second posted by board number four worldwide for their function second by board member travis do we have public comment on consent calendar no request for public comment on the consent calendar mr board president all right there be no public comment and i'll go ahead and call you to see you unless you're further comments or questions to my colleagues seeing none then uh board member aye board a member of uh trust former chavez aye foreign aye vice president fund i myself 49 motion passes unanimously all right uh moving on to uh item 11.01 will be recess we will recess to close session uh at approximately 8 o'clock and or 802 or shortly thereafter we'll resume after closed session dr bauer do you want to go ahead and announce the items that will be discussed in closed session item uh conference will with legal counsel one potential case 1104 an update and as referenced in the agenda conference with legal counsel existing litigation and 1105 public employee appointment uh title assistant principal all right uh at this point i'll go ahead and call for a public comment anybody wishing to speak on items will be heard in closed session please indicate by raising your hand at this moment we have no requests uh for public comment mr president all right uh there you know yeah could we take a 10 minute recess i'm sure it's uh 803 where we will reconvene and close the session at uh 8 13.
canty is 392 square feet so the annual rent for 22.23 would be 373 thousand 198. they also proposed a 2 annual increase which is consistent with the terms at sinclair's cla and we have advised the diocese that the those terms are acceptable subject to formal to bid approval of the lease any questions on that uh i i looked down to technology first and i read your name so mr daley was quite capable of reading those but um mr canova did a wonderful job in filling in i'm sorry mr daley so i'm just sitting would you like to read technology all right joe if you do technology all right uh technology uh board members president mr smith myself mr daily uh mr paris administration president mr jangaro and mr mountain meeting time is 505 to 5 35.
all right uh we'll go ahead and uh um i'll jump to another recess we'll reset us to close session at 803. see you all when we get back um all right let's say we have yeah everybody's here so we got one um reconvene at uh 9 30. dr barr do you want to go ahead and report out i am very pleased to announce that in a unanimous vote the board appointed mr rogelio martinez as vice principal at adelante one effective july 1st congratulations mr martinez and thank you board um all right uh we're we're moving onto 4.01 and this is the german uh go ahead and join this meeting at 9 31 pm good night everyone 9 30 that's a record let's get down
items of discussion student laptops three thousand lenovo 500 e chromebooks with touchscreen capability will be ordered soon for all staff plus one grade level of students plus spares ecf funding will pay for approximately 80 and the remainder will be paid for with funds from our regular hardware budget item two summer projects mr mountain provided a forecast of summer technology work the tech team has begun replace and upgrade local data storage systems in addition to the large chromebook purchase approximately 300 windows pcs will be replaced air conditioning upgrades will occur in seven in several school server closets approximately 50 admin printers are slated for replacement depending on shipping timelines building lockdown codes are going to be reprogrammed to mitigate false alarm activation and work will continue on the referendum projects as well security camera upgrades everything has been ordered for grade 6 through 12 cabling has begun cameras are being programmed off-stage off-site and servers and switches are being installed and configured on-site as they arrive k-5 plans are being reviewed and orders will be processed as soon as designs are finalized camera equipment is currently available but network switches are showing a six-month leave time for shipment supply and chain issues continue to affect everything any questions thank you mr kenovan a wonderful job policy committee uh mr abuba president smith thank you the policy committee began at 3 08 pm on june 13th attendees were board presidents jim smith vice president uh james jim daly myself and board member for assad wad administration administrators president mr lou ross prince brahman hamda vice principal uh principal i'm sorry vanessa gabba and andy yeager also president was john crew from agl and he is also a student representative who was presented who was asked to present to speak on the dress code policy one 5511 dress code the principals and middle schools in the high school presented an overview the dress code including violation statistics and main student concerns the student representative presented a slideshow outlining student concerns on particular items of clothing such as spaghetti straps shorts tank tops footwear and jackets the discussion was held regarding the purpose of a dress code and possible consequences the committee asked the principals to meet to review the dress code and provide any recommendations at the next policy meeting scheduled for july 11 2022 number two zero one three one bylaws policies regulations the committee review this policy and recommends the following edition be made to the policy and number five the procedures section the following language will be added after the first sentence all proposed by laws and policies must proceed through two readings as separate board meetings in order to be adopted unless it is under emerged circumstances as specified in the policy heron 7435 alcoholic beverages on school premises the committee reviewed this policy with no recommendation uh recommended action for change the committee agreed to read the policy to the board in public and enter it as part of the minutes policy 7435 alcoholic beverages on school premises reads as follows the board of education prohibits the possession and consumption of alcoholic beverage without the expresso and permission to the suit of the superintendent by any person in any school building on and on school property or at any school sponsor activity the knowing possession without legal authority or knowing consumption of any alcohol beverage by any person school premises is a disorderly person's offense the board will report to law enforcement officials and prosecute as appropriate any person appropriate any person who violates the law in this policy except that any student who possesses or uses or is under the influence of alcohol on school premises or at any school sponsored activity will be treated in accordance with the law and policy numbers 3218-4218-5530 school district employees who avoid this policy or are present on school premises or at any school sponsor activity while under the influence of alcohol will be subject to discipline which may include dismissal or certification of tenure charges as appropriate the discussion with paul 7435 will be on the agenda again at the july 11 2022 meeting if we can make that change it says 2002 please policy meeting to consider the similar process from other school districts and possible changes or amendments for informational purposes the following policy will review with no recommended action or changes number one zero 174 legal services and number two 7510 use of school facilities on the agenda for the policy committee july 11 2022 personal technology on the dais boe commission communication with the president with the board president excuse me and paul 7435 the meeting was adjourned at 5 15 pm respect submitted lou and ross esquire any questions mr president i have a question um so here it says all proposed bylaws and policies must proceed through two readings um so two questions one is i thought we always had a two reading standard of before any policy was uh before any policy was actually adhered to and the other one it says unless under emergency circumstances specifying the policy here and does that mean that we would be able to put a policy on the on the agenda and just enforce it at that point if it was considered emergency yeah so the first one um was just to reiterate it um um that we do operate under a um two uh two readings of policy before it's approved so uh we just piggybacked what some other districts were doing and just reiterated it the other one was i'm sorry was the question jim so says unless it is under emergency circumstances as specified by the policy hearing so two readings unless it's specified in the pilot so yeah so uh correct me if i'm wrong um gutierrez i believe it was um like we had for uh ko for covid on when we were um you know on virtual that we uh we did an emergency uh amendment to the policy to enable us to do that is that correct is that how do i interpret yeah that's what i would i would interpret it would have to be an emergency so that's why that was suggested to be put there and then on uh on item three for the how alcohol beverages on school premises now i know that during christmas time and then at the end of the year like now you'll see i'm sure tomorrow teachers get gifts from parents and i'm sure there's been and will be and has been alcoholic beverages given to teachers at times um and in addition to that um i'm not sure if it's something that we ever thought about or we will be thinking about but since we do rent facilities out i'm curious as to how that would work for i know i was at a uh an event the other day that was at a school um and at this school that's always happens and at the school um they had they had it they had a section there that was like gated off and it was only for people obviously we were 21 older and it was a beer truck and they had some other trucks that had food and whatnot so if we were going to entertain anything like this i would assume that this policy would need to be changed so i was just questioning like there are some things that we do now that we don't necessarily look back at this policy for so is this something that's outdated we need to change and keep current i mean i always mentioned at other other board meetings we need to look at all our policies and make them current this is one that i don't think is even being followed really to the letter right now so should we modify it now and say these are the things that we i think i mean me personally i would be okay with letting a teacher get a bottle of wine from a parent and saying here you know enjoy this in your summer vacation joe is exactly what i asked in the committee and we were told that that is a standard policy of most board of educations and that it was suggested it'd not be removed um did you want to comment you weren't there yet what's his name was there was this job if i could make a comment no dude please it is a very typical policy i've seen it in many many boards of it with many many boards of education um it says specifically without the express written permission of the superintendent in order so you know if there is going to be alcohol in the prop on the premises he has to be the ones who approve it um i i've never seen it in any situation and force where there is simply a gift you know an alcohol policy is enforced if there's obviously if there's drinking on the premises that's one thing um if they're selling on the premises it's a whole other thing also obviously simply as a gift i've never i've never seen it become an issue so should we add should we kick this back to policy and add something like if if both parties are legal drinking age or something and and there's an exchange that that's some if it's after hours we're in school's end in session or something should we should we look at this um i i think the caveat in here when we looked at the policy is that it's the discretion of the superintendent so uh you can modify the policy for a gift or something like that but if you want to maintain clarity uh i said the superintendent says if somebody receives a gift that would that would alleviate give that that situation the okay so somebody so the superintendent can declare under this policy that if somebody receives a gift obviously unopened and all that other stuff and most of the time if the student or the parent brings it to their not knowledgeable of this particular policy that no alcohols should be on the premises whether it's open or unopened uh but uh i think the discretion i mean if you want to put it in there but i think the discretion of the superintendent to handle that situation is the better way to go here mr abhijava i believe um so we already have a set up uh john john crew was on the uh our attorney it was at the meeting and he suggested that it not be uh it'd not be rewarded or removed just to keep it the way it is you run into many other issues so that's why we took his suggestion is this verbatim from sesame or is this something that we did on our own i believe it's the verbatim okay and joe just let you know this is actually we don't take it back to policy because it's actually gonna be back on policy anyway that's why i mentioned that we it will be on the agenda for june 11 2022. so if any um what did i say i'm sorry i wrote july but i said june um still in that june face um if any of the colleagues want to add anything on the agenda for policy please let me know um through the president um if you want anything on there so president smith i just have one thing uh besides alcohol like for example where do we have a policy when it comes to cannabis now that's legal you know i mean if someone could give a bottle of wine to someone i just want to know i just want some type of policy you know someone decides to give someone you know i mean now that cannabis is illegal in new jersey we kind of gotta have a guidelines because you don't want you don't want an exchange of cannabis from you know a parent to a staff member as a merry christmas here's your ornament type thing you know it's just because you know we we've got to kind of update with us time if i may take that one so um so we actually did discuss after you okay because we actually did discuss that um with mr ross and there is also on the the website of new jersey school boards of new verbiage um interest has made as well particularly i'm sorry not in new jersey school boards on cannabis uh in the school and that is something that mr ross is going to take a look at and bring to policy for the july 11th meeting so that is also on the agenda but that's something that we did find and i did forward um mr ross two policies that two current school districts in state of new jersey all are already using um from chavez may and we're gonna take a look at as well okay dr roberto you want to add something um smith i just wanted to i agree with everything that was said i just wanted to mention when mr konova was talking about you know we rent facilities and we do require any outside organization to get insurance but i saw our board attorney's face when he mentioned the beer garden and i just don't i would i would imagine derelice that allowing an outside organization to consume alcohol in the building would be a liability issue even if they have insurance right always that's odd mr president yes yeah if i have no problem discussing a cannabis policy uh but i think it should be a separate policy or not mix it in with the alcohol because it has different kind of patience it it is actually um i'm just trying to find my email to mr ross so yeah no it is going to be a separate thing it won't be condensed together um like i said there there is information that will be added onto the policy onto the agenda itself just for cannabis alone the only reason why i bring that up uh president smith uh because i know it's legally in new jersey but federally it's still not and because we're a public school system we kind of take federal funding i don't know how that can affect or not affect long term because we do take federal funding so we kind of gotta abide by them also just it's a sticky situation no pun intended uh and yeah that's pretty much it also there's um i'm not sure we talked about it i think a year and a half ago when the original cannabis law was signed that you're no longer allowed children can't be reported to the police there's all different uh policies around that so even though it is federally illegal in new jersey there are other rules that have to be followed even by the police um so i'm not sure if those are in our policy book or if they need to be i remember we talked about it a really long time ago but i don't remember what actually came about because i think even teachers in the union they're not allowed or you know in general you can't punish them anymore as long as they're not using like on campus but i'm not sure if we have that in our policy book just so it's clear for everyone because going forwards clifton isn't going to have dispensary but there are going to be dispensaries in the surrounding towns miss belchering absolutely uh correct the marijuana and parental notification stuff is not necessarily in our policy but it's in the memorandum of agreement that we sign with law enforcement's actually on the agenda tonight that i sign every year so that's part of that protocol in there it's still actually a law in new jersey now it's very controversial but we do have a policy covering any type of even if marijuana is legal there's still age restrictions juveniles cannot have the possession of it um staff you can't you can't be in possession of it on school property that that's in our policy and there's a difference between being under the influence and you know being in possession and then if the the the concern with marijuana is when if you suspect somebody's under the influence and a student or staff member and you send them out for a drug test they may return positive for marijuana marijuana stays in the system for a month so it doesn't necessarily prove that they were under the influence when you tested them so the policy says there must be other criteria you have to you know list the criteria of why you suspected they were under the influence so there is a lot i believe our policy covers most of it but we should probably do a thorough review with our attorney and make sure that we are covered yep okay anything else and just if anybody wants to look at the two school districts it's actually northern valley regional high school and galloway board of education are the two that were used as an example uh but the northern valley has them mixed together but going to what mr daley said we're going to make sure that all right we're going to come back to the board that cannabis and alcohol beverages are going to be too separate okay um any unfinished business uh we'll move on to education administration okay so we have um um ea one um is we're gonna separate that and uh mr abdul you asked to read that so we have motion on ea one motion so move by mr abu dravid second second by mr awad if you'd read it please thank you ea one pride month whereas it is the right of every child regardless of gender identity gender expression or sexual orientation to access free public k-12 education and the district welcomes supports all students and whereas the district recognizes that there are employees and educators of the highest caliber who are lgbtq plus and that all employees are valued members of the school community regardless of their gender identity gender expression or sexual orientation and whereas new jersey law prohibits discrimination including discrimination based on transgender identity gender expression and sexual orientation and whereas the agenda the district is committed to maintaining safe healthy and welcoming learning environments for all members of our community including the lgbtq plus community are those who may be perceived as such and whereas 8 lgbtq plus youth who find their school to be affirming reported lower rates of suicidal thoughts and whereas the month of june is an opportunity to celebrate the identities contributions of lgbtq plus community and whereas the first gay pride march was held in june 1969 to commemorate the stonewall riots whereas the celebration of pride month is rooted in a history of resistance and struggle for equal rights as guaranteed by the us constitution and whereas by recognizing pride month we affirm that supportive school environments substantially improve the mental health and school engagement of lgbtq plus students and whereas by recognizing pride month we support policies practices and curriculum that honor and respect the lgbtq plus students staff and families and whereas by recognizing pride month we reaffirm our commitment to a supportive environment that promotes trust growth and achievement for all students now therefore be resolved that the clifton public schools board of education proclaims the month of june 2022 as pride month and encourages superintendent and all district staff to support lessons and activities that engage students in meaningful learning about the accomplishment of the lgbtq plus community and the experiences of lgbtq plus students staff and families okay comments president smith if it's okay with you um can we not replace but add and if i'm not mistaken lgbtq plus to add with lgbtqia to s plus to include all students um that identify and represent okay is there um the motion or in the second are they okay with that amendment i forget who was the motion though it was mister [Music] okay all right any other discussion roll call please mr abadraba absolutely yes mr awad yes miss basford yes miss beltran yes mr canova yes mr paris yes vice president daley yes president smith yes oh she carries okay so we'll have a motion on um ea through ea 15.
