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my family knows how important this is and we always make that a priority when someone gives us a call so this is just a with a lack of time i have 48 seconds here this is a kind of an example of that 80 20 we put a lot of thought into making sure we can deliver services ahead of time our team intentionally has overlapped these are jason and annika i work with them so much on so many different transactions we have our own language i can say i need a little this district a little that district a lot of this one and they both know exactly what i mean when everyone else in the room is very confused about what we're talking about so we have a very cohesive team here these three people are owners we are an employee-owned firm we've designed our firm for the long term and um all the people listed on this side are owners of film and olaf and associates finally might i not only do the financial advisor i also work in the education programs i do the usc rozier school of education public finance class access big mac has gone cash and i'm out of time the next phase of the process will be the question and answer phase uh each board member will ask one question there'll be a total of uh 10 minutes allocated for this portion of the um the process i just want to remind board members after you've completed the questioning of the firm and submit your scores to the system okay thank you all right um we'll go ahead and get started with uh word by president thumb unmute myself here okay am i being heard yes okay very good okay uh thank you very much mr president uh mr bauer uh you know from from the personal experience you talked about i i think that this question is very pertinent in light of possible increases in interest rates in the future could you tell us about some of the ways your firm could help mitigate the interest rate risk for the district on issued bonds yes so what you've seen most recently is a flattening of the yield curve so being able to issue some of the longer term debt that you have still access to is certainly something that you still can do now if that yield curve starts to shift where those longer term rates go up we want to then try to advance some of that principle and try to make sure we don't have it in the long term but right now in this market it still can make economic sense to issue some longer term debt lock in rates on that flat yield curve i mean not that much difference between year one and your 30 according to historical standards and so that's one example where in this market we get those longer term bonds sold and then we can layer in shorter term bonds two three four years from now when rates are higher and that yield curve might be steeper so that's one example of some advanced planning to make sure we can lock in as low rates as possible the other thing is you have several refinancings that you can take advantage of right now what we would encourage you to do is look at doing those all in one series but what you saw in some of those proposals where folks charge like 50 for each additional series we don't do that we have a maximum of 15 000 per additional series so your transaction be about 55 000 versus more than hundred thousand for some of those other proposals that we saw here but take advantage of multiple issuances at once lower your cost of issuance issue those longer-term bonds why the yield curve is flat and then when the yield curve rises which it hasn't done yet still flat then we issued a shorter term bond and fill in that difference so i think that could be a strategy to execute on a rising interest rate environment or remember one more thing we could work to get your rating upgraded if we can get those ratings upgraded we could also put ourselves in a tranche that allows for lower interest rates that's another thing to do there number two pres uh president quintero number two isn't my question did you want me to ask my question your question okay my question is number three um over the past several years arusd has made substantial progress in bringing stability accountability and transparency back to the district how would you approach the role of financial advisor with this recent progress in mind our goal would be to highlight that that we have already done and set up a process that documents a very thorough steps forward we have it's we're working with another district right now that's been through something very similar montebello unified school district we we came in about two years ago and we have worked with them to before we even start a transaction we've done a due diligence meeting to kind of get everything out there that we need to make sure we disclose because the last thing you want to do is miss something in your disclosure and it looks like we're trying to hide something or we're not being transparent with bond investors so we want to make sure that your finance team has everything that might be relevant to a transaction get that in those disclosure documents what we also do is document the path so if there's ever a situation where the sec says we should look at these folks again the d.a says we should look at these folks what we're able to do is say look when this when the district issued its most recent round of debt they took a very deliberate process and so we document that to demonstrate that along the way or uh welcome mr bauer my question is and you talked a little bit about it how will you help our district increase our ratings as we work with the bonds program so you're so it's going to be a process what um you are moody's they are more open smp is worried about headline risk they put in their report even if you improve unless you can show extraordinary levels of reserves they are still going to be concerned and limit you on upgrades so i think part of our path is to say s p we're going to show you but we're not going to work with you for a while we're going to focus on fitch and moody's show that we have a history of doing really well with them and then over time come back to smp and say we'd really like to work with you again we need you to be reconsider these things but right now what they're worried about they they as to me just say in the report you could do a number of very good things but we're worried about headline risk we don't want our investors focused on getting hurt by headline risk so we're going to continue to keep these ratings low communities and fitch now keep them keep them moving up focus on s p down the road all right uh remember travis um i guess i'm gonna award it a little bit different but so like taxpayers are going to pay for the bond investing and let's call it the profits how much of that money comes back to the community um because actually if you were to patronize us like we're doing business with you we kind of expect them or the firms to do business with us in the future and also that means telling employees to stimulate their dollars to you how would you go about that so i think if i could say back to you i think it's hard for me to hear you um how do we make sure we get the lowest cost to provide the most for the community is that what you're asking exactly so what we're going to what we need to give an opportunity to work with you once i if you really look at the fee structures of all the proposals received ours is very low and so we lead by example we we we get hired and we show the other attorneys and everyone else in that transaction we mean it when we need your fees low because we've already committed and made our fees low so that that's one piece of it the other thing is we we do 100 we did 100 i think 125 transactions last year and so we have our own database of fees that we can show the other consultants and say if you want to work in this district we can show you what they should be for a like type transaction so i think those that's really important but the other thing is even more important than that is making sure we get the lowest interest rates and we can do that through another way another number of ways as we work with your ratings look at competitive sales where we bid those out in the market and get the underwriter that wants to bid on that day the lowest cost and then we can also work with the on a negotiated basis while we're working up that um rating schedule and make sure that we um negotiate the terms with them as well one of the things we want to do is set up a process for underwriters that they bid fees in advance once they've been working on a transaction oftentimes it's even though we can set up a whole lot of comps and things like that they know that they've established a relationship with that district we want to negotiate those fees in advance so that if you want to get hired here put your best bid forward and then um also we would also want them to show not only does the fee have to be good but they have to show us examples of pricing similar debt well so their fee and have a price is very important all right my question is last one this round and the question is has your firm ever been the subject of or been involved in an investigation that resulted from your work with the client i couldn't hear that sorry has your firm ever been the subject of or been involved in investigation that resulted from your work with the client no all right thank you for your uh uh participation in the interview process uh jess will let us know what the next steps are president quintero when um i'm not sure exactly when the current applicant will exit the room and the new one will come in but when we have empty an empty room there i have a question uh jess is going to go ahead and let us know about that can you ask your question again be loud a little bit louder please is the question whether can there be a follow-up question is that what i think that's appropriate no that's not the that's not i have a question but i'm i'm wondering when the the current applicant will exit the room and the new one will come in and maybe in between that time i can ask my question okay because you won't ask a question when the applicants win the interview yes correct okay well thank you for your time thank you thank you mr brown out of the board now that you've concluded the first interview of the first first uh firm you can submit your scores to that system that you have all right before we do that process can i ask my question before that process give me a second let uh let him uh exit the room okay i'll let you know right now capital public financing is the next one capital public financing but give us a second because he wants to ask something before they come in all right ask away well i know the last time we were able to um not submit our questions until the end to the spreadsheet um i know for me that's helpful because um you know i like to take all of the applicants in context and i don't want any one firm to be at a disadvantage or an advantage for going first or last i like to get the the big picture and then be able to take that all into consideration before i submit my votes so as we did in the past are we able to submit at the at the very end okay so you're going to keep track of your scores yes yeah they'll be scored they just won't be submitted and then in the event yeah because it allows us to compare yeah as we're moving along yeah because i mean sometimes we hear something from the first applicant that maybe is an advantage or a disadvantage just by virtue of being first and then when we hear the other candidates maybe that you know puts things into context for me at least so that would be helpful all right so unless anybody has some concerns we have consensus that that'll be the process and you'll hit submit when you feel comfortable hitting submit as long as it's before you leave tonight okay thank you very much [Laughter] i like that better uh all right the next uh next step here bye thank you so much sir thank you welcome can you clarify which um applicant this one is yeah uh capital public financing in mexico okay thank you thank you okay just to restate um you have a total of 15 minutes for your presentation the first five minutes will be for your introduction of your firm the last 10 minutes are allocated to answer questions of the board members there will be five questions again 10 minutes maybe again the clock you will say to kind of gauge your time in terms of your responses okay and the time will begin when you begin speaking uh good evening my name is jeff small of capital public finance group i very much appreciate you inviting me into your community tonight to talk about our firm and how we may partner with your school district we really appreciate your very open and transparent process frankly i think that is very refreshing to us so thank you very much and we appreciate the opportunity you have received a handout it basically provides some easy to follow information that's in our proposal and gives a guide to talk about um how we may work together um in a partnership i think the most important thing to us is having a high ethical standard and although a lot of folks use that word they don't really define what that means to them so i'd like to spend just a minute and tell you that to us that means doing things the right way that means being open it means being transparent it means looking under every rock and getting to the truth because when you find the truth you find the right decision and as a municipal advisor we are obligated to be a fiduciary just like a board member so we are very focused on finding out what that truth is and and let the truth speak for itself and let decisions be made based on that truth you will not find capital pfg manipulating numbers to find an asset to get you know to a certain result um the numbers are what they are we look at data we are creative um and again by looking at the truth and doing all the hard work we will get to the best answer for the district we believe in part of having a high ethical standard as being clear and it's been concise and all of our communication if you hire us we'll be clear and concise so that you can follow it and make informed decisions that are in the best interest of your community we are here as a municipal advisor to minimize your costs maximize funds for your projects so that that comes first the fact that you need a municipal advisor or an underwriter we are we're just a cost so what we are trying to do in this partnership is align district goals and objectives they could be transparency they can be openness they could be funding your facility program matching those goals with our fiduciary duty that we are required to provide you under you know our the securities and exchange commission rules which is really to get you the best costs knowledge and experience it's important to know that capital pfg we are a batik firm we have three registered municipal advisors i'm a registered municipal advisor representative principal and i'm a licensed attorney to practice law as a petite firm what we're trying to do is provide a customized approach to fit your needs not all public agencies are alike we want to work with you based on your business ethics and how you do business and then provide a financing plan and objectives that that fit your plan but that takes a lot of time and looking under every rock takes time so you're not going to find us having as many deals as some of the big firms but don't mistake that with lack of experience our firm has a lot of experience we've worked in 140 communities as a financial advisor we've undertaken over 250 bond issues for school districts over 4.1 million dollars in my 17 years at capital pfg my partners and i have worked together for over 20 years that's a lot of longevity that we bring we don't have we've never been sued individually or as a company we've never had any disciplinary action or regulation taken against us so that is our pride that is our truth that's what we can deliver um in this partnership i've been doing this for over 30 years working with school districts as a financial advisor over that time i've probably issued about 8 billion worth of debt probably 800 transactions so even though we're a boutique firm we're very experienced our firm was awarded two times the far west uh deal of the year by the bond buyer so we have our work has been has been recognized by that national news industry news newspaper we use very sophisticated software to model any type of bond that this school district would ever want to issue we we can do that we have the financial soft financial subscriptions to current market data which allows us to figure out how to price a bond how to compare a bond how to see if if we're getting a big good deal if another district that issue bonds got a good deal how can we take that information on a comparative basis and bring it back to alum rock and determine what can we do better how can we improve this um so it's a personalized approach um again every dollar spent on on us is a dollar that can't be spent on the district um so we take that very very seriously um as far as bond pricing we just don't take anything that's given to us um we're not shy we we will negotiate with with underwriters with our friends it's business and we are trying to deliver the lowest cost to the district um and we have the technical expertise to do that i don't know if i have more time or time's up okay next portion of the process will be the question and answer period where you'll get five questions one from each board member or a total of 10 minutes okay all right uh where was president obama okay thank you mr president uh you know based on uh you know the experience you alluded to in your presentation i think this question is pertinent uh in light of possible increases in interest rates in the future could you tell us about some of the ways your firm could help mitigate the interest rate risk for the district on issued bonds today we receive bids on a it's called a forward pricing we have a bond that that cannot be refinanced today on a tax on a tax-exempt basis we were curious about being able to being reporting back to the school board does it make sense to walk in a taxable rate now and convert to a tax-exempt rate in two or three months that came across excellent there was very little cost differential between doing that forward financing today and waiting a few months however the further out in time you go and for the district you have bonds that are callable in 2023 and 2025.
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but i also wanted to balance it out i i completely get your point um trustee piercy in terms of making sure that all of us represent all school districts and i think that nobody here on this diocese is going to uh argue with that i mean i i represent air trustee area one but i've attended events at cyprus i've attended events at kennedy i've attended at western because that's that's our responsibility but i'm also looking at communities of interest where folks who go to anaheim high school you have a large number of students who come from sycamore junior high and the reason that i'm actually pulling back and i think i try to make this point an argument at the last board meeting trying to figure out how we can keep sycamore junior high within trustee area one and then do the necessary changes in order to create that second cvap district so that we could make it a another special district for a latino district but with my first primary interest was to make sure that we keep the sycamore parents who majority of them go to anaheim high school having to have a trustee responsible for that particular area and i think they know that they're going to anaheim high school they know that they're going to advocate on behalf of anaheim high school i'm talking about the parents so when they actually go and talk to their trustee who is representing that area i'm not saying that no other trustee is not responsible but the idea of district representation was for a trustee to be responsible for their particular neighborhood and as a result i'm going to agree with trustee randall trejo and and i don't know how we're going to do we have to propose the map and then get into a vote uh call or are we going to basically i know the resolution is here and i know we have a motion i think the motion was to discuss the issue right that's right so then we propose a map to basically approve correct so you will vote on selecting a map to go along with the resolution uh so you would need to make that motion with respect to the map uh if there is a 2-2 vote the motion would fail for lack of majority we could schedule then a special meeting when trustee o'neil is available okay all right well having said that as chair i will propose scenario number one and to maintain our trusty areas as is and i will tell you the reason that i'm actually going with that is that i'm looking at trustee area too with the c-vap at 49 percent inevitably there is going to be a majority in that particular district and it will become the second c-vap district in the future regardless so as a result that's scenario two a not two uh no scenario one oh scenario one scenario one yeah okay maintain you said two and i'm gonna say no okay no no i said area two will will inevitably be a cvep majority in the future can i make a comment though i want to make a correction for you which i disagree with sure i have a motion on the flow though okay yeah and i'm gonna i'm gonna second that one okay okay so now go ahead you made the comment that we went into districts so that we could have people representing districts no we divided into districts for voting areas that would give minorities the ability to elect someone from their community that is one aspect of it that was the total aspect that's your that was the total aspect that's why we went with it this is what every area has been sued or brought to task because california voting rights that's what it is it's not to represent certain areas to have people rep it was to give opportunities to minority groups to elect people to represent them sure i just disagree with your the way you stated it because i i do not agree with that at all okay so my point is at the end of the day we'll have anaheim high school in sycamore junior high where sycamore junior high students actually go into anaheim high school will have a representative who will actually advocate on behalf of those families from that area and again as a trustee for that area i've advocated on behalf of all of the schools and all other parents who reached out to me but i think in terms of a map to give significance i am going to go ahead and ask our rest of the colleagues to vote with me on approving scenario one as our trusty area maps so if there's no i just would i just want to say you know anna you know i've been on this board for a long time and you know the schools that i i you know i've i've been out there in the district i i kind of resent that remark that you're saying that you you brought up the fact that we all represent the district we all do and i don't i don't think that i was trying to say that you know just because alvin won he doesn't represent another dis no i didn't hear that from you yeah so i i kind of resent that that but i did not say you said we we all do we all represent 99.9 of everything that we do is for the entire district so my point was i felt that um you know having someone in that district and having having that line right through it and not having uh sycamore and anaheim together was a reason i didn't want to divvy that up and that's that's that's why i understand that we all represent every single school in right we all look at things differently and you know so so i just had to say that but uh i just felt that you know we tried to create and that was the word i wasn't thinking of the the c-vap and eventually it will become a second probably a majority in that group we tried and you know i just felt like when when uh if we're going to try to you know gerrymander you know the lines we don't want to do that we don't want to create that so that's just the reason i wanted to stay with the original map and i agree with my colleague that you know students are going to sycamore a majority of them go to anaheim and you know to stay with with a representative that they can go to um you know a lot of people call out a lot of people call me so uh you know they need somebody to to reach out that's that's is partly part of the reason um why districts are working here it isn't all of it but it is partly the reason they you know we get called out for for we live in the area where we're the neighborhood trustee for that area so um i just don't want to divide a line between sycamore and anaheim it doesn't make any sense for me to do that athen do you have any further if not i will call for a vote all in favor of uh proposing trustee roll call vote oh yeah that's right scenario one so we have a motion on the table for approving scenario one as uh to maintain the current anaheim a uhsd trustee areas and i'll call for the roll call vote and that will be uh trustee randall trejo aye trustee uh piercy no trustee smith no trustee algebra is voting yes so we have a 2-2 motion and the motion will fail and uh i think our next step is basically to say that the motion has failed so we will move this item for a future meeting special meeting okay well do i have another motion for another map i would move for scenario two do i have a second sing i'll go along with that i just hate this dividiness i just we're all members of this community and this just really is heart wrenching for me okay is that a second yeah okay there is a motion and a second for uh okay scenario something additional scenario two right okay scenario two yeah you know we all look at things differently okay and kathy you don't have to be upset because we just look at things differently and we evaluate on different basis okay i'm evaluating on numbers alone because in my area i have four schools that i deal with closely that are not in my area if you want to call it because the line goes right along you've got orangeview western and dale they're all on the other side of my area but i deal with them and i look at them as mine because a lot of their attendance area is in mine so i don't see the the need for worrying about that line that's where i'm coming from and i'm looking more on evening out the areas because to me that was the whole reason for these districts was the voting and the you know the advantage for the minority groups so that's what i'm looking at and that's why i'm in favor of two i'm sorry okay okay that's all you know and i know here we go it's it's not gonna get any different but you know that but we're not we're not arguing we're not being you know acrimonious we just look at things differently and we value different things and that's it okay it's how we look at things so all right so we have a sure we're not arguing we're just having a difference of opinion right so we have a motion on the floor and a second if there's no other comments i'll call for a roll call vote trustee randall trejo no trustee uh piercy yes rusty smith yes trustee algebar votes no so motion fails and as a result we'll probably either call for a special meeting i think we're okay still okay with the deadline yeah so we could actually call for a special meeting before the march meeting obviously because i think there is our deadline is end of february okay we could go ahead and call for another meeting perfect all right we're going to move forward with uh reports and we have our student representative report abdullah fatah all right thank you um so as i'm sure you guys remember i mentioned it last board meeting but this month we had our servathon across all school sites it's a yearly thing that we do a few um projects that we had at anaheim the bros partnered with sycamore to create some toiletry kits for the homeless along with other projects lawera had a week-long servathon because of covid they wanted to spread it out so there wasn't too many people at one time so they did recycling decorating bags for the homeless and holding a clothes drive donation along with other stuff western made it worked on their community garden and oxford did an e-waste drive across the district uh like i mentioned earlier uh this month is black history month and our district is doing a lot of student-led stuff in fact so this coming saturday we have an oc black history parade and unity festival right here in downtown anaheim there's also an auhsd black history month celebration on february 11th in kpac we have the annual la black college expo on february 19th and there's a virtual thrively space discussion uh anaheim specifically there's a new course that's been approved called the photos slash ethnic studies and this class will focus on local and and indigenous communities of color uh anaheim is leading the way in the new graduation requirement for the ethnic studies course that will come in future years at gilbert they had a food drive hosted by the friday night lives club lawyer had an international week from january 23rd to january 28th and on the 27th they had this massive district-wide international show with students across the district i got to see it it was really cool there was the anaheim dance team and then students from all across the district singing and dancing western had is preparing for their international week as well with a lot of different clubs such as vsa korean club hispanic club and more uh and their varsity basketball actually has gone undefeated and is already secured a spot for the orange league champions and so has their water polo team so really great there uh and western just held their first rsvp summit on january 11th and 12th along with cva uh cambridge virtual academy who's having their summit right now so if you want to sign in you can go in there after this and catella is doing their national they're participating in the national signing day uh which was on february february 2nd so just yesterday and three seniors at catella officially committed uh just a quick shout out there's ashlynn vera montes going to cal state fullerton for cross country and track miles johnson for cal state dominguez hills for baseball and cody lozano for viterbo university in wisconsin for baseball and kennedy's cheer song team played first place first in their division along with rsvp summits catella and savannah are now holding their summits in the upcoming weeks so once they're done we're going to have all schools final finishing their summits the district junior high and high school band concert is going to be at pearson park at 7 p.m tomorrow i'll be there if you guys want to come by and then the youth in government day is on february 23rd it's held by our district and students are able to go there and kind of participate in government in local government many school sites are currently doing their asb elections for president and secondary elections and our ambassador applications actually close on february 11th so any juniors watching this right now you can still apply we have an informational meeting right now as well so maybe check in there as well and then student ambassadors are now looking for student representatives for the lcap i think the first meeting is going to be february 17th here at the anaheim district anaheim union district office but right now our biggest issue is trying to find transportation for the students because a lot of them said that they want to come but they can't because of transportation so we're trying to see if there's a way that we can kind of bust them here so if there's any opportunity that we can do that i'm trying to figure that out to see if we can get them transportation because a lot of students want to participate but they just can't because they don't have the rights to get here and yeah i think that's it for my student report all right thank you abdullah i love the way i love the way that you actually looked at the camera and told them to do the work so thank you all right thank you very much next we're going to going right into student speakers this is our new agenda item which recognizes students to speak when they're here but i've received a lot of comment blue slips but none of them identify themselves as students so i will go ahead and proceed to our reports of association and uh go ahead grant i see that you're walking in so i'm assuming you're going to be speaking go ahead we're all lined up in the hall all right uh good evening uh president jabbar and trustees um glad to be back again this evening and actually i'm going to turn over my time tonight to a few classroom teachers who want to give a short report about the lcap uh from last year and its impact on this year and what we hope to continue to do so first is jeff morgenstern from brookers all right good evening i've been a history teacher at brooker's junior high for the past 24 years and i have two other brookers teachers here tonight to represent our members these teachers spend their entire day working tirelessly with our students day after day if you think about time and proximity to students there are no others in education in the educational world closer to our students there are almost 1300 teachers tonight i'd like to take a few minutes to praise our district's el cap stakeholder process the process really is a great opportunity to showcase what we are doing in the classroom and to come together as partners to focus our resources on our greatest needs one of last year's top lcap goals class size reduction was voted on excuse me by parents and teachers site admin district staff and leadership it brought about the hiring over 120 additional teachers to provide better support for our students in the classroom as a junior high history teacher i see every day how smaller class sizes allows teachers to give a better more personalized approach to support i have more time to provide feedback to students on their writing guide the work on their projects i'm able to spend time in class providing the necessary scaffolding for my students who have a wide range of academic language and social emotional needs i have more energy to plan some great lessons focusing on the five c's as well as developing my abilities to navigate e-cadence in short i feel that i'm doing a great job this year and i know that i'm not all the only one there's a common misconception out there and it goes like this it will take us a year or two to get through the effects of the pandemic and then we'll be back to normal this idea is all about making it through and we'll just slip back to the way things used to be to tell you the truth i don't think we'll ever make it back to the old normal the new normal is here in fact we're creating it right now at this board meeting and every day students are in the classroom i firmly believe given the uncertainty of this new normal the best thing we can do to help our students succeed is to have them spend six hours a day in smaller classrooms with their teachers who are best suited to help them succeed i'll even go a step further and say that we should expand class size reduction to all of our classrooms we have some of the best elective programs in the county how many more amazing things could our students achieve if given the chance of having lower class sizes at my junior high our pe department are suffering with class sizes well over 50.
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um it it it it just may not be as cost effective you do lose a lot of savings what we deliver to the school board is here is here's what a refinancing looks like on a tax exempt basis here's what it looks like if you want to lock in the rates today and we measure those savings and and loss of savings using using our computer system that we have and we can very very clearly communicate the options to you the cost of benefits of each and provide you with a recommendation for you to consider all right thank you yes thank you so my question is over the past several years arusd has made substantial progress in bringing stability accountability and transparency back to the district how would you approach the role of financial advisor with this recent progress in mind your outlook is stable so i would believe and i've looked at your auto report your fund balances your your general fund reserves i think they're quite good i could see you getting upgraded in the very near future if your financial performance continues i would want to go through all of your financial policies and make sure that the reserve policies the debt management policies that you've got a good cyber security policies everything is in place and the policies are written in such a way that the district can actually implement and not fail to implement and actually use to report back to your community that really could make a a notch up indifference to get you to that double a3 level but again i think a lot of it is going to have to do with the good work that you're already doing just continuing that and being able to demonstrate that to the rating agencies but that will happen on the natural but i do think that financial policies are key thank you board member uh welcome uh so how will you help our district increase our ratings as we work with the bonds program well i had it i had a situation this about a year ago for sierra college they gave the district a very high bond rating and i was reading the report i thought to myself you know what this bond rating should be higher and the the report they want to release the rating and i basically said no i want to appeal this rating because this district should have a high rating and and the way that that came about was being able to have the awareness to understand what those metrics are and not just let the rating go by without saying hey i think that i think that this should be a higher rating so again it goes back into having the integrity to look under every rock to if if you have to work there until 10 o'clock at night to figure out just you're figuring out the truth you don't want the rating agency just to upgrade you without having the proper factual background that would be a big no-no but i think it's just really doing the hard work and being able to bring out that story and listening and and being aware thank you all right uh where were travis that kind of answers my question the way he answered it can you do what happened i should ask your question exactly okay uh how much okay the taxpayers are going to pay for the bond and the investors are going to collect profits so how much of that money comes back to the community well every dollar in interest that is paid is money that is leaking out of the community so ideally for every dollar you borrow you repay one dollar now we know that that's not possible okay but we do know that there are ways to structure financings um that will help keep as much money in the community as possible and one thing that we do when we enter these pricings with these underwriters a lot of times and and my a lot of my colleagues do this when we price a bond we don't want it refinanced we want to make sure that we are getting the lowest possible rate today and if that bond never gets financed because the rate is too low that's good but a lot of firms i mean they've had the numbers it's just churn for insurance they're they're establishing a higher higher it's called a coupon interest rate say five percent getting a premium up front and having a call date that's pretty soon now it sounds good well you can call it early well do you really need to refinance bonds would you refinance your house if you had a you know two and a half percent mortgage no so it's selling the bonds it's negotiating for the long term not just so in a couple years i can come back and refinance it again all right thank you um has your firm ever been the subject of or been involved in an investigation that resulted from your work with the client never not not our firm nor our employees thank you um that concludes the questions next are canon and if you'll just wait in the conference room thank you hmm foreign this feels like the first time i back to the schools this year and visiting the classrooms and you know it's just different everybody is it that you're more excited to see the children i am yeah i think so yeah and that's like seeing all of you it's makes me happy welcome to alum rock thank you for having us okay okay welcome back um again to remind you uh you have a total of 15 minutes for the presentation the first five you'll be dedicated to the presentation to the board last 10 will be dedicated to questions and answers clock is up on the screen there and uh you may be uh just cognizant of the time okay thank you thank you well thank you so much uh for having us and good evening members of the board district staff my name is blake bean i'm one of the managing principals at k n public finance and i would serve as the primary advisor to the district if we're fortunate enough to get selected my role working with school districts across the state is to help them develop long-term long-term funding plans and also coordinate our internal resources to ensure that each district is getting the right kind of quantitative analysis and support throughout each bond endeavor joining me tonight as part of our team is my colleague nedco nadev and i'll pass him the mic good evening it's wonderful to be in front of you and have an opportunity to partner with uh leadership staff the community in helping your bond program get back up and running again uh my name is ned connective i've been with uh k m for over 15 years now and been fortunate enough for that time uh to execute virtually every financial instrument at the disposal of california municipalities uh most relevant to you a number of large complex successful uh geo bond programs uh i have a mathematical background so kind of naturally gravitate to the quantitative analytic side of our work which in particular in this context means kind of a heavy duty modeling that goes into informing a healthy well thought out long range plan of finance that will help the district accomplish uh uk objectives and set the stage for the successful implementation of your bond program and ultimately rewarding the trust of your constituents as the son of a life-long educator i'm a fervent zealot for quality public schooling i'm excited to in some small way help the district deliver that to your community and then other important members of our team that are not here with us tonight um yvonne hall who provides quantitative and technical support within our team dan cox is our in-house pricing expert larry long manages our annual continuing disclosure practice and then jesse pacilli provides transactional support we appreciate the opportunity to speak with you tonight and look forward to learning more about the district's funding needs and discussing bond financing strategies that help get the district's program on track our team is active in the local area currently serving a number of your local school districts most nameably san jose unified is an ongoing client that i work directly with milpitas unified school district and also morgan hill unified school district to name a few in addition to the local school districts we serve we also serve as the municipal advisor to the county of santa clara and have for the last 16 years in addition to a number of other local cities and local agencies beyond our regional experience we work with a significant number of school districts throughout the state to help develop and implement long-range funding plans as a testament we have been ranked as the number one municipal advisor in california education four out of the last five years based on the par amount of bonds sold and that's a that's a statistic that we can't just make up that it's actually posted and something that's reported out by refinitive uh is to resource that from as one of the larger municipal advisory firms in the state we do have a large depth of staff and firm resources that we dedicate to each client engagement and just as a demonstration i think the the six having six registered municipal advisors as part of our proposed team to the district i think speaks to that really bringing in people and ensuring that the district is able to get a vast amount of thought and quick action in order to meet timelines and deadlines and then lastly our team has first-hand experience working with school districts who have experienced a challenged past within their bond program and through our concerted collective effort working with district staff and boards we've been able to successfully help to re-establish a strong rate of credit rating profile to successfully issue bonds for project funding we have identified and helped uh refinance outstanding bonds uh to generate savings both to taxpayers and districts general fund and we've also helped to establish collaborative relationships with county agencies we look forward to sharing more this evening and facilitating a discussion of how uh of how the district can move forward with its bond program into a promising direction and we welcome questions from the board all right uh we'll go ahead and get started with board vice president trump okay thank you mr president uh you know in uh i think that in in today's environment with the recent market news i think this question is pertinent in light of possible increases in interest rates in the future could you tell us about some of the ways your firm could help mitigate the interest rate risk for the district on issue bonds yeah i'll start with that and pass it over to you nico um yeah mitigate interest rate risk um how do we go about that um you know really we we look at what the financing plan is as a whole um the most impacted by interest rate risk is refinancing of outstanding bonds and so to the extent that there's an opportunity to mobilize quickly and bring something back in front of the board for the board's consideration to take action we would do that we've seen interest rates over the first month of 2022 jump by over half a percentage point or 50 basis points that is directly eating away potential savings with refund with refinancing opportunities and we know this district does have a prime refunding uh that could save district taxpayers millions of dollars and so to the extent we were selected uh we would most certainly look to uh work with district staff on a quick time timetable and bring something back to uh the board for consideration in order to hedge against further interest rate movements we are anticipating an additional uh four to five uh fed hikes throughout the course of the year which will directly impact interest rates among other market movements that a firmware size would bring the level of resources that can really help the district hit the ground running and you really get motoring to to next point um and i think generally speaking even though there's only so much you can do to manage weight interest rate risk uh in the context of uh new borrowings uh not necessarily view interest rate risk as as the the tail wagging the dog uh you um there's tax reasons and uh policy just good governance reasons uh not to over borrow prematurely um so in that context um there's only so much you're gonna do yeah i think that that's right i think it's really differentiating the the the impact that it would have on a refinancing versus really allowing the needs and the timing of cash flow demands to drive the new money issuance so to the extent those needed to be separated and not on the same timetable that would be part of the discussion in order to mitigate that interest rate risk versus combining them all together into a single financing where there is some cost effectiveness and efficiencies there but if there's to my colleague's point if the new money issuance if the timing and the spend down of that issuance is not all mapped out then we would advise the district in that case to proceed with a refinancing that is directly impacted by interest rate movements and not prematurely go to market with a new money issuance from either j or i if a plan a full fully developed plan was not in place the board member thank you uh okay um over the past several years arusd has made substantial progress in bringing stability accountability and transparency back to the district how would you approach the role of financial advisor with this recent progress in mind the district has done a phenomenal job over the last several years and we've tried our best to do our homework just to appreciate just a small component of that and i think through the course of our efforts we have uh if if we were assigned that important role as financial advisor we would look to carry on that commitment that is made to making sure that the district gets its bond program not only back to a point where it's issuing bonds and doing some of the projects that were committed to voters but also reestablishing a credit rating profile that is more representative of a strong district like this than what it currently is over the last five years the ratings have slipped and there is room for improvement and uh i can be you know more more specific with exact areas that we would focus on um and maybe and maybe that's worthwhile i think that with rating agencies um standard imports is three notches below moody's uh that is not a normal that's a split rating and that is not a usual circumstance that we see within school districts and frankly if i know if i may be so bold i think that s p has been overly punitive to the district in rating over the last several years and so i would advise if if we're you know again so fortunate to be selected i would advise staff to meet with smp in conjunction with other financing team members and put together a compelling argument about the progress that has been made starting at the governance level policy level and on down um as to why the district is not a triple b rated district it should be in the a the a rated category most certainly and then we'll backfill that with some of the some of the other components about the district's budget mitigation plan um about efforts to start discussions about hard topics like school consolidation um and then also of course potentially refinancing the outstanding lease off the books um with the 2010 issues just to remind you we have less than five minutes and three more questions all right i think we kept going i guess one important implication of restored credit profile it has a very direct impact on cost of borrowing as you're looking to take the next steps on potentially on both measure j and on to get into measure i thank you um and you actually answered uh part of my question so how will you help our district increase our ratings as we work with the bonds program so if you want to add anything else with what you've shared to be honest it's a great question i'm glad you asked it it's something we have spent a tremendous amount of time on because it it stuck out to us as an area that really um uh stands for improvement i think you may hear from some that there's certain strategies to actually shy away from s p and not use them for future financings we have considered that and we look at it a little bit differently i think that we look at any future financing for the district as an opportunity to meet with s p and really full court press with a great back story about why the district should get back to its previously rated uh levels instead of where it sits at today remember travis the taxpayers are going to pay the bond and the investors are going to collect uh the interest of the profits how much of that money comes back to the community to the community again uh kind of splitting up that component into two parts um from a refinancing perspective uh that money goes back directly to the community um there's not an obligation that the district has to do a refinancing of older outstanding bonds it's a fiscal stewardship issue and i think that that um speaks volumes to uh the new leaf that the district is really turning to really demonstrate um uh where it's at today and so um i think that that would be an important component in terms of the new money bonds uh our goal is still to secure the lowest borrowing cost possible which also impacts taxpayers and minimizes the return to investors and so that's what we always strive for uh when issuing new debt and going to market i think what one important aspect um kind of is an example of the interplay between some of that some of those dynamics is on the measure j side for example where um there is 71.5 million of remaining authorization but because the structure of the existing series a and c mainly uh the bulk of that capacity is in the years beyond 2040.
