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a thief yes folk yes and pill yes nolan yep denyer yes rabe yes gorman yes join us in reciting the pledge of allegiance [Music] 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 to thank everybody who came out tonight and for those watching at home welcome dr stern yes thank you um we have pam porto joining us from our transportation department for the bus bid and then we have um country country trails teacher nikki doleman and curriculum director shane burkmeyer joining us for the ela presentation for the textbook all right this time we'll do public comment we have one person connie collins [Music] i was a bit concerned my kinder grandson is in kindergarten and in his health class he was learning about empathy i think empathy is a very noble emotion don't get me wrong but when you put that in place of courtesy politeness respect civility and say that it has you have to do everything and with empathy it becomes political these are kindergarten children who are just learning how to control their own emotions through self-discipline learning to be self-sufficient and now you're teaching them that you have to care more about how another person is feeling you have to like be focused on that rather than teaching them how to be polite and courteous and have manners i just i think it becomes political i think it's part of critical race i don't like it i i don't think i have a fourth grade granddaughter who's extremely smart had no idea what empathy was so this is a new curriculum this is not something that was taught when she was in kindergarten so that's my uh take on empathy in kindergarten um so you're against empathy in the kindergarten it was they taught they taught it in health is that what you asked no i said you're against teaching empathy in kindergarten i'm i'm again i'm against teaching empathy as and not including other things i'm not saying that empathy is bad i'm saying that they need to it needs to not exclude being polite having manners being courteous showing respect that's what i'm that's what i'm opposed to i don't think i think empathy is fine but i think that a kindergarten child a five or six-year-old child needs to learn how to be polite and courteous and civil and respect other people i don't think that the focus needs to be on how somebody else is feeling and how what you're doing impacts how somebody else is feeling so that's what i'm opposed to miss collins well i'll have um someone from our curriculum department reach out to you as well that would be helpful the other thing was i was doing homework with my fourth grade granddaughter and they were doing a it was about martin luther king which is perfectly appropriate and i think absolutely wonderful i think martin luther king was a phenomenal person the thing that that bothered me i guess is that there was no celebration of everything that's been accomplished everything that that man fought for and everything that this country has gone through and done to make more equality have people be more inclusive all the good things that have come from martin luther king and what he did it was the the last part of it was like she had to focus on five children who did different things that are saying this is what's still wrong with our country this is what's wrong with our country you know somebody who was going against climate change somebody was going against put you know wanted to put a salad bar in a school somebody who wanted to have different colored crayons to represent different colored skin colors i'm not saying any of that is wrong well i'm saying part of it is wrong but um what i really want to say is that there was no celebration there was no talking about what's been good what's been right what we've accomplished how far we've come everybody wants to go back to saying that none of the good stuff happened we have to still concentrate on all the bad stuff and i think that we have to like celebrate all the good things that are in america and not just keep focusing on what's wrong what's divisive what's what's we all need to do things we have to learn and grow every day i'm 70 years old i want to learn and grow every day but they don't have to focus on everything else that's wrong i thought that and the end of that when it was like pointing out like all these different things that you know these kids have to do because there's still so much wrong with this country i don't think it was appropriate for martin luther king day that's all thank you thank you thank you fascinating all right next we'll move on to action reports uh your motion second to approve the consent agenda still moved okay your revenue expenditure reports are included in your board packet revenues are currently at 37.04 which is down from last year at 45.17 expenditures are currently trending at 39.66 compared to 40.17 a year ago this month we received impact fees for 286.29 for 15 home starts and there were no transition fees and then the bills payable reports for northern cain and central are are typical for the month of january all right thanks dana some questions for you all right really quickly is there any projection for home starts anything that's new changed or anything like that that we're aware of i have elgin uh just today came across the scheduled intelligent development meeting for february 3rd that we'll be participating in hopefully we'll receive an update they then posted something i think about how many new home starts eldon has had for the past three years it's not linked to an article 95 of them in district 301 they didn't go as far as saying that yeah yes nolan yes yes ray yes a thief yes garmin yes next we'll need a motion and second to discuss and improve the cafeteria expansion bids for both pkms and ct some move second uh director pollowing could not be with us tonight so i will cover the bits um i did ask um pam is wilson to make copy of the bid tabulations of full tabulations that you would also have as a handout and then um that matches what is the recommendation of the construction management firm shells midnight construction along with director following that we were able to vet out the different bids that came in and we went with the lowest responsible bidder for each of the bids something i would like to point out the the only one if you look at the bid tabulation that stands out is the douglas flooring bid for 90 91 900 um the district decided to go with the alternative bid which would be to re um refloor the entire cafeteria so not just the expansion so that it would all look the same would look new and it wouldn't you wouldn't see the tie in so that's why they're recommending the alternative for the flooring on page one so eagle concrete yes they're about half of what the highest bid correct have they have we done business with it evidently yeah well eagle concrete is uh they they do quite a bit of concrete work around the entire region okay and um i know that they met with the with the contractors that were to vet out the bid to make sure that they understood what they were bidding okay cool yep [Applause] and some some of the bidders could be really busy and not really necessarily need the work but you still want to throw their hat in so they could have done that just in case they were the only ones yeah so what's the total cost here then we had all i just there's another summary page at the end of something like that 1.7 there we go that's in the summary of award recommendations in the packet any other questions you guys still reviewing it good okay i'm phil yes nolan yes yes rabe yes yes yes gorman yes especially in motion second uh to improve the bus bid so move second we sent out bus bids to six companies we actually only received one formal bid back and that is from midwest transit our current bus supplier and we've had a good working relationship with them for many years i don't really see any problems they don't anticipate any problems with delivery as long as we order the buses uh by february so we stuck with the five bigger ones i'm sorry the so the 583 passenger ones you mentioned last meeting i think oh yeah yes the larger capacity buses yep correct in some gasoline buses as well correct we're going to try to say they're smaller collins buses yes yep yeah they're total 20 20.
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brown is here mrs galbraith here dr ho here mr sowalis here mrs walters vice president group here president here please stand 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 terry was there any public comment no sir okay i'm sorry do we want to empower each student to positively impact the world for a bright new future thank you yes we do any board updates uh administrative updates um i just had one item this evening and that was just to give the board a a preview of the first read of our policy review we had quite a few of them we've split them into two sections i provided those for you again these are from press plus these have been attorney reviewed from them and these are recommendations and for the most part well i did not see any or disagree with any changes mr brown was review these with me as well and the only one that we wanted to make note is that there is a new policy as noted in my notes okay and that comes for our february agenda for approval yes yes so committee of the whole i'm going to do for february i'm going to do the press part two and then you'll do all the february okay next up is consent agenda approval um before i take a motion are there any items that a board member would like to take off for a separate vote okay can i get a motion to approve the consent agenda second any questions or comments here under the business when when there's purchases made out there by any of our employees or staff do we get a tax exempt on purchases like a sales tax exempt there there are some that we get tax exempt on like if you order we have it set up now through amazon so if you make purchases through amazon type the business account that is taxes i sell zero for taxes there for all of those amazon okay right so so that is set up there are some purchases though that um there are some companies that will not honor that very honestly things like sam's club and things like that we bring up tax exempt letters uh departments do what the school's doing they just won't honor that there are also some services like food services that automatically tax and do not uh eliminate taxes too and won't honor that too so what other schools do because i have gone back to our principles for department heads as i look at that and say you know there's taxes on here and so they've done that but i i know they've done it with me also in our department for food or anything like that so there are times that we do pay taxes they just they just weren't on earth okay um just some some of the big box stores uh home depot menards so on and so forth i saw there was quite a few purchases there and i'm like we can have an opportunity and then i pay taxes there just by putting us on records there yeah i'll i'll check out if you could say well i will tell you mr brown that all of our credit cards actually have our tax exempt number on them too uh for some reason yeah so there are there are some that just won't do that you know right and then i know some of them do bring up bring along a texas letter yeah you know and all that so a person that used the credit card it's just that we have an opportunity with a lot of tax taxes paid yes and i think the protocol is you go to the pip that department store or whatever and you you might have to fill out an application and submit your letter on file kind of a registration process yes all the schools and departments have our tax exempt certificate certificate and all of that stuff they have all that they can take that okay slowly trying to ingest that what about like our phone bills like sprint you can't do that i did it with my my uh taxes that would come in so yeah those type of services will not they were not taxed but sales tax a lot of those taxes though that are in those type of bills those are federal taxes i'm just talking about sales tax so just look at safety in general i appreciate it and uh there's a purchase or expenditures or invoice by nolan boiler and tank i don't know if you know anything about that we did maintenance on a boiler over there it was like 35 30.
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foreign welcome to our tuesday january 18 ford meeting if you please join us in the pledge of allegiance all right so we will move on to our board of finance meeting mr james yes mr marshall do we have a motion a second all right all in favor aye aye any opposed motion passes also madam president i would like to nominate jennifer as secretary in the absence of nicole for secretary of the board of finance i will second that any discussion all in favor aye any opposed same sign motion passes thank you all right thank you uh the next item of the agenda is to go through um and present the fiscal health of the school corporation and just to backtrack a little bit this is our annual board of finance meeting it is a statutory requirement that we not only school corporations but all local units of government hold a board of separate board of finance meeting in january every year for schools in 2019 there was a committee that was put together from the general assembly called the fiscal indicators committee and it really won what the purpose is is to develop markers that school corporations could have to assess their the health of the financial health of the district so that everyone is kind of aware of where people are and so that school districts that are having financial problems can work with their board and with their community and really there's no surprises um so this committee originally came up with i believe eight different indicator points um after a review after the first or second year that is now down to six and so now we're just going to go through each one of those and i have included the charts and graphs in your bore packet and we will go through each one so on the first indicator is a review of our adm count and you will see that from the bar graph our adm count has been relatively very steady for the last eight years that has shown on this chart hovering around 9 400 kids or so per year last year we did take a dip because of less kindergartners that came during the pandemic however as we previously reported it's not shown on this graph for the 21 22 school year but we are up 62 students last this year as compared to last year so a red flag would be as if your enrollment was declining that means less revenue but that is not our situation we have a good healthy uh study enrollment uh any questions at any time just feel free to jump in uh the second indicator is to look at fund balances so that fund balance is what's your cash on hand in all of your funds in total and you can see that from 2013 through our cash on hand was steadily declining and that was because of just really our state funding not keeping up with you know the educational programs that we wanted to be able to implement here at lake central but as you know in 2019 we started to receive operating referendum money that helped with our cash balances and you can see that over the last two years that has increased to a stable level that is more um that is fine and we have good reserves um here this this chart is a little deceiving because this is a snapshot of your 12 31 balance and as a taxing unit we get our tax money tax draws right at the end of december so we get a lump of money for our debt funds for our operating fund for our operating referenda fund in which we then spend over the next six years so in reality our average cash balance is less than these but there's still healthy amounts that we operate without any issues the next chart is showing what the annual surplus and deficit is for all your funds so you know you can't deficit finance and it's important that we don't overspend the revenues that we have coming in we monitor those revenues it's all again based on our adm count and when we're deciding how much of a teachers raise and how much more money we can put into the classroom it's all based on that revenue and you're familiar with the budget process we go went through so as i've stated in a few in prior presentations here if you look at years 2014 through 2017 it looks as if we deficit spent and had more expenditures and revenues and in reality it is true but there are many things that occur that sometimes you get money at once and then it takes you time to spend it so for an example we were doing a construction project here in 2014 we received dollars in 2013 and in 14 15 and 16 we were finalizing those costs so all those expenditures count toward this graph but not the initial revenue for that snapshot of the year similar with pension money that we pay out to retirees and teachers we sold pension bonds in the early 2000s we received that money we have it here to pay for our severances but we don't receive any additional dollars for that it's just paying out those expenditures so it's not really a clear snapshot of how we're doing but if you look at the last three years you can see that our revenue has exceeded our expenditures each year we are very careful about that and that yellow bar that shows how close you are to the margin uh you know we really want that to be as close to the margin as possible we're not in a business of um raising extra money from our taxpayers and just holding out to an afford that money is going to the classrooms and we want to spend as close to our total revenue as we can and so you will see that here in 2020 calendar year 2020 that amount of our surplus was a little bit lower and that's good you know if we have to dip slightly under to use some cash reserves we're okay with that but we monitor that and make sure that we still have a healthy balance any questions on that okay uh the next indicator is your fund balances as a percent of your expenditures we have talked over the years of how you have to have a good cash balance the prudent range is somewhere in that 10 to 15 range for on your regular operating funds this graph actually includes um all of our operating funds meaning our education fund our operations fund rainy day fund and so forth um so as you can see 2013 through 2018 we were very much below that prudent range of having cash on hand with the operating referendum money that has helped shore up our fund balances as we talked about earlier and now we have a healthy reserve as a portion of our operating expenditures similar to what i said earlier this is a snapshot as of december 31st so when the 2020 percentage says it's 27 percent it's actually less than that because that is a snapshot of that money we just received on average in year 2020 we had about a um cash balance as a percentage of our expenditures now there's a couple pieces of that because of our edge our education funds where we pay for all of our classroom expenditures our teachers there's not really too many unknowns there it's 90 some percent payroll and benefits we are very comfortable having less of a percentage in there because there aren't as many unknowns we don't need to have a large uh balance there so we usually keep that balance somewhere in that maybe eight to ten percent range just for cash flow purposes but when it comes to our operations fund that's transportation that's our facilities and maintenance that's our kind of like our savings you know a boiler goes out a roof leaks you're not getting any additional money it's what you have on hand so we need to have a higher cash balance in that fund just because of the unknowns that would pop up in one of our facilities so when you net all those together we're hovering around the 19 percent again healthy reserves but not too much importing money from our taxpayers the next chart shows our different revenue by type and this is either federal dollars state revenue local dollars and local tax revenue so the bottom line uh it's kind of like a i would call it a coral color is a local tax revenue that has been pretty steady for every year on this chart we get about 35 million dollars for our debt fund our operating fund and operating ref um not referendum fund through local tax revenue the big part in the blue is our state revenue and as you know state funding is what it's all about for schools and that's why that is the biggest chunk that incorporates about 65 million dollars for us the big section in the middle for the purple that is other local revenue and that has tailored off because for up until 2019 that is where the westlake co-op expenditures ran through with that co-op being dissolved and that money no longer running through our books that amount has shrunk and so really that money there is textbook rental money lunch money just kind of local fees so that has dwindled and you can see the amount of federal dollars at the top that has maintained pretty steady throughout the year so again we are highly dependent probably two thirds of our money through state revenue and if the general assembly continues what they've shown in at least the last couple years you know i hopefully that won't be decreasing and they'll maintain that funding levels and we are appreciative of what they did this last session and then finally the last chart is uh your if if a school district happens to have an operating referendum which we have had for the last two years uh what percentage of the revenue is that of your total revenue so in case that does not get renewed how much of a hit are you looking to take on your revenue and therefore your expenses and you can see here that i'm in 2019 and it's about seven to eight percent of our revenue um that we have that we bring in and as you know we use that for teacher salaries our sros um oh and additional counselors that we promised the community when we went on that campaign so overall you can see that the district is in good health by all the indicators shown and i would open up to any questions that you may have this is the document from the state that we knew was coming yeah this this is for every school district um across the state um it's on the fiscal indicators website and um yeah this is something that is put out either every december early january but it's fairly new to the state of indiana yeah it's only been three or four years right yeah okay thank you sure and i think it all happened because of the situation in muncie and uh perhaps another school corporation right uh yeah gary kind of gary muncie that simulated this because of how their financial you know the districts they kind of went down and the legislators want to implement something so that those things didn't happen in other school districts uh across the state absolutely um and there's absolutely nothing wrong with sharing this information with our board and our community as you know we talk about lots of these things all the time anyway yeah we need to do it formally until the end yeah it looks good sounds good thank you okay the next item is to review the investments of the lake central school corporation for calendar year 21.
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so here in connecticut um unlike in some other states are um our money comes from our our city or our top our city and um in that regard it's really the it's the city council that sets the tax rate and they determine how much money we're going to have along with some state money that comes in but it's uh it's what's called being fiscally dependent uh we depend on the city for our funding and what what a board of education does is they adopt and set a operating budget as opposed to capital spending now capital spending uh the city's in charge of i use the term there uh it's really the bricks and mortar uh the big things for example the career academy that's coming up uh that's something the city uh provides but the um the board of education itself does uh its operating budget we could call it the school budget and that's for the 12-month period that begins uh july 1st our our financial year uh goes from july 1st uh to june 30.