it's the moon by vice president daley second second by uh mr abhijabo discussion yes mr president yes mr canon um through you to our superintendent um dr robertos you you mentioned that on ea ii there was the uh memorandum of agreement but i don't see it attached here i mean i see the wording saying that we were accepting them away but i don't see the actual moa because you mentioned it was it was something you mentioned you're correct it is not attached um i can have that email to the board um as soon as possible but just so you know it is does change a little bit each year but it's a document that's signed by every school district in the state of new jersey with their local police department that just outlines the rules for how police operate in our schools this is really just authorizing me to sign it um but i'd be happy to share it with you tonight if you want we could pull it and that's fine that's fine but i'll make sure you get a copy thank you uh actually i have a question um going on with mr kanova said if we were to pull it how quickly can we get it actually i take that back i don't think we can pull it because i have to do it this school year well can we give it to the end of the meeting if we so we can get it emailed to us right now yeah actually we can um take it two minutes a standard document i can find the the website where we got it from and i'll share it with everybody thank you it's like it's a lot of reading material not to be able to read it tonight right you might be able to i have a question are the changes noted in there like italics or highlighted or anything like that because i have the one from last last year and um in order to save me time it would like would there be noted if they if they are not i will note them it was one minor i think it was only one minor change thank you okay any other discussion scene none roll call please okay mr abadraba yes mr awad yes miss basford yes miss beltran yes mr canova yes mr paris yes vice president daley yes president smith yes motion security okay uh next we'll go to um c personnel we have a p one um through p 45 but we're pulling um no no uh is that the one we're calling 34 yeah we're pulling a number a 34 for um uh executive session contract matter so i moved second moved by mr abu dravo second by mr awad discussion seeing none roll call please mr abadraba yes with up standing on p11 and p40 mr awad yes miss bassford yes abstaining on p35 miss beltran yes uh mr kanova yes mr paris yes abstain on 8 25 and 33.
vice president daley yes president smith yes motion scary okay before we uh move on to um to finance and facilities we have um two of our staff members that we just uh appointed uh dr robertosi thank you mr smith uh tonight we have appointed uh our new supervisor in our maintenance department and a new supervisor of phys ed and health so mo do you want to come up and say a few words [Applause] good afternoon everybody vice president daley dr robert tosi mr smith president smith and then all other board members i'd just like to thank thank you for this opportunity um i look forward to working with our custodial supervisor ryan mooney uh and expect to see uh hear of good things going on near future so again i'd like to say thank you and you know go clifton happy to have you though and our new uh supervisor of phys ed and health for the district steve vianna good evening everyone uh i'm cbn i just wanted to take a second um and thank everyone here tonight i know hiring an educational leader is a daunting task and you want to hire me for our students and staff just want to make sure we hear you yes i'm sorry i'm going to repeat start again i can i know it's a long night but i will i'll do that um again my name is steven vienna and i just wanted to say thank you again to uh everyone here tonight of course obviously uh superintendent dr robert jose uh the board uh the interview committee i have heard nothing but great things i will do my absolute best every day to make sure that we continue this tradition of excellence that you have here in this district i can't wait for the opportunity and i look forward to serving you all and i am certainly excited to know that i'm going to do my absolute best to make sure you're proud of the decision you made tonight so thank you for the opportunity and i appreciate it i'm already left okay uh next we'll move on to um financing facilities we have uh f1 through uh f28 so motion one by miss basford second by mr avadrabo yeah discussion president smith if i may um there was one resolution for the the referendum bid package one if we could read it into a record and have it passed tonight please it was in front of everyone when you sat down yeah i was just going to accept it but okay oh it's all right it's all right we can add it yeah there's two the boiler one is on here already um so the only one that needs to be read is the the referendum good package one the 23 million dollar one okay so um all right so we're gonna add uh f29 make that f29 that's the boiler one right it's the high school the three bids three big ones all right so uh whereas clinton board of education um advertised for seal bids for project number three eight four three facility upgrades at clifton high school on june 14 2022.
all right uh in accordance with uh that advertisement a total of nine bids were received publicly opened and read aloud in the conference room at the clinton board of education located here at 745 clifton avenue whereas the lowest three bidders were a paul otto building for a 23 million 223 000 of an s construction 23 million 988 000 and the bennett company for twenty four thousand twenty four million three hundred thousand whereas said bids have been duly received and analyzed by the attorney and architects for the clinton board of education whereas uh the pursuing njsa colon 188-18c the board of education shall award a contract to the lowest and responsible bidder and whereas paul auto building company located at 118 north avenue west in cranford new jersey is the lowest bidder and responsible bidder and whereas the chief financial officer has certified that sufficient funds are available for project number 3843 facility upgrades at clifton high school now therefore be resolved that the clinton board of education award a contract uh to paul auto building company in the amount of 23 million 223 000 for project 3843 facility upgrades at the clifton high school in accordance with the bid specifications as set forth in the bid proposal the board secretary of business administrator is hereby authorized to enter into any agreements to effectuate the purpose of the resolution subject to the advice and approval of the board attorney the chief financial officer has certified the availability of funds for this contract through the following accounts this resolution and contract once signed by all parties shall be available for public inspection at the offices here at the clifton board of education okay so we're adding that on as uh f29 okay uh roll call for the group don't move we already didn't read it right wait so i moved here bye mr daley seconded uh by mr paris any discussion roll call please uh i'm sorry just a quick discussion um for uh sorry for f2 for project red i know it reads um a thousand dollars department human services department human services and its mental health and addiction service division just make sure where the money exactly came from thanks okay motioner and second have any problems with those changes no okay roll call please mr abhidrabo yes with abstention on f27 f28 mr awad yes miss bassford yes miss beltran yes mr canova yes mr paris yes vice president daley yes and president smith yes motion scary uh misuchi just uh i got abstain on uh 27 i apologize no problem okay uh next we have uh board member comments uh did you want to go uh miss bassford uh you're first but mr daley has to leave is okay if he went first no that's all right i don't really have any additional comments other than to wish uh all the graduates the all the best in their future and to thank all the staff and supporting our students and doing a great job and getting them to graduation and wishing everybody a safe and healthy summer so uh i do have to to leave because i have to get out extremely early tomorrow morning and i don't want to walk out in the middle everybody's comments i think that's rude so thank you thank you thank you miss bassford good evening uh it's been um what a whirlwind since we've last met a lot of moving up ceremonies a lot of different things going on in the district i was able to um get to a bunch of them so congratulations to every all the schools that i did not attend i'm very sorry but can't split myself into two i wish i could but they were very moving to see that the traditions still carry see some new traditions start but to see that some of the schools offered um uh citizenship in the presidential awards is very warming to the heart um the students were well behaved well-dressed um respectful to the guests and to the dignitaries that were there so with the staff so thank you to everyone that did a really good job on the moving up ceremonies um two songs celebrate keeps on humming and you can count on me i i can't get that i've been humming it all day because it's seemed to be and thank to thank you to um um assistant superintendent mark gianguero for being my uh my escort to most of them we met we met in the hallway um it was very nice to see him there and some of the other staff members that make the rounds and take the times to go to these events school nine's 100th anniversary celebration was really well done by the children it was every grade level participated from um the kindergarten to fifth grade every single student was involved it was really nice and to see some of the old principles there um some of the old brass i was a very moving and then they had all their um their their paraphernalia up displayed it was just beautifully done and i thank you for the invite um to the students of the month congratulations to senior emily theology i forget if i heard your name i'm very sorry congratulations to the unified club there was a former uh school five student in that group she's now in college so congratulations to her as well it's good to see that they still participate in the new jersey state summer games um congratulations to school number three for getting the national school of excellence um uh thank you to anyone that attended the pride flag raising to ray robitello for organizing it and keeping it great i have a i have a pride poem be proud of who you are who you've been and who you will become hold your head up high ignore the haters they are dumb you are you and you are beautiful perfectly imperfect except yourself as you are shining blight bright like a sonic superstar stand out from the crowd stand tall and proud your vibe attracts your tribe you are celebrated and loved who cares what they who cares what you look like or who you love shout this is me take me as i am and if they don't well don't give a i can't say it but you know what it means you are you you are beautiful don't shut yourself away or hide live your life in the light and do it with pride thank you thank you thank you to the graduating class of 2022 god speed and wear sunscreen good night and god bless each and every one of you [Music] thank you i forgot my list here uh mr canola uh good evening uh first of all congratulations to uh school three on on their success with imagine math um this amazing award to win they were the only school in new jersey to receive this award which i think is tremendous so my hat's off to them i know my daughters use this app they love it my youngest especially loves when the dog runs across the screen and bonks his head but that's just her um guitar student rep andrew you've done a tremendous driving job and keeping us informed on student matters you always bring us the news and topics on such as athletics community events and provide a boots on the ground view on these top issues facing student body so i appreciate your commitment to our students and our meetings and taking the time out of your schedule to be the liaison i wish you the best of luck in uh and all you do and congratulations to our news student representatives graduation day is tomorrow so here's the day that you've worked 13 years to get to so while you've finally gotten it to the point of graduation know that this is a lifelong process many will go into college or in the workforce but the learning never ends and continues on every day you should continue to learn new things and improve yourself remember where you came from and set your mind on where you want to go don't give up times may get hard but personal feeling perseverance will pay off in the end congratulations to all thank you uh thank you uh mr paris thank you mr smith uh congratulations and huge thanks to our students our staff our administration for bringing us back from the pandemic and back to pretty much close to normalcy again i know it's been a team effort and it's been a fantastic year special congratulations to the special olympians also to the imagine math team and what strikes me most the award is fantastic but the fact that we were number one in the state of new jersey number nine in the country and charitable giving i think speaks volumes about our students congratulations to all of them congratulations to to andrew and all the best for the future and to our new student representatives welcome congratulations to our new supervisors of maintenance in phys ed we look forward to great things and i hope everyone has a wonderful safe happy healthy summer and congratulations to all the graduates it's just the beginning of the rest of your lives uh just the beginning but thank you and uh have a great summer thank you uh mr abu dhabi thank you smith um excuse me so the somebody spoke about how i mentioned my personal beliefs in terms of you know what i would want my students to learn in any school any setting but it it also brought to my attention through somebody else who really taught me that it's important for students to understand their individual bodies to explain themselves if god forbid touched unappropriately to give them the ability to describe what is going on to them if god forbid something happened to them many you know many students and young children and i've come to to to realize and believe that that that is an important role it's not just what learning in the class you know and it changed my views a bit not just learning in the class what you know what a penis or vagina is but also god forbid you know let's if anybody remembers penn state if anybody remembers any other institution if anybody remembers anything throughout history imagine your kid being touched that way or threatened of being touched that way i would want my kid to come home say you know what mr so and so and and yes not everybody is trustable and not everybody is reliable and i won't want my kid to come home say you know what mr or mrs or joe smith or jane smith you know i didn't feel comfortable and it allows us to understand what they're trying to say no matter what age that's for my two-year-old my five-year-old and my seven-year-old play unified club uh special olympics congratulations um i understand mr rodriguez you will be extremely missed you and i have had various conversations you and i have had on either on our diversity committee or off our diversity committee you truly will be missed you are one of a kind our all our teachers are amazing but you are definitely one of a kind um dr robertosi heather cutler will need help that's all i got to say because these students have learned compassion empathy um you know it has created unity in the school understanding very across various uh student populations how to deal with one another no matter what each individual person brings to the table so i hope we can we can work on that emily congratulations from the women's club of all wood definitely deserve it that was an oversight a few weeks ago or last month and i think that's great well i love school three i love all our schools congratulations to them and i you know when school three came up and i'm like what sets them apart and honestly i can't think what sets them apart because excellence runs not only in the hallways of school 3 but in the hallways of every school across the district i may have some more time um tiffany and lillian congratulations rewarding the nurses as far as i remember when i used to work congress and pasquale there's been a shortage of nurses and doctors across the country for over a decade now and we're seeing it here at the school level it's on i know it is frustrating to see that more nurses are getting paid higher but as the superintendent said um the demand and we have to step up to it graduation school 11 and other schools thank you very much school14 had a beautiful graduation uh andrew mentioned three two things and i added a third for our seniors advocate organize for power and you are truly the stakeholders in this district you are what we are here for you are what the teachers are here for you are what the cea is here for you are what we as a community one clifton are here for and if it wasn't truly for that then i don't know what we are all doing because that is the importance of our stakeholders in the classroom thank you mr awad thank you president smith sorry about that um i just wanted to i was i was just going to speak about this in an unfinished business uh it just kind of slipped my mind um it's a question regarding you know the board policy uh about certain board members reaching out directly to the superintendent and as one board member loves to say circumventing the process you know uh president smith as a reminder to you know not just you all of us as well as a group you know i feel like you should be the one and it's the way the layout is you should be the one that we should be contacting to and not reaching out to the superintendent not anything against you uh danny i just feel like you have so much on a day-to-day basis on your plate running one of the biggest districts in the state i feel like you know any questions or any concerns that we have we should kind of be going to president smith to alleviate that uh strain on you and then i just hope moving forward you know as a board we can follow and abide by that uh second thing i wanted to discuss was i would like to see a policy on mental health you know miss bass read a couple meetings ago uh you stated that us as a board should get our head heads examined you know it's it was a disappointing comment to hear from yourself because mental health is real and as someone who serves on the city level casa mental health and substance abuse you know there are a lot of people dealing with stuff like this and you have advocated for it in the past about mental health and i just think a statement like that was a little you know distasteful uncalled for and because we have many staff members or maybe students in this district that are you know dealing with such uh mental health stigmas another thing was about policy for alcohol and i know we discussed this if you know we need to revise the policy to include uh about alcohol board members also i feel like you know we are the leaders of this district and we should lead by example and this is something we should take part of this policy um looking over the policy and according to our policy we have um we were advised that we should have been reported to the police because alcohol is not allowed in any school buildings in clifton the reason i'm still on the subject because other board members if it was vice versa would have never let this go and they would have been continued discussing it uh to the last strain and it just disappoints me how other board members are trying to sweep it on the rug and staying silent about the situation and a final thing is miss password i know you reached out to i believe the superintendent and to the president about an investigation against me because i'm speaking out of the actions that concurred in the past couple weeks during the education meeting and claiming that you did not know what you had in possession i think that's ludicrous and it's a waste of our tax dollars you know the district's tax dollars taxpayers money and it's funny how you want to file an investigation and you have filed investigations against two sitting muslim board members it kind of scratches my head on that that's all okay um miss belgium okay uh back to what this part of the meeting is about it's supposed to be about uh giving public uh comments to uh the students in our district announcing events it's not really a port of the time to be attacking each other but i guess some colleagues think that that's the appropriate use of this time um i'd like to say congrats to all the graduates the best is yet to come in your lives have a gr have a great time at graduation and project graduation unfortunately uh due to work obligations i won't be able to make it tomorrow but i'll be there in spirit and i really enjoyed watching you all celebrate at prom it was definitely a highlight of my of my month um a few other board members were there with me also we all had a really great time uh congrats to all the teachers who made it through yet another difficult year i hope you enjoy your summer break uh here's hoping we finally have a normal year next year i know now we've been saying this i think for maybe three years two years i'm not sure i've lost count but maybe next year we'll be able to keep it going uh on the path that we currently are on with relative normalcy and we can get all of our kids back on track have a safe summer to all residents and try and be mindful of the fireworks on the upcoming fourth of july um residents with ptsd children with autism and pets an addition of other people all struggle with the overload especially super late at night so if you are going to shoot off fireworks try and make it during the day or in early evening but the 4am firework shoot-offs are not appreciated by all the residents here in town and have a good summer everybody thank you i also like to thank um all of the schools uh for inviting the board members to the moving up ceremonies um they truly um were so enjoyable to see these students that have worked so hard with their teachers and principal and all the staff in the schools and to see them moving up is is a true testament to the hard work that our teaching staff does and hope that many of those students will remain in the clifton schools and do great things in uh in clifton um today i was fortunate to go to the uh school 11 moving up ceremony and um it truly was amazing to see these kindergarten students that are now first grade students and moving up the work that they did with their their teachers in the songs it just was so clever and so enjoyable to see that and i was there to support all the students but one student in particular is a is a lovely young girl who is now a first grader and as i umpire i have become to know her family and her very well and she's always so helpful in watching triskit as i umpire so victoria at school 11 congratulations and congratulations to all of your classmates to see so many kindergarten students now moving up and to all the fifth grade students throughout the district those moving up ceremonies as well uh were so rewarding and um to both the the high school and the two middle schools on their national honor society ceremonies um it was truly a pleasure to see uh students that are working so hard uh to make the honor roll and uh to be recognized by their school and their district so again congratulations to uh to all of them and to all those students tomorrow that will be graduating from clifton high school it's a wonderful day in the city of clifton where we recognize and congratulate students that have worked so hard over the years and this graduating class in particular because really two years of their school high school life uh was taken away from them and uh to be able to come back and um be great students and moving on to some great universities um and many many students also staying in the uh the trades area we know how so important that is to our world and to our country on having uh people that can continue to do work in the trades area plumbers and electricians and carpentry and all those areas they are so important to our society so um i i wish all those students the very best as as well and um and that's all i have for uh for today okay we're gonna move on to a new business i was sent uh one new business item um so um through uh the superintendent uh i received a uh request for a uh investigation into the allegations of the liquor in the boardroom on the dais and um i wanted to bring that to the full board so that you can approve it there is a dollar amount that would be associated to it so approximately if it was about five hours um so we'll come to about 775 dollars in that area obviously if it was more but roughly in that area so um a board member mrs bassford has requested this investigation and i felt that the entire board because there's a dollar amount here that the board should decide on that so um i'll open the discussion ms basford if you want to add anything to that i reached out to my personal attorney who represents me and he told me to and uh when there's an allegation immediately of any extent to this an investigation should have ensued i reached out to school boards they told me the same to get in front of it uh there was an accusation that is following my personal life to my personal life and they keep on happening every meeting the public knows what's going on they know the allegations i have a lot to lose both publicly personally and professionally and i want to i want an investigation where there's anything wrong done it was a gift it was given to another board member it was it was wrapped up and i want it i wanted to know a couple things so my attorney asked was it tested how did they know