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how can we make connections with our students and put into practice all the programs we promote like capturing kids hearts if we just pile on the students in classes that have become the center of trouble on our campuses the media is talking a lot about learning loss during the pandemic it's true but that loss is really nothing compared to the learning loss of large class sizes so i ask our trustees and our district leadership to continue to make class size reduction a priority thank you and i'd like to introduce rex wheeler hello my name is rex wheeler and i'm the rsp department chair at brooker's junior high i want to thank you for the opportunity to speak and express my gratitude for being employed by such a great school district i was i still remember when i got the phone call that i had an interview with this district and i was very excited i was on the freeway and i just couldn't help my excitement so i'm very grateful grateful to be here as the rsp department chair the biggest need we have is personnel it is my hope that with the new funds the district has that some of those funds will be used to hire more rsp instructional aides laptops tablets and educational apps are great and they serve us well but the one thing that has the greatest impact on student progress are the adults in the classroom i have worked with other special education departments in my capacity as department chair and i know there's a similar need in programs such as sdc severely handicapped deaf and hard of hearing and autism focus in my 13 years of teaching i have seen how important it is to have good instructional aids and the enormous impact they can have on student progress this year i put instructional aids in the seventh grade elective wheel and the elective teachers have all told me how helpful it is to have the instructional aides in class to keep our students engaged not just the special ed students but all of the students we've had a lower teacher-to-student ratio this year and has resulted in improvement in our ability to connect with students having more instructional aids in rsp will benefit some of our more vulnerable students and they often only receive academic support in the classroom unfortunately a lot of these students have nobody at home to help them it's only the adults in the classroom that can help them our your virtual learning was an eye-opening experience for many years i was concerned that teachers might one day be replaced by technology but it came very clear to me that many students lack the motivation maturity and home support to sex successfully navigate the learning environment it was only with the persistent efforts of our professional staff that kept students engaged the same is true for in-person learning instructional aids are a cost-effective way to connect with our students and help them on their path to success please consider providing funding for instructional aides with the lcap funding thank you very much for your commitment to our students and your time thank you evening my name is tisha ludemann and i have been a teacher at brookhurst for 22 years tonight i have the privilege of speaking with you about how technology has improved my students learning and my teaching practice and how important it is to keep technology and technology training front and center in the lcap process i teach two elective classes at brookhurst home economics and avid these classes have not typically been associated with tons of technology use when people think of homec they think uh cooking and sewing and those strange electronic babies and lots and lots of hands-on projects and when avid comes to mind images are of paper cornell notes and tutorial meetings where students and tutors dissect and solve problems on large white boards where everyone has a dry erase pen in their hand i'm not gonna lie that's how i saw my elective classes too until that faithful friday the 13th of march 2020 but i learned to adapt and to embrace technology as we all have perhaps one of the very few positives that has come from a global pandemic is that we all learn to be more adaptable but we also learn to rely more on technology and use computers more effectively this reliance on learning technology has improved education for my students and i see that evidence every day first in my classes um the grades are the best they have ever been really like averages in the high 80s mainly this is due to students making up missing assignments because e-cadence reminds them of their missing work every time they enter my electronic class i could never replicate that for each student as they physically enter my classroom nor would i want to i love that e cadence does the nagging for me second teacher student communications have definitely improved i'm able to set up convenient student reminders and announcements but more importantly i can comment and actually converse on scores and assignments in the e cadence grade book yes a score might be for a cooking lab that was completed in a kitchen and not on a computer but my ability to give feedback to an entire cooking group about their lab performance is greatly improved when i can talk to them both in person and online third important papers don't get lost well actually they still do but when i provide an electronic copy of that paper on e-cadence then students can still access the important information they need to complete their work these are simple ways technology has changed my classroom but as recent as a recent report from the brooking institute points out there are additional benefits technology which i know you know but let me mention them again the ability to provide high quality pre-recorded lessons the ability to differentiate instruction to meet the needs of all students to provide the opportunity for repeated practice outside the classroom and to increase engagement through high interest games and activities education technology alone is not a magic bullet but it can complement teaching and learning when it is used wisely and strategically that is why i implore you to consider providing a class set of chromebooks for every classroom in our district even the classrooms like mine that are not normally computer technology driven and every bit as important is supporting that equipment with the proper amount of time and training to implement that technology effectively by the way nearly every day last summer i trained teachers on how to use e-cadence and loved that work e-cadence is a constantly evolving program and i think staff could really benefit from more training again this summer especially now when a lot more of us can open up our e-classes and see how and show others how we use the platform and i just wanted to end tonight by thanking you for your time and thanking you for what you do for students and i'm just really proud to be on the same team and one of the things that the pandemic has also done is just make me more appreciative and i just want to share that appreciation with all of you and that concludes our report thank you thank you all right next i think i have amanda bean go ahead good evening board president jabbar board of trustees superintendent matt souda cabinet community members joining us in person and online there are many many things going on right now for our administrators and their teams first on behalf of all the administrators we want to give a shout out to our school counselors and wish them a happy national school counselor week next week we appreciate all of you your work and the work that you do to love and support our students thank you also sites have recently selected their teachers of the year we also want to acknowledge our wonderful teachers and the impact that they make daily in the lives of students and we thank them for their work as well many sites are hosting virtual transition events for their incoming students from the elementary schools into the junior highs and the junior highs into the high schools everyone is excited to show off their campus and welcome families to their schools principals have been working to align their site vision with the anaheim union educational pledge and the career preparedness systems framework and one of those is the development of the site level capstone projects um we are working to develop a district-wide capstone uh the fall of next year that every student will participate in sites are also continuing to distribute coveted test kits and have expanded that distribution to their staff we're preparing for the lcap process and busy inviting members from our communities to participate and lastly dr nian and mr matsuda have began doing site presentations to help update the sites about the district and things to come in terms of our budget and what to expect so everybody can stay informed and as always it's on behalf of all of our administrators i'd like to express that we are grateful for the opportunity to serve our students families and staff and we look forward to a very productive spring thank you thank you amanda and do i have natalie saldivar who's gonna yeah okay good evening board of trustees superintendent matsuda district cabinet auhcsc students and families guests and those joining us online my name is natalie saldaway and i'm a ph apga co-president you will also begin to see corey kretz who is now our apga co-president as well i wanted to take the time to thank the board of trustees auhsc cabinet and everyone involved in declaring the week of february 7th through february 11th as a national school counseling week throughout auhsd our sincere thank you for recognizing school school counselors district-wide and especially for introducing the auhsd school counselor of the year thank you tonight i am honored to introduce two wonderful teams that will take this time to report on their school counseling programs we will begin this evening with magnolia high school's counseling department and following them will be dale junior high school's counseling department thank you sorry good evening board of trustees cabinet community members and the audience joining us here and online my name is tomoko taguchi and i'm a counselor at magnolia high school i'm joined by the rest of my counseling team rosie cardoza blair nelson and lulu suarez it's a pleasure to be here with you to share the inspiring story of a current 11th grader aaron castillo miranda who himself and his guardians were happy to let me share aaron began his journey in mexico and came to the u.s and enrolled at dale junior high school in 8th grade he began learning english through his eld1 class and when he came to magnolia his eld teacher and science teacher helped him see his own potential and think seriously about his future since then aaron has thrived not only in his schoolwork but also in his college readiness and leadership skills by ninth grade he had moved up to an eld3 class and with the invitation of his counselor attended peer tutoring for plurilingual students during saturday academy and even helped other students with their homework during this time in 10th grade excuse me in 10th grade he moved up from eld to 10th grade english and his counselor encouraged him to apply for the simon scholars program which provides access to four-year colleges through a sixteen thousand dollar scholarship during the interview round of the simon scholars application process aaron proudly shared that he would be the first male in his family to attend college in addition he will be the first person male or female in his family to graduate from college and receive a degree erin was one of nine magnolia students accepted into the simon scholars program out of 90 eligible students and he plans to attend a four-year college upon graduating from magnolia and after discussing his 11th grade course selection with his teacher and counselor he's currently enrolled in rigorous classes such as ap biology and ap spanish language and culture the counselor also introduced erin to magnolia's college and career readiness specialist rudolfo herrera garcia so that erin feels comfortable seeking support for upcoming college and financial aid applications in 12th grade erin is a student who reaches out to the counselor for help when he needs it takes advantage of resources available on campus and inspires new plurilingual students he meets by sharing that they can have bright futures by taking school seriously we are incredibly proud of aaron's journey of starting in eld1 in eighth grade at dale to now being a thriving four-year college bound leader at magnolia thank you for letting us share this one inspiring story out of many this evening thank you all right thank you [Applause] all right thank you alrighty good evening board of trustees cabinet community members and the audience joining us joining us online my name is nasrine sarvey and i'm one of the proud counselors at dale junior high school i'm joined by the rest of my counseling team miss alexandra george and miss carla cortez thank you for giving us the opportunity to speak on a student's success story so transitioning to junior high is a challenging and sometimes stressful milestone in a student's educational career the last two years have been challenging for many of our students not just academically but also social emotionally due to the unprecedented pandemic and virtual learning with the transition back to in-person instruction the beginning of this school year brought forth a lot of anxiety for many students sorry i lost my place given all the challenges our students face i would like to highlight an inspirational student this school year to respect student confidentiality we will refer to our student as student c student c came to our attention at the beginning of the school year when she was in the health office experiencing severe anxiety after conducting a safety assessment which would be the first of several over the course of the first semester the appropriate outside agencies were contacted to further support the student's mental health and overall well-being for a period of time the student was receiving inpatient care to best support their needs transitioning back to school was challenging for the student after being out for several weeks the student even expressed a desire to switch to online learning or in independent studies instead a 504 plan was developed for the student and was created with the student and family to best support the student within our school setting through collaboration with the student the family our school staff and outside mental health agencies the student began making significant progress emotionally and academically studency has come a long way this school year she is now able to identify triggers to her anxiety and effectively cope with her feelings she seeks support when she when needed she goes to a trusted adult to process her feelings she in this initiates social interactions with both peers and adults and she advocates for herself within and outside the classroom mental health and well-being is the foundation for students achievement and the student was able to successfully end the semester with a's b's and c's this student success story is a perfect example of the importance of collaboration community and compassion within a school setting we are excited to see how students see will continue to grow and thrive academically as well as social and emotionally we know that the future has great things in store for them and we look forward to seeing what we can do to continue support their growth thank you for the opportunity to share this story thank you thank you for sharing those stories and uh making relevant for us i appreciate it thank you very much all right and i i don't think i have um jennifer jennifer hippolyta or hippolyta nope okay all right i keep saying that i i need to correct that all right perfect so we're going to go into our uh parent or parent-teacher student association ptsa report i don't think we have them either right okay now we go into presentations and uh the first one is 10.1 which is the eight through g completion improvement grant program i'll go ahead and ask jaren to come in and introduce this presenters so this is a required presentation and it gives me a great pleasure to introduce our director of special programs mr joe carmona who's going to lead us through this he'll also lead us to our next presentation which is required as well mr carmona good evening board members cabinet superintendent and those joining us virtually i have the pleasure of presenting the district's adg completion improvement plan so a little bit of background the california budget act of 2021 authorized funds to support adg completion improvement these funds are designed to increase or improve services for unduplicated pupils so again that is a term that we use in developing our lcap and though that refers to our low-income english learner and foster youth students to improve adg eligibility and ensure access to adg courses these funds will be available to the district through the 2025-26 school year and our estimated allocation is just under um six million dollars 5.5 million the official allocations are set to come out sometime later this month but that is our estimated amount the expenditures and activities are broken down into three broad categories and i'll go into those in further slides and just as a reminder a uh adg completion is actually a a highlight for our district over the last several years um as noted on the slide we've increased that percentage from 37 percent to 52 in five years so i just want to acknowledge uh the tremendous work of our counseling staffs our administrators our teachers in helping make more students eligible to uh to attend college as part of the development of this plan we engaged with a number of administrators our counselors obviously and teachers to help identify the activities and strategies that we will be using part of what the budget act around these funds requires is for us to identify the need and they target the 2020 21 school year in terms of you know students who either failed a course or perhaps earned a d in a course so the information that you see on this slide these these are students who have failed a course and so when you look across the content areas you can see these are students who need at least one semester so some of those students need two semesters of english or three semesters of english the numbers are calculated using our current ninth through eleventh grade students uh i excluded the 12th grade students because this year if they were not on track for graduation right the state granted a waiver around the number of credits they would need to be able to graduate right so when the the credit recovery needs of our seniors were actually automatically reduced by the implementation of that state waiver so the data that you see again is is inclusive of our current 9th through 11th grade students so there is a need obviously for some additional funding to continue to support our students in not only working towards graduation but also ag completion and being eligible to apply for college so the first broad area that these funds support is professional development and so when we engaged with our teachers and our counselors a few themes emerged one is additional work regarding grading practices and grading for equity many of our teachers have begun reading a variety of books listening to conferences i know some of our board has heard speakers in regards to grading practices and so we want to continue that work in identifying ways that we can have a more fair and equitable practices in all of our classrooms the further development of our college and career access teams so as part of the anaheim union educational pledge we have teams at all of our high schools who are tasked with helping our sites develop the systems to ensure that students not only have access but also complete the necessary courses and activities associated with preparing to move on to an either two or four year institution as an example right completing the fafsa or dream act that's a critical component in the senior year for students in order to move on right and so the college and career access teams at our sites under the direction of the anaheim collaborative put activities and different strategies in place to ensure that those things are happening so we want to continue to support the development of these teams in being more and more effective in the implementation of those activities that are already embedded in our pledge further professional development for our staff to better understand a to g so a g is a a term that is unique to the state of california right these are california requirements um that are applicable to the cal state and university of california system and so we want to make sure our counseling and our teaching staff real really understand what are those requirements what are the set of courses what is the impact when a student gets a d in one of those courses uh in terms of them continuing to be able to be eligible to apply to one of those university systems and then lastly continued support and development around the use of data and data analysis right so if we can identify right the content areas where students are failing to become adg eligible if we can identify early on the areas where we might need to provide some additional support for students in order to successfully pass those classes with a grade of a c or higher so they remain on that a to g track the second area that's laid out is uh what the state calls advising plans and people supports so the uh the the input from from our our partners really heavily identified additional academic supports before during and after school so the bulk of our students are actually enrolled in courses which allow them to be a to g eligible it's not that they don't have access to the courses it's that they need to earn a c or higher and so that support might look like effective tutoring that happens in an after school setting that support might look like support during uh the class period for a group of students who are having difficulty earning that that grade of a c or higher and so these funds will help us provide some of those additional academic supports uh expanding and strengthening our success monitoring of our plural lingual or english learners so over the last two years the district has rolled out a plan to monitor our our english learners at every site and so they were always monitored but this is uh where a staff member has a small number of students that they interact with on a weekly basis right they're not providing tutoring during that time but it's more an opportunity to connect ensure that that student has a relationship with an adult on campus and if they are having a hard time connecting them with the resources they need maybe that's an academic resource maybe it's a mental health support or maybe it's just a kind word to get them through a hard week right and so that that success monitoring has been very essential over the last two years especially when we're in distance learning and so these funds will be allow us to continue that and not only to continue it but to expand it and strengthen those practices and i want to just uh dr bryant and and her team has really been instrumental in rolling that out for all of our sites we want to strengthen our six-year academic planning so our counselors again that is embedded in the pledge that our students have a six-year plan uh and so we continue to look at ways to to not only have that um be a more efficient process right because it takes a lot of time to meet with every student and lay out their plan but also a responsive process right a student enters high school in the ninth grade they have one plan for they that the student in their family and as they go through that plan might change and so we want to make sure that we are responding to those needs and continuing to give them uh the best academic advice in terms of their courses and their future opportunities we want to create some opportunities to meet with students in a one-on-one setting we value the development of relationships in our district uh and so that time when you can sit down with a family and go into a more in-depth conversation um our our counseling staffs are are doing that every day but this will allow us to provide some additional time outside of their normal work hours to continue um again expanding those opportunities and then lastly implementing district-wide college and career advising materials and this is related to the previous slide about our college and career access teams so we have some very um experienced staff across all of our sites right and one of the challenges is that at one school they might have shared the information in one way and then at another school they shared it in a different way so we want to make sure that all of our students are getting a consistent high quality message around this and so we want to take some of those great materials and practices that they have and make sure that those get standardized for all of our sites right so every student has access to the same high level quality information and then the last area is expanding access to course work and i touched briefly um upon this the vast majority of our high school courses are approved by the university of california to earn a dg credit so the the area where we want to expand that access really is in relation to our students with disabilities sometimes those students in their course planning in their iep planning they are enrolled in courses that are not a g and so that's the area where we want to expand the access for that particular group of students for our other students we're really talking about ensuring that they have an opportunity to earn a c or higher in every class so if they don't earn a c um opportunities during the summer for for that grade recovery and and credit recovery but also acceleration so you know some of our students they are enroll in one of our exclusive pathways and so to meet all of the requirements becomes quite a taxing exercise on their schedule so we want to provide opportunities in the summer where they could take a course as acceleration so then they don't have to take that during the school year right so that allows them to continue to access their pathway or their vapa course or something along those lines uh and then lastly the continued development of additional a to g courses to meet student interest and purpose right so this is really where you when you think about the career preparing a systems framework and student voice and purpose so we've actually added a number of courses over the last few years that address this and each year we're looking and our teachers are coming up with innovative course proposals and so we want to continue to be able to offer those courses um to meet uh the changing needs and interests of our students right so um you know uh esports wasn't really on the radar for any of us until just a few years ago cyber security right that's really a pathway that's emerged at our sites in just the last few years uh and so that took us adding those courses right into our course catalog uh to meet that then the needs and the interest and so with that that concludes my presentation about the adg completion improvement plan and i would like to open up the opportunity for questions at this time all right thank you for the presentation i'll go ahead and open up for questions starting with my left uh ann marie yes um thank you for the report um i i love these ideas um and uh so it looks like on that first slide where you said the demonstrated need and you list all of the students that had you said you said had failed and then they needed to make up a semester or two are those all uh are they they the same group of students would you say sure so uh if you were to add up across the various categories i i didn't do the math there but you know that's maybe about ten thousand right students um uh unduplicated students meaning an individual student who needs to make up something in one of these areas in grades nine to eleven that is approximately it's just over six thousand unique students okay thank you um i did have another question um on the advising plans and people supports um you were talking about the success monitoring i love that um who is who who's doing that who's actually doing that success monitoring or who do you who would you so we we ask our teachers to take that on as an additional responsibility they they get compensated for that time but we do ask our um teachers and so across the sites depending on the number of english learners at the site you might have anywhere between 5 and 20 teachers who are engaged at this at each of our schools so again uh that the the the reason for identifying teachers uh as that is because uh one to go back into that intentional relationship building and then they you know that student has has a connection with that staff member and then that staff member becomes essentially like a second counselor you know their sort of adopted parent at the school just to help help make things go smoother for those students and again the the needs of the students there some of our english learners are doing extremely well right they are passing all of their classes they are very successful um and so it's just a check-in how are you doing is there anything i can do to help and then other times those staff members are really providing a lot of advice support and connection to resources um at the site i love that idea thank you it's all for me thank you it's piercy i have no questions and good report and i've learned a couple things thank you smith and i would say something very similar the totality of your report i deeply appreciate it because it takes in so many of the specific areas of these needs and they're multiple and what we're going through this makes it more difficult to say the least so thank you from the bottom of my heart thank you thank you miss smith i had a couple of questions kind of related to what uh mr randall trio had so you cleared one of my questions which was to figure out the unique number of students so you said about six thousand walk me through a plan that would give support for six thousand students individually or in group setting utilizing these funds so the that's a wonderful question and what i would say is that that's really not just the resources involved in this particular piece of funds right those are also the systems and structures that are built into our lcap into my earlier presentation this year around educator effectiveness right all of these uh resources are coming together to provide this support and this is where the role of the counselors is really critical and their input was so essential to the development of this plan because that plan is going to look different based on the student need so if i'm a 10th grader and i am missing three courses right i need to make up three courses that plan might look like um i'm going to address two of those courses in summer school i'm going to repeat one of the courses in my junior year i'm going to be on track and then i just need to ensure that i am earning a c or higher in all of my other courses that could look much different for a student who is missing five courses right so that plan may mean uh we need you to attend our district summer school you're also going to enroll in a credit recovery course during the school year and our school offers an opportunity to improve your grades during saturday academy so we need to make sure you go to a saturday academy so there's a lot of systems and structures we have in place and the counselor has that responsibility to tailor that plan to the needs of the students and so that's where you know supporting our counselors and bringing on additional counselors which we've done over the last two years really helps us design those plans for for each student and the other part of that is when you think about that student voice and purpose and the development of an engaging school environment if our students are interested in the content that's being presented in their classes they will do better right and so when we talk about why are the 5cs so important because that helps them be more engaged in their classes when we talk about the opportunities for dual enrollment opportunities to you know participate in programs like cyber security uh the agricultural the agri-science sorry agri-science community center right ai the students have buy-in to their site and so then they right or even traditionally we might have thought of athletics as the buy-in for student right we we know that not athletics isn't for every student right but but those pathways right we can find um the thing that is really going to interest them and keep them engaged and motivated mr matsuda as mr carmona said it's a very layered approach in terms of how these kids are going to catch up many of our kids though unfortunately are put into apex which is a quick you know online system and most districts use apex we are using it as one strategy we like to decrease our dependence on programs like apex because there's not a whole lot of learning going on one of the things here was the real time credit recovery meaning that when a so why wait until the semester for a kid you know then they have to make up a whole semester why can't we identify that kid earlier let's say if they fail a unit on biology or something take that unit again right in real time we at the either saturday academy or after school we've been experimenting with this model at anaheim high school with some success so i think long term for the district is to develop you using a cadence so because the teachers will be able to determine quicker if a kid's not going to make it during that semester that's where we need to get to we need to get off of apex and into these types of innovative ways so we can catch the kid earlier and more importantly make education work for that kid right because apex is not going to get us there so that's my two cents thank you now i like that emphasis on making sure that we actually catch the student earlier on and then give that real-time recovery and that's the key for us to have success for our students so that's great um the actually you answered the second question that i had okay all right well thank you if there's no other questions yes go ahead um i was gonna ask so under the expanding access to coursework um i was gonna ask i know like this kind of thinking in the future but i know some students kind of struggle when they go maybe they got covet or they're at home quarantining so they may not be getting the same education is there any kind of like resources that we can put into kind of helping those kind of those students so that maybe they don't fall behind in those in that class work as well so i will i'm going to reference back to what our superintendent shared about e-cadence right and really why we've encouraged our our teaching staff to really use that resource because you know that situation a student will find out suddenly right and then they'll be out for maybe five or six days depending on what it is and if what the teacher is engaging in the classroom is there on e-cadence right it makes it very easy for the student access and if it's a part of the regular routine students are already accessing it right and i actually think the the tea one of the teachers from book her shared right how she's using it right as part of her regular routine um and building that in so i think that's a a part of addressing that is continuing to build teachers capacity around the uc cadence and the value um that is there and then i do think that goes back to um the work around grading equity right so if you're not physically there in the classroom your experience is going to look a little bit different and um our teachers should be able to take that into account right so like if you showed back up after having been quarantined you shouldn't have the same expectation in terms of oh i have to take this test now or i have to take this quiz now right there should be an adaptation um for those students so uh and these this idea that even if uh maybe you did follow a little behind of the real-time grade recovery right where you can go right after school right after that unit of instruction is completed so it's still fresh for the student um that's really powerful right and so again we have some sites anaheim um catella cypress are all doing a little bit of a different version of some of that work and want to continue building those practices thank you thank you for the question got it all right perfect well thank you very much mr carmona appreciate it and now we'll go to uh a second report which is uh 10.2 and that's the lcap mid-year update and i'm going to ask oh joe carmona go ahead just give a minute to switch over the slides here all right again welcome and thank you for every uh one for this opportunity to share around the work that our district has been engaged in in regard to our lcap so again a little bit of background typically we hear about the lcap in a board meeting in june but we're here now because again the budget act required that we provide a one-time mid-year update to the board and the reason for that is because school districts in that budget received additional funding that might not have been included as part of the original lcap planning process and so that's why we are having this mid-year update so as a reminder the the l cup stands for our local control and accountability plan and when you think um about that uh we really want to start with our district vision and so you have our career preparedness systems framework the components involved there with technical skills 21st century skills and youth voice and purpose all of those components ultimately right to create a better world through unlimited you so that's our vision the lcap are the the steps the strategies the plan in order to help us achieve that vision our l-cup has three goals these have been modified and adjusted over time as we continue to have input from all of our partners and so our first goal students will demonstrate college career and life readiness and success through implementation of our five c's our second goal provide meaningful educational engagement opportunities for all of our parents and families to advocate for all students and our third goal provide and nurture a safe reflective responsive and positive school culture so when you look at the engagement process that our district does in developing the lcap that's a very robust and rigorous process so i i'm grateful to mr clone and his leadership in laying out the the foundations for that process our our school administrators our faces staff for bringing our parents in our community partners both in higher ed and local organizations who've all played a very critical role in the development of of our plan and so that that process in and of itself is quite extensive additionally we have surveys that go out to all of our various groups and then we work with a number of advisory groups we have a teacher input group we have district task forces we have our dlac our superintendent's advisory and all of that input comes together in that process to help us form the goals and strategies that we will deliver for our students so when we look at the additional funds provided to our district how were these funds used so first and foremost they were used to address the effects of covet 19.
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so that kind of limits how much uh how much funding can be readily accessed uh with just current interest bonds you can get more uh you know it's about 15 million with a structure that's uh comprised only of current response uh adding capital appreciation bonds to the mix uh can secure another 12 for a total of about 27 million so that's a status quo uh there are avenues to free up additional capacity one of them being the refinancing that we've been talking about the series a bonds can be refunded for considerable savings in the current market it's at the mercy of the market so uh that would free up capacity and potentially bump up those estimates i i was just mentioning what can be readily accessed um i i think you you hear from um others tonight that uh good suggesting that uh you replicate the measure i approach and go back to the voters to reapprove um potentially the remaining portion of measure j so kind of recognizing that there is uh considerable potential upside uh to some of those strategies uh in our mind the most prudent approach was to kind of lay out a base a solid kind of baseline game plan um that doesn't rely on uh that doesn't hinge on a good interest rate fortune or further voter support at this juncture actionable plan could be implemented based on everything that's in place today all right has your firm ever been the subject of or been involved in an investigation that resulted from your work with the client no all right thank you that's the that's the extent of our questions next is california financial services thank you so much it was a pleasure thank you all uh california financial services financial services ugh [Music] okay in the meantime i can tell that since the last meeting we had you all put a lot of time and effort to streamlining this and making sure it goes smoothly so thank you [Music] all right [Music] hi how are you welcome to allah thank you yeah thank you thank you oh y'all okay welcome back again you have 15 minutes allocated for your time first five minutes is dedicated to a presentation that you'll be given to reward the last 10 minutes will be dedicated to questions and answers be mindful of the time clock in front of you there make sure you are able to answer all five questions okay thank you thank you is this going to go up on this can you can you guys see the screen i'm looking at it yeah so are we ready to go yeah whenever we read wonderful good evening i'm grateful for the opportunity to introduce you to my firm california financial services or cfs before i begin i do want to recognize and complement the board and staff for their commitment to transparency in the process since my time is short i will rely on notes to make sure i hit all the important points my name is steve gald if selected cfs will staff the project with two municipal financial advisors my name is steven gald and i'll be the district's primary contact i've been supporting school districts for over 20 years and worked and i've worked on a diverse basket of clients including big and small urban and rural and programs that utilize all the different types of financings i will be supported by jesse landry who's here with me who has over 12 years of experience working with school districts including supporting some of the most diverse funding programs in the state two important points about our team first jesse and i have the capabilities and the expertise to provide all the services you've requested this may be in contrast to some of the other teams that interview who have one senior person supported by someone who's much more junior or firms that may just provide to you just a long list of people who may in certain instances work on your pro your project secondly our municipal advisor team is supported by a deep bench of non-municipal financial advisor experts these experts include past school district cbo's state funding experts cpas and school auditors one of the things that makes california financial services unique is we focus specifically on public school districts early on we identified the challenges faced by public school districts were unique and we committed to develop expertise specifically to target those challenges we have continued this focus for 32 years though this approach limits the number of bond transactions we can manage in a single year we remain committed our our singular focus on the school community allows us to bring forward a broader array of expertise to our clients we have experts in all the major funding sources of for school projects and our team works with our clients to design and implement comprehensive comprehensive funding programs that best meet their goals for clients this often means turning over every stone when looking for funding sources and evaluating funding sources and providing robust pre and post issuance engagement with staff board as well as the community in recent years post-issuance engagement has become an even bigger priority for districts in fact we currently provide post-issuance engagement for many more districts than we provide issuance advising services for in addition to general obligation bonds over the last 32 years we have worked with our clients to identify and implement solutions in the area of state grant funding redevelopment pass-through financing developer mitigation and melloroos districts sometimes these these solutions include the issuance of debt long and short-term debt and sometimes they do not we are committed to provide the best solution to our clients independent of how it affects issuance volume or timing this discipline is reflected in our process our processes can be broken down into five components built on a recognition there are no typical programs and that our primary role is to educate our clients and empower them to make effective decisions we start every project with a comprehensive program evaluation striving to understand the goals of the district their resources and challenges our evaluation is much broader than just simply analyzing the district's bonding capacity once we understand the district's goals and constraints we develop options that balance the various trade-offs often faced by school districts once funding options are developed we endeavor to educate the district staff and the board focusing specifically on information that you will need to make good decisions once a strategy is approved we apply our years of experience to implement the solution in the best way possible with particular focus on execution and engagement though no two programs are alike our experience teaches us that often the issuance of debt is the easy part the real challenges are managing the trade-offs that must be made in a way that so stakeholders feel it reflects their priorities thank you for giving us this opportunity i speak for the entire firm when i say we are excited to be part of the alum rock team all right we'll go ahead and proceed to the questions uh border vice president bomb yes yes give me a second here okay very well uh thank you for your presentation oh i'll get into you know a meaty part of uh the business here in light of possible increases in interest rates in the future could you tell us about some of the ways your firm could help mitigate the interest rate risk for the district on issued bonds sure great question i'll go ahead and handle that so i think there's there's a few ways that we would help mitigate that risk i think um one of the first would be uh to be able to develop a strategy for the district to increase its credit credit rating with the the credit rating agencies we know that there was a uh a couple decreases in those ratings back in 2017 to the moody's and standard and poor's ratings for the district's credit the positive is is that when we look through the um through the metrics that affect the district the district's av the other the other financial characteristics of the district you're in a pretty good spot um most of the reason the rationale for those downgrades back in 2017 and 2019 were related to some of the past district management practices and some of the internal controls being prepared so we've seen that the district has made great strides in developing some of those policies and and really focusing in on some of those internal controls so what about one of our thoughts on how we can help the district's interest rate environment moving forward is to be able to increase that credit rating through an engagement process that involves those credit rating agencies and through the bond enhancement uh the bond insurers that would also be included on the bonds that get issued so what we would recommend is that the district rather than waiting until the next time it needs to issue bonds that we engage in that process right now and the reason why we think that's important to do now is that by providing them the information showing them the progress we've made we'll be able to identify if there's any additional things that these rating agencies are looking for and it'll give us an opportunity opportunity to address those prior to that bond issuance so that way we're not waiting around we'll be able to capture the market in a timely manner while interest rates are a little bit lower and also have that process rolling where we can get a higher credit rating for the district and and just to state that credit rating is very important because that directly impacts the cost of borrowing for the district and that ultimately directly impacts the taxes that your your community is paying and the amount of facilities that you can fund for those projects thank you over the past several years arusd has made substantial progress in bringing stability accountability and transparency back to the district how would you approach the role of financial advisor with this progress in mind i think that this ties in well with what jesse had began to discuss as it relates to the rating agencies i think at this point um when we had reviewed the information and watched several your board meetings and and the actions that are being taken i think the good news here is many of the concerns that both the public as well as the rating agencies and county has had you are well on your way to remedying and putting in processes uh both policies and practices that that support good decision making so now really what it is as a for as your financial advisor it's really plugging in or helping you advocate to the important uh stakeholders so in this case uh jesse mentioned the first two the first one the first group there are rating agencies these are agencies that we go to and ask them to provide independent insight and kind of a score on your bonds the second one are liquidity providers or bond insurers and then the third one which jesse didn't get into is really the county what we would recommend and what we would do on your behalf is immediately um start the process of creating and telling your story um proactively reaching out to each one of these um these uh agencies and and and companies before you needed to access the market walking them through the myriad of things that you've done as well as potentially doing a full review of what your current policies and practices are and try to help you identify are there any holes in there that are that these agencies and these folks are going to really zoom in on are there small changes small things that we can do maybe taking something from practice and just simply converting it to a policy that puts you in the best position possible again i think that at this point we've got a pretty good story to tell as your financial advisor we would take seriously our responsibility to tell it [Music] how will you help our district increase our ratings as we work with the bonds program well i i did cover some of that already so you know maybe i'll talk about some of the other engagement processes that we would see would be important um you know i think you know as steve talked about what our process involves is is really looking at the district's overall program because we can't make decisions about bonds in isolation when we decide that we're going to issue bonds we really want need to look at the whole picture we need to look at work with your construction manager and understand what the timing and drawdown schedules and expenditures look like so we can develop a plan that actually works for you and this is important because your the district has a ton of options available right now you have you know over 200 million dollars in authorization right now from uh measure uh jay and i that are out there but really the question is how do you best access that what we don't want to have is a situation where the district's issuing all the money that it can and and the money's just sitting in the bank not our you know in the taxpayers are paying for that money and then we're not utilizing those for projects so as steve mentioned our first step is really just looking peeling back and looking at the big picture stepping back so we can see how do we combine transactions are there opportunities for us to put refundings and new money transactions together in order to save the district on cost of issuance and save the district on having lower interest costs so it's really for us is an opportunity to look at the big picture and build a structure and build a plan and it's not a plan that we build today and it's set in stone it's a plan that we come back to and we looked at time and time and as it relates to the rating agencies this is the type of forethought and planning that radiating agencies want to see they don't want to see a program that's reactive they don't want a program that you know they don't want to see districts that say i'm going to issue 10 million dollars of bonds because i can issue those bonds they want to see that you went through the process of identifying exactly what the needs are and that you can quickly move from the issuance of debt into the expenditure for projects so i think again it's really just a matter of putting your getting your story together and then making sure that the rating agencies know it but understanding that it's going to be a process you know they're not going to upgrade you all the way to the top for the first time thank you remember travis oh you kind of touched on mine but uh the taxpayers are going to pay for the bond and for the and the investors are going to going to collect the interest or profits how much of that money come comes back to the community so how much of the money comes back to the community generally speaking i'll ask answer in one context generally speaking even with low with a lower rating we get very good interest rates as public school districts in the market general obligation bonds are very very secure for investors so we use a term repayment ratio which is the ratio of how much money the community gets in projects versus how much the money the community pays in payments over time generally speaking even with your current rating you should be able to achieve somewhere around a one seven or a one eight repayment ratio as we which means for every dollar of projects the community over the life of the bonds will pay about you know one dollar and eighty cents or one dollar and seventy five cents as we move forward with kind of rehabilitating your credit um we would expect to be able to compress that down to like a 1-5 or even a 1-4 depending on market conditions i think what the critical part for our what our clients have found to be the most critical part isn't so much the what's the dollars and sense of it when engaging with the community it really is what are the projects and do the projects meet the needs of the community in a timely manner and can it be tied back to the amount of money so if i build a school or if i build a if i build a classroom am i paying 1.6 times for that classroom it's an effective classroom that's doing what it's supposed to do versus paying 1.6 maybe for professional services charges or something like that and it's really again it's engaging with the community both pre and post issuance to make sure they they're seeing that connection between the money you folks are raising the taxes they're paying and then the benefit that's going to the student all right uh here's the last question has your firm ever been the subject of or been involved in an investigation that resulted from your work with clients no we have not and and maybe i'll uh i'll use our extra time if possible maybe to just continue on with what steve had talked about um you know our goal as far as the uh you know how much goes towards the project our goal in this when it's really boiled down our goal is to get as much money uh from that that's coming from the taxpayers to put that towards projects we want to see as much money as possible be put towards the projects and that's what our plan is it's not a plan that's going to have as many bond issuances as possible it's going to have as few bond issuances as possible because that's going to help us with those fixed costs and it's going to help us put the district in a situation where it can put money directly over in projects rather than putting money towards interest or putting money towards financial services arrangements things like that so when we take on this fiduciary role it really is a responsibility that we view ourselves as an extension of the board an extension of staff and we take a responsibility that that we need to be able we need to be doing things and developing the plan that fits your community and that fits the board that you guys can stand up here and be proud of all right uh thank you that's the extent of the questions uh the next is isom thank you very much thank you uh mr president can i um motion for a 10-minute break now that i mean we've interviewed four of six firms and i think it might be good to you know allow staff and trustees to have a small break sure let's go for seven minutes okay does that sound good okay is it undoable or do we need a ten minute no seven is good that's very very precise somebody with the door okay so who's come excuse me who's compiling the physics [Music] uh i think i heard the phone going off my phone somebody's dinging oh um you're not here right um that's so true [Music] but i told them today i can't um [Music] this weekend you're having some time off from football no there's still the super bowl is that the sunday no it's next sunday it's next right my husband and i are into we didn't even know the niners were playing what's happening but then we were in a too so we're in a blur anyways right now that happened for my husband who claims that he's not into sports right so he was totally into watching the whole thing and now he's soccer because mexico won last night right nice that they're getting ready for the cup everybody get the summer okay i gotta watch i gotta follow that [Laughter] thank you very much i i was talking to somebody that whoever the yeah we're talking about soccer we're in free time whoever in the program got a couple seconds why i don't know more about soccer we're gonna have our own little mini cup in alberta yeah what's the point i'll share with the world next thursday i'm looking forward to that so it's in qatar you went all the way to south africa don't be shy you say maybe never say never you never know that's true in november all right 729 not sure president there he is he's coming back send it to you hello hello how are you how are you i was just greeting you guys that's all go ahead and take care of that all right at 7 29 we're going to go ahead and reconvene our meeting tonight we brought some booklets and people like those as well thank you so much i apologize to those online you know if this is then do i need to be closer to the microphone or if it's good he will tell you okay oh yeah i'm quite short thank you patricia [Music] okay welcome back um again just to remind you you have a full 15 minute for your presentation the first five minutes are allocated to a presentation to the board and the last 10 minutes are dedicated to questions and answers be mindful of the time clock and make sure that you get to all of the questions okay thank you all right thank you very much did we start now i'm just making sure the timer is working okay so hi uh we are with isom advisors my name is mikiko sato and i have been working with california school districts too since uh and my name is jeff pickett also with isom advisors uh been working with california school districts since 2000 awesome and just with the time constraint i'm going to walk through the presentation and jeff will take most of the questions so first of all thank you so much for the opportunity to present tonight um the first slide up here um is a brief overview of our firm so we are a full service planning campaign and financial advisory firm and we've been the leading financial advisor to school districts since 2011 based on the number of financing we work throughout california we've listed some of our local clients in the bay area there billow you'll notice that we work with many of your neighboring school districts but we also wanted to point out that we have worked with some school districts that have gone through some grand jury reports financial hardship so we have a lot of experience working with them as well i know there's a lot of ways to slice and dice this but we like to look at the number of general obligation bond financings for california school districts and by that metric we have been the leader in this field every in every year since 2011.
