just keep in mind these are emerging issues yet so they're not in the financial in the actual financials yet and as you probably know our cost for substitutes is running high and that's an item that will get some more firmer numbers on by next month so all in all considering these potential issues that are on the horizon and our recent pattern of new unbudgeted expenses our 48 thousand dollar surplus isn't looking uh very comfortable so we may have to consider some budget balancing strategies as we end the end near the end of the year and that's all it great thank you any questions for rosa okay thank you rosa um next up is facilities joy good evening uh first thing i was elected chair of the committee so thank you sharon and bob we reviewed the school dude reports the water update at the middle school the phosphate injection system has been installed and is complete it's been signed off by the state but it's still open we have one more sample round of testing that needs to test for lead and phosphate and then the issue will be closed we went through all our capital projects the hvac at the high school the rfp has been issued but needs to be amended on january 13th there was a walk-through the high school locker room project this month the town will be um putting it out to bid there will be a meeting next monday with the town regarding this the middle school building management system is up and working properly the time and attendance system is working the first payroll went out successfully and just had only a few kinks the high school guidance wing roof and ac there's a meeting with the architect next tuesday to update the specs and everything needed to go out to bid the high school plumbing and fixtures replacement is ongoing security measures film dan is meeting with the contractor paving is going to be done in the summer and replacing the maintenance vehicle 50 was allotted but we're having a hard time finding a vehicle in that price range but more it's more of a supply issue than cost we also discussed the middle school wall winterization is nearly complete on january 21st it will be ready mr caldwell also reported that the engineer hired by the town is expected to provide us with specifications for restoration options by january 21st buildings condition study ken and dan are going to meet with the encore architect on january 11 to discuss scope of work bid specifications and cost estimates so we're waiting for that estimate what it will cost first developing the specs and scope of work uh the bha bhs roof over the main office john and ken we're going to meet with tara carr to discuss options to finance the necessary repairs it's going to be about 50 000 ish custodian staffing we have two open positions the high school night custodian resigned so that position is now open and has been posted we have two internal staff members who have applied and the huckleberry custodian is retiring so that position is open as well and has been posted and we the last update is the high school gym lighting project we replace 30 fixtures with led motion sensor lights they should be maintenance free they are brighter output and when not in use they go off after 30 minutes without motion so that project came in around 17 000 and our original fluoresce fluorescent lights cost about 10 000 just to maintain and fix what hasn't been working every year so that's very exciting and that's it unless anybody has any questions i will say they showed us pictures of the differences of the lighting in the gym it was astounding it was astounding so okay any questions for joy all right so next up is cape so we had our meeting uh january 12th uh mike murphy is pregnant uh present was mike murphy deb brooks rosa fernandez dr maureen ruby high school principal mark landa kevin hawley andrew hill uh dr liz spencer and debtors uh there was no public comment uh we elected our chair uh myself thank you deb and rosa our first presentation was by dr liz spencer she presented on the state mandated uh elective of african-american and latino course uh study course as well as the proposed uh change to human geography from 10th grade to 9th grade this change would happen over the next three years and the next presentation andrew hill presented us with changing a small change in the introduction to marketing program switching the one full credit to uh two half credit classes one being a social media marketing the other uh condensed down to just an introduction of marketing that was supposed to open up flexibility and scheduling uh we next had a presentation by uh kevin holly on the french program moving french cinema uh well renaming french cinema not really changing it to a 4-h to remove confusion with colleges and french 5-h to more of a class dedicated to [Music] focusing and stimulating the interest of post-secondary learning abroad which i thought was kind of cool who doesn't want to go to france uh kevin hawley presented on the esol textbooks from national geographic uh they are more uh age-appropriate to the grade that they're given to that's a nice update there and uh principal mark blanda gave a presentation on the changes to the program of studies for bethel or sorry brookfield high school sorry we're gonna slip there uh brookfield high school uh 2022 2023 uh and also gave a nice presentation on class rank uh and then we did a uh a review on the book that is being challenged uh we're going to invite um uh d pearson to our next meeting uh where we will probably bring that to a boat so that's it thank you so much um are there any questions for mike right hearing none why don't we move on thank you mike um next is equity and inclusion we met on january 13th um i am the chair once again thank you rosa and sharon mrs holly updated the committee on where things stand as far as the programmatic and the achievement equity work that we haven't begun yet after speaking with mr hill at bhs and principal belanda about how bhs is currently gathering some in-house data um it was decided that we'll begin by focusing on brookfield high school specific data first since we have it and we have mr hill in the building to work on it and sort of lead the way and hopefully pave the way as a basis for what we can do when we move forward with the rest of the schools after we first do our bhs focused work then we discussed the timeline of the presentations that we're currently working on which is the stakeholder equity and the teacher quality um and the format as to whether both groups will present at one board meeting or if we're going to split it up so we had a little discussion on that there's some valid points made for both and it's pretty divided so we're um mrs holly made a google form we're going to get some feedback from the group before we decide and she also reminded everyone that we are adding an additional slide to those presentations to explain the why so why we're focusing on teacher quality and why we're focusing on stakeholder equity then we went into our breakout rooms each of those individual groups to just continue to work on these presentations which is basically i probably said last meeting but i'll remind again are for basically four slides the why and then what we already know about this what we need to know and then next steps that we suggest to gather this information so each group will meet individually we've been meeting each of the stakeholder and the teacher quality groups meet individually between our regular equity meetings to work on these presentations some more and that's the plan and then we will gather back in february we're looking at hopefully maybe march april depending on what's on our regular meeting agenda too but we're hoping to have one or both presentations in that march april time frame it would be exciting to see some of the outcome of what the work the team's been doing so it's been a lot of study and work and you know a chance to come see all of us would be great okay any questions for amy all right hearing none thank you very much good report uh good progress the next up is the consent i will move that the board approve the items on the consent agenda which are new hires transfers and the december financials second it's been moved and seconded and i guess we've double seconded it um so any discussion dr brill on the consent agenda this week having trouble unmuting sorry bob no thank you there's nothing okay and any questions from the board all right all in favor all right so we've moved through the core of the report out section of our agenda next we're up on new business um and uh and first up is the proposed uh revision to the program of studies which we had heard from uh mr murphy that was an item at the last cape meeting so um so we have a motion on this one yep i will move that the board approved the proposed revisions to the program of studies as recommended by the cape subcommittee assistant superintendent dr maureen ruby and bhs principal mark milano okay so it looks like i'm up uh it's that time of year where i get to uh talk to the full board after having going pretty in-depth with the subcommittee cape subcommittee last week in terms of our program of studies um just a quick recap to remind everybody what the program studies program of studies is about uh it is a process it is a document that is uh approved by the board of education uh every year it includes not only the bulk of the work uh in this particular document is the courses that we offer uh and and that will offer for the upcoming school year in this case uh 2022 2023 is what this particular program studies is targeted towards uh it also contains information uh in the beginning in terms of some of our policies about how we work through instructional curricular minimum credits things of that nature i did go in depth with through it with the cape subcommittee but there certainly are some highlights i find that's the most important thing to kind of go through with the board so that everybody is on on par with some of the changes or at least proposed changes that are are moving forward so um if anybody has any initial questions i'm happy to answer them other than that i can go through some of the uh the changes that i think are important to point out to the board so everybody knows that we're on the same page any questions or can i go forward all right looks like none i saw mr belden unmuted so i'm going to take that as i was just asked i was going to ask the same question if there's any questions from the board but i'm hearing non-linearity i don't have a question but just bob fyi we got two seconds on the last motion we got no second on this one so if somebody just wants to start joy second did it i saw her uh okay i think there's a little bit of a sound issue there so thank you sorry i'll i'll second this you need one on this one oh no no don't joey oh okay so i think the easiest thing to start is to talk about just some of the uh the general housekeeping pieces that are in the program of studies one of the things that's in there is in terms of credits and what the requirements are those are generally set forth by the state of connecticut and public acts in terms of how many credits kids need to graduate a minimum number of credits there were some redundancies there really was a line of unit this many credits to graduate and then we had you know two full charts explaining those credits so we did delete redundant language that was one of the first changes we made we also made a change to we had several grids because of a change over time to the incoming classes we had a grid that applied to one class and then a grid that applied to the three other classes now they're all on the same page so we're finally to a point where everybody in the school next year will have the same requirements um in terms of to graduate so we were able to take out one of those charts uh that doesn't apply to any students in the school after that uh i'm going to skip over the mastery based diploma assessment i'm going to come back to that one of the the nice additions that we did have that we found over time is that as students start to go through and pick out elective courses which things they're going to take in addition to some of the core classes that they take um they're not quite sure where they fall into categories and what does it count for because there is certainly opportunities within each subcategory of humanities and stem and career and life skills electives where students can choose to take other courses but they're not sure sometimes which ones fit for where so we actually added a grid that clarifies questions it was it was a very easy ad it was something that the school counseling department had been using internally amongst their conversations and it made sense to put it in there to link it to kids so that they can take a look and families and see well if i take this class it counts towards this uh it is a bit of a counting game to determine what they're looking to take and and how they want to meet those certain requirements but at least it's a much clearer picture and they can get an answer right away uh in terms of what electives count i'm going to skip class rank for a minute and talk about some other minor things i did add an ece ece stands for early college experience it's some of the collaboratives we have with uconn the university of connecticut early college experience they have a pretty stringent process for us to uh have a strong instructor that is certified through that is a certain level of education in a particular subject that has taken some preparatory courses and continues with professional development that actually allows us to uh give credit in a yukon transcript for kids if they earn a certain grade in certain courses uh what was happening is we have a couple different courses that are overlapped for example the one i use the most as an example is ap biology so you can actually take ap biology take the ap exam and get ap credit but you could also choose to take that for ece credit you know there's a line enough alignment between the ap curriculum and the yukon curriculum and we have a certified teacher so that gives students some options in some cases we just have ece courses they're not ap and there seem to be some confusion in terms of what counted as ece was it really an ap course we just added a logo a particular identifier that allows kids to go through to see which ones um are ece and some have both for example the ap bio is going to have both symbols in that particular section we did do some other additions that mike murphy did talk about earlier and what i would say is this process and i say this every year it gets a little bit easier um because we've really we work to find the the biggest bang for our buck what we're going to do that's going to make the makes the most sense that provides the most opportunity for our kids um and the great part is it's a collaborative work with the teachers as well as the department heads and the administrators that i work with to really come up with things and one of those things was introduction to marketing and social media marketing to half credit electives that we decided to propose to add and getting rid of business marketing and business fundamentals so here's the issue that we had we had a one credit marketing and business fundamentals course that's available through 9th through 12th grade students but fitting that course in taking up a full year really eliminated options for kids to take other things and looking at the current climate um you know we we felt that we could still achieve those marketing basics through introduction to marketing a very um a half credit class that students can take or you could also talk about social media marketing which is uh obviously it's i don't know if a merging is the right term because it's been around for so long now but it's it's cutting edge it's what kids are looking at um and you can still you can explore those topics and either one of those courses will prepare you give you options to funnel into the second level of marketing marketing too which we used to have a much bigger and more active deca program and this would actually funnel kids into that program a little more successfully and then you know really expand what we can do for for those kids in marketing so that to us um and being a half credit and no one could still get those introductory courses in and get kids interested in taking it is really going to expand our offerings and some interest so we're pretty excited about that uh it was a great reflection from the business department um and so that's why we made that change there were some deletions and this one is a little sad in some ways it's because we just don't have the staff to teach it yearbook was really a full year class it doesn't mean we're getting rid of a yearbook we're not getting rid of yearbook we absolutely are going to have a yearbook there's no concerns there it's really moving to a back to an after school program but we found that that one credit or even half credit course doesn't allow us to offer as many semesterized electives for art for for our kids so we have two art teachers currently on staff full-time art teachers um and we were looking to and they wanted to as do i expand opportunities and and really open up another section of classes for kids to take um those sequence and arts and arts so yearbook will still continue after school it's just not going to be a class and the other one that we haven't run in several years is ap art history i always hate getting rid of an ap ap course you know i think that college prep pieces is important for kids they have the opportunity to take the challenge is we don't have anybody that's certified to teach the ap art history course we also have not had a ton of interest really the ap course in the art department that is the most selected and kids do the most is the ap studio art which requires a more of a portfolio um and it can be done in either ceramics or you know in our our 3d or our 2d models we have really two pathways for kids to go through um to do ap studio arts so uh it made sense to take it out it doesn't mean that we couldn't add it back later on in in the future um but that would probably require um you know some additional planning and possible staffing i'm always looking for teachers i'm always gonna advocate for more when we come to it but i wanted to be transparent about that one of the other things that we have in math there was a course called math essentials that has been on the books for several years but we have never run it it's it's an antiquated course that nobody even signs up for it was more of a cleanup we still offer um in terms of introductory courses oftentimes we we coincide in algebra essentials with an algebra class um really kind of doubling up for some students that need that extra support as they transition to high school they're in algebra one on occasion so we do have a course that helps support students that are at that performance level but math essentials of course we have not run since before i got there so it was what that was more of a cleanup piece um in terms of social studies and once i get through social studies and world language i'll pause if anybody has any questions about these basic additions and deletions the state department of education is requiring that we offer a african-american black and puerto rican latino studies course it is something that is from the state legislature that is being put through the curriculum is developed through the state education resource center circ and we will be offering it it is a full year course so that will come that curriculum writing and work will continue that is something we are required to offer next year we will evaluate as we look at requests and see if it's a course we'll offer again this process is there are so many courses in the 73 five pages uh that we have of this program of studies we don't offer every course every year we do in this process look to see how many requests we have for particular courses and make decisions based on staffing as to which ones we're going to offer to satisfy the most requests that we get the other piece would be a change in sequencing uh you may remember a few years back we came to the board with a new um a sequence of a set of courses called global studies and human geography and the way it worked was global studies was in the 9th grade class and human geography was in the 10th grade and the proposed change really came is driven by the teachers in the department and the conversation with our department head dr spencer uh and looking to see what kind of sequence we have um and what makes the most sense in terms of skills prerequisite skills that are important for kids to have as they build on their sequencing so the new sequencing really goes would now go human geography global studies us history and then there's some electives after that um you know it's important to note that students can in fact in their ninth grade year if they choose to take ap human geography that is an introductory course so we have you know an ap human geography option for kids to take in 9th grade we we also have world history as an option for sophomores that corresponds with global studies so the alignment and the vertical alignment and the offerings across the board in terms of leveling makes more sense in terms of this this new sequencing so there'll be some some tweaking there at that point and then um dr murphy also talked about world language sequencing we had some some funky sequencing in terms of world language um you know we really had a level one a level two a level three and then last year we named level four just french cinema but people were asking what what level is that is that level four french is that level five french which level is it so it was really a clarification and then a really a holdover for years ago it was actually the one the program studies it goes right to level six spanish with no level five um it was a weird quirk i'm not entirely sure why that happened but it's something that we have looked at and now the sequence the proposed sequence goes level one two three level four friend cinema and level five and i'm i i apologize for the french um my french canadian ancestors would be um very disappointed in my pronunciation but it's la cultura francophone which is not even that might have been an italian accent i used i apologize but um that's the name of the course so as mike said it's really exploring into culture and travel and things like that so um it is a much more aligned and we're keeping those numbers one two three four five which is more informative to colleges as well as they look to review transcripts and see where kids are in terms of sequencing um that's the big ones i see that joy has a hand up so certainly um you know after joy if anybody else has any questions feel free and then i'll get into some other things that i want to bring up thank you how does the um the human geography and so for the current ninth graders how does that work with the rollout for next year that's a good question right so what does that look like so what what's gonna happen is so right now the current ninth graders are in global right and they'll take human geography next year they will take human geography so we're gonna run both 9th and 10th grade students will be taking human geography we'll have a lot of human geography going on um but that's how we're going to make that transition to to where we need to be we find that it's you know the level it builds on itself while the content itself from human geography to global studies is not a direct this is the first thing you do in the next thing the the the way the curriculum has been written and um and worked on and modified as we go through it it's really we talk in terms of skills that human geography gets us what we need for those freshmen when they come in and then they're better prepared for that next step for global studies whereas we found it was we are having issues and and not like horrible issues where things weren't going well but there was noticeable gaps for kids and so we wanted to make sure that we addressed that and it's a good hook human geography is such a relatable topic um in terms of of what we're learning what the kids are learning in the curriculum that that really hooks them into so it helps in a lot of different ways so that's a great question joy i forgot to bring that up thank you it even seems like geography should be touched upon every year really yeah well i think geography as a whole is is a lost you know um in a lot of different ways you know even in my house the kids don't know where it really is frustrating i remember memorizing state cat like we drove i was at annapolis this weekend and you know well that's the state capital of maryland of course you know that and kids like what i remember having to memorize you know state capitals back in the day i'm not saying we go back to memorization of state capitals but certainly awareness of the world um and geography around is important so thank you are there any other questions before we get into the topics that you skipped over from anyone all right hearing nothing all right so the two the two big ones and i'll start with the smaller of the two um it's really it's it's an important change um when i was at with cape uh several years ago as we've had conversations about what was capstone that event developed into a senior demonstration project um has been you know and at our conversation at cape last year we really talked about making this a course the senior demonstration project was going to be a course that we wanted kids to take challenges really come with staffing and how to make that happen given the requirements that we have for all other courses it really is is it's in a lot of ways starts with the staffing issue so how do we find a way to make that happen with our existing staff and still offer a robust program um across the board so that was the first roadblock that we ran into one of the second roadblocks that we run into is this you know i've talked about this before is unfortunate the pandemic and one of the the key components of the senior demonstration project was you know volunteerism or student internships and things along those lines there's a pretty robust expectation of what kids would do to be out in the community and do a project that also ties into community service later on but we're finding some challenges with you know getting kids out in the community to do some of these things the state law as it's written requires that students starting with the class of 2023 complete a mastery-based diploma assessment that's the actual language that's in the state statute um so that comes next year without an honest a really honest ability to to run a course like that would support that work we really need to flex to a mastery-based diploma assessment which can be met in several different ways and i've done a lot of research working looking at other districts and seeing some things they do i looked at you know been working with the connecticut association of public school superintendents caps has some great resources in terms of mastery-based learning uh mastery-based diploma assessments also the great school partnership is another affiliation that we work with that has a lot of fantastic resources and ideally what we want to do the whole concept of whether it was a senior demonstration project or what i'm proposing which is aligned to the language is a mastery-based diploma assessment which those four words don't mean a lot to most people it doesn't really even quite frankly mean a lot to me the mastery based piece is is the part that i'm focusing on in terms of diploma and assessment um it's tied to the diploma but what we're looking to do is really create um to take a look at our our three academic expectations that we have at brookfield high school um and have students develop a portfolio over the course of their senior year that demonstrates so this is outside of um you know a class assignment that they would um create uh or do it would to show that they've over time learned to master these or at least come close to mastery or at least shown growth over time in the areas of research critical thinking and communication right those are the three things that our community has identified as some of the critical academic pieces that kids need to be successful right now we don't measure that well a portfolio right with with a process and a rubric to go through to help kids select pieces the reflection of identifying here's here's here's how i can show growth over time and show that i've learned or moved towards mastery on this particular piece um is invaluable for students to go through that process so that they can show and really self-reflect there's a reflection piece on this of course across the board that they've learned to develop those really three really important skills that we've said outside of the general grades in a class and performance on sats and those sorts of things if we truly value the student's ability to communicate critical thinking critical think and problem solve then we have to have something like that that shows um to be a portfolio of some sort that they're going to create i would work with my administrative team and teachers over the summer to develop the the rubric and outline for that plan um and work with through our ilts which are grade level based so you have like 12th grade ilt next year um and the support that exists from that natural structure will help kids to develop a portfolio over time where this where i see this going longer term um is we have we can start to collect pieces um and working with jackie whiting who is one of our um our k-12 uh technology integration i i'm not going to remember her title i always mess it up when i say it but working with jackie whiting has been very rewarding and very informative and looking at how we make this a digital portfolio that follows kids over time you think about when we start looking at the application process for colleges or the application process for a job or a career the importance of having a portfolio of work i think it's something that we all know when you go to an interview when i go to my principal interview the first time i came to work i had a portfolio of work that showed things that i had done that demonstrated i was able to master these things right now we send students out with a transcript that says here's the classes i completed and here's maybe a resume but to have something whether it be in hand or digital that shows a reflection over time that is a collection of their own work i think is is a fantastic way to really demonstrate that kids have learned and worked towards mastery of those particular um you know problem solving skills critical thinking and communication so um that will be done all in house there's no additional work from um you know in terms of requests for extra money or things like that we all have the ability in-house to do that work uh and support that we will also have some alternative pathways certainly for kids um that may struggle uh to work through that um you know and that's uh that's something i'll be working with our school counselors um special education staff um for any students that and just general education and those kids that may struggle through that um to help create a portfolio we'll be able to identify those pretty early on to make sure that they can meet that requirement to so they can graduate i know rosa you had your hand up first so yeah so i was as you were talking about this digital portfolio it kind of made me think that maybe this is something that might be good for beyond high school is not beyond after like beyond before high school um is that anything that you've talked about with um jackie like you know extending it into eighth grade or seventh grader earlier you know there there is there is certainly a piece in terms of you know we start talking about student success planning and what that looks like at the middle school level when kids start planning for their future um you know that i think there's a way to leverage both of those things right to start have kids in the middle school start to prep and plan i know jackie is working doing some portfolio work conversations at the elementary level i can't speak on those necessarily maybe dr ruby who has her hand up might be able to speak more to that um but the process of creating a portfolio is is so rewarding and so eye opening into your own set of skills and what you're capable of doing and identifying you know here's some areas that might be weak out here's some things i'm great at too it's not always weaknesses which i think is a skill that we can translate from middle all the way through and beyond um and to have it collected like we have the technology in terms of you know the the use of google it's amazing and look mary rose so at the elementary level we're piloting portfolios with first graders yeah so i'll let those people kind of talk a little bit about that because i think it absolutely does feed into where we go one of the things one one of the things that we discussed when we were looking at the um the coaching model and bringing in a technology integration coach was the um the vision of having a k-12 um portfolio a digital portfolio and we you know through it you know we got a lot of stuff going on this year and so you know that was broached with uh principles and mary rose um you know decided to work with um it's it's easiest to get the children into doing this when they're young and then have it grow up as they go through you know because you can't do everything with everybody at the same time so that work is actually being done and i know that people hate um edu jargon but you know it exists and part of the edu jargon that people may hate is very important it's um that self-navigating learner concept and we've been harping on that you heard about it tonight and this the digital portfolio really provides us with a with a vehicle for teaching students to take control of their own learning and be researchers and collaborators and communicators like mark is talking about we want them to be at the end of their journey and to be able to demonstrate that and do that in at a very young age so they're building their skill set they're not all of a sudden oh my god we're we're brookfield high school we have to suddenly do this project and we have to fulfill all these requirements but starting them in a digital portfolio and it's video because their um skill set whether they're english learners or in or english is their native language at that age their um their uh oral language is you know much more proficient than their written language and so they're doing videos and they're speaking and they're also writing you saw a demonstration of that but they will be able to create their own pathway and as mark said we want kids to be able to reflect on their own learning to own errors and not see them as um you know like bad marks but see them as part of growth and be able to see things that they do that aren't as you know as advanced as they might want to be and be able to pick out what was good about that what needs to change and then to be able to iteratively improve their pieces over time and so that's we started that work and i have no doubt that i see dean turn his camera on so he must want to say something um that that is going to continue um as we as we move children through the grade level so i'm going to shut up now and turn it over to dean no no i just wanted to say because you said a correlation from eighth grade you know moving up would be we also do uh we we work with naviance which then flows right into the high school our counselors and their counselors have been on the same page with that and we start to do the students here start to do career clusters career inventories um we've had career um people come in with it from the community come in and do a career day uh but the last two years as you could imagine it's been canceled we haven't been able to do it um but we did do some video type career um things with the students but that is something that we have been doing for a while and that whole idea of what are the what are their strengths what you know what are some of the things that they need to work on through whether it's through a writing piece or um you know something that they could put together even in art if they wanted to um would be something that they could upload and then move along as they go to high school to figure out what are those areas that they might want to look into for some of their elective classes and things like that um so that is still a part of what we do yeah and i think like dean said he highlighted something important like in terms of art there's multiple ways to demonstrate these skills it doesn't have to be a classic we do this in english and this is the only class we do this in we want the skills to be transferable across content so kids having the opportunity to to develop and show that um you know we'd be working with the seniors next year um and then probably the year before and then the following year for uh 23-24 i'll be we'd be looking to expand the process you know down to juniors into seniors just continue to build that capacity um so it's it's it's such an important skill um i'm seeing it much differently than i did before it doesn't take away from the opportunity for kids uh certainly to have internships to go out in the community it's there are ways to absolutely do that outside of um you know and that may be more connected directly to some of their career and um and life skills things they're looking to do post-graduate but this is where right now i think where we need to be uh for at least next year and as you can see we're not on cruise control we continue to change the program of studies and look to see what makes the most sense where we are and not just sticking with something because we say oh that's the way it should be it's always been let's try something different um this is a pretty radical proposal um in terms of where we've been but i think it's the the best way to make it happen next year given the unknown constraints of a whole bunch of other things and still worthwhile for our graduating students you know our current juniors our seniors next year all right are there any other questions on this item we're gonna move on to the next one all right all right thank you thank you for that so and this one i ask you just kind of bear with me um this might be somewhat radical to some people it's actually not as radical as it may seem the reason that is included in the program of studies because it really is how we operate the the term class rank has been um part of our lexicon in many high schools for many years perhaps it was where you were when you graduated high school um i'm proposing that we eliminate class rank basically um starting with the current freshman so the last class that would have it would be 20 24.
