but um we did young hearts for life here at south high on thursday we we screened over 2 000 students and we did find some with some issues that needed to be resolved and so i want to thank all of the volunteers that volunteered to work we we had a very successful day and it was very good and the foundation along with district 99 sponsored the event and then we will be doing the same thing at north on october 7th so if you have any students at north be sure and sign up because it's a very worthwhile program and what we do is screen for any um heart issues that may not just show up with a simple heart check so it's an ekg and i'm sure that north is going to need volunteers for that so if you look on their website and you can get in there and volunteer for that and that's it's a shortened day so it'll be from 7 to about 2 30 on the 7th and we're also looking for new members to join the foundation so be sure and come to our website and kind of get an idea of what we do because we do a lot of learning grants for our teachers that help our students and either that or you can contact julia beckman our president who happens to be here tonight and she will be happy to speak with you about the foundation so i'm sorry that's my commercial but uh that is it and i just want to say in coming to the ribbon cutting here two weeks ago it was it was a fabulous event and this auditorium just tells the story it is absolutely magnificent and your tax dollars made that happen so thank you and be sure and try to come saturday to north for the same ribbon cutting kind of thing and you can see how beautiful north is because my kinds took us on a tour it was fabulous and it's a little different but it's beautiful so sorry to take up so much time but that was important to me chris did you have anything on isb okay triple i is still moving forward yes i heard there's a fall division meeting coming up and we are hosting the spring division meeting over at north high give us a chance to show off our facilities to superintendents and boards across dupage county that'll be really fun because we've attended a lot of other meetings over the years at other schools that have gotten to do just that so and you know what the people showing naperville central was it that we went to they're going to eat their hearts out so it's not a competition i know it's not a competition but it is we're everyone in in district 99 should be very proud of of their schools and uh um it's i can't say enough about it second okay uh upcoming board meetings on october 4th we'll have a workshop meeting at 6 30 at the north high auditorium and october 18th uh a business meeting at the south high cafetorium not in this room but in the cafeteria down the hall we have to keep moving because these spaces are being used as they should okay with that we just need a we have no closed session we just need a motion to adjourn don't moved mike and chris i think mike and chris all those in favor aye aye all those opposed we're adjourned thank you very much thank you everybody i need everybody's signature today yeah every board member needs to stop and sign the budget with will do how you voted for the budget okay you
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
we're able to comply with that request up to 2001. those were the records that we could access all right I can concludes the public session in motion a second to go into executive session great yes a thief yes and pill yes Nolan yes yes Foreman yes took a five minute break thank you
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
okay we'll call this meeting to order and we'd like everyone to please stand in courtney hoffmeier our junior high principal is going to lead us in the pledge of allegiance indivisible with liberty and justice for all all right this board meeting is a kind of a special board meeting because we get each each department head uh going to give us a review of what's up and coming and what's happened in the past we'd like to excuse diana butler tonight she's not feeling well and margaret gabby is taking care of her daughter-in-law whose husband is a pilot in the air force and has been called out and she has had knee surgery so she had to go take care of little kids so she won't be here tonight so i guess we'll start with transportation denise hall good evening can you hear me okay you have to talk right into it i have to eat it good evening gotcha governor good evening governing board and the staff and community it's good to be here this evening um introduction i am denise hall i am your transportation supervisor this is a coveted picture that we took and we had a lot of fun doing this this is uh some of our bus rules that we implement on the bus following the driver's instructions keeping hands and feet objects and sell to self and inside the bus unless otherwise instructed sit and seat quietly with arms and legs out of the aisles no vulgar or profane language and gestures or harassment put litter and trash cans and that are provided for you no eating or drinking on the bus behave in a safe and orderly manner at the bus stop riding the school bus is a privilege these are the precautions that we take daily to sanitize our buses daily disinfecting leave windows open take drivers temperatures daily and mask wearing encouraged bus evacuation drills we have to do this twice a year on campus as per dps and training provided annually did you know that it takes 60 seconds to have a bus fill full of poisonous fumes when it was lit on fire or catch caught on fire we practice getting students out in under 60 seconds how to get out with all of the emergency equipment how to walk not panic and leave all belongings on the bus and how to take care of the driver if incapacitated and how to stop secure the bus and turn it off this is a task and a huge part of our year we test them all throughout the year and we have actual evacuations on campus twice a year disaster evacuation plan we keep buses full of fuel we go to specific evacuation sites depending on location we have all of those secured all the drivers know where to go they also know um the back roads if need be all of the county roads all drivers are willing to serve always throughout this whole pandemic our drivers have always come and rose up to the occasion and has showed up to work and done it proudly drivers notified in group techs within 15 minutes of campus winter driving this is a big part of our year that we do safely the part of the job is very tedious and when our kids are we need them to be the best and really obey the bus rules because they all sense the importance of the situation annual training requirements we undergo random drug screens and breathalyzer testing throughout the whole year we have cpr first aid training we have a six and a half hour refresher training we have a ppt which is physical performance training and the department of transportation physical that we have to pass 2001 inspections our fantastic mechanics spent three weeks getting all the buses ready for inspection that happens every year around june we had two majors and one minor which is really good all of which was fixed within with the inspector was still there and was signed off on them mechanics did another fantastic job this year this is uh some of our fun things that we do off on our off time we have an annual maintenance and transportation camping trip we enjoy it very much and need that time away our elementary open house we take questions and meet the students and their families so it'll be easier for the first day they ride the bus share time and locations of stops notification of changes meeting bus drivers that's really important for the kids especially those who have never ridden the bus reconnecting with the students and their parents this is some of the things that are going on here at the transportation we have a new catch base income underneath there the tank is getting a facelift we're working on new fuel tank pumps they haven't been um replaced since we installed them in 1993 and the fuel tank has been painted for a nice update our transportation goals this year is no accidents we want to be accident and injury free teamwork save money that's difficult and everything that is raising all the prices are being raised on everything that we've done and trying really hard to get some things um and get the shop up to fire code to end this with a little humor we are going to sit here until all of you settle down and don't we don't care how long it takes thank you very much from your student transporters thank you thanks denise i have one question do we have do we have the capability to evacuate every student on a bus from the school if we had to yes okay great that's awesome thank you very much this is excellent okay our next uh would be our facilities director jeff hickens now let's hope the lights don't go out yeah can you guys hear me okay so i'm jeff akins um the director of the maintenance custodial department called facilities we maintain the facilities we clean the facilities we take care of the grounds set up and break down for all of the events throughout the campuses let's see if i can figure out how to use this okay here's just some of our crew here i could stand here tonight and talk about these people and all they do until midnight um amazing crew that i've had over the last 12 years this is my 12th year at the blue ridge school district but anyways that's just some of them right there um staffing levels uh we have main we had uh six maintenance personnel and 14 custodians uh just recently dr wright and brenda were able to find money to to hire a few more which i'll talk about in a few minutes the way that we've gotten by was such a small staff through the years we used to have about 10 to 12 more staff than we do now is again dr wright and brenda were able to find some funds for us to be more efficient such as carpet cleaning machines tile floor scrubbing polishing machines bathroom locker room c3 cleaning machines a lot of equipment has made us much more efficient so we don't need the additional personnel that we used to have three new mowers for the fields and the playgrounds new grass catcher that's coming in any day that will will allow us to pick up the grass on all the fields about 10 times faster than what we currently have a new self-driving field lining paint machine that was an excellent investment that took us from three guys doing field lining down to one guy and at about probably four or five times faster that's just some of the things we've done uh at approximate cost here 300 000 dollars so let's go to the next thing new staff positions again thank you dr brenda school board for all of your support we were able to add a seasonal groundskeeper mower that's been huge we had a 30-year bus driver named lance pinrod that came on board and he does our seasonal mowing from april through october that's been huge for us two new custodial positions and two new maintenance positions recently and thank you very much and the crew thanks you let's see what else do we have here there's just some other pictures of the crew doing some of their jobs around here from the floors to whatever maintenance and repairs need to be done in these these facilities vary from 1965 all the way up to what we call the new school is 13 years old over on porter mountain so we've got 1960s buildings 70s buildings eighties buildings nineties buildings and a two thousand eight building that we have to maintain about a half a million square feet total 2010 2021 smb building renewal grant projects so for big ticket items that cost us lots of money we apply for grants with the state um these are some of the grants that we have gotten over the last 10 11 years at the high school we've gotten about two two million four hundred forty one thousand thirty four dollars in uh grants high school east over nine hundred thousand junior high school over seven hundred thousand multi-purpose center um you know 264 000 approximately so for a total of 4 million 331 477 the sfb has assisted us through a grant program in doing things like roofs and major repairs like that what we're currently working on are more sfb grants and this is a list of them here the ones in yellow up there have been approved are in the process these grants take from the the first day that you start the grant until the end of it it usually takes about two years so if we're looking at a roofing project which we are right now in the high school all the high school gyms are getting reroofed that started a little over a year ago and it will probably be under construction next summer so about two years per these large grants this is what we've got up there the uh all-campus concrete we've got lots of old concrete issues that are cracking and we got that underway elementary school waterproofing roof repairs we've got issues over there that we're working on high school maine and old campus gem re-roof that we're working on elementary school interior floor foundation repairs main campus hvac replacements we've got 10 of those underway right now high school drainage issues domestic water pump house renovation high school kitchen suppression system code upgrades junior high boiler replacement elementary school fire alarm repairs and i could put in probably 25 more tomorrow but it's a lot of work managing these things and getting to the end result i believe that's it so thank you for your time i have just one compliment he's an excellent job and he's retiring next year and we're so sad we can't keep you right i know june 30th will be it but i appreciate it thank you is it easy to get money from the state no it's very difficult it's very difficult it's harder than pulling teeth right lots of hoops to jump through well you do a great job thank you very much thank you jeff hello jeff yes also i wanted to compliment you on the upgrade of the signs out in front they look excellent okay thank you thank you very much appreciate it [Applause] okay next we'll hear from our elementary school principal ryan grace good afternoon y'all i wasn't here last year to know how a lot of stuff went but i was here for some of the really important parts and i'm exceedingly happy to be here now i want y'all to to know that ryan's father graduated from blue ridge in what year 19 1980 1980 and my aunt in 1981 in 1981 so he's coming home we're glad to have you absolutely like i was telling mr aikens now i get to go home at the end of the day sit on my porch and listen to bugle and it is one of the best things that uh i've ever experienced i get to have my daughters in my lap we listen to him for a while every day it's great um so our spring open house this is a couple pictures from that we had to do it a little bit differently than we normally would than having people up and down the hallways we had 322 families in attendance which was the first event that we got to have last year um our back to school night we had 598 families in attendance come to back to school night so a huge increase there as far as that goes right now at the elementary school our enrollment is 853.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
okay then ready okay call this meeting to order roll call please brown is here mrs galbraith here dr hall here mr solanos here mrs walters vice president roop here president albert here please rise and join me for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all and ms rook would you please read the mission statement our mission is to empower each student to positively impact the world for a bright new future okay we have a number of public comments tonight the first is on mask safety from ron siegert if you could stand at the podium over there thank you for the opportunity to speak to this board the reason i'm here is several parents in your school district have invited me to come and comment about mass safety issues that might be present before this board i am retired health and safety professional i spent 25 years in the function of osha epa compliance with toxic hazardous waste hazardous materials protecting worker safety in the workplace the materials that i was dealing with were deadly and had to be handled with diligence and equipment designed for the purpose this particular health crisis that we're in with regard to kovid the cdc has recommended and required masking and what i'm here for tonight is to demonstrate so that you can see the potential effect of masking and its effectiveness in any environment school work or anyplace else what i have here are two examples of the approved n95 mask both of these masks are approved it's the only mask approved this mask is not in many of your designer masks or not i don't see any n95 masks they'll be labeled and printed with a niosh approval number and 95 and i'd like to show you very quickly the effectiveness of these masks is it okay the micron size of the coved virus or any virus for that matter is 0.1 microns the effective opening size that this mass protects is 0.3 this mask is three times larger opening than the size of a virus and let me demonstrate as you can see this approved mask has an exhale valve that allows transmission of particulate matter this is a better version of the same fabric material maybe it'll perform better if you are wearing this mask you're not protected now those are the official masks that are used commonly and this mask excuse me oh thank you there we go this is a standard hospital mask let's see how it performs notice that i'm correctly pitching the nose to provide maximum design seal no protection and finally we have the single layer fabric mask that most of you are wearing right now as you can see all these alternatives are ineffective at preventing the spread of disease well what could work what can work the one thing that does kill the virus and pathogens all pathogen is sunshine you do know that that's been provided and researched very well so how do how do we create sunshine inside an enclosed environment like a building the technology is very available and very simple you put ultraviolet light structures inside your heating ventilating and air conditioning ductwork and that will sanitize and prevent transmission of disease in the ambient era so the necessity of mass is vastly reduced this technology is commonly used in hospital operating rooms or clean rooms this is part of the standard technology for preventing transmission of disease or particles in the environment i suggest that as you look at your policies and procedures that masking has many delatorious effects students reduced oxygen content which reduces brain function emotional consequences and many other facial infections respiratory infections and reduced oxygen content that reduces cognition which is delatorious to the learning environment i ask that you would consider other alternatives than just masking i also understand the cares act has given you a box load of money to mask and i would suggest that that's blood money don't take the money if you take the money you lose the control for your students and your families if you have any questions i'd be glad to answer them no thank you very much thank you our format is usually q a so thank you for your presentation and we have questions i think we can contact you should i stay for questions not necessary i don't think we'll have any we'll email them right yeah if you could what'd i do do you have an email or phone number where you could be contacted or if you want to just add it to the bottom and phone number that'd be fine you could leave it on the table over there we'll get it okay next up uh is a public comment on dress code by is it daniel perez danielle perez thank you hello some of you know me i've been involved in the 201u district for a while since my kids were in talala and recently i have some female students that have been making comments to me about how they've been harassed for their dress code [Music] it should be that our male teachers are male security guards even some females in the building should be able to control themselves to let a girl show her shoulders or even to wear a cap sleeve like these are adults in this building and i understand there's also adolescent boys i i understand that and i'm i'm basing this off the high school okay i'm not going lower than the high school but by the age of ninth grade men little men should know how to act around a female no matter what she is dressed like this is the culture we need to provide and making our girls cover up lowering the air conditioner in the high school and i got confirmation on that so that the girls put more clothes on this is this is just ridiculous i have raised two boys and they would never ever look at a girl like that my husband would never look at a girl like that he was raised by a a brilliant woman and her husband obviously so they put on a petition they sat outside some of the students my son was involved and they were trying to protest dress code and my son came home and he was upset because some of the girls that were protesting were harassed by some of the security guards at the high school and i i will be going to the high school about this too but i thought here was a good place to start for their participation in it one of the security guards actually told one of the girls if they put clothes on they wouldn't look so sexual this is not how we need to be raising girls it's unfair now the other student that's with me who wants to talk on his own he was walking around school today in a wife beater we all know what those are did he get in trouble for it no did he get a comment for it no but yet another friend of my sons who happens to live close to me was wearing cap sleeves and did get in trouble for it it's we cannot have it sexist it has to be straight across the board if it's going to be a dress code it needs to be straight across the board it needs to be in males need to stand up to the same standard as females i just think that you you guys needed to know and that me coming here maybe bringing it to you guys would make you think about it and maybe look into what is going on in the high school and i don't know maybe give some help to our girls to know that them being women doesn't automatically mean that they're going to be sexualized thank you and next up for public comment the topic is also dress code with daniel shafrath i say that right good afternoon so my intentions here is to is to say and express my experience as a student part of cmhs i along with my friend we attended the protest and we'd say that it went fairly decent for the first protest against the dress code but it's what happened afterwards that really showed me how much of a problem that this actually is for example that exact period that we finished the protest and we decided to go back to our classes um i had to get a tardy pass along with my other friend that attended the protest and i could hear staff trying to tell kids why not to do the protest and why the protest is a bad thing and you know it's i feel like that's one unfair and also that's just not right i don't feel like that's appropriate that is an adult a staff member speaking business that they have no intention on you know you know working with or they don't have a real good understanding of and you know i'm just hearing it overhearing and all that and it's it's quite frustrating because you know i just want what's fair and along with that um topic of you know staff telling kids you know what to do what not to do why they shouldn't agree with the protest um i was walking back from using the restroom from in my third period and as i was walking back um one of my friends that was part of the protest she's one of the directors one of the heads of the protest she called me over and she was talking to a security guard i wasn't aware of the situation at first and the security guard told me in a very rude manner by the way to just to go it's none of my business she he wasn't talking to me right and you know i don't want no problems i want to go to my class so i go back to my class she texts me and she tells me what really happened the security guard came over to her and started like just judging her and asking her questions like exactly quote unquote why are you in this protest why are you doing this and has the in it went to the point where it even went to fat shaming she was getting all these comments such as you know fat women shouldn't wear skinny girl clothes now that is not appropriate that is not right that is not appropriate whatsoever by any means and you know it offended me you know as a man you know i don't have much you know relation to that whole department as a woman would have right but i still know what's right and wrong and trying to make us freeze with this ac going so high that we have to wear more clothes with all this chit chat chit chat to other kids trying to promote being against the protest you know it's just it's just not right and i don't see why that can't be everyone else's mindset i live in a house with pride and a family with primarily females i have i'm like the only male in my generation in my family i have a lot of female cousins and all that they wear what they wear along with their friends and i'm not gonna go out of my way and sexually harass them i'm not going to have my day be all about what they are wearing right so not only am i you know knowledgeable enough not to be like that but i i can see where they're coming from right and you know when on social media this is you know not really in the school but it's more of how the students are behaving and they are calling these women very mean names like you know excuse my language like and children just trying to wear what they want to wear what they feel confident in what they want to express themselves in right and it all correlates with each other and i wanted it to bring it to this attempt to you guys attention as a student because you know like i said it's not right it's not fair and it's not appropriate i hope i made myself very clear and thank you guys for listening thank you and our final comment this evening came in via email topic is shield testing updates and this is from rebecca herdlika i hope i pronounced that correctly i thought shield testing was going to be available at the high school are there any updates as to when this will begin students are missing too much school already with quarantine due to proximity exposure or while waiting for test results if they have any kind of generic symptoms like a sore throat or runny nose that could just be allergies my child has been absent 12 out of 22 school days so far due to covered restrictions and he will be absent tomorrow too as we are waiting for test results it would be great if it would be available to the community too as it is difficult to get pcr testing done in our area in many places schools included will only accept the pcr test results thank you for your time rebecca okay that's it for public comment next up is consent agenda approval do any board members have an item on the consent agenda they'd like to have taken off for a separate vote okay can i get a motion to approve the consent agenda so moved second any questions or comments on the consent agenda okay roll call please brown isn't i this is galbraith hi dr hall aye mr salonish aye vice president rube aye president albert aye motion carries uh oh yeah we decided yes after the fact would you please read them awesome okay i'm sorry apologies for the consent agenda we had several items uh under superintendent we had item number one approved regular meeting minutes of august 17 2021 number two approved closed session meeting minutes of august 17 2021 number three approved committee of the whole meeting minutes of september 14 2021.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