there was actually alcohol in that content so there was an allegation made it was a serious allegation that can affect me personally and professionally and i want to be cleared of it there should when there's an allegation there should be an investigation immediately done and that's what i was told by several attorneys thank you president can you say comment um is it really an allegation when 30 seconds later both board members admitted to it and confirmed it so what's the investigation for if they're confirming and saying yes it is well yeah i i think that's what we're going to leave up to the investigation um as i stated you know any board member that requests something i will surely bring it here to you and because there's a dollar amount in involved so miss password had every right to to bring this here and uh if the board wants to go through with it uh so basically the dollar amount um we would start out with uh our attorney handling the investigation and uh if the attorney comes back to us and feels that there needs to be a further investigation then we'll bring it back to the to the board but we kind of uh the advice that i got from uh school boards and our attorney was to start at that at this process and uh and go from there so again we're just estimating if if the if the time apps have to be more or if we go further into it um so i just want everyone to be able to be aware of that yes miss belgium um in my opinion i don't think an investigation is necessary um one being that i have admitted that i received a sealed alcoholic gift from a fellow board member so i don't think an investigation is necessary and i think now we're all clear on the policy that is not normally enforced um and even the legal counsel said herself that she's never seen it enforced um as long as it's obviously not being drank consumed yeah like a gift a gift being enforced as being a legal possession of alcoholic beverages um i think this is being taken further because of personal grievances between board members um so i mean if everyone wants to have an investigation and spend 700 and go ahead um but i think i think it's pretty much a dead topic as far as you know i'm concerned we pretty much know what happened um you know obviously i won't be accepting gifts any longer and i hope all my colleagues will also not be accepting gifts i guess um you know and it's if anything it the reason i think joe brought it up is that i'm afraid of a teacher using this as retaliation against another teacher now that we've set an example that this can be done so all you need is a grievance between two teachers one teacher's tomorrow sees a teacher leaving with many bottles in her trunk and all of a sudden now is a problem so that's the only reason i really think that the policy might need to be changes just so it isn't used as a weapon as it is being used right now um so that's that's pretty much my only concern but if you want to do an investigation uh that's fine but i will be voting now on it okay president smith yeah i actually second everything that uh ms beltran said um i think there's no need i mean listen enough is enough like that's it whatever happened happened we shouldn't continue you know pounding the pavement for what it's i told you so or i got you it really isn't worth in our time and i'm sorry i got my back to the public it's not worth our time nor is it worth the public's time nor is it worth the money nor is it worth the headache nor or is it worth anything else as i mentioned before we're here for the students they are the stakeholders that's what we're doing in the classrooms that's why we're all here we don't get paid for this we don't get health insurance out of this we don't get a stipend for this we do it because we want to do it it's simple as that and i think it's time just to wrap things up and move forward so i agree with everything misspelled tron said okay you know miss yeah just let me comment you know miss bassford has the right as a board member um i'm happy to hear everyone's opinion but you know i i felt it was fair to bring it here you have a board member that has uh questions and would like uh things looked into so um if if that's going to help um and and you know you did say you received from her attorney the advice to do that so if that's something that's going to to help um i you know that's why i'm bringing it here so i'm sorry that's all right uh because my family was brought into this as well it was a conversation the next day on a school playground that my daughter came down here to have a throw down with another board member two teachers were talking about my child you contact me you can drag me through the mud you can rip me apart i don't care but when you come after my kids that's it and when i spoke to my attorney who represents both me and my daughter for in the future regarding this she's a professional she has a impeccable reputation she doesn't endanger any lives of students she doesn't steal from anything she has an impeccable reputation you're mad at me you don't like me for what you've done and what you've done in this district and what you've tried to do to people come after me don't go after my kids but to hear that staff members are talking about my daughter that she came down here ripped her earrings off to have a throw down with another board member and it was funny because there's only board members at that time in this room that's disgusting that's my child who does volunteer a lot of her time for the district for the betterment of the schools and for the children and for their and she comes here to advocate for other for for positive things her words are impeccably said i'm not going to let it i'm going to stop it one way or another it's constant every every meeting at board member comments and it's always funny that other board members go before me i don't know how the rotation goes but i'm going to start going back and and looking at it it's always it's always an attack like you said miss beltran it's supposed to be made for comments to the public but it constantly gets done it's about coming after my family but when i spoke to my attorney he asked me was an investigation done was the content of what was in that bag tested and i said no and no so he told me to request an investigation because my reputation is on the line and it's constantly being challenged my positions are constantly being mentioned in public so it is hurting my life thank you president smith can i just make a comment yes mr samantha i think you're a wonderful individual and yeah let's let's kind of let's kind of yeah let's point of order for the um let's just keep getting i just wanna the only comment i wanna make was i've never mentioned anybody's family members and the record shows it that you're the one that stated that individual's name and brought that individual into the situation and the meetings have surpassed where i have never shifted my view or brought anybody into this situation because that person was never present and whatever gossip is being said by teachers that's between them because we all know what happened in that certain situation nothing happened one individual requested to speak with me it was late i politely said i'm not interested in speaking and we parted ways nothing escalated nothing dramatic happened that individual was actually respectful when they approached me didn't say anything wasn't hostile it was just a normal request to speak i just was not you know i think midnight almost at that time i was just not interested just wanted to go home and get some rest and that's pretty much it okay let's uh so that's pretty much it so if we want to drag family members in this just don't mention their names then because nobody mentioned any individual okay excuse me excuse me can't have calling out from the audience please okay is there any other comments on the new business item that was brought here there is no emotion at this time does anyone wish to make a motion to make a motion to approve the investigation oh that's what it's just a new business item you don't have to this password has requested oh i'm sorry his password requested an investigation right that's what i just said there's an answer as to whether or not it's going to be well that's what the board is here to do okay i won't enter if there is a motion i'll entertain the motion at this time make a motion to approve the investigation okay um approval for the uh investigation into the uh mentioned matter um with a uh estimated price tag of five hours 775 dollars no more than okay motion by ms bassford okay no second okay uh motion fails is there any other new business the superintendent i think you guys pulled the whole law enforcement yeah well it wasn't paul they would just get you he would get us the information he sent it to us i'm guessing we have to vote before we end no no yeah we already approved we just wanted to get you the information that's all yeah all right any other items for new business motion clothes second okay uh before we close okay the board uh will meet an executive session um on the following items we have a litigation matter we have a contract matter we have two personnel matters and we have a yeah that's the second personnel matter okay so litigation matter contract matter to personnel matters um action will be taken just to let the public know we will do those topics mr paris that you could be there for executive first there could be a vote afterwards concerning that if you'd like to stay for it it's up to you okay um i'm gonna give it about a 45 minutes in an executive session if it's more than 45 minutes we'll come back so a motion to go to executive session promotion by mr abu drabo second by mr awad any objection okay [Music] mr mcconney we're back tell me when you're ready okay gotta wait for the attorney i'm gonna take roll pull anyway right um yes um the board met in executive session for about 45 minutes uh to discuss litigation matter contract matter and to personnel matters we will have action on one item as soon as the attorney gets here so um uh roll call from back executive here mr drabo mr away here mrs basford here miss beltran here mr konova here mr paris yes here and president smith here we have a call alan you ready getting late oh oh is it the regular one no you have it i don't have it nobody i mean is it the regular c c 34 there's no there's nothing else does anyone have it open i can get all right motion to approve uh section 34 by mr avadravo second by mr awad yes any discussion seeing none roll call please on 304.
mr abhijaba mr awad yes miss basford yes beltran yes mr canova yes mr paris yes president smith yes ocean to adjourn motion no objection being adjourned thank you you
well good afternoon everyone and welcome to this special especially scheduled board governance meeting for the azusa unified school district board of education on june 26 uh we will begin by calling this meeting to order at 103 pm and next we will move to our flag salute next we'll move to a roll call uh board member rodriguez pena president board member bo here board member cruz gonzalez here member arianes present and i uh board member greer i'm also here now we will move to item 2.0 and specifically 2.1 approval of the agenda and we will take uh hand vote but is there a motion to approve the agenda make a motion to approve 2.1 a second moved by board member rodriguez penis second by board member beau and again we'll take a hand vote board member rodriguez pena yes board member beau yes board member cruz gonzalez yes board member arianis yes and i i'm barbara mcgregor i'm also a yes next we move to area 3.0 and specifically 3.1 public comment on agenda or non-agenda items this is an opportunity for the public to address the board of education on agenda or non-agenda items individual speakers may be allowed up to three minutes to address the board of education on any agenda or non-agenda items when the public wishes to address the board of education on an agenda item they may fill out a blue card stand at the podium or raise their hand while in zoom attendance the board will take blue card requests first followed by an order by speakers at the podium and then those in zoom attendance it does not appear that we have anyone in attendance this this afternoon to make a comment lika is there anyone online we have no hands raised on zoom okay then we will move to 4.0 general functions and uh specifically the one item that we have on our agenda which is 4.1 board governance workshop um i'll turn it over to superintendent or ticket [Music] thank you board president greer um just to bring us up to speed a couple of weeks ago we had our governance workshop we had dr yo from csba who was our facilitator we began the conversation we began looking at our survey tool and the results of our survey tool but we ran out of time the board of education decided on today um we are very uh plea dr yo could not make it um back uh but we're very pleased uh to have miss pride here um who's gonna pick up where we left off to continue the process of our board governance and our self-evaluation tool thank you very okay thank you and um good afternoon everyone thank you for being here on sunday i think that shows your dedication and commitment to following through with this process so that right there means a lot and it says a lot about your governing team so i'm going to keep this quick um as far as introductions go i have the opportunity to speak with most of you so my introduction will just be brief for individuals i didn't speak with them for your record as well so my name is angelina price and i am representing california school board association today csva i'm a consultant and a mixed facilitator for them i served on the rolling unified school district board of education for seven and a half years um like i said i spoke with most of you you know that i stepped down last year due to a conflict of interest with my job at mount san antonio college because i work with the teachers from our district and you only have one employee your superintendent and you cannot supervise nor evaluate anyone else from the district so reluctantly i did have to step down from my port position i've been with psta for almost three years now as a consultant and i do enjoy the work and i love being connected feel to the school boards and um i'm very entrenched in through 12 education as my current position at the mount san antonio colleges as the director of off-campus high school where i work with high schools um and i can't even stay in our district because we're way outside of our district so in the region of 42 high schools providing credit recovery and enrichment courses so um i love education and that that's where my heart is and so i enjoy being a school board member as all of you indicated that you do as well and i'm glad that i had the opportunity to speak with one and with each of you uh before we start i will ask is there um do you guys feel like you want to do introductions of yourselves again sabrina maybe i should just hear one from you if you don't buy just um just tell me why you ran first full board since we i ran in 2020 um as a first-time candidate i'm an educator by trade i've been working as an educational administrator in charter school since 2004.
and um as a relatively new member of the zusa community um my husband and i moved here about five years ago um i want like my colleagues here wanted the chance to contribute my life experience and my professional expertise to improve public education which is really the bedrock of any community and that is in a in short why i ran sounds good thank you and thank you for doing that so i'm going to go ahead and we're just going to jump right into things i want to be respectful of your time and i want to make sure that we um get this process complete i've had conversations with your board president and one of the things that i told him was that i will not do training for the sake of prank i'm not a box trainer i have turned down the opportunity to work with a district before because they just wanted to go through the motions and that's not something that i do my goal is to be here to try to be to the board and to help facilitate your discussions around your board self-evaluation and that's what i i want to help with so i my plan is that we'll get through it we'll get all get something out of it and it'll be beneficial everyone involved um yours your board president has told me exactly where you all left out off at as well i've watched your last uh workshop a few times i have multiple pages and notes that i was taking as i was watching it so i i think that i know where we left off at and that's where i'm going to try to pick up that so just a couple of things though that stood out to me since i wasn't didn't start this process with you of course you know i went through the board self-evaluation looked at all the responses and everything and there were two things that stuck out to me when i went through it so the first one i looked at the survey was that um if you notice in the not sure column there is a mark for that column on every single question so i can tell you from my experience of doing the board self-evaluations um for the last few years is that usually when that happens is one of two things that i've saw number one it means that someone didn't take the survey because if someone does not take the survey it automatically defaults to not sure or it means usually that someone is like not fully on board with the process and so they just checked not sure not they're not sure and they put it aside i am not saying that that's the case that with your board i'm just telling you that's what i've found to be the case in everyone that i've done that's always had a not sure for every single answer because you don't see that we don't see that that often i think i've seen it maybe this is probably the third one that i think and one i knew someone didn't take and then the other one someone admitted that they didn't care about it and they just put not sure so that was the first thing that i noticed the second thing that i noticed was that there were no green um not one so and the green is the strength for most members and i just gave you this just because i'm a visual person i like to see things in front of me to help me remember where i'm at so there was um zero screens for the items on the board self-evaluation stating that one of the um the statements was a strength for most members um you did have uh 27 which was a lot for the strength for simple majority and 14 for area growth per simple majority and then there were 20 for area of growth for most members and that there also is is a concern to have um such a large number down at that end so as i watched your last and and for president feel free to step in at any case um any time if i'm off track um as i watched the meeting from the last evaluation i noticed that there was a lot of dialogue that was starting to happen then it was like oh we're out of time and that was such a bad time to get cut off it was like there's finally talking everybody was talking and getting into the nitty-gritty and then we had everybody had the end so i'm hoping that um we can get through that today those items that we didn't get to finish and i'm hoping that we can continue the conversation a couple of things i'll have to say is that um i know that there seems to be a trust factor um amongst the board and one thing you guys also will notice about me is i tend to be more blunt maybe and i hope that you will allow me to do that if you feel that i'm being too blunt uh please interject i don't have a problem with that but i did notice that there seems to be a trust issue among some of the board members and i also noticed that there's still some hesitancy to talk about everything that needs to be said as a board member this is not a conversation that you want to have an open session and you alluded to that at that meeting um you stated that you do not want to have this conversation at an open regular board meeting and this is not something you can agendize for closed session so your only options are closed session open meeting or right here right now and that's what these meetings are designed for um i will tell you that when i first joined my board it was total chaos um there was it was a mess we were a mess for over a year uh and you know we just it it festered because we never had the opportunity to discuss it and and have this fun those conversations that needed to be had and we had um uh csba come in luanne rivera came in and facilitated a workshop for us and it was tough it was very tough it was uncomfortable um there were um hurt feelings at some point and but at the end it felt so nice because we were able to get so much clear and so much so many misunderstandings resolved and to deal with the things that weren't misunderstandings that had really happened but we never talked about them so they just festered so for um for us that process was very beneficial and it really set us on the road to being able to move forward and to um develop stronger relationship and after that we did it it wasn't like overnight everything was but we were able to start talking to one another and being more honest with one another and that helped us to continue on that path and i have to say that um my last uh five and a half years on that board were amazing we had an amazing relationship on our board because we learned that when something happened just to go ahead and address it quick talk about it you know be upfront with one another be honest with one another so we have that press and that's the foundation for all of this is we have to have that trust if we don't if there's no trust if everybody thinks oh yeah they said that but i don't believe it or yeah she said that she didn't mean that but i don't believe it there's a that's not we're not going to get anywhere plain and simple but we have to assume positive intent today we have to believe that what the person is saying um during the difficult conversations is their truth and we have to respect their truth and even if we don't agree with it we can ask questions okay well don't explain to me why you felt that way or why you think that that's you know what i meant or what i said or you know or this is what i what i took from what you said to me so it's just all about communication and those that i talked to everybody said communication communication so we need to have make sure that we're on the right track for communication so with that let's go ahead and get started um we can do this one of two ways i can ask you where you'd like to start um if there's one topic on here and i i want to start with the red usually i don't do that but we need to start with the red so um so that we can make sure we get all of that address so is there one of the topics and i'll um defer to you um for president if was there one that you wanted to start on right away uh i have a thought but uh remember did you have something to add okay i just had a question about um have we created a timeline and a structure for this afternoon in terms of how much time we're allocating to the sunday afternoon yeah so so the the timeline on the meeting is is scheduled for it's we're scheduled to have a four-hour meeting not with the expectation that we spend four hours but to ensure that we to ensure that we get out and don't run into a situation like we did last time where we have to finish uh prematurely don't finish the conversation so no it's it's it is it's less structured than that um and it's more kind of picking up right where we left off from the last meeting thank you thank you for the clarification on that and can i add one thing before i get back with you but that opened the door for me to say something also i want to make sure everybody has an opportunity to be but if um if we can keep our thoughts to just the specific we don't have to go into a whole you know big long scenario essay of what happened then why this and why that just state the fact this this this this is how i felt about it this is what i want to address because then people are more likely to listen when you start going into all of the minutia and you know in 1925 this is what you said and then in 1940 came back and said this and then you lose people because then they're gonna start tuning you out so if we can keep it to you know be be honest be inclusive to everything you want to say but keep it straight to the fact and that way we will all have time to get through everything and because we don't want to have to have part three um sure we'll go no i just wanted you to clarify for a statement i thought i thought we also wanted to make sure that we were going to just reaffirm our protocols that was so no yeah so we we can that that is not um that's not something that is specifically added and that's here however if what we want to do is take time to do that since we're here i think we we have space to be able to to do that um but i i i do want to make sure that we're able to to finish some of the more difficult conversation that we that we started and didn't quite finish so that would take priority we could maybe look to that um once we get on the other side of this conversation yeah i think if we have time we can move on to um what gonzalez wants but i think that where we left off last time was on number 15 board members treat each other with respect and i think that's really important because i think that is right the issues and and i would and i would wholeheartedly agree with that um i think we saw that there were about what if i remember correctly there were three items on that we had on the board right and all three of those items kind of all you know each of them fell within the category of board members shooting each other with respect so that that certainly would be the one that i i would say would make the most sense for us to to begin with or to continue we already started it but for us to continue and board president just for reference that was 4 13 and 15.