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they were used for testing and vaccination efforts we were active in our community we provided testing at our schools we provided vaccinations at our schools contact tracing that's going on right this minute actually to ensure that our staff and our students know when it is safe for them to return to being in person in the classroom we engaged in community forums where we battled misinformation about vaccines about the transmission and spread of covet 19 and informing our parents about what resources were available to them and lastly the development of safety protocols to ensure that our staff our students and those we serve can visit our sites safely and access their education part of that is planned upgrades to our heating and air conditioning and ventilation systems which is beyond the additional elf air filters that are present in all of our classrooms our office spaces and public areas additionally we have planned outdoor learning spaces that we will be adding to our sites so our facilities department under the direction of patty neely did a tremendous job during the year of distance learning adding some of those spaces to our campuses and upgrading existing spaces beautiful and so we will be adding to those already existing spaces so our our teachers and our sites have access to additional covered spaces that have wi-fi access that have power right like all it's not just a shade structure right so these are really spaces designed to uh have an opportunity to do learning and instruction in those spaces additionally through our lcap process we heard loud and clear the need for more staff at our sites and so these funds have been used and i i've detailed uh some of the the categories of staff we've supported 89 additional teachers district-wide 19 additional counselors 12 additional social workers 11 psychologists 11 career and college readiness specialists 10 additional community liaisons and 6 additional speech and language pathologists so i'm very proud of the support of the board and all of our uh human resources departments who worked around the clock through the summer and the beginning of the school year in order to make sure that we had high quality candidates to fill all all of these right and so these are not just how many um when i you see the number these are actual employees these are not we wanted to hire 89 teachers but we only hired 80.
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um up and including 2021. so what's the key to our success we are a consulting firm so our biggest asset is our staff um you can see on this slide slide three that we show our staff as spokes we are a team and what makes us unique is that all of us are dedicated to working with california school districts um and all of us have 10 plus years of experience working with california school districts one thing we also pride ourselves on is that the people who interview are also the people who are going to be working with you so jeff and i will be your main context moving forward i also wanted to highlight brian moore in the brown circle on the bottom he has experience working with standard and poor's and so when we work with credit challenge school districts he steps in and helps school districts frame and tell their credit story most effectively and then finally you know what we notice when reviewing your bond program is that this community is incredibly supportive of the district over time and i think it's very important as your municipal advisor is that we rebuild that maintain it and garner it because that's going to give you access to further funding moving forward um you know we pride ourselves on our honesty and integrity sorry am i i didn't move forward in my notes um you know we are um very proud of that and we haven't um you know had any settlements with the sec for questionable practices um we also understand the need for a transparent process not just in the selection of the financing team but in the implementation of the bond program moving forward and then finally long-term partner long-term plan you know some financial advisor will come in and say we have the plan for you this is how you implement it but that's not how we operate part of our success is that we work with the school district you know without knowing your capital facility needs we can't design a bond program without knowing what's affordable for your community we can't design a bond program so we work with the district and the people who are knowledgeable about about alum rock to build a program that works specifically or to your district something that is dynamic and tailored so that it reflects your community's values okay very quick so i know that we are not the low-cost proposal that you're considering tonight but hopefully in this very short presentation we were able to convey that we have a lot of experience working with california school districts and specifically also with clients with school districts in the bay area that have experienced some financial challenges and difficulties in their past and so we we know all the works as it takes to make sure especially as you're moving forward with your bond program again to make sure that you have a transparent and responsible fund program and then local firm and local experience both jeff and i live in the bay area we can zoom down here you know we talked about the transparent process that would involve a lot of presentations to the boards your bond oversight can lead to your to um your community members you're a short drive down the 280 or the 680 um to come and meet with you and i'm finally implementing responsible and transparent bond programs um as i mentioned you know to maintain and garner community support that's the main thing is so that this bond program reflects the needs of your community and the values of your community i hope you're okay thank you all right so i have 15 minutes do you want to add anything i just want to say uh with the last couple seconds here that you know if you look at our client list and you ask us about our client list many of them have stayed with us for the 10 years that we've been around they're all long-term clients and there's a reason to stick with us because we do a good job and we work closely with them all right uh we'll proceed to the questions portion of these are you here uh board vice president obama okay thank you mr president so uh thank you for your presentation i'm going to start off with a question that you know gets to the heart of the matter in many ways in light of possible increases in interest rates in the future could you tell us about some of the ways your firm could help mitigate the interest rate risk for the district on issued bonds yeah i'd love to address that's a great question because everyone's uh concerned about that these days whether you're a homeowner or a bond issuer are rising um that's going to be a fact going forward it looks like and what i'd like to point to is what we talked about right in the beginning and actually throughout our presentation the amount of experience we have the number of financings we do what that gives us is pricing power in the industry and it gives us sway with the underwriting to bond underwriting and financial firms that you're going to work with the banks that you're going to work with that are helping set those interest rates we talk and work very closely with them um we have a lot of pricing power when they go to set the interest rates we can say you know what we're in the market this week with three other transactions we know where interest rates should be we think you need to tighten up your interest rates your rates you need to do a little bit better and because we work with them so closely and because we know the market um honestly we often get our way and i was gonna just ask that you know one of the important ways to set the stage correctly or well in the beginning is to go through a competitive process to select your underwriter and that really you know lets them know that they need to perform and um and also ask them to report back about the pricing results [Music] board member yes thank you um over the past several years arusd has made substantial progress in bringing stability accountability and transparency back to the district how would you approach the role of financial advisor with this recent progress in mind well i think that's where um you know the initial we could see the initial month the initial few months first few months is just working with your management team and the board and even the community to make presentations to show you what we want to do what we have planned and then of course work with you as makiko's mentoring does that work for you guys what what do you need when do you need your money building that trust and taking the time to build that trust i think it's important not rushing into it financing not rushing into selling bonds just because we need to even if interest rates are rising we're going back to the last question we want to take the time to do this the right way in a transparent way it's going to take working with the rating agencies and trying to bring back um you know a strong credit rating to the district and that's where we mentioned brian moore who gives us tremendous insight in that process all right thank you um and speaking of raising um our our rates how will you help our district increase our ratings as we work with the bonds program i do see on page 11 that you address that any other ways that you will be helping to increase our district ratings working directly with the district management and building the story figuring out what has happened in the past and we've obviously done our reading we've done our research and we know from an outsider's perspective but it'd be good to work with the superintendent and the assistant super superintendents to figure out from your perspective what is going on how do we stem you know you've had declining enrollment that's obviously the big uh way you get your funds is how many students you put in the seats a lot of school districts are dealing with that and we work with a lot of school districts and go before credit rating agencies with districts have done that and then we show the credit rating agencies a plan going forward how are you going to mitigate that loss what are you going to do primarily on the expense side going forward because you're losing the revenues i'm just gonna add that you know i think it's important that you frame the discussion with the reading agency that you're not just responding to their question but you're able to tell your story your way um and then also you know we work with a lot of different types of school districts and sometimes we get the county office of vet involved they're at the table and they're they're also supporting the district um and you know saying what they're doing to make sure that the district is financially strong and um and stable thank you all right uh board member charles the fact the taxpayers are going to pay for the bond and the investors are going to collect the interest or profits how much of that money will come back to the community well i think you know the community you mentioned earlier was very supportive of these students i think the way you show the community is getting what they're what they voted for as you show them the new buildings the new facilities or the rehab abilities facilities how's that impacting the students that's how the community gets back what they're putting into your bond program better classrooms better educational environment for the students i think the key is that we want to make sure that the interest rates are set competitively initially so that you are getting good market interest rates and then we continue to monitor your bond program for instance i'm sure other others have shared this already but you do have opportunities to refund some of your bonds to generate taxpayer savings for your taxpayer you know right now based on the current interest rate environment um and so i think those are the key and also you know tying back to some of your other questions too you know making sure that the ratings are as strong as they can be um you know we work with you closely to make that plan that credit plan um to make sure that taxpayers um are yeah not overpaying for these bonds and we also want to be mindful of the tax rate impact to your community um you know every community is different their tax rate threshold is you know different um and so we want to make sure and work with the board and the community to make sure that whatever how restructuring the bonds meets their ability to you know pay pay so that's an important part of our job as well all right um has your firm ever been the subject of or been involved in an investigation resulted from your work with a client i no all right thank you for that very prompt and direct response all right that concludes the extent of the questions that we have for you um thank you for your participation um jess will go ahead and uh explain what's the next one [Music] i'm sorry i didn't i didn't quite hear you about president i think we have one more firm oh yes uh dale scott is next thank you thank you thank you for having us uh um you oh thank you thank you you so much [Music] so she's gonna be safe okay welcome back um again just to remind you you have a minutes allocated for your uh total presentation the first five minutes it's for presentations of the board and last 10 minutes are allocated to questions and answers a total of five questions just be mindful of this time okay thank you all right all right ready to begin good evening uh board members superintendent um my name is mark farrell i'm with company i apologize that she couldn't be here tonight he has had a previously scheduled vacation with his wife so i'm here in instead i've been with dale scott for 10 years and 20 years in the industry working with school districts on general general obligation bond programs cops trans cfds you name it um and so thinking about bond programs and bond program successes and there's a couple different ways to look at it and financial advisors a lot of times we'll talk about the number of elections that they've won or the number of bond financings they've worked on and we've definitely had our share their 250 elections over 1500 financings and i'm sure you've heard a lot about that tonight from from uh some of the other firms that have sat here but i'd like to maybe take a little bit of different tech and think about the future and think about another real critical component of success and that is having your community feel that your bond program is successful and so what i bought in this presentation are some examples of information that we help our clients put together to help communicate the bond program successes to your community so the citizens bond oversight committee obviously plays the role of the watchdog for the community making sure that the district is spending its proceeds only on the board for bond approved project or voter approved projects but that community that committee is also in a unique position to be able to share information with the community and so in the first tab your presentation the cdoc mailer we've put together a couple examples for you of uh reports mailers that we designed with the bond oversight committee members to be mailed to all households in the district we've got example from santee school district down in san diego county and then another for evergreen school district just down the road and both of them have a little bit of a different style the santee report is a little bit more numbers focused evergreen is a little more project focused with more photos but the important thing is yeah as that independent oversight committee having regular communication go out to them to your community can really establish and maintain credibility in your bond program and when you go back out to the community in the future having that kind of background information coming from that citizens oversight committee on a regular basis can really be beneficial so in addition to kind of ongoing constant communications you may have kind of ad hoc good news that you want to share with with the community so in the second tab kind of appropriately named press release we've got a sample press release from east siding and high school district last year they financed a series of bonds saved the community 15 million dollars save taxpayers 15 million dollars and so obviously one we want to get that news out to the community to make sure that they're and knowing that the school district is being goods towards the taxpayer dollars so we work with our clients when those types of things happen to put together press releases and make sure that those get in kind of the local media outlets we've also noticed that a lot of clients don't really have robust information about their bond program on their website and so in the web content tab i've got a couple examples of uh pages we've helped design for palm springs unified and yuba community college district and again if the district isn't putting out that information about the bond program and your community is going to get that second and third hand and the information that they have may not really be accurate and so the pieces we've designed oops forgot to advance my slides here the pieces we've designed are just you know to help supplement the information that the school district will put out you know the photos of the different projects and the status of the different projects and then the last section is a little bit unique and it's an article from inc magazine it's about a project for jefferson houston union high school district for affordable uh staff housing we developed the financing plan for jefferson high to fund the project it's about a hundred over a hundred units of affordable rental housing and the district has gotten quite a bit of positive press for that project i think one of the things that's important to us is that really and demonstrates one of the goals that we have working with our clients is really to help put together programs that advance the educational vision of school districts and so i wanted to kind of share some of these these kind of ideas and it's a little bit of how we think differently about school district bond programs and holistically about the bond programs we don't just focus on making sure the transactions of success or the election is a success but really try to build long-term success for the district um so your community understands what you're doing so the next time you go out for a bond election or parcel tax election they're already in support of you all right uh we're going to go ahead and proceed with questions to this point we'll start off with what vice president trump yes thank you mr president uh you know um you know thank you for your presentation and you know especially your work with uh you know some of our neighboring districts and i'll get to one of the um most important uh affairs of the matter in light of possible increases in interest rates in the future could you tell us about some of the ways your firm could help mitigate the interest rate risk for the district on issued bonds well um you know the hard part when when richmond bonds is school district uh it's been very difficult to time the market first and foremost when a school district issues issuing bonds it should really i think be driven by what your project needs are and the timing of your projects um one of the rules with issuing bonds is you need to spend those proceeds within about three years of issuance so we have to be careful about trying to let's say issue too many bonds too early to take advantage of interest rates if you realistically can't spend those proceeds within that three year time period one of the things we tend to look at too for for our school district clients especially when issuing general obligation bonds is we do a lot of our bond sales of what's called a competitive sale process that's where we as the financial advisor would structure the financing and then essentially put it out to bid and allow every investment bank in the world to to submit a bid to buy your bonds on that particular day we actually just did a financing for clexco unified school district earlier this week very similar ratings as uh as alumrock they got six different bids investment banks the two uh the the winning bid and the cover bid the difference between interest rates was point zero zero zero four percent so four ten thousandth of a percentage point the third place bid was .05 percent higher and the sixth bid was point three percent higher and so you don't necessarily know what investment bank is going to provide you the best deal on any day if you go the negotiated sale route but with the competitive sale you you at least know that that winning bid that winning bidder is giving you the best interest rate on that day all right next question is board member thank you over the past several years arusd has made substantial progress in bringing stability accountability transparency back to the district how would you approach the role of financial advisor with this recent progress in mind i think one of the things that really goes to the the five minutes i just spent talking about providing information to the community throughout the entire bond program so utilizing the bond oversight committee and not just to have them you know review and put together a report that sits on the shelf but actually get that information out to the community i think it's also important in your school board meetings when we are presenting information about about the finance things to make sure we're disclosing all of the information about the financing that the district might undertake as well as providing different options i know for example you know in looking at bond refinancings and there's a trend to do a lot of taxable advantage fundings today and while that may be good for a school district i think a lot of times not all the information is shared with the school district you know what's the cost of doing the taxable advanced refunding versus waiting a year two years three years down the road where you could do that refinancing as a tax exempt current refunding and so we want to make sure we're providing you all of that information providing that to the board in an open board meeting so that your community also is aware of that information and then the board can make the decision that's best for the district having all that information so how will you help our district increase our rating as we work with the bonds program sure you know i think it's very difficult for a financial advisor to change your rating i think looking at the the district's finances i've done quite a bit of you've improved your fund balance quite a bit and that's really one of the big things that the rating agencies look at they look at your spending they look at your fund balances and that trend over time and you know working with some of your neighboring districts you know we know that the economy and the demographics here support higher ratings than the district has um you've had you know double a category ratings in the district prior and so really one of the big things that they're going to look at is is your financial performance and so we can help present your finances in the best light but you know looking at where you are today and you've got about a 16 fund balance on restricted fund balance which is much improved from where it was when the rating agencies downgrade you downgraded you and i think it actually would warrant an upgrade just looking at that but if you also look at your multi-year projection in 2023 and 24 that fund balance is projected to drop to seven percent so i think it would be very difficult for the rating agency to upgrade your rating just looking at that so we'd have to be able to present the story to the rating agency of well this is the fund balance on paper but here's the plan that the district has to manage the potential uh decline in revenue from declining enrollment for the loss of federal funding et cetera to help tell that story so it's not just looking at a seven percent ending fund balance on the page but knowing that the board is already thinking about what changes need to be made to keep that fund balance more stable taxpayers are going to going to pay for the bond and the investors are going to collect the interest or profits so how much of that money will comes back to the community well i just there's a couple ways to to look at that i mean one i mean the community is getting the bond money for the project so obviously um that is the number one thing that the community is getting if you look at the interest that you're going to pay on the bond you know one of the things we look at very carefully and monitor our abilities to refinance bonds in order to reduce interest rates in the future and 100 percent of those savings go back to to the community and lower their tax bills and so the price release for example that we did for for eastside that 15 million dollars in savings and so you know touching again earlier on what i talked about with the different types of refundings you know we'll do that analysis we present that to uh staff and to the board and then the board can decide if you know with our recommendation what's kind of the most appropriate timing to do those types of refinancing uh and then lastly you know the the bonds that the district sell you know can be purchased by people in the community so potentially they can own uh some of the bonds and and you know they would be earning the interest uh on the on the bonds that you sell right um we close off with last question which is has therefore remember been the subject of or been involved in an investigation that resulted from your work with the client uh no from our work with clients now all right thank you very much that's the extensive question okay i'm assuming the boards in the process of submitting their scores um once that has been completed uh so we'll calculate the scores we're going to have the firms wait out there until the calculation is complete so they're not here in here while that calculation is being done so once that calculation is done we'll invite all the firms back and then board president um ditto you can announce kind of who was the leading finalist we're going to be able to show that here right uh thank you yes [Music] hmm [Music] oh there it is um mmm uh foreign um uh um hmm you perfect oh hmm um what huh uh um no things have changed significantly in terms of communication different information a lot more about what we used to do i've been in our house living in our house for 21 years and so i can't see how this could change in front of communicating to the public in the backspace [Music] well some [Music] marketplace yes if you want him to put it on some oh um resultation sure out there that's part of the transparency are the are the results up there on the screen oh here we go they're going to be shared right now and zoom oh okay thank you all right so now we're at item 2.02 and with uh the second component which is this election of the desired firm um at this point is there any further discussion from the board the scores are pretty much what they are unless there's uh some pressing issue that you want to raise it's information that was not available to us for some reason president quintero yes um i'm not sure if it's possible the way we have it set up now or at some point are we gonna also show the individual ratings for the um for each trustee or only this cumulative score just just in the interest of transparency um i believe that they were all pulled from the individual scores that we all sent and this is a result of that so uh the same thing last time yeah are we are we able to pull out all the other spreadsheets or is this uh just all the raw numbers like yeah there you go so if you look at your individual strengths that's where i'm showing the individuals oh i see can we scroll it across oh if you look at zoom they're there yeah can we scroll it all the way across [Music] okay that's it just to make sure that we it's all transparent and everyone can see thank you also thank you uh since i have my mic open here thank you to all of our team for as trusted alluded to earlier for making this a very transparent very smooth um process and i mean it's a testament to the work of the whole team here so thank you everyone all right further comments from the board yes i think i have my hand up mr president all right uh just the question on the format of the scores uh i i take it that this is an average of all the the scores that we gave for each firm as opposed to a sort of like a a total number uh you know based on josephus indicating that that is correct okay uh further comments from the word um i'm just wondering now uh since we read it do we say it out loud um i know that visually it's there do we voice the outcomes maybe or just uh appoint the firm that clearly do we mention any of that or we just uh at this point if in your comments you want to disclose what it it's it's been uh broadcast live uh on youtube it's been recorded for for everybody to see okay so at this point i think the public can see it's been recorded in multiple forms and it'll all be reported through our actions if i can add them to my comments that's okay um so i i do want to voice congratulations to everybody for coming you know thank you for taking the time to do the interview and go through this transparent process as we've mentioned many times and just for those that might not be able to see um i do want to say del scott and company incorporation were the ones that got the most votes uh as an average um but i do want to thank uh everyone for doing your homework and preparing for this interview uh tonight for the comments from the board no no um yet we have to take action so given that uh uh president i don't know if you saw my hand uh president keith you're gonna speak go ahead and i'll old or how do you wanna give me a quick second so given the fact that we uh see the deal scott i received a 4.32 score um i am asking for a motion from the board to move move along with the process that was outlined at the beginning of the process so um motion two movements a motion from board member charlie's second second from board member uh comments uh board member yeah i i thank trustee pham or vice president fam for uh clarifying about the uh the nature of the scoring as we have it here and my understanding is that this is the average per question for each of them and i'm not quite sure i just want to make sure again to make sure we don't skip over anything can we confirm that the total number of points received is in fact in line with these averages because i'm i wasn't exactly a math major so i'm i'm not 100 sure that an average score necessarily correlates with the total score and my understanding is that we um will select on the total number of points for each candidate so that it may align i'm just not sure mathematically if that's necessarily the case so i don't know maybe going back to the to that other screen or if jose could just confirm that the average score actually correlates with um the total score all right that's a fair question and i'm sure it will help us avoid issues later on exactly sure if we square that all the way so i do appreciate the question we're all we're in the middle of a we have a motion and a second on the floor the vote hasn't been taken so now's the time to go ahead and clarify that um if you see on your screen uh we'll remember right i don't know yeah i can see um so is each so this is one candidate right this is the what we're looking at is field men roll up and associates yes that's correct correct they're the first ones to present so i'm not i think i'll say how how challenging would it be to um instead of showing the averages or in addition to showing the averages to show the totals for each candidate or or even if dr bauer or the board wants to entertain me the question that i'm asking is it is it our understanding that we are selecting based on the total number of points as opposed to the average score per answer um well we'll pose it to the body right now we'll get that clarification on the spot are are you looking for a total raw number of points are you looking for the highest average at the end of the day i'm assuming that you're looking for the ones who got the highest whether it's average or raw number correct exactly and so if uh and so the the i'm getting a consensus of yes from here in the room uh board member fam can you clarify your position and then make your comments yes so so what i i was going to do online with the trustee batehorano's uh question there uh in reference you know in july we use a total number of points as opposed to an average so the thing is i can i can see where you know uh in order to avoid any illegal inconsistencies it would be a lot more transparent and easily understandable to use a total of points as opposed to an average point all right well we have council here and they can let us know if we have to hold for use the same process as we did back in the summer um or is there any difference it's the same we use the same we we use the same what the same process the same process sir we use the same process but i i'm if i remember correctly whether it was for the appointment of um trustees or the selection of attorneys we've always gone with the total number um as the number and and more specific i think for this particular process i would want to ensure that what we messaged out to the firms and to the public whatever that was that someone can review that aligns with what we are about to vote on so maybe we may have used a different process in the past although i don't think we did but i think it's more important what did we say for this particular process to the public and to the firms about what would determine the um selection so that that process was outlined right here on the spot amongst us and so jess would remind us did your comments say highest number or highest score was the highest score highest score i believe that was did we send any communication out to people or or was it no the process was decided here uh at the beginning of the board meeting and they're very transparent and because i believe they're actually calculating as we speak so we might be able to get both so i think i mean we're able to do both getting ready to respond to your question trustee they're crunching the numbers so thank you okay but in the case that they are they do end up different it sounds like we did confirm that mr serna um the decision that we made was the point the highest number of points was what we agreed upon i guess we can go back and check the video later on oh the average no and if that is the case points so we have points score and average if that's the case then maybe we we might need legal counsel to help us sort what that actually means if if the number crunchy shows that it's the same thing then all this move obviously yeah let's go ahead and they're right now crunchy numbers so that way we don't have to get right unless the highest number and the average unless there's a tie yeah of the highest the highest is the highest [Music] you all right so with that uh what the number is p and crunch uh we came back and the results are the same the the well not the same but the highest score uh was received by dale scott company with 180 points so it correlates with the highest average so thank you for those questions i think they helped us clarify and avoid any issues oh okay all right um further comments from the board uh just to mr president just to thank you know uh thank all the firms for participating in uh putting and putting in a uh very good effort tonight all right for the comments all right um yeah i'd like to add to those comments thank you all for participating i think everybody came very difficult process to uh have to decide amongst well-qualified firms uh thank you for all your engagement and let's go ahead and move forward with the vote i'll go ahead and call [Music] call you as i see you initially um board member hi board member travis hi all right myself voting i in the affirmative uh we have unanimous the motion thank you i'm going to go ahead and adjourn this meeting at 8 29.
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no these are the actual people providing services to our students right now so uh the this slide here shows a little bit of the difference or shows the difference between uh what we used when we were uh planning the lcap last spring excuse me last spring in comparison to the amount that was actually delivered to the district through the governor's budget which was finally signed once our school year had actually begun already and so that total is broken up across different funds right so you'll see the the biggest bulk of that funds actually came in federal funds uh the biggest difference for a total difference of just over 50 million dollars so part of this is uh looking at the metrics that we have built into our lcap at this point in the year not all of those metrics do we have available data um yet but for many of them we do and so i shared here on the slides um a few of those pieces the first is graduation rate so the class of 2020 district-wide we saw a 92.3 rate uh continued with over 90 rate for the class of 2021.