on september 22nd uh 2021 um mr gensky please call the roll here ms allen here mr white chairman thank you i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all right [Music] uh dr solo is there any public comment i guess at the email since there's no one present in the room no not uh with respect to our policy meeting okay oh yes okay um so first up is nondiscrimination 41 18.11 slash 42 this is required due to a change in the law as an equal opportunity employer which we're required to be for good i guess they have added this one paragraph here that race is inclusive of that that crates historically associated with race including but not limited to hair texture protective hairstyles protects the hair cells includes but not limited to wigs head wraps and hairstyles individual braids cornrows lock twist band two afros and afro puffs you know basically you can't um discriminate against individuals who wear these various hairstyles or head wraps um which is another an issue for us but um that's the only change in this policy and again it's required by save off okay so so the 42 this is all one policy yes oh i have no comments i have no comment either okay first uh yeah this is for our first reading oh well promotion to move to a first reading yes so i'll move that policy 4118.11 slash 4218.21 nondiscrimination to the full board for is unanimous of those presents all right so the next reading um is gonna sound familiar to you uh this is our title ix and if you recall there were substantial changes to the law there was a lot of conversation about changing this after the new administration we've had a lot of professional development on this frankly it's it's so sophisticated i would really want to try and work closely with our attorney the first time we go through this it it just sounds it's the process sounds a lot like litigation so none of that really changed from the last time we looked at this no and we already had a first reading and then it was kind of put on pause so that's why this is a second reading of this policy this this policy is the legal update so like the last policy you know we really don't have a choice but to adopt the language in this policy it reflects that the update in the law the space so uh federal law was updated in this case federal law yep and so i guess that's sort of a dumb question well okay this is kyle knight so we are bound right federal law and the state at the radical level okay yeah so any school district that receives federal funding you know or state funding is required so it's really tied to it yeah and i i think it's you know beyond that i think this even encompasses private schools although i don't really you know trouble myself with that enough things to worry about but um the [Music] situation here i think i mentioned last year is you know basically if there's a complaint both parties get notified there's like a an interview process uh both parties get all the evidence to those there's like a rebuttal process there's an investigator who's separate from a decision maker who's separate from uh somebody who oversees the process uh it's in a lot of ways i think it was written for a college campus sort of environment or beyond and not for you know fourth grade right but unfortunately that's that i mean i think that's where the the the law is uh is they're looking at uh does this need to be refined because i think unfortunately it discourages kids and families from coming forth with complaints now if we're aware of a situation even though the family doesn't want us to pursue it we still are required to pursue it in most cases for sexual harassment so just out of curiosity why because the family does not want to be subjected to this process basically and yes all the information going back and forth yeah when we can't we can't force them to cooperate but right right you know we can't no we're just wondering so so does title nine kick in when it whatever happened does not rise to the level of a criminal activity no it can be a criminal activity activity and a title ix violation but a title ix violation can fall short of criminal activity gotcha so that's why there's an entire process built in to this so that right reaches a quarter never charges brought right you can still sort of have a recourse yeah yeah just like a fight a fist fight could be a violation of law as well as a violation of school policy same with you know sexual harassment mr white hello hello sir we uh just went through the first policy which is verbatim uh by law we have to make an inclusion into our discrimination policy but this is title nine we discussed this a little bit last year and uh you know after consultation with our attorney he said just move forward with it okay there very well may be uh a change at some point because the office of civil rights is continuing to review this but he said as of right now he should just uh move it forward we're just going on state law yeah federal level so the first we already had first reading last year so this is the second reading so you guys would be moving it forward to the board for a second reading we'll review it at the next meeting and so as many problems that we have with it many of them were not changed they were pretty much left everything's the same everything's the same and you know we still are whether or not you adopt this we're obligated to follow it because it's the law yeah you know but you know i think it's important 37 pages well there's a lot of there's a lot of you know breaks in here but when i upload it but it's it's still quite you know what's that a lot yeah it really outlines the complaint process the investigation process like i was saying before you can't attend there's a a very detailed almost litigation like court of law style investigation that goes into this where you know we'll interview uh witnesses and others anybody associated with the situation then we have to provide all the information to both parties they can you know bring in somebody to rebut the information it's much different than a typical school-based investigation sounds a lot like it and so title ix supersedes any sort of internal investigation uh regulations that we may have had before you have to follow this now because it's the law yeah now i'm trying i'm going off the memory here i thought part of the reason why you were slow on a little bit was because like state and federal law were conflicted no in some way they weren't conflicting the um issue was that the with the change in administration and there's still talk that this will be revisited um although it hasn't been yet the ocr will make a change to this because you know unfortunately it is a situation where you know my belief is i can't i don't have data to support it but when you read through it it's prohibitive for people to bring complaints forward if they've been different you know at least children i mean i don't know at the college level that i would imagine so but i think at the k-12 level it can be prohibited because it's so open some of the details so at this point if anyone had a problem like let's say something occurred in cheshire where they're subject to title let's say a teacher subject to title ix well actually according to this it was a student on student situation as well it was also title nine situation yeah right yeah so if anything like that happened the only the only remedy then is through federal court after we have after the school system has followed what's in this law you've got a you know complaint probably by the plane etiquette commission human rights or uh ocr in the office of civil rights so there's not probably the way to go so okay all right well yeah have you ever had in the school system a situation where something one of these situations rose and it did end up getting escalated past the public schools like ocr or whatever sure okay yeah i mean so it's not like when you say escalated beyond like they were not satisfied with the resolution here and went beyond it as compared to a criminal proceeding which could already be happening but that's like a parallel track yes exactly right yeah and and so yeah we have that for both you know perpetrators and where you know a certain party may not be satisfied and then okay and then you know really what those two bodies will more than not do is come in and validate that the process was followed correctly not so much the outcome usually okay okay so there could be state level authorities that disagree with your conclusion but they don't overwrite you because you follow the process yeah usually it's this process uh has it happened where they have where you've been overwritten by somebody okay yeah i can't recall the timeline no no that's fine yeah it doesn't happen like every week these are three here you know maybe but your process and your end result are pretty good now if it had been overturned once generally speaking yeah the results that call if something you know okay thank you yeah and so the the instances you talked about have have they been subject to this law yet no no so sorry it's really sort of right yeah cause last year i mean last year they kicked in and then you know we just would covet yeah when people sit six feet apart they usually don't have a lot of issues you know right i mean not that it can't happen but you know when you had a reduced number of students in the building particularly in the high school level you know it just it lowered the likelihood of something to grow yeah it certainly could wow okay let's hope that continues um well uh well how about this um uh can i have a uh a motion to move policy four thousand dot uh oh okay students hot online that's a different one right the certified and non-certified yes yes okay so then um so i guess we'll do that in one motion um well there are technically two separate ones so uh so a motion uh to move uh policy number four thousand dot one um to a second reading session foreign to the full board for a second reading okay second all right is there any other is there any discussion on the motion seeing none all in favor is unanimous thank you all right so the last item you know this is not something that's a policy we're necessarily looking to move for a reading or whatever but i think it's just a maybe more of a timely conversation we um you know pre-code actually this just goes back pre-copied that we had looked at a civility code a possible district civility policy and basically what this is is a something that in our community our school community we can point to to say that as a community we've kind of adopted these standards for the court and we ask that people follow them this is not written of law or anything crazy like that but you know to promote a positive treasured public school climate respecting courtesy and language these are the things that we um you know just would like to adhere to unacceptable behaviors that prohibit maybe not prohibited but hinder power yeah interfere with it [Music] so this type of what is this supposed to be intended as a policy or it could be some have a administrative procedure yes some have adopted it as a policy um you know i think it's something that maybe you know there were times i can't remember what it was but remember when we we had something a couple years ago where we talked about that do we have the whole board like um make a resolution toward this now we're not a town council remember we talked about i forget what it was yeah but i think i kind of see this being like social media or something you know i just wanted to throw this out there for you to see like i can pull together other districts that have policies like this if you think it's worth our time to take a look at in my mind you know when we adopt a policy that suggests that we're going to adhere to certain rules of decorum i could foresee a situation where i receive an email that's not following the rules of decorum they shared one with these guys that was incredibly colorful before the meeting wasn't directed at me but um one of our staff members it was like way out of line and i get quite a few i could send you one probably tomorrow if i wanted to um and that that's i mean the vast majority of the people deal with are even the people that are very upset are very appropriate follow this code and i get it you know they're talking about their children's education there's nothing more important i understand that but there's certainly a threshold that people can not just step over but two-foot jump over and in those instances say you know i want to remind you we we have an expectation for stability here to do business i just want to you know make sure that you really you're way out of bounds on this one you know let's let's regroup when you think we can stay within these confines kind of thing so those expectations of civility that we may offer operate under now are are not codified in any way it's more like social graces we would just behave like yeah but i mean i i don't think i ever would have thought we would need something formal like yeah a few years ago even a few years ago but we do so i i don't know that it should be a policy per se but i am yeah it certainly seems like we should start like communicating that this is what our expectations are i if there's a sense like even a curiosity here amongst g3 what i can do is start to look at what some other districts done if anything and come back and take a look at it you know that's why i didn't put on as any sort of reading or anything it's just topical discussion and you know when i first put it out there i know tim had shared with me i really don't want to inhibit um you know free speech so that in in context i was thinking of board meetings yeah i wasn't thinking about you know parents talking to staff and i i firmly believe that the way an elected official gets treated is different than the way the staff person should be treated right i mean that is their job they're trying to do a good job i think all of us on the board are trying to do a good job as well but we have a direct reporting line with voters sure they don't i mean as a parent but i still i view elected officials just having uh uh being able to take a little bit uh yeah more heat than a staff person should be then should be leveled a staff person who's trying to do your job yeah and i think in both cases though there's a level of human civility that needs to be so if somebody's you know dropping profanity directed at you or threatening you in a meeting as a public official that's out of bounds yeah i mean certainly out of bounds for your fourth grade teacher tip you know but um i think we try and remember remind people that hey you know there's an expectation of stability particularly when you deal with our staff that we'd like to adhere to because that expectation of stability exists for us as well for our staff to our community at the very least the thing the thing that went through my mind that the list i don't know if you could scroll through it up this part here yeah up there so let's see um displays of displays of temper wait unaccepted interference uh i can i can see myself sitting in a board meeting and someone getting visibly upset but it's still being yeah bordering like a higher threshold there yes then i would with a teacher who's in a one-on-one with a parent in the classroom i just think that's a much for me that's a much lower threshold yeah a dad my size displaying temper you know pounding a desk in a parent conference if your standard second grade teacher is not that's out of bounds for me but i don't think we had a meeting at that point you know but in the board meeting the the meeting the meeting that we had there was probably one there was one outburst that i thought was over the top some of them was like there's passion yeah and to have that passion flow out a little bit more at a board meeting i think it's okay what happened with governor totally unacceptable of course yeah but in our board meeting there were there were people who were getting upset yeah and but i it went a little bit too far but there was some there that i would say meets the threshold but i didn't feel like it was really too far yeah and so we you know in our role is you know you guys public officials we can determine at that point i think these are just reminders for us and we have the authority in that environment to be able to say you know what i i can see where the rooms get a little hot for us to really be productive yeah i think we're going to need to take a 15 minute recess yeah this is probably good for everybody to go outside catch some air right we have those tools come back yeah you know teacher i think this kind of helps them and administrators you know some of our meetings and things to be able to say all right we're we're reaching too far here we need to and they do sometimes and they've done that we've had to do that um no i thought i think it was very much a difference if you're the yeah the second grade teacher in a one-on-one and you start pounding the desk and you you know physically you could be sitting here with the parents sitting there and it's really the parent is really like trying to be even necessarily trying to be like have a temper or something yeah i could see that being a very different situation where you have a large group sure and i thought tony did a good job at a recent meeting where he basically said look and the discussion we're moving on yeah it was getting it was getting a little bit needed um this that's where my cause that's where my hesitancy comes from i think it would that make sense i totally get this within the school setting with staff the thing is just like it just breaks my heart that society is even in this situation right right before we're having this discussion right you know somebody i know you're so just uh you know hold civil discourse and such reverence to think that you know that can't be accomplished without somebody being coached on how to have this course is almost astonishing and but you know what i think what we've seen is you know a lot of people are toasted at this point between social media the media the you know the events of the last 18 months the world um just people are feeling a little bit fried and so you don't always get their best self when uh we're dealing with them on issues that are sensitive and so you know i what i hear is like a curiosity enough on your part to go out and say what are other people doing what are they saying let's talk about it doesn't mean you have to do what other people say but let's check it out and we'll come back and talk about it yeah yeah for me it'd definitely be more of a curiosity i i don't feel comfortable that this should be applied to a public board meeting and why it's all about interacting with schools well i don't think it was entirely clear no it's not and that's what you know we can look at and that's what i i'm gonna get the feedback you know i hear you guys because you know we're we're gonna be you know like i think it's something that we had said during our our um virtual meetings that the the one thing that is sort of strange about a virtual meeting is that you don't get that feedback from the public and for over a year we never really had that and then we sort of you know that you get what you wish for sometimes and finally when we were back in in uh in person well you know we got that right we got that at our last meeting and probably going forward for a little while anyway and so but you know that's again that's we're elected now you know fortunate catherine has had the brunt of that probably the most uh over the last several years but you know what i said the whole thing people should be able to speak their minds and state their opinions and yes people are going to get passionate but to me there is nothing that says that elected officials have to sit there and take personal sure nature no behavior yeah but the thing is the line and i don't i wasn't reading this as being um applicable to our board meetings at all i thought we were just talking about ways to try to make the school school climate more yeah more civil and to give teachers and administrators it's something to hold on to be able to feel like they got you know some support for saying say listen you know we you know we can't continue we love you but this is [Music] but i do have to say i don't think it's i don't think it's right for people to think that just because they've voted for someone that they can you know treat them with disrespect or sure and that kind of thing but that's a whole right um again people have been so pent up and you know luckily a lot of the correspondence almost all the correspondence that the board has received as far as like has been very cordial and i mean um but nothing too extreme that i have seen maybe there's been some i haven't seen before there are strong opinions right yes generally right generally that it feels like someone could be restricted by something like this even if they want to spout off because it's you know you said it's my kid and you know damn it i'm gonna yeah because it's my kid you know and so there's that that level of passion right now and you know i'm concerned that just because you know someone had a bad day and they just want to you know type off something that somehow if we had something like this an effect it could affect the parent negatively in some way and so i wasn't sure yeah there's not a ton of recourse here i mean yeah in you know i think it's like this part like if we had put if we had if we go through this and streamline in some way is this something that ends up being in the the pack of forms that that the parent signs off on at the beginning of the year i'd like to see what other people are doing too i think that's probably a place that's appropriate for it but um you know there is there is legal recourse for us with parents who are perpetually over the line you had to do that where you don't listen unfortunately given your behavior in the last several meetings you will meet with one person only from our staff like all communication goes through this individual you know and if they're gonna meet we usually have two people of our staff meeting with you know the individual at that point it's like there are steps that we've taken historically to address that i think this is just a good reminder that we can say you know remember we do try and conduct ourselves in this manner and again it is a two-way street you know it's not like our staff are all spock and have no emotion or whatever you know if they're stepping on another for us there's a professional code of conduct that we have to adhere to that's different but you know it's also a good reminder for for us too but for all people that are engaging with each other passions can run high let's try and keep the kids at the front of us and act socially to be a good example exactly right so let's let's say it progresses we want to do something do you run this by floyd or his firm at some point yeah the reason i ask is specifically there was a if i recall correctly and it was in the past year it was a high school girl who didn't make her change squad you know the one i'm talking about she did something on some like instant snapchat snapchat once i don't know off of school grounds on her own time she got suspended or expelled by the schools went to the u.s supreme court it got overturned right and she's already graduated high school anyway yeah but they're my only point is we're getting into forms of communication and just to be careful about that if we do end up doing something with this yeah yeah i mean like they said i don't think we you know we wouldn't be disciplining somebody for violating you know what we have agreed upon our social norms basically um yeah but we we would certainly use use it to remind people of these are our social norms we'd appreciate if you respect these you know we may have to end this meeting if we can't you know respect these sharing things through you know social media or whatever that's got its own set of bullying harassment and all those other things that we follow and adhere to the law i think this is just what we consider guidance which is why i didn't put forth the policy or anything but let's try and learn a little bit more we'll talk about it and determine if it's appropriate to adopt as guidance as a policy as nothing um just we'll look at it yeah i mean there's a lot of stuff in here that uh makes me uncomfortable sure so well i also hear you saying too that you know this there's a different expectation we all have for engagement at a board level meeting versus uh you know more intimate school-based meetings and that's good for me to hear too so that we can you know when we look at these things we can kind of tease that out yeah well i mean i'm just yeah again then well it even concerns me about you know uh parent to uh central office communication or parent-to-teacher communication even if that gets a little heated you know how does this sort of interfere you know interact with that so yeah i guess there's a lot of to be considered here yeah because i'm like i'm just like reading the the first paragraph destructive threatens right and then there's something about uh you know cows but i'm assuming central i'm guessing central office probably gets a lot of maybe not a lot but maybe a couple a week emails like that right yeah it happens so i mean and most of the time you know because we're professionals and we're there no grounded yeah we will just let it roll off our back yeah there are times when it has to be addressed like yeah i appreciate it if you don't direct your conversation you know you're telling me like that you know most people are like you're right it was over like other people are yeah rise the level of curiosity i guess yeah i don't want to burn too much time on this tonight but like we can come back let us do some work it was good preliminary conversation we'll do some research and maybe come back to you and say hey maybe it's you know like this this one yeah like this this time a lot like what we were talking about what do you think yeah so i mean yeah research in the application of how this is being applied you know yeah okay all right so that was our last about forbidden uh seeing that there is nothing else on the agenda um i will be injured all in favor all right all right we are adjourned at um
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
thank you carlos maribel if you can help us with the roll call today is a special board meeting of september 21st 2021 at 6 00 p.m members of the boarding attendant president coordinator president vice president andres quintero [Music] members of administration superintendent dr bauer president thank you mariwin you can all join me in the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the united thank states and today i'd like to open up the meeting in honor of all the immigrants and those of us that support the immigrant community to get citizenship and be here in the united states in a quote-unquote legal way being the daughter of uh being a proud daughter of immigrants and also representing many immigrants in our community as the president of the school board is important for me to publicly state that so i just want to open up in honor of that today moving on to the next item 201 provide further direction on process for contracting for legal services to provide additional legal support for the review of various contracts dr bauer thank you madam president i'm going to turn it over to mr cheng so that he can provide context to the board and to the audience thank you dr bauer and good evening madam board president and members of the board um today we wanted to give you an update um on where we're at with the um rfp that we issued for the legal services to review contracts we did issue um the rp about three weeks ago with a deadline of september 15 to for firms to submit we did send it out to five firms that we consider are reputable and are also commonly used by other school districts um in this county unfortunately we're not we did not receive any proposals so at this point we're seeking um the board uh for some further direction in terms of how we move forward with this and some of the options that the board could consider is to reissue the rp and expand the list and the second one is to allow um me and also council ruth ruiz roheli ruiz to call the firms directly to seek to see if they have any interest and explaining the further or clearly uh what the scope of work would be so that we can see if there are any any interest um in in in those firms submitting proposals to us um thank you thank you mr chang um at this point uh i do see trusted chavez's hand so we'll go ahead and uh go to the questions and comments from the trustees i'd like to make a motion to reissue and expand the list of the uh the rp thank you do i hear any seconds okay hearing none um i do see trustee vegeta's hand up yes uh just before i make a second i'm wondering um about public comment are we going to take any and if so i'm sorry people have public comments do you you want to hear them first before making your comments mean i i always kind of prefer that just to kind of get a sense of that community sentiment before i second a motion or propose something so obviously up to you but um i was just curious when that would be happening okay um i didn't see too many uh public members in them in the meeting so i was hoping that we'd get more while we asked our questions but you know we have a couple more now so and it you know it is a part of our meeting and we did say we were going to start at 6.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