yeah which to say them a lot is the board works well together is number four number 13 is the board manages internal conflicts in a productive manner and number 15 is board members treat each other with respect so the combination of those three i think we can group them together and and have continue the conversation on it it was 4 13 and 15. so then um 13 was the one that i think we were you were on but we'll go back and revisit four as well because i don't think that that one was complete um i would say i mean it may not be most helpful if we chop them up and to say like let's spend time on four and spend time on on 13 15. i think i think if we just group them all into one and it's all i think it all centers around um us not working well due to lack of respect and how conflict is is handled internally so i think the combination of those things we can we can handle it at once excuse me so did you say 4 13 and 15.
4 14 4 13 and 15. okay so at the last um meeting when the conversation ended and i put you on the spot trustee cruz gonzalez but that was where we it left off with you saying that you felt that you hadn't had an opportunity to speak and that you were stating yes we need to finish this we need to have part two because you said that you didn't feel like you had enough time to say what you were thinking i don't know if you can remember exactly where you were or if someone else wants to pick up and start the floor is all of yours i think that we were in the middle of adrian do you feel like that was done i feel like we just you had me you had made some comments and then and then we had to cut yeah so if i remember correctly and if it's helpful i can i can i can try to restate some of the things some of the things that i said if that helps to get the conversation started but uh there were there were some things that i that i that i said um a lot of what i was saying i was directing toward uh for board member arianes i think last time we just said we're gonna use first names can we just shift to that for this purpose okay so um uh directed toward for you gabby and so we had a bit of some some back and forth and i think we we landed a place where i said um i want i want to be receptive and i want to hear that but but i but um one of the things that i stated was i think that there's a lack of self-awareness and within the space of lack of self-awareness um i i opened up and said uh you know there might be space for any other board members to share any thoughts or perspectives that they may have and i think it was in that space that um where it was kind of opened up that i think you had some things that you were wanting to add but but time didn't allow us to proceed sabrina did um speak um about accusations without evidence gabriella did respond they talked about the incident at the park and then that's where you came back in and you were stating that there were some things um that you felt that gabriella had that that kind of made things tough for all of you to work together and then we kind of got cut off then um at that time and then that's where when we started talking about everybody was saying they had to go and so they started talking about reschedule and then that's where um so i know i i pronounced it right like a few times and now i can't remember sorry i have to write it out phonetically but she only that's where you came back in and then you were saying that you felt like you hadn't had a chance to speak and that's that's those are notes i've taken it from my few times of watching that meeting so i'll ask if you would like to begin i i don't if it's i realize that there's things that i there are some things that i brought forward within this space that maybe got the conversation started if if so if you're ready to to go ahead and speak then then we can go there if it's helpful for us to kind of um briefly go through some of the things that we talked about before um i think that's also an option i mean i i can't go so um so just there's just a couple things to add um to what what adrian said and that um it's it's very difficult when we have meetings because often you when when we disagree on things right you you have a hard time agreeing and so often you'll make very negative comments about often especially me right about about my perspective and try to reframe what i'm saying in a very negative and that and it's it's one thing i think when you look at our governance manual we talk about agreeing to disagree and that's part of being able to function as a governing board is to be able to agree to disagree and to be able to be okay with somebody else so i think that's one thing um the other thing is i am i i i'm very upset about what happened last september when you as you went out as president of the board you went on a very long statement where you essentially publicly attacked both me and sabrina called us out by name right and said that we were attacking you and bullying you when there's as sabrina said there's no evidence to any of that in any of our public meetings and as you clearly stated we're not we don't really communicate privately so really that's the only that's only interaction that we have and so it's it's very difficult obviously that's not a place to respond to that right but it's very difficult to have somebody attack you like that in a public meeting especially when they're holding the position of the diocese the president and really just have to sit there and take that right and there's really been no resource compensation because i thought that was really inappropriate thank you so you mentioned two things um that you feel that um gabriella has a hard time agreeing to disagree and that that the statement that she made last december um was personal and and that it was not something that should have been said it was um inappropriate for that time so gabriella i'm going to give you the floor to first address the one about the having a hard time i i think you know i'm hearing you and one of the things that you know through through relationships regardless whether it's at work here home and there's conflict right and there's an issue that means that it's it you know there are some things that need to be resolved and i felt for the last year or two i would say that i i've been trying to approach you and trying to speak with you and i have been signed on i don't get texts back i don't get emails back when i was president i felt disrespected you've been on this board for 24 years i'm reaching out to you as a new president because i really wanted to have a conversation with you and i was disregarded so can i respond to that okay and yes i you know i there's there's feelings that we're probably festering and when there's energy that needs to be released at times right it's going to come out one way or another and you know um unfortunately i my intent is not to hurt you my intent is to have clear communication with you concise communication one of the things that i felt you know that um and i'm speaking to you you know is that i see i see other boards where you know they're able to speak about things go out for coffee or you know and not talk about agenda items but to build those relationships because you're you know they're we're leading a district they're leading a district and i i felt like i pride and tried so much hey i have a question hey and i you know and so i apologize if it you know if it has felt that but i also have felt like when we're in the board meeting and i say something and you're sitting right next to me and i'll say something innocently not knowing the answer i get it you've been here for 24 years you know a lot more i'm hungry to learn i'm hungry too to be able to have knowledge to be able to understand things right in policy and to be able to decode things and to you know to understand budget you know and i'm doing that on my own and i'm i'm learning but i have felt at times channeling and i'm reaching out to you i'm trying to understand things and then i get to the board meeting and i'm and i'm trying to to really be and and you roll your eyes at me or you you'll make little comments under your breath and that to me i felt disrespected and then when i became president you did it more i and then i tried reaching out to you even before december and i've gotten nowhere i felt rejected i felt um just ignored and i've tried and i have felt like i've just been treated like you know one of the things is like we don't have to be best friends but we are in a relationship all five of us it's like a marriage right you don't you don't have to be or you know two people that are raising a child you don't have to be best friends but you have to do whatever you can to be best parents right or we have to be the best that we can to be best school board members with each other having a relationship a respectful relationship and i get it i'm human and i make errors i know you're human and you make yours but i'm willing to come back to the table but talk about it reflect process and strengthen our relationship because i'm not the type of person that's going to be oh well forget i'm not talking to that person anymore that's not who i am i want to be able to build a relationship to strengthen relationshiping and i'm addressing to you because i have felt you know like i said um and i i apologize to you know it came out personal um but that was not my intent so can i respond now um because i appreciate that but i also think that it's very insincere because when you first got elected we did meet several times um you made it really clear to me that you didn't really like the advice i was giving you and you and so we stopped we stopped eating for coffee this yes gabby this is what happened um like about a year later you approached me you want to talk about ethnic studies and we ended up not meeting about that i forget why that meeting got cancelled um the next time you reached out to me was when you were trying to as i already mentioned i hate to bring it up again but you were trying to violate the brown act to have us overturn a decision that had been made at the previous board meeting um and i did respond the first time and i didn't respond after that i mean part of it was i was gone camping so by the time i got back it was all done deal anyway because i didn't have internet but still regardless it was probably not appropriate communication and then you have not reached out to me as president i don't have text messages saying can we meet our emails what can we meet i want to talk about how it is to be a president i have nothing like that i have neither emails nor text messages and so for you to say that that and put the say that i've been doing this it's it's i just feel it's very insincere and i think regardless of what happens and how people feel individually we have a duty to be professional with each other on the diet um and then to sit here and say that i'm mutter i don't mutter on that dice we have microphones you would hear me if i was muttering um so it that that it's those kind of comments that i'm talking about right that it's you you say that you're being you want to reach out you want to and then you you have these little dig right and so it it's i i think it's neither here nor there i think that to me what's important is that we're professional in the diocese and we treat each other professionally and with respect um regardless of anybody's personal feel i didn't like what what you said i i may have disagreed with you i don't remember the conversation honestly but like one of the things that you said before right um and i forgot who said it it's important to you know when you have your relationship to be able to go ahead agree to disagree and you know you're saying that i dig yeah i i like to get to the bottom of things yeah i do i want to address situations and i may come off a little strong because i'm i'm open to hey you know what when i turn around you're rolling your i've i've yes i've called you out i do it i do i have like don't realize that i have because i feel that from you you say something and i you may not say it to the microphone but you say something i've seen you and and neither here or nor there but you know listen i don't want to have any conflict but but at the same time when we do have conflict right and channeling i have supported you i have support and not just decisionally the board members here i have supported you know each one i don't think adrian for his campaign but i'm saying your campaigns i have supported you because i have believed in you later on adrian i got to know him and then right but i have supported you i have supported you i have supported you because i believe in you things happened that need to be addressed [Music] so can i just say one more i i don't want this to be framed as conflict because i don't think it's the conflict i don't have confidence okay i don't i i think that i i don't think you should be acting inappropriately at our board meeting right but i don't claim that as conflict conflict requires two people on two sides fighting with i'm not fighting with um you know i i would just like to see all of us be respectful of the diet and be focused on the work of the district which is ensuring that students are succeeding and be successful can i make a comment up here um i want to make a comment regarding um from from the last um meeting we had to today and and i we did hear from sabrina adrian and shironin you know regarding you know gabby and and the situations that are going on and you know because i'm in the sidelines and i hear it and i see it but we need to understand that we need to know what is the rationale behind and i'm not saying she's always right and i'll tell her to her face the things that she does or the things she even says i'm not saying she's right about it but we need to know there's history with certain board members here i'll say serena and gabriella there's history that has nothing to do with the board and i feel that that has a lot to do with her emotions towards her and serena i mean adrian i'm not sure and you know i'm glad they they talked about i'm listening to them but there is history and when you keep that history behind you and you're not saying anything there's always this elephant in the room there's always that cold spot and i think that's what's really going on between sabrina and gabriela and i don't i don't know i i don't know they spoke together about it i don't know that part if you have discussed it together or um you know talked about it and and clear the air i i'm not sure but i know about it and and i really feel that has a lot to do with the the elephant in the room we'll just say that and i know like sabrina and i you know we're not best friends i am professional with her and she's professional with me on the dice we don't go out and have coffee we don't and that's okay with me i'm fine on the diet as long as you're professional i'm fine with that that's all i need to say thank you for that yolanda um i want to before we move on to another relationship i want to finish this one here and a couple of questions uh things that i picked up on one thing that i want to call to all of your attention is that apologies are great they're important taking ownership of something and saying you know i was wrong my bad that's important however when you follow it up with a that that negate so when the apology comes out it has to be complete you have to either you're going to own it or you're not and when you say but you're throwing it back first which means that the policy isn't is basically invalid so when you apologize to somebody make sure that you really are apologizing for what you said or did or what they perceive them make it sincere and don't negate it after you apologize that's one thing i want to say um sheena lean um and and like i said i'm very blunt yeah um one of the things when i first became a board member that i had to learn how to do was control my facial expressions because my face tells everything and i learned it took me a while but i learned but i'll tell you that when i was speaking and i said that you know i was explaining to you guys that i don't like the train for the sacred training i caught a facial expression from you that said to me with and i'm not saying it was your intent but it said to me oh she thinks that i'm just saying that to be saying it and it probably wasn't intentional it probably was um didn't mean anything but is the perception that i got from the facial expression you made when i stated that sometimes our facial expressions do that whether we intend to or not i worked with another board recently where one of the board members said every time that i talk he doesn't pay attention he always just looks down at his paper he never looks up he never acknowledges what i'm saying he doesn't give me eye contact and he says if you watch any of the videos you will see i do that after everyone makes a statement he says because that's how i process he says it drives my wife crazy too because when she's talking to me i look down he said i've done that since i was a kid it's nothing personal and all that time there were two members on the board who thought that he was doing it intentionally and so sometimes our facial expressions our body language they say things that other people will interpret and that's not what it is so you're saying that i'm gonna ask you did you mean to like give me that expression that when i made that comment um about not training for the sake of training was there an intentional facial expression no okay so maybe what you're interpreting sometimes is not an intentional facial expression maybe that's just something that she's not even aware of and i'm just saying that i'm not saying that it's every single time because i know i make facial expressions that i am aware of on many occasions you also must remember we were masked for two years also yeah [Music] exactly so your eyes are talking i am just putting it out there though to be aware that sometimes we make facial expressions that have no meaning behind it nothing personal or offensive or to take away sometimes we do i admit it sometimes we do but keep that in mind and don't think that every expression that any individual in this room makes is directed at another individual in the room so just keep those things in mind so i'm going to i think um sheena lean you have something to say or where is it gabriella sorry go back to you and let you know thank you for for sharing that you know and i i understand that sometimes you know just like there's facial expressions that perhaps may you know may not be because of a feeling that an individual wants to share right sometimes for example what i say the tone how it comes out because i i speak very direct and um may not be the way that that person is receiving it as well and that is why i wanted to speak with with you finally and before i you know speak with sabrina is why i wanted to speak with you to have a raw and honest conversation you know all that i have heard um it you know from from usually right now is that i'm i'm you know perhaps you don't remember that i i did call you or perhaps you know and that's okay um but i i i have uh and i even after today like you know regardless um we're in the community we have kids in the community we're gonna see each other at events you know i i when it comes to you know to what we believe in i i i believe in the same thing that you do there's a reason i know why you've been on the board and i've supported you because i truly believe that your you know your intent for for being a board member was was was genuine you know bringing um equity into into this district and you know ethnic studies um everything that you wanted to you know almost everything i agreed with you um because i know that your heart and intent you know for for all students not just english language learners okay i know that you have a big heart for our district and to be a board member you know we don't get paid very much you have to have a you have to have a heart because it's not easy it's not easy to learn all of this and to be able to put it into practice and in the apology i truly am sorry and i want to make things thank you for that so then my question sheena lean not to put you on the spot but um gabriella has expressed that he does want to work with you have a good really working relationship with you and that she has apologized for um the things that have happened in the past whether they were perceived or true um how do you feel about that are you ready to try to step out on a new foot so i think i mean yes i am i am i am and i i really appreciate your your apology i think um i hope um yes i just i appreciate your apology um i i think to me the bigger issue is not around interpersonal relationships right because i actually think gabby like when we see each other on on the community i think it's fine right we both have kids in the district like i mean i i don't see i mean obviously we're not like best friends who've been best friends for 50 years but i mean i don't i don't see us having a conflicted relationship out there in our community or just in a personal relationship this is more about how we act in a board right um and whether we take our turns to speak make our point let somebody else be right and be comfortable with that person being having a different viewpoint as opposed to having to go back and forth and back and forth um or dominating the conversation right and taking 10 minutes when everyone else speaks for 30 seconds for a minute i mean so i i do accept the apology i i i also believe that i don't think that we really need to have um i i don't think that there's that that conflict it may be perceived but i don't that really exists um it's more about behavior on the diet and so that goes back to your original comment when we first started and um about the agreeing to disagree and um like you said how you treat each other gabriella do you understand where china leads coming from when she says about in the board meetings um agreeing to disagree so if she has a different opinion from you and um you all have opportunity to comment on it usually so um when it's your turn to comment this say what you feel and why you are for or against let's say you're for something she's against them and say while you're for for or something without putting down the things that other people who said they were against it for um that goes with the agreeing to disagree just state your facts of why you support and it's okay to acknowledge that something that someone else said may not work or you know if you think that that's not the best idea you it's okay to do that and you should be able to do that but it's how you do it if you just say um let's say uh sheena lean says that you know the ham sandwiches should be served every day in the cafeteria and you say no the salami sandwiches should be served every day and she's made her case for the ham sandwiches and you've talked and then she's made her case and you want to you know say something else you don't say well i don't even know why she wants ham sandwiches she doesn't even eat ham sandwiches then it gets personal so you have to keep it to the business and to the professional you know well i found out that the ham sandwiches are not as nutritional for our students that's the salami sandwiches and that's why i'm advocating for the salon now so there you just stating the fact to the agenda item and you're