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hello and good evening and welcome to the this special board meeting of the azusa unified school district board of education on uh january 18th 2022. i'll go and call this meeting to order at seven o'clock and we will begin with item 1.2 our flag salute ready begin next we'll move to a roll call item 1.3 board member rodriguez pena here board member beau here board member cruz gonzalez board member arianis president and i myself a board member greer am here as well we'll move on then to item 2.1 approval of the agenda is there a motion on the floor question to approve moved by board member rodriguez pena second second by board member arianes any discussion then let's move to a vote and the motion passes five to zero next we move to item 3.1 public comment on uh agenda items only this is an opportunity for the public to address the board of education on agenda items only individual speakers may be allowed up to three minutes to address the board of education on any agenda item only when the public wishes to address the board on any agenda item they may fill out a blue card stand at the podium or raise their hand while in zoom attendance the board will take blue card requests first followed in order by speakers at the podium and then those in the zoom attendance and again just to be explicit and remind that during this space we have uh there are a few items on our agenda and we will be taking comments on those items only so if your comment is not in regards to an item on the special meeting um i will remind you of that and we'll move on to the next speaker uh do we have any blue cards or anyone do we have do we have any blue card we do and fabian you may need to turn the microphone on let's load tech one two one two three welcome hello uh thank you so much for having me my name is fabian pavon uh and i am a board member with the latina and latino round table san gabriel alley uh and i'm here to state my opposition for the continued use of the azusa aztec nasdaq the azusa aztec mascot is a misrepresentation of the mexican aztec and so for generations the aztec has been uh uh used uh uh you know inappropriately has been misrepresenting our people and the community of azusa has been getting a false inaccurate representation of mexican culture through that map and the it's it's unfortunate that for for generations this mascot has been used because now descendants of the masjid the ascendant of the aztec can't even tell when their culture is being misrepresented as it is with and so uh today uh we come with folks who have been uh you know have been aware of their meshika aztec culture a culture that has been passed down uh ceremonies that have been passed down through the generations i hope that you listen to those indigenous people who have been spain who have been uh who have taken the time to take that deep understanding uh to learn from people who have uh had aztec ceremonies and and history and culture passed down right and so uh with the latina latino roundtable we've been working with uh uh and we've been providing an accurate version and accurate representation of the mexican aztec uh uh to the community free we've been teaching them about uh dances and ceremony and things like that right they've been getting an accurate representation and i hope that you all please you know reach out to indigenous people reach out to uh you know there's no such thing as an azusa this is asu is the uh the native village that was here before azusa before the spanish before the mexicans before the u.s and we need to honor that we need to do our best to reach out to those indigenous people and have their histories and cultures reflected in the curriculum ethnic studies is going to be a graduation requirement in schools all over california and so i hope that you all take the time to make sure that these cultures are accurately represented please use this as an opportunity to connect with these indigenous people whether they be uh meshika azek whether they be uh uh tongva kis any of these things please use the opportunity to educate yourselves and the community on an accurate representation of indigenous people thank you very much thank you fabian next we have miguel me uh uh i introduced myself in my ancestral language which is not a aztec it's actually otomi but even the word otomi is also from the nawazu uh we actually call ourselves um the news and uh i think the representation of the azusa aztec um pushes this like monolithic idea of like oh just because you are mexican that means you come from uh asic ancestry which is not always the case and it really uh pushes like uh other people other indigenous communities and uh it really makes it harder for people who are not of aztec and especially to connect with their language their traditions their own like practices because um we're similar but we have different practices and traditions and stuff um and uh i just want to say that uh especially uh for me it's been hard for really to find my own language but now i've been able to uh find books on the internet and stuff and it just shows the lack of work that you all are putting into like even bringing proper representation of what asic or mashika is you know and like i'm not even getting paid for this so um yeah uh that's all i have to say um thank you thank you for sharing next we have julian mandu hanoi manatee vinewi in the kamehameha the shame that that sounds like gibberish to you all and it's a shame that i know so little of my own language i just said you know i extend my greetings to my friends and relatives and my name is julian duhano um in coming here you know i'd like to kind of piggyback off of that you know it's good that we have representation as someone who has had my own people enslaved i mean as a matter of fact 2022 is a hundred year anniversary of us being freed from slavery my personal tribe so i understand representation is important and it's something that we all crave and value um it's just the type of representation that we have you know there's other ways to do this like ethnic studies in our city it's taking a cumulative effort of different folks in the community and highs and lows and ups and downs and very hard conversations to organize certain things that you know at first may have felt uncomfortable to us i mean even myself my tribe being a border tribe from sonora in tucson arizona i mean i'm not a california native i was born here but i have to acknowledge that this is tongva land this is the one guy you know not anywhere else that we want it to be just because we want representation and it's nice that we have that but we have to look at other ways for us to get that i mean i've seen some of the pictures and images via the internet and it's a little strange to me i mean out of any ceremony i've been to in my entire life there's a drum that's bigger than the guy i mean i've never seen that like at all i mean i don't even know how you would make that and i make instruments and stuff like that it's crazy it's wild you know it's really flamboyant in a way like a real big like grandiose like it's like a romanticizing something and that's the problem you know we don't want people thinking that like we're these mystical beings i mean we're humans just like you you know we when you think of tribe another word for tribe is family you know so i is in a way it's like somebody's family you know you want to go up and ask these tribes to do things people that somebody's auntie that's somebody's uncle you know i mean we have to be more understanding of the people were actually speaking up around us you know like my other friends said i mean we're not all aztec or so-called mexican you know it's the true word like we're not all like i said tucson and sonora you know if you want real representation or things like that in march they got mexican new year that's coming up you know a lot of places have events like he said we have dansa you know i teach a beating class in pomona so you all want some culture there's ways to get it um if the only example of culture you have is something that you obtained in high school that's kind of sad thank you for sharing next we have linda gutierrez i've been an active dancer community member for over 11 years now and i am against this high school using us as a master being part of our regalia is very very sacred to us and it's usually passed down by other members in the community or elder so to be to see it being used as a costume very hard not only to me my community but hundreds of different natives on thank you next we have alejandro juarez please uh correct me if i if i pronounce that wrong hello and good night to everyone my name is alejandro juarez i want to acknowledge and give thanks to the tango to gabriellino the east the original indigenous people of this plan your board members of the sousa unified school district my name is alejandro and i am a vampinka naga mexican ancestry most commonly mislabeled the aztec for generations my family has been knowledge keepers of our culture and traditions not only in our ancestral land of mexico but as well as here in the san gabriel valley or as our indigenous gabrielino tong but relatives know it as a tangabar for 25 years my family and i have fantastic dance in the city of la puente a wingna and in pomona through our group called and represent over 50 families with this message and that i'm here today we have connected our people back to our social traditions and languages and practices that were nearly extinguished through colonization throughout the years we have experienced much disrespect and racism through the miseducation and the ignorant use of our culture and identity as school mascot we have observed how the astusa aztecs mascot alongside other schools that use our nation and tribe as a mascot disrespectfully make use of our ceremonial headdresses known as our kopilis our wherewits which are our drums and our regalia these are sacred objects that are earned throughout the years and earned during ceremonies and battles our communities have taken a strong stance and we do not support any entities that use our people's name and costume as mascot imagine it as of us of other cultures or mascots right as if african americans or jewish you wouldn't do that to a people people are not mascots cultures are not mascot we are human beings mascots the same thing as mascota right as a pet in spanish are my people animals to you no this is not it it is disrespectful and dehumanizing and plays on the offensive stereotypes of indigenous people it further adds to the collective trauma that we have suffered enough through mass genocide exploitation and looting of our lands and material objects with the current major changes happening in asusa high um district we ask that you take a step in being on the right side of history and authentically honor indigenous people by changing the school's mascot we understand that it may be difficult to some to grasp the seriousness and the effect this has on indigenous communities some people may even say that they're honoring my people by using this mascot maybe even offer alternatives like reforming the mascot by making it more culturally sensitive and educating people about the aspects but the truth is none of these are valuable solutions none and only prolong the dehumanization and disrespect of um that is placed on our communities the only action must be to remove the offensive mascot the time is now please make the right decision today tonight thank you next up we have clara while you're preparing to come up let me just remind everyone that we have a there's a three minute limit uh so please keep an eye on the clock because i will have to cut you off if you if you go past your three minutes hello and good night paul as an asus resident and guardian of two children that have and will attend this is a high a loud and proud mexican first but also an american i find it disturbing the ausd continues the u.s tradition of stealing from other cultures simply because plenty gave up their own to be more accepted by this country i from personal experience went to a middle school named after d.w griffith who filmed the racist birth of the nation two different high schools one with a sheik another with an oiler as a mascot why is there so much pride in the continued destruction of the earth and cultures of the very people that ensured some of y'all's ancestors survival in this plan it's 20 22 we've been trying to reach you um ausd since the 90s it's time to answer the community's call i asked you tonight to change the mascot of azusa high i want to thank i also want to thank the elder um who let me know about this meeting and the gatekeeper of asus sagna for allowing me to speak tonight thank you next we have jenny talamantes i believe we have jenny online yes my name is janita lamantes i've come here today to discuss with you the matter of rebranding azusa high school the aztec mascot should have been removed long ago the current mascot is harmful and stereotypically racist it is cultural appropriation it is seen as offensive towards many people as a student i motioned this district give the students a choice and final decision on a new mascot versus the high school secondly i'm a part of the sophomore class at gladstone that is going to have the hardest time transitioning to new school have you thought about the current sophomores transitioning to a new school they don't want the generations and the alumni that hold that deep pride of being gladiators we went through covid distance learning and now you're closing our school at least spare us our pride and don't make this any harder than it already is business students aren't going to lose their teachers their campus their friends and it isn't about making them go through something it's about at least saving gladstone high school pride those making the argument that it won't matter in a couple years it will matter to me to teachers to students to alumni because gladstone lives in our hearts that is all for today thank you for your time thank you jenny next we have alex hello thank you so much um sincere gratitude to every person that has spoken tonight and thank you to the school board for holding this and really taking these words to heart you know i was raised mexican-american not knowing very much about my indigenous roots in mexico and i became incredibly curious about two years ago i did a dna test and i started getting really interested when i found out i was indigenous and i started going back through records and records and records and there are mishika leaders and historical figures that are a part of my family and so we're not just talking about you know this is this is not some mascot when we look at these images of meshika warriors and headdresses and and in their traditional clothing this is culture this is tradition these are things that are heartfelt and mean things to people so these are not just costumes our culture is not a costume and i sincerely hope that this is taken to heart because i grew up not knowing a lot about the truth of who i am and not knowing a lot of indigenous culture because i was raised and i was schooled here in the united states so these high schoolers that you're going to have to and that are going to have to learn this new content you know it's it's a complete clash when you've got kids in schools that are learning the right culture that are learning the correct history but yet we still have institutions that are using our culture as a mascot so it's not okay so i really wanted to come on tonight to say that you know as someone who is a direct descendant to some of the last mashika emperors it is not okay it is not okay to use our culture as a costume and i would urge the council to listen to the community's voices and choose another mascot thank you so much thank you alex next we have jackie hernandez hello good night to everyone first i want to acknowledge we are on tongue land who are still here in azusa many of the speakers today have said so much that makes a strong statement to the removal of the azusa high school mascot i believe that many of us from latino background feel nostalgia and wanting to connect to our indigenous roots but using a misappropriation of the mashika warrior is not the way to do it how many of us here know where the word azusa comes from the fact that many students from azusa don't know is a sign of erasure and lack of recognition from the indigenous of this land which are the tongue tribe are also leading this effort along with the indigenous leaders from diverse nations and tribes to demand changes made to the susan mascot that is image representation not only of the meshika people with the inca and of the relics i ally with them and their demands to remove the mascot let's acknowledge from the understanding of the origins of the name of our city that this aztec as a symbol of azusa also erases history not only of azusa but of also the people i recognize that some of the latino some of the people from latino backgrounds who also graduated or are still in azul high school may feel loss of indigenous and cultural connection due to the removal of the mascot but this symbol is not rooted in our culture and respectful teachings of our ancestors and roots but i do believe we can do better by removing the mascot while also opening the opportunity for proper education by adding indigenous teachings by tongue mashika and patent indigenous leaders who can help our latino students reconnect and embrace their indigenous roots in a usc schools the catholic knowledge education and wisdom of indigenous teachings is apparent in this discussion and which is why i find important for the inclusion of education for latino students that teaches latino and chicano studies as well as indigenous for here and ausd i hope that you all as leaders and the school board can be courageous and make the wise choice to remove the acid mascot and also seek the education that is fundamental in teaching our children about indigenous history and culture to reconnect with our roots have a sense of identity and feel proud of our progress as we move forward i urge you to listen to our native leaders on this matter thank you [Music] thank you jackie next we have alexander muhika uh could you hear me oh yeah um hello i am here because i was made aware that the azusa school district had a problem and that is appropriating indigenous culture in one of their schools specifically azuza high school and it needs to stop just recently a teacher was fired from riverside county mocking indigenous culture in her trigonometry class though she is held accountable it still does not erase racism in both the united states and california the united states has a real dark history of indigenous genocide and the erasure of indigenous culture and the continual cultural appropriation of indigenous culture azuza unified needs to stop making a mockery of indigenous culture specifically aztec culture all indigenous cultures are very different from one another they're not all the same azusa high school continually misrepresents this specific indigenous culture misrep misrepresenting the specific headdress the drum and the uniform this misrepresentation feeds into the racism and it feeds into racist stereotypes that will harm indigenous communities specifically in this case the aztec community i ask azusa unified to do better and to take down the offensive mascot specifically the mexica in azusa high i ask that azusa unified invests in native american and latinx ethnic courses in their schools these ethnic courses will help the community get educated about the latinx indigenous history and culture specifically here as well in the united states it is imperative that we are taught this history so that we can get an accurate lens of these people and we can understand the history we must be aware of racism and call it out as a community and protect marginalized communities because racism remains a huge problem today thank you alexander before we move on i want to remind the board of board board policy 9323 which limits our public comment on any particular item to 20 minutes unless we as a board vote to extend and so let me ask the board if if we are wanting to extend public comment on this particular item i think this is a very good motion to extend a second any additional discussion then we'll just we'll just do a a hand vote board member vote yes i'm also yes okay we will proceed with althea ito good evening school board members superintendent ortega assistant superintendent mitchell and other acclaimed cabinet members my name is alfia ido and i am a junior attending gladstone high school i first want to thank all the latinx and latina speakers who chose to speak up for themselves and their cultures i thank you all for your vulnerability and strength tonight similarly i come before you today to discuss matters regarding the potential reconfiguration of azusa high school's mascot azuza high school's commodification of their so-called mascot is nothing short if not a repulsive caricature of culture their use in costume in and of itself is a complete bastardization of the regalia that represents valor from the feathers to the headdress each garment represents a token of strength and power azusa high school's reconfiguration and manipulation to their sacred regalia is nonetheless a complete disregard to the indigenous pride and to indigenous pride and community you wish to spend money on praying for higher education when you do not realize the unintentional ignorance you are systemically perpetuating how are we as students supposed to be critical thinkers of our education let alone our lives when the thing that is supposed to be representing us poses as a complete antithesis to the district's mission statement after all is not our district that equips every student with the knowledge and skills for college and career readiness to fulfill our purpose and positively impact society what i mean to say is this is all wrong it should never be this way you say you hear us and that you understand but we cannot find it within ourselves to actually believe that because if you did if you truly cared you would you all would not just be talking about it we are defined by the things we do not by the pretty words speeches monologues or soliloquies you feel the need to share so no you you cannot say you understand who we are or where we come from you may be from the community but you are not the ones who will have to bear the messes that you all have made it is our teachers our staff members administration the students your children will have to pay for your resolutions we all know the district's financial decline was coming as a matter of fact we have predicted it if not yourselves the teachers and administrators who all lost their jobs and suffered significant pay cuts because of it so why now why do you choose to say you care now clearly your decisions say otherwise you talk about funds we have the funds from rosedale to measure k we have them they are there you just aren't simply doing enough you do not care enough and this is a fact we already know a fact that gladstone and schools all across the district are too painfully aware about maybe my coming here and speaking on behalf of my gladstone community is entirely futile considering every decision made by the board these past few months have been nothing short but of neglect but there are decisions in regards to the consideration of alumni but may i ask which alumni it certainly isn't for gladstone you cannot be an alumni if you do not have a home i am a junior so these reconfigurations will not affect you compared to my underclassmen counterparts but i want to be able to come back home i want to be come back home and tell my mentors and teachers that their vein has been worth it to honor and thank you for everything they've done for me thank you we have dr sanchez hello can you hear me yeah we can hear you okay good afternoon good evening everyone uh so my name is dr idena sanchez i teach um latino latina latinx studies in azusa it's the only ethnic studies class i'm also the mother of a pal panther um and i'm also a dan sante and i don't think that comes up too often because sometimes i'll share it with my students most of the time right because i want to give them an accurate representation of who the mashika are and what the murals mean i teach at all three high schools in azusa unified school district so i have a unique perspective walking in and out and it's been a challenging five years and what i've learned being the only ethnic studies latinx studies teacher for now is that one of the most important things i do is cultivate a sense of community and through that belongings it's ironic that i teach this class and my students this without the support and inclusion of me and my professional background the students in this community deserve respect and care for their backgrounds and culture as i teach about mexicans the land we're on and other indigenous groups i hear students tell me about their families and the languages their families speak and how they were so ashamed to talk about it before uh i hear students at rallies when i would go um supervise at the azusa high school rallies and i was shocked honestly the the first times i went um and i would hear newcomer students from different countries in central america speaking their indigenous languages and wondering how this fits in right because indigenous people aren't a thing of the past and that is exactly what i teach in my class right uh still very much alive the culture's alive um or else we wouldn't be doing things like like dansa um and so i want to cultivate the sense of pride but i want to put this mascot into context so when this mascot was chosen it was 1956.
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okay thank you we've already put quite a bit of money into it through brad and it's been more expensive as we get teachers initially trained as we get access to their curriculum libraries but those fees are not repeated so for that fee we're getting the curriculum and the online courses or yeah so we get continued access to the curriculum for the students and curriculum for professional development for us to deliver to staff there are various other pieces like avid weekly which is a weekly publication of you know additional ideas strategies that teachers could be using in the classroom it's we get support from avid personnel so we have an immediate regional support person and then statewide support people so for example they're the ones setting up the visit for us they're doing all of that work and i have another meeting with our regional support person tomorrow and so you know it's this this constant support for me and our teachers other teachers can access that that support as well okay thank you any other questions thank you jesse thank you i'm sure you wear yourself out doing it sometimes and you wonder why you're doing it but thank you for doing it appreciate your efforts and your willingness to do it thank you i'm excited about the program and i've been really really thankful for the support and encouragement that i've gotten from administration and teachers um so far sometimes that's all you get so thank you thank you much all right we'll move to the next section of our program this evening our agenda this evening i'm sorry uh doctor we're going to turn it over for a br star awards thank you i wanted to also inform the board that our last year's last month's recipient amy hathcock recently performed a heimlich on a student that was joking and people were panicked she walked up performed the heimlich chunk of chicken came out and the kid was fine and so it is amazing what our counselors and teachers do and are prepared to do to help our kids our guidance counselors were recognizing this month along with a teacher angela desmond angela is at the elementary school becky wright becky montoya wright she's at the junior high she's all she's a clinical counselor she does counseling as well she has a practice in addition to good work here and melissa martinez-greslick at the high school along with a relatively new employee this year nikki henry they are doing a wonderful job of providing support to our students in addition to the scheduling and everything else sometimes the kids are having a difficult day they need someone to talk to and so these are very hard-working professionals women and we're grateful for them and we will recognize them with a br star in addition to angela desmond a fantastic teacher at bress thank you they get plaques and they'll be presented in front of the student body that they represent their principal will do it in front of their faculty and good deal colleagues good deal all right the next item is item 1.1 next election of the governing board officers for 2022.
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total of 20 buses this year smaller year that we turn in the buses yeah next year is our larger year but this is the smaller year so it's a good time to try out some different things to see what's better for the community and that first six months of the year we'll know come february next year what we want to do basically i kind of think so yeah yep any questions thank you for your work on that you're welcome nolan yes canara yes rabe yes yes bulk yes champ hill yes gorman yes next motion second to discuss and approve the release of the closed session items in our board packet are the agendas and personnel reports that are included so every six months the board is required to uh review their closed session minutes decide which items can be released and which would be held so look back period is from july to december it includes items related to personnel student records negotiations and litigation personal reports of course are subject to release but issues pertaining to any ongoing litigation student records or other matters related to individual students along with negotiations information will not be released okay yes nolan yes gorman yes actually need a motion in a second to discuss and approve the 2022-2023 school calendar second okay much discussion occurred at the board december board meeting related to school calendar the original draft that we brought forward um i also was able to receive uh some additional feedback from the cea uh related to the calendar we had a teacher institute day uh that was scheduled right at the end of the winter break and uh the request would ask to move that data if we could potentially move that date in discussions and looking at the calendar and uh where we thought it might be best we know that we're already rushed at the beginning of the year to get in all of our stuff to get in our meetings to get in our trainings um for some professional development and time for teachers to welcome students back uh we we thought the best place to put that date would be at the beginning of the year to add an extra day for teacher institute and training right at the beginning of august so this calendar if you look at this calendar we took out the breaks that the board has that we we take out we move parent-teacher conferences from october 20th to the last week to the 27th the 28th we put in one full day in november the day before the holiday for the state elections so that would be a teacher institute day there that replaces the october date that we had and we eliminated the half day there the winter break remains the same except that we no longer have the teacher institute day on january 6th what's on the hold on todd in november what was why the day off before election day so we have two four day weekends two weeks apart well we're looking for a time to plug in that teacher institute day where it would have the least disruption to students and since if you're going to bring students back on a monday and then all of a sudden they're off on tuesday we thought that giving them that that weekend if families had other plans or wanted to travel they might be able to do that and what was the thought of not going back to what was previously like the week off in november leading up to thanksgiving oh now that you used conferences on those two days and the board directed that they wanted us to move the conferences early earlier that it was too late to hold them at that time okay and also the challenge with not taking advantage of those two school days and the semesters got even more disparate first semester and second semester the differential in days so keeping the two school days there instead of just eliminating like a lot of schools do i should say batavia's in school they've been in school for years that week always monday and tuesday right um so there are certainly our other districts that do that in march we have the teacher institute day and then the 23rd and the 24th the 23rd our evening teacher conferences in the in the spring so that would make the friday the 24th a half day and then it rolls right into the right into the spring break and then um to give a break because we talked a little bit as a board uh that there's a long period of time for teachers in that april through may and things that we could accomplish so we put in a half day on friday um april 28th and then barring any emergency days um the last student attendance day would be thursday may 25th and the last teacher um work day would be friday um the 26th did we have more half days in the first draft we had more half days in the first draft and trying to work things out and accomplish what the board was asking for we had two alumni that's a couple of those like a ninja ninja comments on that rabe yes a thief yes folk yes sam hill yes nolan yes yes gorman yes and next we need a motion in a second to discuss and improve a donation of 500 from the king county farm bureau foundation that was given to our ffa activity account and here there's a memo in your board packet they received a donation for the it's kind of given around this time of year to school districts for helping out at various community service events and educational events that they help host and then the it'll be used towards expenses for their ffa leadership retreat a thief yes bob yes anfield yes nolan yes yes rabe yes gorman yes information first up will be the enrollment update um enrollment update is included in the board packet i also have a handout for you there and now we're looking at our the three-year trend last year there was um there was a slight loss of students in the district by five but you can tell now that when we look at what we've grown we've gone for 4 319 students to 4 682 students so that's uh that's a growth of 363 students so when we talk about our district being a rapid growth district it's very clear that we are and that 43-19 is the beginning of last year or the end of last year so the 43-19 for 2021 is at what point in the school year do we have 43 19.