live now thank you for that good evening asusa today is september 21st and it is 701. we will go ahead and continue with our open session with our item number 4.1 our flag salute let's go ahead and get started we have axel mejia from murray axel are you on okay you can go ahead and get a start hi my name is axel and today i'll be leading you in the flexor loop please stand for the flexor loop please place the flag put your right hand over your heart ready begin i pleasurely of the just states of america and to the republic for which israel one nation under god indivisible with university and jesus christ thank you you axel thank you so much for joining us tonight and uh are you how are you dealing with the heat right now i see the fan going on very hot outside make sure you stay hydrated and thank you to your parents for allowing you to come into our boardroom resume and leaving us in this flagship today thank you you're welcome have a great one one thing that i forgot to do that i would like to do at our school board meeting is to review our mission and our mission is the associate unified school district equips every student with knowledge and skills for college career readiness to fulfill their purpose and possibly impact society we'll go ahead and continue with our agenda and we have 4.2 roll call we're going to start with board number three board member who's in sellers president board member vote here and board member here and myself for a number of very honest i am here that's five of us moving on to the approval of the agenda if i could please get a motion to approve 4.3 the first by board member second by board member rodriguez kenya and we can go ahead get a hand to vote just start with board member career yes and for remember ariana's yes that is 5-0 it passes can our board approval of the event that is passed we'll move on to 5.1 student matter final sentiment for office of administration and hearing can i please get a motion to move 5.1 5.1 12 seconds we have a first by board member rodriguez kenya we have a second by force member cruz gonzalez recently so can you try and log in again there it is okay now she go as we're waiting let's go ahead and do a hand vote we have board member grier yes board member for gonzalez yeah remember yes and myself board member arianes is the yes and it passes five to zero we'll go ahead and move on to our our item number 6.1 public comment or agenda on agenda for non-agenda items do we have anybody from the floor for the next holy blue card any blue console no blue parts so yes so far we have three hands raised uh first is jenny lee you mean i meet your mic your mic she may be having technical difficulties let's try our next one amber fish you may emulate your mic hello so thank you board members for hearing me out today um i wanted to bring up a couple notes uh regarding our dual immersion program uh i emailed you all last week or the week before regarding the changes that happened at hodge and i really want to commend the board and the superintendent and his cabinet for coming together and bringing up a meeting for our for our parents at hodge to let us know what was going on however i wanted to echo a couple of the points that were made um to you in front of the board as well uh we're requesting that the teachers that were most impacted by these changes because some of the class sizes ended up being larger if we can look into getting those teachers and aid some kind of support to help them out in the classroom because instead of having that 26 minimum teacher to 1-26 teacher-to-student ratio our first grade class is looking at a class of 30 students also more students packed into a classroom was a little discouraging to us um because of covid we're still worrying with some of our children in social distancing we don't know if getting a air purifiers in the classroom is something that is possible uh also i wanted to read from my note what i had emailed you guys um i was really excited about the smaller class sizes for our dual immersion program dual immersion takes a lot of work for our students especially students who are not spanish as first language learners their my son in particular has no spanish whatsoever at home and i was excited to see him go back in person after a year of online learning because it was a we're able to give him um the smaller class sizes i was hoping would make up for some of the learning loss that was given over the course of the online learning uh with a class of 30 instead of a class of roughly 15 i'm not sure that that learning loss will be addressed for students that may need it um so those overcrowded classrooms were just really concerning to me this is something that should have been addressed we knew that we were going to be adding a fifth grade class um i know that you had said that there might not be um there weren't qualified candidates i'm hoping that this call goes out quicker and sooner so that we can hopefully find qualified candidates for next year for our sixth graders and additional classes that may be needed um for support uh also i wanted to transition into oh i also want to say our just our our teachers are amazing for the dual immersion programs i truly do love the couple that my son has been in and i look forward to interacting with more as the time goes on i also wanted to switch over to reorganization really quick i wanted to really thank the board for asking such great questions during the study session and asking for more information and clarity because i really felt as a member of the committee that that last parent staff and student survey that those numbers did not fully show what the parents were really wanting and having that information asking for what those surveys uh comments were was a big relief because you'll get to actually see what the community was saying and not just look at numbers so thank you board for asking for additional clarification thank you your mind hi good evening superintendent ortega cabinet and members of the board of education my name is cecilia ford i am the second vp chief engineering steward of csea as is at chapter 299 and i represent the largest essential group of people within our district the classified employees i am here tonight to speak about the classified staff that pay for health insurance offered through ausd we here all the time thank you for all you do we appreciate you you're valuable to our district how truly valuable are we and how truly appreciated are we really wow so valuable and appreciated that most classified employees who have health insurance through ausd can barely afford it the cost of health insurance keeps going up and yet the district contribution does not folks are having to choose whether to put food on the table keep a roof over their heads or pay for health insurance that the state of california says we must have individuals must work two to three jobs to supplement their income because what they earn within you with you ausd isn't enough most of the earnings go to health insurance now ask yourself when does that individual have time for their family if they are constantly working when does that child who needs their parents see them there isn't enough time in the day for their precious gms in their life because they must make up for their lack of earnings they receive from ausd we lose great employees because they can't afford to pay for their health insurance and must seek to find other jobs that will help them cover the cost we have potential employees not want to join our district because of this because of the disclaimer that they are told to read on all job postings they would rather go elsewhere and feel more appreciated by receiving better benefits ausd's contribution to health care is one of the lowest in the surrounding area the district is well aware of this and there is still no change we will continue to stand up here and repeat over and over when our requests are and we will not stop until until there is a significant change thank you for your time and hearing what i have to say come on azusa unified let's make a change have a great evening next louise week can you please meet your mind yes thank you um so i hello good evening superintendent cabinet and board i am one of the families that was affected by last week's or the previous week's changes in the dual immersion program and i want to thank the superintendent and cabinet for giving us a presentation and a space to speak i'm going to be saying similarly what i said then um i see the positive what could be for our program if we effectively meet minimum needs of needed teachers in the classroom now and i understand that the district is hopeful about the sustainability of the program however as a parent and a previous elementary educator my trust has been lost in the leadership and sustainability of the program for a lack of planning and not noticing lower enrollment my trust has been broken and that if unexpected vacancies are to happen again our children are at risk of changes in the future my child my first grade son cried about losing his teacher who he loved he found out in one day and lost her the next day my student and my son had another student added just last week after these changes were made making his first grade class from 29 to 30 when district expectations should be 26 to 1 and i understand that there's contractual changes and everything but our students are losing critical attention needed and in an overcrowded class of copen secondly the issue not just becomes about hiring but retaining teachers although teachers may have agreed to these changes did they really have the option to say no i remember when i was a teacher i would not have had the option to say no to my to my district or those above me this concerns me about the mental health of teachers teachers are expected to set up new classrooms say goodbye to students create and learn new curriculum aside from shouting them out on social media and extra certification how are we planning on not just hiring but retaining our teachers for the long term so my request i mentioned last week is a tea trade in all classes that go above the class sizes for a minimum of four hours a day number two moving classes to wider rooms if the teachers wanted three purchasing a minimum of two air purifiers per class and if the board is unable to do it i will gather parents who will be prepared who are already prepared to contribute to our classes and it's i would prefer not to a plan to retain teachers in the future and if needed consider reducing kinder di program to one class if staff may be an issue finally in regard to last week's reorganization study session i appreciate board members taking the time to ask questions and see true representation of the community it really meant the world model 4 states that the number one reason it is it would not result in loss of students my children are in tk in first grade if model 4 is chosen this does not benefit my children in their entire educational career splitting resources and putting them at a 12 years old with older students does not benefit them model 4 and the current issues with this dual immersion program will result in a loss of my students and possibly others similar to mine i will forward this to necessary excuse me board members um and cabinet members and i thank you for your time thank you miss please eliza for your comments is there anyone else and we have we do not have anyone else with their hands raised great thank you next we'll go ahead and move on to agenda item 7.1 comments reports and requests by the board of education we'll go ahead and start with a board member post no promises we'll go ahead and start with the board member at red vegas [Music] good evening everyone i'd like to uh report that um i did go to the open house well i didn't go to the open house but i sell it online at the middle schools and um all the administration and staff did a great job either they had a presentation or they had google meets with the parents uh and i was very impressed with the math teacher mr uh from slauson [Music] he was offering his students and talking to parents offering the students a video to show them how to turn in their homework and the parents are worried and trust about that because the parents didn't know that their child had that opportunity to be able to turn in their homework so that's really good because i think it really helps students that are on hand learners and that um you know they'll follow directions more by looking at it than reading about it and i i thank them for that and also um i went into the um class for miss clavacia and she's a music teacher and something i learned with also i went with the mariachi director mr rios rodriguez they mentioned the parents regarding them having music masks and i didn't know there was such a thing and the instruments also i mean i i i i have this question everyone asking but i don't know did the music ones have a hole in the middle of them does anybody know any of that no no yeah yeah they do oh thank you yeah i was i was surprised but i know that the um music teacher when they sing she says their beaks are bigger um so they allow them you know to sing that it's not in their face but i wasn't sure about the mariachi and i know because they use trumpets and so forth so you know i learned something new i also went to the um this is a high school the invading of the bronze plaque to rename the theater in the name of david h lewis it was beautiful ceremony many kind words were said about him and you know mr lewis was also a concert there and the um they had students staff and parents speaking about him he this gentleman has a heart of gold he just loves the students that this is a unified school district um they say he was always there even in the weekends but they also thank the board of education for working uh you know working on this so quickly and making this happen they were really proud i do have the the platform the talk but i have what it read it says david h lewis theater of performing arts teacher mentor counselor 31 years of service 1990 to 2021 all of the world all the world's a stage shakespeare um and i also this is a beautiful we had a project this weekend at memorial park and we had the garden clean up projects were students uh while they painted uh they feed the front gate whole weeds red mulch and plant vegetables and flowers and i want to thank the students in mizzou university district the interact club from the students in mezuzah in glasgow high school a third grade teacher from paramount uh christina dorades and students from christchurch academy brian serrano filled deputy for supervising notice police who couldn't underbeat it without them and they all came out to work together as a team and it looks really nice though to the project they were not completed the last time when sanders churchill first starting to continue what was not done also i joined the celebration of azusa 10 to 50 years of service there was a total of 80 participants from 2019 to 2020 from 2020 to 2021 certificated classified adult and management adult school and management i want to congratulate all the employees for the years of service the hard dedications to our students including unified but the big component was 50 years of service believe it or not my friend former mayor joseph rocha congratulations joe thank you next we have board member good evening everyone i just want to have one item to share that on october 7th uh at 6pm i will be holding another uh online copy and so that will be taking place uh and again explained like any within the community that is our parents students classified certificate anybody who might want to come in and discuss a number of issues anyone who has been to one of these in the past i will send out an email to you or you can uh sign up for for this meeting to get the information and if you um are interested in in getting the information to be able to attend the meeting then just send me an email you can send me a really anyway anyway you can help me and i'll make sure that you get that information but again that is october 7th at 6 pm great thank you next we have board member cruz gonzalez yes um just a couple requests um i wanted to just make a request that um we have i know i know i requested it several weeks ago but that we have this report in terms of how much money we have for photo recovery at the next board meeting um i know our reports that i mean our the report to the stations how we're going to spend the federal money is to do at the end of october right and i'm really uncomfortable to have you bring us something october the second minute october and then we have to see it for the first time and approve it right so so i really i mean i'm making that request that we have at least something on the in the meeting october then it's the first the first meeting it doesn't have to be a whole laid out plan but at least principles so that we understand where we're going um and then along those same lines um i did want to just circle back on the request to have an update on our data or what kind of data we're going to be talking in the data dashboard right and so i think understanding when that giving us a date as to when that's going to come to us so we can have a conversation about it um is i think i wanted to get soon i think we made that request several months ago i'm so bad um so there's a bunch of requests and then my last thing is to just welcome my new student board member who is the the granddaughter of my mentor well i see your parents i'm so excited to have you here i'm sure you're gonna be just as outspoken as brooklyn thank you very much i do want to share that i um i visited um about six schools and they're just random schools people are asking why are these schools are they the ones that are on uh model three model four yes and no i'm i'm visiting doing research um i did go to the high schools i was business of high school and i went to glasgow high school and i went during lunch that was my first time going during lunch to see what it looks like on both campuses right um about the students right we're looking into the reconfiguration whatever it look like but you know asking questions um and be able to do that research as a school board member to to be able not only with the data that we um got from our survey but also being able to to to do some more qualitative right to get to get more qualitative data and i was speaking with teachers with employees with students um and so it was really nice to actually go to um blackstone high school i went to both snooze and glasgow and at boston we got four um on uh with mr uh to mr hague's classroom and for those of you guys that have not been to blackstone high school mr hague has [Music] and let me tell you we have a really good program it's there's a quiet room where we went in and there's like i don't know you can't hear anything like from outside and they went outside and i was in there by myself and i was like oh you know and then they could hear me that was pretty cool um he developed a um an area where the students do their announcements so that's you um he has a green screen i mean come on we are like on fire over here i i just i like about two years ago or about a year ago i went to another district to go visit their media room and i think um you were there with me mister barbuda was there um i think was was polina we've uh caught up or have passed um what they have and i would love for us to keep on supporting the media um classroom and however we can regardless of whichever model that comes through and um continue developing that and so um i did talk to the students as i was walking around the classroom and kind of missing in the classroom so it was really nice for me to talk to students and um ask them what they were doing and so i got a chance to um you know they got the chance to share um and so for those of you guys you know um asking what we have here at our district we have great programs out of both of our high schools so i would love to market more of what we have to let others know because i'm sure people that as soon as the high or people that live within our community that don't have students that come to our schools don't know about these programs so i would like to see more of the marketing um over programs um on our websites and what they offer what they've done right the media i think they um they won an award a film award i think a year or two ago um and that would you know so let's market our programs to get these uh to get our community excited about what's really happening here in susan because this is a unified we're doing great things with the high schools we just need to share with others so just wanted to report on that and at the elementary what was really interesting i do want to share right so we are asking indoors for masks students were out in the playground you know little first graders second graders oh wearing their masks no one's telling them they're like i mean i'm saying hello and they're saying hello and um even at the high school we were walking around a couple students recognized me even but the mouse they came up with hey you know and um so this it's really nice to know that each student is taking their safety into their own hands and not only the foster but but outside as well um i gotta talk to a few teachers um it was a great visit and i hope to continue visiting all of the schools and not just once but a few more times before we make our decision and since i was not here when um we gave our condolences to um you know for our council member macias uh muriel mastias i would like to publicly give my condolences to to his family um at this point i have i have known ireland for 30 plus years and worked with him on many different projects in the past and i am deeply saddened for what was happening i know that the services are this week and i want to extend as part of the board on our condolences and again um our love to the family this week next we'll move on to item number 8.1 comments and reports why we'll start off with the student board members we'll go ahead and start with and i was going to say this right now um i was pretty surprised to actually see our student board member which is miss hannah hamilton she's this is a high school and actually i've known her since she was a little bitty um and so i just want to welcome you um feel comfortable please ask questions this is your time to learn with us um to experience everything with us and so welcome ms hannah hamilton you are in the spotlight to share okay our homecoming game uh we have it scheduled on friday october 8th and then after we have our dance on the ninth we'll be crowning our king and queen then and our homecoming game will be beyond the sea a couple weeks ago we had our first successful fall rally we had our new aztec warrior martine corvos and or you're at samantha sparza crown during the rally we are holding our first virtual fall academy awards ceremony tomorrow and it'll be recognizing over 300 students with gpas higher than a 3.25 we are also having our first virtual student of the month this friday of september 24th and we are recognizing students for their outstanding efforts in and outside the classroom our first triad ends this friday and our aztecs doing great job great thank you so much next we'll go ahead and move on to we have a neck camacho connector are you on zoom yes good evening board members cabinet and superintendent bartega my name is annette camacho i attended murray elementary school center middle school in gladstone high school i am currently a senior at sierra high school i am excited to be in the ap government class and to be representing sarah as a student board member this year this school year has been off to a great start my classmates and i are excited to be back on campus for in-person instruction the leadership class kicked off the school year with a water balloon toss activity and sports jersey day we are looking forward to more spirit days this trimester congratulations to miss science our community liaison for being selected as the california continuation education association 2020 classified employee of the year ms signs was honored at the ccea conference luncheon last saturday on thursday september 30th we have our chick-fil-a fundraiser be sure to mention sierra high school when you make your purchase i look forward to sharing the exciting events that are happening at sierra throughout the year thank you and you said september 30th chick-fil-a fundraiser so if you guys are hungry that day remember to support our sierra high school and we have christopher flamingo from mrsa and she is not in attendance today go ahead and move on to our cabinet and superintendent for their comments and reports good evening i would like to provide you all with an update on our classroom technology as you know during distance learning we were able to take all of the chromebooks from our classroom parts and we were able to distribute those to students we started replenishing those from the parts over the summer um one of the things that we realized was we also had chromebooks that were reaching end of life and so over the summer we ordered another 2500 of these chromebooks um it's definitely been a herculean tap very appreciative to the uh all of our um mis and site technology uh team who have been working really hard to uh get those uh get those chromebooks in the cart one of the things that we realized when we needed to order an additional 2500 was we decided that we knew it was going to take a little while we know that there are many challenges and we just really appreciate everybody's patience as we've been trying to you know get these and get these orders taken care of but one of the things was that we also paid for something called a white glove um service and even though it takes a little bit longer um to be able to get the chromebook it's actually a little bit quicker because what happens is that this service will put each one of the chromebooks on a google admin on the network and then what they do is they send a team to be able to get these devices into the chromebooks fast and so this is something that we've been waiting on for a bit and i'm really happy to announce that the first um first batch came in today and so lee elementary was able to get um all of their all of their cards except for two they're going to go back tomorrow uh the team came in and was able to do that so we're super excited um just again we know that this has just been really tough um but we are we are persevering and so um we're excited for that um also in terms of uh classroom uh teacher technology uh we've been working with the principals to identify any needed uh projectors that need to be replaced document cameras and all of those things as well so we've got that uh going on as well i just wanted to give you an update good evening board of education staff and communities i want to thank everyone who attended and helped out with our presentation event that we held yesterday although this event was held virtually our recipients will receive their award over this next week at their site and department i also want to thank our directors and principals for delivering the required annual annual notifications and policies uh thank you to our employees who have completed the mandated reporter and harassment training and as a reminder we have our live option to complete this training uh tomorrow at sierra high school at 3 15.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
we're well over a hundred plus gained from last year which is is really big we got a lot of people that are coming home to blue ridge and and that's great to see i was here last year to work on our school improvement plan as as the acting dean or the interim dean of students and so these are our campus goals and i wanted to kind of go over them with you all the professional school day last year as an elementary teacher it is very difficult to get people to understand what it's like in the day of an elementary school teacher if you don't get a break um because we don't have the same kind of prep there is no passing period you know where i was at a junior high in the classroom to high school you get a passing period you switch kids and you at least get you know five minutes where you get to stop talking um at elementary school our teachers last year they put in the work and they had kids from 7 15 in the morning until 2 o'clock in the afternoon at non-stop other than a lunch and that was if we had the duty to cover lunch otherwise they stepped in and picked that up too so one of the big things that i wanted to make sure that we had for our teachers this year was that we gave them that time to collaborate with one another to work together to to better our students education to allow data to drive our instruction and we've been able to meet that goal and we continue to improve upon that one every chance we get so i meet with our teachers we have a couple people that meet with our teachers and discuss with them you know what's the need and how do we fix it um our statement number two is that we needed to have increased communication with parents and guardians in the community and so far this year we've we've greatly increased our social media output what we're putting out from the elementary school we've brought other campuses involved to to make it feel like we're not a satellite campus that we're not just over there on porter mountain that we are part of it and so every friday we have a different group from the high school come and open doors at student drop-off we've had the band there playing so far we've had the football team the volleyball team the boys and the girls soccer teams they were there opening doors in their jerseys the little kids just eat it up i mean they they love it as well as a newsletter thank you and it had over a thousand hits on it as well and so we'll we'll continue to put out information you know through every possible outlet that we can and then our our last one for statement three was that our teachers needed time to work with other teachers to grow to do to have some professional development and so uh i've been working with mr pico who's not here tonight to secure funding to be able to send some of our teachers some professional development that we need we're working on the days after our fall break will be a professional development day and i think each campus has a plan for for that day so that we can continue to grow teachers and give them the support that they need because that was one thing that in the classroom i knew that i wanted and when i talk to teachers here it's the same thing they want they want support and they they want to grow and continue in their craft so as far as as our goals go adding back our specials was a really big deal it gave our teachers a chance to you know have a little bit of a break and work with her with their teams it also gave our kids a chance to become more well-rounded so we do have stem we are now part of avid district-wide so the avid program that's at the high school we carry it down to our campus so our sixth graders have the avid class in their elective wheel like the junior high does and then our lower grades they see avid implemented in a couple different ways district right we also now have two pe classes so our students get pe twice a week instead of just once a week that was something that that i felt was really important getting our kids up and moving to use some of that energy as well as just increase their overall physical health and then we have we've added a second counselor she's there part-time three days a week to work on our social emotional health i didn't know that a lot of people thought little kids are resilient and they can work through it some of our kids they were at home by themselves through the whole thing and and they need someone to talk to and so we we've uh with dr wright's help we've been able to secure another counselor to come to campus and and be there to help kids and so we have two on campus um one full-time one three days a week so and then we have a kindness campaign that is now well underway uh on campus and and hopefully we'll be able to connect it to the junior highs and i know the junior high council has been helping sending out a lot of stuff as well our first day of school we we didn't have parents come into the building and so instead we set up photo stations on the side of the building and we had kids from kindergarten to sixth grade that took pictures of their first day the feedback was great parents loved it it slowed us down a little bit as far as getting kids dropped off and out of cars but it worked out perfect so that is something that we'd like to probably continue moving forward and i've talked to all of our team leads about having our grades actually design the banner that would be behind that grade level for the next year because we can make those in our stem classroom so that would be another project for our stem to do as well so um that's the elementary in a nutshell so far this year thank you mr grace yes sir i've had nothing but high praise for the things that you're doing especially those uh posts about what kids are doing in a classroom people love to see the kids learning in the classroom and i get lots of compliments with that so good deal thank you we have we have a lot of great things going on and we just needed to show them a little bit more yeah people are excited yes sir even even me grandpa and grandma we really love to see it thank you very much see our next uh presenter will be our junior high principal miss courtney hoffmeyer good evening so i just want to go over i'm going to do a quick recap of last year so that we can kind of lead into where we are this year um so just going over quickly our transition from online to hybrid to in-person um our social emotional wellness our professionalism and gratitude for the staff at the junior high and the accomplishments that we saw and then lead into where we are going uh 21 22.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