giving the perspective and you're saying why you're supporting it without putting down a message of anyone else directly without without it becoming first you see where i'm coming from absolutely okay you were going to say something hmm yes um i was just gonna respond to it means um you know that i i speak for 30 minutes um i i i also want to also address that whenever we ask questions during you know the the meetings i i've actually written not that i'm trying to you speak you ask questions for 30 minutes and with those questions need to be asked at times like before the meetings um and i mean you also take that much time as well um so i you know i think at times you know yes we may take a little bit more time um and i i think it's important you know if we do get a little off track that the president you know whoever is there can redirect us um and you know making sure i don't know who keeps time um but yeah you know it i think it is important that we do talk about like hey how many questions can an individual you know like and and i get it sometimes you need to ask a lot of questions but if they were asked beforehand right or for myself like if i'm speaking for myself if i'm you know 30 minutes into saying something right like you know what roll me back in like why not like if i start going on a tangent and it becomes a whole like president you know reel me back in but what i don't i'm gonna tell you right now i i don't appreciate when when i do probably go on a tangent or have you know i like to have a detailed conversation i like to have an open conversation but when i get realed in and i get real done negativity right and i get this like um what was it one time um anyhow when i get real didn't negative and um it's like i'm gonna get upset when i don't finish right and now it's important that we are having this conversation about a governance meeting that we are able to go ahead and have this open dialogue and talk about the elephant in the room i think it is important we should have more of these right so we can conduct business as usual you know on the board room and address the agenda items that need to be addressed but anyhow again um you know i just wanted to address that the 30 minutes that i if i if i have i i don't know i don't time it maybe we should start timing something we can have a conversation about but as much as i do um like to speak or you know try to get my com my point across you know again i i've also had you know we've had 30 minutes questions from um instant topics i'm okay with that if we're going to all agree that the president if someone is going to be going on about a state the same topic right um i think i think that we all have to agree to that is there a protocol on that in your governance handbook and i apologize i know that's something i should remember and we can pull it up and look um but yolanda did you say yes yes i do have a comment on that now that you brought that up um gabby regarding um i also feel the same way you know when we uh for example um and i'll say sabrina or shironin you know they're asking questions when i and i don't know um how it talks about it here it asks you know are your board members prepared and honestly i don't know and i wrote i think i did write i don't know and the reason i'm saying that is because when we have a board meeting and there's an item and would you say sabrina is asking questions and asking questions and asking questions to me i'm like i mean did she read it before number one you couldn't ask questions and that's that's okay i ask questions too that's not what i'm saying don't never ask questions but did you call our tutor on monday like he has us call him and clarify some of the things that you're not sure of or you don't understand so you're not taking all the time during the board reading because we have sometimes we have many items on on our agenda and we're focused it's kind of like you're having a one-on-one conversation either with latasha or with artudo or whoever and and it's like going back and forth so again it it you do us a lot of questions and if you need to know them i get it but do you call on monday prior like we should or you know or dude i'm sure he'll tell me well let me check with natasha first you know on if it's a budget or what have you and then i'm clarifying when i do ask questions and i do ask questions during a meeting there's questions that i feel that the community should know and how much money are we spending on something how much that's when i ask questions because i think the community should know about certain topics that they're asking me probably out in the street in the community but when you go back and forth and ask questions back and forth and back and forth and back and forth to me that kind of prolongs our meetings but people are telling me well didn't you know that question before and i'm like yes we got it packed on thursday we all get at the same time oh it kind of looks like you just heard that answer at that meeting you know how could the board member make a honest decision if she or he just is hearing it right now but maybe you're not hearing her like because we received our packet on thursday that's just perception is very important sitting on the board because of course people look out looking in that's their question to me but didn't didn't she know that already or or i'll know it's already in the packet because i've read it maybe how much is whatever it causes um so yeah i do feel we spend a lot of time during the board meeting asking questions back and forth i do um superintendent i know you and i had a discussion the process for um for the prior to the board meetings for individuals to ask questions you have a sudden a set day where they are to call in they can call in and talk to you about board agenda items um can you reiterate that process sure um one of the things uh that i changed and i think to be helpful and to honor uh people's time the previous superintendent not that it's bad or good or anything but the weekly board packet usually went out friday friday afternoons friday evenings and so one of the things that i've instituted with my team is that they get the weekly board packet on thursday it gives not only the board an extra day but it gives the community an extra day to look at the agenda see the agenda read the agenda and so i think giving more time is always is always uh better um and then yes religiously on monday mornings uh all board members get a text from me saying if you have any questions about the weekly board packet and or the board meeting please give me a call thank you i won't put you on the spot and ask how many call you so do all of you adhere to that process do you call and ask your questions in advance sometimes i will be speaking to a mr ortega for an hour hour and a half just asking him questions just to clarify um certain items maybe that i'm not sure of or you know what does this mean or what does that mean so i'm not asking that during the board meeting i do what about the rest of you so i think if it's a process question right if it's a process around like maybe not understanding what's in it like i will i will follow through on talking about it but often the questions are asked and i mean you i mean i hope this is what is reflected in reality but i feel like most often it's i'm asking questions we're talking about programmatically like educational choices that we're making right that's usually when i start asking a lot of questions um and a lot of it is really around my feeling though in order for us to do our oversight we need to be asking very clear questions publicly around how certain things are going to be implemented or how things are good certain things dollars are going to be spent so that we have a very clear record of that right that later on when something is implemented we can see how it is i'll just go back to my initial comment i was really speaking to the length of time like an individual will speak on one item right i do ask a lot of questions but i generally don't you know take a long time to ask my each question so i may have ten questions for probably more like five but it but i'm not speaking like 10 minutes to each question um so but but again i i like you said yolanda right you said you asked questions you think the public should need to need to know right i ask questions that i think that we should need to know and the public should you know everyone should need to be on the same page on so that when it happens we can go back and say yes this is what they said they were going to do and did it happen or did it not happen and keep in mind even if you ask a question in advance um just like what yolanda said as well sometimes you still will answer it and ask it again in public because again but i also would challenge that i will be asking questions on this item so they can be prepared there yes or i am going to pull this item so he knows that it's going to be pulled and i tell the reason why i want to pull it he's okay so i do give him heads up because we do work under the nose price because sometimes they'll ask a question and latasha may not know the answer to that or or mr donkey or may not know or even mr taga so you know i'm not sure if they're giving them hits up letting them know what they're going to ask i don't know i don't speak for myself and keep in mind that um when you when you ask a question of the superintendent in advance it is the right thing to let them know hey just letting you know i'm still going to ask this question in public especially if it's something that would cause the assistant super the director whoever's given a presentation on something to make sure that they're prepared to give a full and complete answer because a lot of times people say well i ask these questions in public you know i spend 10 minutes asking these questions because i want the community to know but if the superintendent and staff are not aware that those questions are going to come up they may not have all the information in front of them to properly ask answer the question at that time so if you ask the question and they say i'll get back to you it was pointless because still only all of you are going to get the response the community is still not going to get the response because they're going to go back and they're going to get the answer together then he'll probably put it in the weekly update and then you got the response but the community still didn't do it a lot of times i work with some trustees and they're like oh no they just want us to ask in advance so they can you know make up something no that's not the point they're going to give you the right information it's just they want to make sure they have the information and they want to make sure they can fully answer the question so that it is on record and that the public does get the full answer to the question at that time so it's always good to give the superintendent a heads up so he can let cabinet know that that question will be coming up in open session as well now granted there are other questions that phil will come up because they may answer a question that you said in advance that you were going to ask but then that makes you think of something else or maybe yolanda says something i think oh well that's a good one what about this i'm gonna ask about that you know i didn't think that in in in you know prior to the meeting but when you can it's best to try to get the answers up front and give the superintendent a heads up of which one you plan to ask an open session everyone get that the reason behind that so let me let me just add because i do think i do think we before we went and talked about that although that's that's valuable i i think something that we talked about which is helpful for us to maybe consider adding um onto our board packet at some point maybe today is this is a reminder about the the seat the chair and how how the chair sits in the seat and then the need to to redirect or to reel in um i will say that there have they have having sat in the seat now it's about you know been about six months there there are definitely times where i'm needing to to the way and almost i i i don't want to use the term but i will like pick a battle because there's there are sometimes when someone is speaking and yeah it's going on but i say to myself is this is this to the point where where i will cause disruption and and and run the risk of making someone feel disrespected by cutting them off even though it's going beyond the time that is that's probably most appropriate for this particular item but i think that if we have if we operate from a team mindset um to recognize that the the one of the responsibilities of the chair seat is to reel that in when it goes there and to remember that if i then you know whether i'm sitting out there or whoever if the person sitting in this seat is reeling in someone who's not sitting in the seat uh that that it's for the purpose of the meeting and for the for the meeting to to kind of progress and not seeing it as a as a form of disrespect or a jab or using this seat as a way to to get at um i will i will say you know specifically um because i know that that's one of the things that you've shared with me gabriel is that that you've that you've felt that way and so that that's really put me in a really difficult time because there have been times where on a more uh where i don't think it's crossed over into like the content is necessarily inappropriate but there have been times where where it should probably stop and we should move on but i don't but i have to ask myself do i if i interject i know how this will be how this will be perceived and there have been times where i have um and so it's a balance this is why i say that but but if we can if we can remember that as a point the chair does that and not take that personally i think that that would be a a a helpful kind of mode to operate from and i know you had a henry's but because i said her name i i want to make sure that she has a chance adrian thank you for bringing that up i the reason that i felt um singled out was because and i'm sorry to be bringing journaling into this but there's a lot of times where shinolin hijacks the meanings meaning that because you do have a lot of experience and i felt this as president that you try to tell the board what to do like nope we're gonna do this no you could do that and it's like wait hold hold on and and sometimes when we have the the lawyers here you'll you'll tell the lawyer what to do and and so i i've i felt that that you know is a little overpowering and wanting to just there's five of us right and there's not just one person who's directing it it's it's collaborative and i feel at times that when you yeah you can do that no you can't do that but wait a minute hold on okay and i've said it but can we please ask a lawyer and i i respect your knowledge and you know what to do but at times i think because we are on the dais that we respect each other and we treat each other as equal not that one is above us and one has been no you know one's new and one knows more than the other and i have felt adrian that it happens quite frequently especially when i was president that when it happens right and it does not get redirected you know in a sense where um you know chilean does not get told like excuse me like you know point of order we need to make sure we ask the lawyer you know instead of interjecting and trying to tell the president what to do or trying to tell another board member like nope you can't do that or yes you can't you know and it comes down to at times you know we we we're learning and at first i you know i would look at channeling when i first came to the board like okay are we supposed to do this you know because you are experienced but at the same time i've realized that now that i'm you know i'm trying to i'm getting the hang of things i've been here for for three and a half years now i it's not that it's it you know i i feel like it's it's very over overbearing that i don't have a voice that my boy you know that we all don't have an equal voice um china lean let me give you an opportunity to respond and um also the um adrian but one thing i want to go back to as we're talking about developing these relationships and and you know being mindful of the fact that our words have meanings um that are different to other people so one of the words that you said that came out that stuck in my head and i think it did in yours too was that you said she hijacked me so saying it that way just sound and you see how that sounds whereas you could have said i feel like tina lean spends um as much time asking questions as i do or i feel like she spends a lot of time asking questions as well but to say hijack seems to be more like more personal so sometimes we have to be mindful of the words that we use and again because perception is everything because when i heard you say that word for me it was like immediately write it down um so if i took it that way as an outsider then and i'm not speaking for you but i can imagine how it might be interpreted by uh as well so just be aware of the words that we use and try to keep it simple and you know no big trigger words finally oh you you said it i mean that's okay i mean i think you said it very well thank you i i am can i respond to that um so i feel that um adrian you know he is the chair so he it is his job to run the meeting smoothly and in a timely manner but also to be fair across the board because i have seen it myself how you would you know put someone down and not the other person and just between the meetings so i mean yes i i think yes you should um but across the board to be fair and just like we mentioned about words it's actually not what you say it's how you say it how you come across a little about because i would hear that also through the public to the community well your board was pretty crazy yesterday it was really wild or whatever you know just hearing the conversations go back and forth and um it's how you come across and how it sounds to the outside right outside looking in so that's what we need to be careful about how we say things and that goes back to my point when she used that word for me as an outsider i was my hijack sounds kind of like that's very hard to load it yes it is absolutely and adrian you're 110 right your job anybody's job as for president is very hard it is a very thin line to walk to make sure that there's equity for all to have the opportunity to speak without you know going overboard and you do it's a judgment call that you do have to make is this on topic or are we straining down another road and and that's hard and that's something that everyone has to respect that position of the president no matter who's sitting in that seat everyone else needs to respect the position of the president but as well you have to make sure that you are being fair to everyone and like i said it's not easy job i was president twice i know it's not easy so um just take their thoughts into consideration as you move forward yeah and i want to there's a before we get too far there's a few things i definitely want to respond respond to but i know that you had so many you have something is it is it directly in the same vein or might it might it sprout out and take us to a different um brand um i don't know that it'll take us to a different branch i mean it possibly is just my opportunity to participate in this conversation as well since i've been given some specific feedback and i'd like to honor receiving that feedback as well so if you want to end this topic and then i can jump to the next part that would be fine with me so few so a few things um one again just talking about the like being in being in the seat and and needing to make make that that judgment call um i i will say that one of the one of the most uh kind of uncomfortable and i think moments when it got a little just inappropriate there was a there was a time during public comment when um i turned over to you um gabby and you said that you didn't have a public comment and then after you didn't have a public comment it went over to sheila neen who had a public comment and she had things to say but there were things that she learning said while she was making her public comment that i think triggered some things for you to say and so because of that you interjected and not you in it you didn't interject with a comment you interjected and almost like reversed it to but now now you do have a public public comment and in that space there was a lot of back and forth that's where there was a comment such as you know don't roll your eyes at me and and that was happening and when i said from from this seat this is not the appropriate place to have this conversation that that needs to happen in the dice and you said to me when i when i challenged to stop you you said excuse me i'm still talking and i said i understand but sheila neen had the floor because it was during her public comment um so i think that we have space maybe this is nothing we talked we will have space to speak during our public comment and i think that that is that is a space when there's there's probably a lot more freedom for us to to say and and take up some space to be able to say some things um but what happened is you i think you felt that i was interrupting you but in but in actuality what i was doing what i was aiming to do was preserve when sheila nain actually had the floor and it was it was during her public comment there there oftentimes is space if after i mean i can't imagine anyone that maybe i can imagine if someone is sitting in this seat and we go around through a round of public comment and if chilean were to say actually i do have one more thing can i i didn't before i said no but now i do and if i i can't imagine someone sitting in the seat would say no you had your chance and so now you can't speak but we still need to respect each other's time so that became a moment where it feels like i'm i'm interrupting and i'm interjecting so once again maybe from your perspective you feel like you're being disrespected but that is me trying to maintain the order of meaning because it because shilling did have the floor um at that particular time the last thing i'll i'll say about that is also just around like you know the fairness aspect of it there there are a couple things that i have to that i've found that i need to weigh when i'm in the seat there are times when maybe someone interjects or says something and maybe it's not the most appropriate thing to say in that moment but if it's a statement if it's a sentence i have to ask myself again judgment call someone made a quick quick statement and stop do i turn to that person and say don't you know don't point of order don't do that again i mean so i could but if they say something and it stops and we're able to move on that that tends to be one thing where i where have found the need to actually interject is not in those times when it's when it's just one quick statement but it's in those times when there's an interjection and it carries on and it's usually not right away it'll be after things are continuing to carry on or intensify that then i feel the need to interject but but across the board there are times when i sense maybe that person shouldn't have said that at that time and even me you know maybe you know should have said that at that time but it it it would