uh statistics again this is this is a huge accomplishment 86 of our kids scored a three or higher center high school kids who took this test only 58 on the national average uh and then again united states history 74 of our kids that took it from center high school scored a three or higher only 47 on the national average i think this shows a few things one there are some pockets of greatness last year in our ap test results uh two i think when you're looking at the national average it shows these tests are no joke these are difficult tests uh these are not give me these are not uh i don't know what the golf term is mulligan or whatever it's not a give me thing these are hard and our students study hard our teachers teach uh do fantastic job of teaching in the classroom to prepare our kids for these tests so i think center high school our students and our staff there to be commended specifically in these areas this really gives our kids a leg up one of the things that you don't see in this is that we also have a lot of dual enrollment options now for kids whereas with ap you've got to take the the test score if you're hired to get the credit dual enrollment there isn't a test for that you get the dual enrollment credit immediately college credit and high school credit just for completing that class with a c or higher so this isn't the only avenue that kids can get college credit there is another avenue so that is fantastic any ap [Music] questions before i move on advanced placement i have a question um first thank you mr jordan for bringing this info to us it's so important um something that we know as you mentioned too on the opener is that access to ap classes and success with ap classes is one of those evidence-based ways that we can really put students on a path towards college and career success um and something else that we know um i appreciate that we're beating the national average um on many different scores that's excellent and that is a testament as you mentioned to our curriculum and instruction and our teachers here from what i was able to decipher it looked like we had about 80 students take the ap exam um and then looking from that i i noticed that uh only 17 of those were hispanic or latino students when our student population is hispanic latino um and so my question is what are we doing to increase fair representation of latino students in our ap classes um and to ensure that there is fair representation in support of them when they're there so one of the things we've done and why didn't break this down for the ap is it it really varies test by test the demographic breakdown uh but one of the things that we did going back a few years ago whereas most almost all high schools have prerequisites and i i see those prerequisites really as a barrier to getting into these classes we've opened it up we got rid of all prerequisites and went to recommendations hey here's what we recommend that you have but take the take the ap class try to try the ap test we're not going to put any roadblocks or barriers in place for that so you'll see in our course catalog and then when our counselors talking to to students there isn't a there isn't a barrier you don't have to take a class before and get a certain grade in order to get in um that's one of the things that we have implemented now last year unfortunately we were down test takers tremendously because in my opinion because of coving uh because kids were taking those classes all year online i think they just didn't feel prepared as they would if they were sitting in class which is unfortunate um i'm not sure that answers your question or not yeah it does i just hope that you know as we move forward we can think more about fair representation especially for our latino students who are underrepresented you know in our in our data so far and on that same note um is it accurate that a three is is considered um for college credit at most schools and most schools won't accept a two for college credit is that is that pretty fairly accurate the things that i was reading seemed to suggest that and where i'm going with that mr jordan um when i looked at the highlights you know i was looking at well who did what in in terms of racial disaggregation and i noticed that in u.s history mean scores for hispanic and asian uh sorry hispanic and american indian students were two and same thing in english lit black students and hispanic students having mean scores around two which again that means that the students most likely not going to get college credit for that course which is kind of the whole you know uh impetus for taking those classes so i'm giving an idea why that is um and what can be done differently to support our black and hispanic students in those in those areas so it is correct three or higher is where you get college credit and then that's where it starts to get interesting because not every college has to accept the three or higher some colleges they want you to have a four some colleges won't accept ap at all it just it depends on where you're going uh in terms of where you're applying to whether they're going to accept that or not some colleges will accept some tests for ap and not others some colleges will accept a three in uh say united states history but in ap calculus they want a four or a five so it really it varies school to school and it even varies by the test that's what makes it hard to to say across the board anyone who gets a three or higher gets credit that's not necessarily true it depends on the college you apply to and the test you take uh uc irvine is one of those schools it's it's it's difficult to get those credits in terms of of our kids scoring at three or higher obviously our whole our whole goal of that class is to get kids scoring a three or higher and get them that college credit so i know teachers are doing before school tutoring after school tutoring uh they're helping out on their lunch breaks whatever they can do uh we've had teachers in the past we couldn't do it last year but uh do saturday studies right up leading up to the test anything to help all students anybody to pass that test because it's such a huge advantage for our students thank you mr jordan i appreciate that i really i really hope we can focus on getting that fair representation uh for our hispanic students in particular and and two that the mean scores even on things that are highlights for us um for some of our sub populations they they are concerning so i hope to collaborate and communicate more on that on that with you absolutely in my my personal thing i'm glad to see us going more towards dual enrollment i'm glad to see the state going towards that because then the kid takes the class they get a c or higher and they get automatic college credit they don't have to go through this ap test which some may say is another kind of a barrier to that college credit um the dual enrollment is the way to go we're really focusing our energies now on moving towards that dual enrollment in as many areas as we can we've got science school enrollments we have astronomy dual enrollment we've got uh a business dual enrollment and we're looking to expand expand expand that dual enrollment uh specifically through sierra they've been fantastic we were ready to do a dual enrollment this past year with american river an independent study where kids could take any independent study course that was uh also a american river college course and get the dual enrollment credit that got sidelined with kobe once we get out of this catastrophe then we'll go back to uh to american river again and we'll have many more enrollment options as well and again that's opened it there's no prerequisite for that that's open kids can actually get almost an aaa degree by the time if they start as a ninth grader by the time they get out of 12th grade if they take enough of those dual enrollment courses it's it's a great avenue for kids all right are we ready to move on to the i ready i've exceeded my eight minutes already but i guess you can cut me off but but please don't because i spent a lot of time on this uh so the i ready diagnostic so we took i ready if you remember last uh last spring this today i'm gonna be talking about the the ones we took in september uh and again we could we can go super in depth on this we could take days talking about this i want to give you an overview um so this is our baseline data our from our first assessment this year in september so our completion rates uh unfortunately were impacted by technology issues particularly at center high school we were having wi-fi issues and specifically we're having issues getting everybody on at the same time without getting dropped so our our overall completion rate k not case excuse me 312 was 72 um for that first september so our scores that we're going to look at today we're based on a 72 overall completion rate and we're going to talk a little bit in a little bit about what we've done to increase the wi-fi and i want to thank eugene personally and and his all his crew over there they've done a lot of work over the last since september and things are looking up our second assessment window when i was supposed to give this actually got sick uh in december our second assessment window was underway um our elementaries in junior high have completed that center high school is still in the process they're actually working this week to complete their window and now that the wi-fi issues are are largely solved what are the school sites doing with this data they are using a disaggregation tool that was provided by the sacramento county department of uh office of education um and that desegregation tool they're looking at at the school site level at the grade level they're breaking down the demographics they're looking at both reading and math uh through the eyes of that tool to determine next steps uh so what did we find from this september highlight or excuse me september uh assessment window here are some of the uh the things that we have found so far there is definitely some achievement gaps that are that are popping out in both reading and math uh and these the the most glowing ones are in these following areas and i'm using the terminology that that uh iready uses in their reports just so we're talking about the same thing so there's a discrepancy or excuse me an achievement graph between non-english learner students and english learner students in both reading and math there's definitely an achievement graph between students with an iep and students without an iep in both reading and math when we start breaking down the scores and then along and they call it racial race lines uh and i'm gonna show you in the next few slides over one third of our students identifying as black or african-american on the i-ready uh scored three or more years below grade level in both reading or math on that september assessment thirty percent of students identifying as hispanic again on the i ready that it asks them demographically uh scored a three year scored three or more years below grade level in both math and reading i want to make sure we don't confuse this ap we're we were talking about threes this is three or more years below grade level so a sixth grader would be down at the third second or third grade level uh reading or math wise the board packet contains the national results unfortunately we are kind of mirroring the national results for iready that was that 60 page uh packet that i sent you from iready i asked them for their their national results from the same time frame looking at the the reading results by by uh race and again this is the terminology they're using the i ready the red is what we do not want anything in red is three or more years below and you can see that there are some definitely some achievement gaps now we also have to keep in mind some of these groups have just a very very few number in the group um so whereas other groups have a much larger number of students in that the demographic group but you can see again what as we were talking about those who identified as black or african-american 32.6 percent were three or more grade levels below that was reading excuse me this is math now uh and we see some of the same things again black or african american those who identified as black rock or american in math 37.8 were three or more years below those who who uh well you can see those who identified in other demographic areas where their scores were so there's definitely work to do uh certainly work to do and that's where the next steps come in so what we are doing now and remember this is as of december some of this has already been done we want to look now as soon as center high school is done and it should be in the next two weeks with this iready assessment we want to start looking for trends where were these september results was it an anomaly it was the beginning of a year after the coveteer are these trends going to hold steady second thing we want to improve our wi-fi and again thanks to eugene i got a report from the high school they did a test when we came back the first week in january and the wi-fi was working uh fantastic they didn't have the issues they were having before so we get more kids on more kids through the test without getting dropped off in the frustrations of that so that's fantastic we and i want to let everybody else in uh tv land whatever we call this no we're still working on wi-fi we're not done we're not saying it's finished we're we're just uh improving it uh as we can uh we want to determine the reasons behind our achievement gaps in regards to socioeconomic status english learner status special education and race again using those uh those terms that are used in the i ready test we're doing that at the at the site level uh site by site using that that the template the protocol again provided by scoe sacramento county office of ed and we want to continue to analyze the results of the district and site levels to develop those plans for improvement as i just kind of paraphrased so we're continuing to look at that um now right now there's so many kids with covet out and teachers out um were delayed over these last two weeks but we're gonna get we're getting back to that work now all right we're there i i apologize exceeded my eight minutes but were there any questions or uh comments i did have a comment on on the i ready results um so with students being three or more grade levels behind that's not something that popped up during the pandemic right that's that would be something that's ongoing and long term um that would contribute to that um i was looking at some of the results in terms of you know the racial disparities in math and english scores and just noting that what we know from the research is that culturally responsive teaching methods in both of these subject areas english and math really makes a huge difference for all students really um it's just good pedagogy and so i'm curious what are we doing in the district um in terms of culturally responsive teaching methods um in english for example since reading is so fundamental and such a a big predictor of success um in life overall um are we doing anything towards that or how do we have any trainings in about culturally responsive teaching are we doing classroom observations and you know who's um how are we kind of proceeding with with eliminating these gaps which have persisted for years um in our district not just since the pandemic right so to your first question that three or more years grade levels below if we were to use these results and and combine those with past cast results that would be true i'm saying three years here because this is my only set of data for i ready but if i was to if i was to project back using cast results of reading and math that would be correct uh there there are students three are great more grade levels below and specifically in in the same uh demographics so that that is correct what are we doing so a few of us are in the csla cultural responsive teaching um workshops that are going on we are scheduling some more workshops uh uh cultural responsive teaching and we are actually putting together a grant uh with some money that we are going to continue some of that work uh next year and the year after because it's a three-year grant so that we continue to look in that exact direction with uh cultural responsive uh teaching factors i can't remember the name of that grant i it's i'm drawing a blank uh but we we put that together we actually had a vendor we were looking at to provide some of that uh assistance with us as well my if we looked at the results and we took out special ed and took out english language learners and just set those aside for a moment and looked at the results without them do we know what that picture would look like uh i don't off the top of my head i would uh i would say that students with ieps make up about 18 of our population almost one out of five i mean we're getting we're closing into one out of five then you add on uh those who are uh english learners i mean we're looking at over over one out of four of our population well that's why i asked we have a large population of both correct and that's going to skew the results and not that those demographics should be ignored i mean we do need to address that problem but i think it kind of distorts the picture with the students who have been here and gone through the district you know for a number of years i mean some of the students with ieps will never be reading at grade level so i i do think it skews the results a little bit i guess and i i guess so it's uh i'm looking at these results anybody who is below grade level we we want to find the best solution possible and help them to get to grade level right i haven't desegregated that data out uh i have not removed those two populations so look at that mr jordan the one thing i think you hit on the head is all of our students are important and all of our students need to be seeing the growth that is for them so to i wouldn't want to just sure we could look at that data but i think we have a lot of our students are representative in multiple groups we want to make sure that we're educating all students at all times so we we personally have not looked at that we could certainly look at it but um at the end of the day we want to figure out what each student needs and help them succeed and be the best they can within um i agree 100 mr i just think that we need to to keep it in perspective and and know what whoops i don't know what i did but we need to know um you know the overall picture not i don't intend to ignore anybody where'd i go you're here we hear you okay now my intent is not to ignore anybody definitely need to provide them the extra help that they need but i think it distorts the overall picture of center um and what we are doing for kids i i guess in in the overall big picture i'd say that our our goal is to get everybody to purple mid or above grade level or at least is that blue or turquoise or whatever color that is on grade level uh that's the goal is to get everybody to those to those two uh right and nancy um i kind of almost look at what you're asking as the opposite of excluding them it's more like let's focus in on exactly what their needs are as a demographic and focusing on the rest of the school to see if there are any other anomalies to see if there's any other targeted populations that are experiencing disparities so i i kind of feel like it's it's just something good to observe to look at it's a good way uh lens to look at it um but i understand what what you know mr lear is saying as far as you know having that overall picture so that we're we're having one goal one goal which is to get everybody in purple and then this is you know targeted universalism which is a new philosophy on equity but basically you have one goal we want everyone to be in the purple right now we identify the populations and what those strategies are going to be for those specific populations so i think that what you're saying is that we could identify some other populations that may also be at risk or that may need some special targeted services um for the opposite find that everyone else is in the blue or purple already so it would be an interesting thing to see yeah we need to we need to identify why the overall numbers coming down and which group in total need that help specifically mr jordan i ready assessment is a one-year process isn't it so when is the next time we'll do the i ready assessment so we do it three times a year is the goal so we just started uh september we took december and again high school center high school is finishing up now over the next week or two and then we'll take it again at the end of the year so that we can chart growth over time and then the idea is to be able to chart it year to year so that we have some more uh data points to look at would it be possible to schedule a meeting with you again in august to see what the um scores were again in may and do a comparison from december to may absolutely that would be um very beneficial we can absolutely at one time we as a board had a goal that every child would read at grade level by at grade level by third grade and i'd like to go back and look at that again and see what we can do to make that happen and that is a great goal because there's a ton of research to show if you're not on grade level by the end of third grade it's a it can be a struggle the rest of the way through k-12 yeah if you can't read you can't do the rest of the work i mean it affects everything math social studies whatever you're doing it effects um that brings up another interesting way to slice this data would be to see how the percentages come out across different grade levels to see if one particular grade level is seeing a a marked increase in students uh who are below so that we can look at what is happening there so just a thought um no no formal direction or anything just a thought that i or even identify the opposite like is there a grade level that's really good excellent so that we can find out what are they doing and you know expand on bring it across other grade levels and that's the work we're doing with sacramento county office of ed they're helping facilitate us through uh the disaggregating we're showing you a very very high level mike or i would geek out with any of you on more data for sure but but the idea here is we have our classrooms doing this we have grade levels at school sites doing it so we we could certainly if there's something the board wants to see in specific or whatever happy to do it again as mike pointed out we'd be here for hours and hours because we we have the way to slice this and dice this and we're making sure that that uh this data that will help change the instruction for our students is in the hands of those people that also need it as well so um you point out great you all point out great um reports a lot of those we are doing with the people that are making those um calls either at the school side or in the classroom or even they're tracking individually by students to see the progress individual students are making within their own classroom so a lot of good stuff wonderful and i'm just showing you that this is the overall 3 through 12 results so at the site level we dumped this data from i ready into forecast five then it they can break down grade level at their school site down to the classroom level and that's what they're looking at and that's why it's really being done at the school site level because each school is going to have different needs depending on what their data shows i'm just showing you like the helicopter view okay any other questions before we move along no just thank you so much for bringing this forward this is great information yes thank you very much thank you okay moving right along and it's okay that you went a little bit over uh jordan because you're a williams uniform complaint report was very brief so it evens out so moving on to the citizens oversight committee uh with lincoln howard hi there so in the past this was craig's responsibility to oversee the bond and the bond committee and every year they came and reported that there was no report that there was no activity report but finally we have a report and we have things to talk about so we have howard fallon here from the citizens bond oversight committee who's going to give an overview of their annual report which is required i'm okay uh good evening everybody thank you for having me today my name is howard bell and i'm the vice chair of the citizens bond oversight committee um as lisa said this is the first year that we've had the opportunity to actually report to the board and to the community uh in years past i've given several reports myself and i think it was like two sentences long and it was something like uh the community that we'd like to record we have nothing to report so uh any case thank you for the opportunity um we divided the report into uh seven sections introduction membership summary financial report projects audits and a conclusion and a little later in a few minutes when we get to audits um when i do the uh high overview i'll ask lisa to speak to the audits and she was the uh is the district's liaison for that particular uh activity uh so i'm going to start with introduction and so on november uh 4th 2008 voters in the center joint unified school district approved measure and authorizing 500 million dollars in general obligation bonds to acquire construct and improve school facilities including building new schools and classrooms to reduce student overcrowding improve existing schools for greater energy efficiency and increase access to computers and technology in june 2020 the district sold the first series of bonds from measure n which was as you can see uh almost almost 12 years later uh titled series 20a in the amount of 12.15 million dollars with the trans that particular transaction closing in july of 2020.