number four approved committee of the whole closed session minutes of september 14 2021 for business approved board of education financial report okay i think that's it yeah that's it okay thank you if i forget to do that next month somebody step up and remind me um action reports first up business can i get a motion to approve the fiscal year 22 tentative budget moved second any questions or comments so it's marked tentative budget here but once it's approved it'll be the approved budget exactly yes okay so roll call please dr ho i brown is an eye mrs galbert aye mr sowalis aye vice president hello hi president albert aye motion carries next up in action reports can i get a motion to approve a certificate of payment in the amount of five hundred twelve thousand two hundred ninety eight dollars and seventy cents to rl sohold general contractor inc for the 2021 renovation work at talala elementary school in the early educate early learning center so second any questions or comments roll call please mr wallace hi dr hall aye mrs galbraith hi brownies and i vice president roop aye president albert aye motion carries next business item can i get a motion to approve or let me start over can i get a motion for approval to submit an application to the isbe school maintenance project grant so any questions or comments roll call please brown is an eye dr hall aye mr salonish hi this is galbraith aye vice president rupert aye president albrecht aye motion carries next up under action reports is personnel and culture can i get a motion to approve the personnel report including approved the certified staff employment employment leave of absence return from leave of absence reassignment and resignation and educational support staff employment leave of absence reassignment resignation and retirement moved second route any questions or comments okay roll call please mr swanette aye dr hall aye brown is an eye mrs galbraith hi vice president roof aye president albert aye okay do we have any old business i have one item can we just go back for a second under the consent agenda dr kagonist you read off your superintendent four items did anybody read off the business item she did yeah she did she didn't i'm sorry i didn't hear it yes yeah any old business or do you want me to go go okay but i'd like to get the board's consent to ask mr cirma when he comes back at the october committee the whole meeting to present one alternative to the short-term facilities plan that he presented at last week's meeting one of the things i've been thinking about is mec we currently have 16 students in that building the short-term facility plan is presented would put in hvac into that building would be approximately 6 million dollars i think an alternative to that would be to not put in the hpac in that building but build out what we had talked about in a previous plan that the high school put in the addition for the pathways program there which at that time the approximate cost of that was 11 million dollars so instead of investing the six million dollars in mec as it currently stands move that program over the high school and then we could decommission the nbc building so anyway i'd like him to think about kind of as he talks with pma about the financing alternatives et cetera um you know what that would take the only question i have is if dr cara if you can can you at least just get with it's a great idea because the money is important to put into that building we would never get it out so it would make sense to put it over there but have a conversation with miss trish and mr wartell to make sure that whatever plan we make to make sure that we're all on the same page so that they're the two that are would be directly affected by this to make sure that you know whether it be it how it would work just so that if mr cerma is going to get numbers and stuff that at least we have an idea that you know what's realistic what our options are you bring up a very good point and we are actually having some conversations uh already about our career tech how we would grow it and also looking at the impact of mec as we're seeing uh diminishing enrollment there and so forth so yes we are going to have that conversation because we know that the kids you know we just want to make sure that mr wartell is on the uh retirement plan okay miss trish she may be as well but at some point the person of the high school will be ultimately in charge of that so we want to make sure that at least everybody's on the same page of why this is coming here is it everything's gonna be safe everything will be designed right just because i want to make sure that they're at least have a you know a say-so in what we do i agree and our priority is programming and and i have to agree with mr swalish i was just over at mec a couple weeks ago for a visit and there are concerns about how that would work out at the high school even if they had their own separate entrance i mean there are a lot of concerns they voiced to me that they are of course going to bring to you but i mean maybe if this i think we don't we need more than one plan we always go with a plan a and we don't have a b and c so i would like to see if we're going to do plan a it was the original thing at the high school what could we do if we figured out that didn't work for logistics or certain reasons what would another plan be so that nelson's asking for this alternative and thank you very much i totally get where you're going with that money spent so good catch on that but let's make sure that what we're asking mr cerma to do has a backup because bill's right put and nelson putting six million dollars in we wouldn't get it back but if we couldn't move it into the high school or in a in a capacity where it's going to fit in that time frame what is our alternative because can we not if we can't get it in the high school in that two-year frame of everybody else what are we doing because we have to make a decision on that air conditioning and if we realize it's not going to work what what are our other options so that's what i'm asking i like the idea of looking at an alternative but i think we need more than one because i'm not sure that what the one would work if if we came to it and we found it didn't work now we have to go back to the drawing board so i'm asking go to the drawing board for at least one alternative if we're going to do this so that we do have a backup plan if we find out down the road talking to people and trying to work logistics that it's not going to work what could we do without putting the air conditioning in okay any other yeah i would just like to comment on it as well and i got a very good catch on that uh nelson as far as the expenditures we're looking to do with that school and only having 15 students but all students are valuable all students deserve a good education best week best as best as we can give them and being said i know money the village omoni was seeking to obtain mec in some capacity and i know we had asked for it was uh i believe it was an appraisal on that so i'm not sure if it was disseminated or has it been really completed so we need to see that as a board see what where they came up to be price wise and this one i don't want to call it a concern i just want to see again a plan a plan b plan c that we have 14 15 kids in this alternative program and the program is more in my opinion of in reactionatory or react if i'm saying a word if if there is such word reacting we are reacting to there you go we are reacting to the kids behavior so for whatever reason they're not participating as we want them to in a regular school setting so here's your alternative let's see if we can get your needed the things you need to have to be educated over here so i just want to know how proactive we could be to keep kids from attending some type of alternative program i don't know if that's realistic i don't know i just don't know you know at one point we didn't have it and i'm not sure if all school districts have it you know high school so on and so forth but it sounds like we have made up our mind that we are going to have alternative program and we're willing to expand money on a structure to house them in or to that's a bad phrase to conduct an education and perform an educational environment for these kids so i'm just i'm just kind of vacillating on this and wavering definitely from a financial point of view it makes sense it makes sense not to invest six seven eight million dollars to put air conditioning in a facility that's only going to house 15 students and maybe probably that many staff members as well but if they are in there they need to be in a environment that's conducive conducive for learning so i guess what i'm asking our superintendent to bring back is okay this is how we got here this is how we get here with the with the alternative program and if there is a way to eliminate the program in its entirety how can we do it if if there is a way and still provide our students with some type of you know a good well-rounded education because i knew a couple of students that went to school my son that was over there because of currency like that constituted a kid yeah he was he was going to get dropped uh kicked out of school for tournancy and as a result he ended up being over and going to the alternative program and graduating from there yeah that is an alternative i see that but couldn't we have caught the issues with that kid for currency up front that's all i'm asking i don't know what kids you know what what's the behavior issues with these kids so i'm just saying what drives these kids to do the things that they're doing that constitute them being over here in the alternative program i i just don't know so we're saying that we are you're not saying it per se but or directly but indirectly we are saying as a board we are okay with having an alternative programs and we're looking to build a brand new structure to teach these kids or to house these kids in this program so again i'm vacillating i'm wavering a little bit you know i don't want to go off on a tangent and against the board pleasure or consensus on this matter but yet i'm just struggling with it i'm struggling with it as far as again promoting our kids and to build a structure for 11 million dollars for 20 kids i'm just struggling with that mr brown we can work on that we'll go back with our staff and work on that we do have an estimate we put in the fyi i can get that number to you again if you'd like to take a look at that but we are we will go back and work with um our administration and our programming to take a look at our services that we do offer you know the mec program has changed quite a bit over time it is not a program for students that have necessarily behavioral issues we are really working on creating pathway programs such as the arrowhead studios they are doing wonderful things over there and some of those things you know we just you know we were looking to see could we just lift those things up and put them in a different area where they could still have access so we are looking into some of that right now well i have a question what is the plan for the building if we move those students well because maybe i missed that the plan for nbc if we move the students well at one time we said you know we're going to basically condemn the building and put it up for auction i know money the village omoni was interested in any in into obtaining the building and that's why we as a board we reached out to the superintendent and the business manager to go out and get an appraisal and see what the building is worth and you know whatever next steps was required i'm not sure but i know i'm not sure if bill can answer the to his knowledge is the village of money still interested in the building well i i mean i think kind of this melds a little bit of the short-term plan with kind of a longer-term view of you know as ken stated i mean we we just from an operational standpoint from an operational budget standpoint we operate too many buildings so this would kind of eliminate one in the short term while you kind of think about you know much longer term plan it would be part of the long-term plan but yes essentially eliminating just because i think ultimately if you think about it you're right the idea is to get them an education in a good environment without a doubt but ultimately if you have a ratio it's kind of like overhead right so if you have 15 students in a building that you have to staff and pay for that the costs are much higher and and as mr sermon has said multiple times that this district can only go so long with the amount of buildings we have at some point because over time they're just going to cost us more and more money coming out of our pockets just to maintain and uphold them so the thought process of roundabout numbers the building appraised it say nine hundred thousand right whatever it was i think we ate fifty nine or that was somewhere in there but if we had six million to it if we go to sell it we're not gonna get 6.9 million so unfortunately if we went to sell it it would be how much of that value would we get back the idea at one point we talked about previously when mr surma put something together and dr kagunese is that we would put an addition on height that was attached to the high school the only reason i brought up tonight is not to bring up old things but at the junior high we need to listen to uh to uh miss creso's of what she needed and we shorted her eight classrooms is what it is okay so now we have to figure out how to move forward in this instance we just that's why i asked mr wartell and and miss trish are two people that would be if they were here not on retirement they will be here for the long term they'd be ultimately responsible let's just get their input see we're at this is an early stage it's a great financial this was a great catch to understand that the value of the money value the taxpayers but at the same time we cannot discount the learning environment at all so at the end of the day if it feels that we need to spend the six million and put it in there that's what we do but at the same time if we have an opportunity to do something to move it over you know again less you're gonna have staff from the high school it's just gonna be part of the building it's not where building a brand new individual structure would be attached so i guess that's the idea right i mean that's what we talked about in the in the plan that i have where when we looked at the the different referendum amounts and stuff that was just one of the ideas but it's early going but at least talk about it now before we want to spend that kind of money yeah and i i think you know being sad and again i don't want to open up bad wounds it's not my intent with my comment that i'm getting ready to make yeah i mean all of our schools that we're putting ac in we're not going to get a return on our investment other than the students learning but that's that's that's worth worth it to me okay the learning for the students i mean we have crete there's some parts of crete is 40 probably 40 years old or 30 to 40 years older than money elementary or mec mec and same with talala same with csk you know so putting eight seven eight million dollars in those schools and you said nbc was appraised eight nine hundred thousand somewhere yeah so i would take it those schools would be equally appraised for those values so to put eight million dollars we knew we knew as a board we're putting a lot of money in into structures we knew that in structures this you know for our practical purpose is not worth putting it in but we looked at that one component that hey we have to keep our kids in an environment of learning that's conducive for learning so that's an investment so we will get a return on investment from that point of view so again i a good catch that when it's when the when the smoke clear and we can thanks you know for bringing all of that informative information or informative data to us and said this is the path i'm recommending that you go and say okay it was a consensus the board said let's move forward and good catch by again by nelson say hey let's not stop looking at opportunities where we can be more efficient financially and he spotted that and again and i think we can continue to do that so i'm just again struggling with taking the kids out of here find another five million dollars you make a good point too with the middle school and we still have that issue over there correct you know we pretty much gave up at this present time seeking to get new buildings again i don't want to go down that path and have conversations on that now you know nelson again last the last meeting we had he said how does this affect future boards these decisions that we're making financially how does it affect you know right now we got a snapshot in time we have to do what we feel best right now i don't want to say don't worry about the future boards but we still have to look long range but i don't i can't say it enough that was a very good catch that he didn't put the brakes on and say that's it we moved forward he still looked at an idea or a situation where we can save money so as ken prepares for the committee of the whole meeting in october where he's going to have pma come with different financing scenarios et cetera and i think he'll have healy vendor here too you could talk about so i think you know kind of the alternatives that we're thinking about sure and prepared yeah we can have a couple scenarios the board with that so we expect an october healey bender but it's supposed to provide the board with a final facility assessment is that correct uh i believe so i have not i actually have a meeting with them thursday afternoon so i'll find out where we're at with that we should have that the facilities i mean the hundred thousand dollars that we paid them for yes and you know that's completely separate from the short-term pursuit right right so it's good to know still you know we still have to look at the big picture right you know and i agree with that i want to i also want to address dr hall your comment about this building you know with with mec in that there are multiple options there one is selling it one is demolishing it one is doing whatever you know because it's our property so that decision would have to be made by the board of what they would like to do with it even and i there is some on my school code i won't go into that right now but there is some school called selling the building and all that stuff so we'd go through that process with you and let the board make the decision on what they want to do with that building make sure you bring us a pair of those socks too oh okay [Laughter] i haven't oh i just don't have it up high enough i just told him to make sure he brings us a pair of socks he has on thanks okay and then he'll trade you for turf size nine no we're talking about it yeah is there any other old business uh president albrecht just one thing i do want to mention i did update the fyi but i know it was the type of conversation and that is the temporary cooling rooms i did get a firmer estimate on that so originally as you know i had put in 980 000 for those we all knew that was high i knew it was high but it came back at 427 000 actually uh the actual construction cost is about 300 and so there's some contingencies and all that in there so i just want to make the board and the public aware of that okay uh that would be the cost of impact okay that's great did we get we had a we had a report we had we had an assessment performed by our consultant engineering consultant electrical assessment right so you obviously that estimate yes is based on certain things right yes how many circuits they're going to put in and what they're looking to do right they can answer that for you i didn't get that detail mr brown i just got and i'm looking at the what was sent to me on this uh and he's got it broken down by the window modifications and also electrical work there's some general touch up all that type of stuff is all in there so i have all of that and we're talking about five five cooling rooms per building right per building yeah and we're talking about a couple ac units i believe they are yeah again we'll have to ask dave on that because based on the tonnage we'll just have today the rooms we looked at that the principal showed us that i think that required usually two yeah in those rooms that they could bring a classroom in so so that would be 10 per building okay yeah right 10 for building 500 per unit that's just the material so five thousand dollars per and i think we talked about it i think mr brought it up last week you know that that you know the point was the money okay right but what is the usage afterwards and i think uh it was good that she brought up to bring it to light so we all understand it together the seven of us but after we're done with them you know the units relatively are the cheapest part of the probably the project all right but it's the electrical portion and i think if we listen to the principle of balmoral she said that a lot of times when they turn these on they're gonna turn something off or you know somebody else will say that at least they'll have the electric capacity in those rooms you know to do whatever they want because remember taking bigger rooms and turning them into temporary for one year after that whatever they want to turn it into they'll have the capacity to do that i would say within reason because you're removing the air conditioning temporary you're fishing out of there i'm i'm just again i'm just concerned i mean before i jumped the gun and said this even that is too high to me i need to look at it because you're adding if you add one circuit one 120 circuit you're talking about five ac units right per no five rounds so 10 10 units so 10 circuits 10 circuits 10 120 circuits well we'll get that presentation yeah let's get into the october committee of the home in the last faction of that i think mr sermon i talked right before the meeting the other thing we got to think about too is to have it done by the spring so that it for this school year that they're handled by it's going to be have to be done at nights and weekends which again we all know is time and a half at least so the cost of that is more expensive if the board would wait until summer it might be reduced if if we wait till summer i don't know i'm just saying but we did talk about to get it in there to be fair to the other four schools that it would be done uh at night so that they could have it by the spring i think that's what we were talking about i can't just on the surface the same even then i didn't want to comment because i want you to come back we were talking about a million dollars per building last week you know cheryl was like whoa that was a million dollars total million total with a million so this is 425 this is 427.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
so with that i'll go ahead and open it up now then to the public comments questions or comments from the public two-minute comments uh mr chavez do we have any members of the public wishing to address support on this item no matter president at this time we have none okay we'll wait a couple seconds to give our public an opportunity to raise their hand on this item if you have any questions comments but comments on this item to the board please raise your hand do we now still now okay and then for the for the purposes of discussion i'll second the motion that's on the floor still do you have any questions comments so go ahead uh thank you can you hear me i'm wondering if you could slow but we can hear you okay um so i just i have a question i'm wondering i mean i heard mr mr chain say that we sent it out to a select number of um firms and so i'm just wondering um is that how we've been doing it or is there a reason why we wouldn't just kind of cast a wide net or is there kind of specific i think i heard you allude to that their specific expertise or experience that these particular firms have with school districts and that's why we sent it um to a limited number but i'm just curious as to what the thought is behind that approach and i think you might have already said it but i just wanted to confirm that yes so the reason why we um limited the number of firms is um because the scope of work was was kind of limited to review of contracts um not you know as general counsels uh as we did in the past so um in that process i did uh survey all the cbo's um in this county to see what firm they were using and how satisfied they were um and we identified five of the top candidates to be able to select uh to submit those or to issue the rfp too okay thank you for that um so can we just clarify again and i want to make sure that the motion that's on the floor um do you want to repeat that please sure reissue and expand the list um for the search of the rp and i do have a question it's um i know you said that there was only five that you reached out to but i still feel that um you didn't reach out to enough uh because there's other counties in the district that you know that do the the bond work so that's that's it that's my comment so was there another um mr chang when you gave us our option or some options um you mentioned reissuing and potentially expanding i think but also the board providing um the ability for for staff to directly contact the firms that we sent them to is that correct yes and and the the ask here is to be able to um connect with those firms and further clarify what the scope of work is because sometimes rp's when they go out it's pretty general and broad and so if they understand the scope of work that we're looking for uh we believe that that could uh generate some some some more interest instead it did by just sending out the rp itself president thank you so then i'm wondering um trustee if trustee chavez would be willing to um accept an amendment to her motion that would say that we because mr chang explained the rationale behind why they selected this group and kind of spoke with the other cbo's embedded group that we first tried to reach out directly to them to to be more specific about the scope of work and see if we get interest in that way and if there's not sufficient interest then we expand and reissue so i'm wondering if issue would be open to um adding that piece in the beginning where we provide authority to reach out directly if that's unsuccessful then expanding the issue okay so i would actually like it in reverse expand the search and then in addition uh the district reaches out to um to the to the list that they have to reach out to but that would um because if you get five no's you you're already wasting time so i would like the the search to just go out there and in addition um start making the calls so i i would be happy to amend it expand the search and also do the follow-up calls to the five that you did reach out to and also to the ones that uh pose any interest on the search so i have a list i have a question and or comments because i'm i'm trying to think of both right obviously at the end of the day we want the best firm to represent our district um and in this case so we put out the rfp nobody applied there's five on there um obviously we need to go to more because you know they received something and they didn't apply for whatever reason um so i'm wondering i'm hearing both and trustee chavez you know in dire in if we can expand it and direct the staff to you know maybe go to the five maybe they've missed it and all their emails are you know um requests to apply um go to the five and then i think what you're i'm in agreement chavez and like even casting a wider right um net and and maybe speaking to additional firms and then at the end of their long discussions or short discussions that they come back with a recommendation to the board