likely be more disruptive to try to correct that in this moment and i think you would experience that what i tend to do in those situations is after the fact i will have conversations with with individuals to communicate hey when this happened this is where i think that this is where i think that went off or how that could have been handled differently and i'll have that conversation separate and and aside so so i just want to kind of communicate that as when you're wearing when you're kind of weighing the seat there there is a lot of judgment calls and i don't see every everything and anyone who's sitting in the seat there are likely going to be times where in your best attempts to to be fair across the board you're you're going to miss something or or you know and or not get something right let me ask you a question real quick just for my clarification what is the process during the board meeting meeting for um individuals to be acknowledged to speak so emotion comes up is second and then um i have i want to say something about it before the vote yeah do you acknowledge people or to raise their hand so that that's something that's interesting i think what and in that particular meeting i think what i also said is as a reminder that the the person sitting in the chair needs to needs to acknowledge uh individuals before the before they speak um there are times when when someone else is speaking and so like there'll be a hand raised but the hand raised is directed toward the presenter or directed toward uh the superintendent but then it does be so then you can't it's then difficult to manage like who is speaking when when hands go up and and people are are called on by by other individuals so so it's probably most it would be most effective and efficient if we all remembered to to be recognized by the chair and so if there is a question that someone has you know it's raising a hand and looking to the chair because then whoever's sitting in the seat it's been happening right here we have a good spot right but then because what i even now i'll say i i have on here sabrina's name written down because i because you said that there's something that you that you wanted to say so i have your name written down here and i and i checked them off as as we're going through so if if you end in order and so there might be times where someone raises their their hand and then they feel like i wanted to speak next or how come i'm not but what they don't know is two items ago or you know two two paragraphs ago someone else raised their hand and said that that they had something to speak and they're you know they're actually third on the list of getting called on um not not not second so um it would probably be helpful for us to formalize that and just remember that it would be most efficient for us to to direct our recognition to the chair and then and then allow the chair to to then determine who who speaks next so are there times when the superintendent or cabinet may call on someone because they have their hand like he's giving a presentation and i'm looking listening to him and i put my hand up to say i have a question and he sees it that he calls on me directly yes but but i want to be careful because it's because it's consistent with i think what our culture has been so i think that we need to i think we need to shift the expectations and so with that again my mind really goes more toward when there's a my mind goes to when there's a presenter because when there's a pers at least when it's people sitting on the dice our eyes are looking in and so that makes more sense but when there's a someone at the uh at the diocese and some and there's a question from a member of the board when someone's looking this way and raises their hand it's not uncommon for the person at the at the podium to say yes board member beau um you know are there any questions and and a hand will go up and we'll say yes yes board member bo and it'll kind of go around so just if we can as a reminder as board members look to the chair to be recognized i think that that's one of the things that would that would that would help maybe mitigate some of the confusion in real time everybody is clear on what adrian is saying and what he's asking of you and and thank you so much for bringing that up because that alone can eliminate so much conflict and so much you know misperceptions on things that you know someone says oh like you said oh he didn't call on me or he called on me last just what you said clarified so much in that one short statement so thank you thank you thank you for that yeah can i please respect what you just said um just like we have been saying earlier and you know there's things that i think um you know we we all need to work on um i know i i i need to work on some things and i i you know to do better you have to be better and to be able to have that self-reflection right as we're doing right now to process this and be able to to really take accountability right to take accountability for something that we've done whether it was right whether it was wrong to actually take accountability and be sincere about it and you're trying to be sincere about it and someone calls you and says well i don't think you're being sincere wait hold on you're not hearing truth right and i i and that was i i just reflected on that um that someone said this you know he said that to me earlier like this is my truth like i'm trying to be sincere i'm trying to be raw here with you and one of the things too that you just said adrian right now was you know that incident where she was speaking and then i interjected and i was listening to you um yes i do remember and it was not what you said i guess it was how you said it the tone of voice like stop you know it was like i was i felt like i was being talked to like i was uh being addressed like as a child and that is what upset me it wasn't that you were trying to redirect me because i want to be a team player i really do um but it was more of how it was handled it was like wait a minute you've never done you've never reacted that way with anybody else when right and so i think i came from that angle and that's why i was angry so i mean i want to be careful because we can continue to as we as we keep saying each other's names then we keep going back and forth and then other people are left out of the uh the conversation um uh but even even with that like one of the things that i that i i said when uh when i kind of began to to share some of the concerns that i have about a lack of respect one of the things that i shared um that that was is an observation that i have um maybe a conclusion that i've drawn is what what tends to be a lack of self-awareness um that i perceive from from your your side of things and even even then like the way that you just what you just said is um you said it and it was like stop but i didn't say i didn't though i didn't say that i mean because it was definitely a you know a moment or a situation where it was boiling over and and thoroughly entered over entered into the inappropriate so things definitely needed to to stop um but but um i i think that there's a there are times where where things are where things are perceived but there isn't an opportunity to reconcile what you may be perceived with then what actually happened um and so that's where i would i think reflection becomes a becomes a tool because it may have felt like that at the time but but i know i i try my i try my darndest when i'm when i'm sitting in the seat um to be tremendously respectful to everyone um eve so even if it feels uh unfair i'm calling on someone or not not someone else i definitely try extremely hard to not be just you know disrespectful in in any way um and i'll i do have some things to kind of respond uh to say about some things we said earlier much much earlier but i can i can bring those back in later about that in in particular but um yeah i want to make sure i want to make sure sabrina has an opportunity i'm sorry it's just that you know i understand you're the chair number one you're a human being so you have emotions and i know sometimes it's hard i mean you can't have a sweet tone all the time sometimes it just comes across that way because i mean i sat there before myself and you start to boil because you're maybe upset because what's going on so maybe his intentions of his um voice didn't mean to be mean but you know sometimes you you're a human being and you're sitting there i get it speaking of humanity i was wondering before i um add my voices table could we take a three-minute bio break five minute bio break because my humanity's calling right now we're good you have me back to my face today um oh i thought tony oh okay yeah yeah he was there daddy day ever they were there he said no oh yeah but he knows mm-hmm that you can participate in and sometimes like veronica i heard her singing ronnie you can sing right but if she says you can't then yeah so i took her and she did and then she saying you're at the hrc when she's saying the national anthem from the city hall and she's staying somewhere over the rainbow irani but that was in her career she was done okay no not home don't don't put my name in anymore i don't think anymore what's she saying okay i don't know about your award dirt come with your award support ah dana okay well let's let's go and hop back in and we'll go uh right back over to you sabrina thank you so i i wanna be mindful of my time and um one of the practices that um i've studied in the course of working with schools um just four tenets of listening from the heart speaking from the heart being spontaneous and being lean you know brief and those are all challenging right because we're sitting here i'm sitting here i'm thinking what is she going to say what is she thinking i'm thinking about response so um it's a challenge it's a challenge to really be open to both listen and speak um and and all of that with all that on a sunday afternoon i really appreciate this time that we could come together separately right with just having the space and i think that all of us are committed to a growth mindset to say okay you know we have improvement right as evidenced by our survey result and how can we get better and i really appreciate what most of this conversation has been about identifying policies and processed it that if we kind of tighten those up that can address many things so i appreciate that um and speaking for myself i am also very committed to getting better and growing and as much as you know we're serving an educational space we're also a learner that we toggle between being leaders and being learners and you know we're leading and learning at the same time as as board members um i think so yolanda when um you know you talked about hey you know we're uh we're we're collegial we're professional in the dice and i agree and i've actually said that to some of my friends i'm like yeah yeah you know yolanda and i we don't go out for coffee um but i don't feel any sort of animosity or anything here and i'm like well you know we get i think we you know you learn to joke around a little bit you give me the oho when the ac is too high right um and so that's like like that's that's that's right you'll sit on your seat right right and you know i'm like turn the ac up and turn it off but and so that's you know i appreciate that and i think that um you know i did invite you to coffee when i first got on board and we had a date um and i think you had to cancel due to a family matter and your life happened i understand i'm like well i'm gonna see yolanda two times a month for the next you know so many months so we'll just figure it out and so i'm i'm totally cool um and i think you know i agree also with something gabriel you said about kind of learning from our veteran board member right because you've come with experience you come with community leadership so the opportunity to start building them in some of those relationships is also an important piece and i think that um you know if if we do get to the point where we run into each other at asukanel or something again and we both have some free time maybe we will sit down yeah and you know spend a couple minutes and that would i think that would be great certainly it would be it would do no harm and i would welcome that um uh i'm just going to kind of go around so as to show no bias um arturo i think um you know part of the the way that i work out i'm addressing arturo as part of our governance team but also to explain kind of my how i operate as a as a board member is um you know at times i'll send like really detailed questions like how about this and this and this and this and i think we really work well because you'll respond in writing you know in your purple highlight here are the answers and sometimes i say i'm going to ask about it and sometimes i'm just like okay good and i think to be to be transparent and i know we're all committed to transparency some of those questions i do ask again in public and so it may seem like i don't know what the answer is but i think for some of these bigger decisions it's important that the public see some of the deliberation so that's why i ask certain questions at certain time um as a and on this side so i know our governance team is comprised of staff as well as as board members um i think it's also important for the you know whatever packet that we're going to get that's publicly accessible um i think that the superintendent and the cabinet should be really well prepared to answer any questions i mean that's it's like that's the official recommendation of whatever it is so and i i i think that we have i mean my opinion i think that the board and the superintendent and cabin have a good working relationship where there is that openness and i do feel that superintendent you and your team are responsive that you won't just tell us something but you'll say hey we'll get back to you and i think that we get the responses um so gabrielle a couple of things i wanted to ask about or i was wondering um and i had some time to reflect since our last governance session um we talked about the june 2021 meeting where it was closed session and in our last government session you said well you were if you felt like you were at a park with your with your kids and i was like yeah what is this like i don't and i said like i don't remember what this was and then later i was like oh i think i do remember what it was and so um i i was not aware that it was an issue or a concern and just as you said was feeling and i'm talking about you know leaning on the leadership of veteran board members that you were president at the time i think and it would it would help us it would help the newer board members to say either during the meeting like hey you know this might be an issue or here's a concern or have it kind of go through our back panels with the superintendent to say like you know what's what are our protocols and we want to make sure they're all in compliance um and that would be helpful not and again this is not about me or someone else individually but just as a process would be helpful because i had i didn't know it was an issue until this last past governance meeting when i realized oh you know i didn't intend it for it to be um you know for us to be compromised in any way and we weren't compromised but i can understand that i could understand that appearance and so kind of making the communication more timely would help me as an individual and i think for any of us you know if we're talking about hey let's try to nip it in the bud right like then let's write it let's try to do that um i think those are the those are my those are some of the things that i wanted to share and i think with with she learning and with adrian i think we've been able to talk a little bit about issues that are important to us you know english learners equity access like those are things that we find a little bit of time to talk about um outside of board meetings and i think um you know we've been able to you know when we look at our voting record right we're not always 50 or 4-1 or 3-2 or 2-3 so i think that we have the space to have our own opinions and we share them and we'll say oh i don't i don't agree i don't agree and then we end up voting the way we said we're gonna vote and i mean i'm not necessarily looking for like a five one five or or a four one but i think that level of discourse is is healthy so that was just a little bit of my feedback after trying to listen intently without formulating my risk um i i sabrina i think it it was during the time when i was president when you came in what was it um this is your second year right on this term um as president i i i did want to address that protocol but i have i i would like to let you know where why i didn't address it with with you um because i felt because of the fact that you and i had a falling out i was fired from my job because of something that you did to me and my kids suffered and i was very very angry with you for doing that to me and not coming to me and speaking with me about something i was angry i didn't want to come off as now i'm going to be angry talking to you about something that you did i didn't want it to come off as that i was like nitpicking so i didn't know how to address it so i asked the superintendent can we please address this as a whole because i didn't want to individ individually address you because i i had hard feelings i was hurt and when all that happened between you and i and we nearly never talked about it behind closed doors [Music] and i came in as president it was very hard again it was very hard because i didn't want to single you out i wanted to be professional and i didn't want you to feel like you know because of what you did to me that i was lashing out at you and it's when it's in your you're right you probably didn't know that you couldn't be at a part and um i don't know um when he put it in the board packet i think i asked him to put um something uh like a protocol kind of like what you do to remind us make sure a closed session that you are you know and he did but it was not clearly just directed at you as directed at at all thank you for sharing your feelings at um i have no knowledge of your past or current employment so i don't know who you're employed by now or why you change jobs um i have nothing to do with any employment experience you've had so i'd like to go on record saying that but i didn't take any action against you at all i didn't take i didn't do anything but i'm not this is a surprise to me this is the first time i'm hearing this privately or public and if we want to talk about um feelings of trust and um not knowing kind of how to navigate going forward in this space the first time that you and i met ever ever you threatened me with recall and i haven't hadn't even been elected so that kind of threw me for a loop because i thought here's the board at the time the board vice president we're meeting for the first time geez you know i voted for you i got your flyer i'm like oh educator that makes sense right um i only knew you're from your fire we met in person and you said that if i didn't bring my kids to the district that you would probably start a recall movement and i was like [Music] didn't really know where to go where to go with that if we want to talk about long-held feelings and specific actions i never brought that up to you i've tried to maintain a professional relationship with you i've never attacked you in any of these meetings i've never talked about you we don't we yes we have we have never sat down for a coffee since those past couple of times and that's that's that cool but i don't agree with your accusation you know sabrina when i met you that first time the thing that i do remember and i don't remember i i don't recall that i i said that what i do recall is that this this this community this community does not stand with charters they will right now it's not and i said please don't bring charters because you've only worked at charters you all your experience have been at charters professionally and we can go in detail but what i did say is if you bring a charter because you're starting a charter uh movement prior to being on the on on the board i said you will be recalled somebody's gonna recall you i do remember so that's not accurate you said if i didn't enroll my children if i got elected i didn't enroll my children and board president i think maybe you should step in because i know that there is uh board policy and district policy about not talking about campaigning on any district property so i'm going to look to you to see if this is a discussion that we can have here on district property well one of the i mean one of the things one of the notes that i have that i have not yet shared is there was there has been conversation about uh campaigns and elections and and you know i supported you like that that kind of language i do think that support during elections is 1 000 irrelevant for the work that we do here on the dice um whether whether someone endorses or supports or runs with or runs again what any of that stuff i think is entirely irrelevant cam campaigns and campaign seasons are a completely separate process that has nothing to do with the work that we do here and the difficult task that we have then is to to be professional and to set aside um any any of those personal things that may or may not have taken place during the during the campaign and and get to the work as as uh duly elected members of the community that we we are we are not we are not here as candidates we are here as as elected um school board members so i so though i i hear that and it definitely sounds like we're venturing into into that i i think um that there may be value and and and so someone else speaking of this there may be value in having if you all had a separate side conversation about about some of those pieces but yeah with with uh election related stuff i'm i'm not entirely sure how much it's relevant for our work i agree with you on this topic only because like you indicated this isn't where sabrina is sitting across from gabby saying hey gabby you know you're gonna be up for re-election i'm gonna endorse you we're not giving out endorsements from the dead we're not doing that what this is this is a conversation to clear up any um conflict between the two of you um it it happened during a campaign season but we're not talking about you actually campaigning for one another right now that's something that happened in the you know if the campaign is over it's done so we're not talking about an upcoming election or campaign we're not talking about something that's going on right now we're just trying to resolve an issue that has carried over into this governance team so um like adrian said as long as we're not giving out endorsements right now you're okay to continue the conversation and i think this is like yolanda said has been an elephant in the room for quite some time so it should get addressed that conversation if you felt like that from then from then sabrina there was months and months that we had a chance to to be able to speak on that and to you know to address that you know if you held that within you you're just barely telling me right now i i think it just escalated to you know to to other things we we were meeting every week we were meeting every weekend for other things to do and you were