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over three thousand dollars and i'm just wondering what was the scope i could i could find okay that's a big ticket item for a fairly reasonable new almost a reasonable new boiler sure so they just kind of stood out with me okay i'll i'll check it out okay also there was a invoice that someone paid a maurice brown 362.98 thank you look that's just a joke guys this is just gotta break the ice here okay and that is all i have thank you all right can i have a bigger picture question i noticed you're now forecasting a surplus for the year we are we are forecasting a surplus for the year uh which you know we knew and again i think you know mr robert you and i have talked about that the way forecast five is projecting things out and then at some point i can share it with the board it's a little more complicated but they use some historical percentages when they forecast that out so we are projecting the surplus right now i uh i could pull it up do you remember what the surplus is right now at least think about this yeah and it seemed like it was driven mainly by higher than budgeted federal revenues yeah and uh i i will share that um we're getting another round of property taxes this month that we normally don't get to from last year already so there's another distribution coming and i know the budgeted amount for in january is a lot less than what we'll be getting so i i think it's good that surplus is going to increase still okay as we go forward so it is looking very positive for this year good yeah okay any other questions on the consent agenda okay roll call please brown is an eye hi this is roo i vice president albert uh aye oh oh yeah because i miss saying vice president for the first time yes i do motion carries well thank you okay good thank you okay uh next up under action reports the first item under business this first item first consideration is a parameter resolution for the issuance of the 45.5 million general obligation limited tax school bonds to pay claims against the district and 7.5 million general obligation limited tax school bonds to increase the working cash fund based on the advice of bond council the entire resolution does not have to be read out loud since it was posted as part of tonight's agenda in accordance with open meetings act therefore mr brown as secretary of the board of education would you read aloud the title of the resolution yes i will resolution providing for the issue not to exceed 45.5 million dollars in general obligation limited tax school bonds for the purpose of paying claims against the district and not to exceed 7.5 million dollars general obligation limited tax school bonds for the purpose of increasing the working cash fund of the district providing for the levy of a direct annual tax to pay the principal and interest on said bonds and authorizing the sale of said bonds to huntington securities inc and blaylock ban llc okay may i have a motion to accept the parameter resolution declaring issuance of the 45.5 million bonds for the purpose of paying claims against the community unit school district number 201u will county illinois and 7.5 million bonds for the purpose of increasing the working cash fund second as a summary of the parameters included within the resolution the following pertinent terms are summarized the district has outstanding and unpaid claims in the aggregate of amount of 45.5 million dollars and that the claims are authorized and allowed for school purposes the board has agreed that it is in the best interest of the district the claims be paid from the proceeds of the bonds the claims consist of the outstanding general obligation debt certificates limited tax series 2021 the 7.5 million working cash bonds will be used to increase the working cash fund all bonds are being used to fund the capital projects stated in the short-term facility plan presented by the board of education the money will be paid back through installments not to exceed 20 years based on the preceding information do any members have questions or discussion on the resolution being presented so just i think it'd be good for as a reminder to the public um we went through in november our intent to issue the bonds went through the petition period now we're at the point of selecting the underwriter and actually issuing the bonds so uh with no further discussion or questions mr brown we take a roll call vote to approve the resolution as presented yes i will this is galbraith hi dr hall hi brown is the president mr smallish hi vice president rule aye president albert aye motion carries okay the next item um is for consideration is a parameter resolution for the issuance of 35 million general obligation refunding school bonds for the purpose of refunding certain outstanding bonds of the district based on the advice of bond council the entire resolution does not have to be read allowed since it was posted as part of tonight's agenda in accordance with the open meetings act therefore mr brown is secretary of the board of education will you read aloud the title of the resolution yes resolution providing for the issue of not to exceed 35 million dollars in general obligation refunding school bonds for the purpose of refunding certain outstanding bonds of the district authorizing the execution of an escrow agreement in connection with said refunding providing for the levy of a direct annual tax sufficient to pay the principal and interest on said bonds and authorizing the sale of said bonds to huntington security inc and bladelock banned llc may i have a motion to accept the parameter resolution declaring the issues of 35 million bonds for the purpose of refunding certain outstanding bonds of community unit school district number 201u will county illinois so as a summary of the parameters included within the resolution the following pertinent terms are summarized the district has current outstanding bonds and debt some of the current outstanding bonds in debt will be refunded to remain to maintain the district's current annual debt payment and lower the annual debt payment in future years based on the proceeding information do any members have questions or discussion on the resolution being presented so again just for the public this action is refinancing existing bonds that the school district has outstanding okay with no further discussion or questions mr brown you take a roll call vote to approve the resolution as presented yes brown is an eye miss mrs galbraith dr hall hi mr swallows hi vice president group aye president albert aye the motion carries um next action item um can i get a motion to accept and approve the base bid of six million two hundred and thirty nine thousand dollars in alternate bid number one for sixty six thousand dollars for a total contract amount of six million three hundred ninety five thousand for r.l sohol general contractor of plainfield illinois for the mechanical work in talala elementary and the early in the early learning center should that be yeah i think it's entry in mechanical work in kalawal elementary second any questions or comments yes i have i have one two this this particular contractor that we are awarding looking to possibly award this contract to tonight they are familiar with the work and and in our district because they pretty much did some work at dlc as well as a lot right yes that was written up and the question i have i'm not sure if we finished up that punch list if we finished that i didn't quite get that out of the i have been notified that it has been finished so they're preparing the proper paperwork so that they can get a final payment that final payment will come in february for that okay so that's it's all done all finished so work is done all work is done okay and it was the lowest bidder uh with the combined bid right brown is an eye dr hall all right mrs galbert hi mr sowalis hi vice president rupert aye president alford aye motion carries the last item under action items tonight is uh can i get a motion to enter into contract with alliant insurance services as the district's employee benefits broker and consultant moved second so ken is this is this replacing metro so yes it's part of our and i shared this with the board back in december as part of our due diligence process we went through an rfq for employee uh benefits broker and consultant we did receive four uh qualifications we interviewed two of them one was vista national who's our incumbent who's our current uh broker and then alliance insurance services now which is uh is almost immediately quite honestly because we'll be starting to work on a renewal if approved tomorrow i already have a meeting with them uh online to begin the process and then we're meeting with the insurance committee probably the first week of february with the new broker if the board chooses that okay any other questions well like did you have creative criteria for how you were choosing this or was it price based what was it it's really not price based because and the fee will really remain the same because it's certainly an rfq they're presenting their qualifications based on the scope of service and so uh in the rfq uh i'm just trying to yeah in the board report dr hall i do i do list out the different criteria that we had in there for the scope of services that are needed and so once that happens then you know the committee really a lot of it is about building relationships and being comfortable with that broker that i think can take us to the next level when it comes to employee benefits because as we all know employee benefit benefits continue to escalate so our goal is how can we better uh [Music] save money really for the district and for the employee at the same time broker can do that for us okay and actually i think we were looking for somebody that had options that we may want to address right now we're we're kind of we've been in the same bucket i guess you would say and um i think as a member of that committee i was looking for what could they offer the employees that may not be in that bucket anymore because as we know not just employee benefits but health insurance anything for anybody is skyrocketing and i think what we're looking for is somebody who would work for us and say this you've been doing this but it may not be the best thing for you take a look at this and see what you think and in that meeting that's the impression i got is that we were going to open the box a little bit and see what else we could offer us a whole lot more options and thoughts i mean they were throwing things out during the interview like this in the district okay questions roll call please brown is designed dr hall aye mr smallish aye mrs galbert aye vice president ruth aye president albert aye motion carries uh next up is personnel and culture can i get a motion to approve the personnel let me start over can i get a motion to approve the personnel report including approved certified staff employment leave of absence return from leave of absence and resignation and educational support staff employment leave of absence resignation and retirement any questions on the personnel report okay roll call please dr hall aye mr suamish hi this is galbraith hi brown is and i vice president rupert aye president albrecht aye motion carries uh next up is old business anyone president albrecht if i can just answer mr brown's question about the one invoice for nolan uh boiler tank service mr brown was for a boiler the boilers over at the high school uh beat out and welded crack between two left bottom rear end tubes and re-rolled the tubes uh looked like it took some overtime so it looks like it was had to be done after hours and all of that because he had to shut down the boilers so it was for the high school boilers and a crack developed you don't know if those are single tank or double tanks so you i don't know that okay i'm just wondering i just don't want to be surprised and we get a big ticket item and a quarter million dollars to replace those so do we have those inspected uh i i believe they have to be respected because by the state about that and then i can put that information every two years okay okay yeah that was a pretty intense uh repair okay thank you yep so i and i just have one item um after the committee hall meeting um mr cermak shared with me this uh ratings report that comes from s p on our debt rating and it was affirmed at um an a level which is investment grade but the good news is that they revised our outlook from uh to stable from negative so and they cited i i would share this with all the board members because i think it's it's pretty easy to read and one of the things they cited was our strong reserves which you know our action that we took last fall to strengthen our reserve position was definitely looked as a positive and i don't see it in here now but i'm sure i read that one kind of the negatives is something we have to keep an eye on is just that our um wages were increasing faster than our revenues so it's kind of a point that we're going to have to keep an eye on something and i think that was shared with us i just read it wasn't it was it i think i put it in the fyi did you put it in the fyi okay because i i misread it at first and i thought we went from stable to negative and i was like no so no and i i just said i was like i don't think he gave the report but he told us okay oh okay i don't share the report though yeah i think it'd be okay i think sure it's uh thank you for confirming that and i was surprised i thought the district's ratings would be just pegged off of what stages you know so is [Music] again as long as we continue the same trend which which i you know look to do so right so yeah so so real quick on that so isn't january 1st minimum wage change again i believe it does so that affected us it won't affect us this year actually because when when we did our budgeting and actually all of our employees are above that right now um so it really doesn't affect us at all it starts hurting us at some point we talked about that a year and a half ago or a year so it'll start affecting us you know now that we go into we'll go into negotiations acne when you talk about starting wages of some of our classified staff is what it does and because some of them are an hourly rate so it'll affect that so those are things that mr neil and i are looking at as we go into negotiations and start talking about that yes okay any other old business any new business i guess it kind of falls in a little bit of old business that was being talked about here it looked like a cpi is like up the roof seven seven point seven percent thereabout and we're going to have to first time i ever seen this cap cap at five percent in a long time i think in a long time yes yes so how do we prepare you know we're looking to do with the borrowing tonight approving the borrower you know far the facility works and all of that and we're looking to kind of draft our refinancing to the point where we can lower the debt from 12 million to 10 million something to that ballpark but it looks like that we may end up taking back so we just got a talk and we got a whole year before our next 11 period let's say if we're looking to take the whole five percent increase so i i think it just lends itself to start talking early on that can well here's what i will say and dr karen and i were having this conversation today in that we we are in a pretty good position and here's why right i do agree that it's a seven percent increase in cpi yeah and you know uh our cap is five percent right now that told now and please bear with me i'm just going to give you some rough numbers off the top of my head so i can just kind of show that you know that amount is approximately two and a half two point seven five million dollars you know that five percent sure in as a levy sure however remember we talked about this property tax relief grant right and if we get that next year i don't think we'll get it this year but you know because we're down the list but i we can get it next year that amount is about 4.1 million dollars so that 4.1 million dollars we could update back to the taxpayer and in essence they're going to gain money on that and and their bill will either stay the same or even go down a little bit now a little bit maybe a couple dollars but it'll go down a little bit because we're actually gonna we would only gain two and a half million but we would abate 4.1 million so so so there's some effect there and everything so again we we are going into a good situation dr karen and i talked as i start preparing the numbers for next year whether that be july or august i'll be sharing that with the board you know and that and letting them know what my projections look like when we go in and we start looking at that from a abatement standpoint and all that and how that would affect the taxpayer okay so we're in a pretty good position i i wouldn't panic yet no but one other component and you know if everything is played equal you know and the assessments of these homes are going to go up as well so that being said that's going to affect you know a certain percentage of a home being assessed at a higher value equates to higher taxes as well well we we just and we ourselves has really very little to do with that but that's not how the taxpayer sees it sure you know we do not have anything to do with assessing a property yeah again i think the way the district looks at it is the amount of dollars that that is the way to kind of look at it because even though excuse me even though property values go up right i can't bring in any more money right over five percent that's correct so again it has a lot has to do with the tax rate and all of those things so again i i the district is in a good spot it it really is and you know if it was in a bad spot i'd let you know it's in the best spot no we don't want to know but but it really isn't a good spot as we move forward so come july or august i'll be having those conversations with the board and then sharing with the public you know at least how that projection looks but i i think i think we'll be okay you know that would i love to update more money yes i would love to admit more for sure i would i would never recommend not to balloon you know unless it really really harms the taxpayers um but again we'll have those discussions i think the other discussion we're going to have come fall to show the board is we're going to start talking about tips and tips rolling off and how that effect is going to be on the district because that'll have another major effect on the district so i you know if i could say this in a positive way in a positive way in a very positive way and so the stars are kind of aligning here as we move forward and it doesn't mean that uh you know and i'll pick on lyle because he's not here but it doesn't mean him and i haven't had discussions too about looking at stephanie you know dr karen knight that's how we all we do have having conversations about staffing getting more efficient all that so it doesn't mean we have to go that route but again i think the stars are aligned and well i think the one big project that's going to be hanging out there that we're going to want to talk about and even though dr hall is here i'm going to mention it is the athletic facilities and i know that and so you know where does that fit in the equation so i think starting july and august we'll start having those conversations they're on my mind like they are here's when i saw cpi jump to seven percent i think there's gonna be one more year of it so and again i don't believe and you should not negotiate in public but we do have contracts negotiation coming up right and that has always been a major component in negotiating is the cpi in some way shape or form so and the last time i saw what a cpi was was close to this was in 2000 this actually before i got on the board just something to think about you know right now as opposed to later and negotiating was based on that cpi and then the cpi we enter a contract again i wasn't on the board at the time the district the board entered into a contract with the teachers union and it was over a good amount of years and then cpi went right back down right right but the district was locked in that price so just something to think about for okay sure thank you all right and oh i'm sorry okay um for my new business it's in regards to the email the social media oh that was mine so i was gonna say that too but go ahead well i guess i wanted to um ask what has what was the process for trying to find out who the student is because this looks like a less than a day's work for me to find out who the student is and i'm looking at who the followers are and i see the different racial undertones like the preaching tones and the cotton pickers and things of that nature this is like for me less than a day's work and this this to me should have been found out so this was shared with the the building administration uh when we received it and they did take a look at it and they were trying to determine who it was they were not able to so we are continuing to try to find out they are doing things internally as well to try to address this as a system the deans are going into classrooms discussing these kinds of things as a whole group you know sometimes students will come forward to give information so that makes it a little bit easier to address but i do know the district as well as the uh the building is heavily frowned on this type of behavior and uh you know we're working to try to do what we can to correct this we have reached out to the uh the carrier of the accounts numerous times in fact several of our administrators have reached out numerous times and there has been no response typically when you go to make these types of reports they usually do their due diligence and will take them down they have they have not done that and i get that part yeah i'm just saying both offense yeah i'm sorry it has to be done at both ends right yeah because i'm like looking at how many people follow this page this to me for me would have been less than a day's work and i would have found out who had this paint job doctor how can i ask you a question about that yes how do you like i just read the email and i am i'm ignorant to instagram i don't understand how it works i don't want to understand so can anybody how do you find that i mean how did you know what you were looking for and where to go well i was sent the actual page so i that's how somebody told you right at the extra pace i know the actual page okay but in essence we didn't know that no no this isn't for you you wouldn't know this all right i'm referring more to because i really am not into snapchat and all that stuff i don't understand right so i thought i missed something and that's why i was asking you yeah no you didn't i'm more referring to at the school level um like looking at this looking at how you look at followers and talking to kids um and that to me because this is part of just building those relationships with students if you have a good relationship with students this this is this is easy work right this should have been found out so we can i'll go back with the uh the building to find out where they're at with their investigation but last time we had talked about it they were they didn't know who it was and we're beginning to try to look at that to determine that so i'll follow up with them tomorrow okay because for me it starts to make like that they really care but that's how i'm looking at it um but they didn't put that because i'm looking at this like this others were reported as a possible hate crime yeah so i i we have we as far as um communicating with instagram we've tried a bunch of different uh ways what one thing did learn is no matter what they do they're not going to let you know that they did it right so there's no response they just don't if they if yeah correct if they do do something they're just going to do it but they're not going to call you back and say oh by the way or look into this um but i did i have and continue to have communication with the police department on this as limited as maybe uh but i i do believe there's one or two that would qualify under that and i guess that's not even the the issue the point that i'm making i'm making this the student or students who put this up who are having fun with this they should have been found out because i see something here about january 7th or whatever um i think that's what i read that would have that's just building relationships talking to students dude somebody will say something and i mean well the one thing you want you don't put anybody on the spot and have them with groups of students to ask these questions but it's a hunt there's 148 followers 148 followers i'm sure the number of them attend greek only high school looking on there and figuring out whose instagram page is whose and who put what up and he started talking interviewing students this could have been and maybe we're trying to look at this and too broad and say hey this is is this a hate crime is this and i was trying to get the police involved instead of going to the people who know that they're working from network small but i just i'm disappointed that it's posted as i'm sure um everybody would be anybody would be but at the same time i'm probably more disappointed that is still they still haven't found the stupid and i'm like this is just more students could be more than you know and then i started looking at all of the pages and it's not just about the pattern pickers when i see the ching chongs and then the other thing that's i mean the cotton pickers had probably the most pictures of course but it's just you know well like i said i'll be fine with the building tomorrow to see where they're at in the investigation okay and i'm sure mr seamson will be involved with that as well yes yeah uh have you the district been contacted by any parent anything regarding this that that is actually how we became aware of it okay that's i think everybody knowing the nature of what's going on here that is not our vice president read our mission statement and our core values is not indicative of what's being publicized out there by allegedly our students and everybody should be upset and looking for some type of fix and some type of corrective action to prevent this from reoccurring again the condition is so adverse it's deployable and we can't does the district accept this okay i couldn't agree with you more and i does say that we have more work to do to get this on uh directly um to adjust how our students are thinking students sometimes don't realize their words and what they're doing they think they think it's funny but this is not and this is i don't know again i don't want to get into these kids not knowing then they're just kids i hope we don't go down that road but i think this is a this is a teachable moment i agree for the district in my opinion the district is the public and everyone that feeds into this district in some some manner so we've been down this road a little bit before but nothing to the magnitude that i was witnesses to see you know i mean as a mother or father or one of those kids i would be highly upset i'm i'm upset and i know none of the kids that has been victimized on their social media like they have i said this is unacceptable so if i could uh president i just want to have one more thing regarding new business i talked to dr cosmanese over the weekend regarding somewhat disappointing on how the district was was socializing martin luther king's birthday i went to all of the schools over the weekend just looked at their marquee and some schools were communicating the holiday of martin luther king some some were not i even noticed again this doesn't have anything to do with us but the villages themselves a couple villages and nothing about martin luther king's birthday so the doctor congratulations surely that they already had a plan to broadcast the holiday on our social media and our district webpage which he did i appreciate it and she communicated with our director of community curriculum again gentile appreciate that and our director of communication natalie nash so i think again it lends itself for a little bit more rigor i know the empathy may not be there again i'm not going to say how bill or janine or nelson and vice president brookfield as opposed to how dr hall and myself feel but it is it is something that's very meaningful to me and we don't have to have a parade about dr martin luther king and again i shared some personal things to dr kagunis about how i felt about martin luther king's birthday so i think again this is a teachable moment for our kids to understand what martin luther king did what his legacy meant and here we are you know our kids is doing things that if they really understood what he represented they probably would not have invoked in such behavior so there it is thank you okay thank you any other new business i have a question for mr cirma um going over the fyi again i believe there was a statement that you hope to get the soil tests the week of january 10th it's the 18th that we heard anything i have i have received them uh i've received a copy of them actually they've gone to the architect and so now we're asking for the interpretation of that because i didn't do very well in chemistry to be honest with him so uh it's about three or four pages of soil samples and everything so we're getting the interpretation of that of what that means uh and then once i get those i'll report those back to the board and yeah they weren't like any red flashing i didn't really see anything i i but again i i don't know what i'm looking at to be honest with you and again this is soil samples from under the underground tank in front of the sixth grade yes yes so once i have that up i'll get that out okay i was just wondering if it if it appeared because they're pretty close to that area yes it has appeared so we have it and i'll i'll follow up with the architect again tomorrow or the next day too okay thank you okay any other new business okay we have no need for closed session tonight can i get a motion to adjourn moved second all in favor say aye
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in your packet i've given an analysis of the interest that we have earned and in 2021 we earned a total of thirty two thousand one hundred and seventy six dollars and nine cents between our accounts at centier bank and at people's bank um as you can see that is less than we did in 2020 because halfway through 2020 interest rates bottled out bottomed out excuse me because of the pandemic so you can see the history there well from 2014 through 2017 it was minimal uh interest rates rebounded um in 18 and 19. we generally have had the same amount of cash in the bank this steadily um it's always you know it's clearly indication of interest rates so we don't do any sort of in other investments um just because we honestly we don't have that much extra cash on hand in order to make long-term investments we want to operate we get the money and we're putting it back in the classroom so that is the review of the investments that we've had for 2021.