okay anything else all right with those two exceptions may i have a motion so moved okay second okay second moved in seconded um so this will be our first vote so it'll be a vote by name um all those in favor of approving the consent calendar with the exception of eight point one point one and eight point two point four please answer with your name robinson i landed i kaiser i dolby aye tennis eye okay five to nothing all right eileen the one that you pulled yes uh thank you madam president um this this is the minutes of the regular meeting of december 15 21.
so the classes of the current sophomores will be the last one we have not done a ranking for ninth graders um and my proposal generally is that that happens uh i have a very i'll go through very short presentations just so you can see it because i think it's important to hear some of the bullet points and i don't want to miss any of them so eric i can share my screen so i'm going to do that now let's see if i can do this the way i let's see and i can now hide controls hide floating meeting controls and theoretically hopefully you all see my screen correct about eliminating okay great go thank you um this i brought to the i had a conversation with kate last year about this particular idea and this just gives you an idea as to why um this is one of those things when i said you know we don't we don't rest and say it's great for all of us it was great for us then let's look forward and say what what works more for kids now these are some of the reasons why i propose eliminating class rank at brookfield high school and i'm going to go through each one of these pieces very quickly but certainly available for questions this is work that i did with uh our college and career counselor shannon longarello who every time i get a chance to plug uh the work of the college and career counselor i will continue to do so uh she's fantastic and i even got a note from a parent today about our interim who's sitting in for her how helpful this person was the parent didn't know how to navigate the college process and our interim um musician gold mr gola was fantastic and i got a great email so but these are some of the conversations that she has with her counterparts um that i've been having with other principals as well so let's just talk about them relatively quickly the first one is diminished importance in college admissions and i'm going to show you a graphic um it's not as important as it used to be or at least people perceived it to be i think we all have a we do have a false and by we i mean a collectively have a a perception of how important um class rank is this information and i will certainly it's a little blurry because it was a screenshot you can see here um across percentages of colleges attributing different levels of importance to factors and admissions decisions so you look at this first time freshman in fall of 2017 so this is a little older data i have some newer data as we get closer but look at where class rank falls you know i want to say it's around ninth in terms of level of importance you can see almost 20 27 of colleges said that class rank or 28 as of no importance at all at all and another 34 say was limited importance that comes to 62 of colleges consider class rank to be of limited or no importance and the ninth most important factor all those other things that come above it you know you see it's interesting you see portfolio on there right um which is interesting but it's something you see teacher recommendation counselor recommendation grades and courses college prep the rank the relative rank for where a student is doesn't hold as much importance as it used to this is another set of data that shows a little bit this more longitudinally over time from fall 2007 to fall 2018 you can see this is percentage of colleges attributing considerable points so they asked these colleges you know where did classrooms class rank of considerable importance in 2007 23 of colleges surveyed said it was considerable importance by 2018 it's down to nine right so in terms of college admissions where a student ranks is not as important as many other factors that are there you see things the one that blows my mind the most if you look two below class rank demonstrated interest right and so what demonstrated interest is that students have gone to college fairs they've connected with college admissions officers that to them is more important than which demonstrated commitment is just an interesting thing that we need to teach our teenagers but commitment and interest is more important than where you rank in your class academically so if colleges aren't necessarily seeing this as the most important factor there is there are certainly ways they'll talk about later that we can still recognize academic performance i'm not saying we don't recognize the academic performance of our students there's just different ways we can do it that are a little more um i think appropriate the other piece is there's variable factors so no matter how much i try as you can imagine in any school and those of you that have been in school they're grading policies how an individual teacher grade something in in a building you know or across departments or just individual teachers they're going to look at things a little differently i can't say that the grade that i got that i give for a student in one class of my honors biology class is the same grade that joy is going to give a student in her honors biology class there's just inherently differences um you know and what happens as a result of that when we look at how to to come up with this this arbitrary rank in so many ways um we do find that students in competitive high schools have a high gpa but a lower class rank right and then we have other schools that are less competitive um have a lower gpa but a much higher rank so it's an arbitrary number gpa doesn't it's not universal across the board you can have a student who has a 4.
uh the citizens bond oversight committee and i'll say cboc from this point forward of the center joining unified school district was formed pursuant to education code uh section 15278 upon the passing of measure n the cboc consisting of at least seven members to serve for a minimum of two years without compensation and for more no for more excuse me for no more than three consecutive terms say that 10 times is required under proposition 39 to present an annual report to the district board of trustees and advise the public as to whether the district is in compliance with article 13 section 1 3a of the california constitution which states that the bond proceeds must only be spent on those projects specified in the bond ballot and approved by the board the annual report this will be made available on the district's website uh membership currently we have uh five active members out of seven of the cboc which serve under the provisions of the california education code article 2 section 1528a they are and they serve as kathleen bett chair as a business organization member myself vice chair as a bonafide taxpayers organization member cecilia casagrande secretary at large community member janet rutledge member senior citizens organization member and latoya jenkins member parent of enrolled child and parent teacher organization member and again we have two vacancies currently that um we've been um attempting to fill so uh we are working on that currently uh next is summary uh of the proceedings and activities that have taken place during the period the cboc met once to receive discuss and review information pertaining to bond expenditures and projects on the following dates on june 7th 2021 at which time the committee reviewed bylaws updated growth projections and held discussions of the center high school career technical education and rex fortune expenditures next is the financial portion of the report for the physical year 2021 the district board of trustees is responsible for prioritizing monitoring i'm sorry prioritizing projects and approving the spending for each project the cboc reviews and reports on the expenditures of measure and proceeds by reporting on the proper expenditure of funds and holding the district accountable for the decisions the cboc may have an impact on spending decisions so beginning in the fiscal year of 2021 on july 1st 2020 we had a balance of zero during this fiscal year had a total income of 12 million 351 three hundred and forty nine dollars with total expenditures of one million sixty five thousand eight hundred and forty two dollars leaving a balance on june 30th of 2021 of 11 million hundred and eighty five thousand five hundred and seven dollars uh in the financial audit of june 30th 2021 conducted by crow llp of sacramento audit services it was disclosed no instances of non-compliance or other matters that are required to be reported under government auditing standards occurred and lisa will speak a little bit more to the financial audit momentarily projects uh in total we have one two three four five uh start off with rex fortune elementary building project phase one in progress uh project budget of 51 million three hundred and eighteen thousand five hundred and seventy seven dollars of which the expenditure incurred was three hundred and ninety thousand one hundred dollars this current stay as of then is um entering into building contracts uh with a targeted school a school opening targeted for august of 2023 again rex fortune for the second project um item uh the land acquisition for uh an amount of 11 million 800 thousand dollars this purchase was completed in december of 2021 and expenditures to date were 75 000 uh next project is the uh center high school career technical education construction program with a project budget of one million four hundred and eight thousand eight hundred and seventy nine dollars and expenditures for the this fiscal year was 173 407 dollars uh status summary of this project is entering into uh building contracts and building completion targeted for august of 2023 the next project is center high school career technical education information communication technology program with a budget of one million seven hundred and sixty two thousand six hundred ninety five dollars uh expended was one hundred and thirty one thousand eight hundred and uh ninety one dollars and the status summary of that project is entering into building contracts with building completion targeted for august of 2023 and last is the bond sale issuance marine financing costs a one-time expenditure of 295 thousand 444 dollars so in total the total project uh budget was 66 million 290 151 dollars with expenditures for the fiscal year of one million sixty-five thousand eight hundred and forty-two dollars um the performance audit is the next uh section uh uh conducted by crow llp again and concluded that the csusd expended measure and general obligation bond funds for the year ending june 30th 2021 only for the specified projects developed by the district's board of trustees and approved by voters so uh i'm going to go ahead and turn it over to lisa so she can further uh speak to the both the audit and performance audit i'm sorry the financial and performance audits so because this is the first year that we've actually spent from measure n um this is the first time that the audit firm crow has had to review the books and they they do our books separately for the district and then they do this just for the bond and there's two audits that they do they do the performance audit which is to ensure that the district spent money according to how the voters um what the voters approved the performance audit and then they do the financial audit to make sure that the accounting part was correct um so what they found was the district's financial statements were free from any material misstatements in the financial statements this is all as of june 30th so we know that we've done some work since then and the numbers are bigger and we've sold even more bonds since then but we're speaking through um june 30th so the balance sheet on june 30th there were total assets of 2.29 million dollars that was cash in the county treasury accounts receivable and that was interest coming in and due from other funds was we transferred a a purchase order from fund 25 we moved to 225 and so that freed up 8 000 in this bond fund our liabilities and fund balance we had accounts payable of 776 dollars that was for uh hancock park a consulting firm that we had to pay an invoice for and so the fund balance was 11 million to 11 million 285 000 and the total liabilities and fund balance was 11.29 million dollars on july 30th that's stating how much was in the bond fund the next page is the statement of revenue and expenditure so this is looking not just june 30th it's for the entire fiscal year july 1 through june 30th and looks at the activity that happened and for revenues we brought in interest of about 53 million dollars we had expenditures that totaled 1.1 million dollars and we issued debt so we had proceeds we sold the bonds basically and we have proceeds from that which was 12.15 million dollars and from the refinancing that we did we received another about 150 000 so the net change in fund balance was uh 11.3 million dollars and that's what the ending fund balance was so again crow found no no misstatements and no um findings in either the performance what we've what we spent the money on or how we spent it and then yeah can we just go back to the um statement of revenues and expenditures and i wanted to just correct that it's 53 000 not 53 million just so that it's on the record correctly thank you sorry okay i wish it was 53 million that'd be i hope i'm gonna put my money in that bank get that interest okay and then we'll go back to howard so really uh briefly in conclusion um uh the cboc finds that the district is in compliance with the requirements of article 13 a section 1b3 of the california constitution regards of the general bond process for the fiscal year after review of all measure and revenues and expenditures the cboc concludes that all funds were used for the purposes of construction reconstruction rehabilitation or replacement of school facilities including the furnishing and equipping of school facilities and the acquisition of real property for school facilities and that no monies were used for staff salaries or benefits or other school operating expenses so with that that concludes uh the cboc's report to the board um if there's any questions no questions going once going twice thank you very much for your time thank you howard nice job okay and now we have uh number four audit report for fiscal year 2020 2021 lisa coronado okay see switch over here okay so i have i'm going next separately sorry um so in september i provided the unaudited actuals and that looked at last fiscal year for the district um they're unaudited meaning the auditor is going to look at those um our financial statements our books and then give opinion on them and provide this report and that's what this is they summarize all of the districts financial activity for fiscal year 2021.
i just have a question madam president we did move to table to the january meeting a discussion we were having on putting times on agenda items and um i just wanted to know if you have with your discretion moved it to a different month kelly that is on this agenda it's under item 5.1 a second from the last on the discussion actions under agenda layout 9.5.1 discussion action agenda layout ah it was hiding thank you my mistake i move approval of uh 8.1.1 all right uh do i get a second second all right uh any discussion okay seeing none so uh this can be a voice vote so we are moving the approval of the minutes of the regular board meeting on 12 15 21. all those in favor please say bye aye hi hi hi okay five to nothing all right thank you i pulled 8.2.4 which is the approval of a field trip request for the chico high wrestlers to attend a tournament in hollis but it's the girls wrestling team and this is relatively new in wrestling and the girls team have been doing exceptional so i just wanted to recognize a sport that we don't normally identify with our female athletes but they have been excelling so with that i'd like to move the approval of the field request field trip request i'll second that motion okay all those in favor say by answering i i okay 5-0 all right thank you so with that we now move to the action and discussion calendar and we do have uh five people on that [Music] issue and so but we will go in sequence i don't know what aspect they want to discuss so if you're one of those five people paula warren uh we're going to do a point of order okay because we need to follow our procedures and go through our presentation first before we open it up to publish okay yeah all right thank you so the first item before the board is the california voting rights act draft maps in the sequence of bi-district elections and we have both our attorney paul gant here and we have our demographers as well representing so paul are you going first okay thank you good evening board president kaiser members of the board superintendent staley thank you for taking a few minutes or allowing me to give you a few minutes of time uh just in introducing this item i uh only want to make a few remarks maybe to review some of the history before we turn to king and associates to really get into what i think is the central uh meet of the meeting which is to get into potential maps that that will be considered tonight you'll have an opportunity to look at detailed maps that set forth the trustee areas that are potentially up for approval obviously asked questions detailed questions of the demographer and also talk about a related issues such as the order of election uh because all seats are not before the electors at the same time and there are some options with regard to that that have to be explored by the board as well i did want to just briefly talk about how we got here um this this uh whole process was launched some time ago uh of course the california voting rights act has been around for many years and uh the last time before the current cycle that we had a really a lot of action in this area was 10 years before in 2010 and that's uh because we do tend to see a lot of interest around the california voting rights act at the time as we approach the decennial uh election because at that point in time is when um the uh there is uh that they have the new demographic studies come out and um and the voters across the nation are counted in the census and that census has a big impact on how districts are drawn and so we see a lot of interest out in the uh in the community we see a lot of interest statewide with interest groups stakeholders who want to talk about the nature of local elections um when that approached uh for the 2020 cycle your district along with a lot of other municipalities local agencies statewide began to receive letters and those letters come from interested parties often in the form of attorneys who have a great deal of background interest and they wish to serve as advocates for changes in electoral systems at the local level the california voting rights act provides a uh let's just say um it encourages the move it is designed to encourage the move for local agencies to what we call trusty areas away from at large areas it's not required but it's encouraged and it is very easy for an advocate to come in and make that demand and then boards are or municipalities such as whether the city of chico or whether that's chico unified school district have a hard decision to make should we stay with our large system or should we acquiesce to this demand should we do we see a reason to do this and so without going into a great deal of detail your ward did consider that demand and ultimately decided uh in early 2020 that that you would support and pass a resolution to move to these trusty areas so um i think it's important though to kind of cast our minds back to that time frame because some of you are new and we're not here uh certainly members of the public may not have been as focused on it at that time as they are now the i think it's fair to say there was a certain skepticism on the board some board members felt like why are we doing this this uh hue and cry for changing to these new this new election system is not coming from our public we're not hearing from members of the parents we're not hearing from local stakeholders members of the board didn't bring this forward what brought it forward was a demand by an attorney okay admittedly as experienced attorney one with a great deal of interest in elections and certainly had a right to be heard um but in fact the process was driven to a great deal and again if we're honest we know it was driven in part by this concern about litigation and the board had to weigh a decision should we maintain our system go through litigation fight for to stay in an at-large system or is it more appropriate to preserve the resources of the district go ahead and follow the cvra which encourages trustee area elections is there any real harm to doing that and ultimately the board said there's no great harm to doing it that way it's a different way we're going to have to adjust to that but as compared to trying to hold on to the older way go through litigation deal with high legal fees that's not what we wish to do and the board voted and then decided to move to the trustee areas okay out of that process then you were ready to move forward early spring of 2020 came you'd just really gotten into the process your consultant was beginning to provide information about how that process would go what do we start to do when we develop these trusty areas and covet came and basically what happened at that point of course is the state is shutting down the emergency order came in from the governor and said timelines can be suspended we understand that this is not the first order of business because the public is going to have a hard time focusing on this providing input so you're allowed to suspend those timelines and quite frankly your district just like a lot of other districts and municipalities said we're going to shelve it we're not going to focus on this we've got other things that require attention so it essentially went on the shelf and it went on the shelf until last year in the summer when the governor and the state of california said okay we're going to pass some we're going to pass a law we're going to allow the timeline to restart we're going to make some adjustments to the brown act we're going to make some adjustments to this process to make it a little more streamlined but you're going to start the timelines again so at that point district staff advising the board said okay we need to start this again we bring them back to consultants let's consult with the attorney let's get going so we pick it back up but in part with a new board we have we have two new board members that were not present during the last round so we then start the process and then we get into the substance of considering these new trusty areas and just briefly as mr murray and and ms king will go into greater detail but we we end up with a system of four public hearings two are somewhat informational and then we have two meetings which we're now into to actually consider those maps that are very detailed they have a lot of demographic information and the board is presented with a lot a lot of information quite frankly and the goal as as the consultants both legal and demographic working for you and i would say staff too is to provide the board with a set of lawful options it is not to try to encourage or suggest the board should go with any options that's what's important to understand the options that we try to bring before the board for consideration both consultants and staff are those that we either have received information might have an interest because there have been comments from board members or members of the public that have raised issues that may need to be considered in the adoption process so we put together a series of options and then the board and the board alone decides which is the best option our goal is to present you with options that are lawful that meet the fundamental requirements of the cvra but within that context you're going to have a lot of different possibilities to look at there are a lot of stakeholder interests and they differ from map to map there are a lot of public considerations to be considered and so the debate may be vigorous and sometimes it is and that's understandable and there's nothing wrong with that the public may well have strong views and they may come in through this process hopefully they will give you input through their through their uh both written and verbal comments because that's how the process is supposed to work so at the end of the day the board will vote on what is the best trustee arrangement what are the best district arrangements for this district so i've taken probably more time than i should so far i will also be available for questions but i thought if you know subject to your direction i might turn it over to mr murray to present his his presentation and then we would both be available to to answer questions um yes board member tennis um thank you um mr gantt before we move on to uh king consulting i want after two years of i mean i was only have only been here for just over a year but after two years of this process we were surprised on friday afternoon i had some confidential information as a board member prior to that that this was coming but we were introduced to two brand new maps the orange maps a and b can you please describe your involvement if there was any in the creation of orange a and orange b well first of all as as the attorney in consulting and providing advice to staff for the board i don't i don't create it's it's outside my area of expertise to create proposed maps however what you're referring to i did review and did some research legal research to say if these possible maps that you're referring to the orange maps were to be adopted are they fundamentally lawful in other words do they comply with my best understanding of how the cvra has been interpreted and if the board were to choose one of these maps would it be unlawful that's really my legal analysis what i will say about the maps in terms of the information that's included in the maps the cons your consultants receive information typically through the district that has come through a number of different sources it may have come from board members who have said well i would like you to consider where schools or elementary schools are located uh in considering where the trustee areas should be i would like you to consider where high schools are located i would like to consider you to consider communities of interest and various other items that have been brought forward since the prior meeting it was brought forward to us as consultants that a question had arisen about the order of election and what the election process would look like if one of the different maps or some other map was adopted and so there was focus uh by members of the public as i understand it uh suggestions or questions that came to staff that said who's gonna be elect who's gonna be able to be elected depending on the different maps it became i think maybe for the first time really in anyone's mind a clear question as to whether as we go through this redistricting process is that going to impact how is it going to impact on choices for board members both in the current cycle 2022 and 2024.