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thank you good night oh we were gonna tell the firm we're gonna have the firm come back in and yeah let them know oh yes yes so we can't we can't adjourn yet we can't uh we we can adjourn we could just let them know that yeah okay for the decision do you want me to um shut down this um the zoom um crosstaking dead or whatever okay so i'll just shut it down
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uh our a to g completion again 52.8 to 52 percent uh students who demonstrate college preparedness um through the eap so here this is measured in the standardized casp and so um i i just want to highlight here uh that you know the previous results are from 1819 which are that's the the baseline year and then the results from 20 20 20 20 21 you actually see we improved upon those results those results happened during distance learning so the persistence of our students and our staff to meet this state obligation uh is to be applauded you know this is not something that we spend in a tremendous amount of resources and energy on because there are more important drivers than these tests but the conditions under which we had to do this and continue to show the growth of our students it's not so much about these results this is actually a reflection of the quality of instruction happening at all of our schools and that speaks to our purpose our five c's and the development of our technical skills dnf rates so the fall of 2020 the completion of the first semester of distance learning 28 of all grades given at the end of that semester were a d or an f and this fall that is 15.4 of all grades and again this is a tremendous resiliency on the behalf of our students and our teachers returning to in-person instruction and that's actually the lowest fall dnf rate in the last four years so that's before the pandemic so our our our folks are doing tremendous work we have the seal of by literacy so you can see there 1100 students in the class of 2020 and just over 1300 students for the class of 2021 and then enrollment and post secondary options so you'll see there was a slight decline here from 70 percent to 64 percent and that decline um happened almost entirely in two-year college enrollment i know this has been a discussion with our college partners about how to address this obviously the pandemic had a lot to do with why this is and as we continue to prepare our students to be a tg eligible and to show them the opportunities they have with the pledge to attended a two-year college tuition-free we expect that this enrollment will rebound um it will take some time and i know the collaborative has been discussing this but but we expect that this will rebound as the uh we continue to uh recover or um i would say make ourselves stronger i don't know if we're gonna recover from the pandemic we're gonna strengthen ourselves and we'll this uh enrollment will continue to improve uh and then uh lastly just in terms of expenditures in our plan we had a 157 million dollars worth of expenditures included we've spent as of the beginning of the year just over 42 million some expenditures that you don't see there yet because they are planned to be coming up so i mentioned those uh hvac projects in ventilation in those outdoor learning spaces so those um are in the planning process right now right we have uh architects dsa approval all of those component components and so actual work on those is slated to begin this fall and then obviously summer programs which we've expanded to include enrichment we're having opportunities for junior high students which we never had before will be happening this june so those are all expenditures not reflected yet in terms of where we are currently so with that this concludes my report and i welcome the opportunity for any questions all right thank you mr carmona any questions from the board miss randall terrell thank you for this report um i love that we're doing this now and right before we start thinking about doing the lcap process so this is this is awesome and the numbers are fantastic i i couldn't be any more pleased i was just wondering on the metrics for the the graduation enrollment dates would you happen to know the national average or the state average i do not know the national average the state average is much lower especially when you look at our low-income students the rate at which we graduate low-income students is a barometer of equity almost i don't want to say it's unmatched but the rate at which we graduate low-income students and have them prepared a to g we significantly outperform the state so that's um i don't take any responsibility for that work so that that's something as a district to be quite proud of absolutely thank you uh ms piercy um i really don't have any questions but i am i'm really pleased to see that did not drop as much from our rates of 2020 considering that was all and that was a tough year you know all online and i i think it's kudos to the teachers who worked hard that we didn't drop as much and you know in all these categories that we dropped granted but considering the awful year and all online i think the teachers did a good job let's hope it bounces back up again i like to say that our efforts last year were heroic i don't use that word lightly um i i think every staff member um i think our parents and our communities were heroic and so you know i i really think it's important we acknowledge their contributions as part of the educational system and the leadership of the board to institute a covet 19 waiver to take action when others didn't so you know from top to bottom this is an amazing community that we're a part of and we have the honor to serve and last year really was many heroic efforts up and down the line of folks involved with educating our students smith well i was going to say thank you and i was going to use the word remarkable but i think your word heroic is much more appropriate because we were going into such an unknown it was just out there how do you grab it when you can't get a hold of it and i would say heroic it's a much better term and thank you thank you yeah and i i think that if you look back on that year the key difference besides all the things that mr carmona said was the design of the professional development from the curriculum specialists based on the national online standards our teachers when we shifted were focused on engaging our kids creating communities as best they could right that's the heroic part because we we are outperforming many districts with similar demographics and as joe said we are above well above the state average so um you know the curriculum specialists just i mean a lot of people deserve uh a lot of credit but those guys really created targeted professional development and as you know all last summer our teachers were trained on national online standards and we're like the only district that did that i think that's the key difference maker i would just like to add a thank you to you mike you've been a wonderful leader and your team are just exceptional people and they're all heroes too so thank you i'd just like to commend everybody involved again going back to curriculum specialists to our teachers especially our frontline teachers who had to not only had to go through a lot during the pandemic but they actually kept this going for our kids and if you take a look at the numbers i'm amazed yeah we're well above the state average um and i think we're also performing some of our districts around us so uh that's great and talks about the resilience in our community and our students so thank you for all the work and thank you to the parents appreciate all the effort that they're putting in at home as well all right well thank you very much thanks mr carmona thank you next on our agenda is our public comments piece and i will go ahead and read the preamble here opportunities for public comments occur at the beginning of each agenda item and at this time for items not on the agenda persons wishing to address the board of trustees should complete a speaker request form which is a blue form available on the information table at the back of the room and submitted to the executive assistant prior to the meeting each speaker is limited to a maximum of five minutes and each topic in the item is limited to 20 minutes board members cannot immediately respond to public comments as stated on the speaker request form having said that i have about uh eight nine uh speaker request form for anaheim high school uh colonist name related so i'm gonna go ahead and restrict the minutes to three minutes for each speaker on that particular topic then i do have a walker high school speaker who wants to talk about a waka high school issue so let me start off with them and that's victorino supine go ahead come on now yes oh i'm sorry and then we do have our uh timer right there and that timer will beep when it is okay one minute warning all right so okay hi uh good evening board members uh my name is victorino supan i'm a father of conrad supan who is an 8th grader at walker oh good evening um so i'm not sure if this is the right venue but uh uh my son is uh uh is getting is having a uh how would they say um it started with a basketball tryouts and uh he was doing well and three kids gang up on him and he he tried to fight back and good thing coach former came and pulled him out of the group but it was deemed as mutual because he tried to defend himself against three kids um so and then i got a call from the school explaining what happened so i said and they said it's mutual so i said it's okay so i think it's a one-time incident but then there was a concern more because after that incident and part of that students that hurt my son posted in discord that my son threatened to shoot the school and after that other students joined in discord and dox them put his face his picture in discord and incited violence against my son they said to shoot him to punch him in the throat to hurt him and you know very hurtful words right called uh cass words my son so uh i wrote to the school i tried to explain this what happened i gave all the screenshots in discord and all that so they said they're going to look into it but i never really see any concrete action i was told i'm not privy to that information um so i said okay i trust the school they're doing the right thing so the second incident happened my son went to his friend jason because my son plays baseball for cyprus and crescent little league so he has a friend there who plays baseball with him and he wants to join the group and talk to them about baseball or sports and then one kid there said i we don't want you to be here i don't want you to come to this group right and my son stood his ground and said no why not it's it's these are they're also my friends and then there's a lot of trash talking and showing and and my son got punched in the head five times for standing up to this big kid um can i say his name but i okay abroad or not all right so so um so that was the second incident and again i wrote to the school and i said what are we going to do about it i said in one of my emails i said i predicted this by putting my son in that accusing him being a shooter or potential shooter of the school it put a target on him but everyone my son was telling me days weeks after that months people are asked haunting him and mocking him when are you going to shoot the school you better tell us we're going to beat you up before you shoot the school so everybody wants to like think or believe what was put in the discord in the social media so my son is not paying attention to this he just not paying attention he just avoid trouble he just walks and does his thing and and uh again i reached out to the school i wrote i said this is happening so what are we going to do about it i need your help to clear my son's name uh concrete steps needs to happen to vindicate my son that he never threatened to shoot the school right and as far as i said i suggest that if this student who fabricated the story if he can post in discord and uh to say that he fabricated it it was all lie it wasn't true and he apologized i think that would put it to bed uh so i suggested that so the school did administrator did talk to the student and and i was told they did right but and i was given a screenshot of it but when i asked my son where is it can you show it to me um they said oh it's my son said it's not there anymore they took it out so not i think they just maybe for a short period of time just to satisfy the request from the school administrator then they took it down they remove it and then they showed the screenshot to the to the administrator and said okay you've done your part and then uh again you know the daunting the mocking happened remember there was a tick tock video that came out on the last day of school that came out and again they're taunting my son are you going to shoot the school where are you going to shoot the school so i said don't come to school that last day because you know there's this tick tock video that came out and i don't want kids you know uh hurting him again and then this last again i appealed to the school there are several emails i wrote but i'm not getting responses and that's what brought me here and the third the third incident of recorded incident i'm not even counting those things that he was ostracized from groups he was told to leave groups of friends when he wants to join them and chat with them during break time he's always say leave we don't want you to be a part of a group thank you mr super i know your time is up but thank you for coming out and speaking to us and i'm going to have uh jaren meet with you right outside can i just do one one last so the third incident happened they make my son look stupid by writing his by vandalizing the school writing his name using a science experiment uh sanitizer and soap big letters his name and then they docked they poured water on him cold water they empty the entire water bottle on him and and my son didn't fight at all he just grabbed the water bottle emptied it and this this student did it several times to him right so i didn't wait for the school anymore to act because nothing's going to happen so i appreciate it thank you again i know i got to make sure that we just just just just want one one more point okay so what i did what i would suggest sir is i'm going to have jaren speak to you okay and and then uh jaren if you can go ahead and give us a update on this and what the school's done and what we have progress i really appreciate it for all board members uh and i'm sure jiren will follow up with you on that one okay thank you thank you thank you for giving me the time to speak appreciate it thank you all right um i'm going to ask the next few speakers to come in and again i'm just kind of reminding you uh because this item has plenty of speakers i'm going to restrict the time to three minutes each and as mr carl actually mentioned you will get a go through that one more process so that we remind everybody all right i will call the first speaker virginia carmelo okay then who actually put in the uh oh you did okay next time let's make sure that when they're here let them go ahead and put in so that we make sure that we are it's a we are able to go ahead and fix figure out uh how much speaking time each person gets okay so thank you very much so he's not here either okay all right shannon reavers good evening mr chairman board members of the board my name is shannon rivers i am currently the director of programming for the american indian resurgence native ways to college initiative here in los angeles county we are focusing on developing new curriculum within lausd and charter schools and schools throughout l.a county and anaheim orange county with regards to curriculum change or adoption and what we're looking at is we're hoping because my brother david back there and members of this committee have been successful in changing the columbus day to the indigenous peoples day here in anaheim we've been very successful at doing so my hope is is that we develop a new style curriculum not under ethnic studies not under anthropology but something that is american indian or indigenous studies what this does then it is opens up the opportunity for all students to take this class or this course within anaheim high school i know that we are looking at a test pilot here with anarm high school this is the suggestion here tonight that we develop a curriculum that is based on american indian or indigenous studies specifically that is focuses on the first nations people the tanga and other local indigenous tribes and nations that are here we have been placed under a social science we've been placed under ethnic studies or history and even anthropology and anthropology um has this idea that we no longer are here in fact there are over 170 000 native americans in la county a large population of them live in not only los angeles county but throughout los angeles itself and i would ask and argue that you would that you would have to understand the history of relocation for indigenous peoples and why there's such a large population here in l.a county uh and the and the um relocation act of 1940s and 1950s for indigenous peoples getting back to the curriculum however it is important for um we see a spike and a rise periodically in this country on prejudice and indigenous peoples are not immune to that unfortunately we've seen that with the teacher out at riverside unified school district and so what we would like to see is that a curriculum change or adoption into the curriculum that is currently existing and recognize that indigenous peoples native american people are not only here but play a significant role politically socially and economically within la county thank you thank you mr reverse all right our next speaker is david garcia good evening my name is david garcia and i had come before the board of trustees previously so i just want to echo what my friend has just said because it's truly important my name is david garcia i'm a member of the tom autumn nation desert people here in southern arizona we are the second largest fairly recognized tribe in the united states so i want what i would like to do is present basically what i had spoke about the international declaration on indigenous peoples so i would like to quote and it's basically affirming reaffirming and the concern and then recognizing so let me begin and i quote affirming indigenous peoples equal to all peoples to be different and to be respected as such affirming also contributing contributing to the diversity enriching the richness of civilization and cultures which constitute common heritage of human humankind affirming further all doctrines policies and practices based on or advocating superiority of peoples or individuals on the basis of national origin or racial religious ethnic or cultural difference differences are racist scientifically false legally invalid morally condemnable and socially unjust reaffirming for free dis free from discrimination of any kind concerned indigenous peoples have suffered from historic injustices as a result of causality consolalization and disposition welcoming and welcoming and an end to all forms of discrimination and oppression where they occur and recognizing that the situation of indigenous peoples varies from region to region and regional particularly in various historically and cultural background should be taken into consideration unquote so again let me just leave you with this just yesterday on the national news the washington skins had done away with their mask and now they're known as the washington uh commodores i believe the comrade commander commanders so having said that as i had said previously that throughout the united states indigenous people tribes are pushing for doing away with the mascot as well as the the name and so i bring it back to anaheim as it was said earlier by shannon rivers we were able to to suggest and then finally meet with the cultural heritage committee of anaheim and that was the beginning of the relationship so that's that's what i want to leave you with so thank you and good evening thank you mr garcia thank you all right elizabeth barrios garcia good evening buenas noches my name is lisa barrios graciano i am an auhsd alumni three of my kids graduated from the district and i'm going on my 21st year teaching here at the district i'm here today to ask you that our district recognized indigenous people's day and that we form a relationship with the elders in our community the indigenous elders so that we can go ahead and form bonds that are long overdue i am on the team writing the curriculum that will be presented to our students on native american experience as it was decided on the board meeting of december but i am afraid that if we don't partner up with our native american community we might end up further insulting our indigenous communities we lack the knowledge and their perspective and i find that telling their story without having them at the table is arrogant we have the opportunity to form bombs that will heal our community i would like to see our students understanding that native communities are not a thing of the past are not peoples of the past they are here today that we should be working alongside with them um the city of anaheim is planning a park which um part of that park will be dedicated to the tongva people and wouldn't it be great if we can form a partnership so that our students can understand their culture their history what they are facing now that they are part of us that they are our neighbors instead of looking at it through like it has been mentioned through the lens of anthropology as if they were not here today so i'm begging the board that we form a partnership so that our students get a true the true meaning of of what native experiences thank you thank you ms garcia um just if you can just hold on for a moment i i i think the intent of the board with the resolution was that to make sure that we actually partner not only with our students but also bring people to the table so as a teacher on that committee i would i would hope that you actually advocate on behalf of that and that happens at the local level yes i and i am and i will be um contacting also our are since we're becoming a community school i will also be contacting martin calderon who heads um when it comes to the teachers at the community school level but i've also talked to our our team about that thank you all right appreciate it marianne almero members of the board my name is marianne my native name is it means creative woman and i come as a representative of the citizen potawatomi nation i'm a 28-year resident of anaheim and an alumni of sunkist sycamore and anaheim high school i was educated within your district and not once in my education here was i ever presented with history lessons told from the perspective of indigenous people but instead the perspectives of the colonists who saw my people and our sacred ways of being as less than this is not the fault of any particular person in this room it is the fault of the eurocentric standpoint that our educational process has been built upon it is the commonality of many people of color that education on our history and from our perspective is given to us from within our households our community or by research we conduct on our own this means that those who are not people of color or those like me who have had their history erased through the process of assimilation and colonization are left with only the perspective of the colonists leading to widespread ignorance that feeds institutional racism this is why the bill requiring ethnic studies as a graduation requirement is so important this is the only way many students are exposed to different perspectives of history or see themselves represented well in the classroom prior to ethnic studies there was nothing of the sort perhaps there are some of you on the board who have never been exposed to indigenous history in this region until we came to speak asking for a change of the colonist name and mascot once again this is not the fault of anyone here in this room however the ramifications and responsibility falls on all of us with that being said it was a great success for the board to have voted in favor of introducing native american history and the greater history of houtugna what's now known as anaheim to the curriculum of anaheim high school however because it is native indigenous people who are the gatekeepers of our history we are asking that we the indigenous community work alongside you as well as the task force in a partnership to create and introduce this curriculum for the students in this way the students may be enriched with the stories that were passed down through generations history and traditions that never made it into the textbooks yet are relevant to the land we stand on and to the heritage of the students that we serve as al-jabbar stated at the meeting in december this is where we bring people together we look forward to the chance to work with you to learn from one another and grow together to build a more kind and just community i'll be in contact with you all thank you thank you miss romero mazza i'm an alumni from anaheim high school class of 98 i'm a resident of anaheim high school and i graduated from native american art school i wanted to read that letter that virgina carmelo wrote let's move anaheim towards a more exclusive and dignified future by removing the mascot and the name colonist many schools and national sports teams have come to a rational understanding of negative impact of mascots that are offensive and harmful they have chosen in the spirit of respect understanding and the for better benefit of communities to remove their distasteful mascot name such as actions in our country demonstrate that removing long-time negative representations of oppression racism and equality are a step towards healing and persuasive and historical injustice towards minorities specifically native americans and indigenous peoples that includes the mexicans and the chicanos and the various in the southwest there's 40 million presently that united states are federally recognized by the us government because we lost there was a treaty that was broken by this government in 1848 trilliua lupe hidalgo this is a historical disconnect between the colonists quote a depicted by the anaheim high school mascot and much later german colonists in anaheim colonists arrived in america in the americas east coast until 1600s were never and were never in california colonist predates establishments of the united states of democracy colonists worldwide took indigenous lands as their own under violent dehumanizing methods raids and warfare which is the reason the word should not represent the high school students the word colonists need to get abolished executed execute that word colonists it will cap what happened with time with the education obviously the colonization 1857 germans had planned the project to move anaheims where in fact investors was it was local native american tongues and indigenous agricultural workers mexican indians that made possible the water supply and land preparations for the vineyards of the germans could prosper three years later when all was ready the germans arrived to make their homes unseated land during this same era local natives barely survived in croatia in croatian having suffered 90 loss of population under horrifying attempts to completely exterminate indigenous peoples and take the lamb for native americans in their term colonists is a reminder of our cruel cruel and distorus treatment of our ancestors to this day in 1963 dr martin luther king jr said the following dr jose mourinho he's one of us and he's been disrespected so many times at the city council as well by the colonists our nation was born in genocide when embraers this is a quote from martin luther king jr our nation was born in genocide when it embraced the doctrine of the original american the indian was inferior race even before the they were large numbers of negroes in our shores the scar of racial hatred and already disfigured colonial society from the 16th century toward blood flowed battles of racial supremacy we are perhaps the only nation which tried in matters of national policy to wipe the indigenous population moreover elevated the tragic experience into a noble crusade indeed even today we have not permitted ourselves to reject the field remorse of a shameful episode our literature our films and our drama are for all exile us be foreign thinking responsible to all let us create a much needed satisfied so this is from virginia carmelo and i want to recommend the school board and the teacher lizette this book is called we should be uh requiring this the high school to make the students read this it's called first families a photo photography history of the california indians and el jabar thank you so much for what you stand for for everybody and trujillo and everybody else this is for you al jabar who can i give this to so he can get this this is the united nations declaration rights of indigenous peoples thank you and they show you more information all right penelope luna lopez hello my name is penelope i'm gauchi chili chichimeka first nation native to eatshitland what is now called america by colonists i'd like to give my respect to the tangua nation whose land we are now on on december 14 2021 at the anaheim unified school district board meeting a young indigenous woman our sister was verbally assaulted with racist and anti-and indigenous remarks and physically harassed pushed and grabbed by speed castillo outside the district doors this could have been a student a staff member your child a police report was filed there is video evidence this case is actively under investigation to hold speed castillo accountable for physical assault shortly after entering ironically speed castillo was congratulated for the peace and kindness award he is a liability to our children he is to be held accountable he is a colonist there is no pride in being a colonist to be a colonist historically is to be a murderer and a rapist colonists arrived to each other in 1492 with the intention of profiting from our land and enslaving our people hiding behind the disguise of a savior and using it to justify exploitation and murder of our relatives across the northern and southern continent mass genocide took place on these lands we now walk over graves before 1492 the native population was over 112 million now after 500 years of genocide it has dropped 90 percent to 6 million [Music] to continue to call yourself colonists is to advocate abuse in the school system to perpetuate genocide on native land we demand that you remove the colonists name as well as the mascot and pay reparations to the families who attend your school we demand reparations for the psychological abuse of making kids say once a colonist always a colonist you are concerned about the money it will cost you to change the name but it cost us in blood for you to be here now on our land as public servants you have a responsibility to end this cycle of violence and rape we are here to speak for our children who you do not hear how can you be ignorant to the context we are living in by calling yourself colonists you are continuing the cycle of genocide and forced assimilation historically colonists systematically stole the children forcing them into residential schools that indoctrinated abused and slaughtered them miss luna if you could wrap it up that's all thank you very much okay i have to cali greetings good evening i just want to address the question of genocide is never far from discussions of settler colonism and so you you voted to take the symbol and the mascot the quaker out but you didn't eliminate the word colonist and there's a connection and just really quickly um land is life land is necessary for life and you see so indigenous people respect the land to have life and that's part of who we are as indigenous just human beings so when you call things to have a reference to colonize colonization and the the quaker the symbol it represents genocide and the things that took place and it doesn't make sense to remove the symbol but not remove the word because there's a connection to genocide and therefore cultural genocide is is elimination refers to the summary liquidation of indigenous people so another form of genocide it talks about the logic of elimination has manifested as genocide and settler colin nation has employed organizat organizing the grammar of race and it's all about oppression and i would ask that you would revoke retake account and look at the whole community the whole community not just the school as you heard all these organizations educating everybody about the story of the original people of this land needs to be considered and re re-voted on because you've already admitted by taking the symbol out but it's like half an admission to not take the word calling colonists down so it doesn't make sense so once again that's oppressing us so please consider the vote again thank you i thank you mr kelly all right well thank you all for coming in and speaking to the board today and we'll go ahead and move to our next agenda item add into business educational services 12.1 school-sponsored student organizations some move second i have a motion and a second on the floor and we will also take the vote of our student ambassador so all in favor aye aye aye aye all opposed motion passes unanimously including our student ambassador as well next we go into resolutions resolution number 2021 slash 2022-b-14 request for proposals for managed print solutions and other related electronic equipment partisans services and this is a roll call vote so i moved second i have a motion in a second and uh miss randall trejo i'm sorry uh do you have any questions anybody no no questions um miss randall trejo aye ms uh piercy aye ms smith aye motion pa and uh i vote i motion passage four zero uh resolution number uh 12.3 resolution number 2021 slash 22 dash e-10 korea and technical education month so moved second we have a motion and a second any comments seeing none i just wanted to say this is uh great i'm glad that i i don't know if you have a representative from rop uh if not we'll go ahead and take the vote and we'll go uh miss randall trejo aye piercy aye ms smith aye and i vote i motion passes 4-0 12.4 resolution number 2021-22-e-11 national parent teacher association founder state so moved i have a motion second and a second um we'll take that any comments just that it's uh over a century ago that we had this pta established and it's still going strong and they do a good job perfect having said that miss randall trejo hi vodi miss piercy aye ms smith i and i vote i motion passes four zero resolution 12.5 resolution number 2021 uh slash 2022-e-12 national african-american history month second i have a motion and a second any comments um miss randall trejo aye ms piercy aye smith aye and i vote i motion passes uh resolution passes uh four zero uh 12.6 resolution number 2021 slash 2022-e-13 read across america 2022 a roll call vote it's all moved i have a motion and a second uh a vote uh or you have a comment yes okay um read across america has been done for many years and it's held on march 2nd and unfortunately this year uh like last year not a lot of people can go in and read to the classrooms that has been the protocol that we've done i know that i went in quite a few years in a row reading on that day to the classrooms and it is so enjoyable to sit and read to a class of kids but unfortunately right now in my area i know that elementary schools are not letting people onto the campus it's just the kids so in our area we're going to try well my kiwanis club is going to try to do this we're going to tape us reading a book and then try to give it to you know you know the school so because we can't go into the school they stop you at the gate you know so i i walk my grandchildren to school every morning but i stop at the gate and they go in we used to be able to go in and do walk around and they played music in the morning and you could sit and or not sit stand and talk but unfortunately kobet has changed that so but anyway i encourage that anybody that can maybe uh you know make a a video of yourself reading and and give it to the schools that's in your area that's a great idea thank you ms pearson for the suggestion all right uh we'll take a boat and miss randall trejo i vote i miss piercy aye ms smith aye and i have about eye motion passes four zero 12.7 resolution number 20 21 uh slash 2022-e-14 preserve music in our schools month so moved second i have a motion and a second any comments oh yes this is so important and it's so necessary and and it's so nice when i see people donating musical instruments and whatever to schools and and the getting music back in the elementary schools this is so important and i just want everyone to get on the bandwagon let's have music in our schools as well as art and reading of course all right thank you miss piercy anybody else just to emphasize that we've never you know disregarded our music programs in auhsd we've always kept them strong and we really really care about our rapper program so and you all know that music has a high correlation to math it really enables students to do their math work easier it's amazing but it does work so it's important we teach music just like we teach art it is very important they're not just frilled classes thank you miss all right our vote miss randall trejo aye ms piercy aye ms smith big guy and i vote i motion passes four zero twelve point eight resolution number twenty twenty one slash 2022-e-15 women history month salute second i have a motion and a second any comments seeing none we'll take a vote it's a good month yes city majority over up here on the deal that's right uh miss randall trejo aye ms piercy aye ms smith hi and i vote i motion passes four zero 12.9 resolution number 2021 slash 2022-e-16 arts education month i move second i have a motion and a second and i'm sure very important perfect all right uh having said that we'll take any other comments which sounds very important all right uh vote miss randall trejo aye ms piercy aye ms smith hi and i vote i a big i uh motion passes four zero 12.10 resolution number 2021 slash 2022-e-17 national athletic training month second i have a motion and a second any comments having none uh we'll go for a vote and that's miss uh radar trejo aye ms piercy aye ms smith aye and i vote eye motion passes four zero twelve point eleven resolution number twenty twenty one slash twenty twenty two dash e uh e dash eighteen take down tobacco day and we have a motion on the floor and a second all right perfect um i'll call for a vote uh miss randall trejo aye ms piercy aye ms smith aye and i vote i motion passes 4-0 12.12 uh resolution number 2021-2022-e-19 through with two-week it's all moved second i have a motion and a second and uh with no uh any comment seeing that well i wasn't aware this was a major problem around here but it is a problem nationwide and a lot of them think it's safer because it's not smoking but it's just as deadly and we need to make sure that kids are educated about that absolutely thank you very much and uh we'll call for a vote ms randall trejo aye ms piercy aye ms smith aye and i vote aye motion passes four zero twelve point one three resolution number twenty twenty one slash twenty two slash hr dash zero five adopting staffing flexibility measures in accordance with governor newsom's executive order n dash 3-22 again this is a roll call vote any comments second we have a motion in a second and i think this is great i'm glad that we have that flexibility for our district with that um yes and i agree and i just can't you know like i said i just learned about these restrictions because of course now when i was subbing a number of years ago we didn't have all these restrictions so a lot of these were brought on afterward for whatever reason it's made it very difficult so it's about time they start peeling them back all right call for a vote miss randall trejo aye ms piercy aye ms smith aye and i vote i motion passes four zero the next two items fourteen 14 12.14 and 12.15 was actually removed at the beginning of the agenda adaptation now we go to educational services 12.16 local control accountability plan every student succeeds act federal addendum and it's an action item so moved second i have a motion in a second any questions or no seeing none all in favor aye aye any opposed motion passes unanimously uh 12.17 agreement with orange county department of education peer-led campaign advisor incentive action item second i have a motion and a second any comments or questions seeing none i have a question i just had a question regarding um i just saw that savannah high school applied and reselected was there any other schools who applied from our district i'd have to check with dr cruz but not to my knowledge but i'd have to confirm with dr cruz okay i know savannah i know savannah did proactively go out and apply uh to get it but i don't know that other schools did okay and i think this goes back to some of my comments and my questions in the past too i just want to make sure that if i know there are criterias right but if there is an opportunity for us to actually apply and get selected for a program like this let's just encourage all our schools to apply because i think we have you know good programs and have opportunities and i think we all of our schools need to take that opportunity to do it so i wanted to please emphasize that absolutely thank you very much um said that i'll call for a vote all in favor aye aye any oppose see none congratulations to savannah and uh motion passes four zero 12.18 revised board policy 7704.11 music organizations this is an action and information item this is our second reading i'll entertain a motion second i have a motion in a second any questions or comments seeing none all in favor aye any opposed motion passes unanimously or 4-0 12.19 educational consulting agreement is it flip poet entertainment so moved okay i have a motion in a second any questions or uh ques uh suggestions no i'm just i am enthralled to uh watch this at our uh presentation on the 11th on the 11th yeah absolutely all right uh i'll call for a vote all in favor aye any opposed motion passes 4-0 12.20 educational consulting agreement le ballet dembaya of los angeles so move check it i have a motion and a second any um comments another one yep another great one i'm looking forward to it having said that call for a vote all in favor aye aye any opposed motion passes four zero twelve point twelve one uh twelve point two one agreement saline health llc uh with the correction that uh the services provider at the cost of 6720 that was a correction that we made we have a motion in a second any questions seeing none all in favor any opposed motion passes four zero and we are consent calendar anybody want to pull an item motion for the balance uh move for all of consent calendar and i have a second all in favor aye and he opposed motion passes four zero and now we go to uh superintendent's office uh conference oh nope that was statement superintendent staff report no report i'm going through for those of you are watching i'm actually asking everybody so any reports anybody no reports all right and then we'll go to board of trustee report i'll start with ms randall trejo uh i was just able to go to the uh online uh nick task force for just a few minutes um and uh they looked like they had wrapped up a lot of things um and that's moving along i am really proud of that group they've worked really hard to build consensus in that group and it looks like a few courses are coming through so i'm really proud of them i was also on the foodis medicine town hall which was just uh just wow just floored me um the partnerships uh that that are formed with the the magnolia i'm going to call it the farm because it's just easier for me to remember it that way uh but just the extent of the the science and the um just the idea of saying that food as medicine really is enticing and to look at food in that way as a healing factor the outreach to our kids it's not just going to be for magnolia students but it's going to be for a lot of our students across the district just i'm really excited about what's going to be developed there what is already being developed there it's it's already far along and i want to thank you michael for your vision of this and thank you to everyone else to make it happen um the the folks that are connected with it they're all going to do a great job they're extremely passionate and it's just another example of you know what what we can do what we are doing in this district and we've got a farm it's just amazing so uh congratulations on that and um looking forward to the tech parade on saturday gonna get my steps in walk in the parade route again and then i was also invited to sing at the celebration or the lunar moon celebration at the oc fair so i will be singing for that celebration and i'm just really honored um that the vietnamese community have invited me and accepted me uh in their celebrations so looking forward to that and so happy lunar new year to everyone as uh our ch as our student trustee pointed out earlier and uh happy new lunar new year to um to the community and it's the year of the tiger which is my year as well so pass it on all right let's piercy okay i attended a a couple of student discipline meetings and at the last one we have worked out a survey that is being sent to all personnel all our administrators our staff people asking some questions about how they feel about discipline on campus and it's all going to be compiled has it been sent out yeah no after february february 8th oh okay and i i kind of perused it i went on and kind of looked at some of the questions and and i'm really glad to see that i think you know it'll be really good um and then that'll give us an idea what's happening because this is a unique year i mean uh we're back after a year and a half of being gone so things are different the kids are different okay and then i attended the csba budget uh symposium or budget workshop whatever you want to call it on zoom um interesting um then i attended at cypress high school their new symposium on careers now they have speakers they brought in a speaker who was a graduate of cypress high school he is a um a newsman a news anchor he you know flies the airplane around and or he did that for a while anybody's been in recording i mean um announcing news now for 10 or so some years and i can't remember his name i wrote it down somewhere else and i forgot that paper but i really enjoyed it it was the first one they held it in the morning on a late start morning and they came from their zero periods um they it was a there was a couple little things that they need to work on because some of the kids when the bell rang they thought they had to get up and leave and that was kind of like ah but they'll work on that but i know they're going to have another one next month with a different type of career but he was very well received he did a great job of talking to the kids talking about how he got involved in it and how it's maybe not a a big area to think about it's a little difficult but if he wanted to do something like that how he got into it it was he really did did a really good job a lot of kids afterwards stopped to ask him individual questions even after they had the opportunity and then a lot of the teachers remembered it so a lot of the teachers were there to say hi and you know congratulations so that was i i really enjoyed it and then on martin luther king day i went to magnolia high school and amazing the number of people out there working the community as well as the kids and they got all the berries very farm a section lined up and ready to go and it was um i think some kids were really learning things were a little more difficult than they thought just putting in posts these kids were out there trying to hammer in these posts and they weren't going in as fast as they thought they should and some of these boys that thought they were strong oh maybe okay a little more difficult than i thought was that but it was really amazing to see they'd already planted so many of these berry vines got these uh post up to start you know wiring it on so they don't have the the the wires to go on up they were spreading out fertilizer and soil they had they've done they did a lot of work a lot of these kids are out there with shovels and hoes they've never done this before what a learning experience and then after i you know watched all this going on at the what okay the magno no agricultural oh how do i say that magnolia agricultural something experiment yeah i went to visit the actual magnolia garden you know that has been going now for several years and it's looking really good too they have done a good job there's a nice big tangerine tree in other words and so it's gotten it's been long enough that this tree is about eight feet tall and it's just it's really good to see they've been working on it steadily and they've kept it up and done a good job and um that was about it i think that i did so far this month so all right thank you miss smith i just uh only going to report that i did tune in on the discipline committee hearing and so that was that's always informational the gentleman that spoke here this evening was mentioned to me that there is a national museum back in washington d.c and my comment was when putting casinos to the voters in california in the 80s it seems to me as i remember it was sold to us to get passes so that the money is that were earned by these casinos would go to the different indian communities to help them raise them up and over the years i've personally don't know factually but i my gut feeling is that that's never happened and so when i mentioned it to him he said how that worked is that apparently the certain amount of monies go to the state and then the state divvies it out he says so you get a portion of it and anaheim and other communities do and i'm thinking to myself how could these people get their story out more effectively and i suggested to the young man nasa that was spoke here last month that what about an exhibit down at the museo i think it would be a wonderful opportunity to put something together and then there's a teacher here that says that she wants to work on the curriculum and i think that coordinating in a group they could figure out some ways to get their story out and they could even elevate it to a national indigenous week month history month to get their story out because i i'm very empathetic and sympathetic to them for years it has just really tugged at my heartstrings to see how these people have been treated in this country but that's just my feeling and you have government and they control it and they put people where they want them to be and they've been very poorly treated in my opinion so i just appreciated this gentleman coming he gave me his background and his involvement i think he said with the united nations and anyway his story was very worthwhile hearing and if we can work something out that is implemented into our schools at appropriate time working with them i think would be a very positive goal so and i just want to thank all of you you are all heroes all right thank you miss smith uh my report i'm it's a pretty short one i actually attended a sycamore junior high for the martin luther king national services day there's some really good work we had a lot of bros not only from anaheim high school but also from sycamore junior high and other students who actually came and did not only campus cleanup but they also put together uh some essential items for uh homeless folks so it was a great opportunity for our students to participate so i'm glad that the tradition has been continuing every year so i'm sure that we'll do i know there was work at magnolia farm as well so i'm glad that that's continuing to happen in our district i also attended anaheim high school coffee with the principal via zoom we had a very good attendance that that group has been we've been having parents who are attending on a regular basis probably because easy access getting on zoom is much more easier than coming to on campus so it's been great coming up we we do have a there are two organizations actually reached out to me mona and islamic relief wanting to do a winter package distribution for our community families in anaheim area so we are having it at anime high school i know anaheim high school is taking the lead on it because it's their project so i'm glad that we will be doing that this saturday from 1 to 3.