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so if we look at the next slide okay this is a little snapshot of our our budget this year and um it i think one of the most important points to make is that um almost all of our budget or the lion's share uh is salary and and benefits the um and you know i say to people sometimes if you think about it when you were in school and you were in the classroom uh what was in there that cost the most money and that almost the only thing was the teachers so there's um you know almost uh 58 of our budget is is for staff and the benefits that go along with that you know many of you probably know in local governments including schools salaries and benefits are are negotiated uh with our unions at the bargaining table it's a mandatory topic so uh you know what the kind of health insurance we might offer or uh other benefits those are kind of fixed too in the short one as union contracts are set for maybe three year periods it's hard to change things up unless you sit at the bargaining table uh but we also have a uh the next category down another almost five percent uh comes from uh we call them purchase professional services but in there you'd find um just to give you a couple of examples uh most of the tutors that we use for special education are in that line um you'd also find some of our legal expenses and technology services and and things of that nature they're in this what we call the 300 lines uh the next line down the purchase professional property services um there you would find i just want to make sure you some good examples uh some of the repairs we make maintenance contracts um even things like taking our uh refuse away and [Music] things like that just to keep our our buildings running uh okay uh every day uh and then you'll see a couple other big lines that come up the the other purchase services eleven and a half percent uh that's where we put our transportation contract for our school buses that's a five-year contract that we signed up with our bus company that's in there also as many of you know some of our special education youngsters are placed in out-of-district schools those amounts are in there as well as um you know for any students that might attend one of the states um faux ag programs in high school uh the tuition for that is also in that line uh supplies uh are exactly what you think they might be uh they could be instructional supplies and teachers use in the classrooms or uh textbooks if we replace textbooks you'd find them in the supplies but also things like electricity the state would like us to call that a supply these are all uh categories that the state of connecticut asks that we use and and talk about a certain way so the fuel to heat the buildings or propane that goes in our school buses i mentioned electricity uh even the supplies that we use uh in our high school sports program uh uniforms and balls and bats and all that uh come out of that line uh we have a line for program improvement uh you can see it's um almost one percent um and that's um that's actually where we put um equipment and copier leases uh things of that nature um that's where we put our uh mandated adulthead program uh appears in that line and then finally uh at the bottom dues fees uh staff development staff development that's a training for our teachers uh that's also in that line so that gives you kind of a uh a snapshot of about uh how much we spend uh not how much that's how much we're budgeted uh to spend this year in the different categories so um you know the question is you know we want to hear from you um what what should we uh what would you like to see us do uh it would be in in one of these categories but let me first um just go through very quickly uh the calendar for putting it all together for next year and to show you a couple of periods where i think you can make a difference where it's probably uh most important um to speak up and and let us know what's uh what's on your minds uh so and if you go to the next slide well that the the budget calendar uh you can see we've already started it's a it's a long process uh before christmas we sent uh instructions to our principals and program leaders uh giving them uh some amounts of money that uh we'd like to see them decide uh how it can be best spent uh those decisions are all due back uh later this month so um certainly speak to your your principals in your schools uh if you think there's something um in particular they uh they uh ought to know or you'd like them to hear um some of the money some of these decisions are coming up uh this year uh right from the principles so it's a it's a good time now uh to talk with them um and then you'll see uh we're right now we're we're projecting all our wages and salaries uh for existing staff of the people that we have now i mentioned you're on union contracts and benefits and things like that not a lot of input you can have there or on the next part down uh some of our fixed costs i mentioned what those are uh but here we are tonight um at our first of two forums and um so if you have somebody we're going to hear from you uh in a few minutes uh but we haven't yet put the budget together so this is very timely um as we're getting everything back if there's something we should add or or think about this is the perfect time to let us know because next week we start to meet with i call them the preparers the principals of the pro program leaders and we'll ask them what's in your plan what is it you want to do with the money we've allocated to you um and so that's when we really begin to put together what what we'll call the superintendent's budget at that point so if you go to the next slide well i think continue uh we're gonna have another uh forum uh january 27th and then it's after that that we complete uh the superintendent's budget and that's uh that's a budget that then goes to the the board of education the uh you can see it right there uh early february we'll be preparing it so once again this is this is the right time to hear from you and uh what our board of ed will do they have as you know they have different committees they have a finance committee that will get a good look at this probably the the first close look at it once it's presented to the board and then later on next month uh the work the full board of education uh will take up the budget they'll adopt a budget but in that in that period in february that's a good good time too to let us know what you think it could be uh to put to support something that the superintendent has already put in or if there's something you think should be in it isn't uh that's the time to uh to let us know we want to hear from you uh because in late february uh the board will adopt the budget at that point it goes from being the superintendent's budget to the board's budget and that's what goes over uh to the city uh we're targeting march 1st at that point so that the next slide just a little bit about um the different parts i i mentioned them i won't go uh won't repeat what i said earlier but our uh we've we've changed our budget process around a little bit this year and uh based on enrollment projections uh the the number of uh students we think will be in our schools in in september or late august elementary principles we'll be getting for expected pupils uh middle school students uh middle school to get 75 and the high school 85.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
this is following mendes versus westminster in 1947 that desegregated schools in california brown versus board in 1954 that desegregated students in the entire united states azusa high school opened just two years later after brown versus born in 1956 there was a mexican school in azusa not long before this right and so the panel that picked the mascot in 1956 according to the azusa herald met uh went through three choices before settling on an aztec uh and it wouldn't take much to see what the makeup of this committee might have been uh and they didn't choose it to honor uh the mashika or indigenous or mexican culture and what i do know um about our students is that we need to give them a sense of empowerment we need to give them something to unite around and so i think with the schools combining it would be good to let the students decide on a new mascot thank you dr sanchez next we have keanu martinez hello hi um i'm kiana and i'm with uh can911 of san gabriel valley um thank you to everyone who's spoken today on on the topic of the the mascots and how it is you know highly disrespectful to the the people who are still um here the tangova people um it's it's long overdue and it can be the azusa uh school district that sets the precedent for the surrounding cities who many of them also have a similar uh cultural appropriation uh of their mascot and or their school name and so i feel this can be uh it's something that could be good for the community uh to show that we uh love and support the indigenous people here and we honor them and we want to do better to be a better be better allies um and thank you to dr sanchez i don't know you but beautifully spoken and i think that it it can be seen as an opportunity to bring the students together to come up with something that they feel represents our uh this this community that we've created or been brought into um and also of course bringing in any uh wisdom from the tonga people that we can and so i do think it could be an amazing opportunity and you know a beautiful thing to to do um to set a president uh so i highly urge you know the the the board to you know think about their morals and what we need to do to be a more just community thank you for your time thank you kiana next we have joe thank you um unified school district board especially for giving us more time um i want to give thanks to the indigenous people tongva of asus i'm here currently sitting in my car on aksuna and also known as el cerino shout out to our cousins our distant cousins out there who are attending this meeting and all of us who are reclaiming our indigenous roots when i was in sixth grade a student asked the teacher why why did the native americans get their land stolen and the teacher just said because they weren't civilized i want to acknowledge that the school has that much power in building communities and also upholding white supremacy we have a chance today and tonight to start healing to let our ancestors their deaths their silence the genocide should not be done in vain that we can honor their lives today through school through education through community so i hope that tonight we can reflect on that and that you guys as the board can reflect on how much influence you have we have a time right now where there's many of us in that diaspora who are reclaiming our roots and are dealing with a lot of challenges right now not just covid but we're dealing with climate change we're doing the economic collapse we're dealing with a lot and so i want us to kind of come together and hopefully the students especially to hear their their young hearts come together and figure out what does it mean to be a community you got ronald mcdonald as the mascot for mcdonald's you got mickey mouse as the mascot for disney our people are not mascots our people are not brands or logos you've already seen it with the redskins getting the the mascot being taken out so it's this is nothing new and you we're gonna see more of these things we're gonna see more of these statues of white supremacists coming down and with that we're going to see more healing and i and and and i want to shout out to all those folks out there too have been part of this effort in regenerating communities so thank you for listening and thank you for letting us share our stories and i hope we move forward and begin our alien journey i hope thank you joe next we have please uh correct me if i pronounce that incorrectly hello can you hear me yes we can hear you welcome hi it's theresa may chuck my first name was cut off dear assumes the unified board this is my 15th teaching high school english in the los angeles unity high school holden cougars my life has been dedicated to nurturing the minds and spirits of our youth and future generations i urge you to please change the aztec mascot for asusa high school and the other schools as it is disrespectful to the native communities and perpetuates stereotypes negative stereotypes of native peoples have been perpetuated since colonization we are at a point in history and time where we know better cultural appropriation is harmful using cultures as locals or mascots is exploitative as an institution of learning schools have a great responsibility to the community and to our youth someone exploited on logos and people dressing up as a school mascot that is supposed to represent a culture and people is disrespectful it could have devastating effects on our youth and how they see themselves in addition the mascot image of azusa high school and how it is represented during events misrepresents native tribes and their traditional ceremonies we are adults and our decisions determine and shape the future of our current youth and generations to come we have the power to correct the wrongs done on this continent and to make our community a better and safer place for our native youth in the past few years alone we have witnessed the devastating effects of stereotypes on many diverse peoples of color we could stop stereotypes listen to the stories of our diverse communities and treat people with the humanity and dignity that they deserve there is an opportunity here for a great and positive change there is an opportunity here to have a new mascot for susa high school one that is supported by the susan native community on tongva territory and led by the local native community thank you for your time and consideration in resolving this urgent matter thank you teresa next we have joanna zhang hello can you hear me yes but we have quite an echo okay great so my name is joanna and i am a concerned member of the public i'm voicing my concern and i'm urging you to listen to our community members who are sharing their lived experiences azusa high school should be a leader and set an example in the world we just listened to community members who trusted the board with sharing their stories their vulnerabilities and their families histories we need to listen to those who have been severely hurt and impacted by this mascot it is time to step up the world is watching and azusa school district should lead by example thank you thank you joanna next we have rhonda can you hear me yes we can hear you yes uh good evening um my name is rhonda and i am a uh actually a proud gladstone alum um sad to see that gladstone's going to be closed i'm pretty sad about that but uh i think really um i'm and i sympathize with what my the previous speakers uh have been saying and talking about but i think also one of the real issues is how mascots are selected even though i'm a proud gladstone alum even the name gladiator is problematic i mean it's a killer for hire in an arena if we think about that even gladstone you know so um i think there's a lot to be said for letting your students decide who the mascot is i live in northern virginia and i know about you know i was happy when they got rid of the redskins the name it was offensive it's a racist name redskins nation's capital um but i think um i have to say uh i think this is a great opportunity to learn more about indigenous aztec the culture show people the proper way i have to say when i was growing up um i i i noticed uh from as a gladiator you know from gladstone that there was immense pride in being an aztec there was it people felt it it was totally different than i'm sorry but you know how it was in gladstone um so teach people the proper way about the history um but um i think um that there again what people are saying truth i know people have been offended and so on by it but there's a lot of people it gave them a sense of pride and identity and community there in azusa that i never saw with my high school so um i think there's a balance i think uh definitely take the time to teach people you know the ethnic studies all of that stuff but realize that also a lot of people got some pride i'm not indigenous but i saw with myself with my own eyes how a lot of people were identified with being an aztec and even those who weren't indigenous or aztec or whatever could see it and and and and felt the pride uh that was there so i think there's a way to do it doesn't have to be necessarily all or nothing um but um you know i i don't there's a lot like i said there's been a lot of hurt throughout the years and the centuries i get that i understand that totally um but you know that's my say thank you rhonda next we have eater good evening everybody uh everybody can i think i see my uh mute icon uh detecting sound so so yeah good evening everybody um my name is edward i am uh i'm um i'm on my way to be an educator um so so i i do spend at this moment i've been spending a lot of time with youth of our grades particularly middle school and high school um and currently i'm sort of on a journey right to reclaim uh the history that you know was never taught to us that was sort of just kept as a side as a side note in our education my educational uh journey and part of that is um me becoming uh being part of the of of the of danza stika as well so so even though it's not it's not um it's not uh i'm quite aware of the genocide and all the uh the history of our people what they've what they um what has happened in in a few hundred years of our existence um well i come here to basically i'm in support of of this mascot being changed uh now i just and i'm kind of backing in what rhonda was saying is that um for me what i saw is basically a caricature something that wasn't treated with respect so it could have been it could have been definitely in these last 50 years it's not i've been correcting showing more respect but but um i believe like also students students also should have a say on what what should represent them as well so i definitely support a change in this uh and what we have right now with the asusa aztec as a mascot and yeah that's all i have to say thank you that next we have justin mendes hello okay perfect thank you uh good evening good evening everybody thanks for the opportunity my name is justin mendez and i'm here to express my support in changing the mascot and i think this is a serious issue because this is also the opportunity to create an empowering symbol for our youth in the community instead of one that is is mocking and as we've heard from people in this community that it is uh disrespectful to their heritage to themselves uh and to their roots to their indigenous families who who the land belongs to and it's it's not new right as it's been said the national football league the nfl they changed their team and they did it with swift action um you know to the the washington football team to because they understood that the mascot was disrespectful and you're hearing from the community that this is disrespectful so i i do believe that it is a a proper and a great action to think about this mascot and create a symbol that again everybody in the community can can stand behind and this is a a public school so it should be serving the the needs and the voices of the community uh thank you for the time that's all i have to say thank you justin next we have edgar montes hello hello edgar hi good evening good evening uh board president vice president board members good evening everybody in attendance tonight and everybody listening in at home or watching through zoom good evening to all uh my name is edgar montes and i'm the rialto unified school district board of education president i've been a school board member for 11 years now first got elected in 2010 by my community i got re-elected in 2014.
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uh open for discussion you sure you don't want to discuss i would like you to continue as board president and i would like to have chuck waldo continue his advice because you guys are awesome so there's really no dis what if what if we want to discuss it right are you okay with that i am okay with that so are we ready to have a motion and vote i think so if you're okay i'm gonna move i think we need a motion to vote for the governing board president for the year 2022. also move to um just have a motion amend i recommend is that what it is or set in motion or emotion i move to have david merrill as president of blue ridge unified school district so is there any more discussion that is a second on that all in favor i didn't vote by the way i was just so it looks like vote for yourself looks like it's unanimous margaret is not here she had a commitment that kept her away from the board meeting this evening she would have been here last week but since we moved it a week back she couldn't be here so she needs to be excused so we are we are to the point we need the vice president and i'll make a motion to uh move i move that check waldo be the vice president for the year 2022.
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end of the school year the date on the it's december 11th we did we decided a couple months ago you wanted to go month by month by months and years yes that's so that's so it's 40 19 is 12 months you're looking at month by month perfect every year every month no so up 363 students in 12 months correct essentially yep did all the ones that left come back i'm kind of curious is this like really net new people or are they just somewhere back well look at 1920 it was only 43 24.
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and then so our next item would be to formally adopt our annual investment resolution this has been included in your packet the resolution states the types of things that we are legally allowed to invest in for indiana code and then this resolution resolves that we continue our banking relationships with two local banks that we are happy to work with center bank and people's bank both do great jobs for us and i so i seek your approval to adopt the annual investment policy resolution move to approve the recommendation offered we have a motion second we have a second by dr meddling any discussion hearing none all in favor aye any opposed same sign motion passes thank you and then the last item is to seek your approval to remove old outstanding checks that have not cleared our bank per indiana code and all outstanding checks that are unpaid for a period of over two years as of december 31st in which they were written can be uh should be cancelled so in essence it's any check that we still have outstanding from calendar year 2019 doesn't matter if it was written in february or october and so forth so when you pack it i've included a listing of those checks it's actually it's a very low dollar amount only 931 dollars and four cents and so i seek your approval for the removal of those checks so moved you have a motion second we have a second by dr medlin any discussion hearing none all in favor aye aye any opposed same sign motion passes thank you all right thank you that concludes the board of finance right now all right do we have a motion to adjourn yes or no sure okay thank you when the conversation threat starts off the original one then i can't find the original one on this oh so that's the problem sorry about that all right we will reconvene for our school board meeting uh we'll we'll move on to our agenda approval deletions editions dr veraco thank you mrs seuss uh you do have one amendment to the agenda and that is roman numeral 8b 1 some additional personnel requests from mrs mucha we have a motion by dr malcolm second second by dr medlin any discussion hearing none all in favor aye motion passes i did speak with mrs kelly she's not here this evening there was no correspondence so we'll move on to our liaison committee updates mr marshall uh yes in the arena of personnel interviews we have impending interviews coming up it's a little premature at this time to have any discussion but we do have some personnel that are either retiring or moving on dede tonight thank you all right could i ask a question about that in past we've had two people on that committee why is there only one on there uh may i answer that no i'm asking there was not two people somebody else that they have the knowledge absolutely answered there was not two people there was one as a backup in the chance that i was not able to attend the the one exception was when we replaced mr gandalfi with mrs mucha that was a central office position and we did have two and i think that's important to have two people on it i really do it's a very big corporation and that's a very important position i think it should be a discussion when all board members can participate in that conversation so i will motion that we [Music] have discussion about that and we'll put that on hold for the work session hopefully and i know that's going to die and i know it won't get a second but you know nothing gets a second that i say but that's okay um i really think it's an important position and it would help our communication which seems to be falling apart we can put that on the work session thank you dear appreciate it mr marshall did you have any other anything else you'd like to say no i have nothing else to report in that area thank you dr medlin no updates thank you thank you dr malcolm well i yes actually um i am not on wellness committee i was there as a stan stand in in case sandy couldn't make it sandy lezantine so my name should not be on here it would just be dr medlin education foundation is um just working really hard pardon me oh what's on there the revised agenda smith oh on the revised agenda i'm sorry i don't have the revised i'm sorry i don't yeah i don't use the revised do you want to okay good we've got that off thank you gene i appreciate that uh education foundation they're just working like crazy just keeping their focus on doing what's best for kids in the classroom uh legislative i think dr baraka will be addressing the legislative updates so there's no need for me to speak one thing else that i would like to suggest but i'll wait till we're done with these committees go ahead mrs seuss i'm sorry all right um and then as far as uh st john redevelopment committee i have no nothing to report dollars for scholars this friday at 2 30 they will be having a meeting immediately after school to review with any seniors that would like to put in for a scholarship to dollars for scholars this friday if they you cannot make it due to work short notice whatever we will have a link you'll have to reach out to mrs resnick as she is our dollar for scholars liaison school liaisons so um and that would be after friday after 3 30.
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uh as you know the middle schools and high schools are a little more uh complicated to run there's more electives more things going on uh they're just more expensive to run there you see those different parts i won't go into those again we may at the bottom there we may have some one-time special needs things like maybe there's a a kiln in an art room that needs to be replaced or a copier machine some of the i'll say the bigger ticket items that you need to do it wouldn't be fair to try and take them out of a per pupil allocation because that would take away most of the money that the principal might have so those are the uh concepts if we could just maybe there's one more slide to kind of set the stage here these are the component parts you you just saw um just to repeat there's the the salaries and wages that come from the union contracts the base allocations that's what we're calling those per pupil amounts they're for consumable things learning materials i talked about the fixed cost some of the improvements uh those will be things that uh either come right from our strategic plan or uh perhaps from the board and superintendent goals uh that are set down if they do require some some financing they'll get added in and then you see there at the end the one-time occurrences that i just uh talked about so um hopefully this gives you a kind of a working uh base we can have a good discussion uh as well as i i pointed out some places where i think uh hearing from you would be the most uh effective and i think where you can influence the process the most so uh questions on the process the timing [Music] what we're doing [Music] i know it went kind of fast but get to where we could talk a little bit john i think that was a great presentation to really set the foundation of what we're doing or what you're all doing on uh crafting this budget and so now what we'd like to do is hear from all of you that that are in our audience um members of our schools you're the important families that can help us um direct how we're going to craft this budget so i am going to set a couple of quick guidelines to this part of the program um i'd like your suggestions and we certainly value them we'd like to keep them to at least just 30 seconds so that we can get through everyone um that would like to share so on the bottom of your screen under reactions you should have a little um hand wave if you'd like to put your hand up i'll call on you and please feel free to um give us your suggestions you can also just put your hand up to the screen and i can acknowledge you um like that as well just to let you know we are recording this tonight hatters tv is also running this live um for those folks that wanted to watch it and not be part of the zoom meeting and that we will be tracking all of your suggestions on a chart that we'll be sharing as well so i'll start off with um oscar fuller and if everyone else can mute themselves so we don't get any uh feedback that would be great so oscar would like to hear from you uh just a very quick question uh how does uh our per student expenditure compare to other school districts around the state great question and john or kevin or ed if you'd like to take that i could do um it it doesn't um rate very well right now um the last time i looked uh we were number 169 out of 169 uh cities and towns the corsat spending figure the state does does it a certain way you don't just take the budget divided by your number of students but it is it is a uniformed way uh that every every school system uh follows [Music] thank you for that question that was good for someone to ask that i'd also like to introduce to part of our finance team our deputy fiscal officer eddie miranda is also with us tonight so just wanted to introduce the team i think it's important that people put a face uh with a name so another question from our group there he is good and another question from our group or another thought of how the money should be spent okay juanita harris go ahead thank you and um i just want to piggyback on the first question um i just want a little bit of clarification with the um giving of monies per pupil elementary level middle school high school we've experienced historically over the years that we have numbers that go up and down as students are enrolled in our school system and certain months during the year we do have a large number of students that come in how is that money distributed at that time as those numbers creep up or decrease john can you take that well that's an excellent point um [Music] timing is hard you know as i mentioned our our school year starts july 1st um as you saw we you know our board will work on its final budget in february so that's a full you know six or seven months before the students start arriving and and even when they uh they do begin to arrive in august and september it's really october 1st is the date we take our official count for the state of connecticut counting how many students we have and what grades and things like that and you know by october a lot of plans are in place you know if you're a teacher and you're you're getting ready for your your class to come in uh in the fall you're going to be ordering uh for them in this in the summertime if not a little earlier so when we do get unexpected changes in in a class size or something like that we we do have uh some money uh to help um with those changes not a lot um we gonna try and stick with it but i i think if it were um a dramatic change i i don't i don't think we'd be taking money away from a school we'd probably look to see if there's something else we could do uh maybe curtail some other budget or maybe there's a budget that we realize is is more than we need at that point and try and pull from some other place the district to help with those uh fluctuations uh this is the first year we we've done the per pupil uh so it probably will take a year to two to get get it really uh going well at least that that's our initial thoughts great thank you juanita for your question um we'll go to janice next uh hi can you just explain what does that per pupil go toward is that for supplies per pupil or i'm just not fully understanding that thank you and thanks for doing this okay so i'll call it um per pupil or or base allocation i like to describe it this way it's for the current programs and services next year but there's some uh discretion that the principal has um [Music] you know they they're if there were a change in the program or additional services uh to come if you saw from my uh i know i went kind of fast but we would budget for those centrally either as an initiative um one of the goals or uh maybe even a special need so um it's really to give the principal uh the ability to make decisions close to where they need to happen those are the best decisions so that if a teacher needs something uh or something um is is different than we planned the principal can adjust for example if they had uh budgeted money for postage and uh and they have a new teacher in this school and and the new teacher wants to do something in their classroom that's a little different we don't want to discourage that the principal could move some money out of uh some other place and into that line it's designed to give as i said to give them to just have discretion but the current year program and put the decision closer to where it belongs the the uh the concept itself uh actually came from yukon many years ago a professor by the name of harry hartley designed it it's been used in many places i know trumbull has used it fairfield west hartford greenwich it's morphed a little bit from place to place but it seems to work uh principals like it and and it also um allows the the central office to concentrate on improving the schools and moving ahead and planning for next year so they're not um involved in kind of the i want to say routine decisions but the the things that our principals are very capable of making thank you great thank you janice we're going to go to uh kevin for a second go ahead kevin thank you ann uh so i just wanted to interject quickly um good evening everyone um again juanita was good to see your name on the screen i hope all is well in retirement um i i just wanted to to offer this to the question that uh juanita harris acts earlier to your question because and i know juanita has experiences firsthand as a counselor at a high school we experience um a significant number of new students typically in january and february this time of year um it it's unbudgeted i just want to be clear um our um our budget is locked in um well before as john had alluded to well before um january we began to see these increases in enrollment but from november 1st after our enrollment is locked in budget is already locked in um it's it's not uncommon that we may get hundreds of kids after november first number one which is no different this year i believe we have a net difference of about 300 students since october 31st and we will continue to get more um in january because we continue to get an influx of new students this time of year so so specifically to that question our budget is locked in for the 21 22 school year um and to the point that john was making certainly we will pull resources from other areas to meet to meet staffing needs if necessary it's not always the case um because we might be under subscribe in some classrooms and you know our principals and guidance counselors and um when i'm sure you've been part of this we find we find space in classrooms where we can uh may not be a an ideal fit at that time but that's what that's typically we've had to operate but that's but that is our reality as a district and unlike you know many of our neighboring districts we we continue to experience growth um while you know some of our neighboring districts are their enrollment is on the decline but that that is just kind of our reality here so just level set an opportunity for everyone as we understand the budget and some of our realities here in districts great thank you for clearing clarifying that i think that's really an important um piece of it so we'll go to uh rhoda please hi um writer uh first thank you for inviting everyone who's interested and who came tonight i am a teacher at morris street school i teach fourth grade i'm also a danbury resident my student my two children went through all danbury schools very proud of them but the past few years as everyone knows there are many children who have not made the progress that we would hope they would have and we don't have enough time during our school day to really do all the things with our students that i can so as a teacher i would suggest some after-school programs that go year-round not just start january february when some money looks like it's available and some of the after-school programs could be academic some of it could be social emotional academic a combination but there's just not enough time during the day and i think we need to plan this at least for elementary school and start in the beginning of the school year so maybe you can consider some of these kinds of programs and i'm not talking about elp that's completely different i'm talking about some kind of program that would not cost the families but it would help some of these students who have really fallen behind because of the situation we've been in so i hope you will think about that thank you for sharing that thank you and rashna i saw your hand up did you still want to say something yeah thank you so much uh good evening and thank you for the opportunity i'm just i'm just curious like uh last as compared to the last one or two years so uh what uh how what are the major challenges uh uh in the budget uh preparation this uh here uh because uh as uh mentioned in the first in the first or second slide the majority of uh uh the budget component goes to the staff salaries and benefits and i think it's um it's majorly for the current the current staff so because of the changing scenarios like um if as compared to the last year and there are more requirements for the teachers and they there are sometimes online classes also so will the development that will be requiring cost related to the staff development also and maybe some investment in technology as well so uh is this uh majorly different from the last year or is this a major challenge also i'm just curious about that thank you i'm going to take a step at least a couple parts better um [Music] you know i don't want i i don't know if it's that much different uh from what we had a year ago but uh certainly uh social emotional learning is very high on our list and that's an area for if you talk to teachers um i think they'll tell you that it's that has changed uh quite a bit uh but also um you know the career academy um the matrix at the summit uh that's very very important uh to us it's it's it's two years away uh but that that really has to continue you heard the superintendent talk about the enrollment growth that we just continue to get and um as that gets closer to the high school level um that that's going to be a very important project so kevin if you want to add to those but okay yeah all right so um raj that's good good good to see good to see you again um this evening um i you know another challenge for us um that we haven't yet discussed yet um is our reality with the federal funds that we have coming into district uh to john's point we have um paid for some of these priorities um specifically or um bringing in staff to support social emotional providing social emotional support in our schools um so we've hired additional counselors we've hired additional people personnel staffs psychologists social workers etc in a district two deans to dean's academic deans at the high school as well however we we've used federal funds to pay for these positions and um on top of that we're opening up a new school in 24 25 and we have that we have to provide staffing for a high school that right now we don't have the funding for of course that's not next year but it's the year after um and so some of our many challenges um are all rolled into one um it's one uh beginning to you know we we talked about a plan i've talked about a plan through attrition we will fold many of these latest hires into the system through attrition and so as folks leave us or retire we will fold those folks into the general budget versus the federal grants that are being paid out of now but this does not address um the idea of opening up a new building four thousand students um actually thirteen hundred students in total um and having staffing to support um that the 912 and 6-8 program um so and don't get me wrong there there are plenty of more priorities and we're hoping to learn of more priorities in this forum this evening um but but those are some of our biggest challenges um on top of the ones john just mentioned um and i'll stop talking because people like chrissy have they great so chrissy you're up go ahead hello again um okay so i guess i kind of just wanted to piggyback off of what uh rhoda was saying there with uh programs um i think you know in addition to after school programs i actually think like during the school day programs um would be of value um you know like the last three to four years uh field trips haven't happened things like that um you know and i just think that there's a lot of social emotional value to that um it really helps the kids connect school with fun positive things you know i mean the teachers are great they do a great job of trying to make learning fun but there's just something different about being able to go to the zoo and enjoy a trip like that that you don't realize that you're learning that they're missing out on um because of our current covet situation so i guess i just i was wondering if maybe kind of bringing bringing those experiences to them would help sort of enhance that or um give some of that value back great thank you for adding that that's some good thinking there absolutely someone else somebody we haven't heard from somebody new to our group what are your thoughts what what is that innovative thinking that you have going on you know what what was are what are some of your thoughts if you think of like well what if they did this what if they tried that what if they um you know thought outside the box gotta have a few of those thoughts out there you could raise their hand and or just start to talk about what some of those thoughts might be um and this is juanita again yes go ahead go ahead and i just again you know just throwing out a couple of ideas and i'm thinking and hopefully uh kevin might be able to help me with this and i think i see another high school counselor online um we are under the um mandate for a certain number of credits for graduation and um i'm not sure but i think that we will have um a large number of students who will not meet um the number of credits needed to graduate within the four-year span um just because of the pandemic perhaps because of the influx of numbers that came in this year and not having the classes um for the students to be enrolled in so we may i'm not sure down the line we may have a large number of students who are behind in their credits so i'm just thinking uh similar to like your online community college classes perhaps we might think about um some online night classes for credit for some of our students that would be done virtually remotely and online so that's just an idea that i'm tossing out there great thank you for that other thoughts go ahead kevin hi no i i'll just say juanita thank you for that question and for the families who are not aware um there's an increase in graduation credits i believe we moved from 20 to 25.