whether it's you know the top three or we end up getting you know two just two firms um and maybe just one you know out of what they the discussion they had and the white wire net and then at that point then we would then choose because i'm also thinking by the time we set another rfp process if we do that we open that up you know and then those interviews i know that um you know that's just time that keeps accruing so i don't know can we amend it to maybe just direct staff trustee vicarano i actually i think i like um the amendment as trustee chavez posed it where we do both simultaneously we expand and reissue but also reach out to those that we have but if i could ask mr chang um or anyone on staff i guess um would that be efficient is there a better way that you kind of hearing what we're wanting we're wanting to we want everything we want to reach out to the ones we already reached out to we want to reach out to more and we want you to come back to us with um some recommendations based on that it sounds like so based on what i guess our comments have been so far do you have any thought mr chang is what would be most expedient for for the staff yes so um typically when we issue rfp staff don't usually make connections or um have any conversation with potential um interested firms um just because it's probably best practice not to do so um and so if you are to issue an rp um then we would have to wait until the deadline for us to have any conversation with the firm itself just because it gives a really bad look in terms of favoritism if we were to make connections um you know before we receive the reposal itself so you're saying that we can't really do but it wouldn't be the best idea to do both because those five that already got it potentially have a an opportunity or some advantage over those who would still be theoretically responding to the new rfp yes that's typically not not our practice um when we issue our p we would normally wait until they submit proposals and then we would have those conversation in terms of um you know setting up interviews and stuff like that so just to clarify as he tries to talk with your hand and quintero one second so just to clarify with uh trustee with another question in your answer we're either going to open up an rfp is what you're saying is best or direct staff to go and find the best firm to come back with that is that correct change where is that what you're saying one or the other yes at the same time yes i would recommend one one of the other thank you trustee chavez um okay as far as the five goes i don't believe it was an oversight um the fact that you reached out to those five and they didn't respond that's a response in itself i think it would be better and uh to just cast the the bigger search um so that we can get a better range of people who are willing to work with alan rock just because you they didn't respond doesn't mean that they were willing i think that we should open it up to firms that will be willing thank you trustee quintero yeah i would suggest that we go ahead and take the advice from staff because they're the ones who are doing the work we do need uh council to go ahead and start moving forward on some some seriously deferred maintenance uh that we've had because of the issues with the bonds and all that stuff so rather than holding off and going through a new process i want to encourage my colleagues to go ahead and move forward with uh the the the the recommendation from our cbo who's recommending that we go with uh with the strategy of reaching out to the five firms the five firms that were selected i'm a seminar who's well-known well-regarded uh they're they have their their unknown entity and so it'd just be a matter of them reaching out and um and lay out what it is that we're looking for the fact of the matter is that alum rock was in some some some uh went through some serious issues the last couple of years so it's no surprise that we're gonna have to go ahead and uh you know walk people through what it is that we're looking for and then let them know that there's been some change a significant change for the better uh and so with that said i will not be supporting the motion as it is and i would encourage us to simply take the recommendation from staff let them move forward to reach out to the five if they absolutely refuse we can go ahead and revisit this but i highly doubt that that's the case thank you trust your fam and then trust it and then trust each other you know so uh i concur with board vice president um you know at this point you know i i understand and i have a feeling that you know some firms may be a little reticent i you know i know that ellen you know alan rock has faced its challenges and we've gone through them but also you know this is an opportunity for us to go out and also explain to to willing partners that uh you know alan rock has changed and that this is a you know that this is an opportunity to move things forward in new direction and while also maintaining uh transparency so you know i'd like to i'll go ahead and i'll motion uh how motion to was it move forward so we do have a motion on the table uh trusty fam okay so do we have to so we have to vote on that motion first or yep yes right okay and if it doesn't uh go through then come back to the conversation then why don't we go down or move to call the vote move but let me let me get uh mr reese's answer i believe trustee fam can make the motion someone can make a second but uh trustee chavez's motion will be voted on first yes right okay thank you so we'll call for the um vote um i do see trustee because i don't know trustee chavez's hand up so maybe they're willing to even uh amend the motion no i have questions though about this vote yep go ahead okay so um i didn't i don't think that i necessarily heard a recommendation from staff i think staff gave us a couple of options that we could kind of discuss and see which one we think would work um so i don't i don't know that there's a recommendation necessarily that we have to go with unless i may have missed something in that in that presentation um and i obviously also agree that time is of the essence we you know we have a whole bunch of stuff that we want to get moving in the district and we're ready to go and we've got all this kind of wind in our sails and we do have some momentum regardless of what others may think or say we we're moving but we and so we want to get going and it's for that reason that i'm kind of hesitant about what's being proposed potentially as a new motion because there is no i i like to think that um trustee um quintero what he said is that he highly doubts that if people are talking to that they um that they won't come along that i hope for that too and i think there's a pretty good chance of that but my worry is that if that's not the case if those five say you know if we take a week or however long it may take to reach out to these people and then discuss with them and they all still say no we're not interested we just lost some time there because now we're going to have to reissue again anyway so that's why i'm just kind of leaning more towards just reissuing those five can still um you know ideally they would apply but if not you know then we're still in the because if we reach out to them they say no then we have to reissue and we're in one place if we don't reach out to them and we reissue then and if nobody responds we're kind of still in the same place we're going to be stuck still so i don't know i'm not too strongly supportive of what's being proposed here most recently because of timing so maybe i don't know if my fellow trustees or even staff can um [Music] you know help me with my worries about a president i see trustee chavez's hand up dr bauer i think is responding to your question so dr bauer can you please uh respond thank you i think that i don't know if this is going to help but if the board allows us to call all the firms available and figuring out it is just the permission to follow this process as opposed to the process that you requested before so basically the board is that we'll be able to allow us to call as many firms as needed until we find the one that matches the need for alum rock and that is i think that that's a a good way of addressing trustee chavez trustee vegeta's concerns about you know these firms were not you know responsive at first but maybe they will but if we limit them to the five i understand that the worry about you know then what we have to come back so if the board pleases and allows and gives us direction to expand the search not only to the five but to any other firm that will be needed you have um mr reese and mr chang doing those phone calls trying to find the best possible this is to analyze contracts and i just want to make sure that everybody knows this is not general counsel rogelio still is going to be helping us vetting someone you know the contract that we engage so whatever it is that we bring to the board and the goal was to be able to bring this to the board in october um so that we remember you guys approved a program manager that is still waiting for a contract since july so this has taken a long long time so if the board pleases if they if you allow us to say just find the firm right then that gives us enough breath to be able to bring to the board potentially something that makes sense for everybody by october thank you okay thank you trustee chavez uh right this is what so this is what i'm hearing from the other trustees so you're advocating to talk a firm into taking the job those five that doesn't make for a good combination uh first of all i don't believe that we want a company that might have uh not seen it that it was just an oversight i think we should do this search pass the wider net and just move forward us and so we we deserve to get a good firm who's willing to work with us if you do that if you if it would have been done from the get-go we probably would have had more than just the five that you reached out to it it needs to be done as soon as possible yes but we also need to get the right firm and not just be stuck with five who didn't respond in the first place who needed to be coached into taking the job that's it thank you i would be very careful putting words in any one of our mouths uh but i didn't say that but um vice president quintero and then trustee family i said this is what i believe yes so just waiting for the last speaker to finish um i i understand uh a board member of harano's comments or concerns and so i would suggest given the fact that you're the seconder that we go allow them to move on the five and if they don't accept none of those firms large reputable firms except then go ahead and authorize an rfp i'm assuming that's the way which would be able to move that's not what you want okay i'm glad i'm glad that's just that's what i understood before that it seemed like you guys wanted to open up a whole rfp that's going to go ahead and take up a month and that was my concerns yeah if that's not the case then i would suggest we move forward with dr bauer's recommendation of just having them go out there and look but from the motion that travis put forward it doesn't seem like that was the case so uh so at this point i would suggest we vote on the motion and then let it let it go however it will and then we can go ahead and bring back the authorization to go out there and find us a firm yeah are you okay mr mama i know you called the vote for the vote can we just vote on this and then move forward uh sure i was but the thing is i think i was basing on what uh rogelio said i'm in i could make a motion that we have right not yet we gotta vote on this first so everybody's just gonna say the question of call the vote for the vote now can we hear the question we'd have to vote on the actual calling of the question so let's just vote on it rather than calling the question are we okay to vote yeah are we all okay i was just gonna say i wanted to just thank dr bauer for her comments because that really helped clear up for me and and you know and like that's it i'll say for now awesome thank you okay so i'll call you as i see you on my screen uh trusty fab no trustee but no rusty chavez hi vice president quintero no and myself no okay so let's open it up trusty pam okay mo motion to adopt recommendation from the administration it would be more specific yeah motion to uh was it uh re uh motion to expand authorize the expansion of the search as uh as recommended by uh administration i have uh is that how um uh superintendent bower can you uh please repeat the request that you just uh requested from us so that we can put it in the order to allow staff to find a firm including the five but if they're not then extend the search for any other firm that matches the needs of the district as vetted by our general counsel and cbo okay so motion to approve you know what to expand the search to recall the five and to uh con and staff to contact other firms as mentioned by the superintendent just can we confirm with dr bauer that that motion accurately reflects what you're saying okay second okay all right so now i'm gonna hop for the vote on this one uh trustee pam hi uh trustee with gerano hi rusty chavez hi vice president quintero hi and myself i've had passes unanimously um okay thank you and next item approve resolution 10-21-22 outdoor equity grants program grant fund dr bauer thank you this is a very exciting um request we are asked by the outdoor education grant program from the state um to have more um the resolution approved by the board so that we can submit a grant application that will provide one of our sites and this in this particular case will be russo macanty with opportunities for students to have access to environmental education and to field trips to match this environmental education during the summer miss tano coley reached out to me with a request from the staff in russo mackint and they as a staff requested from the principal to be supported to be as an environmental education school so you know we wanted to make sure that we provide the adequate support for the staff and aligned with that we had the company that you have already approved that is helping us write grants brought to my attention this particular grant that will provide up to seven hundred thousand dollars in four years to support the program so the resolution before you is so that the board is aware that we want to apply for this grant it is a requirement for the grant application the grant is the october 4th and it's before the regularly scheduled board meeting so i'm respectfully asking the board to approve this resolution as presented to you to support the school motion to support uh what dr bauer just said again okay motion by trustee chavez second by vice president quintero i'm going to go ahead and open it up for uh any comments from the public wishing to address the board mr chavez if you can help us identify any members of the public wishing to address support on this item uh yes ma'am because at this time we have no public comment okay i'll wait a couple seconds and allow folks to press the button in case they were hoping to do we now still none okay seeing no members of the public wishing to address the board we'll come back to the trustees any questions comments or concerns on this item i think we need a second we have a second vice president give that a second okay i didn't hear thank you uh-huh any um other questions comments concerns from the board okay cnn we'll go ahead and take a vote trustee pam aye trustee chavez hi vice president quintero and myself i passed unanimously adjourning the meeting at 6 32 p.m thank you good night good night good night
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
good meeting board and staff hello staff members um on our hvac system um as a great applause we did have all of our hvac system service required for starter school um but for many circumstances such as the age of our universities i'm realizing a lot of our users are known to actually for having technical difficulties throughout the day and normally this is not a factor for us to have a quick turnaround to address them that do to hold it on most of the supply and items that i need to address the items are on delay um we are currently realizing a six to 12 week lag time on receiving parts that normally we just go to home people or other companies just to pick up um additionally to have a temporary solution we have started purchasing temporary units um we have recently just ordered 12.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
so we had i mean as everybody is aware this is just really reminding us of of all the transitions that we made last year and all the all of the asks that we had of our students so starting with online learning that was a huge adjustment and and parents and students and staff jumped in to make it the best that they could and then moving into hybrid learning with half on campus half at home another adjustment for our students we were very grateful to have students on campus but it was still it was a difficult transition but again parents and students and staff all worked together very well to make sure that that that it was it was successful for the kids we had new technology that was introduced last year and the students what we found were it has been amazing to see the change in students and how comfortable they have become in reaching out to teachers and counselors and principals email just to let us know if they what's on their mind and if they need help with something so that has been it's been wonderful to give them that technology and and let them have that avenue for communication and then coming back with our with everybody in masks and students obliged they i mean they did such a great job uh making that transition as well and then finally our final lap where we celebrated a difficult but a successful year with our students and that one was especially meaningful we had a retirement for mary lee cox last year so she is leading that final lap and that was that was probably one of the most memorable memorable final laps just ever there was so much uh i think probably relief that that year had been over and that we had gotten through it together but then just so much hope for the next school year as we were moving on but we also had a lot of accomplishments last year that i just wanted to make sure that we emphasize we had our navajo county spelling bee champion jack woods our physics and engineering club ranked top 20.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
for all for all buildings for all four both four or five is it five four we're not talking about mec right yes is that msc yeah okay so so 100 grand roughly yes okay still high buddy okay any any i'm closing this off any other old business i have uh one new business item has anybody uh terry has anybody signed up for the and with lori here i'm going to plug this for the um uh three rivers division dinner on that okay well count me in so so one also when you're done i have one thing okay go ahead um dr carrie i was just wondering i had talked to you about asking for the sros to come to a meeting and introduce themselves and tell a little bit about what they do and what they hope to achieve et cetera et cetera and you had said something about the october committee the whole it sounds to me like we're putting a lot on october committee of the whole so um i still would like that to happen i think everybody would enjoy that plus i think they need to meet the board members they've never met so i was wondering what we would do here now yeah it was actually i always look at my agendas and not to pack them too heavy uh and there's a lot going on the community the whole so what i might do is move that presentation i was going to have the high school along with ms riley give a presentation on uh our behavior behavioral discipline rss sro program and have them there at that so i may do that at the regular board so i haven't forgotten and i try to balance them out so maybe that's a better spot for them okay i have some questions first when is the uh the dinner the three representative what day is that again thursday october 28th october 20th and then i don't know if this is we'll go with new business but i know that i was talking to the previous superintendent and he said there was a plan for the athletics facilities that he left that um maybe somebody in the that one of you all might still know about that i mean i'd be interested in seeing that because i remember seeing it before and it was pretty uh the same doable and i just wanted to sit with somebody and look at it if you have it do you have a copy of it still i have yeah i i do have one that i remember presenting a while ago that included not only the football field but also a baseball and softball field right he that's what he said was yes and i and i do have that i'd be happy i can i can share with you doctor just uh just you just get as a powerpoint presentation right yeah yeah yeah yes i have it yes i want to i would like to sure well i can i can send it to you and then if you want to talk about it i'll be happy to go over with you and all that stuff too that that works okay okay yeah i have one thing too speaking of athletics it was brought to my attention we have to cancel a lot of um athletic games and things because of transportation i'm sure that's because there's no employees but i'm wondering i didn't have a chance to look at policies but um some of the coaches have mentioned if i don't know if there's parents could drive or if there's any rules against thinking outside the box so that we don't have to cancel games yeah i know that we have and i've talked to mr tobias about this too we have tried all avenues uh i think the only thing we really haven't tried are coach buses but those are really expensive you know everybody's running into the same situation there are the drivers are just not there and um all the companies are not only first student but all the other ones that are out there so uh i know mr dubais is thinking outside the box i don't know what other options there are to be honest with you i think you know parents could drive but there's a whole liability issue when it comes to that too and i and sometimes i just get real leery with that dr hall i don't know if you've got any thoughts on that i know you're involved in athletics uh i know my understanding with having parents involved is it's a liability for us and too much of one years ago when i was a student at 205 it was they were going to a summer league game and somebody died in a car accident and the school was liable for that because they were going to an event we at our district use coach buses i know last year we did i'm not sure about this year but i know last year we definitely used coach buses i'm not sure the cost of them or what company but um we could have used it because it saved us money from regular buses but it seemed to be pretty effective and i wonder how they're doing about drivers also oh that's a struggle yeah it's a struggle with drivers but with the coach buses that helped out i mean so so you think the coaching businesses are getting drivers because i'm wondering if they're getting drivers too because now they're getting a backup if i saw on tv today school had to cancel their junior high in high school because 33 bus drivers and whatever didn't show up so i mean i know it's across the board that's why i was wondering about coach buses if they're actually it could be i don't know that i don't know right now yes you haven't heard anything about that fast enough okay thanks regular school bus yeah that's a mess that's an issue yeah i can i can check out those type of transportation you know uh the the issue that happens with extracurricular activities is that is not reimbursable through the state so it's a straight cost that we pay so if there is additional cost of that we're out there now again i'm not opposed to that i you know within reason i think right you know and that so uh but i'll be happy to investigate that and look into it and see what we can do i appreciate i just was asked so i just brought it up but everybody everybody's the same way the transportation it's just it's terrible maybe you could look at it and put it in the next fyi sure sure kind of give the board kind of an idea of the cost disparity of you know but it's either maybe doing that or nothing so okay any other new business okay what's that next up is closed session and we do have closed session tonight and let me find the thank you laurie can i get a motion to go into closed session for the purpose of self-evaluation practices and procedures or professional ethics when meeting with a representative of a statewide association of which the public body is a member second roll call please brown is an eye mrs walters aye mr swanless aye dr hall aye mrs galbraith aye vice president rupert aye president albert hi okay we're in close session at 7 30.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
previously last week we received eight that we have been deploying to different sites and we've also invested in fans to provide those to the school side as well um today i'm happy to announce that we were successfully able to install the new ac units at the uh high school in paramount which has been down for over a year we will do a broader fixing measures to keep them going but we actually finally received the new units today and they were successfully installed thank you good evening i just wanted to share uh does my joy of being on campuses uh visiting classrooms visiting with nutrition services staff the social staff office staff and being on the ground with the buzz with the kids with the parents um is just the highlight of what we get to do um also want to announce that our education foundation the al foundation is going to be holding a fundraiser on saturday october 2nd uh we are very appreciative of the foundation uh they support many of our initiatives uh that uh happen in our school district uh not only at the student level but the staff level uh as well so i just wanna show my appreciation to the foundation for this i also want to join in on the congratulations to your years of services of our staff members uh across the district uh yes we have the mayor rocha or joe rocha former mayor 50 years we have so many so many staff members uh 40 35 30 25 just the dedication of our employees uh is it is amazing so just want to say uh congratulations to them thank you yes one of the things that um i did overlook was that i could congratulate all all of our employees who have been here for the amount of years that they have um their dedication and just their commitment to assist the unified is this priceless and we thank you thank you for that moving on to [Music] item number 9.1 which is discussion an action of legal counsel at board of education meetings during open session thank you uh so this item uh is on the board of agenda uh tonight uh to open up a conversation the possibility of having uh our legal counsel a present during open session at regular board meetings um the idea behind this was to add a layer uh for for us as a team uh to ensure if we had a question about process or procedure uh they would be there to help us navigate those um those particular uh situations and so tonight uh we just welcome the board to have a conversation about that and hopefully uh land on some kind of motion um to moving forward so okay so i'll reverse them um i was just my question regarding that is um from what i know we'll pay 250 per hour and he's here three hours and i'm not i'm not sure he's alive i can't see him i'm not putting anybody down but the last two meetings he was here and in three hours which is 750 he said one word one thing i mean i i i know the purpose of it and i know it's important but i think we should have him when we're going to discuss things that we know we're going to need him i i personally don't feel that we need to spend that kind of money every single meeting when he's on tv and then that's it i mean i i understand i'm just thinking i shouldn't say it's like a waste of money that's my opinion that's how i feel about it um good evening everyone i think for transparency state since we were we considered an agenda item um i think we should be on a person 30 around um when leading council started attending our board meetings because mr superintendent i believe the way we introduced the items if it seemed like a proposal when in fact we're currently in that state so being clarified for the public and our stakeholders where we are and when it started uh yes i believe uh the legal council began i believe it was two meetings ago so that would have been maybe i'm wrong maybe that would maybe no i think that would have been august 17th i believe i believe this is his third board meeting with us that's correct superintendent ortega [Music] and i brought this to the superintendent um we in previous school board meetings and it has come to my attention that we've been violating certain brown acts within the board meeting and therefore and with this is full transfer this is my first time being president on this board and i'm grateful for those but a lot of the times um there there's times where um you know we we turn to a board member and it it's important that we have um what is it uh um [Music] process and sometimes we're not doing that as a board and so to me that's a concern because within the next several months we're going to be we're talking about closing schools now we're talking about you know um the crva which is the redistricting we're talking about this so it's really really important that we don't look when we have a question we don't look to a cabinet member to the superintendent to a board member for support answers to a question