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and i also want to thank senator tom umberg his office reached out to me as district director anna gonzalez reached out to me regarding a organization or company wanting to distribute 400 chromebooks for our students so i want to thank mr green for doing a lot of legwork in order to get make that happen and i know we're having a distribution event with senator arnberg being there on the 28th so i wanted to personally thank him for reaching out to me and making this happen for our students so having said that that's about here everybody who is uh celebrating happy lunar new year and that i'll enter well i have to go to the next part of our advanced planning our next board meeting is on thursday march 3rd at 6 pm and then any suggested agenda items seeing none i will entertain a motion for germany
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good afternoon we're calling the committee on education to order this is friday february 4 3 o'clock p.m in conference room 229 welcome to the senate committee on education today is friday february 4th it is 3 p.m we are hearing room in hearing room 229 this meeting including the audio and video of remote participants is being streamed live on youtube you will find links to viewing options for all senate meetings on the live and on demand video page of the legislature's website this zoo meeting and youtube live stream event will include the 3 o'clock pm agenda for this committee on education in the unlikely event that we have to abruptly end this hearing due to major technical difficulties the committee will reconvene to discuss any outstanding business on monday february 7 2022 at 3 pm and a public notice will be posted on the legislature's website i'd like to take this time to remind our testifiers that due to time restrictions on our hearings we will be limiting testimony to one minute per testifier per bill for people participating remotely please remain muted and video disabled until shortly before it is your turn to testify when i call your name unmute yourself and your time will begin after your minute is completed staff will mute you so that we can move this hearing along in an orderly and efficient manner should you experience any technical difficulties when it is your turn to testify we may have to move on to the next person due to time constraints your understanding is appreciated and we would like to remind you that the committee has your written testimony we apologize if the closed captioning does not accurately transcribe the audio broadcast if you wish to review the written testimony submitted please go to the legislature's website you will find a link on the status page for the measure thank you gosh that takes five minutes first on the agenda is senate bill relating to digital literacy and this is relating to digital literacy libraries board of education and state librarian to testify stacey aldridge state librarian please aloha chair kadani and vice chair kim and esteem members of the committee thank you for the thank you for this opportunity to testify in favor of and in support of sb 2214 we appreciate the recognition of the importance that libraries play in the 21st century literacies that of digital literacy the current language is very um specific and mentions children families and the workforce and we would respectfully like to ask that the language be broadened to include others our day-to-day our day-to-day experiences show that kupuna and also patrons who have disabilities also need support too and we want to make sure that the language is inclusive we also know to implement a full-blown program and effectuate this program to support all of our communities and the upcoming statewide digital literacy initiatives we will respectfully ask for an appropriation that can support a position that can coordinate all of the efforts that are being made and also funding to support um contracts that can provide technical support um for the patrons that we serve and also their their learning in digital literacy thank you so much for this opportunity to um to testify and happy to answer any questions you might have mahalo thank you stacy next to testify trevor or barzua testifying for the chamber of commerce trevor please thank you chair gadani and vice chair kim members of the committee trevor abrazou representing chamber of commerce hawaii we stand in support of this bill and we understand how digital literacy plays in the modern day workforce and modern day education here and us by passing this bill it would put us a competitive advantage with other states and you know we believe that digital literacy and digital equity throughout the state is vital to a strong economy so we do support we ask you to pass this bill and thanks and happy to answer any questions thank you very much trevor next to testify james gashel testifying for national federation of the blind of hawaii james yes thank you madam chair and man vice chair i'm james gashel i'm testifying on behalf of the national federation of the blind of hawaii we're fully in support of this bill we just have a simple amendment uh in the language to add um along with the other digital literacy services provided knowledge and use of access technology for individuals with disabilities this is really one of the big um needs in this area and we're concerned that it could get overlooked amid you know just general needs we support the general language that's for sure but want to be sure that disability access is specified and aloha thank you for hearing our testimony thank you very much james um awesome please okay um we have written testimony from selena lee also in support members are there any questions of the testifiers thank you and we will decision make on this at the end of the agenda but james just to let you know that we hear what you're saying and we're planning to make that amendment thank you moving on senate bill relating to education establishes a school psychologist national certification incentive program and appropriates funds to testify interim superintendent keith hayashi please aloha chair kadani chair mercado kim and members of the committee sean bacon interim assistant superintendent of the office of talent management testifying on behalf of superintendent hayashi and the department of education the department stands on its written testimony and supports the intent of senate bill 2823 the department did propose language amendments and looks forward to working with the legislature to make any refinements to this bill thank you for the opportunity to testify i'm available to answer any questions thank you sean um moving on alec morentek aloha chair and members of the committee my name is alec morentek i'm a school psychologist for the kkp complex area on hawaii island and i'm chair of the legislative committee for the hawaii association of school psychologists we support this bill because it would move school psychology we would like to see school psychologists more at the school level than at the district level um additionally this would provide equitable pay and bonus rates um for comparable shortage rates that we are currently experiencing um additionally it would provide a way for us to establish this because we're currently under bargaining unit 13 which does not provide us an avenue to directly negotiate with the department of ed i also stand on my written testimony at this time thank you for this opportunity to testify thank you very much alec next to testify dr angie graham aloha chair cadoni and senators thank you for taking the time to listen to my test testimony in support of sb2823 my name is dr angie graham i am the current president of the hawaii association of school psychologists i am the district school psychologist for east hawaii and i am a parent of two children in the hawaii department of education i would like to first state that i stand by my submitted written testimony and i would just like to emphasize that as a supervisor of school psychologists i have seen how difficult it is to recruit and retain school psychologists in hawaii hawaii is competing with other states and districts who already offer this incentive as the cost of living in hawaii is already high it is hard for many professionals to move here and our stay here the bill would be the first step in honoring professionals who work closely with our students and help them thrive socially emotionally and academically the bill does one other important thing it recognizes years of service education and expertise a school psychologist brings to the department of education mahalo for your time and i am available for any questions thank you thank you so much [Music] that's all the speakers we have although we have 26 written pieces of testimony moving on members any questions many of our speakers okay let's move on to item number three senate bill 2818 relating to summer education establishes a position of summer learning coordinator within the department of education makes an appropriation to fund the position of summer learning coordinator to testify superintendent kitayashi please good afternoon chair kidani vice chairman congratulations members of the committee i'm terri ushijima interim assistant superintendent with the department of education testifying on behalf of interim superintendent keith hayashi we stand on our written testimony and support sb 2818 the department agrees additional capacity is needed to coordinate all summer programs and we appreciate the new position to support this work we would defer to the department of human services in regards to any restrictions placed on federal funds mentioned in the bill that are administered by their department thank you for the opportunity to testify on sb 2818 and we are available for questions thank you terry next to speak kathy betts director of department of human services kathy good afternoon chair kidani vice chair mercado kim and members of the committee my name is catherine scardino lieutenant program administrator with dhs here to testify on behalf of the department and cat director kathy betts the department stands on its written testimony offering comments i will be available to answer questions from the committee thank you thank you kathy next to testify paula adams executive director hawaii after school alliance hi hi chair kidani vice chair margaret kim and members of the committee my name is paula adams i am part of the hawaii after-school alliance i am here to support senate bill 2818 related to summer education that will establish a position of summer learning coordinator within the department as it reflected in my written testimony summer programs are key to help a student reconnect with peers and caring adults re-engage in learning and celebrate the student's social emotional academic recovery this position will help coordinate service avoiding duplication of effort promoting equity by replacing the first comfort self-recruitment system to target to target the most impacted and vulnerable students better connect parents and students to programs and effectively determine whether the gaps are in summer opportunities thanks for this opportunity to testify thank you paula next to testify kathleen algayer for hawaii children's action network speaks aloha the chair and vice chair and committee members president owner with um h can speaks um we are in strong support of this bill you have a written testimony i just wanted to share that you know at the beginning of the pandemic um that first summer when school was out and parents were still going to work we didn't know what we were going what we were going to do with our school age kids the community really worked together with the departments and even with like county officials to try to make sure that kids had a safe place to go um that the programs were still able to function um they you know uh really the amount of effort that went into this to make sure um that families you know we're gonna be able to to meet their needs their children would have their needs met um and support you know just at the very beginning of what we now describe as learning laws i think that if this position had been in place it would have been a much smoother transition and so i really hope that you um support the measure and pass it out of the committee thank you thank you kathleen next to testify gizi zhang testifying for cares care after school and recreation education services hey yes hello chair um my name is hello chair and the committee of education um hey senator kim my name is and i have a small after-school arts program here in kapalama in neighborhood and i testify in support of the bill of the legislation and the language used in the legislation in the purpose goes into social emotional um learning and trauma and i think it would be in the interest of the legislature to develop summer learning programs um by appropriating funds for the summer coordinator um so that students can have enriching activities outside of their academic studies um and um you know they say thank you for your testimony that concludes our speakers but we do have 15 written testimonies members questions i have a question for um kathy sardino for the department of human services kathy are you there yes i am yeah so the programs um that the programs that we are looking at are you know already um they already exist so does tanf fund support any of these programs now in the dle um yes we do currently through a contract with doe we provide um subsidies for the a-plus program for needy families or kind of eligible families in addition we also provide uh funding through another separate contract to provide the uplink program for middle school and intermediate school students and those are the only two programs yes we do have a third contract but it's only a pilot project which we started last year and it's only with three schools it's a summer child care enrichment pilot program two schools here in oahu and one school on kauai so is there any way to support new programs that are not in the statute that doesn't conflict with the tanf rules so long as the the summer learning program is not academic uh it is not towards academic but more like an enrichment and extracurricular activities as described in our um written testimony [Music] if it's for elementary school children it's probably child care and we prefer that it be provided as a subsidy for middle and high school students we can provide federal tennis dollars for programs that support pregnancy prevention thank you kathy so um would it help for dhs to be able to support this build if we removed uh on page three lines 10 through 12 which requires a learning coordinator to work with dhs to leverage federal funds for school-based summer programs for children yes we would recommend that um we can establish agreements through contract with due outside of this measure thank you because we'd like to work with you to to um you know get more programs up and running because do do you does date just send back tanf money you're not or do we use it all do we actually just do more yes we do have uh so when we have monies unspent uh from the uh current block grant it does go into our kind tanf reserve so we do have federal monies available and for uh and it can be used for pregnancy prevention programs and services so for example after school or summer programs that support middle and high school students thank you kathy appreciate that so we'll be working with you to give further clarification of programs that we can use we look forward to it chair thank you appreciate it members any questions that's not moving along senate bill 2182 relating to school gardens establishes a school garden coordinated position within the department of education makes appropriation to fund the position and related expenses to testify superintendent hayashi please good afternoon chair kidani vice chairman carlo kim and members of the committee i'm terri ushijima interim assistant superintendent with the department of education testifying on behalf of interim superintendent keith hayashi the hawaii state department of education stands on a written testimony in support of sb 2182 the school garden coordinator position is needed to successfully implement act 175 session laws of hawaii 221 which includes improving student health developing an educated agricultural workforce and accelerating garden and farm-based education for public schools thank you for this opportunity to provide testimony on sb2182 and we are available for questions thank you terry next testify laidy bernal coordinator with hawaii public health institute we strongly support this bill school gardens are an amazing way to accelerate student learning improve student health and also increase student preference for fruits and vegetables and local locally grown and produced foods in hawaii so this this coordinator and school garden programs in general go really hand in hand with the farm to school meals that the doe is also working to expand throughout the department we would respectfully request one minor edit to the bill which is to change out the word starting to developing and this is on page 2 lines 12 and 21 we feel that this would help the this effort apply not only to schools that are starting garden programs but may also have an existing garden program which many public schools already do and once again we strongly support this effort to establish the school garden coordinator within the hawaii department of education thank you very much thank you lardy next to testify brian miyamoto for hawaii farm bureau good afternoon cherokee donnie vice chair kim and members of the committee brian yama here on behalf of the hawaii farm bureau hawaii farm bureau will stand on important testimony and support thank you thank you brian nice to see you next to testify lauren zerbel for hawaii food industry association top presidential you they are in support of the bill and the last testimony is kendall matt matsuyoshi or local food coalition good afternoon uh cherokee donnie vice chair came and members of the committee kendall matsuyosha on behalf of the local food coalition we'll stand on our testimony in support of the measure thank you very much kendall members that concludes the testifiers we do have 20 written testimonies are there any question members of our testifiers if not moving on to senate bill 2816 relating to education grants requires the doe to establish and administer the strong students grant pilot program to provide grants for eligible education expenses to eligible students requires the doe to submit progress reports to the legislature prior to the and 2024 regular sessions and appropriate funds to testify superintendent hayashi please good afternoon again chair kidan vice chair mccarthy members of the committee teriyu shijima here interim assistant superintendent with the doe testifying on behalf of superintendent kitayashi the hawaii state department of education supports the intent of sb 2816 and respectfully provides comments in our testimony the eligible education expenses defined are duplicative expenses already covered by the department through federal education grants and the strong student grant program would divert a significant amount of resources that could otherwise be equitably allocated by the department for all students thank you for this opportunity to provide testimony on sb thank you terry next to testify kathy betts department of human services good afternoon chair kidani and vice chair kim my name is maureen bates from the division of vocational rehabilitation within the department of human services and we stand on this testimony and i'm available for questions thank you thank you next to testify david miyashiro testifying for hawaii kids can aloha education committee i wanted to clarify how this program could work given our initial pilot online families have indeed struggled to pay for many education needs they can't get all the things that they need from their schools directly online programs like class wallet are well positioned to serve as a digital wallet for families and have been used to administer millions of dollars for similar programs in other states in our pilot families have access to a wide range of education vendors within the system and they use their credits to find the supports that best fit their needs this has included school supplies supplemental learning materials and paying for tutoring services you can read some parent quotes in our written testimony but it's clear these families have been incredibly grateful i know there are many others who deserve and need support mahalo thank you david that's the end of the testifiers and we have a total of eight pretend testimonies members questions of anyone of this testifiers okay moving on senate bill 2826 relating to education establishes a career development success program to provide financial incentives for participating public high schools to encourage students enrolled in grades 9 through 12 to enroll in and successfully complete qualified industry credential programs establishes a similar program for public charter schools and appropriates funds to testify superintendent hayashi please uh good afternoon again chiara kidani vice chairman proud of him and members of the committee at ushijima testifying on behalf of interim superintendent kitayashi we stand on our rigid testimony and support sb 2826 the department of initiates incentive funding for schools whose students attain industry recognized certificates on the promising credentials list thank you for the opportunity to testify on this measure and we will stand by for questions thank you terry next to testify director kathy betts department of human services good afternoon chair kidani and vice chair of kim and members of the committee this is maureen bates from the division of vocational rehabilitation under the department of human services and i want to thank you for this opportunity to stand on the department's testimony and will be available for questions thank you thank you maureen next to testify ivan lau interim executive director for hawaii state public charter school good afternoon chair kidani vice chair kim and members of the committee we stand on our written testimony and support and deeply appreciate the inclusion of our public charter schools in this worthy program thank you so much thank you yvonne next to testify david miyashiro testifying for hawaii kids can aloha education committee as hawaii continues to recover economically from the impact of the kobe 19 pandemic now is the opportune time to make sure our students are positioned to survive and thrive in hawaii our schools have been incredibly innovative for example with an explosion of career academies in our public high schools in recent years however the tougher question is how much these programs are actually helping kids not just survive but thrive the promising credentials report is powerful and has clearly identified the credentials linked to local jobs that will increase in demand pay a family sustaining wage and have a promising career ladder sb 2826 will incentivize schools to be thoughtful and intentionable intentional about how their programs are truly setting kids and our state up for success mahalo thank you david next to testify trevor our bazoola or chamber of commerce hawaii trevor please thank you chair kadani vice chair of kim and members of the committee trent robertsoua chamber of commerce hawaii we stand in strong support of this bill and of work-based credentials and career development success programs here in hawaii i want to echo what david said in terms of setting up students for success with high paying jobs right out of school and not having to incur high student debt from going to college and getting a job that they could have learned during their high school years so really uh support this bill and excited for it and thank you for hearing it in committee thank you very much trevor that concludes the testifiers we had a total of nine written testimony members any questions thank you let's move on to the next one senate bill 2184 relating to digital learning established is a digital learning center within the department of education appropriates funds to staff and administer the digital learning centers to testify superintendent hayashi please good afternoon cher kidani vice chair mercado kim and members of the committee keith ayashi interim superintendent for the department of education the department supports senate bill 3094 and appreciates the appropriation to support virtual learning through the establishment of a digital learning center thank you for the opportunity to testify we are available for questions thank you superintendent this was for senate bill 2184 um senate bill 3094 is the emergency appropriation to the department of education for the virtual schools thank you superintendent next to testify trevor our bazoola chamber of commerce hawaii please thank you vice chair and members of the committee trev robertson chamber of commerce white we stand on our testimony in support of this bill and happy to answer any questions thank you so much trevor next to testify james the guest show testifying for national federation of the blind of hawaii james thank you madam chair uh vice chair committee members james gashel here testifying for the national federation of the blind of hawaii we're fully in support of sb 2184 going to stand on our written testimony making the same point that we made on sb2214 and asking for essentially the same language in an amendment aloha thank you very much james members any questions of our testifiers if not let us move on to senate bill making an emergency appropriation to this department of education for virtual school provides emergency appropriation to the doe for virtual school and authorizes the director of finance to issue general obligation bonds and to testify superintendent ayashi good afternoon chiaki dhani vice chair makato kim and members of the committee the department supports senate bill 3094 and appreciates the appropriation to support virtual learning while the department advocates for in-person learning we do acknowledge that some students thrive in the virtual setting and a virtual school will enable the department to provide these students with diverse learning experiences based on their strengths needs and interests a virtual school will also reduce the opportunity gap that currently exists between students and increase equity and access to content that may not otherwise be available to them this includes access to specialized programs such as the kaipuni program thank you for your support and the opportunity to testify mahal thank you superintendent hayashi that concludes our testifiers we had four written testimony and support and one comment members questions okay superintendent hayashi please i know that we are still in the early stages so if this build is approved um how soon will the department start looking on it at it because we need we would need to find a site for such a digital center yeah thank you uh chair for the question uh the department is currently looking at various sites to establish the digital center and we are starting to narrow them down currently thank you for that i know um it's a large task because we're also looking for sites for teacher housing which uh you know myself as chair and my vice chair and members of the committee fully support the teacher housing idea and we've talked about it for a long time but i think this is the time to get serious in i appreciate your willingness to help the teachers in need and also the students for this digital learning center so i appreciate that very much thank you superintendent thank you chair okay moving on next bill senate bill 2893 relating to a school supply subsidy pilot program to testify superintendent hayashi things nice good afternoon chair kidani vice chair mercado kim and members of the senate committee on education kara tanimura interim assistant superintendent for the office of strategy innovation and performance testifying on behalf of interim superintendent keith hayashi department of education the department stands on its written testimony in support of senate bill 2893 to establish a one-year school supply subsidy pilot program at nalehu elementary school in the ka'u ke al pahoa complex area thank you for the opportunity to provide testimony in support of this measure thank you kara members questions if not moving on moving on to senate bill 2862 i think it's the other dmk relating to education this bill appropriates funds to the department of education to install air conditioning units for public school classrooms that have not yet received air conditioning units to testify also to a junior hsta president aloha laverne moore speaking on behalf of hsta president usa tui jr we stand on our written testimony in support of senate bill 2862 and we appreciate you appropriating funds for this providing our teachers with air conditioning we also want to point out that we are also hope that you would consider more air purification measures doing this covet pandemic times thank you so much for the opportunity to testify thank you laverne next to testify corey rosenly in support i see uh assistant superintendent randy tanaka are you testifying on this bill randy yes cheers good afternoon kidani vice chairman kim and members of the committee randy tanaka office of facilities and operations testing on behalf of superintendent hiyashi and the department of education the department supports senate bill 2862 and appreci appreciates the appropriation for air conditioning in our school thank you for the opportunity to testify available if you have questions hello thank you members any questions assistant superintendent um i know that in 2016 there's appropriation for 100 million i guess in the the preamble of this it served was it 1300 public school classrooms and then um the sum for this one would be 40 million to help with over 5 000 classrooms that still mean heat of data measures it just you know i just looking at the numbers i don't know if that's even close to enough money to if we're going to go with that how you originally did the or how the deal you originally appropriated 100 million um how would how would was that even enough money or is there better use or better ways to do the heat abatement that wasn't um originally done senator from from just a quick look backwards when we initiated or this projects were initiated it was a lot that we didn't know about the electrical load and that's what caused some challenges in terms of getting enough air conditioning by matching the electrical loads we have a number of very old schools that need to refit the they cannot carry the load and in addition to when kobit came along we were putting more computers in the classrooms we were putting air purifiers in the classrooms and box fans so that exacerbated our problem um and we continue to march forward uh we have electrical assessments now with for more schools so we have a better idea i will tell you that the technology has actually changed quite a bit where um window units are quite effective versus split systems and the most recent units we looked at addressing the concern of air purification or air filtering the new units allow us to put a filter into the window units which really support the the magnitude of air filtering the challenges we have in cobit we the recommendation is to open the windows open doors get airflow in and sometimes we're challenged by people keep keeping the airc unit running we end up air conditioning the state of hawaii but now with these new filter systems we can close the roads and re re-purify the air so back to the question is that enough money [Music] i'm hoping my people have done the estimate correctly we will give it a good go at that budget but we still have electrical capacity issues you should also know that this is going to cost us another best guess is another 3.5 million dollars on our annual electricity expense as we continue to load more ac units into the rooms but from all the data we see that a comfortable environment is most welcoming for a good educational experience so we appreciate your support and continue to march forward thank you thank you thank you chair thank you any other questions thank you very much randy appreciate it thank you i think that concludes our agenda members [Music] oh yeah yeah can we go to the breakout room sorry take three reconvening the comedian education recommendation of the chair is to pass out senate bill 2214 with amendments the amendments will incorporate the request of amended amendment requests by the state librarian to expand the scope to include all community members also incorporating the amendment from national federation of the blind to explicitly include individuals with disabilities also including one fte as requested by the librarian and a blank appropriation to cover costs and operating expenses for effectuating this program there are also some technical and non-substantive amendments members questions not terrible thai chair vote on senate bill two two one four uh vice chair also uh with a met pass with amendments vice chair votes i senator de la cruz excused uh senator kanuka senator favello hi hey madam chair four eyes one excuse recommendations about it thank you moving on senate bill 2823 relating to education establishes a school psychologist national certification incentive program and appropriates funds members we have a little bit more work to do on the language with the doe as well as the um hawaii association of school psychologists so i'd like to defer decision making to next week friday possibly so let's move on february night february 11 friday february 11th at 3 p.m in this room 229 thank you moving on to senate bill 2818 relating to summer education establishes position of summer learning coordinator within the department of education and makes an appropriation to fund the position recommendation of the chair is to pass with amendments to amend to remove requirement to coordinate with dhs on federal funds for after-school programs noting in the committee report that this position should still work with dhs where appropriate members questions share both side chairs recommending senate bill two eight one eight tests with amendments any member president voting with reservations or in our position hearing none four members voting our recommendations for doctor thank you senate bill 2182 relating to school gardens establishes a school guardian coordinated position within the department of education makes an appropriation to fund the position and related expenses recommendation of the chair is going to be to pass with amendments we're going to blank out the appropriation of two hundred thousand dollars but include it in the committee report for the next committee ways and means to consider that amount of funding um on page 2 line 12 and 21 to delete the word starting and replace it with the word developing to provide clarity that the coordinator can also assist with existing school guardian programs members questions if not chair votes eye cheer recommendation senate bill 2182 password amendments any member voting no any members voting with reservations hearing seeing and hearing none of four members voting on your recommendations thank you moving on to senate bill 2816 relating to education grants recommendation of the chair is to pass with amendments to amend the adjusted gross income requirement to address the points raised in the department of education's testimony regarding family size and equitable prioritization number two is technical and non-substantive amendments questions if not chair boat's eye senate bill 2816 password amendments any member voting no any member voting with reservations uh seeing none well five members present senator de la cruz also here of measures adopted thank you senate bill 2826 relating to education establishes a career development success program to provide financial incentives for participating public high schools to encourage students enrolled in grades 9 through 12 to enroll in and successfully complete qualified industry credential programs establishes a similar program for public charter schools and appropriates funds recommendation of the chair is to pass with amendments um it would include definitions for advanced door opener springboard and foundational credentials as found on the hawaii career pathways website that is found on page four of the bill any questions recommendation of the chair is passed with amendments chair boat's eye senate bill 2826 recommendation password amendment any of the members voting with reservations voting no hearing none five members present all voting and affirmative recognition adopted thank you senate bill 2184 relating to digital learning establishes a digital learning center within the department of education appropriates funds to staff and administer the digital learning center recommendation of the chair is to pass as is members questions chair votes are recommendation senate bill 2184 pass unamended any member voting with reservations any member voting in opposition hearing none five members voting eye recommendations adopted thank you moving on to senate bill 3094 making an emergency appropriation to the department of education for a virtual school recommendation of the chair is to pass with amendments that are technical and non-substantive members questions if not chair votes eye share votes eye on senate bill 3094 recommendation passed with amendments any no votes any reservations hearing that five members will avoid the affirmative recommendations of doctors thank you senate bill 2893 relating to a school supply subsidy pilot program establishes a one-year school supply subsidy pilot program at na'alihu elementary school repeals appropriate funds repeals on 1-1 20-24 members the recommendation of the chair it's going to be passed with amendments the men amending the scope of the bill to cover all rural title 1 schools including but not limited to naoleo elementary school and defecting the date to july 1 2015 members questions recommendations senate bill 2893 pass with amendments any member voting no any member voting with reservation amen all five members voting eye recommendations adopted thank you the last one on the agenda senate bill 2862 relating to education appropriates funds to doe to install air conditioning units for public school classrooms that have not received air conditioning units recommendation of the chairs to pass with amendments we're going to blank out the appropriation effect the date to july 1 2050 and technical and non-substantive amendments questions members if not share both side recommendations senate bill 2862 passive amendments any members voting any members voting reservations hearing none all five members voting recommendations thank you very much members we have one more item okay x agenda [Music] this is for senate bill 2928 relating to education there's a proposed sd1 establishes a working group to consider and prepare to study and prepare an implementation plan for agricultural career pathways and report to the legislature appropriates an unspecified amount of funds the senate bill 2928 do you have any testifiers no decision oh sorry sorry okay senate bill two nine two eight bill 2928 proposed sd1 passed with amendments to insert the prose proposed sd1 into this bill recommitting the short form bill back to this committee members questions recommendation of the chairs to pass with amendments recommendation is to pass senate bill 2928 with amendments any member voting no any member with reservations hearing none recommendations adopted thank you members that concludes this committee on education senator go ahead you
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
at 903 am and we will start with roll call trustee anderson here trustee kelly pheasant trustee lee president trustee pope president and i am also present okay item two flag salute in recognition of free speech and the following board agenda item we welcome all and would like to note that saying the pledge of allegiance is not a requirement to participate in the business of this public board if you do not say the pledge for religious political social or personal reasons you are most welcome here as an equal participant in the business of this board okay and uh we have a flag in the background of superintendent lair's screen there so for those who would like to participate please rise salute pledge i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice okay moving on to adoption of the agenda do i have a motion so moved and do i have a second second okay uh roll call vote trustee anderson aye st kelly hi lee hi trustee pope aye and the chair vote signs so the agenda is adopted um do we have any comments from the audience hold on give me a second to check it looks like we do not uh testy bruno okay thank you okay moving on to agenda item 5a governance lead leadership session which will be facilitated by monica so go ahead take it away monica thank you president bruno thanks everybody good to see you all it's one of those times when i'll ask you if you're comfortable to have your video on uh there will be minimal as i discuss with each of you minimal screen sharing because you should have and give me a comfort level by holding up if you have a printed copy of the template we're going to be working through today so i can see that you've actually got that paper nancy steve scott looking everybody making sure that you have your paper copy excellent got a thumbs up there okay good that's one to make sure now we sent these out when we worked together gosh nine months ago i suppose it was the meeting guidelines they were resent to you this morning and i want to use them as a basis for a very quick activity by getting these spoken heard we're going to speak them hear them hopefully uh uh certainly understand them and live them a little bit and we're going to do that just in alpha order and i'm going to ask you to read two or three at a time not needing to uh you know you don't have to do a big stentorian dramatic voice just read it so we get used to speaking to each other watching each other listening to each other and it as we're going alpha del rey that puts you up front so del ray i'd like you to read the first three going through the third one that says everybody's opinions count could you read one and three one two three wait a minute this doesn't i am not sure what you want me to read oh it's a sample sample meeting guidelines oh the one that we received this morning yes okay hold on i gotta get that up just a second does your copy everybody have numbers on it because i don't see numbers no they're not they're bullet points so it sounds like it's got different content as well ours starts with we will keep our focus on the best interest of our students that's it that is it yeah okay that's it the second is we will listen actively to all ideas we will listen openly without preparing responses and the third is everyone's opinion counts will be open to the ideas of others kelly you're the next step in the alpha order alphabetical so the second song so why don't you just read the next two okay we will wait to speak until a team member has finished talking we will keep our remarks brief and to the point so that all opinions can be expressed and anyone can call a timeout if he or she feels the need for a break thank you lee would you mind reading the next three certainly we will communicate openly and honestly with each other we will respect differences we will show respect never dismiss or devalue others we will be supportive rather than judgmental thank you much nancy how about the next three we will go helpful feedback directly and openly all team members will offer their ideas and resources we will build upon the ideas of others and look for common ground we will paraphrase for understanding scott could i ask you to do the next three yes each each member will take uh responsibility for the work of the team we will each be responsible for the access of for acts for the access success of the meeting participate equally address concerns we will respect uh team meeting times start on time return from breaks promptly and avoid unnecessary interruptions and the third we will stay focused on our goals and avoid getting sidetracked excellent and steve if you would conclude by reading the last three when we have a difference of opinion we will debate the facts of the situation and avoid personalities we will address process not personalities we will all work to make sure there are no hidden agendas and that all issues and concerns can be dealt with openly by all members we will work toward the future learning from the past excellent now i know you've read those and you could intuit them and take them into your core easily by just reading them but as i said part of the reason we're doing this today is not it's not a sequential exchange of emails this is not a survey we're putting together and aggregating this is a again i've used the term before you are this multi-headed gorgeous creature governance team and so that's why i wanted you to hear literally hear each other's voices as as we talked about this is way and also the meeting guidelines folks are a little bit of a microcosm of the more detailed more in-depth work that will come out of the development of the governance handbook because a lot of these things which were put in quite uh you know not school language but very conversational language are very much the same tenets and principles we're going to be codifying in the in the um the governance handbook so the other document that you got which you just put gander at is the discussion guide we were talking about that it's it's the agenda it is as the term would say guide you know what a guide is you know it's not you you have to take every step your guide will maybe go first if you're trekking down the amazon but you're going to be making the journey and this is uh we've said we were going to maybe take a break around 10 o'clock that's fluid depending on how we feel uh when we have a natural break we will take a break for stretching coffee refills and all that kind of stuff and you'll note that the end of our time is to say you know what the heck is this document this tool that we're doing what's it for we're not going to spend this saturday morning together developing a handbook that's going to go on the shelf and literally our proverbially gathered dust so we'll we'll talk a little bit about those questions and i spent them in advance because uh they they are reflections because sometimes they're like i had never thought about how we're going to use this going forward i've really never considered what an important tool this is for onboarding a new member so that's the lay of the land this morning so we'll be flexible as i said it's the guide in the way that um you know that dwayne johnson was the guide in the jungle book we just it's just going to guide us in our discussion hopefully we're going to make progress but it is not uncommon as you can imagine this is a pretty meaty document it's not uncommon in a session like this when we let the work take as long as it takes that we may get to a point where uh the superintendent and the board president with the gavel will say you know we we're so glad we've got this work done we have more to do and maybe we'll proceed by identifying a subcommittee that continue to kind of wrap up the loose ends and come back to the full board as you know it's common practice when a board does a governance manual a governance handbook to um when it's when it's freshly birthed is to bring it forward at an open meeting a regular meeting and adopt it almost as you were adopting a policy so that's it um the point of it as you know is it's another absolute tool to maintain cohesion in the board we spent a lot of time talking about you know the collective board and its role versus the individual board member but it is my friends a living document it is not brought down from the mountain on stone uh a lot of boards in fact there's language i think in the template that we're looking at today some wars may get codified in their handbook that they're actually going to review it like every two years that may not be appropriate not everybody does that some do it just when a board change necessitates it such as filling a vacant appointment or after an election or that sort of thing so it is a living document and it's a working document but it really is going to codify that's its purpose is to codify it has two purposes one to codify these agreements that will reach about hey this is the way we do our best work as elected and appointed trustees and the way we work best with our superintendent and his or her team but it also is another one of these opportunities to communicate it's a record you you communicate to the public we made a commitment this is our board now if i uh had any thought at all that a member of the public was going to just say oh this looks like fun reading i think i'll read the scoreboard governance handbook they probably won't but nevertheless it's a truly important message to send so that's kind of the point of it so i wanted to mention to you just quickly because it we'll come back to it i think when we talked before i made a couple of book recommendations one of them at my screen's doing that weird thing is this book called call to order uh i'm going to re re-recommend it to you because not only is it really the gold standard about how meetings are run but it also is a more of a macro thing about uh governance uh behaviors in general so call to order i recommend to you good all right thanks for reading the sample meeting guidelines everybody get pull up your um your template which you got you've got that paper copy you've got a pen i know a lot of us like to make notes uh we're not going to share it on the screen but if you'll see that one of the key squares in our brady bunch here is the inestimable and quite valuable carol hunt so as we talk carol will be in the document and she'll be putting uh notes in there and when a discussion on uh hey that's good you know we let's tweak it this way let's do that when a consensus uh edit uh percolates to the top carol if you would when you put that in there i would suggest put it in either in another color or put it in under yellow highlighted and that way you can cross reference it when we get back to it so that's the process um we talked a lot about ida we again this is another tool that helps us get there so that said when you are weighing in on a suggested language word choice tweet uh whether it's a concept whether it's the language whatever you of course are speaking from your point of view your perspective who who else's perspective could you speak from right it's your perspective but remember that the final document is not uh the the result of of six authors but it's it's the author one author of the board so that's that's kind of my my lead up and now we're just gonna jump right in so what i'd ask is um i think because they're not dozens and dozens of us here we can probably keep our our uh our uh microphones on rather normally in a large session i'd say hey stay on mutant but if that gets to be a problem we'll change that but for just you know so we'll just sort of be in this cyber room together let's keep our mics on and let's just jump right in so you see that the cover page is blank because that's literally just the cover page where normally you put the names of the trustees it would say steve bruno president etc etc etc scott lair superintendent and then the next page has it's really sort of the back of the cover page which says if you'll be with me it says unity of purpose roles and responsibilities norms and agreements i'll give i'll go quiet for a second ask you if reading that simple it's actually just two sentences uh any uh tweaks edits modifications you want there chime in okay i'm not hearing any again this is not set in stone so let's move on we don't need to what is that horrible horrible um uh grammar thing several years ago at one of the awards shows uh one of the guys was up uh accepting an award i think it was a grammys and uh he said something that somebody else said he said well we're in total agreeance well from that point i think now people actually i hope marion webster hasn't gone there yet and put agreeance in as a substitute for agreement but we don't need to spend time uh being in in vehement and total agreements if we agree we move on to the next page which is the first section we're going to talk about like we said in the discussion guide we're going to talk about this whole section about building the governance team the first page asks a couple of questions what do we want to accomplish what do we stand for and the bullet points proposed there in this template kelly i'll get you one sec um our our answers to that question sec uh similarly on the next page roles and responsibilities so we're going to focus now on what i believe is page two on building a governance team unity of purpose kelly your hands up now before we move on to page two can we um can i just make a comment about the footer i i don't see a need to have that footer on every single page footer is going to go away yeah okay in fact carol carol you can excise that footer now beautiful yeah thank you yeah i mean it's important but not no it is it it's it's it's inform more informative than important but not in that not necessary thanks kel perfect example of yes nancy i'd like to find out if do we have any public online at the last check eugene said we have no