coming to my house you know that would have been an appropriate time to hey you know what what you said like can we talk about this you know i i i would have been open for it but i think harboring something that i said um right and and then turning against me you know three in three days before um a certain date when i was calling and calling and calling you and you know texting like hey call me back hey and i didn't get a response from you and then everything the way that it happened right with my job you know you know my former employer you know that it was i i know who you're who you formerly work for i have no idea who you work for now i don't know about your transition between employers i don't know anything about that we we don't talk so i and i don't i don't ask people about where's gabby working now they'll speak i know but i'm also trying to have a conversation i i get it but it's it's clearly in record that your name's on there so i mean you can sit here and tell us right now that you had nothing to do with but put on record on paper with human resources and all that that i had to go through your your name's on there and the fact that you didn't call me back the fact when i was able you know i was like calling and texting and i'm like hey what's going on but i'm confused and then it all came down on me and i and i wanted to have a conversation like what happened what what happened i i don't know and yes i think you know yolanda's right i those feelings i was very hurt to see your name on those papers you know those things that i just and you not returning my my phone call what am i supposed to believe what again i i don't know what you're talking about i've never been involved in anything to do with your employment status and as someone who has run for you know been a candidate election season's a really busy time i thought we were but as a candidate you know if you're hustling you're out there if i didn't return your call i apologize we were supposed to meet that weekend and you left me hanging so i mean you know you didn't return my call that week or the weekend after that or the weekend after that i do apologize excuse me i do apologize for leaving you hanging and not knowing what was going on i do apologize because i do i i also believe that's important to let people know you know is are we on are we off i so i acknowledge that and i do i do apolog i want to start because i do believe yolanda has something to say you know i'm sorry but i'm still feeling this elephant in the room i'm feeling he said she said the papers and the documents just say what you need to say gabriella um i'm a reminder if she doesn't remember i mean that's what that's why we're here today i will caution on um since this involves a former employer i will caution um the direct use of names there um just because how would they ever clear the air that's i think whenever i think to go into detail the two of you really need to sit down and have a talk um outside of this form to say things bluntly and openly and be able to use names and what was said without disclosing something from her personal life as far as her employment i don't think that that's something that that should happen um here right here right now um yeah i don't want to say too much either but yeah i know i just think they they really do they don't together i think they talk about it i don't have to be there yeah i think it needs to be said that's all yeah i think the two of you would benefit from a private conversation to go into details about what you're saying happen and what you're saying you have no knowledge of i think that that's a conversation that you if you should really really take the time to and put a time limit on it say hey for 30 minutes or for one hour we're going to talk and nest it at the end of that time i'm done with this topic it's over you know and can both walk away but i think that that's something that needs to happen i i'm open for it because what's you know what was really um one of the things that i heard you say today sabrina was hey yolanda i got on the board and i wanted to have coffee with you and and i'm and i'm thinking and as i'm hearing you say that and i'm thinking i you haven't tried to have coffee with me you haven't i want to have coffee with you i would like to have it you know an intelligent um emotionally intelligent and logical conversation with you to be able to put this behind it i don't want to harness these feelings that i i have towards you which i do i did not as intense as i did before but i would would like to have a conversation with you and just clear the air regardless of what was done what would you know what like let's talk about if i did something like okay you know you said that i'd i i i don't recall but you know what this is what i do recall that we can go back and you know and truly just hash it out would like to have that that time with sabrina would you be open to having a one-on-one conversation with gabriella i think we're two adult women i think we can work it out i'm not saying that we're gonna whip out our calendars right now but i am open to that that that would be great thank you and i do again suggest put a time limit on it um say if you guys do get ready to meet i would say you know if you're gonna meet from four to five to the time limit on it that way things don't go off and just keep going on and going in circles put a time limit on it say what you have to say say what you have to say get it out there and be done i would also like to put it you know like a time frame i don't want to let this go on too too long so if if it would be okay if um each of us can send about three dates to each other and we don't have to look at our calendars now and go ahead and just take it from there would you be open for that does that sound good that's fine okay thank you thank you both for being willing to do that um tina lean i think you had your hand up yeah i don't want to derail where we're going and so i i'm thinking that we may be just about done with this this exact portion i there are things that i'm wanting that i wrote down to respond to things that were said much earlier in the meeting so um if if there are is are you wanting to respond to things that have already been said are you are there new things that you're wanting to to discuss now it makes more sense if you do your okay okay so a couple couple of things um and i i already kind of started on this when i talked about the election piece um and and again what someone's support or not again like i said during election has absolutely nothing it's entirely irrelevant um if i'll go so far as to say this it would be it would be entirely inappropriate i believe it'd be entirely inappropriate if i found myself unwilling to work on behalf of the district with another member of this of this school board because of a situ personal situation or or or a personal problem or or something happened during the election i think that that would be inappropriate and even i'd go so far to say a disservice to our community and so i think that the onus is on each of us as mature adults to figure out how do we behave uh professionally um even with like intention with and and simultaneously where there may be some unresolved things that are that are there even if that is the case uh that there being unresolved things does not give us uh license to to to to be disrespectful to each other um at the dice um in addition to that i do want to i uh one thing that i want to say just kind of going back to a couple things that you said gabby is um again today you you you communicated a a desire to want to try to reach out or to want to hear to want to know um you know receive feedback when when you know if if something's going off the you know the rails or whatnot and for a long time i think you would agree but i think this is pretty easy to agree on that that was how we navigated our our conversations that there were oftentimes conversations that we would have privately you know off to the side about different things that happen and again on the other side of of um me sitting in this seat um you did communicate to me that you closed off the channel of communication and so it was interesting to me because at the last meeting you said um that you had you had been asking and reaching out to other people and found yourself ignored um and then even today you said i'm not the kind of person that wouldn't that that wouldn't talk or that would shut off communication but that's that's not accurate because that's that is literally what um you know what what you said to me is is that um you no longer you're no longer interested in having the conversations or or discussing uh some of those those pieces with me and so that that made it extremely difficult again for me sitting in this seat and needing to navigate some of this and trying to navigate some of these pieces when this isn't my best my my preferred place to have some of these conversations is not here but this was but this is the space that i that i found i find that it becomes the the next most appropriate place to be able to have some of these these conversations because you've cut off uh those channels of communication so my hope would be that um some of those channels of communication could be reopened um and that we would have the opportunity to have uh some of the some of these conversations when so that we can navigate things when it affects especially especially when it's things that affect the ability of of the uh the the team to work cohesively but again i think that there's room for us to navigate those things um separately independently um where we don't need to necessarily have hash it out here but again when it's the only alternative that that's where we find ourselves actually when i said that to you earlier i wanted to open that line of communication to have coffee with you as well um revisit that and does that sound good i'd be happy to i just say something one of the things you know to be to be able to be uh to show vulnerability right some people see it as as weakness um a lot of the times right when i was in the classroom um the student who is the most um the one that has right that would give attitude over you know would not say things correctly or would come off as like okay it's the intent of that you know what that child was trying to to share with me right as being in the classroom um may not have come off like okay the child didn't say it's sweet but there was a need there's always a need behind a behavior right and so i think that that's the way that i want to approach this to the fact that um we see a need right there's conflict going on on our diet and if if i come off and i had i have shared hey i feel like the need i haven't been hurt i haven't been respected i'm coming from a place of frustration right and so just like being in the classroom you see that child who's frustrated overreacting right how are you going to address that child or your own children right how are you going to address that by conversation and i just want to thank you guys all for being open and honest um and whether we agree or disagree or we remember don't remember being able to have a conversation about what we're having i mean that's it and having self-reflection like you know i can just speak for myself like i i'm not perfect but when we have you know and i know you guys aren't perfect either we're human and but i can tell you that when we have a really good meeting when we're all in the same wavelength and we are moving things and we are making this district making sure this district is moving in the right direction and when we are like hey i you know what you know during the like hey baby i i support what you just said yes i you know i like because yes it's in line with how we can move this district forward during this just reconfiguration or you know i really like what you asked like i'm gonna i'm gonna i'm gonna say that or whatnot i walk away with wow today we were actually we had unity and purpose that's big right and and we could sit here and look i'm going to be honest with you at first i felt attacked at during the board meetings and so i became defensive because i went back and saw the board meetings right because i really wanted to reflect and i really wanted to come to these meetings like i want to hold myself accountable if i'm going to sit here and point fingers and try to address things i need to look at myself as well when we're in the classroom this prop right here child's 15 years old quinceanera during this whole week and i am going to share a little bit this is my god daughter during this whole last two weeks we've been so actually last six months but in the last two weeks we've been preparing preparing preparing preparing preparing for so much stress right for just five hours so many conflicts with her with her with her five girls that were on on you know on the quinceanera because of personalities we had to put out fires as adults but things aren't going to happen as long as you know and this is what i really want to say to you guys things are going to happen and i just want to be able to go ahead you know from my you know for me like i want to be able to go ahead we have so much going on within our school district you know um the one high school safety this you know being able to strengthen the ib program you know i think that's great you know being able to you know strengthen our ell i see you guys talking to each other about your strengths not once have you guys ever mentioned even during the boardways you guys support each other not once you guys support my strengths but that's okay because i know my strengths i know my worst i know what i bring to the table well hopefully at the end of today once the air is cleared on a lot of things we've covered a whole lot of ground already um and you know you've reached out now and they've responded that hopefully you'll have your one-on-one with sabrina and then you're one-on-one with adrian and then that'll clear the air even more so that then everyone can be on that wave that you talked about all the time and there will still be conflicts that will arise but hopefully you will know then to address them quickly and effectively you know and things won't just sit there and build up these balls in between yourself and other members and other members and other members so adrian i think you had the floor no well i said what i said but i do i know yolanda has something to add yes i just want to add that i myself on this board has have never felt disrespected or spoken over and i know we've had some hard times with the pandemic with the reorganization of schools with the high schools with the mascots we don't always disagree but i thought we were a very good team i i i i don't like to say this but i think it's it's a personal issue between i'm not sure my fellow board members and maybe gabriella and i think of data again like i mentioned before you know it's how she says things and i think maybe sometimes it does sound harsh and and maybe you know we didn't i'll look at ourselves and see how we come across because i have never felt disrespected on this board you know i i have not and i will honestly say that yolanda i have i'm gonna i'm gonna tell on you right now listen yolanda sits on the lack of the board are you still on the board uh not as of the 30th okay she was on the last board with me and this woman here she knew how to get people under control when our memes were on zoom and people would talk over each other she would put us on everybody back in check on the camera i'm like yeah she would keep making sure everybody's staying i just want to be sure that people know that you know we're not dysfunctional i i really strongly i know there's personal situations but this board is not dysfunctional we have come a long way and we have made hard decisions and great decisions and i know we do it from our passion from our heart and we all want the same thing it's for our students theirs is unified and our staff so i don't want to make it sound like we're all out of control when everyone's fighting that's really not it it's personal and i really hope that it's fixed you know that we fixed it all i agree with you 110 this board is not dysfunctional no not by a long shot trust me you are not a dysfunctional board and um and you're right it's more of just not dealing with personal conflict that has created some tension and how um some trustees are interacting with one another and if if that can get resolved um i think that you'll see that the time in the meetings decrease then you'll see um just the tones change and everything else as well definitely well thank you for those thomas you're right on target and actually one one thing i'll add i'll challenge that a little bit actually is um i do i do think we should be careful to not see dysfunction as a as a yes or no checkbox kind of a thing but instead if we see if we see it as a on a spectrum um i think that at times there are things that have that that happen whether it's and a lot of times it's probably personal things that that make its way into onto the dice that does not make us as functional and as effective and as strong as we can be and so um we we are because we are a board of five and we are people we are individuals we will never hit perfection and and but but i would still i would i will always as long as i'm on this t i will i will always uh look to push us to be to to iteratively grow and be better and to be and to be stronger and so um so i just wanna i just wanna uh caution us against thinking we're not dysfunctional because that that uh or either we are or we're not because that might make us think we have a box that's checked off and so there isn't there isn't work to do i think that i think that there's a lot of room i think that we've looking back on this these past handful of months there's a lot that so many difficult things that we address over the course of these past six months so those are indicators that we are not entirely dysfunctional you know on this side of the spectrum but but i i do think that we there is room for us to be much more efficient and much more respectful uh and effective and functional um if if we address some of these things and maybe some others and there's always room for improvement and whatever we do yeah i agree but i think you bring up a good point of kind of what we've been talking about today of perception because when you when i think of dysfunctional board i start going through all the school boards that i've worked with over the past few years and which ones were accomplishing things and you know making things happen whether people got along or not and so for me when i compare dysfunction versus functional that's what comes to my mind but you think of it in a different way you may think of it in a different way and so on and so forth and like you said then everybody has this different thing so i'm glad you clarified what you mean when you say hey let's not you know just check boxes so thank you for that claire uh finally you've been waiting for your top no i think i think we wrap that up no no i'm not gonna i'm not gonna reopen anything i think we've i think we've um are you sure because this is the time and the place to make sure we leave here today everything that you wanted to say has since that yeah no i mean there are other things that i would like us to discuss absolutely but only i mean are we doing so i did want us to talk a little bit about um and this goes to the maybe some of the comments around like perception right um thinking about what we spend our time on at the board meetings right so i've heard a lot of reference about long meetings we actually generally don't have long meeting um and when we do have long meetings along topics it's usually around process right not around outcomes and so i was hoping that we could be reflective and maybe think about how do we design our board agendas right so that we're talking more about student outcomes getting updates on implementation of programs um and i know we've talked very some very difficult issues this year with school closures but i think even in the spaces that we do have that's we're not we're not talking about that we're talking process right like i just think about how long it took us to figure out who we're going to appoint to what committees right those kinds of things or how artudo is going to implement or have a community meeting right having long conversations on that process and not really about like how are students doing right how is the a b program ib program being implemented so i'll stop there because that's i didn't want us to talk about that that's that's a good point because you know csba model is that majority of your agenda should be on student success and achievement that's what your agenda should be focused on um there should be very little other things on the agenda everything should come back to the student so i'm going to let your superintendent get involved here on this conversation i was just going to point out if it helps us in our conversation uh question number 30 that was the next um that was the next question if you will or area or topic that had the most votes uh from the board of education and i i don't know if that relates a little bit to what you're speaking about i'm gonna read absolutely uh there is a good relationship between how long the board spends on an agenda item and the importance of that item and i'll i'll say this is i i was definitely one of the people who when when marking this marked it on the lower side you know whatever whatever the lower side was um because i do think that there are there are times when i'll reflect back and i think we spent so much time on that particular item and what and i understand oftentimes those are things that are important and i get them that they are that they're important so they have to take place but it's that's it's not though it's not the way it's not about students it is about process it is about some of these other pieces and so i i am i am at times disappointed when i'm leaving a meeting and realize that we spent a whole lot of time talking about process stuff instead of outcomes and students um so this probably process wise comes back to i'd say what we're talking about with the chair and recognizing the um or the chair recognizing individuals that speak and then also not taking that personally so if whoever's sitting in the seat is asked to be mindful of that and when we're when we're veering off into some of those you know we're spending all this time talking about some of the processed pieces i think it's helpful for the the person in the seat to be able to communicate that um with the with the anticipation i think the expectation that it's it's received in a way that it's what's best for the board it's what's best for the board meeting it's what's best for the district as opposed to feeling like it is intended to invalidate the thought for the the questions that that you have and so um i i think we maybe will be able to address some of that with uh presidential redirection in real time i did all that hundred percent i felt the same way and i and i and children and i i think we were both the ones that did mark number 30 um when we left off the last time and i already said earlier regarding you know taking time on one item i already discussed that so it's what i said earlier that's why it pertained to number 30.