where we can potentially be violating the prone act so it is really important how valuable it is for us to be able to have somebody outside of the board and outside of cabinet to be able to go ahead and if we have a question turn around point of order right these are the things that um i'm not experienced i'm learning but i'm passionate about what i'm doing and so we need a little help and that's how i feel that we can proceed and be able to learn at the same time and for us to be able to learn in my case you know it might take a few you know six months to a year this is not something that is set in stone but definitely that um a usb ausd needs at this point and so moving forward um right i think it's very important um like i said we've already in previous meetings it has come to my attention by another lawyer that we have violated and i don't want to be put in that position um as a board member that we are slightly violating the law and or certain things like that and so therefore full transparency that is the reason why um asked for this to be to be here um and so therefore anything and i think you know that that's that's a great reason but i wish we would have input or we would have known what he was going to come and be here and we have input on that on the discussion i hear you and i felt because we were going to start this crba we're going to start this whole um uh talking about the reconfiguration and therefore that's why it's on the table right now and we are having fun you know we're all twenty percent we get a vote we get a twenty percent of us and therefore right now it's right here out in the table and it is our time to be uh to have this discussion to be transparent right now i just shared why i thought it was important and as president yes i did make that decision to bring this course fourth grade meetings which we said august right because it was repeatedly and so you know like we would turn to one board member and then we turn to the super can you please ask the lawyers this and then okay let me go ahead you know so at this point right now it is here now and we here are the board that can make the decision we can have a say we can express how we feel about this and thank you mr rodriguez kenya board member um that is why i have friends of the board just to have a discussion about this yes may i ask a terrifying question only just for clarifying um so when uh when we are talking about possibly violating something um are we talking about robert's rules of orders of parliamentary that's one thing the brown act is something completely different um so i believe that it's it's the first bucket robert's rules of waters and parliamentary i just want to ask that question and make that make that clarity yes thank you and i stand correctly it is it is that the promising and the robertson rules of order and things that we have questions about for example you know something on the agenda items that we previously perhaps did not have them did not have a chance to ask it before and we are going to be making a decision and we are literally against the wall and so so to me i you know it is important to be proactive and i see it as being proactive and being proactive and having that is is something that we we can go ahead and move forward if the board decides or here we go and so that's why it's here on the table so i had a couple thoughts actually the first thing i was going to look to clarify was this the same sense that i have that mr ortega that you shared which is us complaining that our potentially completing uh parliamentary procedure with the with the um and as we i i would agree that there are definitely some a number of high you know substantive and highly consequential conversations and decisions that we're going to be making in these coming coming weeks and months and at some of those meetings i i would i do see wisdom in having legal counsel present when we are anticipating those conversations i i can see the value there to board member rodriguez point though as as we look at some of the let me let me tell the public none of these none of these meetings are boring but as we look at some of the meetings that we're where we are where we are um handling more of a mundane business that isn't that it's necessary and needed for us as a district i do question or wonder if if while i'm grateful for our legal counsel who is here and standing ready to respond to any questions that we have i also um recognize that there the the urgency with to which we need a response to those questions as we're as we are addressing some of the more mundane business uh that we have as a an organization i'm not i'm not sure that it warrants uh board member rodriguez you said 750 based off of you know 250 an hour but there are times when our meetings are longer than that right and so and so i i'm and then when we the urgency of having a response in real time um with our legal counsel if it wants to be that that amount of money and and and it does it does at least at least make me pause but before i feel comfortable moving forward with that i wonder if a better um use of resources would be for for us as board members to to recognize that that we would meet and agree to as a standard practice to uh be better trained in parliamentary procedures and so if we were to look at robert schools of orders if there were if there were trainings that we needed to engage in you know once a year or at once every two years or something along with however whatever the frequency that we determine so that we're better positioned to build that capacity within ourselves as a board and not needing to to literally spend tens of thousands of dollars a year um so so that so that we are we're following parliamentary procedures parliamentary procedures are important i i think that there may be more efficient means of getting there and more efficient use of our resources um i think throw this out there um we can also do you know one of the things that we can also do is why i think it's important that we're having this you know this conversation um [Music] you could rsp for a paralegal right um for this paralegal to be present if you did not want the actual lawyer to be here and i'm going for that on the table but that's a possibility that we as a board can decide we can do that do we know how how much the cost or how um and i think that um i i i think that we do inconsistently apply our procedure so i think if we all have the same training and have come to agreement about how we're gonna operate i think that can help a lot of situations i would also just say um i would prefer not to take action on this item because i just maybe give direction because then that will just that will give our president the flexibility to be able to call the attorney and if we start making actions and it might put her in a box where she can't you know she doesn't have that flexibility to decide when the person could come in but i think i'm hoping that you hear all of us saying that we think that maybe when there's a like a hot topic coming on then it would be appropriate to bring an attorney but maybe the better solution is what adrian reports let's look at a paralegal and what the potential cost for that would be can we also uh get a sense of what types of parliamentary procedural training exist if there's whether there's things that we can do through lego or or or csc um california school board association there's things that we can we can do for them can we get a sense of what some of those costs might be as well just so we can compare those um so on that front a couple of things uh we are set for our next governance meeting to get training on parliamentary procedures and i believe that is october 12th that's number one uh just a quick peek at our current attorney uh legal firm not saying that this is the industry standard i don't know but just looking at their the contract that we find with them their paralegals range from 150 to 230 an hour can you clarify what the cost is for um so or carlos you can speak to that what the cost currently per hour that we have our attorney on ortega if i can just raise a point i think we talked potentially about having a reduced amount for my services for the board meetings so when we're talking about this amount 250 is less than my my current rate and i think we also talked about the idea potentially of having a flat rate understanding that sometimes you're going to have short shorter meetings and sometimes you're going to have longer meetings and i think board member rodriguez pena is exactly right i didn't say much the last two meetings in which i sat in because typically the role as i understand it as i've been asked to to be here as by the board president is solely to provide parliamentary procedure to be the parliamentarian and if the board is efficiently running their own meeting there's no need absolute for me to interject or kind of jump into the conversation and the last couple meetings i've watched have been very efficiently run to just add a full context on that so uh typically uh it's 350 an hour and so 250 is a reduce rate again carlos would be able to speak into this more just could be looking at the contact that we signed with them paralegal services run from 150 to 230 phenomena so one thing i also want to bring up and i hear you guys what you guys are saying um as i've attended other school board meetings in other cities i i see their their attorneys actually present studying with them you know and one of the things that i've noticed um within our meetings is um for example i had motioned for for something and you know someone questioned wait can the president motion and everyone's looking at each other so for me i feel that there is a need um so then my next question is could we have a an attorney you know how they have doctors on call or or the um what is it that uh paralegal is that something that for example um you know if we have a big item yes we can bring the attorney in but if we can have a paralegal and this is the question i think for our lawyer um mr carlos um like when they have those yeah and in madam board president i don't see any problem with having somebody on call in particular when you have meetings they're going to be a little bit more complex you're going to tackle heavy issues so i don't think that's an issue um i do think that when you have an attorney especially um i'm helping the district with a lot of different legal issues it really is a two-fer here because sometimes i'm actually read into some of the issues that are happening and so i can kind of provide some background i think a paralegal is great to support other things that the district is doing but currently there's no paralegals working with azusa and so i would have to find a paralegal within the firm that could potentially be on call and make sure that that paralegal has have to have the expertise in robert's rules so i don't know initially if it'll be a great fit um but something i'm gonna have to look a little deeper into and just for clarity i just want to make sure that i understand and carlos that you understand so are you saying like for instance if we went with a recommendation that's kind of going right now like hey heavy items let's have carlos here for open session more mundane to use uh board member careers uh term we're fine without him because i'm just i'm not saying that's what we meant but on those means are you saying then like hey cardinals you're on call so something a hiccup happened it's like okay let's pause and let's call the attorney is that what you mean is that because i just want clarity on what that means yeah when we have a um pretty much to what board member recruits and fellows was saying that when we have a uh an agenda item where we know it's going to be heavy and bring them in but all the other board meetings like for example if we know it's going to be a light agenda um [Music] um and he really is not going to you know be uh needed if he could be a call for example there's sometimes i myself may ask a question like hey can this be done i'm looking at you we're looking at here we're looking here for answers and that is why i've asked for the attorney to be here because we're looking at each other like hey can we do this and we're looking at the audience and the audience is going like this or we're looking at board members you know we are board members and yes we are going to have that um that training in october but this isn't ever you know every two weeks we're having a meeting we're making decisions and like i said when i've been at other school board meetings at city council meetings the lawyers are right there ready any questions and sometimes they do just sit there and just kind of what you know um carlos just shared sometimes what he's working on with um human resources or uh with our cpo like latasha fall right with mot or something that we may have a question on he is already aware of what is happening and therefore we have a legal question about it he's already here and that was my point and that's why i asked him to come because if they had seen that there was a lot of meetings where you know board members were asked well can that be done or can we do this wait no can we do that and and honestly i mean we're human and i you know i've only been here about three years um and it's different being in the classroom and being you know in this center being out in the audience than being here and so i just want to be able as a board member all of us to be able to to handle um our differences meaning that like okay i don't think you could do that or this you know it's like no no let's not waste time on i'm doing all that let's let's just turn it over real quick if they're can we you know fade point of order can we do this because we know how can we proceed with this and then moving on and so what i can recall this thing is that um the majority of them what they're saying is that they are not comfortable with with them being here every single meeting but then what i am proposing is that we can have him on call for example such as if he is not attending but we do call him and since we do have a say we have a question right we call him and we utilize him for you know i don't know two three four questions for the meeting and that can be like for about an hour is there something that we can work out that at every meeting he can be like on call and that's what i'm putting out in the tape so does that mean if he is answering questions for one hour he gets to 250 dollars not for them right i think we would go ahead i was just going to suggest that i think we probably need to get a sense of what the what all the services are and then we can work something out but i think that to board member rodriguez pena's point um i wouldn't want to really bill for time that i'm not working so i'm not looking at any kind of minimum one hour and maybe what we can do is work something out where certain issues as they come up if they're problematic for parliamentary procedure you table the issue um and then you postpone any action on the issue somebody there in the room could text me hey we're gonna have an issue this is what's going on and then i can make myself available towards the later part of the meeting um also i i think to the madam board president's point i have seen uh legal counsel present um for quite a few different school boards and and city councils as well and i think it does help sometimes having the legal counsel in the room as opposed to by zoom um and so i i think everybody was gracious enough to allow me to participate via zoom but i think it might be better for the board if i was actually there in person for for these particular meetings that we're talking about that are going to be heavy with issues but but board member rodriguez pena i think we we can work something out where it's really only the time i'm working will be what's built to the district so i'm yeah one of the questions i had is how would that play out and so that that's helpful to hear you describe that for us or the potential of that i think there's more to be fleshed out to think through logistically how would that work out um i have found that at times when we have gotten caught up parliamentarily or parliamentarily speaking it has it has disrupted our meetings and and but this has the potential of being even more disruptive for toward our meetings if we're asking a question we're saying we're going to pause table this matter put a conversation out bring that bring the item back and discuss it later in the in the meeting we might be in an attempt to solve one problem we could be creating two or three other other problems so that's that's why i do want us to be be careful but i would say it's worth exploring and kind of looking through what what that model could look like something i'd also be interested to know is as we look at our legal what we pay towards legal expenses uh let's say annually if we were to add this in i'm also curious to know not right now on the spot but maybe we can be updated in a weekly update what is the what would the percentage increase be that we would be looking at with with these added services compared to um because it's one thing for us to look at it on its own but when we're looking at um comparing to what we what we might pay without it that would be that might be helpful for us to know and and understand as well as we're making a decision um but yeah i i even even the concept just be clear even the concept of having a paralegal which i'm grateful that we're gonna look into to see what that could be i'm i i would at this juncture without without the additional information i probably feel the same way about having a paralegal president as i would about having um a legal counsel presence just consistently and constantly in real time um but but there's definitely the opportunity for more information together another thing that i wanted to mention um that i feel that um that is being said and and i i hear you you know uh which is the cost but in reality if you look back in time the rostel project that school cost us close to eight to ten million dollars in legal fees and we still don't have a school um you know things like that where where we can learn from our past that if we be more proactive yes we do spend a little money and that was you know an example uh there's other examples where um things can come um again we're going through the reconfiguration i think that i've already said that but it is important that we be proactive and yes being proactive may cost a little bit of money but in the long run it will save us so that's that's all i have to say um i think it's important that we do explore and and i agree let's explore um you know something where what would it look like if um if we had him on call and i i don't think that that that was very clear um so we would if we were to call him since if we would have a parliamentarian question and that's what he would he feel like point you know what is it 0.25 so it'd be like 15 minutes or about two or three questions or whatnot and so um it'd be interesting to find out and again this is an investment i think um and i believe that um [Music] and i'm glad we're having this conversation um anybody have any more comments yeah which i'll make a request can we can we put this conversation on the at the governance study session on october 12th so that we can have um we can have a process question at a governance retreat where it really should be um and and maybe just hold off this finish this conversation there i just felt like we're going like i don't feel like we have a resolution right now and i'd rather move on to the rest of it [Music] actually um can i just ask why would you would like it for a governance meeting and not a regular meeting where we have more attendees because i think that this kind of question is a process question in terms of how we're in meetings and generally the best place that that conversation is that i've governed that's really the purpose of this in my life for the purpose of those of those meetings so it makes sense to have that conversation there i mean our televised i think we'll have as much audience at that meeting in any other meeting so that's really what because i think we've how much time we spent right now talking about this um and i'd rather talk about things that impact our students i think that this doesn't affect our students the way that we run our meetings and the way that we proceed during our meeting so it is important that we talk about it at a regular meeting so we can go the superintendent and i can go ahead and discuss that and then get back to our board we can go ahead and see here i have a question um for holy council since we the majority would like this not to be an action item so what do i do i think at this point you've had the informational discussion about the issue and what i what i hear is that it requires further study to answer several questions that the board members posed at this point and and not to put superintendent ortega on the hook but often a board president would refer to superintendent superintendent ortega and say can you please further discuss that and come up with some options and some potential pricing options um with legal counsel and then i'll have a conversation offline with superintendent ortega and then we can bring it back at the board president's direction we can bring it back to a subsequent meeting no action is necessarily required this is an information and or action item so we're moving on to the next item thank you for that and just just before we move on um it begs the question should i be staying for the rest of the meeting or should i sign off now and it sounds like i haven't yet been formally asked since you were asked to be here today i think it's only fair that you stay here until the end of our meeting thank you understood mr carlos um i i i don't mean to i'm not saying that you're not doing anything so you know i apologize that's how you took it i'm just i'm concerned about the money the money being spent you know not not that you're not doing anything or you're not doing your job so don't get me wrong and board member rodriguez pena while i appreciate they i appreciate that clarification i work at the pleasure of the board and i think you are absolutely 100 right and that's often what a parliamentarian does the parliamentarian's on call if there's a question so um i i work for you uh madam board president or madame uh rodriguez ford pena thank you sir yeah does anybody have anything else great then we'll go ahead and move on to consent calendar and it is from 11.1 to 11.5 thank you getting motion to move the consent calendar so really first by board member greer we have a second by board member rodriguez do we have any discussion and seeing that there's none let's go ahead and count our vote we have our student here and we have can we get the student preferential vote and it passes by zero since there are no items pulled from consent calendar we'll go ahead and move on to business and finance we have 12.1 approval of resolution number 21 322 annual delegation of an administrative authority to process routine budget revision adjustments and transfer that is so we'll go ahead and can i get in motion to approve 12.1 and please get a second we have any discussion on this item 4.1 please the transportation yes so apparently um is going through their way before they're upgrading their financial system and we are on our we are waiting for or we will be um transitioning to their um more robust financial system currently um the district operation if we want to make a budget transfer for example at azusa high school they wanted to purchase bleachers they had five thousand dollars in their supply budget but this is going to be uh something that's over their allocation they would have to put in the budget transfers make that purchase right now we cannot make that budget transfer until we brought the item to the board to approve it then they completely requisitions to make the purchase what this is given is the authority for the business office to do routine transfers between um objects and funds and then we will report all of our transfers that will come in has to be reflective in our first and second and number 40.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
last year earning 63 000 in new technology and equipment our eighth grade girls won the white mountain league championship and we received the sportsmanship award at the junior high uh for the year as well so that was another huge accomplishment and we also had we just there were a lot of social emotional uh supports that we needed to put in place last year because as uh ryan said mr gray said that there are a lot of kids that were at home and were trying to figure some things out on their own one of the things that i do want to thank technology for we have a social sentinel which is a program online that alerts us to concerning vocabulary in emails so we could flag different words that students were using in their emails and that helped us out a great deal it helped us to be able to intervene when students were having a hard time either with somebody else or if if we were concerned about their wellness so i want to thank them for that we also continued while we were online and in hybrid we had daily announcements that were posted online for students so that we could stay connected to them and we continue with those daily announcements you know we have our daily announcements at school this year as well so a lot of things were put into place last year that we knew would help us this year i also wanted to just mention the junior high staff they're incredible just they stay engaged they keep the kids involved so many different just positive things going on in the classroom and finding creative ways for the kids to stay engaged in their curriculum so moving on to we also we we realized that we were going to have some learning gaps after uh last year so this is just a kind of a comparison this shows you the 2019 azmerit results that we had and if you take a look at this that'll just kind of show you that we were really pretty even with the state as far as our as far as our achievement and then if we when we move into 2021 we see a bit of a gap and we anticipated that that gap would be there so we did see a gap between eight and ten percent in each one of our categories from um between ela and math so knowing that we have that we just there are a couple we put some goals into place so that we can meet the gaps that we have so our goals as a district we have four of those goals increase student achievement address the social emotional needs of our students establish excellent customer service and manage a safe and healthy learning environment so i really just want to focus for just a moment on those top two increased student achievement we do have some things in place this year knowing that we have those gaps we just kind of broke it out into what were what we are doing to help identify those gaps and to narrow them so we have more frequent data analysis and monitoring and remediation efforts going on we've actually added a position in math for math remediation we also have our title one reading and math classes in effect so that we can help target those students who are really who suffer the biggest gaps and close those gaps in our achievement more professional development mr grace also talked about this just giving teachers more of an opportunity in professional development to find different strategies that work in the classroom that are research-based practices and just keep everybody on the same page we are working on vertical alignment from kindergarten through 12th grade so having that vertical element we try to have transition between sixth grade sixth and seventh grade and eighth and ninth grade we're trying to incorporate more of those teachers to come together um in in professional learning communities so that we can also figure out those gaps between before k-12 and also being proactive with students who have a history of our excessive absences we had that quite a bit last year students with absences we've recognized those we're targeting those students just to make sure that we can keep that we can keep that in mind and then our social emotional needs of our students as well as our staff we do have we are very lucky to have miss montoya on miss montoya wright on our campus uh she is a blessing for our students she does work very well with those kids we have a list of students we well with 300 we have 300 students that we want to make sure that we are we are addressing all of those social emotional concerns that we have with them um so again we have some different things in place for that social sentinel is one that helps us out but we also have social emotional wellness trainings that are going on miss montoya wright is also she provides us with both youth and adult mental health trainings on our campus throughout the year so that we can help teach people how to help others and then address our staff questions and concerns promptly as they come up and also provide them with the resources that they need to be successful so that is our focus this year we have more as well as internal external customer service and managing a safe and healthy learning environment um one of the things in a safe and healthy learning environment is just making sure that we're addressing any bullying and hazing that comes up we do have a full student assembly that we we have right at the beginning of the year to really outline with them because sometimes they just don't understand that some of the things that they might be saying or doing are considered bullying and hazing so we try to address that with them right at the beginning and give frequent reminders to them as the year goes on this is just some