one eugene okay we do not no it's just yeah it's just us thank you you would see their little tile on the screen along with all the rest of our tiles and right now carol is the last one so if anyone else pops up it'll show up on the screen wow okay thank you and just so you know just we're in a webinar mode so you 10 the 10 of us and tiles the rest are participants so you might not see that us as hosts can see that so right now there's only 10 10 individuals on uh which is just us so we would have to click on participants sorry my bad i didn't realize that was possible okay oh yeah very good okay what are we thinking about that first that page building a governance team unity of purpose starts with uh in the uh italicized statement there it talks about the next uh full paragraph then it poses in the gray bar the two questions and it poses bullet points that answer those questions the floor is open for comments suggested edits or tweaks or validation we need to uh raise our hand for acknowledgement oh that'll help yeah yeah kelly go okay so in bullet two um i think the word greater is uh unnecessary uh it's the community it's just superfluous um and then in bullet one two three four five six uh remove the phrase never resting on our laurels that's my suggestion uh and on bullet the next bullet we want to exemplify a positive culture rather than perpetuate a legacy of very nice not just talk about it but actually do it kelly thanks for thanks for offering those before i ask for anyone else if you have any to offer are there any comments of a sent or asking for clarification for any of the suggestions kelly's made um can you please restate how you wanted the last bullet to read we want to exemplify a positive culture as opposed to perpetuate a legacy so don't take it out perpetuate legacy of and adding the word exemplify kelly i think that's both both uh to the the notes that you made um uh uh point at one thing this doesn't need to be flowery language i mean that that forest you know never resting on our laurels is a little bit dramatic you know and it's this does not need to be dramatic or floored yeah well and and also i think it's important that it's um that it's very what's the word positive that the we're saying what we will do not what we won't do and that it's the clear and not you know extra language gotcha great understood understood um other comments your thoughts dr lee i see you've got a hand up yes um i appreciate those uh previous edits i was looking in the same direction um i see mention of facilities an excellent program but i i see no mention of removing student achievement for our most vulnerable populations um i'd like to see something about equity mentioned and what we stand for absolutely great point yeah i was looking at it with the eye of an editor not the eye of a publisher yes yes indeed because we are remember we're asking and that we're answering the question um i what are thoughts on this uh meriting its own bullet versus being tried to be absorbed into one of the others i feel it might merit its own bullet any thoughts anybody one bullet thumbs up i i'm flexible either way i think these are all good suggestions dr lee would you take a stab at how that that bullet point might incorporate itself into what we stand for list yeah maybe something like we stand for uh equity and the in improvement of all um you know vulnerable student population student achievement but the improvement of achievement how about outcomes there you go yes my brain's not on you yeah i know we stand for equity and the improvement of student of all student outcomes or all how do we get that vulnerable populations in there improvement of educational outcomes for all yeah for all vernal vulnerable populations student population or just all populations to be more of a targeted universalism approach well and well and perhaps adding something like providing um the supports needed for vulnerable populations to succeed and we also are committed to providing the supports that vulnerable population populations need to succeed yeah i think in this case i think in this case the use of the descriptor vulnerable is not what i was referring to earlier of just being a florid language it's an accent accurate descriptor vulnerable populations yeah i think vulnerable also um is kind of going out of favor at this point as far as that you're basically labeling people and then they are um taking on that persona rather than saying um sorry it's something along the lines of we stand for equity and the improvement of outcomes for all students and to providing the necessary strategies uh to meet all uh to meet us to meet populations student populations where they are or that doesn't sound very good but something to address the needs of all student populations how about to meet the needs of all student populations which i just said yeah which implies i love it because you said it sorry so let me read it we stand for equity and the improvement of outcomes for all students and to providing the necessary strategies to meet the needs of all student populations do we hear consensus for a draft on that you can certainly i'm not sure equity is the word to use because i don't know that the general parent population even understands what you're talking about however kelly can you reread it please yeah we stand for equity and the improvement of outcomes for all students and to providing the necessary strategies to meet the needs of all student populations or how about each student i must say you're speaking of what's in and out of favor i'll tell you that really there's a great uh push just to start referring to our our students not as all but as each and every yeah it's a subtle but significant difference i think that's a good catch kelly yeah and every okay so one more time i'm sorry strategies to meet the okay we stand for equity and the improvement of outcomes for all students uh of educational outcomes no i i like outcomes in general yeah i do too of outcomes for all students and to providing the necessary strategies to meet the needs of each and every student that's good everybody carol is our scribe did you get that no she's going way too fast either she needs to read it much slower or email it to me i'll paste it in the chat and dr lee are you good with that edit since this was your idea sorry yes um i can't see the chat but yes okay scott do you see any problems with it no i like it good work i like it good work and a good catch too because i don't think we have the educational outcomes or outcomes even in that but we don't have chat we don't have chat because it's webinar kelly sorry sorry you'll have your sister off chat because it's been very distracting for the public we've made other means for the public to be able to speak to us got it gotcha by email okay understood okay um so other very good work you guys i do want to say nancy this is you you made an interesting point we have this tricky uh line that that uh governance teams walk but we have to if we must go one way or the other on educating our parents our community you're saying hey maybe they don't know what equity means because i mean we we live and breathe it as education leaders you know in the equity uh inclusion diversity vocab right we live and breathe it and you're saying well maybe a lot of parents don't but uh this is where we have an opportunity remember this document is sending a message and this is a way uh it's an educational opportunity i think uh it you you raise a good point uh in a larger discussion which is uh is one of the first steps we need to do in improving and being an equity focused organization letting our our community our parents know we are the answer is yes so i really appreciate you raising that point because it's not not to disagree that maybe there are some who say well i don't know what that means isn't equity the same as equality you know at which it isn't but it does point up the need for further education in the community yeah i can tell you my son writes for newspaper and he's told to write to a seventh grade level yeah we know that nancy however the word equity is really critical to um societal changes that are occurring right now and if people don't know what the word equity means they need to learn it because it's critical at this at this point in our society we all may understand the difference between equality and equity and if they don't understand it maybe it will inspire them to look the word up it will give an opportunity for learning i think it's just it needs to be normalized that word needs to be normalized and i think it provides like monica said an opportunity for us to educate folks around what what it does mean and what it represents and so i i i get your point nancy but i think that my work or our work would be how do we inform folks to what this is all about and what this statement means to us as a board well then maybe we could use the word and then in parentheses say what it means i don't know but i'm just saying it's going over the heads of a lot of people in this area um that's i i would uh maybe we could do like an addendum or something or or footer you know what's it called a i didn't go to college sorry a a a footnote basically you know i would say put it put a pin in it put a pin in this because adding a line in a document is not your equity work of course uh that's it's it this is just pointing out that it's it's a continuing opportunity for parent engagement and education um but i would put a pin in it in terms of using this document to carry that education burden but just be aware that this is shining a light on on that responsibility you have to educate yeah and maybe do maybe other i'm i'm just hip shooting from the hipper but um it might be that uh your equity policy might be something that you might uh work into a superintendent's note on the website you might do a this is old old-school term you might do a press release it says oh uh the board's uh this is our equity policy which is adopted and we're constantly reviewing somebody so it's it's not a one and done i think we've talked about that before but uh maybe just as a group an individual you might be thinking of ways is how do we not miss opportunities to bring those those wonderful seventh graders nancy bring the seventh graders into it yeah i'm sorry scott right yeah scott's column yeah scott's column is one way yeah sure every month at the end of it we could have you know new school word of the month or something yeah well the other piece is i think if it's throughout our documents whether it's our our udl whether it's our um okay our blueprint i mean there's a tons of different places we can include and reinforce what it means to the board in the district and i think that's how we also get it out as well um i mean i think it's that important yeah this is a question about seeing the opportunities and making making more you know okay good discussion good discussion um so i'll just go ahead and interject um monica had mentioned um about an equity policy um to my knowledge we do not have one correct and so that might be a good follow-up you know we're setting the larger vision um you know that we're committed to equity but what does that mean how is that embodied and enacted in our learning environments and spaces that's something that we as a board definitely should define and how codified so that it's clear to all of our employees and you know everyone involved in the district what we mean when we say equity and that's a perfect example of a that's the kind of discussion policy development and adoption is done at open meetings so boom another great opportunity to educate the public there is a csva equity policy sample policy scout i'm sure you're aware so yeah okay okay let's keep moving uh that next page actually before we go on um do we see any sort of a need to add something here about what we stand for as far as the type of education i realize it's in our goals our mission our vision but we obviously stand for those things and this document is saying what we stand for so maybe it wouldn't hurt to reiterate you know that we want you know to provide um a what's a safe what is it what is i'm sorry i don't know our mission why don't we just add our goals and our mission to the documentation exactly that would be awesome and then on on as far as what we stand for um [Music] you know we stand for supporting the goals mission vision and vision mission and goals of the district which which kelly might be like with our the first quote our shared purpose is to have the best learning environment for all students it's pretty broad maybe we need to you know as outlined or as something in there i don't know yeah our shared purpose is to have the best learning environment for all students um [Music] and then that way if our vision mission gets edited at some point we don't have to actually change what we stand for just change but no i like the idea of putting i'm sorry i'm waffling here i like the idea of putting it in here in fact i had a note to that effect further down so our shared purpose is to have the best learning environment for all students and to support the vision mission and goals of the district does that sound right or is that too much pretty clear i think don't worry you really you raised um uh you you you give us a chance to demonstrate a key point here which is this template we're working from is straw not cement so if if as we go along you say yeah this this template would be strengthened by addendums or appendices such as our vision mission statement then you can absolutely do that there's no need to to stay in this structure as it's presented so thanks very for making that clear my mission so we could then for the first bullet point we could put our shared purpose is to have the best learning environment for all students and to support the vision mission and goals of the district appendix a and then appendix a would be division mission and goals of the district right which could be changed if said language change correct right other thoughts steve nancy lee yeah looking good okay it works for me all right let's move on that next page is a recap of things we talked a great length about about the roles and responsibilities uh i would ask you to uh this one doesn't pose it structurally in the way of a question and bullet point answers but it just restates the roles and responsibilities they're pretty straightforward uh any uh tweaks edits modifications that would make it stronger for you guys yes i'm just not really liking the word we in every bullet point so for instance number one could we possibly say set direct direction for the district as opposed to reset the direction i think you're exactly right because the way the uh the uh the statement before the colon says the five responsibilities are at that point it also means that the verbs could become the you know the ing's our responsibilities are setting the direction establishment providing support oh that's great because you see down in the next section we carry out these responsibilities in these job areas um i'm not sure establishing the district i noticed under that when it says student learning and achievement maybe that's put in the other part of it so are we thinking of changing these to be the you know setting the direction establishing direction providing this providing support is that what people are thinking i think so yes i think that consensus there yeah okay yeah and kelly also has their hand up yeah so um these are not prioritized one two three four five so those should be bullets because they are they're not uh sequential nor are they by priority so they need to be bullets and then i notice that uh it says the same thing we set the direction and established district direction i think that um the second one where we carry out these responsibilities in each of the following job areas maybe it would just be better to stop say establishing established district direction uh for example goals vision mission equity statement policy etc oh look i had a equity statement in there um just because it's redundant it doesn't there's no reason for it to be in there twice and like it doesn't explain it any further you know as i look at this kelly what i'm seeing is i i i can see that this was crafted in sync or to sync up with the masters in governance curriculum areas and it needed you see what i'm saying because there is a class called setting direction and then you're into all these other things finance facilities that's not so that's i i i think it was it's a little bit of a round peg square hole to put uh establishing district direction as a job area yes but other thoughts anybody definitely had a thought on it um since we changed the other you know the previous section um to be more active verbs um i think that perhaps just deleting that word establishing under the job areas um section would make more sense because that is a job area of the district the district direction um so but the word establishing you know there is kind of a distractor now that we've made you know the other ones more of what you know the active responsibilities are um direction is a job area along with the others that are listed but that word establishing is a distractor there right because when you list those responsibilities as we just described it's redundant and then do we need to have the word job could we just say in the following areas and then um for the first first one instead of setting direction just say goals vision mission equity statement policy aren't all of those things don't they fall under that instead of having to explicitly list them out because things may change over time just the words district direction cover that i agree i think dr lee your point is there if we start if we label it out what if we forget or i wouldn't want to limit to say the direction might not be something that we don't know tomorrow maybe the direction that we set the district in and this is our dynamic and we've had to respond to things that we've never had to respond to over this past year in the in the pandemic so distance i really want to be careful we don't box ourselves in as well yeah i understand what you guys are i just and and maybe i'm just being nitpicky i tend to do that but it just still seems redundant to me to say we set direction and then in the job areas of setting direction um it just seems silly uh it is it's it seems redundant if if if that uh area of responsibility is something and you wanted to you know in something to do with mission and vision uh because all the rest of these things if a district has a mission of vision and goals look at all that other stuff get falls into under a lot of that too mission vision and goals and i see your point now kelly too it's we're saying the same thing again we set it up above by saying the board you know we established the direction then we say again we're doing the directions of job duty we're really student learning outcomes finance facility those are all pieces within that so it's almost redundant to say it again the body part is kind of like a descriptive of is more it's more descriptive like it's it's all of these areas so i don't think that listening listing you know policy maybe just say policy right and then that would encompass anything equity statement vision goals mission el gap all of that i don't know i look at it more um critically from what um trustee kelly said it really seems like the five responsibilities sum it up and i'm not sure why the whole section on we carry out these responsibilities in each of the following job areas are fair um because all of those things feed into the five items of the five bullets that are above in the responsibilities i mean finance facility all those i don't know why those things need to be listed there when they're incorporated in and implied in you know the direction accountability um that's what policy does um community leaders is community relations now because i mean i don't understand yeah by any whole section nancy thanks for your patience and and dr lee and in fact that's why i was uh making note that those bullet points in the second bottom the bottom half of the page uh seem to be more in service of uh enumerating the curriculum areas in in the training that csba doesn't hear but they are all and and when we do these trainings as those of you know you go and you you talk about all five of the responsibilities as seen through the lens of finance or all five of the responsibilities as seen through the lens of this or that so uh i i think they're they they may be uh not not really germane to this document nancy you've been so patient what have you got to say i just think that we have not mentioned curriculum development maybe that's what it should be changed to setting the direction of curriculum well i think that's implied to be part of the whole student learning and achievement yes the actual curriculum in the district is something so very important to parents right now and what their children are being taught right and and i would say and i would see it falling under the direction and structure and i mean it really falls into those five big bullets nancy where with the exception of community leaders other than communicating to community leaders that the board would set the direction and approve the curriculum the structure at which we you know it's all right in i would use that word curriculum because that's what parents are screaming about right and left what's my child being taught what if we were to just remove that entire section and leave it just as the top and then that way it's just saying that in all aspects of the district we set direction we establish structure we provide maybe expanding on the the lead-in sentence to that list um the role of trustees is to stay focused on the big picture while fulfilling five responsibilities in we've already talked about how it doesn't feel necessary to call them job areas so that would apply to this first sentence and also the bottom sentence and in maybe in maybe not even saying fulfilling five responsibilities period and there they are setting direction establishing structure and i'm leaning more towards what trustee kelly mentioned as well just deleting the we carry out these responsibility and this and the bullet points there and just going straight to the superintendent assist the board and carrying out the responsibilities in each of the we're not calling them job areas whatever we're calling them key areas or whatever yeah key areas yeah and just to be devil's advocate scott do you see any any area of the district that we would not be setting direction establishing structure providing support or ensuring you know any of those five things no i mean to me it's very broad with the the scope of the work that you five would do so to me it i i can't think of anything that would not fit within that and steve i'm sorry i didn't mean to interrupt you no it's okay if we're going to take out the list of job areas i think we should change that opening sentence to while fulfilling five responsibilities period and taking up in a series of drafts just did that on the screen here's what i wrote it just says the role of the trust of trustees is to stay focused on the big picture while fulfilling uh five responsibilities colon setting direction establishing structure providing support ensuring accountability acting as community leaders and we we can even take out the in the first and second bullet and take out the second one though maybe we can add some of those to the top one they're different though they're different things though i understand what you're saying and i don't object to including them but if we did keep them in they would need to be separate from that top list because the top list is not about areas of our you know our key focus they're they're like overarching functions right i don't see what the problem is of leaving them in delray hang in there we'll get you in a sec yeah um i what what i mean what i sort of alluded to earlier i think that you see that those those those five key responsibilities are responsibilities that you carry out in whatever area if you if if there's a finance issue you have to do those five things if there's a facilities issue you approach it from those five things so that's why this is uh please don't tell my my my colleagues but it i feel it's a bit of a commercial for masters in governance uh you know that's what it's doing it's listing the the curriculum those are those are the course areas of training and and they are the course areas because they are the areas we train in how do you set direction in all of these sorts of things but they are different strictly speaking than just identifying what your responsibilities are so it also tells the public what we do this is true delray thanks for your patience we did not include hiring and giving direction to the superintendent well see that comes under human resources but isn't that part of ensuring accountability i'm just curious isn't that one of our responsibilities under the item of ensuring accountability that falls under that that's why i'm saying it's in my opinion um it's i think we should remove the um the commercial for the masters in governance because it just causes confusion all of those items that are under the job areas responsibilities are implied through the five statements that are above it so you know um don't worry maybe shots uh steve any thoughts did you hear the discussion um i think delray brings up a good point because that is one of the chief responsibilities of the board um i i definitely don't like the first bullet that currently exists in the job areas and i am leaning towards thinking that that list is not really necessary as uh some have said um i don't know i you know what how about we in the interest of uh letting this get do consideration uh make a note that this might be a a an appendix area perhaps it might be an appendices that said the board ex you know carries out its responsibilities uh throughout or something in and there's an appendix to the thing which lists among the areas the board blah blah blah or something just a thought del rey now you're back yes well i was always here i just took my video off okay um in sake of time can we um move on from this item each of us give our information via email or to you or whomever and look at each individual's idea of this particular line item and come back to it as a whole later i think that makes sense that's what i'm saying let's put a pin in it make an and then uh can sort of by email compendium uh see where the uh you know where where people are coming up kelly did i see your hand yeah can i just think i'm sorry i i'm just gonna make one last suggestion what if we were to take some of those some of the bottom section turn it into a sentence or part of the sentence above so in other words it would say the rule of the trustees is to stay focused on uh the big picture while fulfilling five responsibilities in the areas and in the area all areas of the district including policy student learning and finance financial uh but yeah i mean somehow incorporating policies when you're getting too wordy kelly well it's less words because we're taking out a whole section but it's kind of a compromise for keeping in some of the things that you guys are saying is important all right i will i will submit this via email i think del ray your i think your your your suggestion is to write that that um specific thoughts expressed in a separate follow-up email can can address this superintendent i see that you have a hand as well and i just wanted i was trying to refocus myself on because i've heard a couple statements about the public and this is the is the target audience for this the sixth of us or is the target audience the community um and and that's where i think i was getting because i'm i'm going back and forth like are we trying to make sure we're inclusive to show what everyone uh everyone read this or is this a document that we uh the the six of us live by and it's more of a not internal document but i don't know if i'm saying this right you are and i would i would respond this way scott is that it's it's real real purpose is to help you build and maintain cohesion so you can do these five irons as a byproduct if it similarly sends a message to your community that we are committed to working well we don't just show up you know 15 minutes before open our packets and try to we are committed to working in this way so it is a byproduct of the work but its main purpose is to build and maintain cohesion that was my exact question yeah that's a good point and you know in any in any uh and we mentioned that it has a very real world um for those of you that can cast your mind back to when you when you join the board it it's part of the onboarding materials for that person who you know was a candidate and boom you're on the team this is a very key document but it is for for you to work from so and then one more go ahead nancy sorry i was just gonna say or if they're interested in running for the board they could see this and say this is what it entails good point good point scott my last comment then i'm gonna i'll let this one go but maybe what we do is we have the five areas and then we we carry out examples such as so it's more of a a descriptor of what those might mean and you're not in you're not saying these are the only things we do but here are examples uh to your point del rey of you know maintaining fiscal um responsibility hiring and firing superintendent you know maybe we give examples within that lower block of what these five um statements mean or how they can be carried out but we're not boxed into these are the only things so that's something to think about as we provide feedback to this interesting page i think that's a good point all right good work can we move on to the next page all good let's go into the next page please note that on the the i guess it's page five it's as it's numbered there that under the gray bar of governance norms we'll go back to that that opening uh paragraph but you'll see a lot of bold face uh students there those are that's not suggested texts those are uh questions being posed to you because since people started doing governance handbooks back in the old day whenever that was uh we we've changed uh technology has become a bigger part of it so this is why where you you could have found a perfectly workable governance handbook from 30 years ago that would not have to worry about having devices off or honor this or that but nowadays many boards are finding they do want to put it in your handbook so that's what that's there for so let's go back to the top and read that first paragraph uh which talks about what cult it tries to define culture it tries to talk about agreements um about how um i'll go ahead and throw it out there maybe as a discussion starter um sometimes we see sort of interchangeable use of the term agreements and norms um personally i've never been a huge fan of the word norms but it's used all over my organization so i i acquiesce but how does it work for you because you see in that beginning paragraph what other thoughts tonight you have because it says we teams have these agreements on how they'll treat each other and then the gray bar calls them norms any thoughts about that issue or about that opening paragraph just a mutant chime in i i'm okay with it as is i'm not sure what it's saying here is it saying we're not going to do any of these things like have bandwidth use in the house well nancy we're we're not down we're not we're still above the gray bar uh i know personally i've seen it interchanged each way whether it's governance norms or collective agreements i mean whether you're doing like plc work so either i mean personally i they kind of are interchangeable to me so i'm i'm fine with whatever the group is okay other thoughts anyone it's pretty conversational it's meant to be easily understood i see behavioral behavior ground rules um you'll you'll note that it articulates in the last sentence of the opening paragraph about uh that norms can uh it talks about build and maintain positive culture or shift a negative one uh kelly you mentioned earlier about you know maybe opting when possible to uh keep articulations and characterizations positive maybe maybe shift to negative one maybe is is uh superfluous because building and maintaining positive starting from positive or starting from negative but uh any thoughts any other thoughts on that opening paragraph this is just a description of what the culture is and it could be a negative culture so i see no reason to to take that out i think it reminds us that culture is our responsibility and we can either make it positive or negative okay other thoughts other thoughts on the opening paragraph before we get down to some of the bullet points i agree with miss kelly i'm sorry i have a question before we move on did we skip the superintendent assist the board and carry it out its responsibilities or did i just was i busy typing and missed that i'm sorry oh the the bottom sentence of the previous page yeah because i had some comments on that i'm sorry guys that's no actually you're you're correct kelly we we did uh the only sort of mission that we made of it was that it for consistency's sake we would not use the term the phrase job areas okay so here's my question about this this phrase um job area yeah and in all and leads the staff total culture the agreed upon district vision mission and goals uh it seems lacking what the district needs accomplished i'm not sure if that's too much or too little does vision and goals cover everything should we re-list the vision mission and our goals here in this section okay so we kind of already talked touched on this the the the whole statement seems a little bit lacking but i i i'm willing to just let it go uh well i'm confused and why it's even there because that is the role of the superintendent why are not the role of each board cabinet member president clerk representative also also listed um either i would strike that or add the others to that whole page i would submit that if we're not listing those inaccurately what we you know have already said we didn't like the term jobbers if you're not listing those at this point that explanatory tag on sentence is not needed yeah i mean i guess if you say rolls of the board in the first section and roles of the superintendent in the second section then it kind of makes sense but again i mean it's it's it's implicit that the superintendent assists the board and carrying out the responsibilities so i kind of feel like maybe we just get rid of it i don't know what do you guys think i've heard of that whole phrase the superintendent is the board you eliminate all of that i was thinking about it do you know i would not say you eliminated but i would would add the role of the president the job description of the president the job description i mean eliminate the word job but just saying for right now an ad clerk and role of the representative as well because which would have the role of all trustees then we would specify the role of the superintendent the president the uh clerk and the the representative i think that's taking us more granular um and at the top it says the mutually agreed roles of board members and the superintendent with the five points so i'm also finding that last sentence um to be just more it's duplicitous it's like it's already stated at the top that those are the mutually agreed roles um our job the job descriptions that are already pre-existing outline what each person does and what their responsibilities are in that role so i don't know if it's necessary to restate them here this seems more like an overarching vision type of statement yeah i'm inclined to agree with uh trustee lee there because um just that that main thing that the mutually agreed on roles the board members as superintendent uh we are let's make sure we're not just looking at it too much from our bubble we understand that of course it's implied that the superintendent supports the board in in every bullet point uh remember this is your document this is not um so from my perspective uh it's already 10 o'clock i don't want to get too bogged down in the exact wording of that page i think there's a lot of content that's uh more important in later pages and i i just kind of like to move on personally since we've already agreed that people are going to weigh in on how to handle the the templates second half of the page maybe they could people could also in their email follow up weigh in on that the need or uh not need of that follow-up sentence does that make sense steve president okay kelly thanks for doing that we did skip over thanks okay meanwhile now we're back to the next page now the nazis you're saying i'm sorry i don't need to interrupt but it says a break from 10 to 10 15 and we're two minutes into that break and i i truly need one oh okay good well let's take it i when when we started i mentioned that we would see if it felt like it was needed and it sounds like it is so it's 1002 let's come back at 10 17.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
you can uh take take a stretch break get coffee we'll come back and be ready to barrel through okay see you in 15 minutes thank you thanks perfect um scott i also have a question about um our conversation about following up an email since this is an agenda item and it's a public uh item is that violation of the brown act if we're submitting our suggestions to the rest of the board via email i would submit them suggestions to me and or mr bruno as the president and then we would i don't think we're gonna get through this whole thing so we may have to do a subcommittee so i would say we put her and then steve and i and we'll try to get one more member do you agree steve with that or i have much fewer comments on the second half of the document just so you guys know i'm not going to be i'm not going to be holding you hostage i promise but i think if your good point if we submit our comments to myself and mr bruno that way or even carol that way we can have them and then try to integrate them okay this foreign um you um uh hello that's you okay we seem to be back pretty much del rey will be clicking on in a sec i'm here um good president uh bruno thank you for uh keeping us there dr lee thanks for uh making that that call for the break because we need to be refreshed and revive for the for the next uh time together uh steve i'm i'm thinking in the interest of efficiency because we've already sort of established we know when we are working through things that they might be necessitating some offline individual work and a follow-up expression from individually i wonder if that's something that you might be able to monitor and when you get your sense and you feel like uh as you did say in in the interest of time let's let's uh let's take this and do our individual follow-up contributions would you think seems like yeah because all right so let's move on monica could i could i interrupt you real quick one thing that i think some of the some folks had jumped off camera but kelly asked a good question it probably best if people are sending feedback make sure you email to me and steve not the whole board just so we can get that feedback so i don't know if everyone caught that before they jumped off very good point to to uh identify yeah thank you kelly for picking up on that yep mr brown thanks you okay now the next page it's actually two pages but it's just because there's a little bit of hangover on the on the second page there i want to skip the the bold phase i want to i want to look at the uh kind of um uh uh sort of opening paragraph we talked about the first one uh the governance norms gray bar then it talks about uh that little professional government standards list but then let's skip past the bold face questions which are our pointed questions to us to talk about technological changes in board meetings and let's deal with the bullet points that begin from keep from taking disagreements etc on to the following page with the last one leverage historical experiences and then the and above all and then we'll swing back to the boldface things that specifically have to do with uh do we need to articulate norms regarding technological digital challenges so am i clear in what i'm asking us to do here we're going to start there and i would ask you to look at the bullet points that begin with keep from working through the uh the lat the next page one's leverage and then uh again there's a little bit of uh probably unnecessary floor language where it says and above all you know boldface all caps that may not be necessary because in fact uh it's just separating the the last and the next to last bullet point there so before we jump in dr lee you've got your hand up uh jump on in yes so the first bullet um keep from taking disagreements personally individuality is embraced and respected um i ha i have a problem with that word individuality maybe something like diversity of opinion is embraced and then respected um did you see my suggestion interesting and i see we've got just a typo there carol we don't have to close parens kelly your thoughts yeah on on this whole bullet um i don't care for the language it's very negative and so i was recommending something along the lines of accept differences with professionalism understanding that these differences are normal expected and healthy and that they bear no judgment toward me as a person kelly i'm gonna that that made me want to put my hand over my heart and i could see you know the the trees waving in the sunset and all but i want to tell you this brevity is our friend if there's a way we can distill those those thoughts into a few or a few words that would be useful um dr lee when um i liked how you had a phrase that was actually more descriptive and better than individuality refresh our memory what did you say diversity of opinion or diversity of opinion yeah opinion maybe my main thing is that i don't want it to say keep from taking disagreements it makes a positive state yeah make the verb uh uh if using using the the the words that are here if we made it the positive statement it would be something like embrace and respect diversity of opinion i like that because that's what we're saying and then the byproduct would be taking it any other thoughts on that let's go to the next next bullet there other other tweaks or uh modifications that that are jumping off the page at you and remember we want to be consistent um uh in fact i for that i mentioned the second bullet is not consistent all the other uh norms start with a verb yes so that should be changed to just show respect good good catch i would add courtesy to that as well respect and courtesy nice i like that so instead of be respectful it's show respect and courtesy toward all others oh you know what i rewrote this one as well sorry i was on a roll this morning okay kelly ten words or less so would all others in the learning community never devalue any trust never to value or dismiss uh others period i i wouldn't i wouldn't put it in in the learning community just all others i think is is best regardless of where they're coming from or how we're interacting with them we need to treat everyone respectfully and do we need to say devout do we even need to have the second part of it like just show respect toward all others show respect and courtesy toward all others period yeah dr lee backing up for just a moment you said you didn't like the word individuality there i'm not disagreeing with you i'm just um would like to know why you didn't like that so that i can keep that in mind for future items because it didn't fit with what was being stated um and i think that monica pointed out that what we're really talking about there is more about diversity of opinion not individuality okay thank you yeah i agree um with what kelly said about um striking the dismissing and devaluing that's negative language again so i really like that revision for the second bullet of um showing respect and courtesy for all i don't even think you i don't think you need for all it's kind of um implied that we're going to respect all so respect and courtesy period i like that interesting you want brevity monica we've got bread show respect be nice how about that so that that said that the the wordiest bullet there is the one that begins with commit uh it the actual the norm is commit commit the time necessary to govern effectively and then it begins to uh give the for instances how do you feel about the sort of the that second lengthy statement you know anybody i'm sorry which one are you talking about commit to the effect to effective deliberation yeah the bottom one commit the time necessary it's one two three four fifth fifth one oh okay i'm in in all cases i think that we need to change change out um make a commitment to and say commit to you're in the previous bullet we're we're on the second bullet the fifth bullet down kelly i understand that but the two above it say make a commitment or be committed i see you need to say commit to effective deliberation and then and then on this last this next one okay let me read it again i changed it to dedicate the necessary time to govern effectively and then just so we wouldn't have commit commit commit i i do like that because that's a few too many commits in a row yeah dedicate the necessary time to govern effectively uh including and then if you want to be more descriptive we could put it in parentheses with an example for an eg um for be prepared participate um and yeah be prepared participate and that's it and and unders my feelings we're trying to keep others brief and we're not giving examples on others so i think just dedicate the time necessary to govern effectively and then lock right there yep i agree everybody live with that i think i agree too okay next one gets a prize for for brevity any other thoughts on the the bottom uh three bullets and uh proceeding and following the the bold face and above all i have a problem with the and above all um i do as well i think i think all of these are equally important um and then two that last part of the focus on students best interest on what's best for the students i don't understand and it is the touchstone that allows us to have our differences i i suggest striking that i don't even know what that means yeah i would cut that one off right after the word interest just focus on students best interest and make it plural interests within us i was i was debating that in my head i could go either way on that yeah the uh after the the dash dash it gets uh quite murky there okay um how about just just so we don't skip it uh leverage historical experiences what are the authors trying to tell us to do there any ideas is that more confu is that adding more more uh shade than light i don't does it does it talk about remember what a norm is the norm is hey this is how we agree to uh behave with each other i would strike that whole bullet okay yeah okay i mean we could make it shorter and just say learn from past experiences but if our focus is on how i mean it says our norms are how we treat each other so i don't know i i i'm leading towards striking that valid valid i i agree the validity of that is that because we're talking about these are things you do in the convening meeting experience the leverage historical experiences that's your your your individual work you do at home in your heart and in your head and everything so that's good i think it's very strikable so if we wanted to add some specifics now that we're in this digital world about norms do you feel it is too granular to start talking about you know be sure your cell phone is off and all that kind of stuff dr lee you have your hand up i don't know if it's in response to my question or just another thought yes it is in response to your question um i i find it very troublesome and problematic um to start um making up um you know guidance and rules of how we're treating each other that you know in the bolded section here these items are really about policing each other's behavior and environments and i have a big issue with that um i think if we're going way off in the weeds um you know in the 80s uh boards got the right you know the board members have got the right to call in my phone there wasn't a big hoopla about you know how we're going to act on the phone are you chewing in the phone is someone in your background making noise is your pet meowing are your kids making sounds you know i don't think all of that is necessary um when we think about how we treat each other i think that these suggestions that we've worked on so far are really more on point um right now you know there's a big hoopla about virtual meetings and you know and again um i i think we could get off in the leads about trying to control board members and their environments and so forth uh when we have holographic ability to come into meetings then we're gonna need some guidelines around that but i think just more being transmogl the way it is written now um whether i'm coming in through zoom coming in by the phone coming in as a hologram or on face to face these are things i can do to treat my board my fellow board members you know um in a way that is creating a positive culture so i i disagree with all of these suggestions here about cameras eating wi-fi family using bam with that i think you're right it's there's nothing that would date nothing that would date this document more than writing it for 2022.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