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i got reelected in 2018 and if god wants and if my community continues to support me i'll be re-elected this year in 2022 our district's been through many controversial uh issues and situations uh this is nothing new um many people have called in and spoken about you know the um the nfl and some other situations uh this is the year 2022 and i truly believe we're in a time in our country in our communities where a lot of changes are happening for the better um some people might be in support of the mascot but obviously there's a great deal of people in your community and surrounding communities who um i would like to change the name uh respectfully for for various reasons and i just wanted to call in and show my support for those people in your community and in my community in surrounding communities who believe it's time uh to change the way people thought in uh and and and really just stand up for what's right you can't have it both ways you can't you can't say it's okay to offend people it's okay to disrespect people it's okay to hurt people's feelings um and be insensitive because other people it makes them feel good it makes them proud we can't have it both ways our school district doesn't have a mascot like this nor do i think or our district would ever consider having one like this and um please uh uh take into consideration your community's concerns your community's desires and um at the end of the day hopefully uh the real the uh azusa board of education can do the right thing for your school district and for your students and your community thank you edgar next up we have caitlyn arianis hello can you hear me yeah we can hear you okay good evening board members superintendent assistant superintendent and the rest of the respected cabinet i'm caitlin arianes a junior at gladstone high school and i wanted to express my support for the rebranding of the sousa high school aztec mascot as the mascot stands it feels as though it is a caricature of aztec and indigenous culture mascots are meant to be a symbol of pride but how can we bear pride when we have corrupt something so sacred why do you claim to be for equality and equity yet turn a blind eye at real issues in our district i believe that in order to gain perspective on the subject the board should listen to the actual people of indigenous ascent who are speaking in front of you today if you choose to neglect those who are speaking out the least you can do is not neglect the people whose culture you are appropriating so please keep in mind we are watching the community which you have neglected is watching the decisions made forth today will be remembered and they certainly will be remembered on november 4th all i ask is you keep your most important constituents in mind your students the future of this district and most importantly the tonga tribe when making this decision that is solved thank you caitlyn next we have sharon lara alton hello my name is sharon lada alton and i have been doing danza esteca for around a half of a year and i have to say that it's changed my life i am an english teacher and a professor of english at chaffey college and i work with students that are indigenous from indigenous communities that we all service um and so what i want you to urge you today is to change the mascot the aztec mascot because our culture is not your entertainment i think i urge you to look at the voiceless in your community and give them a voice and proper representation i urge you to listen to the community and change the mascot to something that represents azusa unified that is strictly you that lifts your community up but i urge you to go a step further i urge azusa unified to stop the excess accepted narrative of genocide that we're teaching our elementary school youth we teach mission projects that normalizes the genocide of indigenous people the people sitting in your homes in the your communities in your schools at what point are we going to expect better from our educators than now your community is coming towards you asking you to change these things just in a simple representation of a mascot right but yet we're sitting in the classes where there be where genocide of our people is being normalized i really urge azusa unified to invest in educating their instructors in anti-bias and anti-educa and anti-racist education and to take this a step further than a mascot because it's more important than just a mascot thank you sharon next we have selisa loisa good evening i just wanted to say thank you for everyone who's calling in and speaking and representing communities um my i think there has been voice for tonight i also wanted to bring to the forefront the issue of longfellow i know the decision on longfellow will also be made today and i know that there are many different ways and opportunities for the early childhood education programming to continue thriving in our district i think one of the largest points i wanted to make today was the high schoolers are getting their space so that way they can thrive at their developmental milestone milestones that they are at middle school is also getting their individual space so that they can thrive in their individual milestones i would love to see our district also providing the unique space that longfellow offers to allow our early children to allow our babies to thrive to feel that support the community the collaboration that has already been long long time successful and standing and instead learn how we can duplicate the success and that is it thank you so much for your time thank you so lisa next we have mercedes what president it looks like mercedes has lowered her hand okay mercedes feel free to raise your hand if if you inadvertently took it down we'll move on then to rafael saldana good evening people my name is rafael i'm alan sante in the area of los angeles um i am from peru i'm native american from peru and when i at the uh as the community embraced me into this beautiful world dancer i knew that there was certain kind of ethics that we should follow when it comes to putin under regalia and that's that's same thing i'm going to ask the board of asusa to change the mascot well i know there's a lot of history of people being heard by like that misuse is masculine can move forward to new things to a brighter future changing the mascot because there's more than just a regalia there's a lot of history that history is not a mascot like malar my brothers have sisters say on this meeting and i asked you kindly to remove the mascot because there's a theater warrior carries a lot of history a lot of pain and a lot of history with it and therefore i asked to remove it kindly and like many of them say uh build awareness with a lot more educational options about what it is what an asterisk was more than just an individual with feathers and and uh in an outfit you know so i'm sorry i'm not the best speaker but i just want to be the voiceover and super all my brothers and and i understand your pain and i'm insularity i stand with you here and um i'm here to hopefully ask the decision to move forward for a better future thank you for your time board thank you rafael i do believe we have mercedes back yes good evening hello yes we can hear you just uh first of all i want to thank all the indigenous leaders and students and people who are recognizing uh their roots and also for the board to bring on this issue it's an issue that has been occurring it's been going on for some time and you know a lot of uh professional organizations and high schools have taken on this issue and it's unfortunate that um yes the aztecs uh in a lot of ways have not properly represented uh the the name of of that particular indigenous group of the aztecs and what we have to look also too at the demographics and we see that um there is a large number growing more and more every day to the awareness of our indigenous roots and even here in the uni uh sousa unified school district i was fortunate that for the last five years i have been given i have been given to uh gladstone elementary and center uh indigenous ethnic study presentation and um i've noticed that um in the last couple years that there is an increasing number of indigenous people that speak other languages and uh and uh spanish and english is actually their second and third languages and there are a lot of they speak a lot of their indigenous languages and um and they're attending uh associate unified and so the question is that how do you make that turn to properly um these these all these different indigenous nations that are rising up these people that are becoming aware of their indigenous roots and how to how to allow them to be able to um grow and and understand uh the education that they're getting in a public school district and so i think that that's the question in part the answer is um with the ethnic studies that have been proposed and how to how to be able to move from what the mascot has been represented as a racist stereotype and how to incorporate the different many different beliefs of indigenous peoples in the americans from the native people here where we have our name of asusa come from to the many from central uh and mexico and south america uh and north america and so that's the the question is how do then we are able to teach properly teach indigenous history in this in this country of this country and in the americas and so i think the answer is the ethnic studies programs thank you thank you thank you next we have joaquin c here we go hello my name is joaquin chavez and uh i live out here in the san fernando mission area on tatavian land and i live across the street from the mission and they also just removed a statue the father serra was removed and i think it's very important that we continue enriching our community with culture history of our indigenous people uh i also have a dansastica group in north hollywood with my father and we teach our children our youth our elders our community of our traditions about our culture the importance of our culture and the real representation of the mashika and the aztecas and uh having these mascots represent you know uh the aztecas or the magicas is as uh all of we all heard it's it's false information it's misleading it's disrespectful um and um we find it very you know hurtful to be uh to having our children witness these false um false narratives of what our culture is and so at this point i just want to extend my gratitude to the school board for extending the time to listen to our community thank you for extending the time to listen to us i also want to thank the community for stepping into this space and expressing their thoughts and their opinions and their feelings about how they feel because this is a very important issue and it's a very important turning point in our history thank you thank you joaquin next we have carlos goitia good evening um first and foremost i uh i want to acknowledge that we are on tongva land stolen land um my name is carlos goitia i'm a regional leader in the pomona valley i'm a lifelong resident of the city of pomona i am an elected official i am a director for three valleys municipal water district i'm calling in behalf of support of all those that are have called in in support of the name change for azusa high school um all the comments were great comments uh as one who identifies as indigenous myself uh i i never understood uh i always knew that growing up i always knew that i was indigenous but we were displaced you know being a lifelong resident of of the city of pomona finding out through uh through my dna and confirming that i my ancestry is of the apache shirakawa mascalero apaches and uh i take pride in that and doing a lot of research and understanding my culture and uh we i i just want to say to the board of education we are the leaders of today it's incumbent on us it's our responsibility to make the decisions that reflect us i i i know that your board is is diverse um whether you identify as latino mexicano indigenous african-american you have a diverse board i take pride in being the first indigenous uh indigenous person to sit on the board at three valleys uh there are hard decisions that i have to make there is one that recently i have made i was the lone opposition uh vote to offramp a study and a project of drilling for water in in the mojave bonanza springs area uh these are hard decisions but as as electeds it's incumbent on us to make the right decisions so i implore you i ask you to to do the right thing and make the right decision and making that name change and respecting the cultures the tangva people we in pomona are are are realizing the original name of pomona which is which is which are sisters of the asus kanga uh people um we we're bringing awareness to that so thank you and thank you board for allowing me to speak thank you carlos next we have michael we still have michael in attendance uh yes we do michael you may and mute your mic hello can you hear me we can hear you yes how much is going to cost about 2 or 3 million to change the name can you hear me we can hear you uh we you're able to speak freely for three minutes but we do not respond you do not respond okay all the money they're gonna waste for this when they can be put in for the education for the children since the coroner virus is keeping the children back and maybe we're behind now all the children all the school districts we should be focusing on that then just going to focus on the name and all these people who are focused on this hey let's get all the city to agree with it forget about all the outsiders all the ones that went to school here should be the ones voting get the aztec warriors to vote albert sanchez larry shooting luna all them guys and let's see let's see everybody have a vote like that instead of getting these outsiders who'll come around they don't live out here even if they the ones who are speaking i don't think they even went to school some of them probably went to school here they just want to come put their two cents in i honestly think we should go ahead and put all this education money all this money they're going to charge to education our children better i don't see what's the reason why we're worrying about this name you know to me i think it's just a lot of waste of time and money it's just like when you had i mean when we had that 20 million they put their conditions they should have put the solar out there save the school's money i really don't understand why they're complaining too much about a name i mean it's a name it's been there for years should stay there for years no one's never got offended from here until now he's trying to start whining about it say hey leave it alone keep on going just be the aztec warrior they already changed the the mural complaining about that they should put the old mural back then the one that they have now then after that you're gonna have to change that too and there you go wasting money again but i'm really disapproved on everything because we're over here sitting watching this wasting time and money to me when it should be saying hey we're gonna get the education for the children get the pool for them so we could get some trophies and stuff from people out there swimming and stuff but that that's not gonna happen either because why the coronavirus but i hope the name's just a because she's been there for years i don't know what's a hold up on this thing it's just downfall waste money again that's all i got to say and hopefully our mirror gets better and healthier and all the children who need help you guys should be building a program for them to be you know going for assistance for math reading writing social studies science something that they need helping out the single parents that are struggling that money could go to that too instead of this you know change a name thank you michael thank you next we have mazatsin azteca yolo kali please correct me if i pronounce that incorrectly yes uh you pronounced it correctly can you hear me yeah we can hear you okay thank you very much and uh first of all uh yeah first of all i want to say that i agree a lot with uh what michael had to say i could i could i could feel him i feel like i could feel he's coming he's speaking from his heart and uh and many people have a lot of connection to to things the way they are uh and and also i also have to say that i resemble the remark i am an outsider i i do not live in the area and however as you can tell by my identity here that i'm presenting it means uh massaging comes from the aztec word that means deer and it means either venerable deer or it's a term of endearment uh little deer and azteca locally means azteca yolo cali meat house of the aztec heart so it's very uh serious situation uh to understand the meaning of some of these words that we have here and that is part of the culture that now is um as we know uh one of them i think it's the majority uh what they call minority cultures that that exists here in this country and um but my dedication has been to to teaching people to become aztec as the aztec word comes from two words one is astli and it means instrument to harmonize and the other is tikka which means a person so a nasty is a person who becomes an instrument of harmony and that is the culture and the tradition that many and most of the people that preceded me were talking about in their presentations that i agree also with all of them that spoke before me very honorable and very respectful and um so being an athletic is it's really not impossible and and i i i heard uh some people have said that not everybody can be a nastic well it it's not really a nationality or a place of origin it's actually a way of being right an instrument of harmony and right now i believe that i will add my voice to those who are asking you to take this name aztec or take the mascot concept of aztec off of uh of the school district in order to create that harmony you know and maybe maybe maybe little by little we can learn to become aztec but at the moment you know we need to have the harmony so i add my name to removing the the mascot draftkamati thank you very much on this beautiful day of the read uh eight read and the reader is called and guided by tesca and that means the consciousness and the memory so thank you very much next we have alex munoz uh can you guys hear me yes we can hear you okay so um i'm currently a senior at azusa high school and um basically what i agree with what michael said that it's going to be very expensive to change and there's already numerous expenses that we have to cover for high school like we can't even get our pool fixed and we want to change the aztec mascot like where are your priorities at um and not just add to that it's just sure we can change like maybe the song you know the the way we dress the the spirit day spirit rally whatever it is we can we can do that easy it's just like out of all things we're prioritizing right now doing a pandemic changing the mascot is one and and not like providing better education for students and uh i just think that it's you have your priorities are mixed up and that uh the priorities should be the students and not the image that they portray out to others that others might get offended um okay and i do hear the side of it being indigenous people they want their dignity they after so many years of of just stealing their culture and i get that and that's why i want uh i support uh making the aztec more accurate or whatever it can be so uh that's it thank you very much thank you alex lika do we have anyone else with their hand raised we have no other hands raised thank you then we will move on to 4.0 general functions and specifically 4.1 discussion and decision of reorganization school mascot and colors for azusa high school i i believe to start things off mr mall you would have for us some some information and some some details on uh some of the intercosts associated with this change yes thank you for president um so we did um receive information from legal counsel which identifies which are the recommended and preferred funding sources it was concluded one as we all knew general fund would be able to absorb any not absorbed meaning we have financially but it is a fund that has the most allowable expenditures we have our developer fee fund which is fund 25 in which those funds can be used for modernization to be used to identify going to our schools due to school closure or reorganization where we are projecting an increase in enrollment we have our fund 40 which is the rosedale fund that is funds that we use for capital expenditures such as 10 tangible items that'll be affixated to the building modernization pool we did also talk about how we possibly out also the turf overlay we have our fund 21 which is our bun bond funds for measure k which we can use for any modernization project that we have currently on the list so we have four funding sources i'm sorry four funding sources in which that we have available before the topic of rebranding i'm fun one is the main one but we can get some rebranding expenditures out which would be like redoing a turf painting if you wanted to redo the pool the basketball courts but for items such as new uniforms um for our different sport events those would not qualify for those funds beyond the general fund i have a question my question mr mall is um i don't see anything on this list that shows um the grant writer if the grant writer um from i heard in the past your if she wasn't about look for grants that had to do with uniforms or is there any grants or i'll take i can take that one uh we have contacted uh our grant writing company to see if there was any if there are any grants to help with any of these associated costs um there's one grant that they definitely have identified they keep looking and so we can definitely continue on that route uh to apply for uh potential uh grants uh but nothing concrete we haven't been awarded anything or anything like that right now it's just discovery and an application if that's that's where we want to go do we have a sense of the potential timeline on that uh not all grants but most grants do come with timelines on when they are [Music] announced and when deadlines are the one grant that we are currently looking at is not one of those grants that actually has an open just an open timeline and so we can move forward with that particular one and again we'll they'll continue to look for grants that match up to this and i have another question also regarding we did receive a list regarding the uniforms that the students that is is a high um from you know volleyball tennis softball cross country and so forth um for boys and girls and i noticed that a lot of these um the track they haven't had a new office for 15 years you know everything's five years or or more you know eight years six years um well how often do they change uniforms or where they get the funds and when they're going to change their uniforms i can take that question so the uniforms are purchased with an athletic budget which is part of general funding that the sites receive and also with funding from fundraising from the uh teams and then um just one more question regarding i know that we did use the all cap in 2017 for uniforms for the mariachi program and also ben that's correct right so um what what uh gold was that and what action was it that we used in there in the alcap i want to say it's um i'd have to look at it um board member rodriguez pena but yeah we do have as a matter of fact in our lcap we do have under our music budget uh for the lcap we do have um uniforms as part of um of that funding that we have a built-in any any of my colleagues have anything to add questions to ask comment i would like to introduce myself my name is gabriela arellanes and um i i want to thank everyone who has showed up tonight in person and online i appreciate for all of you guys that are watching we received over 30 email 30 emails and support of this mascot change all of them comes down to one thing there's so many issues right now as school board members that we are addressing one of the students from gladstone high school said this was a long time coming miss althea theo we knew this back in 2019 before we even spoke about all this when i brought it up at a school board meeting we talked you know i said let's talk about the elephant in the room this the whole change of the mascot is the elephant in the room and it has not been since 2019 it's been for centuries we need to address morton yes we do need to address more important issues but but it is the mascot issue among others that prohibits people from seeing indigenous people as people it is so easy to say oh it's just a mascot oh we can spend money on other things but according to 538 analysis hundreds of schools across the country still use native americans as their team mascot monikers widely seen as racist and demune dehumanizing to the native american community there are people who will downplay the importance of the issue and say oh gosh don't you have better things to worry about your priorities are mixed up well the humanization is i think the very root of all the other issues that we face for decades advocates for native american rights have been working recklessly to convince the teams schools to change their names filing lawsuits to protest and applying the pressure on teams and their sponsors right now we at susa unified school district are re reconfigurating and have the opportunity to make this happen are we gonna wait for the lawsuit are we going to do it now that's our choice that's a choice we're going to have to make tonight bar sharp president of the national congress of american indians who leads the country's oldest and largest american indian and alaska native tribal government organization the widespread of black lives matter protest ushered in a national debate about race and racism in america one that finally finally included the rights of native american native americans we all know that this day would come this should not be a surprise to us the moment has just been an incredible sacred moment bringing this country together to advocate for the rights of indigenous people and to be an ally and partner with others that are disenfranchised the continued use of naval amen native american mascots and education has a long and harmful history these mascots perpetuate racial stereotypes and culture misappropriation negatively impact the identity and psychological development of indigenous children and create a negative learning environment for all children for these reasons teach for america publicly opposes the use of native mascots and supports the removal from k-12 schools now we here in asusa have a partnership with the western justice center we went through the training what the western justice uh center envisions this is their vision they envision a world in which communities are healed united and transformed through conflict resolution education and restorative practices rooted in equity justice and opportunity how can we say that we support something partner up hire consultants to be teaching our we're starting that right now teaching our teachers right we have one class in each of the high school we have one teacher we need to do better because we know better it's about education or the lack of education that makes it so hard to adapt or change this is not about oh i i'm monastic or i'm a gladiator this is about doing what is right tonight i humbly and strongly request we find the funds which we now see that we can do this to repair and do what is right for our children and future generations asus school board members the time is now if not now when thank you i have something to add remember all right so um i also um thinking back on on statement the and radiance i think the best way to honor the tradition of both high schools is to equally move forward with the new beginning it is difficult enough for us to experience change let us not choose a school let us grow one school as one by merging into the name we would send a message that we have not chosen