4.97 gpa in one school and is is 15th in their class and you can have the number one kid in another school because they wait on a different level have a 3.98 and they're one's number one one's number 15 their gpas are vastly different so and with weighted courses it's just there's so many different factors the other piece is it lacks contextual information every time we send out a transcript electronically to a school which we do every year when students apply we always have to include our our school profile so you can't compare an a in world history to an a in worlds in brookfield to an a in world history in fairfield or at danbury or at newtown they use our school profile and take a look at what is offered and this is what goes out so it's a general school profile which talks about give some important statistics it's really more about the school itself than sometimes the grades the kids earn which is very interesting so being able to offer the things that i bring to you tonight in the program of studies that shows all those different advanced courses and certainly there's some information here on test scores absolutely but a grading scale this is what they use to kind of normalize they need to find a way to compare so every college university has a different process of doing it but you can't simply take student a from one compared to student b from another high school it doesn't work they could have identical grades but they are not the same student based on academics alone so you have to really look into the numbers i think the part that really for me is one of the most important things is it creates unnecessary pressure for students and families we have kids that don't take courses that when they come in their freshman year or they plan to take other courses they'll avoid taking that ceramics course or that second ceramics course a student could get into ceramics one fulfill their art requirement and absolutely love working with clay and they take they self-select them out of that opportunity during the school day to continue their their path in art because it's an academic weighted course not an honors course and i want to get those extra points to get to a higher gpa to get to a higher rank it it doesn't nearly carry the same amount of weight that it used to in terms of class rank and it really limits our opportunities for kids we have the kids that are all taking the same courses i'd like to find a way to diversify that so that kids could take different courses and feel comfortable to expand a little bit more and not be as worried about where is my um how will my gpa suffer even if i get an a in an academic course the other part is we typically and and this is this is a tough one right we typically i'm the one who brought in the top 10 uh scholars dinner right where we recognize the top ten so i don't want anybody to think that i take this lightly in terms of my reflection and things that i haven't thought of i've thought about this realistically even though we recognize a bunch of students at the scholarship night when it comes to our students in terms of recognition with class rank we only recognize the top 10.
the report begins with the management's discussion and analysis which is a narrative of all the financial activity for the district that is presented in all of their reports if we look at page 13 statement of net position for assets the district ended on or had on june 30th 111 million dollars in total assets in cash and investments there was about 46 million dollars and i want to point out that that is general fund but also fund 21 for the bond fund fund 25 developer fees and also new this year is student body funds have to be put on our books before we were fiduciary it was a fiduciary fund and it was kept separate at the school sites and now we report that in our financial documents so that's part of our total assets our liabilities are 139 million dollars and the big one was is the 126 million dollar due after one year that's our geo bond and even though we as a district don't pay out that money the community members do that still goes on our books as a liability so our total net position at on june 30th was a deficit of 21 million dollars and again that's because our gop was we owe so much on that the page after that is our statement of activities again that is all of the activities from july 1 through june 30th and this breaks down revenue and expenditures and it basic it puts it in categories such as instruction transportation food service so you can look at those details if you're interested the pages after these two reports the net position and statement of activities just provides the the more of a detailed look at these numbers and provides just more information about what they need i do need to say that on um the total assets 111 million dollars on page seven it references that number but it says one eleven billion dollars when one was left off so that is a correction on page seven so when crowe looked at all of the financial statements um well they looked at all the financial statements and then they also look at other areas of the district they look at attendance they look at teacher certification and misassignments they look at instructional time they look at if kindergartners repeated that we have a letter of permission from their parent so a huge thank you not just to the business office and what they do but every single teacher who takes attendance um the personnel office food services looked at el teachers and how they classify students is looked at so the whole district is being audited not just our our books and so thank you to everybody who has to gather all the documents along the way so when we looked at the state law or when the auditor looked at the state laws and regulations there was a qualified opinion which means they found an area of concern when i talked to the auditor they said our district wonderfully that with the chaos of last year it was expected that there would be findings and many districts had many findings and luckily we didn't really have that many findings and they weren't very serious so one of the findings was that in one period one student was marked wrong for attendance so they were um let me find it they were marked as disengaged on the daily participation record however the student was marked present in the attendance system so um considering all of the periods and all the students and all of the engagement uh records we had to keep i think one student was pretty good um so great job teachers for doing well with that the other the federal awards were unmodified which means there are no findings for the federal money coming in and the financial statements were also unmodified meaning there weren't any gross misstatements but there was a uh a material weakness something that had to be corrected and that's what two invoices that were um should have been paid in last fiscal year were paid in this fiscal year 21 22.
so out of that process and understanding that yes depending on choosing one of the existing options yes it could very much impact on the public's opportunity to consider or elect even current members of the board out of that process then it was requested and we did create the orange maps which unlike the other options that were developed and by the way these maps have been developed only in recent months they haven't been under development for two years because the the process was started and then stopped and then since that time we've had the census which provided all new data that had to be reviewed and so really it's only been a few months that the current set of maps and options have been under consideration but with these questions we at the request of staff did provide an option under the orange maps that would not present some of the elect election complexities that the other three maps were presenting in terms of having several board members in overlapping and trustee areas so you say that it was staff that expressed a concern about having multiple trustees in in the same area no that information the question was we generally receive our direction or request to perform work at the request of staff but the information came through staff i don't know the exact source uh but i know some of it as i understand came from public questions you say there was some kind of sorry contact from the communication from the public that said something along the lines of were concerned about multiple board members being in the same trustee areas well i wasn't subject i didn't receive the communications mr tennis so i don't want to characterize them specifically i didn't either i didn't see those either so i'm surprised that we're taking this step now well the other thing i want to mention about the process and discuss about the process and again i'm happy to field more questions i i want to make sure that i give the opportunity to mr murray and his team to to present the information that he has in his uh presentation because i think a lot of that will fit into some of the questions that you and other board members may have on this topic about order of elections but it is typical in fact in my experience it's not unusual at all that during the process of considering maps this part of the process questions arise the questions arise from members of the public they might arise from board members stakeholders in the community letters from interest groups they can come from any source but when those questions arise they may result in a request for another map option these are just options and it is typical for the process that as we zero in on those maps and some of the specific effects that those maps will have that new map options come to the fore but aren't those supposed to be policy driven you know demographically driven are they supposed to be politically driven are you supposed to make a map you know based on somebody's political wishes you know are we are we here to create districts for for incumbents so that you know when we have to run for office we can we can have a nice clear field and we get to put that incumbent on the ballot is that why we draw a new map for the process well i think that the decision-making for how to choose a map is the board's decision so you have the opportunity to consider any number of considerations and and in my experience it is not unusual for the impact on the distribution of board members and how they are placed in various districts to be a consideration you're write that the fundamental requirements of the cvra require that they meet certain guidelines to be considered lawful and that means they cannot impair the voting strength of protected groups they they must be within a certain range balanced uh demographically within a certain percentage between the different trustee areas and there are other general rules like they have to be the the the uh each each trusty air has to be contiguous what we call contiguous they can't be isolated dots on a map and there's also what we call the compactness i want to say guideline it is a somewhat vague guideline but it does discourage the creation of bizarre shapes such as a dragon or you know there are other examples out there but in order to simply develop a map in order to satisfy a political party interest for example so what you're referring to i believe would be the issue of gerrymandering what we often call gerrymandering is it appropriate or is it proper to try to structure your trusty areas in order to satisfy the political interest of one group to the detriment of another group and i would suggest at a certain level that is not proper and so it would be a proper consideration for the board to look at if that if that were the case if for example a map was structured in order to encourage one particular political point of view over another and any and a detriment to a group of stakeholders who had a different view that would be something legitimately that the board would want to think about and even ask questions um i mean what sort of conclusions might a you know the the majority members of a political entity draw along those lines you know don't you think it's possible they might uh think about that and think yeah yeah i kind of like the idea of drawing a map that's gonna you know keep us in in a position of strength that we're in right now so um there are a lot of impacts uh of various sorts in this process and i think it often it comes to to light as you get late in the process i think it comes to light both for the public to stakeholders and to you as board members just how complex this can be and how many different impacts there can be and that's why you're the board you know that's why they they put you in the position where you can ask hard questions gather information look i don't like any excuse me i'm sorry about that i i don't like any of the maps you've provided we would like to see a different map you can do that you can say there's too many maps here we need to simplify this process let's cut it back and often there is a narrowing process as you get late there's often a narrowing process where you're saying okay it seems clear the board's most interested in these two maps tell us more about these and you can narrow them you can expand them at the end of the day you can ask questions of your consultants you can listen to public comment you can consult your own conscious you can have a vigorous discussion amongst yourselves ultimately you have to make a decision as to what is the map that's going to best serve this community and if you're addressing a question to me at that process at that point in the process it's often counsel is this we've we thought a lot about this we're kind of interested in this map is there anything unlawful about this map is this going to be south uh reasonably subject to legal challenge and then i'm i'm happy to address that but i think that there are a lot of issues that are not necessarily going to end up in the courts that nonetheless have a major impact on your community that you i would suggest should yeah address could i ask you and you can come back and say we are talking about maps that we haven't had our experts present with what they saw as the option so i was going to suggest we moved to them is your question more appropriately to it's exactly what we're talking about right now but i can wait if you would like to madam president you are you okay with going to the maps is happening no i find it frustrating actually frankly that i can't ask my question while i've been waiting to ask myself okay well then go ahead so my direct question for you is actually to repeat that right back at you you jumped my my line actually um is it unlawful for us to consider a map that that takes into consideration where current incumbents currently preside and and my and i will tell you that based on my analysis and research it is not unlawful for you to consider those as possible options would it be unlawful for us to consider maps that um let's just say in a in a future scenario we're drawn to put two or three incumbents in one district knowing that they fall in one realm you know on you know in their in their political leanings or however we want to be in politicking and favors another one or two to be in their own district so we know that some are going to definitely have to go up against each other and it's going to put that you know political arena at a disadvantage and and put other people at an advantage to maintain their seats potentially depending on the will of the voters without seeing the actual maps that you're talking about and without having a record in order to review both the backup information that came to the board and the board's discussion itself at that juncture i really i can't speculate as to what the legal answer would be you have a lot of leeway you have a lot of discretion in this area that we do know there are certain guidelines that must be followed and if those are violated the law the map would become unlawful if uh communities of interest and particularly ethnic or racial minorities voting strength is impaired as a result of the maps you choose that would that would likely raise legal issues if the if the demographic balance is out of alignment with what the cvra requires that would be a legal issue so just to be clear under your our current maps that are in consideration um it's it's not your position that we are considering any maps that are unlawful i would not i would i am consulted one of the reasons i'm consulted in this process is certainly neither your consultants and i would hazard yes your staff does not want to waste your time to have you considering maps that if you were to adopt them would be unlawful that that would not be a good use of your time and be very frustrating so yes i did look at the the orange maps toward with an eye toward not advocating for them or any other map we're not here to advocate for the result just to present options these presented additional options and based on my analysis they could be adopted within the law thank you the same is true of the other options by the way that have been presented all right so um if we can have our demographics experts from king's associate come on up thank you and reintroduce yourself yes thank you so thank you board president kaiser members of the board superintendents daily and staff so my name is rob murray i am the director of demographics and planning for king consulting i have been working with chico unified school district throughout this process again as mr gantt referenced some of the early public hearings just soliciting more general input developing the initial map options presenting those options and then adding some additional requested data so that those options could be assessed against other metrics and then here tonight to review again our initial options uh with some additional context that has not yet been presented as well as to present two new map options i do have with me jamie king eisemann the president of king consulting but she's had a busy week i'm gonna try to give her the night off as much as i can and see if i can uh answer your questions on their own but if jamie trust me if she feels like she has something to contribute she will be up here to let you hear about it uh so with that uh yeah so our agenda you've seen variations on this quite a bit uh we're just going to do a quick review of that timeline the criteria i do want to spend a little bit of time focusing on some new feedback that we've received in between our last meeting in person november and now uh and then again reviewing those original area maps with some additional contacts with electric election sequencing uh we are gonna just do a more uh thorough walkthrough of some scenarios that can come up under different combinations of trustees and different trustee areas just so that everyone understands all of the potential uh things that can happen and then get into the new map options that have been developed and then going into we have all of that criteria data and we just now have two additional map options to join those ranks of numbers uh so again we won't read off every number on every table but we'll just show you what you have to look at so on that timeline so again we were last here in november it's now january 19th and we have the additional map options to present and this is an informational meeting and you get with a again i know we have some members of the public who are going to speak after we've wrapped up and then at february 2nd we'll again if depending on what else we hear tonight come back with any additional requests for information but any at that point any map option that has been publicly presented for at least seven days the board can choose to adopt at that time or we can just come back again on february 16th but again tonight is really about presenting the information that we have and the board will not be making any decisions to adopt any maps tonight so again i think mr gantt has covered a lot of this but really undersea vra two of the big things we're looking at it is most particularly the district's hispanic and latino population uh that represents the largest protected class minority that we have looked at and we will be seeing the concentration relative to the total district population of that group in all the maps in all the areas and of course keeping in mind with your total population uh the equal representation each trustee should represent about the same number of people so we do have a range for each area that we need to stick within to make sure that there is balance in terms of how many people each of you is representing a quick uh reminder of that background kind of on the nuts and bolts level how this works is that we have the census data that from the 2020 census with population totals and broken out by ethnicity and by over under 18.
between 10 and 11 there can be thousandths of a point difference they can nearly statistically take almost the same cl same classes across the board and because somebody got an a minus versus an a and a course one's number 10 one's number 11. you look at those kids and say wow there's a lot that went into that minus versus that straight up a is it really fair um so one of my proposals right and this is where um i think it's important to recognize student achievement is go to a latin honor system right to move to um laude magna laude and summa laude based on percentage take instead of have an arbitrary one like a one through ten set like you can only recognize ten kids you look at the percentages in the class let's recognize the top 25 percent 15 and 5.
and the reason for that is when i get to a point when i'm closing the books and i say you know we can't pay last year's bills anymore and so that means we have to pay this year um for last year's bills and i just wasn't notified that they had come in and i needed to accrue them and the reason is we were without somebody in that position for five months there were four people doing the job and it was it was miscommunication so next month i will have to bring forward these two findings and say how we're going to correct them and i'll tell you now i will say we're not doing engagement records anymore we're back in school so that's easy and we hired somebody in the accounts payable position who's already gone to trainings to learn how to close the books at the end of the year so these are easy fixes for us and other than that there were no other matters um reported so on lisa to um to fix the two invoices that were not accrued do you just need to do a journal entry uh for this fiscal year showing that it was uh supposed to be last so the auditors did that in these statements they made that correction okay you know we're so used to having no findings but congratulations to everybody involved um great job with like you said the chaos of of the pandemic one student hooray congratulations and uh just two invoices um i say it was a win-win congratulations on a great success thank you any other questions about the republicans thank you okay thank you very much okay moving on to item six uh comments from the audience regarding items not on the agenda let me read this little statement anyone may address the board regarding any item that is within the board subject matter jurisdiction however the board may not discuss or take action on any item which is not on this agenda except is authorized by government section government code section 5494.2 a speaker shall be limited to three minutes as per board policy 9323 all public comments and items listed on this agenda will be heard at the time the board is discussing that item and do we have public comments i currently have one and that is marilyn marilyn i'm going to unmute you good evening can you hear me yes good evening hi oh i didn't realize you guys had moved to zoom so i went up to the school i apologize oh i'm so sorry i um getting my stuff prepared i i'm he's just used to speaking in front of you so i'll do my best um you guys can't see me can you no okay um well i've sent most of these documents to you via email there are some that i have in front of me um last meeting i was a bit disheartened from our conversation that we had i did get some feedback to my comment um so i just first i'd like to go over the oath of office that you guys took and remind you that you swore to support and defend the constitution of the united states and the constitution of the state of california against all enemies foreign and domestic and that you will bear true faith and allegiance to the constitution of the united states and the constitution of the state of california the mandates that are being put forward are harmful and divisive and what i have provided you is education code 32500 in this education code it states in section 201 all pupils have the right to participate fully in the education process free from discrimination and harassment california's public school public schools have an affirmative obligation to racism sexism and other forms of bias and a responsibility to provide equal educational opportu opportunity harassment on school grounds directed at an individual on the basis of personal characteristics or status creates a hostile environment and jeopardizes equal educational opportunity i will fast forward due to time to section e which states there is an urgent need to teach and inform peoples in public schools about their rights as guaranteed by the federal and state constitutions in order to increase people's awareness and understanding of their rights and the rights of others with the intention of promoting tolerance and sensitivity in public schools calgina senate bill 559 will further prohibit discrimination under the above provided provisions excuse me on the basis of genetic information and defines these terms making conforming changes excuse me i have a lot of paperwork in front of me all persons within the jurisdiction of this state are free and equal no matter what their sex race color religion ancestry national origin disability medical condition genetic information marital status or sexual orientation they are entitled to full and equal accommodations advantages to facilities privileges and services this bill is protecting californians from being discriminated against they're entitled to equal and full accommodations advantages facilities privileges if you're excluding children from the school because they can't conform to these mandates even the cdc and california department of health have provisions for people with disabilities to be exempt from these mandates and the cloth masks are emergency use authorization only um i have more paperwork to send you i'm probably coming up on my time but section 12926 does state what california defines as a disability and i believe that you guys could be in violation if you're excluding children from class due to not being able to wear a mask also recently scott gottlieb and the chief scientist at the world health organization came out against masque i'm sorry vaccine mandates roseville joint union high school district has recently put out a letter stating that they are aware that these mandates are illegal and that they are giving the children the option to say that they don't want to wear the mask i had a copy of that letter with me to provide you so i will be sending that to you via email i also provided you yesterday a copy of the letter to the california state legislature which has been signed by several trustees throughout the state of california and i'd like to encourage all of you to sign on to this letter also and you can contact kevin kiley to do so thank you very much merlin and i apologize that um you did not get the information that this was going to be through zoom i i imagine that was quite frustrating for you um currently county new sacramento is mandating that we meet via zoom until further notice you guys understand it's not a law though the other school districts aren't doing this there are school districts that are still meeting in person despite the mandates because mandates are not laws what i've given you right here these are laws so you can still meet in person if you want to you can you don't have to but you you can meet in person okay thank you very much and do we have any other public comments vanessa mason has her hand raised vanessa please unmute your mic hi thank you um a previous board meetings uh the board elected to require address verification could you please review the results of the address verification i don't see it on the agenda and i think the deadline was december the board meeting in december and i don't know if the public has been made aware of the results okay we cannot um discuss that at this meeting because it's not on the agenda but we can take that under advisement thank you any other public comments i do not see any others okay um moving along um do i have a motion to approve the consent agenda with items one two three seven and eight pulled for separate consideration a motion okay uh trustee pope uh trustee anderson kelly i believe kelly is trying to make a comment that is currently muted so uh so trustee kelly you were second in the motion yeah okay um so we'll do a roll call vote trustee anderson hi trustee kelly and the chair of osi so the consent agenda minus those items has been approved okay um consent agenda item one approve adoption of minutes from december 15 2021 it's been standard practice when board members are absent that we um pull the the minutes from that meeting and the uh board members that were present vote on it so that was approved okay so we have a motion and a second so trustee anderson aye rusty kelly hi trust dealey i was not present at that meeting okay so abstain yes okay trustee pope hi and the chairperson so that has been approved and um item two is uh resolution 15 20 21 22.