information for our safe spaces and the free mental health first aid certification for adults and i have more information if anybody is interested in that and you can also email ms montoya for more information on that we are excited about this school year uh we're still early into it but we have a lot of things going on we have a ton of kids that are just super excited about being involved they want to be involved in clubs they want to be involved in sports and so we just want to keep encouraging them to stay involved thank you [Applause] courtney i have one question numbers-wise did we maintain what we had last year do we increase or did we go down we maintained we maintained we we are at the end of 2019 um at the end of 2020 we had 321 uh 316 students we had i think it was 308 at the end of last year we are at 300 right now 297 i think is our number right now all right thank you thank you great thank you okay our next presenter will be our high school principal mr lauren webb all right thank you so similar to the other two campuses that have already got given their presentation definitely last year was a year of change we made the best of what we could and the situation that we dealt with and and we came out positive our students you know they they had a great year even all the things that they had to go through some of the highlights that i want to hit on are some of we did resume the state testing we had a year where we did not do the azmerit or which changed to the azm2 so last year we resumed the state testing and we the high school was able to close that gap that we had previously with the state and how our our students scored so we had a continued academic and extracurricular success our ap program is very strong at the high school and very proud of what our ap students and teachers are doing with with that class and the the different classes in the program there and then finally i'm going to hit on some of our ccr our ccri points which is college and career readiness index with a state assessment when we switched to the azm2 in 2019 when we had the the azmerit scores for ela we were five points below the state average and 19 points below the state average of math so we made some adjustments in our classes we had our 10th graders for year raw year-long math and english and i was able to you know sub we still had some classes that were a semester long class if they were in advanced class but most of the student 10th grade students did year-round ela math at the end of the year when we did our testing with the azm2 we narrowed that gap where last year's results were only two points below the state average in both ela and math so that was a great growth that we were able to see there and we hope to continue to to see that actually close the gap and actually move ahead of where the state is on those scores extracurricular success we have continuing you saw some pictures with courtney and some of the fab lab the physics and engineering club they continue to be successful in what they do mr woolridge has a great program down there so they also won two more competitions this last year the innovation award for the solar go-kart team they went down to tucson participated in that event and the innovation award was a safe functional and more innovative than others that they had seen in that competition and they also had the solar efficiency award of how the input with the sun and output of the the machine that they were using they also submitted something with the nasa human exploration rover challenge previously they had won for the drive train in years past this last year they won for stem engagement so again national recognition for their programs that he's doing with our music programs continue to receive superior ratings and with also just things here locally and then world strides they were able to not last year but the year before go to florida and participate in the world strides music festival they receive superior ratings there they continually receive superior ratings when they have large group festivals so we have a lot of kids that are involved in some of the extracurricular activities not necessarily the athletics but they have other options that they can participate in at the high school so we encourage the students to to be as involved as they can and that's what the picture of the solar gold cart that they took down to u of a athletic success is last year we had state championship team in the boys soccer a lot of different accolades that that went down the list with coach of the year conference player of the year and then they also had conference first team all conference players in the girls soccer program they had um one all-conference first team player and then two all region first team players and then look at the football they were co-champions last year and then several of the student athletes were team on the recognized for their all region first team and then we had coach of the year which was a great recognition for coach london on his last year you know here at blue ridge before we brought him back into the weight program but he retired and it was nice to be able to send him out with a region coach of the year and then his son pj was player of the year more of our athletic successes girls volleyball again we had some of the girls that were recognized on the first all-region team and then boys basketball we had one all region player baseball we had a couple that were on the first all the all-region team and we also had a region defensive player of the year softball we had recognition of couple girls on the team there the last recognition is the this was compiled by the sports 360 az and they do a tally of those students that are student athletes with i think a 3.8 or higher gpa as far as the all academic team recognition is this is throughout the state so we had two in in football six in volleyball and 12 and cross country and they only did the fall sports they didn't do the spring sports but it's a great recognition to our our student athletes and how well they perform in the classroom our ap courses so this year this last year we were able to pick up two more courses so now we're up to 11 ap courses we had 73 students enrolled in ap classes and i when i looked at that number i wanted to take it into a deeper dive we there were 73 students but their actual total number of ap classes that they took throughout the year was 180 so you have students that are taking more than one ap course at the end of the year they had 108 exams when they can take the ap exam to see if they qualify for college credit the average score of our students that took the ap exam was a 3.1 or higher if you have a 3 or higher on those then you're able to get college credit so 69 of our kids that took the ap exam had a three point at a three or higher and so that's a total of 75 credit college credits earned so ap is your advanced placement this is a nationwide program and they have established curriculum that is the same no matter what school you go to and at the end of the course you take a end of the course exam if you choose to and if you have a score of three four or five then you can get college credit and that college credit goes with you in most cases to whatever college that they decide to go to and finally in our college and career readiness index 97 courses now this is just focusing on our seniors 97 of our seniors passed a college level math science social studies or foreign language course and then so that includes our partnership with npc our dual enrollment classes talent classes or it could have been with our ap classes that are here on campus the next one were 98 of our seniors passed a cte course which they got college credit and they can earn it with an a b or c with mpc so those would be excuse me something like cabinet making they can do that for dual enrollment and get college credit for that within a cte class there's multiple classes that they think you can do there so 98 students got a college credit for that one and then the industry recognized credential that would be if they have the welding certificate that they can go through and get that that certification there's a multiple list of different certifications that our students can get so we had 30 seniors get the certification or license through that cte program and then the technical skills assessment is a more defined level like if you take your sports medicine class you take the end of the course if you take all three years of sports med at the end of that you take the technical skills assessment and then that would the the end outcome would be your sports trainer certificate for that tsa so our seniors did a great job this last year even though it was coveted it was in a new environment they had a year and a half of craziness but they still had a great year and a lot of successes so we're really proud of our seniors last year point courtney pointed out some of our district goals same thing that she was demonstrating we do have the first goal was the increase in student achievement we have the avid program which will hit all of our kids even though it specifically will want to focus on helping kids make that determination that i you know what i can do this i can go on to the next level in college some of our kids may not go into college they're going to get the tools that they need to be successful and so all of our teachers are going through the professional development and training so all of the students will be able to benefit from the the skills and goals that they would get in the avid program and that also helps with our tsi our targeted school improvement we have students that are again our english language learners our special ed students and our native american students who the state have identified we need to focus on these groups so we're doing that focus through the avid training and teachers are learning the tools and the things that they need to do in the classroom to be able to help those kids make the growth that they need social emotional needs with the thank with the help of the board and dr wright we're able to increase our student support positions we're able to bring in some more help up in the front office at the high school so our excuse me our numbers at the high school we had 680 students last year this year we're at 740 so we do have a big year population and we're seeing the the needs that the social emotional needs of our students say there are higher and they're coming in with more severe problems and so it's been helpful having more support up in the office to be able to work with those students as they bring those those concerns and those different situations that they experience at home at school wherever life brings those problems there they're able to come in and get some support and help for that and the other last two we definitely want to continue our efforts in improving the customer service and how our our front staff the teachers everyone has that interaction with our customers and that's the the students and the parents so we're working on those and also doing our part in managing the safe and healthy learning environment and a lot of that goes with from the beginning with the bus drivers to maintenance and then our part in the classroom to helping give the kids just a safe place to be and that's it on the high school yes sir yeah for sure so two years ago we had gretchen knox she was an appointment to west point academy to to air force academy and so we had you know she was actually um won our valedictorian and she was a you know she was a state she went to state for the first year for a female wrestler so and she did great academically so here's a indication of how well a kid can do and then she got the air force academy appointment last year we had michelle basinger who was a west point academy appointee so two years in a row is pretty rare to have from a small school so we're really proud of our students and what they they can accomplish here [Applause] okay our next presenter would be for special ed and that's rebecca frase good evening and thank you board and community and staff for the time that you've allowed us to to brag about ourselves luckily i'm fortunate enough to work with three wonderful prince principles who are guiding their schools incredibly and all of my special services students are affected by that wrong one there we go so from the office of exceptional students we um not only do students with disabilities we also are the umbrella for the gifted students so any exceptionality so here's our covid i happen to share a a campus with our developmental preschool so it's easy to get some pictures and they're so small it doesn't always show their faces so the confidentiality is still maintained so during coveter after with the huge lockdown we started to come back we played outside instead of on equipment with pool noodles and balls we wore our masks and we still attended to these kiddos and sometimes we learned outside developmentally this is a good trick too because occupational therapists would tell you to begin writing in this nature is a good idea so we would take our little ones out there and and do some fun stuff with them we even zoomed our meetings and i remember you know making our jokes about we felt like the brady bunch it was a good thing we zoomed our meetings we kept up with every iep meeting even though sometimes we were closed sometimes we couldn't have the parents on campus but it kept up the communication with those families and it also kept us in compliance with state and federal mandates here's a graph that is difficult to see and i tried to change it a couple times this graph really represents the different disabilities and it starts with specific learning disabilities and then on the bottom of that is orthopedic impairment um ironically most districts and this these are national numbers most of our students come from these speech language learning disability other health impairments are most of our students ironically when you look at other health impairment sometimes that comes with a lot of behavior and the state doesn't always recognize these categories when it comes to reimbursing us into the individuals with the disability education act grant they more so will pay us back and reimburse us on these categories down here of whom we have very few kiddos these are your multiple disabilities sometimes your autism and things like of that nature but those kiddos with behavior we still have to have staff so we still have to pay out as a district to make sure we may maintain safety with all of these students right now at the elementary school we're down two special education teachers at the high school one and i think that we do pretty well at paying these individuals but they just aren't coming and so those are still posted i know mr grace and i have reached out to colleges trying to find someone getting ready to finish their student teaching or others that are in the educational field that will help us out a little bit this is something that we achieve at the end of special education is that the kids learn to be self-advocates that they learn to be confident in what they can do and that they can be successful in life and so we teach them about overcoming embarrassment accepting help and relying on your advocates because and we introduce them to community advocates vocational rehab post high school that will help them gain employment or education for their education if they choose and so what's next the next focus for this year is going to be in gifted accountability we do have a good gifted program in horizons but i as a director really don't know a whole lot about what's going on and we need to make sure that those are meeting some state mandates i just found out that um much of the testing that they used was out of date so we replaced all of that because we can't use out of out-of-date cognitive assessments 504 also now falls under my umbrella which is much like a special at iep but it's more on the medical part for kids with diabetes and other medical issues and so we're learning a lot about that right now taking some training to make sure that we're using best practices in that category as well this year is our first year of self-monitoring usually we have the state come in and monitor our special education files for compliance and it's a tedious job as they make sure that we've dotted every eye and crossed every t this year i get to do it myself which means i get to pull 30 files and try to figure out what the state wants because they change it every year and make sure that our documents are in compliance then the state will come back and take a handful of what i've gone through and see if i'm lying or keep me accountable so far our monitoring has gone fairly well and so we're hoping and praying that this year's as good as it has been and that is all from the special ed department thanks [Applause] thank you sometimes i know that job can be almost overwhelming but thank you excellent job thank you the uh i think it's appropriate we give all these guys a round of applause right now if you don't [Applause] and a great big thank you again from the board uh for the hours and hours that you spend in in taking care of your jobs and responsibilities appreciate it so much this school would not be what we are without you we can't operate without you and thank you very much very very much okay the next item on the agenda dr wright you want to take over its recognition of our semi september vr star award yes uh courtney can you come up and talk a little bit about heather fuller she is our br star for this month and um she's been under the weather but working and so she's excused for tonight we'll get her plaque tour soon yes thank you i would love to talk about heather she is incredible um miss fuller has she's been in the front office i think she's worked for the district about 10 years is that 10 to 12 years she's been with the district for quite a while um and she just knows the community she sees people coming in she recognizes them and every and they feel they feel like they have found a friend when you know they see an old friend when when they come through our front door she's just very welcoming she also helps our we have a new employee in the front office as well and she just helps to guide her she is wonderful to all of our staff members and she just stays on top of everything all the time so i'm just um we're super happy to have heather and um and blessed uh so thank you for that recognition i think it's very well deserved we'll make sure we get her picture and her award right all right thank you okay board the next item on the agenda that we'll be voting on is a consent agenda and the consent agenda is in is an accumulation of items like payments of materials equipment salaries and services in reviewing the consent agenda is there one particular item or a particular group of items that you would like to with withhold and draw and vote on separately is there any discussion regarding the consent so if there's no consensus i have a motion to accept items uh item number two which is a consent agenda which consists of items uh 2.1 through is it 2.13 so i have a motion i have a motion from jennifer chuck ii all in favor that would pass unanimously okay the only other item we have left on the agenda is a superintendent's report dr wright will turn some time to you and thank you and i'll ask the the mr president if i have some latitude when i'm discussing curriculum because there's a couple of adopted school board policies that involve curriculum and i can probably share some light the ones that we the the 59 pages that we had to read yeah the uh what i want to do is i'm going to talk about the district-wide effort to align the curriculum and i'm asking for some latitude with your permission i'll proceed so before i get into the alignment of the curriculum the board did a couple things night one it adopted a regulation under the regulation i-h-a-m-b-r and that's life family life education what they had required is frankly a lot more investigation and transparency and involvement from the community boards are not required to adopt this regulation our school board adopted it our philosophy has been if there's something that's more inclusive that involves the community and should we will even if it's more time consuming what the board adopted tonight under the family life education in a nutshell sex ed requires an advisory committee to be established that advisory committee is composed of stakeholders inc including community members teachers students and a board member these meetings must be held in open meetings they have to be noticed two weeks in advance and then whatever is going to be taught with this committee is going to eventually agree on which the school will present and the committee can give feedback and the committee's got to decide what it is that they want to present that has to be sent to the board for a 60-day review and it's going to be put on the website it's online and in person 60 days before the board decides so if the impression is that something was passed you didn't have an input that's not true it's just the opposite the board has left right after that 60 days there's another hearing another public hearing isn't there where that's discussed and then it's that has to be a week before the board meeting two weeks before weeks before so there's a ton of discussion we won't begin this process the entire course is about uh one quarter and so likely given this the flow of the year it's probably going to happen in the last quarter of the year which is really what april may and so uh the discussions will begin in november or december the committee will be formed any of you here that have an interest let us know if you would like to participate the committee needs to be uh representative of the demographics in our school and area which it will and then it'll it'll it'll take time i've had the good pleasure of probably organizing and leading a half a dozen of these last seven years accurate description and what i found is it's a great opportunity for the community to learn more about what the schools are actually doing than what you might read on social media and for instance i've heard an an elderly gentleman say that a kid got expelled for saying god bless you when someone sneezed that's never happened in the history of blue ridge and never would in fact there's a moment of silence for prayer we say the pledge every day and i've been told 100 times we don't we do we say the pledge so if you want the information my office is always open i'm available for discussion but in this matter and these important matters the board's approach has always been let's get them community involved it takes more time far more time consuming but it also i believe as does the board if i might speak on their behalf an inclusive process is far superior than something that just passed in midnight so that's our approach the second one would be sensitive information the statute has been passed by the arizona legislature that essentially prohibits the following it's teaching that one race or ethnic group is inherently moral or inherently intellectually superior to another with another race or an individual by virtue of their race or ethnicity or sex is inherently racist sexist or oppressive whether consciously or unconsciously an individual should be discriminated against and receive adverse treatment solely because of their race or their ethnicity it goes on what what this is is elements of what commonly is probably referred to as critical race theory um a statute has been passed that prohibits that now does that mean the discussion of race isn't going to come up of course it will yeah the the civil rights movement happened it's a part of american history it happens there it's it's talked about um the civil war happened slavery occurred all those things but this is a statute that the board has adopted by policy and it's a statute so it's not a suggestion by the way all the stuff we accepted 99 of it are statutes that we're going to comply with the board is saying yes we will comply and so the next one says an individual should feel you cannot teach this an individual should feel discomfort guilt anguish or any other form of psychological distress because of their individuals of their race ethnicity or sex and uh the next one is that a meritocracy which it means being promoted based on your merit or what you've done such traits is hard work and work ethic are racist and sexist inherently so these are the core of what the state legislature believes is associated with critical race theory it can't be taught so that is i uh school board policy i am as in mary be as in boy and that's uh controversial teaching i we have all of this will be on the website all these policies now that they're approved will be on our website and they're open to review if you want kind of a a quick sheet i can make a couple of copies of whatever policy you want leave me your address let me know what board policy or issue it is that you have an interest and i'll get that sent to you i'm also willing to visit with you after the meeting tonight if you have specific questions and then next we're working on curriculum ryan courtney and lauren have been working and rebecca by the way with our exceptional students have been working all four together to make sure that our students at the very top high of the achievement their needs are met like the young lady is going to west point our should our kids should be able to qualify to go to west point if they want to and then the students that are really struggling we have students that are not they don't touch they don't talk they're they can't move we have them all over the spectrum all those children are important to us and they all have distinct needs and our goal is to meet everyone's need and they i'll add that public schools are probably doing the best job they have ever they keep getting more and more mandates that are unfunded and are struggling just to make everything work if you think about the the last summary i sent to the board we're we're working through about seven major issues right now so curriculum alignment has to do with our first goal which is increasing student achievement we want to make sure we're teaching at this at the next grade level so to put it very simply sixth grade the curriculum should align with what they're going to get in seventh grade so they're prepared seventh and eighth and all through the the whole spectrum that's a vertical alignment horizontal is all the grades should be teaching the same core subjects and also principles within those subjects so that's curriculum alignment it's a ton of work i think last time i checked there's 750 standards that you're supposed to teach these kids in 182 school days it's a tall order and by the way they come to us in all shapes sizes and from every demographic group and so it has never been more difficult i've never been more proud of a group than i am of our teachers administrators the last couple of years they've been put in an impossible position and we have not had one teacher quit because of covid we have not had any of that we have had uh teachers show up and put themselves at risk if you remember 18 months ago we didn't know what to expect but our teachers working very hard to support all of these kids i'll also add our schools our buses and food program have delivered a half a million meals in the last 18 months one half million if you include us with show low we've been we've still served over a million mills between show low and blue ridge and denise's school buses going around dropping off those to kids that are otherwise would not be fed that's a pretty it's a pretty big order so yeah we we have all these other things that we're doing and by the way you need to teach the kids so we're talking about the curriculum a little bit today and that's an important the alignment is going to be a year-long effort from our four principles sped and campus with a team from every campus and then we've also will create a committee as well we involve the community that's always been our way we'll continue to do that on uh does the board have any questions on curriculum alignment or comments okay i have so many notes over here i've confused myself okay the next one is the girls and boys athletics our teams are off to a strong start blue ridge has had a long standing tradition of outstanding athletics and i'll say extracurricular including our music programs and we're off to a strong start the covet update is this uh the numbers in our area snowflake show low pinetop lakeside are the highest around they're starting to level out thankfully our hospitalization rates are very high it's starting to level out the we're having cases every day at the schools we haven't had what's constituted as an outbreak yet but we are getting very close to having to implement stage two so if i'll just if i might remind the board our objective is to keep our schools open we want to have a place a safe place for kids to go stage one is school as usual as usual as the new normal can be stage two is you're still coming to school they're being fed and they're being supervised and we're providing group instruction because we're going to be out we have teachers yesterday we have today we had nine of our elementary teachers out yesterday i think we had six at the junior high and an equal number at the high school there comes a point where you don't have enough teachers to have normal whatever normal would be a customary class those kids will still come to school they'll still get fed but they'll learn in groups and learning labs and we'll do our best to keep the classes open when it comes to the point we do not have enough staff to maintain that level of instruction then we'll go remote learning only that's the third phase god forbid we have too many people sick and we can't support instruction we would have to have schools closed that's the last option and we hope we don't have to exercise either three or four these phases are also on the website if you just log on to brusda.org you'll see an announcement in it and it'll review that for you my county call what the county is tomorrow 11 11 a.m last week we saw a little bit of a dip and we're hoping to see if that trend continues we're hoping to make it to the fall break which is a week first week of october and then be able to come back and finish our semester uh i don't have any other information other than that uh mr president if the board has any other areas in these that i might address i'd be glad to do so another question is chuck jennifer concludes my report thank you in there all right well thank you thank you for attending us today we are not having call of the public right now because of the uptick in covet so we kind of keep our crowds down a little bit this is on youtube you can go to br and uh get uh information rotha off of this meeting you can watch this meeting again on our youtube channel so if there's nothing for dark to write we'd have a motion to adjourn a motion from chuck a second from jennifer all in favor thank you very much