one school over the other the um aston azusa aztec mascot is culturally insensitive to the native american community we have many speakers here and well thank you all for being here and people on zoom it was over almost hour and a half but um it was real really good really interesting and it also educated myself and i really appreciate that regarding the change um the aztec mascot and the logo for the following reasons it is disrespectful and racist to the native americans the heads the headdress is a sacred object that is earned throughout the years of battle the outfit they wear they use it as a costume the young lady that comes out as a warrior yet she has a short skirt on and she comes out now what are we saying about the native american women that is disrespectful even for myself i am 59 native american and i also did my studies so i i don't appreciate that we are stereotyping indigenous people schools and teams have changed their mascots such as warriors rays indians redskins cheese tomahawks for the same reason we're in the 21st century why are we acting like we're back in the 60s i'm from the 60s i went and feel like i'm fighting for the same lucha all the time it like never ends well i feel myself as a board member can make a change and can end things that i was not able to do back in the 60s um now's the time to unite the gladiators and the aztecs as one let's make that change now thank you um i'm okay with changing the name i think i came into this meeting um and i know people watched the last meeting i'm feeling really feeling that we could um find ways to be um i would say multiple sensitive with using the aztec um mascot um but i think dr dr sanchez's comment um really resonated with me really thinking about you know when azusa was a very different place when it was when in 1956 when we created it and knowing that i can only guess as i mean obviously we can't know that what they were thinking in their minds about who was who were the decision makers at that time who was sitting on this board um thinking about the systemic racism that we've all talked about on this board and talked about how we're going to address um really make i think um help me come to that conclusion that it does make sense even though it is it will be an expense and it will be coming out of our general fund most likely i think it's important for us to be able to have um even our outward-facing icons our messages reflect the internal ethic that we want all of our community and our students to present so um i agree board member bo do you have anything to add thank you board president just a few comments um i can say that all each of us and as a as one unified board we have a lot of responsibility we have a responsibility to our stakeholders to be fiscally responsible we have responsibility to our students and families to provide a rich rigorous education and there are always they're always going to be a variety of competing priorities but i think when i think about education i think about the responsibility we have as educators to apply a very deliberate critical thinking lens to everything we do and for me the the how and and the why is just as important as the what i think we've heard from the community tonight both in person online and in the variety of our email communications that there are a lot of ways to approach what we're doing in terms of consideration of renaming the mascot for azusa high school and i think that there are some really interesting and innovative ways to achieve um achieve what we want to achieve and promote an inclusive environment that's respectful of a very rich pan-ethnic native american heritage there are very lot of ways to continue to improve and strengthen our liberal arts curriculum in the k-12 spectrum and i also think that um as mr mall's team has put together there are ways that we can be creative you know with our with our budget and be fiscally responsible so i think what um you know the approach that i'm championing is that there are ways to do you know say yes and and not instead of either or and so i i'm hoping that we can work together tonight to find ways to achieve that yes and compromise that's going to enable us to reach our goals and really fulfill our mission as a district excuse me and and the other dynamic that i wanted to bring in onto the table is um identifying the actions we're going to take as well as the timeline right and and perhaps decoupling the actions from the timeline and and deliberating on those as separate items will allow us to have greater clarity about what we're doing rather than feeling pressured that it happened that needs to happen tomorrow of course it needs to have a specific deadline and we need to hold ourselves accountable to that deadline but i offer that to the group as a tool to help us parse out not only the what and the why but the how and when thank you thank you board member bo i will add a couple just a couple comments um a good a good friend of mine kind of stated a proverb to me and and said that the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago the second best time to plant a tree is today and i and i can't help but think about that when we when we think about the the situation that's in front of us now um yeah hearing uh dr sanchez you share and talk about just the the realities and and the history of how those decisions were made and uh and when that was and the makeup and and even looking around this table and seeing and and with board member bow online seeing the uh the expanded representation that i can that i can only imagine exists as compared to back then um i think that there has been continued learning and continued understanding of of uh the the impact that these types of decisions have on on people and on and on culture um and so with that um i i also um look at what's in front of us and recognize that yes we need to continue to be fiscally responsible we need to look at how we utilize our funds to ensure that we're we're using those funds for um our uh our students and and their education and and their resources and and and what they have available to them and in their environment and um kind of going along with that um environment and their education i i see this i would also agree that um now is a time for us to look at and address um this matter last thing i'll say is these types of conversations can somehow be controversial and and i want to say i think it's always important that we we look at the the individuals who are impacted by these decisions and we consider the impact on them as as opposed uh above and beyond uh higher and louder than the voices of those who um are are not as directly affected and their their culture is not being um uh appropriated or or or misrepresented who who speak on behalf of those whose culture is and so um i i think just kind of hearing what my colleagues have said um i'm i'm grateful to be a part of a of a board who has has learned and has listened and is continuing to learn and listen any additional questions comments um i will note then we'll we'll entertain a um emotion here then in a in a moment uh i will add that it does call for uh mascot and colors um for um azusa high school so um i didn't hear anyone really speak on colors but but that's that's also worth worth noting one of the things that um i have comment on that that i heard tonight was you know to to get the community involved and especially the students i heard the students that spoke tonight they want to get involved making them be part of this decision and include them to be part of this decision um would would benefit um would benefit them so are you saying the timeline should be this school year since those they're seniors right is this juniors and seniors junior's been senior well i would i would ask um so arthur if we were gonna rebrand right how much lead time would you need to be able to do all that work like let's say for our target is fall of 2023 right that's our target date of consolidation so how much lead time do you need so i think um if we're um hearing some of the the the comments on uh balancing and being fiscally responsive but also making the right decisions um and i think i echo the sentiment that this this can be a community involvement um a type of [Music] process that really gets voices into into this and i think that if we if we have the mindset of as an example just hearing that if the vote is tonight yes we're going to change the mascot and the colors of zozo high school um and we have the mindset of uh implementation uh that is phased in we can we can accomplish the fiscal responsibility uh because we we will have uniforms right now we will have stuff that have azusa high school that don't have the mascot and so the things that do have the mascot right we can move a little bit quicker um so i think that if we if a decision is rendered tonight we can uh get right on a process uh lay out a process share that with the board of education uh in terms of how we think um i believe we have a couple of products or software things that are coming up that can help us to get community involvement and so we can we can come back with what that what that would look like uh to the board of education but i think we have we have uh some time the the big ones really like the the big big ones uh here are going to be um the turf um we believe depending on the decision uh we so let me clarify what that means let's pretend we kept the colors but only change the mascot as an example if the community said that then that actually um gets a get gets a quicker turf uh versus we're changing the colors and the masa and which which is all fine but that's really the the big one uh some of the murals and then the um the gymnasium floor are really latasha those are really the big ones i don't see the marquee as a as a big time time one the big ones i would say are the turf the floor in the gym and any not even painting just the the logo work so i don't i don't see a big time constraint i just have a question regarding when you mention the colors so i thought tonight our vote is to to decide on change of mascot and colors uh correct but we don't have to right and that's what that's what we can defer but we can defer that to a process i think what i heard arturo you say is that um if we give you direction to move forward this is this you can we can give you direction to go and develop and and develop a proposed process correct right how we're going to do community engagement what kind of committee's going to be have the makeup of the committee and then you would bring that back to us correct i'm i'm good with that can you clarify what she just said please yeah so so if we voted tonight that uh we we are fine with changing the mascot and the colors of azusa high school right uh we would right away get to work on a process and a timeline of how we're going to involve our stakeholders to give input and voice we're just talking about a committee so correct the committee to be the stakeholders in the community like like chamber or who are we talking about um right now i don't know but i'm thinking it's not a mock committee it's a it's a big it's a big input and voice um and just to further let's pretend that if we're not deciding today what that mascot is and those colors are correct right so i'm what i'm suggesting is that once we hear the voice it could turn out to be that the mascot has changed to x but the colors like we like the the the voices like the colors so they want to keep the colors but they just want to change the mascot and that we should honor that and be okay with that unless the board's saying no definitely 100 percent know that the mascots must change and the colors must be but but um right here at stacy we're supposed to change colors and masks i mean just i mean that's what i'm reading and i thought that's not our discussion but now we're saying that we're allowing the community or whoever committee did students i disagree with that i think that we're going to have that vote today for mascot and colors that we stick to it and that we change the mascot and colors and do not give that to the community and give only the um the choice of color it's a different color we're going to change the color and change the mascot just just to be super clear maybe carlos looks like you you'll want to lean in as but looking at 4.1 says discussion and decision of of in essence school of mascot and color so so that invites a discussion and a decision of two things school mascot and colors so we may whatever the board decides we may decide um that we we do not want to send that out to to be considered or we can say that we do want it to be sent out to this committee for for consideration but i but i see that we have we have a couple options in front of us carlos did you have i agree i think the board can do one or both so the board can act to just change our to change the mascot today and defer the issue of the colors the board could also take action to change the colors and then through the process it may be that the original colors are re-adopted by before so there could be an opening that the board could say we want to move forward with an open process for a brand new mascot and an open process for brand new colors hit community input and then ultimately it may be that the original colors are pre-adopted but the board has a lot of discretion however carlos if i could ask for a clarification right just to to continue on this on this conversation uh the board may elect to say we vote to change the mascot and the colors and we will leave it up to the stakeholders and the process to determine what the mascot is going to be in the colors are going to be correct they can also just based on this conversation that just happened right now they can say everything i just said but through that process the the mascot must be changed and the colors must be changed we will not accept the the current colors that exist right now yes the board can take that action as well and those are the again those are the wishes of the board so i'm happy to make a motion with the first scenario that you just mentioned right where we would vote to change the mascot and then defer to you to develop a pro or um and then give you direction to develop a process for for a community either a committee well a process that we would ultimately adopt as a board so not saying do it go go off and do it um that would have have whatever vehicle it is look at options for and recommendations for a mascot and the color but if we as a board want to separate the votes i can do it i can do a vote just on mascot just for the sake of clarity would you would you mind concisely restating your emotion so my motion is that we uh my motion is that we um take action to change the mascot of azusa high school um and and then how would you say it and create a process for community engagement to determine what that new mascot will be and and corresponding color that is my emotion there's moved by board member cruz gonzalez is there a second i will i will second that motion is there any additional discussion i would like to challenge the motion with a different motion and and if you're looking to amend the original motion yes there would be a motion to amend motion to amend the original motion i would like to go ahead and since we've gone this far and we've spoken and been able to reconfigure i think it is justly that we must change by motion to that we must change the mascot and the colors together there's something new second so this amended motion then is on the floor any any additional discussion for the amended motion uh um i agree with that for for the following reasons you know if you know we we're speaking about merging the schools merging the colors so it is a new beginning so it is going to be totally new you know because you stick with the colors and there's still some there i mean i'm telling you as a board member 10 years if i go to azusa high and i'm wearing red they're like oh my god why are you wearing red okay i mean i'll go to blossom high and i'm wearing blue you can't wear blue i have to see what i'm going to wear before i go to school so i think the color is very very important uh all right i mean for staff and for students my two cents that i'll add is um i see us again we're with this we're having a conversation and we're making a decision on behalf of of individuals that we're inviting into a conversation that can make decisions for themselves but we are the board he's before president but we are the board i recognize that and in the process that that was one one process that we can that we can look at is saying to our community what do you want it's what what we are saying is as the board it is we are allowed to engage them on what what does our community want and what makes sense and what is feasible and provide parameters that say using the aztec as a mascot is is an unacceptable option but as far as colors if our if our community comes back and says we and um that we do not want to keep the same colors then the the original motion not the amended motion gives the gives that option for uh to be considered if they say that they i forgot what i said whatever the opposite of that is then they also provide that option i see this motion as as eliminating choice and and eliminating options that our community has to decide for themselves and so that's why i would be in favor i would i would not be in favor of the amended motion board member beau did you have anything to add not at this time okay so then we will we'll do a if i'm not mistaken we'll do a hand vote on the amended motion um which if if that passes it becomes the official vote that we'll we'll take online um board member um rodriguez pena yes board member bo no board member um cruz gonzalez no board member arianes yes and i bourbon mcgregor i'm also a no so the motion fails um three uh two three knows the two yeses uh which brings back the original motion that board member cruz gonzalez stated which is that we are defining that the mascot correct me if i'm wrong here but the motion that was on the floor was the finding that the mascot must change but um kind of allowing for a process that will that that could include the community and our staff uh determining that the colors could remain the same or that the colors could change i would like to go ahead and amend them the first motion again and then as i would like to go ahead and have two separate votes i am not comfortable voting the mascot and colors since the first uh amendment was not carried on i would like to go ahead at this time and mend that and motion to go ahead and split the school mascot and the colors and two separate votes so it's easier if i just retract my motion as long as my second agrees and i'll just um i'll do an initial motion just motioning that we take action to change the mass thought at azusa that's so is there a second for that motion my second so we'll we will uh the second will be board member rodriguez pena and then any additional discussion i would like to go ahead um and vote online for the mascot back up just one second here where i think we had a motion to essentially bifurcate the original motion board member uh cruz gonzalez was correct that she could withdraw her original motion and and her second agreed so in the way i'm looking at board member cruz gonzalez your your original motion involving two issues now on i withdrew that motion yeah right right so we don't we don't need to jump into the discussion on that original main motion i believe board member cruz gonzalez could have before and now make a new motion i think i already made it and i was already second by yolanda so now we're voting on that and then i would only include the mascot with the the with voting online the reason why why we won't is because the we we're taking one item and we're splitting it into two but our computer still has it as one item so we'll have to take a hand vote on the first one and we'll have to take a computer vote because we because we split it up or we could take a either or but we can't take the we can't take the online vote twice and then it's just clear it's it's reflected in the minutes right regardless of which order and so what i'm i'm asking is that we take the mascot vote online and that we do the colors by hand vote if that's okay mr president thank you who's gonzales second by board member rodriguez pena and who is the second on the new yolanda thank you we'll call the vote and the motion passes uh five to zero which leaves us still with the the matter of colors uh that is that is in front of us is there a motion on the floor what is emotion well i would just suggest that we don't take action on the second item or do we need to take action to send it to the committee i think i think it's implied right it you can the board by consensus and also direct staff for the board president can direct staff to come up with a plan to bring it back to the meeting or the board tax vote okay i'll make a motion i'll make a motion to direct the superintendent to include in the process of renaming the mascot to also include what in whatever that process stakeholder engagement process um um recommendations on the colors of the school can i please ask that they also be divided that is the motion is just the colors of the school you said mascot right now no no i in what i said is in the engagement process of renaming the mascot also include the color i would like to go ahead and separate that i believe the matters are already separated okay so i'll just i'll just rephrase it so i also my emotion is that the committee that's put to the committee that's convened or the stakeholder engagement process convened that that commit that that stakeholder engagement process also include recommendations on the colors of the high school of azusa high school moved by board member cruz gonzalez we have a second so i have a clarifying question board president so as the motion stands this gives the um the committee or the process right um discretion to propose colors they could be the same colors they could be wildly different is that correct that's my understanding [Music] foreign second any additional discussion then we will move to a hand vote board member rodriguez pena no board member beau yes board member arianes no board member cruz gonzalez yes and i am also a yes and so the motion passes three yes the two no before you guys leave we invite you to come to our high school i know you guys have done i know the kind of work you're doing in pomona i helped co-found the latino roundtable come over to azusa you guys are the san gabriel valley pomona valley latino roundtable not just the pomona round table um yes we'd love to have you guys host you guys over here moving on to item 4.2 discussion and decision of school reorganization school mascot and colors or gladstone middle school are there any questions um or any information requested or is there a motion i'd like to go ahead in motion 4.2 second what is your motion to go ahead and change the mascot and the colors together second a move by board member adianas second by board member rodriguez pena any discussion uh my discussion is if it passes are we gonna go to the same process as including the community and they would be working the same committee will work on both of them um i will request a little bit of time um but i think similar i think mostly yes i'm just wondering out loud like again don't hold me to this but i'm wondering out loud do we involve middle school students in the in the middle school process uh you know those kinds of things i'm just thinking out loud right now but mostly 100 yes part of the stakeholders though in the high school you would include students initial initial thoughts absolutely yeah so why not can i get a point of clarification from board member arianes i just want to make sure if if the motion is to change the mascot and seek recommendations from the same committee i'm going to be looking at that i want to make sure that is correct thank you any additional discussion um although i appreciate the comment by rhonda about what a gladiator is i think i think i'm i'm a i would be okay keeping it as the gladstone gladiators i think um alumni that have gone there for decades are losing a high school but at least they'll have they could still have a space with a name attached to it and i don't think it hurts us at all to have our middle school called the gladstone gladiators so i'm okay with keeping it the way it is even if even though we're treating it differently in the high school and i think clearly tonight show that there are there are many multitude of reasons to change the mascot at azusa high school so i that's that i would be comfortable just keeping it as a glutstone gladiators that that is not the motion right i know but i'm just giving my discussion and um in addition to that um i'd be happy either way but we will save money we do not have to um do both high schools um that funding is a big thing right now board member beau did you have anything to add not at this time thank you i also would be um i would not be in favor of this motion and would uh would vote no so that the uh mascot and colors remain the same at glasgow then i if there's no further discussion i will call for the vote and the motion does not pass it fails two yeses to three notes so maybe misunderstood so what was the most was the motion to keep it or okay so i'm you can ask confusing i was promotion thank you for that board member cruz gonzalez so the motion was basically to decide to change the mascot in colors and now that board member greer shared as board member cruz also also shared that they were not in favor of changing gladstone high school gladiators mascot or colors and so they opposed it and so what this means is that um that they do not want to chain the majority there's three of them that do not want to change flatstone high schools mascot or colors they would like to keep them such as and it would be gladstone the only thing that would change what would be gladstone middle bull instead of glass don't hide so i'm sorry then i misunderstood and i changed my vote oh no i think i misunderstood let the record reflect that the emotion failed one yes the four note um actually carlos in a situation like that if she misunders she gave a second he seconded emotion here's here's what i want to wonder does that just is it does the fact that uh board member ariana says motion failed does that seal that because there still wasn't a decision there was just a there was just a no given and the fact that board member rodriguez pena said that she misunderstood and she was the second does that nullify the the vote to even begin with i don't think we need to go back to nullify the vote in its entirety of the bottom line here is that we've had a practice here at on the diocese of both changing the vote after it's presented on the screen and so i think the simplest way to go about it is a board member rodriguez pena said he wants to change no the motion fails and so you can kind of move on um so therefore we we will take that to mean that the mascot and colors remain the same at glaston middle school correct thank you then moving on to item 4.3 discussion and decision of school reorganization longfellow school i i will i'll ask um staff if i know this was something that the preference was back in december the preference was that we wait until the the new year to make this decision and so now that we are on on the other side of christmas break um is there any infirm can you provide us with some information and and thinking in regards to um longfellow yeah i can share some some data on longfellow to help with your conversation and decision right now at longfellow school it is a preschool through tk school the tk that exists at longfellow is a dual immersion class room there are eight teachers at longfellow school currently and among those and among amongst those eight teachers there are 12 classes that are taught because um preschool uh is a.m and p.m okay um at gladstone high school um there are some programs longfellow sorry yeah at longfellow school uh there are some programs