uh per census block you see the map here kind of zoomed in on chico and you even from here can see there are different sizes and shapes and they have very different populations some of your census blocks don't have a single person living in them your most populated one has more than 1400 and it's again by the population total is the letter of the law that has the the balance especially if this were zoomed out you wouldn't be able to even see these smallest blocks but you have some very large census blocks in the northern and eastern portions of your district but again some of them don't have any people in them some of them have maybe a single digit number of people in them so again it's we're adding up all the census block populations that form these trustee areas yes so just to clarify square mileage is just not something that's considered under legal requirements um no the size of the areas and you'll see as we go through the original blue green and purple maps you will see that none of the maps have equal sized areas it is equal population that we're considering and all of the maps fall within all of the maps have all the districts falling within that twenty two thousand eight hundred to twenty three and twenty five thousand two hundred twenty five population rates right that is one of those legal requirements that as mr gan referenced uh we would not bring forward any maps that didn't meet that requirement in an earlier presentation of this board you said that um your firm that districts should be as compact as possible so what's the i guess legal basis or tradition or custom associated with that nope and i think uh and that is a good question and as mr gantt said it is not a rigidly uh defined term and for me uh it does sort of hit on that you know it when you see it but when you have kind of tendrils of areas leading off to something kind of dumbbell shaped things where you might have two blobs that are just connected by the width of a street in between them you know where you have you know just anything that you know it doesn't mean it has to be a perfectly square or circle circle shaped area and i'll actually point out some examples of this with some of the earlier maps and on the orange maps uh what some of the thinking is because for example on the blue map where one of the guiding principles was using the high school boundary which happened to have enough population for two trustee areas and the pv area and three trustee areas and the chico high attendance area you were kind of working with uh dividing those shapes up of two areas in the pv zone three areas in the chico high zone and that led to the shape of one of those chico high areas where and the two up north where when you look at them in isolation some of the shapes might be a bit odd but when you consider that you're just looking at the two areas in the pb high and then you're dividing them into two then they are both as compact as i think they can be while meeting the population standards under that and then same for the three below so it's a there's not going to be a short simple answer to that question unfortunately so if one district was five square miles and then another district was over 150 square miles would that be a little lopsided possibly for for trying to fulfill that goal i would say not necessarily in this case i think compactness really refers to the shape of just not having particularly odd looking shapes not necessarily to a compact geographical extent so moving into we have the criteria that we oh yeah i know mr again yeah i'm going to let you speak to that on the legal side on this because i think it is a very important question obviously and you do have different shapes this is a legitimate and an important question that the board needs to consider i don't care about the shape the consider the issue is for compactness is often what is the driving what what are the driving considerations is there an is there appear to be an unlawful consideration that is impacting on that shape is what it comes down to and that is generally what the courts are going to be looking at in helping them decide whether the compactness principle has been uh denied they'll look at a number of things they will say where where are the dividing lines between these trustee areas are they are they for example major thoroughfares are they recognize dividing lines or are they you know cutting across fields are they reaching out to small areas to try to drag them in in order to increase the voting strength of a particular group to the detriment of another group which is why a focus on that that's the kinds of considerations uh when the court would weigh whether there's a compactness violation i hope that that's helpful and then one other uh point is in a district like chico usd where as i was kind of referencing with some of those census blocks you have uh some areas that are much less densely populated than others uh you it is almost inevitable that you will have whatever areas include your more rural populations are going to have to be larger in order to have the same number of people in them as an area that is within you know the core city of chico especially because with how many people live in the core city of chico compared to the outlying areas it's just not feasible to uh you know have those be really the same size two years ago when you first present i mean i think it was maybe your second presentation um you said that um you were asked by somebody who was on the board at that time and is still on the board somebody who i respect and like um that they didn't want residences of incumbents to be a factor or they wanted it to be a factor of last resort um criterion of last resort um and there were non-verbal cues from other members of the board at that time that they agreed and now you've gone off and you've drawn a map that has and to my analysis the top criteria is to honor the locations of incumbents and where they live and i believe that the reason why the orange map has such a huge area over 150 square miles for district 5 and such a small area by contrast for a different district that it was in order to achieve that putting those incumbents in those in those desirable locations for them i.e where they live currently okay are we getting when i uh go through the orange map we'll certainly get into some of that and as far as uh and something that we will cover is yes i was not even aware of the addresses of the current board members at the time those first maps were developed and then when i get into some of the election sequencing i think that will illustrate why there was some desire to provide an option that simplified uh the sequencing and minimized or even eliminated some of the complications that can arise and again as i think i will just reiterate mr gatt said this is my job is to provide you with an option that meets all other requirements and then how you then pick up that ball and move with those options uh it's out of my hands at that point go ahead with your presentation thank you so the the additional feedback since november there will be a few of these that i'm going to speak to very specifically on the maps and then some that i just want to speak to now just to answer some questions that came in through the website comments that i was able to read over these last couple of months and so one of them was that consideration for the next election election sequencing and uh just what might happen when current trustees are in the same area we'll go through some examples that really walk through all the permutations of this but that we have some new map options based on that concern and then and one other that i'll get to in just a minute uh some of the feedback that we got was just expressing support for one or another of the original three options all three of them did receive some comments that express support for that particular option uh there was a couple of specific questions on the purple map which i'll bring that one up with the elementary school boundary overlay to speak to a couple of those questions uh one just in general about how to find and use maps and so we will also add the orange maps to uh this capability but the just images of the maps are on the district's website page and we also have some what are called kmz files but a very small file that can be downloaded and then there are instructions on the web page for going on to google maps and it allows you to kind of drag that file in so you can display trustee area maps on top of you know anything on google maps you can search for your home or any other point of interest see what trustee area it would be in different maps and so just wanted to make sure that just people were aware that that was something that the district website does have available i did hear some feedback the identification of a neighborhood that was not shown on the neighborhood's map or analysis cal park so we have that shown now and we'll just uh see where that one falls on all the maps as we get to uh one that i think is very important to clarification on the district extent uh on all the maps when you see them just as a reminder we're zooming in so you can see more detail in streets within the city of chico but there is an inset that shows the full extent of the chico unified school district and yes everything shown on that inset is within the district so people in for example forest ranch and cohasset are in chico usd those kids go to chico usd schools and people who live in those areas can and are on the hold seats on the board of education and then finally uh speaking of those communities uh the uh comment referred to them as the mountain communities but the you know whether mountain foothill but the uh there was some uh expression of those as a community of common interest and disappointment that most of the original maps separated those two communities between two different trustee areas so that also informed some of what went into the orange map which we'll show you when we get to that but first those original draft trustee area maps again the blue green and purple unless people have questions i won't belabor all of the different reasons broadly the blue map was based on the high school boundary of having trustees entirely as much as possible within one or the other the green map the high school boundary but having every trustee area straddle both high school areas and then the purple map looking at a focus on elementary school boundaries so we're going to just quickly before i get into my election sequencing rundown here is that purple map with the overlay of the elementary school boundaries there was one comment wondering about a specific area that might have been included uh uh between areas three and four but that is that citrus and neo-dao boundary where the trustee areas do run right along and that is the expressed intention of this map to try to follow those boundaries as much as feasible however there was also a question of why parkview was split in this map and that's just unfortunately with the different population densities making every single elementary boundary fit in i just isn't feasible this one does have seven of the ten elementary school boundaries entirely or almost entirely within one trustee area but for people who are particularly interested in parkview unity the blue map actually does happen to actually place almost all of parkview within one trustee area so just wanted to point out those specific concerns and now i do want to spend the so definitely expect to get some questions perhaps during this part because the there are some perhaps complicated permutations from this but the next step uh yes i'm sorry just i wanted to ask a question of staff just for clarification on our school boundaries um off the top of our heads what's the percentage of our students that form 10 and don't actually attend school in their boundaries so over 40 percent of our students aren't actually going to the school which they reside in so those those boundaries aren't necessarily like representing who people will be voting for for the schools that their kids are necessarily going to correct and we show you one of the data points that we've had is showing you the full matrix that breaks down where the students are enrolled who live in each trustee area which showed that literally every area on every map had at least one student at every school in the district exactly i guess that was kind of the point is just to demonstrate that that we really are an at-large board regardless of if we are being put into districts for voting purposes that we have students no matter which district we're going to be in that are attending all the schools in every school district boundary thanks for clarifying that 40 is very high i mean that's that's a huge nod to chico unified for student choice and parent choice for for where students get to go to school which is really great does that include oak bridge and fairview okay yeah we have a rich history of choice within chico unified and that's something that we really tried to pride ourselves on and it started with sierra view and academics plus and hooker oak and rosedale in the two-way immersion program but then when parents have preferences of schools that they want to go to we do try to accommodate that and that is not the case in most districts and so i'm just going to jump back into this but so the the quick uh kind of the so first the 101 level so as as a parent just looking at the table there are five members of the chico unified board and there are staggered terms so any given uh election they'll be either thr either three or two members uh who are being elected and that will still be the case whether at large or with trustee areas so currently we have all of the current members listed and when their term ends there are three members uh president kaiser and members lando and robinson whose terms are up at with the election that will occur this fall and then the other two members dalby and tennis uh have their at-large terms through 2024 so all board members can complete their elected at large term for three of you that is that will uh be later this year and for the other two uh they're still two years away and so once we have trustee areas whatever map it is three of those areas will elect in 2022 and the other two will have to wait until 2024.
that number can change every year gpas are relative a relative shift you know and i looked at what would happen if with the graduating class of last year of 2021 if we went to a latin system instead of recognizing 10 kids in you know whether it be publicly in the newspaper or whether it be something we do at graduation in the program or there's another scholarship night instead of recognizing 10 kids we'd recognize 56 kids 22 kung lao 22 magna laude and 11 uh summa laude and then one of the other questions is what do you do with valedictorian and salutatorian well going back to latin roots and i know because i did take latin for four years um so magister would be very proud of me that i'm coming back to my latin roots when i talk about what we do with latin um you know valedictorian salutatorian wale in latin means goodbye salutations salutatorian means hello it was an arbitrary thing that was created to who talks first and who talks last so yes it became the first and second in the class but they had to come up with some delineation so that's really what it means to me more importantly if there is a way to apply and vote and have a committee review or the kids themselves the student body pick the student who's the most representative of their graduating class that is the way to go rather than valeditorian sleditory we would still have to identify a one and two because colleges like uconn for example will still offer a full ride to the number one and the number two student in the graduating classes but that may change over time i think it's a better representation it doesn't take anything away from the efforts of the of the students we're still going to have kids that perform at the higher levels they'll be recognized for it and then we take some of that that weight off we still have student speakers they represent better represent the class and sometimes it may be the kid who ends up being who would have been the first in the class is chosen that's entirely possible that student may be the best representative for that class they may not be but we're going to give some voice back to students and some choice the other thing is is i always look um to see what my neighbors are doing right i don't have these great ideas on my own all the time sometimes i look to other people to see what they're doing um and i took a look at some of the higher performing schools and while i try not to compare ourselves to everybody everything is relative it is interesting to me that over time schools like new canaan wilton fairfield both ludlow and ward staples in westport trumbull newtown massac and pomparog they don't use class rank anymore they haven't used it so um that's basically my presentation these are some of the resources and i'm happy to share with the board so they can see this particular presentation and i will stop sharing but really i think overall this process benefits students um it opens up opportunities it eliminates an unnecessary competition that really doesn't that doesn't get them anywhere it doesn't change the ability or the the the close-knit group of kids that may be at the top of their class we're still recognizing kids but it really is a diminishing it really does not matter as much for college admissions as we used to as i used to think as well speaking of someone who was just outside the top well maybe i'd telephone maybe a little more than outside the top ten but it was i remember being upset when i realized oh i was i'm not gonna be one of those top 10 kids in school um that has changed over time so it's in the program studies because it's a core uh concept for how we uh have done things in the past and it was important to put it out there um so i'm certainly open to any questions um i know members of the cape subcommittee have heard heard this and i know uh like for like joy i know heard this conversation last year um and we have some new people on board this year so i'm certainly open to any questions concerns any anything i'm happy to answer and talk through and talk about options all right i'll raise hands and i'll uh i'll do any questions people have hey bob just a comment i think mark did a fantastic job of that presentation um yeah i just uh speaking for one who thought that was a really stupid i mean i i wasn't really you could say it sorry mike we were talking about that you know at first we're like what what yeah i joined i was like is this is this a thing like it so it really the rationale and everything really i love the objectivity that the data everything's great i have to say that mike mike actually said you know the first time i heard you talk about this i thought this guy is crazy i could vouch for that you might you did you did you did say that mike you did i did i don't know i i i own it uh yeah well he must have been talking to my wife because she thinks the same thing so well i will just jump in and say as a parent of two children who were number 11 in the class um i'm all for this right because i like the thought of recognizing more and having broader things i'm not a 100 percent sure i'm a fan of removing the valedictorian because i always think that's a mark of very high distinction right and and it carries a history in a in a school um but i like the general construct of class rank is less important and broader recognition is is a stronger way to go involves more kids and it doesn't draw those hard lines right you can you can you can be a little bit more um you know you know that guy that person who's number 11 or number 26 it still could get an honors right because they're in the next grouping down right right and i and i've seen it and and so you know when we calculate class rank when we do that we calculate you know the five bel you know the 11 through 16 we go back course by course grade by grade you know to make sure and when you're sometimes you're talking thousands of a point and depending on how a student did in their first semester their senior year with a class that it's unbelievable a minus to a to just a straight you know a middle of the road a versus an a minus can change students by you know so you're talking the separation is just um you know and so the proposal here talks about i'm just eliminating class rank um you know the the other part of recognition is not a part of that that's certainly something we can have a conversation about down there you know as we move forward in the coming years in terms of recognition of valedictorian there's a lot of different ways that we can do that for me the important part was to put it out there as as a way that we could approach things at brookfield high school and then you know depending on where the board sees this going and if it passes or we have additional conversations there would be multiple information nights for parents that with school counseling staff to help them understand the change and why it's important and what this looks like for them including inviting college admissions officers to be a part of that conversation because i they can hear it from me but they may not not that they don't believe it but it's so ingrained in so many different ways of our society that class rank is so important so that's part of the rollout but we do have some time to make that happen so right i really appreciate you listening you'll still be calculating grade point averages and things like that correct oh yeah we're still gpa is not going to go away so we'll still use that because that is a point um and it's not going away like with this graduate we're talking about the current freshman before we've done any numbers we haven't run any numbers there's no class rank so it's not like you're pulling it out from underneath somebody if the students felt they were number 12 and i could have gotten up there there's been no calculation for the the current ninth grade class uh for that to happen so any other comments discussion points guys i for one like all right any other points you'd like to bring up um mr belanda before we uh take a vote on the program of studies i i just appreciate you listening to me and you know even if you can keep it to yourself you thought i was crazy first you know and then it's changed your mind i just appreciate the openness of the board has always been there to listen to proposals and suggestions or thoughts i might have and give feedback i really appreciate it um yeah that's all i have i just want to say that when that when apple does its new commercial on the crazy ones i think mike is gonna volunteer to have you be a part of that you know the commercial i'm talking about right all right so we've got a motion on the table it's been moved and seconded that we approve the proposed revisions of the program of studies as recommended by cape and dr ruby and principal belanda any further discussion okay all in favor aye any opposed okay it passes unanimously congratulations mr blandon well presented very well done um thank you for your leadership and creativity thank you so much for listening i appreciate it thank you thank you very much mark well done tonight okay so next on the agenda and we're moving on to old business we had uh we had tabled the school calendar until uh tonight so there's a motion on this item i will move that the board continue the discussion and approve the 2022-2023 school calendar as recommended by superintendent dr john grill do i have a second second okay so we've gone from two to kind of one but nobody heard it to to having to go just a second now uh man we gotta get into the the designated seconder um the uh all right so it's been moved and seconded uh dr bro would you like to leave the discussion sure just to start off and i think there was definitely some feedback uh when initially proposed and uh some feedback earlier this week uh so happy to have conversation um basically basically with the calendar there were two two uh it was a very traditional calendar in most ways in terms of the winter break the spring break um the short winter break uh meaning the february break um and professional learning days and so forth um it was my you know recommendation to the board for two specific uh differences uh for the year one was specifically about increasing our uh existing four early dismissal plc days um to adding three more of those and i know we had some feedback and some thoughts on on that particular proposal and then the second proposal um was specifically around accommodating and making uh the practical work uh with fiscal responsibility in regard to the mid-year move of the huckleberry faculty and students from huckleberry in the mid-year time around the what we anticipate will be the winter break time over to the new school candlewood lake elementary and so uh part of that proposal was moving um to to make it work within budget from a 182 day student year to just for next year a 180 student year student day year which is the state mandated requirement of 180 days so those were the two really big issues that i think perhaps um some board members might have a little further conversation so did you get into specific input on those two and what's your again or your reaction to the inputs you got from people well i think there was just question on is this and we could go back to december 15th that was the last time we talked about this was is it the right time to increase the early dismissals um for collaborative time i think the board and certainly the educators value that collaborative time with our faculty to plan for students review student assessment data plan for differentiated instruction work with our technology integration specialist gives us more time for that at certain checkpoints in the year um and so those we thought would be needed we currently have four of these early release days we used to have five it was reduced a few years ago and we just stuck with the four days um the other piece to it was we've had them kind of typically on fridays that are against longer weekends and the thought was to move them from the these proposed seven days or keeping it before whatever the board ultimately decides and we talk that through from fridays to wednesdays and what