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
um for the viewing public uh this will probably last at least an hour maybe an hour and a half and then we'll come back we'll have no other action items and just adjourn so thank you very much can i get a motion to adjourn all in favor say aye aye all opposed okay we are adjourned
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
so then the board of education would see the transition after the fact that after it's done already yes apparently if i'm being honest currently that's already happening but what's happening is we will do the transfer but the sites will never see their transfer put in place and so we're actually having approved requisitions for negative lines and then that's more of a cleanup process to make sure we truly didn't overspend and then i'm also reading here where it says it's not to exceed 20 million dollars is that is that like the cut off that you can for the year without approval over the board of education yes one year but there isn't let me say it differently uh there's not one transfer that a district could do that would equate to 20 million dollars this would just be up to essentially we can have the authority that growth here will be making transfers and the cumulative amount cannot exceed them [Music] so we could make it greater we can make it smaller it's just with the authority to uh uncomfortable with the figure not the process i understand the process but i am i truly understand have any more comments so how yes how would this process be any different than our current process that you think so right now if using the same example this is a high school want to put a transfer from their personal account to purchase and supplies for the students they can put in the request we can actually process the uh transfer and that day they will be able to make that purchase for those supplies right now they have to wait until we get board approval then they make the first look their allocation that they were already awarded so our all of our sites received um funding per student so that they could have a discretionary account and then they tell us we're going to hear hey natasha put it in the supply account hey i'm going to buy technology but then things change and they can't make that change happen until we bring it to board even though this is already their funding that they were allocated and then and then that was like the next question was and so then all of these all of these changes will come to the board right yes ma'am and they happen next to zero so it's not like all of a sudden azusa high school and they have four thousand have been here they could purchase from ten is this for all of the schools yes all schools all funds so even the employees and what would um so what would happen if the board did not occur then we would go to the we will remain in our current practice where scientists are putting a request for budget transfers and they would have to wait to realize those transferring to the next four agenda and how would that affect how would that affect our students well i don't want to say that it will affect the students but if you get delayed members using their items because we'll have negative funding lines so what did you say that we um at that point did that's the purpose of a special meeting with this 24-hour reading if necessary that something had to get done before the next one reading are those that think about natural constitutive emergency meetings or especially the differences special or emergency meeting i think it's just not probably more especially just 24 hours notice i think it's also important to know i like what tasha was saying um including myself we all set up our budgets based on what we think is going to happen this year and then oh man like this i i didn't anticipate this but i don't have enough money in that line item so now i have to have to move it um and so it's about um this happens um i wouldn't say frequently like every day but it happens with with some uh occurrence and so just that that purchase or that um delivery or that service that just has to be put on hold until we have our board meeting to do that um sometimes we're talking about hundreds of dollars sometimes thousands of dollars depending on what specifically uh it is and so this is just to expedite uh those services and those and those materials uh not only for our sites but our departments as well you said you said sometimes it's hundreds sometimes it's thousands just to be clear so it's never been tens of millions never and if i can do a perfect example um our code funds we did not have those funds at the time the budget was about it when we received those funds we were starting to spend those plans but they were never put in our financial systems until we brought that together so that means in order to find our standards we have to allow negative funding transactions we are producing purchase orders with no funding allocated we knew we had the money but that's not best practice because ultimately if you forget you're going to spend the money twice and so this is putting parameters in place to ensure we're not free that's a perfect example of maybe what a high high end could look like can you speak to maybe what at that point what was the height of those negative transactions we've never since i've been here and i've only been here a year we've never had anything beyond 1.5 million as far as making the purchase and that was literally providing chromebooks or something like that so because i wonder to sort of remember our biggest famous point here here one thing you said before maybe as the conversation has evolved you you've shifted on this but you said you're comfortable with the process but some of the numbers become comfortable yeah um instead of pushing this back i wonder if that is giving anyone else any degrees of pause um can we look to approve this with the caveat that we adjust those numbers and discuss what those what those more appropriate numbers would be yes sir sure program mr malda i heard you say that the 20 million dollar shoulder is at the discretion of the district so can you provide insight as to how you propose that number in particular is that based on overall budget size um a percentage so we operate over 120 million dollar budget um and so we just figured 20 million which is just that um depending on like we know for a fact right now our esr allocation is 20 million um once we receive those allocations we want to be able to budget and spend that right now you would not have that little reason to do that so that's where we started with that number thank you and my full question is um i'm i'm glad that we're having this discussion um but i think for me knowing that the checks and balance is already in place with budgeting and allocation and allocation of sites um i haven't seen anything that would give me cause to think that we're overextending um and i'm trusting the process here among cabinet and what's appropriate board approvals i i would be in favor of um enabling our systems to be more efficient to be able to get supplies and equipment into the hands of students and teachers and really relinquishing that local control to the sites knowing that we have a strong process in place thank you and i agree with sabrina i think for me the key pieces is the fact that it's safe that non-routine budget revisions still must come to the board so that makes it very clear that these are just routine items okay so when i'm hearing i'm hearing both um i feel that ford is comfortable with this but i do hear um two board members or with board members saying that they're not comfortable with the amount um but when you clarify it and when you share that it's 120 million and being saved um so um do you think moving forward right so it's only been 1.5 but now we're having all this money for our provide i [Music] do you think that they will reach 20 million i don't think that one time but then he was because not at one time and there's always a record checks and balances and documentation correct yes ma'am and i can also we can also incorporate on board updates of budget transfers and importantly that that also helps with the movement of the items i just want to clarify because the the resolution doesn't it says it says an individual budget revision could be up to 20 million and the total is 59.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
okay because i thought you guys were all saying that 20 million would be the total over the year well i'm just going to suggest just to move this along so i mean if you want to work with a different level you may demotion so you have to you have to remember motion otherwise let's just focus on the table okay i think we'll go ahead and move forward i'm thank you sorry about that we have a student our student preferentials yes great and it passes four one we'll go ahead and move to item 12.2 gratification approval of compulsion agreement between the susan universal district and deborah hammers sorry 12.2 we have a first fight board member rodriguez canyon we have a second five board member prayer any discussion but yeah i have a question in terms of the consultant um so when it says that she will be evaluating recommending changes um what [Music] okay great and so when you say no options are we looking at maybe [Music] this is all we offer just this one would you need more what exactly is this consultant going to be doing for our district and for our students so she will be assessing our in total our total nutrition services operation um she started on monday where she did a staff training for all our nutrition service staff will be incorporating safety training as well and we'll do proper food handling um we will be assessing our meal distribution our meal options our meal options and we will find ways to be more efficient with our operations as far as the presentation of our food and the selection of our foods who selects our foods for our students right so we're hiring this this consultant and you're saying you know so she's gonna come to to help us you know the selection of the food so who is responsible for for selecting the students meals currently right now i'm directing nutrition services prepare their meals and so the consulting will work in collaboration with our directors that we can have other ideas to see what other options are out there other options so when you say other options what do you mean better so right now we provide most of almost all of our military package um so there's other options where we can actually prepare meals on site versus having pre-packaged meals um we can incorporate safe ways of having on top of our options um exploring more options on our meetings such as vegan options as well um we just want to evolve and there's a several options and i think in both collaboration of their brains we can take our practicum to the next level and um i remember there was one year that um [Music] when we had our previous uh director there was taste tests [Music] that will be incorporated yes and we have the students choosing and so i i don't know what the high school is but sometimes they they don't eat because they don't like the food and so i would would really like their their input and if you think that's going to happen sorry [Music] yes we have a comment by our school um [Music] uh our schoolwork our student representative ms canna um i know that someone did in fact visit us and asked what we would like as like um students they asked what kind of meals we would like it for preparation for the school year um so i think we also have our comments on that i think it's great that when we're considering bringing on a consultant as an outside resource to evaluate our program i think the piece that might be missing in this document which is spurring my colleagues questions is what are the specific goals or intentions around around the contractor consultant so um i as being as one voice i would like to see a little more detail in the scope um going beyond you know imagine advice on the official service program i'd like to see some goals and examples of activities of what this consultant is proposing to do the verification is the this is something that you would like moving forward i would like to see that um incorporated as an addendum to this this agreement that the spoken service be include more detail in terms of functional areas if it's menu planning if it's fresh food options those types of broad yet defined categories okay and dr bo i just wanted to clarify is that a motion to amend the original motion to approve this this uh action before the board yes mr vegas um how should i voice that and i wanted to clarify if you're making a motion to amend at this point then you would need a second on the motion to amend and then if the board approved the motion to amend if there was a majority of board members then that would be the the motion that would be standing in the original motion to approve um the the action that had been recommended no longer be there so i just want to clarify for for your motion to amend i just want to make sure it's it's clear what would be added to the current recommendation thank you give me a moment to collect my thoughts so i can write it down and be able to save that for the record give me one question should you get in a moment yes [Music] what is her background or she especially is she specializes in menus or nutrition the yeah of arcadia unified school district uh she actually hired and trained stella our own director she actually actually all the directors here with the exception of maria she actually trained them over the course of her career so she is well over she does all the nutrition services oh okay i'm just going to say i'm a really big fan of our canadians they're known for so now my challenge is to make sure we say that [Music] i would like to thank carlos thank you for for um [Music] for interjecting um on this and this is i'm just going to give that example right now we just had this happen i i didn't know how to proceed this is something that i just learned today so thank you um board member bo for uh for speaking on this behalf i actually um one of the things that well she's so collecting with us um with the previous uh cabinet that we worked with at the beginning of our of my turn was just that that all of the contracts that come to the board with independent contractors should have these things we need to know you know what is the goal but what is the end goal what are they going to do and at the end did they accomplish what they said they were going to do we're going to pay them but did it happen and so this is one thing that i would like to bring back um i know miss blatant while you were not here when he has board directed our cabinet to do this and so i i would like to bring this back um so that way we we are transparent we are holding our consultants accountable um and making sure that they follow through and what they said they were going to but then i also think they would be helpful that we knew you know where they came from or what other districts they served in a little bit about their background you know who's rushing out behind they're hiring this person that would be good for us to know also and on top of that um one of the things that we have said before as well is you know did we hire her could we have an rfp go out and do we have other contractors and this is just in general not just this one if we have other contractors or you know what were their qualifications right or did we just call her up or all this consultant up and say hey we have this going on do you want to come and you know i want to be able to have equity and transparency here in our district and i think it would be really really important for us um and it just so happens that um you know this is a good example that we have these rfps for our consultants to be able to go ahead and bid for for these um jobs that we are giving these individuals that are going to come service our district specifically for consulting services you wouldn't go well which you know you would you typically it's um just for the service of the need of the district you reach out to the entity or the organization um if there's other companies you could with two proposals or posts if that's the desire but that is not a requirement so that's something that um i know that we in our previous uh meetings we as the board had asked cabinet to do um for consultants and so i think foreign there are conversations that we had a couple of years ago where we discussed some of this i i think what's most important from this is yeah when we have a consultant just clearly communicating what the expectations are what the desired outcomes are and ensure that there is one of those success indicators so we can determine that those that came and and were here to do a job that they were successful in the job that they did so so adding great levels of very generally i think is a good idea we did discuss that in the past and we haven't come away from that so if we can re-evaluate how to bring that back into the mix would be helpful um i do think that it is it is a good idea for us to bid for or um or some of our our vendors but i don't i don't know that it's always appropriate across the board um that's there are when we were having some of those some of the conversations i want to say we were talking about like something i'm mistaken because it was a while ago but it might have been some of the construction projects that we were looking at with uh measure some of our bond money so so because of this i wonder if this is different than i would imagine this is different than that um so maybe we just make sure we add a layer of i'm i'm not suggesting that we don't already but that we ensure that there are layers of thoughtfulness that are that are there when we determine if we need to uh put out a bid and we have multiple kind of bidders for different things that we're working on or if it's more most appropriate to just contact a particular agency exactly just speaking right but no i'm not i'm i'm i don't think i don't think that that wasn't i it appears that that was following this instance so in this instance i would not make i i don't feel any less comfortable because i don't have proof that there wasn't a page for this there could be other things if there were other items that we were discussing i i might not say the same thing but in this particular item i'm not concerned that we don't have multiple uh bids for this it just tastes bad for president i'd like to propose an emerging motion to approve the contract of 12.2 to for the agreement to include a an addendum that states a more detailed scope of work including but not limited to management advice around fresh food options and menu planning can we get an emotion to approve the addendum well i'll check it i will second remove [Music] okay so to repeat my motion to propose amended motion to approve the contract with deborah including for the agreement to include an addendum to the agreement to include but not limited to a detailed scope of work or fresh food options and many planning and it's accepted by the chair we have a sending by chris gonzalez did you go ahead and cast our vote so i reckon is this is this do you want more discussion no no no no this is an amendment to and i'll just jump in there what i understand too this is an amendment to the original motion the original main motion was to approve the consultant agreement as it is currently written um i understand dr beau's amendment to add a provision in that consultant agreement that requires for the examination of healthy food options so it would be effectively approving the consultant agreement but adding that language in i just want to recommend that we take the voice foot on this motion so that when we take a motion on the actual motion the main motion we can record it in the system and i have a question for her carlos um what would [Music] uh the the first the first first there's going to be a vote on the amended motion whether or not that's going to become the main motion before the board and it seems a little anticlimactic but then the bush if that amendment passes then you now have an amended motion before you the main motion which was consideration of the consultant agreement that goes away and then dr bowe's motion would be the motion before the board and the board could take a second vote and whether or not that motion would pass in in theory dr bo's motion could fail and then everything reverts back to the original motion right so the motion that that the vote that we're taking now um if we take it by hand then whether it passes or it doesn't and then what i would do is then bring it back during this meeting right now that's correct then you would vote on the amended motion [Music] thank you we're going to do a hand coat for this one and then i'm going to go ahead and um bring it back well i've already carlos i've already amended the motion with with um dr beau's amendment in there so that it could be one vote that's the way the system works we amend the motion which is the consultant agreement to the vote so we just need to recall dr beau's motion for member bruce gonzalez's second and vote okay and then then at that point for my read is that the amended motion would now become the main motion and i don't know if the system allows you to have a second vote i i agree it seems redundant but first they will not okay so is there yeah i would be creating a second vote after the fact in minutes this system will not let me do that it's either we vote on the first one or we amend it with dr foe's suggestions and we vote on that so basically the addendum added now what we're going to do is we'll we'll do a handful not a computer vote and then i will bring it back right with her her added amendment and that's what we'll vote on [Music] yes and that's okay for me to add those two minutes after the fact because it won't be a record of this at this meeting right now i think that might be the only solution because we're having uh trouble with the system allowing us to track exactly what we're doing so we're going to have to write that one in later and i appreciate your patience so we have um a first by partner of the foe and we have a second five cruz gonzales um it is recommended at the board of education right by a per consultant agreement between ausd and david thomas with the amended motions including addendum and we're going to go ahead and get a handbook board member freezing dollars yes for number three part number review yes i say yes so it passes 5-0 and now i'm bringing it back correct correct now you're calling the question on the main motion which now is uh dr bill's amended motion yes which was your calling the matter to vote so how would i say there would need to be a a motion to start that process is there a motion is already on the floor so now we just i i call for the vote i call her i call the question okay well no i don't do that but you can just call for a vote now because the motion is on the floor so now i'm calling the matter to vote okay so now we vote electronically correct thank you and it passes by zero moving on to 13.1 we have 2020-2021 academic achievement results this is a simple item we have mr good evening president ariana's board members uh mr ortega and then uh what a pleasure to be here in person uh after a year and a half of presenting through zoom so it's nice to really see you all this evening i'm going to be reporting on the results of our 2021 state assessment i'm going to start to take you back in time a little bit back to 2019 covid pandemic hit us and uh we are all in the stay-at-home order and this california state board of education waived the state assessments which are the s back and the past and the tests that we use annually for accountability purposes and then in 2021 we found ourselves continuing to be in the pandemic and the state board was uh able to provide flexibilities to districts last spring because many districts were across the state many different places uh many still in distance learning some slowly entering hybrid formats other small rural areas were able to go back in person and so the state really determined that districts would need to decide what was most feasible for their communities and their students and so they developed some options from which all districts could select and um it included using district developed assessments that were aligned to the common core state standards that were available to students in grades three through eight and eleven and they could be individually reported to parents and families so here in ausd we have a very strong system of district-wide common formative assessments for all of our students in language arts and in math so the most feasible option for us was to use these results for the accountability purposes for the 2021 state assessments and so while the data i present tonight from our local assessments really supports us in in understanding where our students are it is very important to note that this is just one small snapshot that helps us determine where our students are as we begin to make decisions and drive instruction it gives us data for the accountability purposes but our teachers our schools are using multiple measures to really precisely determine where our students are and how to meet those needs we will continue to have common formative assessments uh teachers can look back on all of the assessments last year and as students returned to school this this fall we immediately began to do diagnostic assessments in language arts and now with our students so that we again have multiple points of data to drive instruction so tonight the focus is just sharing one quick snapshot that will be used to report in our school accountability report cards that will be presented and to the public in february so um i'd like to go ahead and share some of the results of the formative assessments tonight that we are using for 2021 accountability purposes these are language arts results for students in grades 3 through 8 and 11.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
you can see 32 of the students at this assessment we're meeting or exceeding the standard and this graph also shows you the full range of performance levels the next slide uh shows you a different view uh disaggregating by grade level and if dr mitchell could roll it up just a little bit more you'll be able to see at the bottom of that thank you documental the the grade levels uh by grade the next slide shows the view by our student groups and a little bit higher and then the bottom can show you the groups that you're able to disagree and then the following slide gives you yet another view of the data by our school sites next let's look at the mathematics results overall we have had 18 percent of students meeting or exceeding standards on the assessment and then again reflecting all of the performance levels on this circle graph on this slide the following page again as we did with the language arts we were able to look by grade level and the next slide can provide us a snapshot by our student group and the final graph again provides our our school level results as a quick reminder these results are for students um not all students in the district while all students do take our common formative assessments uh for the purposes of this reporting this is just students in grades three through six for elementary schools our seventh and eighth graders that are in middle school and then our only our 11th graders for high school and again i can't emphasize more how important it is for our own uses not the accountability purposes but our own purposes to use this as only one snapshot and indeed we have multiple points of data that we use to drive instruction understand our students and develop plans for accelerating learning this year so in the final slide you'll see an image check we'll go can we ask questions through each slide if possible please this is my last slide yeah i mean i'm happy to stop now okay so parent and family uh information letters accompanied individual reports that were uh printed from illuminate which is our our district data and assessment system and did this letter describe the assessments uh provided descriptions of the performance levels and percentages of the scores and additionally outlined the standards that were assessed and this was mailed home in early early june of 2021.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above