that are not funded by uh california state preschool program uh so we have our dual immersion tk that is not funded by cspp we have our special education preschool that is not funded by cspp and we have our dual immersion preschool that is not funded by cspp the cspp sections and teachers those have to be in licensed rooms and even though the other ones don't have to be in licensed rooms we definitely work towards ensuring that they are in license room although they don't have to be if we were to move in the direction of closing uh longfellow um the we would have to ensure that we have uh licensed rooms at um at our other sites but right now that only pertains to hud hodge is the only school that doesn't have currently a licensed uh room where we can put preschool that process can be anywhere from three months to a year depending um but if we look at the two-year timeline that still can can set us up for that uh in addition to that uh if we were to move in the direction of movement just some things to consider all of the other schools um that currently house preschool which is all of them except ellington and hodge um they are not at capacity so there is room at all of our elementary schools to house uh more preschool students in addition to that we have five schools that have licensed classrooms that we are currently not using for preschool so that there's there's a there's an there's a built-in expansion there if we wanted to uh to to do that uh just for uh just to to ensure that we're moving in the right direction we would engage with licensing just to say okay we're going to move in this direction we're actually going to put students there now um but we don't we don't see that as a as a as a big thing we would also have to engage with the state to ensure that we have moved our programs to the correct locations uh and that they are aware of the locations uh that are currently being funded uh and and and where they are uh where they are at um so um that's some some data points uh in terms of of long fellow we can answer any other questions that you might have board member vote thank you board president i'd like to make the motion to table this item can i see i was going to ask board member beau for clarification whether or not you wanted to postpone this matter yeah i guess the specific board meeting or to the discretion the board president to bring the matter back i'd like to have it tabled to uh be brought back at a at the discretion of the board president okay so that'd be a motion to postpone and is that that is up that is not up for discussion does that require a second and discussion and vote he's making it as a motion so i would ask for the second you you have not formally adopted robert's rule so if there needs to be some discussion about the motion i think that's acceptable within a zoo so so um motions to table postpone are non-debatable and i and i was hoping we could have a conversation about the sabrina i'm wondering if you're willing to withdraw your emotions so we can just have a quick discussion before you do your motion again or if you want a second i'll withdraw the motion for the sake of discussion thank you so i think um for for me to understand i mean as it i mean traditionally right um the really hodge has been has been um impacted by space right and if we think about it they don't even currently house their own tk one of their tk programs because you have the dual emerging tk program um that used to serve feed into two schools but now we have that we have valley dale tk dual immersion so that really is the dual immersion for the for the hodge program um compounded with the fact that in my mind there is room for expansion so we we've been able to create preschool programs at all our elementary schools yet also keep a valley deal i mean longfellow going to me speaks that it doesn't make sense to close it um knowing that we don't have any full day preschool programs in our district um and the state is incentivizing that we i i know personally people who don't come to our preschool programs because they need full day and they can't live in our community but have to go someplace else often maybe a poor quality program because we don't offer full day so i would just so knowing that would take up more space right because then one class would take a full day knowing on top of that that the state is looking at expanding cspp since we have we're going to have universal tk and i'm i'm appreciative that we're ahead of the bandwagon on that one right so we're way ahead on that um that they're even thinking about for csvp starting to allow districts to enroll two-year-olds right which i think first would be i mean it's a big thing to do right but knowing that and knowing that there's places for us as a as a unified school district to really eventually become a birth to 12 district right i would just i i'm not in favor of closing longfellow because i think it sort of closes opportunities for us board member rodriguez pena yes my question is dr latasha if i recall before the pandemic either we had an application or something out for a full day and then um i never heard about it anymore just i'll take that one ms rodriguez pena yeah um yes we are keeping our ears and our eyes and everything close to the ground we will be at the moment that that is announced as a funding opportunity uh we are ready and able and and willing to employ we we have that desire uh to open up a full day full year uh program uh in our district thank you for the confirmation uh board member bo is your hand still raised from uh your previous motion apologies i lower my hand okay any other conversation discussion i would like to vote on this today because we do have it on the agenda other i mean other if there's like an urgency why we should not but um that's what we have it on this agenda today so sabrina i'm just curious why you um why you thought it'd be why we should table it i mean i'm open to that i just want to know why i'm i'm happy to have a one of my colleagues you or another colleague make a motion for a long fellow um you need a motion motion that she's not going to do it she's not going to put her to motion out the table yet one of us can make a motion so for us to make a motion to um keep longfellow open all second so moved by border rodriguez pena that we that longfellow remain open second by board member cruz gonzalez any additional discussion then we will move to a vote and the motion passes five to zero which brings us to 5.0 and specifically 5.1 adjournment is there a motion to adjourn make a motion to adjourn second move by board member rodriguez famous second by board member adianas any discussion then we will vote and the motion passes five to zero and so we are adjourned on 9 14 p.m thank you everybody have a good night
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second from jennifer all in favor then again unanimous all right thank you very much like i said i just get a lot more phone calls and a lot more text and everything that goes on at the school has my signature on it no your signature so if anything's going to come back it'll come around back around my neck not your neck sorry thank you mary for keeping me out of trouble and the things that you prepare the documents all right item 1.2 resolution a resolution authorizing the approval and execution of funding proposal grants a special project vouchers warrants salary and other expenses to be signed between board meetings the superintendent seeks board authorization to allow a resolution authorizing vouchers salary and other district expenses to be signed in advance of scheduled board meetings do you want to put that into english sure the timing of the business operations are such that they don't always flow with a once a month meeting and there are people waiting to get paid or contracts that must be signed and so this empowers myself and the chief financial officer who's brenda thomas martinez to transact that business and the board has given us the authorization to do it in every case we come back to the board to make sure that these actions are ratified by the board but it gives us a chance to transact business in advance of the meeting this is a customary item it's sort of it is an annual deal and it's it's needed to perform school business any questions or comments about that we have a motion to accept then item one point two have them have a motion from diana a segment from chuck all in favor that two is unanimous item one point three identify and record conflicts of interest for governing board members school administration and staff district-wide so this is an opportunity for those on the board that might have a conflict of interest with somebody at the school chuck do you want to start and we'll just go around this way i i don't have any conflicts i don't have anybody work here or even a student attending right now my daughter caroline cox is a teacher at the elementary school my son-in-law eric cox is a part owner of white mountain physical therapy and they have a contract with the school district to use part of the facility in this building and he also is a coach for the football team and i have three grandchildren that attend blue ridge as well that's ryan cox lauren cox and jared cox that's it appreciate all that they do that just means that you can't vote on anything that would be in particular to the you'd have to recuse yourself from that vote all right are you ready for my list okay so um wait let me write this down i'm just kidding i have it written down for youtube okay so ian brimhall pllc in arizona mountain orthopedics is owned by my husband and myself and he does volunteer work and usually is the medical physician on the sidelines for most of our varsity events also we own arizona mountain specialist group which includes a couple of other physicians that are part of that organization that also volunteer for the school and we are part owners in the sunrise surgical center and they also do surgical and procedures on injured kids in case of emergency here we go and then we are the owners of camp grace that provide after school programs for our students and then some non-profit events i'm also an employee of white mountain physical therapy so we do some athletic training here at the school i'm the founder of white mountain youth foundation so we put on the high mountain half marathon and then provide scholarships for our students and then i'm also the founder a co-founder with my husband for brim hall family foundation where we donate a lot of money for equipment and events at the school and also project elevate which also provides equipment and pro does events for the school so that's it thank you and thank you all for for what all you do oh i have a child also that's part of the school now and also a um foreign exchange student that's here too so thanks i think that's it you got all that mary we already know okay thanks and i have one my daughter amanda butler works at the high school and throughout the district to do with attendance and with nursing thank you um margaret will have to margaret will uh we've submitted a list for her the same as last year which mary do you have those that essentially her husband lynn gaby is a there's a doctor eye doctor and they donate work sometimes and they donate glasses to students sometimes that's about the extent of her conflict yeah but we always just want to make sure she we knew she is and then on mine there are two firms one of which uh right welcome paulie my brother's the principal owner of that firm he's presently inactive of that um he's on a sabbatical for three years uh that firm in its original form which was i can't remember the name but my brother was still a principal owner the district has been doing business with that firm for over 20 years i've been here for seven we still continue to do business we have a cadre of about five attorneys that we use and wright welcome probably is one of those five of the firms that we use another one is the trust the leadership academy the district has done business with the trust as its provider for insurance for i think close to 30 years 25 years my consulting firm provides support to the trust leadership academy those are the two issues or conflicts that i have thank you and thank you for what you do so with those um disclosed we have a motion to accept those disclosures as stated in 1.2 a motion from chuck have a second from anyone sacred from dying all in favor yes 1.3 i'm sorry thank you jennifer that was 1.3 item 1.4 directive of annual investment reinvestment of all monies within the school district service fund dr wright you want to explain that for those listening yes there are times where you have pretty large sums of cash that have to be directed into an account through the county they're on interest bearing very very low percentage rate but they're they're guaranteed funds and so they earn less than half of a percent but we need the board's authorization to continue to do that so at least the taxpayer money is earning some interest and it is in a safe account and so in order to direct these funds to that money market account we need the board's authorization annually any question questions comments or concerns about that if not korea excuse me can i have a motion for item 1.4 a motion from chuck a second from diana hall all in favor that also is unanimous okay item 1.5 a governing board that delegation of purchasing authority and again dr wright would you explain that this is something we have to do every year yes and these are for items given we meet uh once a month there are there's timing of certain purchase items especially in today's market for instance when we're going out to technology we purchased a cache of computers or certain elements items that need to be where time of essence is important we need to have we have there are set limits based on the area that myself only myself and brenda thomas martinez our cfo can sign for but we see we seek the board's approval annually in order to conduct this business as well just as a statement that's not a one signature that's a dual signature on that right it can be up to a certain point right what's the list it depends on the item in most cases at least has my signature on it most cases both but at least one or the other all right any questions about that any concerns comments item 1.5 can we have a motion to accept a motion from jennifer a second from check all in favor that also has passed it 1.6 establishes the dates times and locations for our regular governing board meetings basically it's the third wednesday of every month last year we were the second i'm sorry tuesday sorry tuesdays and wednesdays get confused because they're in the middle of the week and i try to take naps through those days no so used to be the second tuesday of every month but we had conflicts with the second tuesday with dr wright being able to be here on time so with the meetings that he has to attend so we've moved that to the third meeting uh any conflicts anybody can see i'm wondering if we can move the december 20th it's really close to christmas time absolutely maybe move that up a week or even a different day absolutely even if you would like to do the um would it be the 13th would be the second tuesday the 13th yeah i would even be okay to move it even to the first tuesday of that month we could but we have we'd like to close the month out all the financials so if we could do the second one the 13th would that be acceptable yes would that cause a conflict with you or is that no in fact that's just an oversight in my part thank you if that works uh mr president if you'd like to so that would december meeting would be changed from the 20th to the 13th yes sir all right any other suggestions comments if not can we have a motion to accept item 1.6 with the revision of december 20th to december 13th have a motion from diana second from chuck all in favor thank you that's unanimous okay the next item on the agenda is a consent agenda and that's items all 2.1 through 2.8 are there any items board members that you have reviewed that you would like to take out personal uh individually and we vote on those individually or can we just move on the entire consent agenda nothing we have a motion to accept the consent agenda emotion from chuck second from diana all in favor okay that is unanimous also item three superintendent report item 3.1 dr wright will turn some time to you thank you uh last meeting the board directed me to look at our average daily membership and our student account to give an update on that and to draw a little bit of a comparison beginning of the year and then the most current figures and so i have that information for the board as of today we have 1860 students in total and if i break down those by campus we have 694 of those are at the high school 293 are at the junior high and 876 are at the elementary school grades k through 6.
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so right i mean there's definitely more than just the ones that came back i'm just curious like the younger students who left most we still have some that did not oh i don't know what percent i'd have to look at that but that's it just speaks to our rapid drone right next we have a mobile unit installation update dan was able to provide me with some notes for the mobile unit installation update country trails is 90 complete um they need to finish the plumbing and hang some whiteboards some of the cold weather that we had put us back a little bit uh hpt is 75 complete uh with the same thing they need to finish some plumbing and connect temporary overhead power hang white boards look like a 60 complete and um they need to install the waste system and they need to hang white boards and finish some plumbing there as well along with some skirting and prairie view skirting will be completed this week as well as exterior punch list items for that building for capital projects uh we're looking uh of course to move forward with a discussion with our what we want to do concerning lilly lake's hvac system looking at the boilers in that building and then a possible generator replacement looking to replace the generator looking to install a generator at least and then looking to install generators and other buildings that that lack them at this time um just like so many other shortages we're finding that related to generators that that there's some backlogs of being able to get them so we're going to be looking and moving forward with those type of big processes uh within the next coming months do our administrators in each of the four elementary schools have like their master plan for once we move like how everything is filling in or is that still in process of being determined with the mobile units yeah who's going there who's backfilling these classrooms or what's happening yeah so each of the principals have talked to their team of teachers and asked for volunteers to move first uh we had hoped that we would get them out before winter break then the cold weather hit we ran into some challenges with uh you know getting in this sewage lines and all that stuff connected obviously ct is our big one right now because we need the lunch space so we need the classroom space to put lunches in there especially with the mandate of uh students who come back after five days need to wear the mask for an additional five days even in the lunchroom so we are trying to get ct that's our kind of our first one we want to get done uh prairie view is waiting they don't need this space as desperately as the other buildings so we'll be doing ct then hbt is our next one that we really want to get to and then lilly lake but yes all teachers that are going no they're going uh we'll try to do a sub day to get them time to get into their classroom once we get it set up and ready to go uh so they have a day too like coaching football players need some volunteer hours there could be some there could be some football players just like you know take care of it like get 30 dudes in there and just probably do weekend weekend work to get the dust and stuff moved over with our custodial staff yeah they'll put in for some weekend work to do that type of you know shifting of materials then try to give our teachers some time to get the classroom set up but they're well aware and they've been as we look at the date changes they keep shifting on us but as we look at the closer dates then they will continue to work on their plans all right thanks for that curriculum director brooke myers here to discuss the recommendations of the olly sack [Music] got a hefty pile so i'm here with our sac facilitator nikki dolman she oversees the k-8 sacrificial or isis facilitator we work in collaboration so over the course of the past year our ela team has really dove into what our needs were and looking at our curriculum resources determined that we needed a curriculum resource that addressed all aspects of ela instruction really focusing on that interconnection between reading and writing we were looking for materials that really were rooted in foundational skills address language arts um as well as speaking and listening and as an overall so about a year ago we were digging in and looked at looking at various resources more of a comprehensive um comprehensive unit and we determined that they were through the branding process there were two series that we wanted to dive into this past fall we had put together a pilot team 25 teachers across all four buildings and representing each of our grade levels had tried these various products and we did it side by side for the reason to determine which ones are going to be the best ones for our students and what our needs are and so over the course of that time um they determined that into reading was the tool that best fit our needs and so as you see i've got some products for you to take a peek at this on top is our start right reader so our kindergarten through second grade materials are embedded with decodable text so not only do we have our core lesson that addresses reading and writing but it also supports that foundational skill lens and that's an example of the start right reader for the decodable lens we have our um a sample of leveled text it's the rigby library not only do you get a level text across that grade level or span of grade levels within your classroom setting but it also gives you um some take away components for instructors or teachers to use to start those conversations really embedded on what are what are the comprehension skills what is the foundational skill what are the follow-up activities that i would like to be able to do the next component that you'll see there is the consumable as well as the teaching pal so the hard copy the teacher pal every teacher will have that it gives them some anatomy annotated notes questions to ask how are you driving through that lesson and then the consumable piece really marries that reading and writing collaboration so an impactful component for us when we were digging into it was to ensure that not only were students um have access to great literature but they were writing in every single one of our lessons so you'll see that is valuable in that component the next piece there is an example of a table type lesson this gives anchor charts that drive that small group instruction as well as can be utilized for independent thank you for thank you for being my vanna white here tonight i missed that can you do that again right hold on it's coming the next one there is um an example of the writing uh teacher guide so kindergarten has it all embedded in their literacy um in the writing component as well first through fifth get a separate um writing it's titled writer workshop which drives through the writing path process in each of the genres yes can any of the print be enlarged or is this standardly or for those that might be visually impaired can any of the print be large for them everything that you have there is also available through digital okay so we can it can be projected um enlarged in that capacity a staff member could um enlarge it and then print it so we'll have access to those pieces through the digital lens and then the last thing there is just the overall teacher edition again it's embedded in that writing and reading rooted heavy foundational skill development and addresses all aspects of ela instruction so in your board packet you'll have the memo um we're presenting and proposing that we're doing digital as well as print copies for each you'll see the breakdown of what the cost is for each of those grade levels in that k5 setting as well as the professional development that's tied to it so nikki has used this not only as our ela sac facilitator but then also as a second grade represent representative that taught it so do you want to share a little bit about yeah that's not real i actually like it i enjoy it it's set up where there's modules and each module lasts about three weeks and they literally walk you through each day and what it's going to look like and they show you the different components of each day that you're going to do my kids really enjoy it they really like the foundational piece of it they love the routines that they've established in there they love getting out their whiteboards they love the writing part of it um they like some of the texts that are in there they've really enjoyed them there's some that they've kind of been like you know but they overall um whenever we get out our uh my pals book they get so excited they're like what story are we gonna read this time and they love to have that in front of them because it puts the text right in front of them and it's good text it's text that i would pick for myself as a mentor text if i was teaching something so um i was really pleased to see that that was one of my biggest concerns when i was piloting when i told shane was i don't want just any you know text that you know the publisher was like well this fits this skill so we're gonna make up this story i wanted something authentic and real that the kids could you know um that was engaging and by authors that they knew and that that's what that's what we have in there so about diverse library or connectivity to social and science context this is kind of my is my this is a little bit of my baby here because i um i think that there's a huge need for that cross-curricular piece um our day is full and any opportunity that i can take to get into science and social studies with my ela curriculum i will take it anytime i can get and one thing that i really liked about it at least at the second grade level um i haven't gotten in too deep at the other grade levels but at the second grade level there is a lot of opportunity for cross-curricular activities um when we were learning about the rate course in science and social studies one of the actual writing pieces was about the rainforest we read a book that i would normally read to my kids and there was a writing lesson tied to it so it was exciting to see that um it was a lot of fun and we've been working with the coach with the coaches on trying to align our science and social studies with um the modules that come with the program while still maintaining that foundational skills piece because we've made that our priority and we've said that the foundational piece is our priority so we've been trying to work around that and and uh rearrange the scope and sequences a little bit to fit that ability to be able to do that so authentic text is the root of this program as well so not only do we have authentic trade book text that comes from that culturally relevant text that's embedded in the lesson as well as on follow-up and writing components that are attached to that so we're all encompassing all those components any questions for us thank you okay thank you all right thanks for your district data analysis dr manga so in your uh book or you should have um kind of a spiral piece of the data analysis what what i kind of want to preface is that we have to remember that we are coming off of obviously a pandemic no testing for our students was done in 2020.