that would do is you know most will recall that several years ago we worked with negotiations with the teachers to add an hour uh on wednesdays so almost every wednesday during the years about 30 meetings during the year where we have collaborative time after school for an hour with the teachers and so the thought was if we have an early release on a wednesday which many of our neighbors uh chose the middle of the weekday because they also have these meetings um you get more continuity because you have that extra time and you're not so short on time and you get you get that extra hour with the teachers and there's just more time once you get into the flow of thinking and planning and working you just have more time to get get that work done so that's that's the plc part i i don't know if we want to take this holistically or a piece at a time um so okay anyone want to start discussion i can start if you'd like i was gonna say we could start with the plc days i think that's uh the easier aspect to tackle um you know i wrote john and said that um i didn't feel that now was a good time because we needed to you know capitalize on more instructional time and having our students in the classroom you know and design a you know calendar that's least impactful on our students and having that in the middle of a week on wednesday i know kind of leverages for the teachers um it's a disadvantage for the students um it's really breaks up the continuity of the week it seems very disruptive for students having it on wednesday right in the middle of the day it's hard on the families who have to arrange for you yeah my problem with it is the combination of the two you know taking a year where you're going to shorten the school year and then shorten it further by taking more learning time away from the kids it's just to me it just didn't seem like the right timing for the discussion and i don't like it in the middle of the week either to be frank because it's hard for parents and hearts for families so yeah but i i also agree i just think uh the kids missed out on enough instructional time over the past probably two years now at this point um that we probably should leave that alone and you know just so everybody knows in our planning that wasn't that was part of the discussion you know and it was you know weighing and bringing that forward to the board for exactly this discussion john are some of the half days that are on the calendar already that we that we typically have are i believe some of those are half days like before a holiday let's say are those half days for teachers as well or are they i think just just the one before thanksgiving is the only one right that the teachers have that in the in the one before um before christmas eve is typically the two half early dismissals that do not have a plc attached to it okay and then we have early release days of course for conferences based on the way the teacher day and teacher contract works so i mean and i wrote this i wrote this to dr brill as well but um i am also not um right now in favor of taking any more instructional time away from students when i heard it it just kind of just was like oh it was just kind of like something that was like more time being taken away out of and they need to be in school i mean they've had a really rough couple of years a lot of students missing a lot of school and so i feel like every minute in school is just precious right now um so it just kind of my initial gut reaction was just like oh no not more school but i would i don't know if it's possible um you know i would support you know massaging the calendar a little bit so that you could get maybe a couple extra half uh half days for teachers maybe that means those are you know full days for teachers before thanksgiving or christmas eve and that's not that's not going to be a popular opinion but um you know if if that kind of prep time or time is needed for those teachers you know that might be something at least until we can revisit this topic maybe that's something that we could do yeah and you know without getting into the the tales of woe i i definitely know that uh for any of us against the holiday is something you know we all loathe to to you know while being creative and brainstorming i get it but that's something i don't know that would be something that would get it would be productive time or yeah but but i understand you're brainstorming coming up with ideas the um so like i said that wasn't lost on us in the conference the leadership conversations about bringing this forward and um you know like i've said this is something just like mr vallanda talked about that he talked to kate last year about the class rank issue so um i'm wide open to the thought process of uh several of you have articulated that this might not be the right year for this but it's definitely something i um depending on the board's appetite and the board adopts the calendar um and we can make adjustments tonight we can you can give me some direction and even assign a board member to work with me in the interim and we can bring this back on the 16th of february to adopt all depending on what the board would like to do we continue to have that conversation um but as always wide open to board feedback uh in consideration of our context and where we're at so we talked about the plc days any inputs on the 180 days given the scenario of doing this transition uh the big huckleberry transition uh this year which we talked about at length that our last time we discussed this we want to end that the other discussion first it seems like maybe we should tackle that and then tackle that i mean they kind of go together so but uh i mean i i throw if you want to end that one i for one am not in favor of increasing the number of plc days and i'm not in favor of doing them on wednesdays yeah i just see them as two separate entities but okay they're definitely related but um that's my video i don't know how everybody else feels anybody else have a differing opinion let's go go there i think we ought to continue down the path on on the on the plc days all right hearing none let's go on to the 180 and we will we'll deal with emotion as a whole when we get back to the motion so how about uh input on the 180 days versus 182. so maybe i could just start just to get a brief summary out there as a reminder for everybody so with the mid-year move we've got a couple things to consider um the mid-year move involves a good deal of time for our huckleberry faculty and staff but we're really talking faculty here to pack up classrooms and some offices obviously but classrooms um although we'll have movers contracted and so forth there's there's lots in a classroom in the middle of the year mind you um to pack up and move and have it moved and then have a second time where we really need to have a day for teachers to set up their classrooms for students to arrive in an organized efficient and happy place to make sure everybody's prepared to receive the students at their new school and so we built a a calendar that still provided us with our professional learning days that we traditionally have that are necessary throughout the school year teachers work up to 187 days in their contract that's what's been budgeted in the 2223 uh superintendent's budget proposal and so working within those days planning for all the faculty but specifically around huckleberry grades two three and four having a day to move before the winter break and a day after the winter break to set up classrooms and then subsequently having time built in for the grade five teachers from wisconsin the center school staff to have a pack up time at the end of the year and building in professional learning on those days as well it's all articulated in the memo i put out on the 15th but just giving big picture here where we would utilize the time for the other half of the faculty that aren't involved in the move on either end of the year or in the middle of the year for professional learning our principals and leadership team would obviously plan accordingly with input from the faculty at that particular time of year what's specifically needed so that's in a nutshell what the the plan was and it would be a one-year proposal for the 180 days not um and then turn around right away the following year in 2324 and get back to the 182 days so two questions i have um one is what are the specific duties of the movers what are they going to be exactly responsible for so um you know i am as a teacher responsible for putting my items into a box and then they are taking the boxes or are they literally stuffing the boxes so the bid has not even been put together yet joy but so i'll give you my best understanding of this through the nbc and the architects is that the teachers were packing all of their instructional supplies curriculum supplies um other manipulatives and scissors and interior desk supplies all the things they have in their classroom if they have bulletin board supplies they'd be packing those and there'd be a specific list for the teachers exactly what they would be responsible for the movers actually move the boxes and any furniture that we're taking with us to the new building um of course everybody knows we talked about at the beginning of the meeting there will be new furniture in all the classrooms and offices and so forth but there are a list that we actually work with today i'll talk about that a little bit later of of items that do need to be moved so the moon's removing those pieces of equipment uh whatever those equipment pieces are furniture as well as the the boxes that offices and classrooms pack okay so so given that this is not like a district-wide impact right it's just impacting current what the initial plan is you know grade two three and four is there a way you know we can leverage that and um provide time for those three grade levels you know uh like i suggested in the email like a non-instructional rate pay i don't know if you've spoken with the union um say three hours um you know and i'm just going back to when i was a fifth grade teacher and when i had to pack up my classroom and move to middle school yeah joy there's am i jumping in too quick did you have more to say i apologize gonna say um not discounting trust me i know all that classroom teacher has um and a lot i'm sure will be thrown out hopefully um gather a lot through the years and i've got to give the the faculty and our uh melissa i'm not i'm not sure where our fifth grade team is right now uh middle school they tend to have a little less in the classrooms than in elementary uh but i know melissa and mary rose been working with their faculty over time on the purging portion of things you know things that they aren't going to be necessarily moving everybody knows they're going to be moving so that's been kind of naturally happening over over time but what i would say is in working with the teachers union um uh and again anything we do needs to to be negotiated with a teacher's unit but definitely they they uh talking with mr petrino they are open to that kind of concept that you just talked about joy so if if we were to budget more dollars in the budget to compensate teachers for their time outside of the day and we didn't use it as a regular day where we shortened school year for uh packing purposes say you know you use three hours as an example but time we were thinking more in the in the area probably four hours to be honest with you um that teachers could put in over let's say from after thanksgiving recess to the winter recess over time to get themselves ready because we'd be able to give them a memo with direction of exactly what to pack and here's your boxes here's your labels you know those kind of things and on their own do that and compensate them for the time that is something we definitely can consider um the one thing though and having a conversation with the teachers union was kind of the the moving in and setting up the classroom that isn't something necessarily that you you could do in an hour here or not we're there i mean we really have a pretty definitive line in our timing where we're not going to be able to either have have school or depending on where this conversation goes for a day where we can use our time wisely and and let the team set up uh the rooms and ready to go and this is really an enigma it's a mid-year move so there could be a combination of the idea you were talking about and kind of what i proposed i think there might be some room to have that uh discussion um and go back and count the days and you know make sure we're within contract and then go work with the teachers union so again it all depends on the board's appetite and where they are with my specific recommendation um and then if there's any direction you might want to provide it's a tough time a year to be asking people to do it on overtime even paid right people had a lot of pressures in their life about organizing around holiday holidays whichever holiday you celebrate right it's a tough time of year yeah so um i hate to say it right if you could if you could pack it over you know some time here and there over three weeks right maybe that's perfectly doable but it's uh i for one i'd rather take the time and do it right and as you've proposed here bob did you have the numbers i know you said it wasn't much but budget savings wise if we do eliminate those two as well well 20 to 25 000 right it's not a huge number it's and the only place you save any money is hourly employees right who uh that you know it's not really a teacher savings what the proposal is actually would take it around the other way we would end up not getting the savings and we would add an added cost right for the overtime right so i would argue it would go from being uh slight savings to a slight extra cost right in the budget so if we did it on overtime any other comments or discussions i think it's a creative way to handle a challenging situation i don't think two days you know it's not the best but i don't think two days are going to make or break the school year for one year so i'm in favor of it anyone else you know one thing i didn't share and i just wanted to put this out there i don't have um i didn't take a deep look at it but i understand from uh dr constantino out of new fairfield they have a big renovated new project um and they're they um are planning for a mid-year move as well and they took considerable amount of time extra for the winter break to build in some time it was i think it was a few days that that week at the beginning of january so you know these are vexing situations and we all have to look at our context and work and try to give a heads up to people and our families as well you know and our faculty and staff as to what it might look like so um so it's such an exciting time at the same time there are inconveniences that we we do have to face and think about okay what what happens at the other schools um while the huckleberry team is doing their packing and setup uh are they doing actually professional development work in other schools so we would plan professional development uh work bob and i wouldn't be able to predict right now on you know mid-year what that's going to look like but it would be on the real-time data um or particular project uh whatever it might be um at that time that would be necessary and knowing the calendar ahead of time in advance our principals can plan that and start looking at the year with their teacher leadership teams as the you know this time of year doing x is going to make most sense for us so why don't we start preparing for that whether that's inviting someone in to work with them or uh spend time you know with student data or instructional coaches whatever it might be portfolio work like we talked about tonight you know there's a host of things that we can spend time on okay so i don't have any doubt that would be very productive how does the team feel about um allowing the other schools to operate and not have pd during that time and just not having students attend huckleberry does have 180 days at huckleberry not 180 days across the district correct what do you think about that john the reason i proposed it the way i did is i thought we try to keep a uniform calendar for the families for those families that have children across the various schools and grades so the kids i got that man that was where i was coming from thinking of families so i just don't think it's a hard concept to kind of matt we manage it with early dismissals you know like early dismissals at different times at different schools um i mean people still ask what time lunch is served and if lunch is served um so i think that no matter what it's just about communication really oh yeah i also kind of wonder about uh you know the number of of because they're specific grades um you know we're impacting a lot more grades by going into school those days versus the two three four um yeah it just does it seems like we're by not having school that day it's those days it's it's impacting a lot more students than just two three four so yeah i don't know i just kind of kind of grew joy in this as far as is that is that going to be a large number of like i said because i get that you know keeping the parents in mind i think that's great um but yeah keeping again going back to the whole keeping kids out of school awesome instructional time it's going to affect you know grades you know and you know and again that that's that's why we have this discussion i mean i would just you know if let's just use i think it's january 2nd is the monday that that we're proposing as an off uh for for the students so we can in for some of the staff so we can get huckleberry to move in and again this is putting this together assuming there's not another delay the building's ready that's the great assumption we have here is let's just say i mean i i have genuinely wonderful rule-following parents who contact the office and ask about the last day of school like how many snow days do we have we want to plan a vacation but we want to make sure the kids don't miss out on an end of the year party and we want them to be here so you know those are just real normal things that people ask about and so if you have one child who's in school on january 2nd in a family and the other isn't going to be in school you just start getting all you know i'm trying we're trying to do the best we can here and accommodate as many people as we can so those those are some of the the real kind of questions you get um but again these are the ideas these are the discussions we have right but i think there's a central value here the value is we value instructional time of course juncture and you know people's vacations yeah well that's that's an individual value um and i think us you know as a board we're we're on the lookout for the community and stakeholders by and large and then there's the the fiscal piece which we we can't ignore um that if we ask first it might not even happen because we have to negotiate the more time for huckleberry staff to to work outside of 187 days or whatever it might be and so so we might have grandiose plans that that can work and feasibly it can but ultimately there may there's a whole agreement process that we would have to go through so we need to you know be considerate of that as well and then if there's an agreement there's an extra cost to that so that's another piece to consider when we're trying to put together a budget um you know because fiscal responsibility is another value of the community so again my proposal was was my my best recommendation to be as creative as we could within the confines and the framework we have trying to uh to your point might follow and work with the brookfield values so my understanding is the it's those those moving days would not be part of the 187.
board member compensation for missed meeting um essentially since dr lee was out sick um standard practice is to uh still compensate the board member for a meeting that they missed for being ill do i have a motion on this item okay trustee kelly has moved to approve drive a second oh second okay okay uh so trustee anderson aye trustee kelly aye trustee lee do i have seen this one uh president uh typically yes because it could be viewed as a conflict of interest so okay trustee pope and the chair votes i so that is approved item three um i i'm going to motion to to uh bring this to the floor for discussion a second um so this is approving a donation of fifteen thousand dollars from the wind found from the wind foundation for center high school geometry and construction program i just wanted to take a moment to comment about how this program has impacted my family personally i think it is a wonderful program my son when he was in high school and going back all the way to elementary school was very disengaged from math this was a different way of presenting it and he became very engaged he became motivated to do the homework because they weren't allowed to do the construction projects unless they'd done the math homework part and suddenly his his math just skyrocketed his engagement was wonderful he even came back his senior year to be a foreman helping out in the class and right after he graduated high school he uh was able to get a job framing houses straight out of high school so i just want to take a moment to say how thankful i am personally for this program and how wonderful i think it is i would also like to thank the wynn foundation for the donation of fifteen thousand dollars they have donated to the geometry construction um for many years um it started out with a donation of five thousand and then increased to fifteen thousand so that's um that's a great win for our geometry construction students um so thank you wynn foundation to approve okay we have a motion to approve do i have a second second i'm not sure it was first on that i think it was dr lee um so uh so roll call vote trustee anderson aye rusty kelly hi trustee lee aye trustee pope hi and the chair vote site so that is unanimously approved and then item seven approved social emotional learning curriculum tk through sixth grade um yes thank you mr bruno i would like to have a little discussion on this item um i was actually confused on what this was um and so i appreciate the communication with mr lair mr lair will you just give a little overview on this item please number seven excuse me trusty pope do i have a second on the motion wait a two and then i i'll continue okay okay thank you very much thank you mr laira will you just give an overview please sure sure so this this curriculum last year uh during the pandemic our teachers were really calling for some sort of more organized curriculum to assist them with lessons for our k-6 related to social emotional learning this this program was well received from the from the staff this year as we start moving forward we recognize that the staff was calling for it again um our social workers and counselors in the school sites were doing that what it is is it's what i like to call like a plug-and-play curriculum it it is supplemental so so staff can grab it uh pull out different lessons from uh either the actual physical hard paper copies that they're have or can be assigned online it's just over a myriad of topics that allow for conversations related to social emotional health and learning um and so far the staff has found it very uh a very useful resource to assist them in working with with our students um so that's the the the program that it is thank you mr lair i find this um very beneficial especially right now in this time of the pandemic when a lot of our students are hurting socially emotionally and learning-wise so i think that was a great tool for our staff to use so thank you [Music] that's it okay do i have a motion to any further discussion okay do i have a motion to approve a motion to approve okay and is there a second second okay so trustee anderson aye trustee kelly hi sorry i keep getting double muted so apologies i'm handling my mute myself so if the host could stop muting me that would be very helpful okay trustee lee hi trustee pope hi and the chairperson so that is approved unanimously and now item eight approved professional services reader lisa coats i'll bring it to the floor bring it to the floor second okay thank you mr bruno um so i would like to thank brian mr ryan miranda for continuing with the teach love and logic parenting class um this now has been what third year mr lair fourth year do you recall that that mr miranda has brought this to to our district um uh from what i'm hearing from mr laird it's very well receptive from our um parents great information that that our parents do receive this year it is going to be virtual um and if it's okay with mr miranda if i could pop in um in a couple sessions i'd really appreciate that um so i just want to say thank you for bringing this to our district and our parents okay any further discussion on the issue okay so moved and do i have a second second okay so roll call vote trustee anderson aye trustee kelly aye trustee lee hi trustee pope hi and the chair votes eyes so that is unanimously approved now before we move on to business item eight a um does anyone need to take a break or anything this is gonna be a big chunk of stuff so i just thought i'd check in see if anyone needs a break okay um would a five-minute recess be enough ten minutes mister may i ask a question is this in regards to the um policies that we are about to approve before we do that i thought we'd take a short recess well may i ask and what your intent on approving these policies well well not approving doing the readings i'm sorry do you are you going to do them individually or are you gonna do them in a block um because there are so many i thought it would make sense to do each one individually if that's the will of the board yeah so historically we have done them as a batch for the first reading it really does save a lot of time we're not approving them tonight and so um approving the first reading as a batch is just a time saver it usually only takes a couple of seconds people are allowed to discuss any of the items and so or we could even pull specific ones if you would want for separate considerations okay um i i'm totally open to doing it that way but let's let's first just take a recess for five minutes okay okay so uh we are at 7 25 and we will resume at 7 30.