and then the other thing is in a way uh are we giving trustees the well-deserved benefit of the doubt to say that when you have as a norm be respectful or commit the time that being respectful is not having your your toddler wailing in the background and not you know a lot so it's it does seem perhaps a little bit um uh unnecessary at least and maybe insulting at most to say we have to have an arm that tells people to turn their phone off you know other thoughts anybody so you know as far as it's disrespectful of your toddler wayland in the background at the same time sometimes that's life you know the ones that got me were um pets and kids in that camera range sometimes that's beyond your control and as far as family use of other devices consuming bandwidth i'm the one that signed up for the board not my entire family and i don't feel that it would be right for any of us to be telling the others families what they can and can't be doing during a board meeting agreed i'm hearing consensus now that being said um you know as far as drinking on camera is as scott takes us up we have water bottles with us during in-person meetings i think we've established that having uh something to drink is not disrespectful in our eyes um eating i've seen that go poorly with other boards it because it hasn't been an issue for us i don't think we need to address it um as far as cameras on and off my preference would be that cameras are on the majority of the time but um sometimes something comes up for instance a kid or a pet coming into the background and it might be good to turn off the camera or when i was uh connecting from home i was having connectivity issues so i turn off the camera to minimize bandwidth so i don't i don't think that we actually gain much by putting in formal policies yeah i agree i i agree with what monica and dr lee also said about you know that these norms are the same regardless of what your mode of communication whether you're on the phone on a zoom in person or yelling from the other room it doesn't matter you're still gonna respect diversity show respect commit to you know all of those things still apply and we don't need to define exactly how what that means we're adults we know what i do that's exactly where the adults i'm saying i mean no not to cast aspersions on our student body but i mean this is not an asb you know governance form where we have to say kids you can't you know bring your uh your your sub sandwich in here like that so i possibly some well-intentioned thoughts with people raising this issue but i i feel nancy del rey are you joining in this consensus that it seems like it's a little superfluous that adults know what be respectful means yes i do agree on that standpoint but what i also think is um what should be mentioned in our norms is not to accept text messages do not accept um facebook messages do not respond during a board meeting when people are trying to contact you do not respond via email because i believe that has happened in the past and it's just rude um it doesn't give the other board members a chance to communicate with the public during a board meeting um that's my thought you know if i may i'm going to indicate that in the next section which is going to be very meaty we're going to really want to work work as quickly as we can to it on the protocols there is one that has to do with uh some of the aspects of meeting behavior and uh it it there is a reference i think it's one about board meetings in the agenda that might be a way where you could uh i think it says all it says now is put your cell phone on silent but we could address this issue maybe then del ray would that be all right perfect okay yeah and and as far as that goes i do think it's a good idea to have it in the handbook because i made that mistake early on i i own up to that and i should not have and viewing this as a way to onboard new board members i think it's good to put that out there that's a very good point steve i can recall um in one of the districts in my area had a great um furore when uh the son of a sitting board member who was a faculty member in one of the schools was texting his mom what to say and do during the meeting which of course is not only bad form but just plain old you know bad uh bad brown accent um so and but then i also remember in some of my early days uh there was we had a meeting on an election day and i'll be darned if our cbo was not monitoring returns and emailing people updated returns during the course of the meeting like you were watching the super bowl you know fourth quarter and here we are anyway okay i think we've i think we've done a good job with that carol just did have you made note of our discussion that has appropriate carol hang on kelly one second harold's with us okay kelly your thought uh i just wanted to kind of go back over we kind of rushed through these and made little changes here and there but i want to make sure we're all in agreement or agreeance um embrace and respect diversity of opinion show respect and courtesy participate in effective deliberation which i changed each listening opening openly while everyone is allowed to express her point of view is that one to be shortened or are we keeping that each listening openly openly and then uh commit to open an honest communication dedicate the necessary time to govern effectively be collaborative maintain confidential confidentiality in an effort to foster trust i don't know where that came from focus on students best interest and be present this is in regards to ray's last comment be present minimize distractions and participate fully in the meeting are you trying to to send carol home writing and emailing it to her so no problem you're you're a good typist you're getting all that down the only the only thing that i would say is i like having the focus on student best interest as the last one so we should move that to the bottom of the room okay move that to the bottom okay will do and then i'm going to go ahead and send this to carol you want to move it to the top or to the top i like that that really shows how important it is i like that is everybody okay with that okay okay now take your either either if you're scrolling or flipping or both look at what we've got ahead of us we have about a half dozen areas which are the protocols and some of them uh are going to be we're going to be able to say yes i agree that's that's characterized accurately in this or that some of them are very specific like a board meeting date and time this draft will not make reference to your uh formula for meeting dates and times uh some of it will not comport with what may be your policy uh processes and this or that one of the categories as you've leafed through is is fairly large and that's the one about board meetings and agenda the others are uh not as lengthy um but my my thought is this because i think you know it's 10 40 almost we really are making pretty good pro progress here i had thought if we were running way behind we might try to do a divide and conquer and split into uh two sums and each take a section but i feel like our better work comes when we're all here together so can we just would you president bruno feel like we should just barrel ahead and see how much we can accomplish i i like the idea of staying together as a group okay good well that said let's jump right into it excuse me excuse me monica are you saying um stay later than the 12 o'clock hour no no no i'm saying that if if if we feel like there is additional work we we talked about uh the possibility what's often done is that a subcommittee which in a five member board means usually the president and one other board member um acts to kind of tie up the loose ends and come back to the full board so you can do the final tweaks that way so dr lee i had a hand um raised um and i want to pose this to president bruno um i believe our board bylaws say things about committee on the whole and subcommittees and that we don't have them but i may be mistaken i i am a new member um and two just in terms of like building our board dynamic and um you know how we progress ahead um is it possible um president bruno for us to you know see how much we get through in this meeting and then perhaps have another meeting where we all come together not where it's just the superintendent and one person and then bringing it back because then to me it seems like we've all had input in all parts of the handbook is that possible or is that you know is there a fiscal reason why we couldn't or something like that um as far as subcommittees go i know that we actually do have subcommittees um you know that that's nothing new as far as whether we want to do this as a subcommittee or another special meeting or something it really comes down to scheduling um but let's see how we do if we can keep moving along it might not even be a necessary discussion and it might not even be should should the follow up uh next step it might not be something that necessitates uh my uh facilitation because you seem to be uh so you know you've got the the dance steps down so okay did dr late is that it somewhat answer the question i would just say um it only seems like we have the the the dance steps down because of the the guidance of the external um um you know prompting and that's keeping us on step duly noted okay jump in and let's take a look at the numbers yeah um this this will come back to the board at a regular meeting for approval is that not is that not how it's going to work that's common practice we would have time to review it again provide any feedback at that point and then um have a final version to vote on certain yes okay would that would that satisfy what you're what you're looking for dr lee no what i'm more looking for is a collaborative collaboration like we're doing now for the entire document and not okay not delegating to a subcommittee or superintendent okay okay good well let's let's let's uh let's let's proceed then all right the first one is on leadership responsibility and roles of the board first paragraph thoughts comments suggested tweaks or consensus that it pretty much stands acceptable i have something for this go nancy sometimes in board meetings um stuff gets brought up in a very negative way because people don't find out if it's being done ahead of time so in a way that's it's been slamming the district instead of being brought up as a question like do we do this or have we done this it's the district doesn't do this and i want to put it on the agenda it's about time we do this um i would like to suggest that board members know or ask about the situation before they bring it up in the public meeting as well as we always had a practice before by gentleman's agreement i suppose that if there was a huge question on an agenda item say with fans that they would call the finance person on the phone and ask about it so that that person would be ready to address their meeting their question in public and not be caught off the spot so regarding that um i i think it's better for us to channel our communication with district employees through the superintendent because strict employees persons in finance don't report to us so since we only have one employee i think it's better that we ask him and then he asks them um as far as bringing things up in advance before they come up at the meeting speaking only for myself many of the times that i request that something be added to a future agenda um i'm doing that because the idea of it came to me during the meeting either because of a public comment or something that happened during the meeting so um although it is kind of sprung on us a bit i have not heard you do it in a way that slams the district steve i've heard it being done that it when it does but um i mean sometimes public brings something up that they're upset about and i think what we're doing it we're already providing it in advance because we're scheduling it for a future meeting so never mind you're not catching what i'm trying to say so you guys can i can i see if i understand what you're saying dancing kelly kelly i know i know you hold that thought but i've dr lee's been patient childhood oh i'm sorry yeah yes um i um i was looking at the last line normally requests from board members shall be communicated through the superintendent um i just wonder if it's okay to add the president and superintendent um because sometimes as a board member you know it's not something i want to bring direct to the superintendent i want to run it through my president you know to see if that's even something appropriate to bring up to the superintendent for example um is it okay that we add through the president and superintendent there if that doesn't have to go through the president to get to the superintendent oh but what she's saying is sometimes she's saying and not go to the superintendent you might it might be about the department for goodness sake that's up to the that's up to the board member right so you if she's asking if we could just add um and or president or president it's not restricted it's not it's not a two-step process the way i heard you describe it i think so and and either way with the word normally there that allows us some flexibility um i know that i've reached out to other board members in the past saying hey i was thinking about bringing something like this up how do you think i should go about it and you know sometimes it's good to bounce something off of each other they don't necessarily have to be even the president and i've had full access to you steve i have no problem with that absolutely yeah um nancy i think as we go through some of these protocols some of the kind of the the uh issues and sub-issues that you're talking about about how uh things might come out from either community in board meetings might be addressed and some of these are board members yeah well that's why i'm saying this this this very first uh paragraph is is basically a a recapitulation of the of the the general role the board is a collective as opposed to individual board and what the superintendent roll in there kelly yoda thought yeah yeah i think maybe um what nancy's trying to get at is when we get to the not not just this but when we get to the end of the meeting and we ask for agenda items um based on maybe something that happened during the meeting or a thought that just popped into our brain i don't feel like those have to be agenda items that really they could be presented as um can we look into this and potentially set it as a board as an agenda item in the future and then that way you are um asking about you know is there a policy about this and can we look at it and and potentially put it on the agenda and then the other thing is um like steve was saying sometimes like when lisa's giving her you know budget reports sometimes questions will pop up during the meeting but i do agree that uh if you know in advance when you review the agenda that uh you should present those questions prior to the meeting so that the people can be prepared and then ask them in public so that the public knows that these questions were asked and the person is prepared to provide a public response exactly nobody wants you to play i gotcha and that's right and we don't want to put our employees in that spot and i do want to push this because we're coming to another protocol on agenda and and and and the idea that the idea about dr lee's mentioning about you know uh perhaps presenting an issue to the board president or the superintendent and or perhaps and or the superintendent there's that that in fact is you know how typically the way an agenda is developed the board president and superintendent are working together so this would make very good sense that you would go to the board president and or the supreme court okay but monica i'm going to be specific here i was trying not to be specific because i didn't want an issue to develop but if say i came to court and i said you know what there is uh total ignorance when it comes to special education on this board now you never do anything for special education i've watched it for years there's never been any kind of talk about special education i think we should start doing that right now and that particular person if i had no background i didn't ask anybody about it i didn't know that you have done multiple things on education throughout all the years but i came up to the board in public and said we didn't do this ever why aren't you doing this i think that's wrong for a board member to do and slam the rest of the board in the district i agree i think it could be posed as a question you know what have we done in the past can we bring this up as a topic of discussions i i don't think we need to formalize anything in there i think that gets back to what we've already put in about um being respectful and you know i think that sometimes we all come across differently than we intend i know that um my family has given me that feedback several times that the tone that i give off is not necessarily what i intended so um i i think it's good to remind us all to try to be mindful but um i don't think we need a separate policy for that because i think that's covered by the norms we just did um as far as the the giving people a heads up about the questions that's actually covered in a protocol a little bit later so we don't need to get into that right at the moment but um i i can see what you're saying but um like i said i think that's covered by the norms and we don't need to set up a specific protocol for it okay dr lee your hands up yes um on the i think we're on the board meetings in this section uh no we're not there we're not there yet we're still we're not there yet so we're still um so that that first square is a block that really is talking about the collective power of the board if there's nothing that you feel needs to be tweaked or modified there i'd like to work our way down to the three remaining boxes on that page can we do that okay so the next one has bullet points and uh there's a a little bit of this is uh uh echoing to the protocol language that we just did but some of them are are more specific having to do with like the third bullet point which has to do because now we're getting into talking about being present at school events and things like that i'd ask you to take a look at the second box with the bullet points and weigh in with any uh tweaks that you feel would be uh critical to making it more clear i'd just like to say i think it's fine perfect the way it is well in the second box uh the represent the board at various school events um particularly those held at specific sites assigned to members members annually on a rotating basis to my knowledge we don't do that if that's not your practice that that phrase can go away and also in this day and age i i'm hesitant to say represent the board at various school events when that may not be an appropriate thing to be doing right now with you know it's interesting because like for those of us in uh you know perhaps uh not the big urban areas you know every time you when you go to the football game are you quote representing the board well no you're there you know supporting the the team or something so uh other thoughts on that bullet is it is it's is it unnecessary having those events right now to start with so you don't have to attend them but we've done it both ways where you've been assigned schools and we've not been assigned schools so particular events i mean i don't think having this policy enforces us to assign um specific sites but that if we ever did assign specific events or sites that this says we're gonna adhere to it um and i think by adding uh represent the board at various school events when appropriate would address the concept that steve was trying to get out without going through that second sentence yeah yeah i think maybe change it to when appropriate would would make me feel better about represent the board of various school events when appropriate so if you had a veterans day program at an elementary school and you you might go and give out an award or something like that okay doctor lay your hands up or oh it did come yeah i i was just agreeing um with what trustee kelly and trustee bruno had mentioned um and two um i believe we have a board representative uh with a specific role for doing um what that's talking about so that's that's for serious meetings usually for the county uh many county uh school boards associations have a representative the way we've i know bigger districts a lot of times will assign by either by your region you might go to events but i i would put in there when we can get back to events i'd love to see all of you if you could make it come i think it sends a great message so i wouldn't want to limit ourselves or say as broad as we can because general is possible yeah and when appropriate like you just said steve because you know whether it's a uh award ceremony or just a tour or whatever i i think it would be great for all of you to have the ability to be anywhere you want to be and the school's notice yes at the same time i do acknowledge that we all have lives outside of the board and scheduling can be uh problematic at times so i think leaving it as as appropriate yeah it keeps being unreasonable taking out the whole second half of the sentence right yes it's unnecessary and confusing now the high i speaking of unnecessary and confusing that third box there's a brief box that starts whenever possible we've talked about the board acting collectively that's in the first thing we know that um this is talking about that committees have a direct and valuable impact that seems i'm speaking quite candidly now because we're trying to work work this to make it work for you guys um i i think you wouldn't have a subcommittee of the board a two member of a five member board subcommittee if you didn't think it would have value and impact so i i'm a little confused by this box any other thoughts i think that this whole thing is weird because the two thoughts don't seem to go together at all is the sentence about committees or is this con the sentence about um the board as a whole and when you say each committee shall be considered okay considered i'm very confused by it very confused it's very ambiguous and vague it makes no sense to me at all the whole thing i don't think advances enlighten me i i'm thinking it could be excised entirely yep okay i'm seeing some consensus here let's go down to the next one this is a one of those minot devices about you know learning that um this is a a list of ways to respond to board members do you feel it needs to be that specifically sketched out in step by step by step by step by step or is it um that you're going to do something that's ended after as appropriate any thoughts keeping in mind that this is a handbook um particularly of use your news board members i actually like this um it reminds the incoming board member we don't have the authority to get involved directly in these things it is the proper protocol to refer it in and let the appropriate people handle it um i think it's it could be um stated as a recommendation on a best practice or you know something a little a little less restrictive as far as these steps it may you may not need to repeat the information or remind them that board members have no authority that may be irrelevant to the conversation i think that these are good practices that we could follow it doesn't say make an effort as appropriate yeah so that that does keep in mind that these may not be appropriate in all situations so shall we leave it shall we leave it as is and when we before the final uh you know gamble comes down you'll be able to think about think about it and all right the next one actually goes into the next page which talks about when interacting with the public and constituents board members pull themselves to highest level professional ethical conduct is that necessary to say or have we already covered that in the norms no i think that's necessary because the norms are how we treat each other this is specifically about our public representation of the district i i think they're different there's a there's a nuance there i i would agree with that all right i hear consensus looking to see any dissent not seeing any okay moving on to the next area which is relationship staff and community the first box gets into what specifically it has to do with some personnel practices and this is entirely this is a center but no pun intended this is this needs to be center centered so this is not suggested verbiage for you if it is not has not been will not be your practice about board members on hiring committees as you know the pendulum is broad many districts have absolutely zero i should i'll correct myself most districts have zero board member participation and hiring because the board has one hiring decision and that's the superintendent sometimes in small and very rural areas you may have a board member shoot who hires bus drivers you know who's on a committee or something so i i invite whatever uh reaction or input you have to this as it applies to center specifically dr lee got a hand yes um i'm suggesting that we strike this entire first paragraph because to my knowledge our board does not participate in hiring um decisions in the district i don't think it's relevant to us i would agree in fact frankly it makes me kind of uncomfortable and seems to create an opportunity for abuse of the position agreed where are you guys you've lost me under the floor the board's rolling okay if top of page eight the board the the boards the bullface board's role in relationship with staff and community okay the second box under that bullet is about school visits let's be candid uh does this uh align with what has been your uh effective and accepted practice or does it need tweaks i'm sorry did we agree to strike that first paragraph i believe i believe we did i think nancy was still trying to to just sorry exactly what we were talking about so yeah on hiring decisions yeah and we're suggesting yeah she she was literally getting on the same page with us literally and figuratively in delray did that you're with it on it that's not been our district okay dowry's got the thumbs up okay the second one the second box there is three paragraphs that have to do with uh the the uh the courtesy steps of advising folks when you do a school visit any tweaks or there does this does this align with your practice i have a question on this one too board members shall provide advanced notification to the superintendent of such visits is that our common practice i appreciate notification of that because i i made visits where i have not did not notify the superintendent that i was you know visiting or uh attending a school event what's been the practice certainty yes you would farm the superintendent usually they have go ahead delray i think i just went over what you were saying that's okay kelly did she can continue go ahead yeah i was just agreeing with delray i said it at the same time as you scott that that has been our practice yeah and only the difference would be though i think if if you're going for something for your student if you had a student enrolled to school or something like that but if you're going to observe in classrooms or things like that just a heads up and and the only being is that way we can the school sites tend to stress a little bit when a board member walks in thinking that there's a problem you know that's the only that's the only thing i can think of but with your own kids and i'm thinking like you know steve i know you were at center high with your daughter you know so with with you yeah i know and when and often times it's just by cc and the superintendent you say principal jones i'm looking forward to be there for your assembly today cc superintendent so just just to clarify something um [Music] that this makes total sense to me in terms of i want to go visit the campus and check it out but for school events for instance let's say a football game if we're gonna go to a football game we don't need bother okay i would prefer not to have my email inundated with that but if you're if you're going to like really tour this school a lot of times i'll ask you guys when we're out of covid i'll ask you guys would you like you know del ray and i've done it um well we did it in between that little break and kel you and i did at 1.2 recently if we can get in and and see it just to let them know where we're coming but if it's if it's for something related to hey a football game basket whatever it may be a play um band concert whatever yeah no that's not necessary and in fact the the brown act carves out i think specifically so that you don't feel so you can't have more than two of us at the football game you know right okay and and also the very first phrase in this paragra in this section says when visiting schools or departments as a board member so i think it pretty well clarifies that it's only if you're going there for as an official right representative of the board the one thing and i think i'm sorry the one thing i would say though is just it's it's very difficult to take off your board member hat ever i know your parents but when you come and i've probably said this to all of you when you guys walk on campus you're you're probably now a board member first and a parent second which is absolutely probably wrong um but but that's why i went back and not to beat this one up but that your role on an interview definitely would could weigh heavily and influence unduly just like i don't sit in a lot of interviews because they they they tip their hat to me and we want the best person hired regardless so and along these lines just personal disclosure um i had a meeting with some office staff for uh my student and just as a courtesy i gave scott a heads up just in case my presence there made anybody uncomfortable i wanted him to know about it in advance so okay nancy got a hand yeah in the past um we had always been told that board members should not participate in volunteering with classroom groups or school sites booster clubs things like that because it puts one board member in a position where they can be manipulated or they get more information than other board members when there's issues that have to be dissolved um resolved by the board and it that's just sort of been the agreement that we've all had in the past and i wanted to know if we're going to stick to that or if we're all on our own or how do you want to handle that my my personal opinion then i would take your guys advice but i think even any of you as you've come on the board have given up certain roles and responsibilities at the local school sites to take on the broader role now certainly if you want to volunteer or help out or something we would we would encourage that but like uh school site councils or ptas it's it's it's not a good practice for you guys to be on those that i'm that i've experienced um but so i think and if you guys are okay with it i would rather have a conversation about that if you're um going to be involved with something just let's figure it out but if you're just showing up to help out at a car wash i think that's fantastic but yeah okay yeah nancy in regards to you know somebody may or may not have be given more information or be influenced i think that information could be shared at a public board meeting with the other board members and could be useful uh in certain circumstances so i wouldn't want to completely eliminate the possibility of interacting like as a parent no not as characters or like let's say we had a you know grandparents reading program which many districts have i would love to volunteer for that and being able to sit with somebody you know with a class and read to them i don't think that that would necessarily it wouldn't be inappropriate i don't think maybe you're sidelined by six teachers on your way into the and believe me it has happened yeah but that's where it goes back to the protocol we just agreed to is you're an individual on the campus it's it is hard but but you have to go back to the protocols that we have established and have followed for years yeah is if you're on the campus you know if i'm with you sometimes i can help deflect because i'll end up taking the the conversation but if if you're by yourself it is very hard where that's where as a new board member someone that that bottom line there where you receive the information and then process is is crazy we'll tackle you oh yes okay and tackle me too you guys keep warning me of this but no parent has ever approached me with not inherent gestures no teacher no student nobody has ever sidelined me with any questions ever so maybe they just don't think i i i could help them i don't know but we haven't been in school kelly we haven't had union issues yeah you don't want to get in the middle of bargaining listen i want to give i want i want to uh take step away and not step away literally but i wanted to make a a bit of a a time check we're just about minutes from our stop time what i would like to do because as as this part of the discussions continued and in light of what i think dr lee pointed out i would like to commit to you guys that wherever we get to today i would like to uh scott and i will arrange this with my superiors and stuff i i would like to to try to schedule the continuation to be a part of the continuation uh if that's going to happen as steve said let's see how far we get but i'm looking we're 5 00 50 minutes away and i think we've got uh to stick with the dancing analogy i think i want to finish the dance with you so i'm going to try to see if we can organize that i know scheduling is always a problem but i just want to put that out there so we know we're 50 minutes away let's see how far we get and then we'll go to our next steps so okay next the next box i am puzzled by all together because i think it i'm not sure that it says something new and instructive and it seems to talk about something that's staffed a a protocol or for for a for staff like something that's that the superintendent was saying staff if you've got something you know if the board member wants something from you to what do you think steve thoughts uh frankly i don't like this section because i don't think we should move directly to staff for information i think it should be reworded uh when requesting information from staff to request should be done through the superintendent yep that's exactly what i was going to say and then just strike that second part because you're right monica we're not outlining what staff should or shouldn't be doing here we're outletting what we're doing and then the other piece would be with that just as a process for me is there may be a time and sorry i'm looking at you steve so i'll use you steve comes to me with a request on finance well i'm gonna lean to lisa heavily so it may be hey i'm gonna talk to lisa or i may put you in direct contact with lisa or uh that type of stuff so that happens quite frequently but at least i'm in the communication chain and i do know over the years if someone has gone to an individual they've always come back to me and said hey you know kelly called me and asked me this question great so i just i think that process has worked great because i i don't know everything and so there's it's in the weeds where we will put you in contact with staff whoever that staff may be great so are we okay with changing it through to through the superintendent and then striking the second paragraph consensus nancy your hand yeah past practice has always been too that when like informational reports that are going to take a lot of time come up that have to agree to it before scott gets people involved in it are we going to stick to that i'm sorry did your audio cut out for a second there could you please repeat that past practices have been that when a board member is asking for something that's going to take a lot of time and effort to put together that three board members have to agree to bringing that up and having that done before scott's gonna direct people to put a lot of time and effort into it are we going to stick to that is my question i would suggest the best process for that would be is if i get it and i determined i would work with the board president to make sure it would be a reasonable request and then share all information with all of you if that works that still goes through let's say nancy you made a request i'm sorry kelly i'll pick on you i know when you came back on the board we had some hvac stuff that we were looking into and i don't remember who was the board del rey was at the time and i said hey i'm going to put this together and then i shared it with all of you so that that's a helpful process to me to have just one other person to do it nowadays with the way we can generate reports some of them are a lot easier than others to just bang out and then share with all of you but that would be my my practice but if it's something that's you know hours and hours of work i'm going to go to the board president and then say hey do we do we want to go down this road or how do we that's exactly what i'm talking about when when it takes a lot of work because there for a while you were being pulled in 20 different directions well we had a lot of new members so that that also there's a lot of uh getting people up to speed so no that was before that okay my only concern with this scott hold on steve we're coming back at you yeah no problem nancy you've definitely um led me in the right direction on this one but my only concern with leaving it up to you scott is that you are too nice absolutely and so i kind of i'm leaning towards saying yes it should be at least two or three board members requesting the information so that you can kind of taper down the information to exactly what you need so you're not over taxing the staff and and i agree with that um and i'm probably the biggest offender of that because when i came back on the board i asked for a ton of information um that i thought was pretty easily accessible uh but may not have been so pretty kelly i'm i hearken back to when we did our first workshop together as as this group um i remember we talked specifically about having confidence and trust in the superintendent uh in the role of triage because we we want to sort of advance triage for him and then we just sort of say oh we're just gonna have to trust him so that when he says bandwidth is gone or that i'm pressed or my staff is stressed or whatever that he will tell you that rather than you guessing it scott i agree scott would kill himself for this job hours a day maybe not i would just caution you to truly use a triage approach scott so that's that's president bruno my concern with this is if we start saying things that take a lot of time uh require three board members is that's very inexact and oftentimes those of us who aren't the ones um preparing the reports or something don't necessarily know what it entails so it's hard for us to make the determination of what's going to take a lot of time and what's not um so i do think that that scott needs to to triage and uh decide what needs a board majority and what is something that can just be cranked out because i don't think we're in a place to know and i think using inexact terminology like that presents us with the opportunity to be inconsistent so i think we're all in agreement that we don't need to add anything to this policy there's a couple hands up dr lee's got a hand up yeah dr lee um my question uh i mean my comment was more on um just revising this paragraph to say board members shall request information from the superintendent so that we're not making any direct requests for information exactly it seems rather it's convoluted the way it's structured there so and then that whole subsequent paragraph about management staff and all that it it should be stricken because it's immaterial no it's not a budget um good that thank you guys you're you're doing exactly what i was just about to ask this let's remember let's bring the these discussions are so good because i love it because we've got you know a long time board member like nancy you're saying hey i remember the practice was this it's a good discussion but also we want to make this document a good tool so that thank you for bringing it back to that now the next uh protocol area is about board meeting the agenda there are about only about two or three items uh the the second one should be the low-hanging fruit because it sets out about your board meeting formula um i i have mixed feelings on this i'm not really sure this needs to be codified in your thing but it's good a lot of people like to know my school board meets the second the first tuesday of the month or whatever uh what what's your feeling about we'll come back to the first box but i want to get rid of the second box easy because as i say it should be uh pretty straightforward what are your thoughts about how would you would like to articulate your meeting schedule well first i would just want to put our regular meeting doesn't begin at seven um and i hope that we're not changing it too please okay other thoughts i would say to be on when we hand out to this is one of the questions that new board members or even the community asks so we already tell them the pattern the board actually votes this pattern in annually or a pattern and annually so i i think it's redundant to say that and my comment to any new board members the first thing i say is we meet the third wednesday of the month we try to keep our first wednesdays of the month open we do begin at six with closed session trying to start it at five unless we need 5 30.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
um and then there are some random saturdays such as this that we would we would work with everyone's schedule would you be comfortable with the superintendent just putting that down and giving carol that verbiage yes yeah and i like the part scott about uh that the board votes on it annually because it's true it is it is an organizational meeting it is an organizational meeting action item yeah i was actually going to say um because it's voted on and published elsewhere we might not need it here but actually i think it is good to have it remember yeah a big a big role a big part that this document plays is to onboard new members so this is right for the the future guys okay back to the first one it's very instructive in the day in the age of uh where we are now a lot of folks do not understand this first statement that a school board meeting is your meeting and not a town hall so that might be something that's more important today than it might have been 10 or 15 years ago uh what what are our thoughts on that first box and then we'll move on and wrap up this section um i'd just like to state that this does not necessarily describe the way we've been running our meetings uh more recently however i think that maybe we need to return to this because the way we've been doing it has led to some chaos at times which has been counterproductive so i think maybe formalizing this and getting back to it will be a step in the right direction good job dr lee um i would just add uh to that um often it feels especially during public comments that it turns into an open forum town hall meeting um and it really um it's disconcerting um i i i don't see anything in here about you know public comments and how we receive them um but i know that the practice on other boards that i watch that seem to be high functioning is they literally receive the information then they say thank you the president of says thank you that's it it doesn't go into a long discussion or a town hall forum meeting so i'd like for us to have possible um address that and get some decorum around that so that we receive information we don't deliberate it or get into discussions about it um during public comment um and you know if it needs to be an agendaized item it become an agendaized item [Music] that is actually addressed in a later protocol yeah many uh many i don't i i haven't seen one of your regents in a while so i don't know but some some boards will put the public comment um specifics on their agenda so that as it's posted it will say yeah yeah they're there but what we do what we practice is about this policy that i did not realize the difference i didn't realize that it wasn't an open forum meeting for the public uh until someone's i mean i probably like i knew it but it just didn't register until someone told me that um and so i think it's really important to have that in here because it's a great reminder that this is our meeting that and that's what you know trustee anderson said this is our meeting this is not the public's meeting we are holding our meeting in public and i think this reminder is great so i think nancy nancy two things the first being that we have leaned towards letting the public be heard especially when there are major issues in the district and there's supposed to be a three minute limit but some of those people have gone for an hour you know that was one issue the other issue is we were always told that this is a it's not a public meeting but a meeting being held in public right is the difference and that kind of helps i think people understand what's going on right yes it's it's true and as dr lee said we we can never re remind ourselves enough because it's one of the most difficult things to do sitting on the base is to not respond engage heaven help us deliberate to public comment it's very difficult you know great super great uh presidents president bruno i bet you're one of these they know how to do that with that benign face not looking i agree i disagree just saying thank you for your input very difficult to do but that's that's it so yeah okay so what are we saying what do you think scott i'm sorry i was just going to add it the hard part is is it the the town hall idea can be fine when it's something of celebration or whatever but unfortunately when you get into negotiations or you get into personnel matters it really causes us problems so we really i i want to just re-stress that we really need to get back to thank you for your comments appreciate it because if our pattern is different it starts to look like well wait a minute now all of a sudden you're not asking questions and we're hearing this hearing so and we've all i mean we've all probably been guilty i know i have you know it so i just think that's something we could we could continue to better for the for the betterment of the district as a as a whole well this is a good point because we've had times when the public has attacked personnel and i think everybody needs to hear what needs to be done when a teacher or employee is being attacked from the public at a board meeting so so uh let's move on from this i'm feeling like when this comes back to you for final approval if if if you have further thoughts that germinate but it i'm hearing that this this is a valuable uh section to leave in yeah and then the third one the last one which is the very top of the next page uh which is basically it it's uh it's a little confusing language and it talks about historical structure utilized by the board it's basically just uh it might need to be collapsed in with the next bullet under it which says that the superintendent and the board president are essentially crafting the agenda what do you think about can we look at these two boxes together all of a piece and see if they need to be specifically uh separate or combined um kelly yeah um i can't see everybody so i apologize if i've talked over i'll try and remember to just raise my hand um i definitely think that the board president and superintendent should be able to make necessary and appropriate changes when that we needed in order to make the meeting run efficiently for instance when we have to approve every month or or not approve every month whether or not a person can can continue to use the waiver uh on the brown act um that doesn't make sense to have it buried at the end of the meeting um and so rearranging that for logistical purposes makes sense and i dare say that the rest of the board really wouldn't be interested in that decision nor would would they would it be needed so i think yes combining these two and and saying that when it's uh necessary or appropriate the structure of the agenda made may be altered with the approval of uh the or may be reorganized by consultation between the superintendent and board president okay dr lee um i didn't quite understand about um approval for whether a person can do something with the brown app but um my my point on on this one um you know we've mentioned that we want to give the um superintendent and staff advanced notice of questions and so forth that we may have about the agenda um that's really difficult to do when the board receives the agenda and notice of it at the same time that the public does 72 hours before a meeting takes place oh and and a weekend when staff and superintendent aren't working so how do we overcome that uh so that it's not feeling like a gotcha um and that folks do have you know time to prepare for questions i don't underst i don't understand your question lee could you please repeat it i think you understand can you repeat the question which one [Music] you want me to repeat everything i just said i think she was if if i may sort of uh paraphrase for understanding she was talking about the sometimes there's a timing issue when the board packet when the agenda post and the supporting material post uh because staff is always working right at the very last minute to meet the posting requirement and get it out by 72 hours but it's not usually four or five six working days it's just right there and then it's also the same time and that sometimes happens over a weekend and maybe board members feel like well i can't call the superintendent on a saturday to ask my question or this or that uh that poses a difficulty what um and that happens all the time whether people meet on monday or tuesday or even wednesday what what i'm wondering though is is there language that we think that needs to uh this is talking about agenda preparation under you know under the aegis of the superintendent and the president uh creating the agenda and then the board members you know putting identity that's all part of creating the agenda that's part and parcel of creating an agenda and then the board president discussing the constant agenda well of course they're discussing it they are crafting the agenda so i i find second box to be sort of overstating the obvious that's that's my my reaction to that kelly well um two thoughts so it says in here that board members may request items to be placed on the agenda and in general i i don't think we've ever not put something on the agenda that someone has requested so folks should have a general idea of what's going to be on the agenda not necessarily if they didn't request it but also i mean do we want to put some language in here that says that you know the draft could be provided in advance or is that too much of a uh imposition on staff it it's gonna it's gonna be hard to get the the full material out ahead of time when we're trying to material just just the draft agenda just the you know the three yellow pages that it shows the structure of the meeting and the items that are on it we could certainly work the soonest week because our agenda items are due to us the week prior so like for example our meeting on this 16th items were due to us on the 4th and then we work all next week to put it together so we could certainly put it in as a draft usually by tuesday i'm trying to work with the president and share what we are or where we are i mean so uh we might not have a backup material at that point i'm sorry and then let's suppose that you send it out to everybody on the board on tuesday and someone had a concern with what was on the agenda would we change it would we would the board president and superintendent make that decision i mean are we going to upset people if something's on the agenda they object to it prior to it being posted but that is still on the agenda or should we codify that i just there's so many questions and i don't know where which side of you know kelly kelly i'm going to i'm going to give a little bit of a homework assignment which may uh may be instructed in this in the 9 thousands in 9 000 plural the 9 000 series of your bylaws are the ones that set out how the board does business and it does speak to some of this i'm looking i was looking it up to see what number was from this book call of duty because it it does set out some guidelines about the authority that the discretion and authority the superintendent and board president can use to determine if a an item is uh agenda worthy agenda needed you know a a savvy superintendent somebody board member may come say hey i got this issue i've heard from the community good superintendent may go out and deal with it and it's done before the next board meeting does that mean the superintendent might might still want to include it in his or her recap report say you know we actually we dealt with this issue but but the board president and the superintendent have some discretion and authority about putting eyes on the agenda outlining your bylaws so i would suggest that might be before we meet again we might want to revisit what the bylaws say about this aspect steve so um addressing that it might be possible to get the agenda out to board members a few days earlier without the board packet but i think if we get into the cycle of well then uh if somebody wants something changed we'll change it i think that starts putting an undue burden on staff to have to rewrite the agenda rewrite the packet so i think if we're going to get it out early it would kind of be informational only i agree steve it would have to be because if it's determined something's put on by you know a member requests it and you and i consult and we put it on there as board president and then you know kelly's going to argue with us about it i mean pretty soon we're i'm worried we're treading on brown act stuff i i think what i heard was how do we get uh more ample time to to create our questions and then possibly give staff a heads up on that um so i'm i'm open to suggestions i just i'm worried about extending our development of the agenda timeline because we go once a month it's going to put it harder on staff we're going to have a lot more things that are ratified because i have to draw the line carol and i have to draw the line of when items are due that aren't board member requests just pure things so i i don't i don't have an answer for it other than we do get it out the 72 hours but then the weekend before which i know is hard for you guys to because you probably don't want to work on the weekend either so i i don't have an answer to that i i don't know del ray did you have a question or something i nope okay okay um um so my um my comment was um in line with what superintendent lair mentioned uh of course definitely just informational homely um as a board member i have felt a sailed and surprised uh sometimes by things that pop into the agenda that i wasn't aware of and that we hadn't formally discussed as a board and so you know getting access to the agenda at the same time that the public does when it's already a done deal doesn't give a me as a board member the respect and time uh you know of knowing what's coming up and what folks may be asking you know me about and it doesn't give me the time uh to ask timely questions uh to the superintendent or to the president uh or to things that could informational requests that could be made um so i would definitely appreciate you know early access uh to the agenda not the board item and all of that but just the agenda so i have a heads up of what's on the horizon for me um as we go to next meetings uh superintendent i would uh quit not wanting the meter to be running too long but a quick check with council about sending board members the agenda without supporting materials in advance just to make sure cool sure okay i want to give a time check here we're about 25 minutes away this template is constructed in an odd way because the next section gets into a specific meeting task which happens not at every meeting but frequently which has to do with policy adoption and then it resumes all these good aspects of being in the meeting that we're talking about uh so i'd like you to give me your feeling if you'd like us to follow along the way this template is guiding us into this next discussion about uh policy it says chart of policy revision it's really policy development and adoption but if we'd like to continue on the way the template goes or skip the policy thing to come back to in our in our follow-on session and continue with these aspects because if you look at pages 10 and 11 this is really what we've been talking about about things going on uh you board members get to packet and what they do and seeking information uh any thoughts on whether we just temporarily skip and come back to the policy development adoption process or just continue on anybody have thoughts preferences one way or the other steve i i personally would like to stick with the other stuff that we're getting into and then come back to this because this is very specific kelly your thoughts agreed i think this is um addressed in board policy and so i mean for me if we're going to talk about this we would also have to develop a whole process on board uh policy that is presented outside of csba and so then it it just gets way too muddy i think it