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so i'm sure to those scholarships coming in who's the liaison mrs resnick registrant okay and that's all i have did you have something else you wanted to say um i i could do that right now or i could do it later um in light of the way for some reason with this group the way officers are handled um first of all i'm not opposed to a slate of officers i think that's a great idea but i am opposed to the clandestine manner in which it was put together i i don't know for a fact if everyone on this board knew it was coming as a slate of officers except me i had no idea it was happening that way so i started thinking about that and i thought maybe it's time we put together a nominating committee and that would just take care of all this ugly stuff that happens so and so called so-and-so it's it's just ridiculous um drama that happens behind the scenes so i'd like for us to talk about a nominating committee also at our next work session as as much as we've worked as a board to be clear and transparent among ourselves and among our colleagues i found that to be very unprofessional the way it was handled so that's all i have to say thank you all right dr veraco official school board business topics consent agenda thank you again mrs do seek board approval for the minutes from our work session on january 3rd as well as our regular board meeting of the same day and then seek board approval for our claims payroll and extracurricular expenditures that you received last week we have a motion by dr malcolm second second by dr medlin any discussion hearing none all in favor motion passes there are no public comments for action items so we'll move right on to our official school board business topics regular agenda dr veraco thank you once again my first two items are to have the board appoint liaisons to both the dire parks department board as well as a construction liaison for a plan that we are going to rule out this evening regarding pivot elementary normally the board president appoints these at our org meeting but since we didn't complete that last time i thought i'd put it on the agenda this time and have the board actually take action on it i'm not sure that that's necessary but i've been told by mrs seuss that dr malcolm will serve on the dyer parks department and that mrs sues herself will serve as the construction liaison appointment that sounds great all right so we have a second all in favor aye aye any opposed i just have i just have a question because i also wanted to be on the construction liaison committee um and i know when we had the high school construction i think there were three school board members on there so if we could have discussion about that at our next work session too sure thank you all in favor aye aye motion passes thank you just as a point of clarification we did not have three because that would constitute a meeting but we did have two at the beginning of the big construction project no they didn't join we never had more than two because that would have constituted a public meeting and we were meeting with our architects and our construction managers and sometimes talking about some of the okay flies in the ointment so to speak okay my final item is just to talk a little bit tonight with the board about house bill 1040 if you followed what was going on down at the state house last week there were a couple of pieces of legislation regarding education in the area of curriculum and additional requirements that some folks wanted to do if you'd watch the youtube piece where the senator state senator from noblesville was explaining to the committee that he didn't want teachers to take a stance on the isms you saw the con comment from the teacher who pretty eloquently shared why some some things you just have to take a stance on but this 1040 is going to have some of the same pieces that sort of went away from those pieces of legislation last week but they also have a couple important items i think maybe even some of the folks who are here tonight will be interested in and in this 1040 one of the key components is that it includes a parent opt out for any school that has a mask mandate and i just want the board to be aware that effectively at least for us and probably from most school districts the amount of paperwork that would be coming in and keeping track of who has completed the opt out versus who hasn't will likely make most schools optional um it it still creates some of the problem with quarantining because you know it's one of the main reasons why we've stuck with the masking to keep our quarantining to a minimum and so it will it won't solve all the problems but it appears to me from my contacts down at the state level that when this latest wave drops off there's a good chance that that will get passed through the general assembly there's also a piece in there that any school who wishes to have any students under 18 participate in any kind of assessment that has to do with anything related to mental health would need parental permission this would likely jeopardize some of the youth risk behavior surveys that are conducted by the state of indiana themselves so they may in that legislation also just say they're not going to do those anymore because again it becomes unmanageable to to to to have so many opt-out opportunities it's interesting that one of the pieces of this legislation also repeals the provisions enacted in 2019 that would be specifically indiana code 20-19-5 that required the indiana department of education to develop sel activities so we'd go back to square one and all of those types of activities that help a lot of our students and i understand some people have taken exception to certain parts of it but i don't think throwing the whole thing out is the answer but that's what this bill aims to do and it requires the indiana department of education to develop a complaint form for stakeholders to use should they take exception to content or lessons utilized by teachers and probably of all the stuff i've heard that's the one thing that i personally don't have a problem with because i think we already do that and so um if somebody says this is the formal process and this is how many days you have to meet and or talk about what it is and analyze what the problem is that's probably the one piece that we could live with the bill also includes a clause that says the list of communicable diseases may only be expanded by an act of the general assembly so how they're going to decide and maybe it's that it's never that never will anything be termed a communicable disease again it's clearly you know because they don't believe that the covet thing is communicable and then other issues relating to the committee evaluation of lesson plans um that were halted in last week's senate bill 167 and a different piece from the house some of that stuff we expect to be rolled into this piece of legislation i did speak with representative slager when he was driving down to indianapolis today about some of these topics and he's confident that it's going to come up later this week at some point and so we'll continue to follow that legislation closely because it will impact us any questions about that or anything else happening at the state house sure tell me more about the opt-out so what would that how would that be handled i mean the paperwork itself would be overwhelming yeah so if they say that the department of education will develop an opt-out form and each school district will put on their website it's at that point that i would recommend that we just go to optional because there's no way we can be keeping track of who's supposed to be wearing the mask and who's not and we're not going to arm bands or anything else like people have you know said you mark people and so i think they will effectively make the decision for all of us because it just will be too cumbersome got it so they are going to be having they meaning the state leaders will be having discussion about the the mask wearing and the requirement and where we are with that is that something on their agenda then that's what one legislative tour put in his bill and i believe they're going to discuss it soon okay that's okay that's good to hear thank you and i appreciate you talking to mr slager earlier this morning on the phone sure i appreciate them calling me yeah any other discussion i will move on to our director of human resources personnel mrs mucho thank you very much we are asking that the following personnel items be approved but i do want to bring to your attention a retirement of a very special person who has given 26 years of service to lc and 33 and a half years to the field of education and that is mrs dede logan [Applause] i've had the privilege of working for dede for many years and i can say she's certainly an excellent principal and great representative of education absolutely so can i have your approval yes we have a motion move to approve i have a motion and i will second that any discussion hearing none all in favor motion passes thank you very much also in your packet i have a request for an additional fee raises for our substitute teachers for each different level a raise of ten dollars we have a motion by dr melco second second by mr marshall any discussion all in favor motion passes thank you in the many different layers of food service we did forget one layer when we made our raises and that was for the people who cater for us so we are asking for the same raise as given to the other food service personnel yes we have a motion by dr malcolm second second by dr meddling any discussion all in favor aye aye motion passes thank you and for your information there is a conflict of interest form in your packet thank you my last item is for a professional leave form for our director of food service which is virtual so the cost is very reasonable move to approve we have a motion by dr medlin second by dr malco any discussion all in favor motion passes thank you very much all right so we'll move on to our director of primary education dr bracy good evening there are no approvals for tonight but i would like to update you on our high ability assessment let me start by saying our schools have done an outstanding job with testing our students it hasn't been easy but we only have a very few makeup well we only have very few makeups left of the 1 students tested 86 students have qualified iowa testing will be administered to 261 students to determine their proper placement that's additional testing and then only 42 students still need to make up kogat so kudos to our staff for executing kogat with excellence during these very difficult times thank you thank you thank you thank you yeah and thank you for the report you sent out earlier today to about i read and ireti could you send me a hard copy of the report you just gave this report sure i can send it to you tomorrow thank you appreciate that you're welcome thank you we'll move on to our director of secondary education mrs castaneda good evening for my first item i am seeking your approval for the professional leave requests we have a motion by dr malcolm second second by dr meddling any discussion hearing none all in favor aye motion passes thank you and for my second item i am seeking your approval for the field trip requests that were in your packet move to approve the field trip requests we have a motion by dr medlin second by dr malcolm any discussion yes i heard from a friend of mine who was at imea the lake central hamburg choir almost composed the entire handball choir for the state so the all-state handbell choir was well represented by our lake central students yes and mrs novak gave them kudos today on the announcements as well they did an outstanding job do we know how the choir did there i do not okay could you get that information for us please thank you all in favor aye aye motion passes thank you thank you and we'll move on to our director sorry business services mr james okay uh the first step my first time tonight is uh dr bronco mr ledger and i are going to do a presentation regarding a our upcoming vivid elementary school expansion project there are multiple steps in this process and this will be the first step and we do a preliminary determination hearing in here so i will turn it over to dr brockett so we want to give a little background here on how we got to today and um you know i think the first thing is i want to say again thank you to our community for allowing us to do the substantial work at lake central high school back in 12 and 13 and then rebuilding the protzman school as well it's it's been a big bonus to the students there and the staff there to have those facilities and and equally important when they're new just like when you build a new home there's not much maintenance to do in the early days and that saves money that can be used elsewhere but for us today you know we're really in a situation where the number of empty classrooms we have across the district uh is is getting pretty low it's getting low to the point where we think it's time to add some capacity to those classrooms the second bullet point you see there though is to honestly acknowledge that some of this is um brought about by our own commitment to have smaller class sizes in k to two um we know that smaller class sizes benefits students at all levels but we especially believe in it for our youngest learners and the biggest example of being tight is calling so they're in their second year right now of operating at full capacity um and we've already probably done the other thing that we could have done to try to add space and that was to turn a piece of the library into a classroom as well the last time we had our demographic study revised by gerald mckibben was in december of 2015 remember that when a demographer looks at your information he's doing what you would call forecasting and not projecting projecting would be just to look at past numbers and try to draw correlations using fractions but he's taking into other considerations using demographic study from the census as well as uh other things that he gets his hands on like housing starts in migration to the community out migration and some other housing patterns it's important to know that you know the green spaces the farmland in our district is running out but if we go back and look at how we end up with an overcrowding situation at kohling it is in fact because even though we have six elementary schools the territory of the culling uh is somewhere a little over 40 percent of the land mass of st john township now i'm not trying to you know kick around anybody who preceded me in the job because it was farmland and so that's the way it got divvied up but it is the the reason why calling is more overcrowded than the other schools in our last demographic study the one thing that jumped out at me was that as we have turnover of our mature neighborhoods we could see an increase in enrollment in our district as mr james said earlier in the business meeting portion of our meeting you know we've been pretty steady for the last three or four years really i mean we've gone up a little bit we've gone down a little bit but we're hanging right around 9 400 kids total so this new census data it may indicate a different forecast and so i'm going to probably at some point recommend to the board that we incur that cost and have dr mckibben and his staff update that with the 2020 census data but it's important for the board to know that our recommended expansion tonight is based on the actual need for classroom it's not based on projections or forecasts it's based on how tight we're getting right now go ahead mr james so we have looked at other things in the past because we haven't just started talking about this in 2021 if we go back to um the second bullet uh a previous board i think only howard was on the board at the time we talked maybe janus too we talked about uh having calling you know between the school and the bus barn putting up a third and fourth grade wing the board at that time really did not like that idea of having a 900 student or a thousand student elementary school when elsewhere in the district we have a couple schools in the low 400s and so that that got pushed out we looked at a 7th elementary school on the property at blaine or at burr in sherville and you know the the price tag of the protzman school was around 31 to 32 million given inflation we projected that to be closer to 40 and based on what some folks are telling us who are starting their construction and getting bids they're even seeing bids 12 to 15 percent above what they thought they would be six or eight months ago so the classroom edition can meet our needs without creating a separate issue with a significant tax increase it makes sense to go to either bibit or pifer they're the two small schools i mentioned earlier versus a new elementary school um bibich is our choice at this time based on the the capacity where they're getting tighter as well and part of that is because we we put some schools that came in or some houses that came in new in the preserve we pushed those folks to the bibit school um and we would also while we're at it at bibich we would redo the original hvac system and and redo the ceilings then after we do that project so while piper also has space on the property that project would be a little more extensive because the renovation to move the cafeteria would be a lot more expensive than what we have to do at bivich um but i will keep it on the radar because you know the next time if there is one where we need some capacity piffer would still be a really good candidate for that and then back to the timing on this you know we are very sensitive to our taxpayers we like to keep score mr james is going to show you charts maybe tonight maybe later where we are against our peers in lake county in terms of school taxation rate but we like being low we think it's important to only ask for what you need but at this time we don't think we should wait any longer given the now that we're down to just a few classrooms empty across the district short term and i say short term because we think the new construction can be done in about 18 months and then we'll need another half a year plus that summer to redo that hvac in the original part of the building but there is a chance that we could see cl some class size creep up until we can get the extra space and so we share that um in addition to the fact that some of the other projects that you hear about going on uh people are having trouble with supply chains and getting materials and so we're not exactly sure that where it's going to go but um anyway without going on we think the time is right to consider this project i'll turn it over now to mr ledger to go through some of the timeline and other key factors with the land itself well thank you dr veraco i just want to kind of go over some preliminary design ideas we've come up with as well as attentive schedule what you're looking at now is the existing site plan of vivid the dark blue areas would be the three areas uh where rob is okay well rob's over slow down there uh uh right there right there would be a a 10 a that'd be a 10 classroom edition right there coming in right off the main entry for uh dr malcolm and mrs logan that's right we're behind where room one is uh we had four rooms there on the fourth grade wing and for a total of uh 14 rooms it'd be a net gain of 12 rooms i'll get in that with the floor plan because we have to get we have to lose two classrooms there for bathrooms and then access to there on the back there is about a 2500 square foot addition to the cafeteria um we'd also add uh we're gonna add about 92 give or take parking spaces one there that one's i think we've kind of moved that one then between the two new editions that's going to be a separate teacher parking lot one of the biggest things here too i want to point out again dr malcolm and mrs logan can attest one of the biggest issues we have babies right now is parent pick up and drop off and you can see if rob goes on the west side there we have a parent pick up and drop off which will add a separate lane for that and it's about a 900 foot staging area so we'll be able to have a lot more cars there as i said dr malcolm and mrs logan are clapping because they know the they know the problems with that there and that will also separate out front in the parking lot we'll have a separate bus pick up there for 18 or 20 buses there so that's in will also improve some of the site drainage with the site work the next slide is is the floor plan um as where rob is pointing out you can see the four classrooms on the fourth grade wing the 10 classrooms here these classrooms here will have a separate bathroom to accommodate extra first and kindergarten grades again it's a delta of 12 because we're losing those two classrooms one and two there again the cafeteria expansion will be as i said about 2500 square feet we'll also enclose the kitchen line the kitchen itself add a serving line um as dr rocco said too the gray area the existing classrooms in phase two that's gonna be an alternate to replace the aging hvac system as well as the ceilings uh this is the tentative schedule i wanna make sure you guys understand it is tentative um with the pandemic uh the market is very volatile with as far as uh uh workforce and even more so with uh materials availability so right now um you know we're here doing the presentation uh in february next board meeting we'll have another uh approval and public meeting uh we hope to hire construction manager by end of february uh the goal right now the architects we as you can see the preliminary is already kind of gone and we hope to have the site drawings done in april and we would bid the site package in may and then we'd have the building drawings done it'd be a separate package in may as well we'd hope to break ground sometime in june after school that's out and then the uh we bid the building package in june as well as dr veraco said we hope to have the first phase the new additions complete by december 23rd by of 2023 and then in january we'd start phase two the existing hvc and ceilings we'd we'd move kids into the new classrooms and we'd separate wings and start that phase and then uh you have that done in the summer of 24.
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it is the 1920 uh freshman class that is now required to graduate with 25 credits um i i will say and this is one of the budget dilemmas that we have this year and moving forward um currently our high school is offering eight eight classes uh which gives students more opportunities at um obtaining 25 credits for graduation uh previously um students were being offered seven classes um but of course eight classes comes at a cost um and certainly does impact our budget um and so as we're going through this process this is something we will be making the board aware and our school community aware of as well and i'm sorry to interrupt kevin kevin can you just um briefly give um some insight into federal funding versus city council funding sure sure so so the the major the major federal revenue um that the district is benefiting from right now is the cares act uh which was the initial uh relief fund monies um and then what we've oftentimes referred to is so two and so three and so those last two grants for 25 million for so3 which is certainly sizable and esti-2 grant was at 11 million so the district was awarded approximately 38 million dollars to be spent over three years at the time of the award of those grants we had hired several positions we had budgeted for several positions and equipment and ppe experiences for ppe equipment to make sure we satisfy the social distancing guidelines and so so for example and i'll just say this quickly the leasing agreement in brookfield is one of those commitments we made we committed to close to a million dollars in furniture across the district to improve social distance in district wide um and we use those federal monies from example cares essa 2 and s3 for some of those things thanks for that question great from our general budget in which we budgeted um in which you know john is kind of walking through a little bit earlier janice you're up yes hi um one other thought i mean this wasn't why i got on tonight but we're talking about outside the box ideas one thing i had thought of back you know when i was more involved with one of the um parent-teacher organizations i was involved in was the idea of possibly doing some kind of night classes or even day classes for parents that were nice for parents who for whom english is a second language so english english classes for parents because like i used to get you know one of my frustrations was i'm looking at a room going there were very few spanish only speaking parents i'm like these people don't love their children less than i love my children it's a communication issue and like the more parents that we can have be involved in the district the more you know the more we can pressure the city council to give us the money that we need to provide everything that we need for our kids and i just think just including more families is you know in any way that we can obviously we do that at a district level by sending out everything in english spanish and portuguese so just if there's ways to help people kind of assimilate and learn english i think that would be a great thing great thank you for that suggestion and we'll go to patty go ahead patty you're muted patty wait okay goodnight everybody just uh one of my suggestions as a parent if if i have a change maybe they need uh having any programs uh for parents like uh lei serraz or el pat well i told you about the part and that program has helped me a lot understand how the important is the parent um be next to the the student and help to the teacher because i know a lot of a lot of job that teacher do it but they also needed the support about the parents for the children for the kids and to help in the house and a lot of parents don't think about if i read the book and the night for the kids is a lot of help and help to the teachers too and these programs like laceraz or pedo another program they help a lot understand us that's very important the parents um help to the teachers and for the for growing up the kids to learning more better great good all good suggestions patty thank you and chrissy up again sorry um yeah actually in keeping with the idea of like an esl class uh in the evenings i i actually again i know this would be a big ask but um uh learning a second language at the elementary level um you know i know i think ais already has uh something like that um with that especially in the community that we live in i think would be extremely valuable and that communication does go both ways so and then as you guys have said before you know we get people that kind of come into our community in 12th grade with two months left you know so realistically i think if our our kids had a better foundation of even spanish in particular spanish portuguese it would i think help all the way around bridging that gap because then their peers can even help help them assimilate and incorporate thank you kristen we do have um our we race which is our adult esl classes and i know they just did registration for those um right before the break and then right after the break and i do believe those classes are filled and so as an ongoing course for adults those classes always fill up we do have some other parent opportunities parent c is coming up um we'll have some form of a family university or a family camp type thing um coming up in the future too so we encourage you all to take um advantage of those things as well so great a couple more ideas from folks we haven't heard from this is great go ahead rhoda so i'll piggyback on some ideas that other people had um we do have summer school at least in the elementary school for selected students students who are at whatever the benchmark level is decided why can't we open that up to any student who would like to come to summer school um that means they would get breakfast they would get lunch and they would have a few hours of academics and every student in elementary no matter what level you're at could always use some more academics in the summertime [Music] all right thank you for sharing that idea that makes a lot of sense and patty yeah hi good evening uh my name is patricia chukong i work as a family and so for marriage primary school i would like to search just like we were talking about like the issues to communicate with parents it's the language right there is like a lot of parents who want to speak spanish and they have like they have been having a lot of trouble uh enable to you know to communicate with the teachers or sometimes they feel afraid to call the school so i i know there is if like my suggestion is possible like like right now the people are focused a lot in kids and the students right in our children but what about with the parents like if there will be any chance to support the parents like english class i mean classes for parents who speak spanish like i know a long time ago i don't know they used to have some classes and that was the first class that i take in this country it was morsel street so they used to support parents but right now i don't know like i know there is some parents that they are asking if there i know where if there is any any class like they can take but i don't i don't have the answer i don't know if there is any school who are providing like esl class for the parents that's my question and my suggestion if it will be possible thank you all right so we're coming up on our hour i want to make sure if we haven't um heard from someone that has an idea please share it with us if anybody else has a thought there is two other opportunities that i'll share with you tomorrow evening we have another chat chats with kevin which is an open two-way dialogue um with kevin to talk about um issues in the district and then next thursday night we do have another one of these listening forums for our families so if you um come up with some suggestions you can shoot myself or uh kevin or john an email i'll put the email addresses in the um chat for you as well so there's always a way open door to communicate with us but i see that um alan kovacs has raised his hand alan go ahead hi anne how are you good how are you good thank you great um yeah i mean i hear these ideas i think there are you know a lot of a lot of good ideas out there i started i started looking at you know where we came from from from 2010 at the high school level up until today and i was re very concerned that you know we haven't made really significant progress on our test scores our graduation rate um those kind of things and so i started thinking you know what what could we do um to help those numbers and you know my thought here is you know i'd like to see a higher proportion of our budget being spent directly on classroom expenses things like teachers guidance counselors nurses assistants supplies things like that you know when i hear that we have funding where we're hiring um these positions in and then we're going to wait for attrition and then integrate these positions into attrition i i don't think that's going to help us i think we need to step change and you know actually um fund some of these so that we're not flat year over year um you know it's no no surprise that you know student achievement is linked to to how we spend our money and i think it might be worthwhile to take a look at how we spent our money in the past and why it hasn't produced the results that we um are expecting so just just my ideas on on you know funding classroom expenses um to try and move some of those numbers kevin or john would you like to react to that at all right so so i i i will start and just and just one just often and thank you for the question and the recommendations um i think some of some of the investments that we are making um will help improve graduation rates um and and i and and i i feel confident that it will you know just in terms of a strategy and engage about engaging our parents and making sure they're they're they're more included as part of this process schoology is one of the investments that we are making to better inform our families of how their nine through 12 students that kids are doing in the system find ways to build better connections with the community um and so some of the things when i say community not just the parent community but also our school community and so some of our plans with um partnering strategically partnering with uh various um work groups to provide relevant work experiences for kids i think is gonna really help us in that regard um i think so some of the efforts that we're gonna make with personalized student learning is part of our academy work i think is going to motivate and inspire kids in ways we haven't been able to do before um and and really i think i think we learned a valuable lesson this past summer uh many folks are probably not aware um many of our students in six eight last year we had them engage in a project-based learning experience over the summer and these are our students who were who experienced who failed two or more classes at the middle school level um we specifically um assigned them projects similarly to some of the things that go on at westside middle school um and you would have thought we had um you would have thought we had all of our students in ap courses and you know everyone at the end of the summer um through math through literacy um standards uh throughout throughout the summer worked on all these standards but at the end ultimately had to produce a project that had to work and had to function at a high level and so our our plan as part of our academy work is provide these relevant inspiring type engaging curriculum experiences uh which i really think is going to help help our overall graduation rates uh but to your point mr kovacs i i think there's we also need we do need to be a little bit more strategic in providing the kind of support um at the high school level and i think that's going to happen as part of our planning and opening up this new school um which i think we're going to have to be really mindful of as we move forward um and not just you know just find ways just to staff the building we need to make sure that they adequate staff at danbury high school and then also at the end very career academy as well so so thank you for the questions and um it has been noted i will certainly be circling back on those recommendations and all of them that that i've heard this evening great so are there any last thoughts so like i said a couple of minutes ago um i put in our addresses our email addresses feel free to reach out to any of us uh come on board tomorrow night you have to go through a registration process um like you did for tonight so go back to your email and register again if you'd like to attend chats with kevin tomorrow night or the budget forum next thursday night and thank you very much for coming on tonight so kevin or john any last thoughts all right i would also like to thank people for being active we all we always need your help so uh thank you john and i'll have kevin you close this out if you like and so and by the the way that other screen is assigned it looks like i've already closed out um but since you did call him john i i will i will just say thank you everyone for your participation this evening um this feedback um as i mentioned earlier will be recorded and will be recorded also in the next session as well the team and i will take these responses code them appropriately and then re-share them as part of our budget process so just want to thank you we we take you know the all of these all these suggestions are really important to us um and we appreciate your feedback this evening gives us a really good good idea on what's important to our families as part of the budgeting process um and i'm i'm hoping as part of our budget presentation so you see yourself in some of the recommendations and priorities so thank you for joining us great and with that we'll um conclude tonight's some listening forum everybody have a a good night stay safe and be careful in the morning thank you very much for attending you
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