you cannot have more than five members on the board and two of you uh will have the opportunity to remain here through 2024. there is no scenario where somebody who has already been elected it must end their term early so what happens next is let's say and some of these maps will show you this very thing happening but you have members a b and c who are all living in the same trustee area uh actually we'll simplify it first let's say it's just a and b the most simple variation of this is you have two members who both are on the same election cycle and in 2022 a and b are in the same area they both want to continue their term of service on the board and seek re-election so they along with anyone else who enters that contest will all run the voters of that trustee area will make their selections and whoever wins that election is has the seat on the board and no one else does but what this means is that whenever there are multiple board members now who are in the same trusty area know you know that for everyone beyond one that is a current member who definitely will not be back after the election now let's add in our member c there who's in who's elected at large can serve through 2024 but uh it's they have a couple people whose terms are up in 2022 and that trustee area is holding an election so if they don't run which they don't have to they finish out their term but when their term is up their trustee area is not doesn't have an open seat so they would have to wait until 2026 to run again so more likely member c there can go ahead and run for the trustee area seat and if they don't win it just reverts back to what we just talked about they still serve out their at large term but once that term expires uh unless they move to a different trustee area they need to wait until that the trustee seat in their area opens again yes did you just say that um a sitting board member in a newly created trusty area can not be scheduled for their term to expire for another two years but they can run for that newly opened seat in that new district did you say that that is correct because if they don't do that once their term expires then they would have to wait two years for the opportunity to run again so if they don't want to risk or rather if they want to have the opportunity not to have that lapse in their term they can run for the trustee area seat and what happens if they win is they won the trustee area seat they would then give up their at-large seat and because that was brought about because of the 2022 election that leaves a vacancy on the board and creates the need to fill that vacancy either by appointment or by holding a special election for a two-year term from one of the areas that does not have a trusty seat yet and i'll show when when we look at each individual map i can show you examples of this with real maps and real people and that might make it a little more concrete but these are some of the permutations that again when the question came up of what because actually backing up a second in addition to selecting a map you also select the sequence of which trustee areas elect in 2022 three of them have to and which two again two of them have to wait until 2024 and in putting potential election sequences up with these maps it turned into the exploring all of the potential outcomes when there are multiple trustees grouped together and again the one we just went to with the trustees that are on different election cycles in the same area all three of the original maps do present that and so present the potential again of either a member on the 2024 cycle either having a lapse in their term or winning a trustee seed and creating a board vacancy and so i think that was the impetus for is it feasible to have a map that meets other legal requirements but avoids those potential complications by having each current member in their own area so that it's very obvious which trustee areas are on 2022 or 2024 and avoids any possibility of having that board vacancy or having members who would like to remain on the board but are forced to wait for two years the other option that i haven't discussed yet is again with a b and c together if it's not going until 2024 then when a's or b's term expires even if they would like to run they're the ones now waiting for two years until they have that opportunity when that seat is contested again yes i have to tell you mr murray i think that you're a very competent professional i've heard you present on this topic a number of times i've watched footage of you presenting on this topic before i was here and i think that you did your job i think that you did what what people asked you to do you um at the outset of this process two years ago um asked it wasn't in the context of a formal vote but you were asked you know on on the record to please make residences of sitting board members a criterion of last resort you nodded your head you said you got it that's what i'm gonna do you then came back months later with three maps where you didn't think about that you were a machine about this and you didn't look at where people lived now we're doing a complete 180 from that with the introduction of the orange maps and we've got these two brand new new year's babies the orange maps a and b you know where did they come from why did you change your approach on this and again uh my approach is really to provide legally sound maps at uh the request of input that is coming in and so in this case it uh this is something that came through uh to me directly from district legal staff uh just again asking is it uh can we explore if it is if it is it feasible to have a map that does this and i looked into it and it was so i'm sorry i have to do this but this is why people put me here and that is to ask this this difficult question that i don't like asking because does every single person in this room i've gotten to know on on a level and i like them i like the people here at chico unified school district i like the consultants that we work with i think they're good people but i'm concerned that um we may have let our humanity get the better of us um somewhere in this process and so i need to know you said that it was legal staff that asked you to draft the orange maps legal staff has said in this meeting right here that they did not create the orange map so i've got a big question mark in my head and i need to know who created the orange maps a and b whose idea was this who asked you to build these maps good evening board member tennis for president kaiser superintendent staley i felt like it was probably time for me to stand up i understand your desire to point a finger and ask somebody where the maps came from but when we're working in our sacramento office it's a very organic process that rob and i go through when we're having conversations about public input history with the board history of this process so you know while there's a desire to point the finger at someone it really happened organically it was the culmination of rob and i having conversations with your legal about community input regarding wanting to see a new scenario that included the foothills as their own area in combination with the issues that we saw with the election sequencing and i will take ownership for that and i will absolutely stand here and say that rob and i looked at that together along with paul and we said what if there's an opportunity here based on community feedback and the issues we're seeing with election sequencing to present another completely fair and objective map you know we are working in our sacramento office we don't have any political stake in this game we have worked for this district since 2004 providing fair and objective data for things like boundary changes of schools and enrollment projections and we've done the same here so that that's my response is that this came naturally as part of the process through conversations that rob and i were having as we were developing the new scenario with the the foothills as its own neighborhood does that answer your question yeah i i don't think so so so you and your co-worker basically decided that we up here needed a choice where we could all have a district assigned to us and you produced a map that actually listed in the legend of the map who was going to be in each district each map because we have to deal with election sequencing each map is going to have that we are at that point in this process that has to be a consideration because you have to make a decision about how you're going to sequence your elections moving forward regardless of which map you choose but that doesn't really we did not make a choice mr tennis we took the public input that we received since the last meeting and created another map this is absolutely part of this process this is not uncommon this is not something that's new to this process if you'd like me to bring you forth at the next examples of other processes that other public agencies have gone through or new maps were introduced after they got into the election sequencing process i'm happy to do that but again this this came from public input following the last meeting and our analysis of your election sequencing and that public input was that public input was the desire to have a new map that made the foothill communities their own area who actually had their own trustee i haven't seen that email nobody asked nobody said i want the foothills to have their own community and so therefore i want a new map of the public input that we received through the website i believe since the last meeting and rob you can speak to that if you like and i can jump in here too i mean there's a lot of things that led to this um right off the bat when the maps came out and we had a phone call that said so which area is it going to be open under each map i'm like i have no idea i hadn't even thought about that i was still focused on which map are we going to use and so the the question about transitioning or election sequencing came up um there was a conversation with our director of community relations i want to know which areas will be open under each map frankly i hadn't even thought of that i asked legal counsel wow i don't even know how to answer this question and so mr gantt said let me work with rob on that let's see if we can put that together that's where we have these examples of sequencing and when you look at the examples of sequencing it becomes very clear that um you know none of these are ideal for a very oh here's a seamless transition it doesn't work that way with the ones that we have and so i did ask you know wow is there any way to make this sequencing better did i ask go draw an orange map no but through that conversation i think that's where you guys have conversations all right can we look at something that makes sequencing better while we also take into consideration public comment you know what so i do feel like you you want to point a finger at somebody but it's a it's a process and my job is to make sure the board has options if the board doesn't like the options don't vote for the options but you have it gives you more options i don't see a downside in having options to choose from so this and this will be my last comment for now and we can move on but but this whole discussion about this sequencing problem this sequencing crisis another way to say that is to say that wow we've got a problem because you know these maps don't treat everyone equally these maps don't guarantee that each incumbent is going to have their own district to run in and so this narrative of a sequencing problem has been created as a way to paper over the fact that we are basically doing the opposite of what you guys were told two years ago we wanted to make a bottom priority go ahead please so quick question uh in any organization this county the city whatever that switches from at large to district elections they all have to make some kind of a decision about who which seat is going to be open right there's no law that that covers that or is there and this is where again you have three seats that will open in 2022 so once you have made a map with five areas three of those areas need to hold elections but are there rules governing which districts no aside from that at the time that you adopt a map you also have to specify at the same time again what the sequence is basically which three areas are going to go first and which two are going to wait until the next election and we did ask that of the elections office and they said that is up to the board okay so this is not this issue of deciding who's going to be which districts are going to be up for vote when it's not some new and surprising thing this is a part of the process right this is always going to enter the conversation around this time once we were looking at maps and you uh again because at the time that you adopt a map uh you also at the same time so as you'll see when i get to the maps in a moment i have put a suggested sequence on and i can tell you on each one also really where you have the most uh you know not that it's arbitrary because they're uh you probably have the uh local expertise to say which ones might make the more sense but uh when you have multiple areas with no trustee and just say one of three areas needs to go in 2022 and the other two have to wait until 2024 uh that's where you have a lot of discretion okay in what might make the most sense for that and again we'll be showing you some specific examples of that uh but yes it really was that whole uh again i in reference to your point mr tennis i had no idea where any of you lived until the point where we went to start answering this question putting up what the sequences look like with the actual board members that we have and seeing that as was referenced in every single one of the original three maps you have not only board members together but board members presenting that unique uh or not it's not so unique situation of board members on different election cycles that creates the possibility of either lapses in service or vacancies on the board again depending on other criteria that could be weighted more heavily that is absolutely something that you can adopt and move forward just knowing what that's going to look like but i think maybe some of the language of criteria of last resort i think that might be what qualifies as that last resort in that uh this was not just making one that you had a couple of other options where things were kind of close but you wanted one that absolutely put everyone in their own area this was you had three options that all presented the same potential for having to conduct a special appointment or special election and making it an option that reduced or eliminated that potential so that it was an option i want to i want to note that this process is going on in the entire county wherever districts have been chosen or been in effect sort of legally coerced by threats to move to that and the butte county office of elections is so swamped with this that they aren't even able to publicly present at this time what the elections are going to look like eileen um thank you kathy i just for my for my own focusing i'd like to ask a couple of questions on what i need to consider to to cast my vote number one is the election laws say that once you are elected which two of our members have just been elected you are entitled to serve the entire term four years so that's that's a guarantee the law the law provides that you're not required to and that's why the option arises right but you are entitled entitled that i i thought that was the term i used but that's that was the understanding that i have yeah we do we do need that the other thing that the um that the law provides is that the protected class in this case we have identified our hispanic population even though it's not as concentrated as it was after the 2010 election there is still evidence that there is a protected class concentration so that we need to be careful when we are establishing our maps that we don't arbitrarily dilute the voting power of that protected class correct so if you introduced a new new criteria such as taking consideration of board member addresses and their placement in the areas and that were to diminish the voting strength of the hispanic population in this district that would very possibly generate a legal challenge that could be successful that's my understanding i it is also my understanding that we have the criteria of a balance by numbers of the number of people in each district being because of our total population of i believe 120 000 plus each district each new district has to have that between 000 where's the um anyway you divide it by five and you know it has to you can't put uh more people in one than you do in another that puts it out of balance beyond that requirement of dividing it equally as equally as possible the one person one votes down one exactly yes the other thing that i thought the law talked about even though it doesn't require is that the shapes be as organically reasonable as possible i believe that's the intent of what the law says that that you can't make you know an octopus with ten legs out so that you uh you'd try additionally if you did you'd have a mountain to climb but you might i mean it's it's all in comparison to the lawful and reasonable criteria that the board chooses to emphasize the the other thing that this board and by this board i'm going to include at whatever point we were first making the decisions had two different members on because incumbents did not get reelected so we have different board members making the continuing the process when the governor took the the timeline bar away so we have um we have criteria for population criteria for ethnic and then the boards have said we also want to take a look at socioeconomic balance we want to take a look at home ownership versus home rentals and i believe one of the other uh well not one that we had things like different high schools being either represented by one or two or by we had some things that this board at this time in the process which is the second shot at this gave to the demographers and i believe every single one of our requests including several that came from an audience member that was here have been met and those options that's the goal let me say that when we understand that it is often difficult for people to participate in this process and that when one board member speaks with an interest or member of the public has the courage if you will to get up and speak in front of the audience like this and they state an interest the process believes and i think it's designed to look at that is they're probably speaking for more than one person that includes board members we recognize that but it also means members of the public so to the extent that it's practical to do so and that those criteria appear lawful and not inconsistent with the legal criteria we must meet then your demographers do attempt to take that into account unless the board as a whole orders them not to see how that process works it is designed to be inclusive it's designed to generate options and only remove options that either clearly don't have the board has no interest in that are unlawful unpractical unreasonable and or conflict with higher purposes but that's how you go through this process that's why you have multiple hearings you have multiple meetings for this process i got up to address a question that was still outstanding and it dovetails with your question which was the question of we were here i'm not me personally but your demographers were here and there was a discussion that took place in march of 2020 under a different board different members under a different census different numbers at a different time in the process in which possibly one member outwardly and there's maybe some non-verbal i don't know i didn't see it but at least one member suggested that's not a criteria i would like to see used and unless it's a last resort that we are now at an entirely different place and information came forward to the democracy legal council that there was an interest and concern in this issue it is a legitimate issue we're not here to make the board's decisions if a issue comes to light that's a legitimate issue that could cause some substantial concern and it's lawful to address it by bringing you an option that's our job we don't make the decision but we don't want to leave you hanging we don't want to get to the fourth meeting only to find all the light bulbs go on and people say wait a minute we're gonna have to we're essentially going to have to have board members make a decision to step either step off the board or to to not have an opportunity to serve on this board every one of you was chosen by members of this community every one of you and the process was delivered upon you essentially through a threat of litigation the community didn't come forward and say we're not really happy with the makeup of this board in fact they said the opposite they voted all of you on to the board okay so if this issue is coming up and is saying we're going to force us into some very difficult positions in fact it may even force us to go have to go out and assign somebody who hasn't even been elected to cover part of a term or we may have to go through the expense of an election a special election i haven't priced that lately it's expensive okay so it's a legitimate concern if staff leaves out off the table if consultants don't address it when asked to do so we're doing you a disservice all we're doing is bringing you this option along with the others what you do with it is within your authority mr gant every argument you just made could be used to argue in favor of gerrymandering on behalf of a board majority except that gerrymandering involves the disenfranchisement of one group in favor of another it's it's a legal term illegal gerrymandering is in by definition unlawful i mean i don't know how somebody would go about proving that okay you know i mean you basically are like laying out some version of a legal case as to why we should all just vote to basically feather our own nests and keep ourselves in power i'm not arguing for you to adopt any particular approach mr tennis i'm explaining to you at your request and then the request of other board members pointed questions why did we bring an additional option to you and we've tried to explain that we can i think seeing some of the actual information in the presentation may help clarify questions but that's it in a nutshell that's why we did bring you an additional option i'm feeling very strongly we need to let our consultants continue so that we have a clarification uh on the maps and um and then more questions can occur and we do have members of the public who wanted to speak to this item as well thank you so yeah let's see uh going on to the maps now so your blue option is that we are now showing this with a summary of the board members that reside in each area and a suggested sequence and so my suggested sequences uh lean towards uh if there is a trustee who is on the 2024 election cycle and they're the only trustee in an area that is an obvious match for a 2024 same for a single trustee or even multiple trustees who were all in 2022 but when there are multiple trustees in different election cycles which as i said is the case in all three original maps my suggested sequence is to put that one in 2022 again that is something that's ultimately at your discretion but just for this example and that would be because it at least provides every member the opportunity to run it does not force some anyone who is on the board to wait two years for the chance to seek re-election so that is the rationale for putting forward uh two three and uh five and 2022 and one and four in 2024 again with uh areas one and three that is entirely your discretion which one of those would kind of get to go first with the opportunity to elect its resident trustee and which one would need to wait until 2024 but one of it's going to be one or the other if you uh put area 5 going first but what this means specifically is that so by the end of the full 2024 cycle there would be guaranteed two board members who are not among the five of you now it also means that after 2022 uh at least one between kaiser and lando uh should they both seek re-election would not win uh if member dobby wanted the opportunity to continue serving on the board in the long term and not risk a two-year gap until the next opportunity to run in 2026 uh should member dalby win that election then both uh president kaiser and member lando uh would be off the board and again that would then your seat would then be a the trustee seat not the at large seat you can't hold them both simultaneously that would create a vacancy on the board uh you would have just had elections in this sequence with two member robinson may or may not have won that race against any other new uh candidates and then area three would already have elected someone in this case then that would leave the vacancy uh probably in area one uh to again either by appointment or by a special election to fill that fifth seat on the board so again there's some permutations that can happen there you've already looked at some of the other merits of this map but just knowing how that would actually play out with elections is now becomes a consideration at this phase on the green map we now move to three areas with no current board members residing in them in this case both of the areas with board members have that split of 2022 and 2024.
everything is everything i proposed as part of the 187. it works within the confines of the collective bargaining agreement 180 in classroom teaching days and uh and seven uh either seven teacher additional work days yeah which are either moving or professional development depending on where you are it'll be seven professional development days for the everybody but huckleberry and huckleberry would have five plus two moving days in effect correct right and fifth and center would have a moving day uh so they'd have the six pd and and they'd have other you're right yeah at the end of the year those would be that'll be different sets of people who are moving right correct and that's the one that's on the 13th of june on this screen i believe the ones we're talking about are the ones in pink um i think the 22nd and the second and december and january and then the 13th of june i think yep yep yep okay and as long as we don't work more than the there's no need to negotiate the teachers are assigned and they those are the days they work and then of course we use a pd day at the beginning of the year time with the fifth grade team and the center school team to actually do their move-in work uh to follow the classroom and that's naturally built in in late august too okay all right guys are you guys ready to go uh a vote on this i mean let me just ask everybody if you're ready we're ready to go take a vote um so let me just let me just explore one thing so we kind of as a as a group our kind of straw polls we're not don't seem to be in support of doing the added half days you know for plc days this year so john have you thought about this eventuality and what you would recommend taking out in that instance or is it something you want to go back and study no no i you know i i'll i'll uh work with the boards uh at the board's pleasure for the coming year because i really do see the merit in the in the uh in my proposal certainly i wouldn't have proposed it but i also understand where the board is coming from uh in in a year coming out of the pandemic and let's hope this is more back to normal than ever before um i get it um where we've been so you know if that's something we want a table and i'll i can come back to you i guess my question is we have uh uh do we want to take a vote on it or just want to table the whole thing right for for tonight or do we want to table the calendar yeah we want to approve part of it and not the rest i guess is my question i mean so for example we could approve the 180 day plan and then come back on the on an amendment for the plc days um that would give us some strength for the budget discussion we're about to have um and uh or we could just table the whole thing does anybody have an opinion one way or the other because that doesn't sound like you're ready to tell us which days you would want to take out if you know by backing off the plc oh no no bob i i said i'm i'm willing if the again you straw hold it here if the board feels very strongly about the plc days given the context we're in and would would like to either have that conversation a little bit later because it doesn't impact the 180 um or make a final vote on that tonight um kind of leaving its status quo from this year to next year i understand that and i would accept that as part of the the the board's vote tonight if you went in that direction is there also still debate or discussion about whether those days should be on wednesdays because it sounded like that was that some people didn't like the the wednesday part of it not just the number of plc days no i just for one think it's be it's a big interruption to families right you know that when you start doing it midway i mean i think unless we have some sort of like major comeback that we need i think we should just vote so vote on the you can't vote on the budget as the the calendar as is or you can vote on the calendar as is that the motion has made but you're going to end up voting it down so i'm trying to figure out if we could amend the motion in a logical way that would allow us to improve something that's what i'm actually trying to figure out right that's why i was thinking breaking it up making a motion that refers to the keeping uh pd days status quo and keeping them on friday i think joy if you say status quo i think you cover it all right for plc days right on fridays as proposed by superintendent and i'll i'll make going forward the assignment will be to adjust them to the proper uh fridays and you know that are more typical to this year i'll match them up so i could definitely do that um all right so look let me try this see to see if this will work for everyone and just just tell me if it doesn't work just say stop let's redo it okay so i will vote i will put a motion on the table to amend the motion that's on the floor right now to read that the board approved the 180-day calendar as proposed by the superintendent however we ask that the superintendent come back with a final proposal for four plc days instead of the proposed seven okay and and target for fridays to be as much as possible similar to what we've done in the past okay i will second that amendment okay so i got it so okay um it's a it's a challenging amendment it's kind of a partial approval so um so any discussion on the amendment okay hearing none all in favor of approval on that amendment please vote by raising your hand hi okay we are unanimous so um so dr brill you got your one you got the 180 days but uh we've got to come back what i would suggest you do is as a comeback just bring back the calendar with those adjustments and at our next meeting and we'll just approve it at that time uh the fi the final uh the final calendar with your you know adjusted plc structure then we can move on thank you okay everyone okay with that decision we just made good discussion by the way i think so appreciate everybody's input thank you okay next up is budget transfer i will move that the board approve a budget transfer as recommended by director of operations ken post and the finance subcommittee second question we have a second second um so mr post you want to just walk uh the board through the what the changes are i think these are won't be a surprise to people but i think uh if you could just kind of give a summary to everybody sure it's actually two budget transfers one is to account for the hiring of an athletic trainer which we've discussed in the past for the remainder of this school year and this would be accomplished by allocating savings from professional services which we would have spent on the service for the trainer uh and from the teacher salary savings so it's uh thirty four thousand seven hundred fifty dollars in salary five thousand six hundred thirty eight dollars in health benefits and then offset by the services cost of 26.9 right 26.9 and then teacher salary savings of 13488.
perfect thank you thank you okay is everybody back i see dr lee and mrs pope oh miss miss kelly i'm gonna give miss anderson another moment or two here before we resume okay the meeting is called back to order at 7 31.
so going ahead and resolving those in 2022 and then i've picked area one again that is at the board's discretion of the other three areas uh one of them would need to go ahead and elect in 2022 with the other two waiting until 2024 and then same thing except this time if you could have the possibility of either kaiser orlando winning that election in which case mr tennis would serve out his at-large term but then wait two years for the opportunity to run again or if mr tennis were to win uh that would then again create a vacancy on the board as he cannot hold both an at large and the trustee area seat remember dalby could do the same thing in area five and this would potentially have two vacancies on the board following the november 2022 election which would then be resolved in the same way in this case area one would have elected its own trustee so areas two and three would need to either hold special elections for a two-year term or have a member appointed and then on the purple map uh very similar and that you also have the three areas with no trustees but now you have four of the current board members in one trustee area which means that at the guaranteed uh turnover over the next two elections of at least three of the current board uh this time the there was at least only potential for one uh vacancy should either uh member tennis or member dalby uh enter and win the election for trustee area five in 2022 so if um if i'm correct that would mean that assuming either tennis or dalby won the um the other person who was elected to serve until 2024 would have to then be an at-large representative correct they'd yeah because no one's term ends early so right yes right if either tennis or delby one the other would still be a not large trustee but when that term expired unless they moved to a different trustee area uh there would be no way for them to run from their current residence until that particular trustee area came around again in 2026.