belongs to policy and we should just strike it from this document all right let's let's revisit that and for now continue on to what is now currently on the on the template page 10 and you'll see uh we in the next 25 minutes i do want to hearken back to our discussion guide which was in a perfect world which we all aspire to live in which we don't we had talked about using the last part of our time together this morning to talk about how does this tool this document live with us in the future obviously those are questions to reflect on and pose when we have had more time to complete this process so we will not pose those reflective questions here on february 5th but do know that we'll come back to them because i said that it would be a shame to do this work have a handbook and then put it on the shelf together dust so we're not going to spend our any of our next 25 minutes talking about the reflections we'll continue to work through this and then we will talk about some next steps when we get in about the last five ten minutes or so we're at the top of page ten uh this is a topic we've already sort of begun to dance into which is board members uh putting questions to the superintendent and staff so that uh they can have their questions satisfactorily addressed before they ever sit down at the board table and so that the superintendent knows that this is something that might come up in the meeting the second paragraph uh talks about what we know about any information that goes to one board member goes to all uh all of that stuff uh that talks about this one i've heard this reference say trustees technology that their questions are spontaneous i don't think that i've actually heard at a board meeting as a trustee say uh well this is a spontaneous question which i didn't ask in advance because heck you're listening you're thinking you're learning questions are coming to you as you listen and learn so i'm not sure that i really like that statement i would entertain thoughts about that top box anyone i would just start to say obviously i know and it's happened over the years that i've been doing this there are always opportunities when board members or anyone thinks of questions so i would never want to stifle that spontaneous question because you may not think of it at all and and probably all of you have done it the one thing i just want to put out there is staff does the best job they can trying to make sure they they have answers they want to answer the questions they may not i just want to make sure it is acceptable that that staff might say we'll have to get back to you on that because we certainly will not lie we won't make something up and not that you would ever want that um and then anytime we can help staff answer questions prior to is always helpful because then they feel like they can more fully answer your question and we would never want you to ask a question and once we answer it behind the scenes or before that you don't bring it up that that would never be the intent obviously letting us know so we can have an answer for you is always um it helps everyone look good and no surprises but there are going to be surprises that that's the way a meeting works of course other thoughts anybody um just kind of piggybacking on that i do think it's important that if you have a question that you're posing ahead of time there's a good chance that a member of the community has the same question so i think it is good to pose it during the meeting as well but um that being said it can be useful to have the information ahead of time if it's available sometimes the answer to when you ask ahead of time is i'll have to get back to you on that um but by having it by having the answer ahead of time it might lead to a follow-up question that you know where the answer information could be gathered ahead of time so i i i just see this as very benefic but want to make sure that we continue the questions in public as well and that is standard practice other thoughts anybody about that top box specifically uh let's move to the next one which is i i would characterize this as um needless to say you know the phrase needless somebody says needless to say and then they say it anyway well this is needless to say but it's it's said uh self-monitored compliance to public meeting uh that's just a way of what your you had a protocol earlier that said uh respect confidentiality or something to that effect which this seems to say to me any thoughts is it is it superfluous uh to to to be honest leaving it in there for a new member just so they recognize that my it might not i don't see it as hurting or helping either way but having it in there might just make people aware uh of it good point scott thank you for reminding us that that's the big part that this document plays is helping on board board members yeah um the next one gets into the area about uh uh we've all talked about you know about the brown acts about avoiding reply all serial meetings email meetings it's fairly straightforward any comments or tweaks that would be suggested there anyone board members when responding may not reply to all which i think is super important um you know to have especially for new members um but is there anywhere in here maybe i haven't gotten to it yet where it addresses just even sending out communications to all not a reply to all but sending it out to all um about agendas items or upcoming agendas items because i think it's important that you know new board members and current board members kind of keep in alignment with that not just in responding to things reply all but into sending out communications with all of us you know all the board members included on it about things that may be potential we we see emails such as that um that have disclaimers either at the beginning or at the end that say you know this is for information only please do not reply or some such nancy your thoughts yeah i have a real problem with this one because the way i understand it from our previous meetings is that members of the public are the questions they have are supposed to be sent to the board president the board president is supposed to be the one who responds to them it's my understanding that his response to them can go to all of us because then we know they've been responded to but we are not to respond to that response at all in any manner shape or form and in that way we know that the public's comments and concerns have been addressed and that his response should be as if letting them know the board has seen your comment and received your comment basically end of discussion am i right or wrong steve kelly had her hand up first okay yeah we you are correct nancy in the past that was our policy and when i first uh became president last december that was the policy we were using however it became a concern and when scott consulted with scott holbrook our legal advisor he recommended against that at all he said that there should not be any reply all regardless of whether it's just um letting you know that it has been responded to so we abducted that policy separately uh maybe not you know before i remember but that practice that's not what i remember from scott so a better way a better way to handle it and i will acknowledge that i recently did that where i replied all and as soon as i did a reply all i went shouldn't have done that um but a better way would be for me to reply to the member of public and then craft an email to the rest of you um saying just to let you know i i addressed this issue so the person has been responded to right the the issue that came up too uh i think kelly sorry i'm gonna hurt him back to what brought this forward was with the individual board member was giving his or her opinion to the respondent and then that was getting copied to the entire board and that's where scott was like no if you're going to respond on behalf of the board it might be we've received your email thank you very much individual members may respond individually to you but when we started if people start giving their their let's say it was a upcoming agenda item and they started giving their perspective that could be a problematic when now the other four members know you know kelly's gonna vote a certain way that that's a no-no so what we would want to adopt or or consider would be the idea that if steve is board president's going to respond he can do an acknowledgment which could copy the other members so you all know that he responded or he could send a separate one-way communication that he responded and it would never limit you each from responding individually to the constituent and giving your perspective if that makes it more muddy [Music] i'm sorry one more comment on that um the problem that we ran into with the process that you just outlined scott where you're replying to acknowledge is that it can open up the possibility that the person they're replying to then again responds and includes all of the board members that happened this past year with a staff member and it became a big issue so if you're if if youth i mean i guess that could happen anyway but i just think replying all uh in general it has has not voted has not been a good practice for us so so the consideration then would be is i i think as a non-uh as the non-president let's say how how would i know and feel comfortable that someone has responded or is that irrelevant i i think no i think it should be like steve said a separate email just saying this has been responded to yeah think you could respond at all to him i think it should be the president no no that's true what i'm saying that the president would just say send a note to the rest of the board saying this has been responded to yeah and you know responded we we we're we're drawing a distinction between an acknowledgement and a substantive response yes right okay so yeah and nancy even if the president responds if you want to respond you are uh free to do that we um you don't have to but we can't limit board members ability to respond to constituents then you end up with a problem where if you have three of us respond in a certain way that they know where we're going well you shouldn't be responding in a certain way you should be acknowledging i think that's the point we're trying to distinguish uh we we're gonna uh stop and talk about going forward but can is is the next one quick enough to look at very quickly it's talking about setting cell phones on vibrate being discreet when checking devices is this getting into the weeds ladies and gentlemen i don't think we need it well actually i think this goes back to what delray was saying earlier about not checking uh facebook or email during a meeting which did frankly get me in trouble early on and i should not have done that and as a new board member i didn't realize i shouldn't have done that until our brown act training and i went oh yeah i blew that so is it of benefit then to include uh this this uh box or some version of it even though the protocols we previously did talked about being uh respectful and present and all that i asked i posed that to the group nancy your hands up is that newer from before that was from before i'm sorry okay what about any any thoughts on this del ray where i was going with this is that when we are virtual some of us are virtual some of us are together the advantage of the people that are zooming in or telephoning in have the availability of answering emails or answering messages or accepting these and replying to this information while the other board members are sitting in person they are receiving information and responding where we're not um because you know we are present not that the others are not present it's just that they have that capability of doing so and this has happened in the past and that's where i was going with that steve steve you had a phone um well i just wanted to say this goes beyond the ones uh remote and in because i was you know i i frequently have multiple tabs open on a browser anytime i'm using a browser it's a about half of it but um i had the board agenda the board packet and my email and i saw that i got an email and i checked it you know so those of us who have electronic devices even if we're president of the board meeting we can do the same exact thing and it's it's a bad practice i'm spanking your hand steve oh yeah steve when that happened you were zooming in you weren't present no no he was there in person i was i was in the board meeting you sounded totally chasing i see kelly than dr lee i was actually next um but i just want to um this is constantly something that's mentioned in our boards and the rhetoric around it is is very disconcerting this idea that depending on your modality of how you're participating in a meeting you're present or not um maybe we need to put something in our on our governance guidelines about it because whether someone's on the phone in face-to-face um you know um however on zoom they're present and they're participating um possibility i think the possibility for us uh to really move forward as a board i like these guidelines um you know whether someone whatever modality they're they're coming into the meeting with they could be distracted by a device and looking at the device i know that i always have my laptop with me and i do everything digitally so whether i'm sitting in front of you or you know i'm coming in through zoom or coming in through the phone i'm always going to have that present so i think it's important to just kind of note you know that we should be present in the meeting and not responding to the public uh and not messaging one another on our devices as well because that has happened in previous meetings [Music] make it make it as brief as you can kelly um i feel like we have two different conversations happening here one is about the use of device and being present in the meeting the other is a protocol about not responding to anyone regarding items that you are currently being discussed on the board two completely different issues although i understand what you're saying dr lee about keeping these rules i do kind of feel like they're unnecessary but at the other side of it i don't think it's unnecessary i think making sure that we do not respond to anybody in regards to items that are being discussed on the agenda is extremely important i think that's what i was stating miss kelly is exactly that no i'm agreeing with you that's what i'm doing i'm agreeing with you two different things going on okay and i think separately separately uh addressed in the verbiage and the the protocols that will come before you defile so um that would be the large box at the top of page 10 excising the skinny box that's below it and then uh the next two boxes the third one having to do with um cell phones and being discreet uh well well i suggest we when we revisit the rest of the protocols on this template with regard to board bb's agenda which you see go over the next page will be in our our follow-on dance as i said uh before we get off that specifically i just want to mention this there has been some pushback uh from um folks about uh you you notice this is the template the reason it has i believe that has the phrasing there about be discreet when checking devices because that presumes one might be checking a device so a purist approach might be what good grief turn your phone off do that but then you have people that say i have kids i have an aging parent i need to know this my you know blah blah blah so uh it has been sort of accepted that you can't be a puristist and just tell people turn off your devices uh that's that's something we want to keep in there uh steve another thought on that before we sort of tried to do a little bit of a wrap up in the next steps discussion so just really quick i agree can't be a purist on that because sometimes you know you do need to have a device available in case of an emergency we've all got family situations and loved ones with health concerns and things so we might need to to have that available although it's discouraged to be to be used i i wouldn't want to say a hard and fast rule about it but getting back to the email thing is i view the issue as bigger than just responding to them even if you're just reading incoming in emails as uh scott holbrook pointed out that's giving some members of the public a different level of access than others yep so we we need to not do that answer how do we just get incorporated into this policy do we add it to this existing one or do we do a separate thing specifically for you know not interacting with anyone regarding items on the agenda kelly she had called on me real quick um i wanted to quickly bring up that we all know a board member that we had constantly say all of my people or my people are telling me that language means nothing to any of you who don't know that because anybody can say that she had nobody behind her that anybody ever seen but all her people were telling her this so just be cautious of that sounds like it sounds like the voice to experience here nancy dr lee your hand was up or yes um i just was um putting in my um vote to to remove that item in an effort that whole section um i think it's um it's unreasonable um i think we're in the 21st century and you know folks like me um and others use their devices uh for these meetings uh i don't handle paper i do everything digitally um so i'll always have my device and it'll always be present but i think it is important that we're not communicating with the public and elevating comments that are being sent to us through email so maybe addressing it through that way but not banning devices or you know putting any restrictions on that well i'm going to use that as a perfect springboard to segue into a next step because think back to an hour and 20 minutes ago when you did some good work on norms and if you went back and revisited the norms that you did you would find that they are quite uh substantially uh appropriate for covering the the they're the good strategic ways to handle this without getting into the tactical ways that those things are lived out so your norm work really covers a lot of this professional focused uh intentional all those good descriptors that you did in the norms come into play here which is to say we still have more work to do and uh uh superintendent uh i you and i will have a a subsequent discussion just think about how this works we've got uh eight busy squares here uh well let's not like i'm gonna include carol and eugenia thank you carol eugene we love you we'll give you the whole uh applause thing um because uh we we've done good work here but i think we if we even if we all said hey i'll hang around another hour i think we're getting a little tired and we might not be doing our best work plus if we want to honor one of our one of our norms is that we honor our meeting times you know so uh superintendent and president bruno that being said uh for next steps uh if if i proposed on behalf of csba that uh we would try to coordinate a follow-on session to continue as we have been doing today that would be question one and the second part is as as your pleasure is would it be helpful for the trustees to get uh a recap of the good work that carol has captured so far or would it be better to wait until the entire process is done to feed it back so i i leave that in your hand steve what are your thoughts on those two questions um i i would like to try to schedule a follow-up so that we can continue this i think it's become very clear that each of us has a different perspective and um i think breaking it to a subcommittee would exclude uh too many points of view um so i would like to do that and my personal thought is that it would be beneficial to get an updated one so that we can begin to think from that point moving forward superintendent would you concur what works for us so what we'll we'll do is uh off offline monica you and i can figure out what your schedule's like to try and get some dates i'll bring it back to this group to see what works for them and then in the interim of that carol and i will work to to make the updates that we believe we've captured so far and we could share that out as soon as possible um and certainly prior to uh any any future or second step in this works for me yeah questions ask kelly she's looking for carol's job kelly your hand is up actually or actually question uh about how much time do we think we might need to finish this there's only two pages left out of 12 um and so i'm i'm i have no further comments on anything other than what might come up in conversation well there's uh two and a half pages left but um do we think an hour would be sufficient and could we incorporate that as a workshop say prior to a regular meeting just a food for thought i'm not sure that an hour would be sufficient but i don't know it's hard to say i would hate to have it with a certain cut off short time like that because then we might not finish again yeah what i would suggest is if we in monaco united we schedule the let's say we schedule three hours so we're all committed and then if we only go an hour hour and a half then we get an hour and a half of our lives back um i will say i think um in the mornings like this we well i'd probably rather be with my family too this morning uh but i think um we're fresher when we've woken up and and done this and i don't know about you guys but i'm tired right now from the three hours we've done so it's intense so i think if we could schedule a saturday or a separate day like a five to eight or something like that um that that might be a better uh way of attacking and then if we're done we're done you know good point good point uh well that said i thank each of you for uh just jumping in and modeling really good behavior on how these things are done i'm i'm quite quite happy with it with what we have made progress on so far and i uh thank you and i turned it back to the president for the resumption of the meeting okay thank you so the next uh agenda item is advanced planning uh we have a future meeting date of wednesday february 16th at six o'clock pm um are there any suggested uh agenda items kelly not necessarily for this meeting coming up but i think that we do need to address the concept of having an equity policy and so whatever we need to do to develop that i think we need to start getting that agendized i made a note of that myself um i was thinking because this meeting's coming up quickly that might be better for the march meeting and we also we do have a and i i i could pull it i i think in the new batch and actually an equity uh template from csba so that would be a good starting point instead of starting from a blank slate we could utilize that and then adapt it to what the the board uh defines is is the policy they want carol are you bringing back new policies for the second reading or are we keeping our old ones uh the policy you have the batch that will come back on this is the second reading but there's another batch that's in the in the mix that we just got so we have another uh update uh you want us to save the old ones yes please that was save some paper i also sent this um to through you to through email uh to you all um um steven um scott um it was about the equity um plan and i'm sorry i forgot the second one oh the second one was about um consider revising the board policy and development process in our bylaws to conform to page nine of the governance handbook templates so i'd like to see that um you know come up for agenda so that our process that we use to develop a revised board policies is clearer i really find the language that's in the template to be much clearer than what we have now okay i have not had a chance to review that email yet was that this morning that you sent that or no uh you all asked us as we saw revisions and things that weren't being discussed in detail to email it to you during this meeting so okay yeah it's feedback on the governance handbook it's that's the title of it okay i i will take a look at that when i get a chance um again i i feel hesitant to add anything to the february meeting on on short notice um but okay that would be for march uh steve sorry just to clarify okay thank you and then um oh the other thing that i had in mind um there was an item on our december agenda regarding um student board members that you'd asked dr lee to be on there we did address it to the best of our ability but i wasn't sure if that covered what you wanted to address so i wanted to to make sure if it didn't that we do get that on a future agenda as well if we could um i saw from the notes that the board felt we should revisit this after the pandemic but given that we don't know when this pandemic is ending i think we should you know move ahead with including students and require them to come to a meeting no i would allow them to participate virtually i would i would virtually or attend the meetings the same as other board members actually you know what i think that this would be a discussion that we would have during a board meeting in order all right you are right thank you kelly i appreciate the the correction i was correcting myself just you know yes um this we discussed it at the december meeting but dr lee uh was out bill that meeting so um i wanted to make sure since she was the one that had requested that it be added to the agenda that we had addressed what she wanted so um scott would it be would that be something we could add to the february meeting or should we push that one out to march um le i we're in the middle the items just came in from friday so we're actually starting so we could do it either way i mean if it's just the discussion i'm we can put it on okay does that work for everybody okay let's let's have that discussion then okay anything else okay um do i have a motion shoot do i have a second second all right meeting adjourned thank you everybody i appreciate you giving up your saturdays and that goes for board members and others who are here to support us as well thank you
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well thank you everyone for joining us for the dartmouth school committee budget subcommittee meeting um our first one of the fiscal year 23 calendar so we are having a remote meeting today here obviously on zoom uh but it is also being broadcast live on uh dhs tv media channel on youtube so just wanted to fill you in on that so um we're looking forward to working with you all on this fy 23 budget this is we're still in the preparation phase of this budget sort of the planning phase are we will be bringing forward uh a budget presentation for the school committee next week so this is an important part of the process where we can hopefully start to build some support from you folks and uh and um you know get ready for sort of the next stage of moving forward with this so with that i will share my screen and get started with the presentation if anybody has any questions please feel free to chime in at any time we have a pretty small group here in the zoom meeting so feel free to just interrupt me and we can we can talk about things but we'll have time for questions at the end as well all right so um we have a consistent uh mission vision uh and budget goals that we've had for some years here in dartmouth um as you probably know the our mission is to provide a quality education for all learners uh and our budget goal really is to make sure that uh we our funding is strategically allocated to support the mission and vision so to support the school the district improvement plan the school improvement plans and really to focus on providing a quality education for everyone here so we're still early in this list but there's actually been a lot of work that's gone in to get us to this point schools and departments back you know prior to the holidays prepared budget proposals that they submitted to us they are focused on their school improvement plans and on student achievement and really looking at data to support their requests they've submitted some very thoughtful proposals we'll go through a little bit some of the proposals in a minute we at the same time that they're doing all that work i am uh preparing projections for all sorts of budget areas so um staffing transportation utility projections lots of moving parts substitutes um just you know every every little piece of of what it takes to run this fairly large operation we're doing at that same time and then we begin to meet talk about evaluating proposals and trying to come up with a district-wide plan to move that to move that forward and that's sort of what we've done to date today is the first time we're actually going to be speaking publicly about the budget so that's opening the lines of communication with the school committee with our finance committee representative and hopefully gathering some support for what what looks to be you know a somewhat challenging budget year um where our hope is that from here we're able to expand that support and um and you know get support from the school committee and ultimately the other boards in town the finance committee select board and so forth and get what we need to support kids so there's some some things that um you know play a large role in in this budget and uh we'll look at the numbers in a minute but um we we are in we will be in bargaining with all seven of our collective bargaining groups this year all the contracts expire either june 30th or august 31st of this year so there's a lot of uncertainty revolving around that in the in the meantime there are contract there are things that we know about those contracts so there are increases there are salary schedules that have steps built in and other benefits that are tied to those that we do know so we build all those in we factor in savings from retirements and uh then at this point we have 10 of those this year which is kind of on the low side for us some of the retirements are not particularly big savings type positions sometimes our our retirements are spots where we can you know focus on trying to save some money to reallocate that's not really the case this year we have some increases as as we do every year with special ed tuition the state sets out of district rates um for statewide for all of the schools that we sense we send students to that usually is an increase of between three and five percent so if you think about our typical budget in in past years well it's actually typically gone up less than what that particular area um has increased we've built in about a hundred thousand dollar increase to to cover that uh transportation we've got some some really good news uh in that this is our final year of our fy 23 will be our final year of our regular bus contract that means there's no increase this year which is a big help budget wise our special ed contract is expiring it's not been a great year for bus companies uh transportation has been an issue staffing major problem uh the minimum wage increase has caused sort of competition amongst uh you know for for uh employees and we've definitely felt effects of that and the pandemic clearly hasn't hasn't helped either so we built in just under a hundred thousand dollar projected increase for that and we're hoping that that uh that will be sufficient um enrollment in fy23 slight decrease from fy22 not quite sure whether some of that could be pandemic related too we might seal we might see some people returning um that uh you know that made a different choice with their kids in uh this school year so town state federal stuff um this is a fairly bleak area of of the of the projections uh the town i don't i don't have a firm projection as to you know where we are for the town yet and i'm not surprised by that certainly don't blame them for that there's a lot of moving parts right now and they have a lot of uncertainty in terms of um funding from the state and uh other sources so it's that that is sort of to be determined that'll be coming but not quite yet state and federal funding so chapter 70 which is uh the biggest funding source that the town receives um that is education aid from the state they have uh the governor's proposal was for a one percent increase for dartmouth in chapter 70 funding it's a hundred thousand dollars they we get about 10 million dollars in um in chapter 70 funding so that one hundred thousand dollar increase one percent so it is an increase but basically it's a step backwards when we're looking at inflation and wage wage increases and everything else i wish i could say i'm surprised but but at this point i'm i'm definitely not surprised by that but it is unfortunate well the legislature hasn't done anything with it yet there will be as we move through this process they'll the different committees the will will act on it and i'll keep you posted i don't have a lot of hope though that that's going to be significantly different um federal funding though uh i don't know where all the money's coming from but they definitely you know they're still seem to be maintaining uh all i think the grant funding um will be maintained they've committed all the funds for esser um which is the covid relief um monies so we know that what that is so we can plan on that so that's actually kind of a nice one to be able to to count on and i'll talk a little bit more about that as we move forward through the presentation so health insurance we we got i guess what i would say is fairly good news in that the the average increase of the maya health group which is what we participate in excuse me is 3.7 so the town received that notice has not yet received notice on um on on how much dartmouth's increase is going to be but the average increase is 3.7 so last year dartmouth was below the average and that was a big step um and that is based on uh the experience rating of the town dartmouth has historically been above the average uh so it was great that uh that that we saw sort of a turnaround in health in the community hoping that that happens again and the increase is below 3.7 they did say that the low increase is zero so somebody some community had no increase i'm hoping it's us uh some community had a 7.5 increase so obviously that can't be dartmouth so um greater new bedford volk they have uh the the minimum required dartmouth contribution is up 80 so that's 418 000.
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that's pretty significant um so that's that's something that the town's going to have to you know obviously doesn't have any isn't in our control and doesn't have anything to do with what i'm presenting today in terms of the budget but it is something that the town needs to incorporate and consider um as they you know as they move forward through this process and bristol aggie is up 47 124 000 um and that's basically it appears that there's eight more students next year at bristol aggie than before so it definitely is another uh another amount that the town needs to to factor in so mr kiley i know you you're you're just the facts ma'am here but i'll make so i'll make the political commentary and i you know i know it doesn't quote unquote affect our budget but it does because it affects how much money is available in the town you know we talked about this when when you know our vote representatives came came to see us and it's it's hard right i mean those numbers that we're talking about provoke and aggie are you know several positions in our district right i mean or things that the town can't do and i and i do think it's time to sort of think about as a community how we can smooth out some of these um these bumps because you know 418 000 is a not insubstantial amount of money right oh i agree it's i mean 8 so an 8 increase is um you know obviously we're not talking about increases anywhere near that level so um you know if there's only one pool of funds how do you you know how do you split that up who pays for that i don't know but uh yeah it's certainly a concern and that's why i thought it was important to note on this so um i won't walk through every single proposal because the next three slides are have valuable proposals that could help kids in the dartmouth public schools so um i'll start by saying sort of at the top the top two lines of numbers on this uh on this slide what they show is the fy 22 budget that's the year we're in our budget is currently forty seven million one hundred and eighty thousand five forty eight eighty two okay now the fy 23 draft budget so that is sort of our preliminary budget before considering all of the requests from the schools and the departments all of these things in this list down below so basically what um that number represents is all of the projections that i talked about doing all of the key factors that we talked about the special ed increase in tuition the transportation increase the um all of those factors um obviously building in salary uh contractual obligations uh are built into that and where our starting point is at forty nine million one hundred and seventy three thousand one hundred and fifteen dollars and ninety three cents so four point two two percent increase now so that is salary so you know staffing is more than 70 of our budget so obviously that is significant um and those other areas where there is some increase relatively minor increase in utilities also built into there unfortunately the town has locked in some pretty favorable contracts because if they hadn't the utilities would be uh would be a problem as well so that's sort of our starting point at 4.22 and you'll see we have a lot of really you know a lot of proposals here and as we go through this process i can share more detail if you have questions about specific proposals but a lot of proposals for staff that can help kids um some proposals for supplies and i'll talk a little bit about that in a minute and i'm just going to page a page through this a little but most of the major proposals on this list are are staffing related so the left left-hand column of numbers so that if you look at the bottom the total of all of those proposals is 969 000.
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so just under a million dollars it would represent about a two percent increase in our budget so as i said we started at about just over four percent 4.2 percent that would get us to 6.2 percent uh if we were to incorporate all those proposals that's 50 million dollars for our budget at that point now obviously we have to you know we have we understand that we have to do our due diligence and try and um come up with a budget proposal that accomplishes at least what we hope to accomplish in terms of providing what schools what students need but also be reasonable and responsible in that in that proposal um as a result the right hand column of numbers are what we've uh actually built in at this point so there are a few things on that list that we have incorporated into the budget and there are some on this list that we haven't incorporated in the right hand column but we do intend to acknowledge that they need to exist and that we need to figure out an alternative way to fund them so one thing that was sort of a common theme amongst the schools is uh inflationary factors on uh and supply chain issues for ordering things it's real as we all know i think in our personal lives there's no way around it it's it's a reality i don't know how long it's gonna go on i'm hoping that things come back to normal but that may not um you know that that may not be for some time so what we are committed to doing is using about sixty two thousand dollars uh our proposal would be to use about sixty two thousand dollars of school choice funding to buffer costs of inflation and supply chain and supply issues so i have specific items on this list that we know have to happen we're going to make them happen our hope is that the school committee would support our using school choice funding to support that i believe that it's a good use of school choice funding uh i don't know whether prices are ever going to come back down so i don't really know whether it's one-time expenses or not but at this point i think the best thing we can do is you know is attempt to incorporate those things that way if in fact this is this is the new reality and the new normal moving forward that costs are higher then at some point we're gonna have to come back and try and build them into the operating budget but at this point i really think that um you know we'll we'll hopefully try and approach it that way to lessen the actual need to increase the operating budget even more than it already is here like like school using school choice funding we're also going to use sr funding to support some of these requests so esser again is the coronavirus relief fund there's multiple grants involved and it's over a course of several years and they couldn't have really made it any more complicated than they did but the good news is there is money and we we are currently using it to support kids right now with staffing and expenses and our after-school programs that we've that we've initiated and uh so we our hope is that um we will be using approximately 75 000 of sr funding to support support things on this list so that being said there are a lot of things on this list that we haven't built in um so even if if we're talking about 217 000 that we have and i'll talk a little bit more about those specific requests uh in a second on the next slide but you know we're gonna support 75 000 with esser and 62 000 with school choice that still leaves a lot of requests that are valuable that we are not able to to build in at this point in in our process so what did we build in so we built in a teacher at the quinn school we had a situation where if you if you you'll have some more information in your budget books when i when i send them to you um but our enrollment at the quinn school was problematic we were going to be up to 27 kids in uh in a grade level um in each class on average uh and that was really inconsistent with what we're trying to do for kids and inconsistent with what the other schools look like um and so at this point uh we've included a new teacher in our recommendations so you may know the next one you may know that um our tracy oliveira is is will be retiring uh in september mid-september so we are including in this proposal a director of teaching and learning focused on the needs of specifically on the needs of the elementary level so we've identified some thoughts about how that would work and how it would allow someone to really focus on the needs of the four elementary schools and that we think that that would be beneficial to students at that at that level and then one director dedicated to the secondary level so really bridging the gap between the high school and the middle school focusing on the on the transition between high school and middle school uh and and really attempting to meet their needs and then those two folks working together obviously to to um make sure district-wide uh we had a good transition from elementary to to middle school and so forth so there's a lot of work to be done and this would allow you know allow us to do that in what we think is a more thoughtful way moving forward and then the third proposal that yep can i ask a question about that 108 number that you have on that oh yeah sure right so is it help me understand is that the full cost of two people or is that two people starting when tracy retires because it's not in sync with the fiscal year right so i just want to know are we gonna have more higher costs on that in the year after how does that work okay so let me explain to you where we are right now so our our budget proposal last year um so let me back up so the assistant superintendent michelle roy retired in december 2020.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
in the budget proposal for fiscal year we presented a um we presented a replacement of the assistant superintendent position we never replaced that position but in that process we had eliminated the funding for the director of teaching and learning position so we only had one position at that time we had the assistant superintendent position funded now as of right now we have a director of teaching and learning so this what that 108 000 is the difference between what we currently have built in in the fiscal year 22 budget and what it would cost to have the two director positions in the fy 23 budget now those positions are offset they currently are in the budget offset by some grant funding particularly title one being the largest amount and but it that would continue with these new positions so there's really no impact there uh so this would that 108 000 would fund an extra position a new position for next year i would not necessarily anticipate an fy 24 increase beyond what you would normally you know whatever salary increase are we going to overlap these people such they start at the beginning of the fiscal year and they'll overlap with miss oliveira a couple year a couple months for training or at least july and august is that the plan so it's these two positions we'll actually have three positions for two months do you know what i'm saying or are we just gonna have two people and they're gonna start in september dr gifford do you want to jump in on that i think that um our plan would be to have them start just like any other administrative position which starts in um sometime in the summer uh we haven't really talked about the days and as you know some directors have uh various days to their contract so we haven't gotten into that depth yet but we obviously would want the first the people to come on board earlier than uh tracy leaving just to get i'm just trying to figure out what the what the numbers if what the numbers mean in that 108 contacts if it's two people three people for two months and then two people for the rest of the year or what that's just why i'm asking right and depending on how when we choose to do that um could have some impact obviously on the on the financial side of it so the third request that we have there is uh for an rbt an rbt is a registered behavior technician so they are members of our teacher assistant group and they provide direct services to students behavioral services so this proposal is actually not one just one staff member this is to hire one staff member to meet needs that we currently have so we have the needs now we are spending money to provide the services but we think it would be best is to hire a staff member to provide the services rather than contract out services um so we'd be doing that with the hiring of that one position and also uh we're in the process of we have sought volunteers to train existing staff to provide rbt services so we'd be providing them with training they'd get the credentials and they'd be available to us and it would provide some more flexibility as uh those services become necessary for for students in their ieps uh it it would be a more robust model than what we have now and right now we're we're stringing it together but this would um this would be a much much better way um to provide continuity and offer those services to students so i talked a little bit about the school committee so the school committee uh we'd be coming up with uh on the 14th we'll we'd have we'll have a presentation for the school committee um we will have a school committee meeting uh we will have a couple of school committee meetings where we can um work through the budget talk about the things that um you know that we've proposed the things we haven't proposed um and other topics as they come up and develop with funding and with the state funding and so forth we then would have a the public hearing for the budget on march 21st sometime in that mix we'll meet with the finance committee i'm not exactly sure when that would be sometimes that's before the school committee approves the budget um sometimes it probably will be before then i would guess but we'll also meet with the selectmen and hopefully you know get recommendations for town meeting from those bodies um school committee approval right now tentatively scheduled for april 4th obviously this can all be flexible to an extent although we do need to get to to be done with this process at least in terms of an initial budget vote by the school committee so that we can get it on the warrant in time for the town meeting which is on june 7th so we do have some flexibility we have lots of opportunity to talk about this and basically um that concludes the presentation part of this i'd be happy to answer questions talk a little more about specifics about this if anyone has anything they'd like to add so i'll keep talking sorry i don't know if others want to add but you know from my time on the finance committee i've developed a real aversion to using one-time funds for recurring expenses and and i know that some of these things we need to do um i think we need to have a conversation like at what point does school choice become a recurring revenue we've had it in place for [Music] how many years now so i maybe i'm a little less worried about that we have a healthy balance in that account where we could ride it out for several years such that if we put 62 000 on it this year and school choice went away we wouldn't have to come up with the full 62 right away um i am deeply concerned about the fiscal cliff that the esser grants really represent and um i know these are things that we need to do i mean we can see it on the news about the the emotional challenges that our students are facing right now um i'm just it worries me um about you know where we're going to be two to three years from now um and i think we need to have these conversations um about you know deeply about what we're putting on us our funding um and to develop a plan such that we don't all of a sudden have to lay off a bunch of people who we who we've come to depend on because the town doesn't have the money for that um so i'm really a little bit nervous about you know 138 000 going on non-recurring revenue just here i think we already have some stuff that's on us or um and i think we need to you know have some conversations about how we're going to plan for a soft landing i'm really worried about that it's your right to be worried about it we are very worried about it i think all school districts are very worried about it um and the reality is that there is no way to not have some degree of fiscal cliff the intent of these funds was to support students by hiring staff i mean yeah you can run after school programs which you may not run three years from now sure but that is minor um and and they've come out with additional grants that have helped us do that so that the problem is that we they you know we've been provided with millions of dollars that's a great problem to have and we are attempting to address those needs which are absolutely real um we're well aware that kids need more help now than they've ever needed and we're trying to provide that help but it will come to an end and there is no source of revenue once you get past this that i i would be very surprised if there is a federal source of revenue that continues this at the end to any to any large degree so what we've been talking about internally is okay how do we adjust staffing and sort of wean off it but it's hard to do and you know when you have a proposal a budget proposal that's already fairly substantial it's not like you can build those positions into that easily so you have to look at things like attrition and it's just not going to be diff it's not going to be easy to do it's going to be very difficult can i just make maybe perhaps one recommendation as we look towards the future right particularly where we're using this money to hire um i think it would be good for us to be very careful to in documenting sort of what these people are doing so if they're you know doing you know uh community outreach as a social worker like how many people are they visiting how many kids have they gotten back in because i think part of it is we're going to have to make a case for continuing these positions so to the extent we can document real needs that have been addressed um it's sometimes pretty you know opaque here you know for for the community you know what does an outreach social worker do well you know they make sure the kids are in school and this is how many kids they contacted and this is how many times they connected them to these services um i think that may help us because you know ultimately i think you're right mr kylie um we can't look to the federal government i don't think we're going to be able to look to the state government to save us from that and so it's going to probably have to be on us and so from the school side i think we need to be prepared to make the case as to what benefit these positions offer and why we need to figure out how to fund them so to the extent that we can document that or just track that now i think that would be useful i agree do other folks have comments questions thoughts okay well i appreciate you all attending um again this is our first budget subcommittee meeting depending on how things go we could have other budget subcommittee meetings we certainly will have lots of whole school committee discussion about the budget um starting on the 14th so i appreciate you your time and coming and and talking to us about this and considering our requests and hopefully we can move forward and with some support for for what we need for kids so thank you all have a good night thank you mr kiley thank you so much mr peratti has the video stream ended
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above