any questions on that one before i move on to the next okay and the next would be to transfer budget funds for the nine additional days that the interim high school principal worked and this would be accomplished again by allocating savings from teacher salaries and that's six thousand and twenty one dollars okay any questions on either of them okay i'll wait till joy gets back take a vote or we'll give her a short bed how about that there we go all right so hearing uh no questions for mr post all in favor of approving the uh the budget transfer please just raise your hand okay it's unanimous thank you very much all right so the last uh of the old business items is the uh superintendent's budget this has been on our agenda each of our last i think this is the third or fourth meeting now that we've had it on our agenda and and and dr burl thank you for all the very helpful presentations you've done over the uh the last meetings they've been very informative and i think have helped answer a lot of the questions that the board had um what i what i'd like to do is um let's perhaps start by um asking mrs fernandez to kind of just recap the work that the finance committee has done just so we're all on the same page of the scrub it i'll call it the scrubbing work that uh that we all go through and then off the back of that maybe we could have mr post give an update to the um to the board on where are we off the back of that work so uh rosa let me turn it over to you sure so um what our process has been and this this started last year and it worked really well so we've um we've continued it this year and we've even made some more improvements so um i think we're in a really good spot but generally what we do now is the finance committee has been meeting every single monday since dr brill first proposed the budget to the board of ed and at those meetings what we initially did was is we divided the entire budget line item by line item across the three of us and we took our historical data what you find in your budget books as well as additional information that ken has provided so the actual budgets of each school the ones that were proposed and we go through them we have a couple years of actuals even for each school and we delve into every single line item and collect all of our questions into a document that is now 25 typed pages long so it is very extensive we have each asked a lot of questions about every single line item like why is it increasing this much oh it looks like the driver is coming from this school what was the estimate can we get a better estimate when will we know an exact answer um so we have a lot of questions that we fired away at ken and ken has been exceptional at answering every single one of them and it's a document that you guys all have access to so you can see how well we've poured over this budget and it's also a really nice document that we will be able to now turn over to the board of finance and the board of selectmen and they can see the work that we've done in scrubbing the budget and analyzing feeling support for the budget that we are now going to hopefully adopt and then put forward to the town so um so that has been our process and i think and i hope that you guys can um trust the work that we did and i know that some of you have contributed questions to that document as well so um i think we're in a very good position to say that um you know our number is the number that we uh stand by and something i forgot to mention in my finance committee report we actually did vote to recommend this budget we firmly stand behind it we've we've gone through it for the last month and a half and it's something that we um we can stand behind now so hopefully that explains that that we also have a member of the board of finance on our committee as an as a attendee and uh and the town controller uh mrs marion uh comes and they also ask questions which has been very helpful by the way we had some good discussion part of the discussion we heard earlier today about maybe using a little bit of the cafeteria fund came from one of those discussions so oh and mr lucas is with us as well uh the town treasurer so so we've tried it you know i it's it's been a very collaborative set of reviews i think and and bob if i may um at this point now um ken prepared a couple of um sheets that we just went over in the special finance committee me um that i think would be important to share kind of as a reminder of where we were in the superintendent's budget and where the superintendent's budget is now because we present on december 1st so early we learn a lot through the process and refine a lot as we go through the last um almost two months now so maybe cam if we could start with the the sheet that goes with the you know the um the original proposal and then the reductions over time and then there's also a couple of puts and uh puts as well as reductions put some takes there um in the ad of the conversation to the budget roundtable which is how we work with our our community uh about athletics and hockey and that is in there as well so ken i'll let you take it sure so the superintendent's proposed budget was 48.8 million dollars which was a 4.24 increase over our current budget uh rosa mentioned earlier about the health benefits reducing our premium increase from 7 to four percent saves us a little over a hundred sixty four thousand dollars uh we're always hopeful that the rates will come in better than that but we will see in time as part of our scrubbing process uh we found that we could reduce our postage ask by fifty two hundred dollars i got additional information from the town wc uh wpca which is actually gonna increase uh our sewer cost estimate thirty six hundred dollars i heard from the voag school that we go to on their tuition intentions for next year which increases our tuition cost by 2 580 as part of the scrubbing process we found that we had double counted some textbooks in our request so that's a 7 500 reduction uh we also discovered in our whiskaner extended duty since we are part of our proposal is to increase the the principal secretary to full year we need less extended duty for for summer work as was also mentioned earlier we're gonna propose to increase our lunch fund transfer from thirty thousand dollars to forty thousand dollars per year uh we had a bid opening for our transportation contract last friday um we have not awarded it yet we have to review have another meeting with the finance committee to review it uh but taking the the numbers from the the bid that appeared to be the lowest it would translate into 9 370 less than what i put in my original estimate uh adding hockey we currently we can we can pick whatever number we want for this but currently we have nine players uh all being charged eighteen hundred dollars a piece which amounts to sixteen thousand two hundred dollars um the last two lines on this section are chrome books that we just literally found out days ago that eric had applied to e-rate for 600 free chromebooks and just found out that we got we're gonna get them so that allows us to take out the two groups of chromebooks that we were going to be buying 175 for k7 which is 41 250 and 200 for grade 8 for the one to one program so 55 000 those reductions bring us down to a little over 48.5 million dollars or a 3.66 percent uh increase and then with the 180 day calendar nurses paraprofessionals monitors and occupational physical therapists would be allowed to work two days less which saves us another little less than 24 000 which makes the revised proposed budget 48 million five hundred and seven thousand six hundred twenty one dollars which is the three point six one percent increase does anybody have questions about any of these individual items so now i don't think everybody was at the the public hearing was did everybody was everybody at the public comment or no i think we had one or two of us missing so we only had one parent who had a real question on budget at our um at last week's special public hearing on the on the budget and the the comment the question was a very simple one there's only one sport where the kids have to pay in varsity sports right now and then that's our the kids who participate in the cooperative hockey program and uh it's an expensive program right there's not that many kids that were involved that's quite a cooperative program um and uh and john i think we participate with bethel and henry and burying in that and there's but just the cost of ice time alone right it makes that an expensive program so the parents said would you consider um putting into your budget uh not having to require the kids to pay right you know because they're the only kids who have to pay it so we asked ken to include that in this budget proposal and the finance committee agreed to carry it forward and uh and we just have to decide if we want to include that add back in right as a group right that's that's that's a simple it's not that expensive but it's uh but it was it came from a parent request for those of you who weren't at that meeting ken does that what it was something just as a reminder too bob if i if i may something we talked about a couple of years ago um with hockey and it was it was you know we added uh gymnastics and volleyball in last year's work for this year um great turnout in those sports we're really excited about that the kids are super excited um and so the thought was you know we got rid of pay to play years ago hockey was the only one that was kind of acceptable for that because of the expense of the sport but maybe it's time to to make that move and so i'm thrilled and i'm really pleased that the parent brought that up and i'm excited that the board generally was open to having the conversation about it thank you and that the cost of this is actually comparable to the cost of our gymnastics program and our boys volleyball program when you talk about uh the gymnasium rental the coach and assistant coach and other costs involved uh transportation officials game workers those other sports cost us about fifteen thousand dollars per year that's what's in the budget for next year debbie i think you were going to say something i'm sorry i may have talked about it yeah i was just going to ask if those if the hockey costs um are basically all inclusive or does it leave anything that parents have to contribute our understanding from uh athletic director baldwin is this is this is the fee that parents are charged and this would this would cover everything and you said that's for nine students that's for nine students correct what if we have uh more than nine what would you do i would recommend allocating the the amount we have budgeted amongst the however many students we have so if we had 10 or 11 that students would end up having to pay something but a lot less yeah that would be my recommendation unless we want to unless we can find money in the budget elsewhere to uh transfer but there's no guarantee that early in the year that we would be able to identify that okay all right so let me just kind of start because i think then you have another chart uh well let's come back to this so can you add another chart that kind of then portrayed what the budget now looks like yes now can you see the budget driver's worksheet now yep yes you can good so we have the 2122 approved budget we have our status quo budget which is uh 47 917 505 which is everything you saw on the other page [Music] with certain things broken out um we have five different categories or four different categories here new required which is the bilingual teacher which is a little over 90 000 uh enrollment-based changes which would be the proposal to at four and a half kindergarten paraprofessionals uh in lieu of adding one additional section of kindergarten and that's a little less than 101 thousand dollars uh we have uh we are expecting an additional outplaced student for 124 thousand dollars uh we have the investments from the arp esser phase in which we've discussed in the past and that would be the social studies instructional coach and a portion of the technology integrator salary and then in our other investments category we have what i mentioned before the 12-month making the principal secretaries k-8 12-month making the athletic director a 12-month position which is something that was negotiated with the administrators union already increasing the center school art and music teachers from .7 fde to 1.0 fds adding the athletic trainer and taking out the budget that we had originally put in for this for the service adding boys hockey and then at huckleberry adding a math interventionist and reducing two regular education paraprofessionals those positions currently help with math and again all those come down to the same total 48 million 507 621 3.61 increase okay can i ask about the uh the the so the a the rpser isn't that isn't that already paid for through the art for the esser funds yes but the esser funds mike are uh have to be spent in over three years right so instead of having a budget cliff where we introduced um summer school instructional coaches and other interventions we um talked right from the start about a phase-in plan where the operating budget would need to take on anything new that is not a one-time investment that we want to continue in the regular program so this is this is the phase-in uh of that over time so so so now the our money goes to this this year well it went this year but next year to continue that we would have to put in the budget for next year that's what all this is covered for the first year it's not covered for the second year and and we're making those decisions and working with the finance committee on um smoothing out the phase in so there isn't a real heavy bump in any one particular year right yeah if i remember it was so so some things phase out after year one some things phase out after year two some things phase out after year three years ken has a worksheet on that we've gone over a couple of times and we've talked with finance committee on i think that's something as we go forward we should we should plan into our next level of presentations and we've talked about that okay so um guys we need to vote on the budget you've heard you've heard the finance committee is supportive of this um and uh and ken has now given you a recap it's been good good news i think you know from especially by the way eric great news right getting those uh getting that uh e-rate thing um and uh and ken we're uh it's good news on the insurance i'm just crossing my fingers i i for one don't trust the uh the state level estimates yet so uh we'll have to watch and see that one but uh but the good news is the town and the schools are in the same boat on that stuff so um so we have two ways we can go right we can go down those list of items that are on the investments list and say do we agree with each of them take a straw poll vote and make sure we're all in agreement item by item which i think which is what we did last year and that served us well um or we could have just you know we've all had a chance to review this we could just take a vote and approve it so does anybody have a preference on approach here you want to talk through each of the investments or have you had plenty of that over the last couple of meetings i guess is the important question i mean i'm ready to vote on it i mean yeah i think i have enough with it so i'm ready all right and then i i'll we'll run the best process so there's a um we need to put a motion on the table and i will um uh move like i can you're going to have to fill in a number for can you just tell me again what the total number is i'll put it into the motion 621 right okay all right i'd like to make a motion that the board of education approve a budget for the uh for the school year 2022 2023 to be forwarded to the town for a final approval in the amount of forty eight million five hundred and seven thousand six hundred and twenty one dollars as presented and recommended by the superintendent of schools and his finance director mr post we're going to give this one to amy she gets to make all the motions she gets a second one every now and then um all right so it's been moved and seconded um any discussion hearing none all in favor please designate by raising your hand okay it is unanimous so we have a budget that we're taking forward congratulations it's good work everybody thank you okay um and i think the next major step uh dr burrell is that we will have a presentation with the board of selectmen we have to submit let's start there which has to be done by the 31st so we have uh basically 10 days to do a transmittal letter and get that some formally submitted um and then after that what date did we settle for a meeting with the oh um gosh it's my birthday february 10th there you go so you remember don't worry great way to celebrate oh man so february 10th we will we should all block our calendars because we will have a we will have a board of education meeting and the board of finance will have board of finance meeting the board of selectmen will have aboard a selectmen meeting to actually go into session let us review and tell them through our budget and over the next couple of weeks therefore we will be revamping the presentation that dr brill had given us i'll make sure we float that out amongst all of us before that meeting so we'll all of us seen the the messaging on it but it's very consistent with everything we talked about when we get there um and uh and then just for the public this starts the the town side of the process the first selectmen gets a chance to review the board of ed budget in the first two weeks of february then it goes to the board of selectmen in the second two weeks of february they deliver it to the board of finance in the beginning of march the board of finance then deliberates on it for a month basically along with all the other parts of the budget and uh i think there's a public hearing i think i saw on mr rooney's calendar on the 29th of march um and then they submitted for the town meeting which is the first tuesday in may and then the referendum is midnight two weeks after that generally that that date actually gets set at the town meeting but it's uh usually two weeks after that so there's a there's another couple of months of review um still ahead of us um where others get a chance to look at it for us as a board we also will have a session with the board of finance in march uh that uh we should all plan to attend that meeting as well it will not be a meeting of the board of ed it's just it's it's a meeting of the board of finance and we're there to answer questions and uh and and discuss it with them so we don't usually go into session of that meeting we do go into session at the joint meeting so mr post you were going to add something yeah not to prolong the meeting but i just wanted to to take the opportunity to publicly thank the principals mr conklin and mrs wygonic for all the thoughtful work they put into their budgets you saw the details that they send me that we used to put the budget together and it's uh quite extensive and a lot of work and i want to publicly recognize that and in i wanted to let ken go first on that one and i appreciate that ken because um i have to thank ken for all of his work and the board and the finance committee for all their work um to what ken just said and starting right from the beginning of the meeting with the center school spotlight tonight none of this happens with without a great team of people and a supportive board uh supportive families and but just an incredible faculty staff and administrative team um considering we are rounding out and heading into year three of what has been a very challenging time and generational time for all of us um i continue to be impressed by the the work level um and the the patience and cooperation and flexibility it's just it's incredible in the commitment and dedication so thanks to all um that includes mrs ferris and dr ruby as well in their budget work that they do to put it together um and make it all happen um it's just it takes all of us and it takes takes this board as well so thank you everybody and can't forget mrs reynolds for all the support she gives me oh of course mrs reynolds we love mrs reynolds can't do it without her okay so uh congratulations all on uh probably one of the most challenging parts of what we do as a board you know getting to a budget to take forward and we do have more work to do so next on our agenda is an update on the candlewood lake elementary school building project uh mrs fernandez why don't i turn it over to you and between you and dr update sure um so winter conditions on a building site where there's no roof is making it very difficult to work there's a lot of ice buildup on some of the concrete slabs that are still exposed so workers are having to mitigate those dangers with salt and sand so you know that's creating some issues that they're working around um but steel walls for the gymnasium are going up so if you again if you i always mention this but if you take a drive by that's what you're seeing you're seeing the steel walls for the gymnasium going up while there's still concrete and concrete walls being poured in other areas um the radiant flooring for our pre-k and kindergarteners who spend a lot of time on the floor that's starting to get going or at least like you know the whatever the foundational stuff for that um is needed the exterior materials have been approved and hopefully we'll get to see a mock-up of that soon um in some areas where there's going to be brick the style and the layout of those bricks are being reviewed right now if you remember we at some point we had added timber beams to the exterior to kind of soften the look of the entrance and those beams are also delayed along with the canopies that go over them um again this is not this is not a portion of the project that's really going to delay um that's going to delay very much because it's not you know something as as big as like the roof which is causing the real delay we're still waiting for the roofing materials that's expected at the end of next month and furniture selection and layouts are essentially complete so the completion of the furniture and equipment selection which is no small feat but its completion marks an important milestone in the project which must be reviewed by the state's office of school construction grants and reviews so just like we did at the end of the schematic design phase and the design development phase the prior to the meeting with oscg r tekton will need to get the board of ed and the nbc sign off on the work that they've done for that furniture fixtures and equipment for the state to review so that meeting and i know you guys have we've already discussed the date on that but that meeting will be will we all get a chance to review those materials at the nbc meeting and that's on tuesday february 15th at 7 pm so we should all make a point to go there because we will need a quorum well actually i guess we don't really need a quorum because we have a border bed meeting the following night so but that'll be our chance to um to really get a glimpse at what we are going to be approving the following night at our board of ed meetings we don't have to do we do we have to go into session that night i don't think we yeah okay and i'd like to add just a very short piece on the furniture um i have to thank i mentioned it earlier mrs baldwin our supervisor of special education for elementary school as well as mrs lavroshano and mrs diamond met with myself um eddie from tech town who you all have gotten to know the two interior designers and we really i wouldn't say for the first time but we we really got to see the nurses office and what it was going to start to really look like with the furniture that we talked about that's going to be in there and the classrooms and the elc room and the pre-k um and when we have all the chairs lined up in the multi-purpose room we went through all of that methodically today basically through their powerpoint presentation that they'll be doing for the nbc so we could ask the final questions that what the library media centers are going to look like up and down um and so to see uh crisp clean the colors the the furniture and the the most prideful piece for me and and i was so um pleased with the with the techton team of taking in mr baldwin's physical education along with mr cudney who was a representative physical education teacher and mrs fitzgerald from visual and performing arts and our media specialists our classroom teachers and our special education teachers in otp and all the work in the user groups that went in to see it coming to fruition on the specific feedback and hey we're going to need this um we're going to need this kind of cabinetry to store these kind of instruments that down to that specificity bile cabinets you know all of those pieces to see that really coming to fruition was incredible and i think you'd be very proud when uh and pleased and excited it's going to really start to come to life for you when when you see the furniture um walk through that presentation uh next month and we spent about two hours on that this morning it was a great deal of time it was just incredible cool i love to hear the excitement about it that's really uh that's that's i can't wait now yeah okay um is that it any other any other updates nope not on that all right thank you um next up is uh public comment uh there was nobody who signed up and there are no members of the public on our on our zoom so i will say that we're gonna there is no public comment for this evening so thank you you know that's an easy one um uh next was three main points what do you think i was re thinking it would be really nice to talk about the center school kindergarten book sale project um also the high school program of studies yeah i was going to say that sorry go ahead say your third one well i'm torn between the school calendar and the budget well one thing we do with the school calendar is we send out the school calendar but i don't i know there's a comeback to make sure the board's comfortable with it even though you've approved it so right maybe that's where i was waffling okay well i know we just planned to do the school calendar after our next meeting yeah okay we'll have to give a final approval anytime i was going to suggest um the program of studies is good i was going to be even more specific and talk about the elimination of class rank um we don't have to you could just highlight that if you want but um i was just thinking that that's such like a big deal and i feel like yeah people are going to hear about and be like oh wait when did that happen yeah that might be like a good you know a piece to just highlight because it's kind of a big takeaway of this meeting yeah i definitely planned on having that as a major part of it yeah okay so uh the the kindergarten book club um the program of studies featuring the class rank and then the uh and then the budget yep everyone okay with that yep all right cool done okay next up is uh upcoming events okay i have some things at center on friday the 28th is spirit day and community meeting on monday the 31st is the last day to bring in a snow person for display monday the 31st through friday february 11th is a valentine bingo challenge from the ptl the week of february 7th through the 11th is the kids heart challenge tuesday february 8th is the 100th day of school that first graders will celebrate there's also a pto meeting virtual at 7 p.m and wednesday the 9th is the 101st day of school these are also weather dependent right now and that kindergarten will celebrate so those could change and then at wms uh this week is upstander week is ongoing tomorrow is shine bright day wear neon colors and friday is where your bobcat blue to speak out against bullying and that's all i have this week mr rendo was showing off team up against um team up against name calling and bullying today so of course i wore the best team out there i heard a couple boos on that all right uh all right um okay so uh that's it for our mainline agenda we do have a brief executive session scheduled for this evening uh we have a motion on that yep i will move that the board enter into executive session to discuss the superintendent's mid-year goals second okay let's move seconded all in favor all right um so for the the public who's listening in this is the end of our uh broadcast uh portion of the meeting because executive sessions you it's a it's a private unbroadcasted section so we're going to go over to a different zoom i think for the board members you'll all receive the zoom link and we should meet over there and uh for the member for the public thank you for listening in uh always appreciate those of you who stick out for what has been our three-hour meeting this evening so um i have a good day and we'll see you next time take care everyone you
uh business agenda item 8 business item a first reading policies regulations and exhibits one moment so um the first reading as one badge okay and do i have a second uh okay um let's do a roll call vote just really quick to do it as one match trustee anderson wait a minute now we we might want to ask if there's any discussion in case anyone has questions good point thank you appreciate it i don't have any questions but i didn't want to okay is there any discussions mostly okay trusty anderson uh a vote to to approve the first region is one batch aye rusty kelly hi trustee lee hi and it's eye okay so let's go ahead and do this as one batch actually i believe that means we're done oh it does not be formally read okay unless we have any public comment or anything but which would have happened after the motion so we are ready to move on okay wow wasn't that easy we didn't need a break after all okay um so moving on to identifying committee updates uh facilities update from putnam give me just one moment everybody good evening board how are we all doing this evening good good evening so uh at our last board meeting we were given authorization to uh proceed with purchasing the land uh to build rec's fortune and we were able to get that uh land purchase completed before the end of the calendar year so we're able to make that purchase for 11.8 million dollars so we are now moving forward we have an anticipated start date of march of 22 to uh start breaking ground so we can uh anticipate completion date on the new rex fortune site to be ready to accept students in fall of 23.