how do the rest of you feel about that gabriella you know lean sabrina um i i think that sometimes we do spend a lot of time and um there's there's been times and and i hear for example shinolin's passion when it comes to ell but i think that for example some of the questions in which i i'm writing him down because i'm like i'm learning from her as she's asking these questions because these are important questions to ask about you know the eel program that we provide here um but at times like oh my gosh okay was that a pro like was that protocol or you know and so um at times not just her but even like myself or yolanda or sabrina or agent um we i i've caught myself you know talking about the process instead of like the outcome and so um i really appreciate when when we uh when one of us will ask for for data um right uh on our students um on how that is reflected because i appreciate you know when we ask those ques when we ask for that because then we're you on on thursdays when we're able to go ahead and receive that we're able to see things you know uh to implement um the programs that we are going to be speaking about for example the for the reconfiguration um process right the programs that we want to strengthen so i do see that at times we do kind of do this and start talking more about like how to tell him how to do his job yeah don't get into the week and um i and yeah i think it's good that we're catching ourselves um and that we maybe you know are our focus and don't have hurt feelings when the president cuts you off right okay and one one thing just to add real quick just because i want to make i i almost i almost don't want to but but but i i will i'm grateful gabby that you and i will have some space to have have some some conversation but one thing just for context um so that because it's what comes to mind this specific example comes to mind there are times uh there there have been many times in my opinion where we're talking about sometimes like really difficult things when there are difficult things and and it appears though like when we have these board meetings these board meetings what they're really intended to be are meetings between the board the board is having a meeting and we happen to be having this meeting in public in front of other and that's separate and different from us having a board meeting with the public and that's why when we've had some of these challenging things there are people who try to interrupt or raise their hand or speak and i hate it too and we have to tell them sorry that's not the space for this and so we are having a meeting but but legally others are able to witness it they can watch it on online there are often times as i believe or have counted where it seems like when we're having the meeting sometimes you kind of veer off and start to have a conversation with the public or with and and you're and it's almost like a moral appeal that's taking place and that you're in you're speaking to the to the public or to the audience or to the people at home and and it's a it's a meeting instead of instead of it being a meeting that they're watching it it feels like we the board are watching a meeting that you're having with with the public and so i i that's that's one of the things that i think you know where i'm wanting to be careful because oftentimes that happens when you are tremendously impassioned and it's not it would not be my intention to cut you off while you're being tremendously impassioned but that would be an example of a time of multiple examples or times where i think there's things that you're saying and it's probably not the most appropriate space to be saying the things that you say but but as i'm weighing that i'm saying there's zero weight there's no way for me to interject and to stop this without it being perceived as as disrespectful in any way so i reason why i want to say that is um because as part of this as part of the presidential redirection that we're talking about there's also going to need to be space for us to say to to each other when that happens hey we're have we're not having a meeting with the public we're having a meeting in public and so let's so let's let's direct our comments and our questions to to each other here on the dice as opposed to making um long-winded moral appeals to the community i hear you and i i think you know again uh being redirected um we'll have a conversation but i think in general i've been being redirected that um we shouldn't get our feelings forward you know what i again it's it's not what is said i guess and like yolanda said sometimes and it's not just me it's it's everyone human right we say things um that may come across harsh right but talk about it with that person right and so you know working on that you know just being mindful of you know what this person is going on and on and on you know for example uh board member rodriguez pena did i please ask that you come back instead of hey you need to you know i'm the president you need to redirect your you know the difference of tone and that i think it you know and i think we've definitely clarified that today absolutely and um adrian one thing that if you think of any specific meeting that you know of where you can say see look at let's look at this meeting um this part here where you're talking and um look how long you went on or you see we kind of went off topic for any board member um you know that you may have to cut off or you know bring them back then that's a good learning tool because that's the one good thing that's come out of this whole um profit thing for me is being able to watch people's board meetings online um and so if you see if you know of a specific meeting or something call into their attention hey watch this meeting and go to the one one one hour 22 minutes and and this is what i'm i'm talking about because it helps us learning like i said i'm a visual so i know for me that would be beneficial finally our sabrina either one uh i think sabrina your turn your mic is on we're educators by virtue of being in this room and and holding these seats and um you know sometimes uh we don't always take advantage of the tools that really good educators use in the classroom so for example when we're talking about assessment this is our annual board self-evaluation right we only do it once a year but in the classroom we don't assess our students once a year one time and say hey you got a good grade or you didn't good teachers are always constantly assessing right you have your exit ticket or you have your benchmark assessment right and at the end of the year you kind of see like oh well if all the benchmarks were positive then we kind of think that's a really good chance at the end of the assessment would also be positive or we'd also show the same areas of growth right so there's kind of like no surprises so i just kind of had a little of an aha moment um maybe arturo maybe you could help us figure out something like um i know when we did the covid check-ins you had a really quick google form that you would text us maybe there's some sort of benchmark like assessment that we do after you know once a month or once a quarter with our board meetings where we could say you know five questions uh you know have we been have has the board been spending a good use you know managing its time effectively have board members been uh treating each other with mutual respect you know kind of those key areas that we've been talking about so that gives us some immediate feedback and it's fast you know google form could be fast and then we could kind of keep that record so that we could all see it so that when we get to this point next year we have the opportunity to correct the course during the year and can take this kind of more dedicated time to go kind of even farther and do more growth so i just had that idea about you know how do we leverage some of our technology and some of the tools and best practices from education with what we're doing here one of the districts that i work with actually does that and what they did um they started doing it after their first poor self-evaluation and they looked at their reds and their yellows and each member picked the question from the board self-evaluation to put just like you said not the whole thing just what do we need to what are we going to focus on let's not try to focus on everything what's most important for us to focus on and so each board member submitted one of the questions and then that's what they did every quarter they check in and they just do and it's anonymous again and they just do a little survey they have to look at to say okay oh look at that you know we have three people saying we're doing a good job now where before it was only one person so it's a good idea and it's easy to do you can either make a questions each person make up a question or take something from the board self-evaluation but that's very suggestion that was longer than a minute serena but anyways worship i just wanted to say that um i understand what adrian was saying about gabby regarding because i think it'd be good we're all facing each other because i noticed she'll face that way and and i am that's my left ear so i i read lips sometimes and she's talking that way and she's talking i don't know i'm not sure where she's talking but she's talking and it's hard for me to understand her but she's going on and on she'll start really great and then she loses herself and she starts going off and people i heard people say what are she talking about and um also what children mention regarding questions one good thing about arthur what he does when we have questions for him he'll write him down well we get our thursday packet and on that packet whatever board member asks whatever the question is on data or what have you he'll write the question not necessarily who asked them and the answer to it so we all get the same thing so that would be great when she has questions you know i mean that we are we're all seeing the same thing at the same time because even when she's talking it's great information it really is i i also learned by her i was looking for her um since day one that i've been on board but you know just writing it all down right away i'm trying to remember what she's telling me but when he writes it down then i'm reading it and i'll even maybe get a clarification from him you know if i'm not understanding it but i think it's good when he does it he gives us the packet what whatever any board member asked him yeah yeah um i really like the way that we're sitting right now i like i'm able to see like we're able to see each other right we are having a meeting um [Music] the reason i'll say that i i do face this way right is because sometimes i don't want i'm going to be on i i don't want to see reactions i don't want to get you know they don't want to get triggered and so it may seem like a conversation but in reality it's because i kind of like and process thing but i don't want to see right and it's it's not that and i don't feel engaged i feel like i feel like we are having me we right now the board cabinet ms price this is our art right for us to just for us to have opinions i have a voice be able to go ahead and right um i don't know what do you guys think is your normal boardroom yeah yes and how are your tables usually we are based in each other yes yes this table still here no no we have audiences here what about yours building oh okay okay well it used to be more like a u and then after covey now it's more like a square it's more like a line remember the line across no no like a brush but now it's very it's very rectangular before it used to be it felt more like we were like on a curve yeah where do those desks go are they the same ones they're not the same ones are they either yes so where are those other ones um the old dice uh was just not good anymore it was falling apart um because of covet again bringing it in and out and so in your next weekly board packet we finally have a rendering of a proposition for a boardroom and setup and that one is more of a art if you will um it's on a platform and we all sit at the arc so i'm going to put it in your weekly board package just for some some feedback and you see a picture it's a picture yes yeah yeah it's a it's a drawing it's a drawing of what it might look like does that include chairs yes yes it would it yeah chairs a platform a bunch of stuff in the room well and and i would say i understand i can understand how this though this setup where it's a closed circle how it makes it that much more of a that we can recognize it as a meeting for just us i can see because it's a meeting that's in public and on display um this could be this is probably not ideal to close off the the circle entirely i think it's still important that there's a side that's open but i think we need to continue to ask ourselves how can we operate and how can we operate as though it's this and even though that's open i think that you made the point because when you're doing your business so at the beginning of most meetings you know that's when you do your response and everything your students and everything and all of that your support your focus on this part then because these people are here for their recognition so that's where your focus is but then once you start up in the items like you said the focus should be one another in the dialogue between all of you with the superintendent of me so when you start going down you're talking about all of those and that's when like you said that focus on one another but at the beginning you do want to be able to see the people here that you're recognizing it'd be kind of rude to have cares to the back of the people who you're saying hey so we can recognize you and i'll just one other nuance in gray area as well with that even during but even during board public comment i think that's still there's there's probably space where we may direct questions or comments that go to the uh cabinet and there may even be times where i you know i've heard sharing out announcements that there's an event that's that that's happening at the district and so making a broad invitation i even see that as an appropriate space to be able to do that but yeah once we cross over into and when we get into general functions and and there and beyond i think it's just tremendously important that we are having a meeting with each other and as in the most meaning the most respectful of ways by saying this we're really ignoring the the crowd that it's it's we're not it's not intended for us to have a meeting with them we are having a meeting and and they have a right to watch and your comments will show the public that you're taking into consideration their needs and their concerns by the interaction that you have with each other on those agenda items so they'll know that you're still working for them and doing the work that they you know elected you to do because they'll hear it in the comments can we go if we can cuz i know gabby you had your hand raised to add something to this and then i want to make sure that we because it's 333 i want to make sure we have space because sheila had some other things that she wanted to bring up as well i think you guys answered it okay cool thank you so i just wanted it's still on number 30.
um and so i think adrian i think rightly you talked about um that piece in terms of our interactions right but i also think that there's another piece around just the intentionality of what gets put on our agenda right and so figuring out like um what's being put on when like i mean a good example could be i know we've talked a little bit about this but not specifically right like there's a lot of work on like the looking at dnf right in high schools right um when when does that come to the board and in what way i mean does it make sense for it to come after every trimester when you have updates you know um when does the data around the alcap come right when we talk about like implementation of the of our priorities with with our priorities right when do we talk about that as opposed to like one lump sum meeting in april when it's very very high level and not really talking about like how are these programs being implemented and how effective they are so i that i think is is more i don't know how that happens right whether that's a group activity whether that's a president and our photo activity but really thinking about like how do how do we bring that that student piece into the pull into the board meeting so that's what we are really focusing on i don't have an answer i'm just maybe with that you know arturo you're self-proclaimed systems educator um you've heard this is not the first time you've heard this feedback about how do we put the outcomes and how do we calendar these things so along with other regular calendar items maybe you can share in the board packet um kind of a sample calendar for curriculum and instruction type of item so we know what would be coming in in each order and then if we have feedback then we can send that to you and then we can try it out this next year yeah and i think that i think it's a great idea um there even a another couple ideas that maybe come to mind that i i can even uh talk when we when we can talk about i'll say that one of the things that has been difficult is when we have tended to because of what we've been facing we've added so many additional meetings like over the course this past year there have been so many where where this is supposed to be meeting twice a month where some instances we're meeting every single week of the of every single month and it's in and it's and it's nonstop uh then some of the other conversations that arthur and i have as well when we're looking at what to put on is here's the conversation that we need to have due to timeline constraints and we need to have this conversation and then there will there will be other things that you know legally this has to be presented and shared at the board but not today but it has to be shared by the end of may and so we'll at some times weighing what's on the agenda we'll push some things back and then we get to the point where now there's no more waiting on this particular item this item has to come in uh now and so now there's no you know there's no other choice but to but to jam pack the meeting so it is a game of tetris uh to some extent but yeah i do think that there is some intentional and systematic work that we can do to try to um prioritize those the pieces that that you're that you're talking about feeling i i also did i did want to give you some feedback because i do think um i do think sometimes the presentations that you're bringing to us sort of missed the mark and miss and hit miss the sweet spot between over generalizing and giving too much information and i think about um when we try to have a conversation about the bond prioritizing the bond right and the first time you brought to us you gave us that huge spreadsheet that wasn't really usable right and so we asked you to go back you did a good job coming back and it was much more it was we were able to have a conversation and make decisions right um but i think often i i think of that example i also think about the example when we're going to talk about this point about the projects or not the programs that we put in in schools right so we had decided we're going to have a study session in april about that right and so i guess in my mind i thought you as staff were going to come and we're going to have this very long discussion about what you know what are those options what what tradeoffs what do they look like and instead we kind of just got the same presentation we had gotten a couple weeks before that and so i walked away i and i don't think i ever gave this feedback i apologize i think for whatever reason but i walked away feeling like like that was a wasted meeting right like we could we didn't have that meaning because we already got that information and so really being intentional about that and that's you know that's a hard thing get to nail right um but i do think it's part of being a really effective superintendent is understanding what kind of information you need to bring to a board so they understand what's happening and can make decisions and and also her going back to the programs when you bring the programs to us because um you know there's so many programs that we have in different school sites from elementary to middle school high school i would like to see um when we are going to be selecting programs or or looking over them you know what is the effect of the programs you know our do we have how many students who have enrolled in these programs uh you know what students are interested in programs i mean are we spending our our money wisely on these programs are they being effective and this is where you get the the outcome right you know on english language learners or on the dnf program you know i i like to see the outcome of um the effects of these programs i think that would be really helpful for myself as the board member to decide you know is is that program valid to have at that school side or is our program um are we spending our money wisely that's the most important right there budget wise you know to you guys are making great points uh one of the things that yolanda you just shared right the assessment of the programs that we have in place right what is what is the what is our our our goal for that program was the end result are we achieving that goal i don't think that um [Music] we have in every program here in our district that um what is that that protocol that that scale right for us to be able to see that and i know that what i'm hearing from the board like right now is that we would like to go ahead and see that right what is you know is it is this program we're spending you know this much we're assessing it and is there something that you know can be improved something and so i feel that at times you know when it comes to to to that we are on the same you know wavelength and because it affects our students it affects our children here in our district and at times we have spent on certain programs right and it's just and and i'm giving you feedback this is not your but you know teachers will say this program's not working and they're the ones working with program every day with the students and i will say can you please talk to your friend you know principal who who is in charge of that program they talk to the superintendent is that program being assessed and just like we are assessing ourselves right one of the things that you brought up to sabrina i think is a great idea being able to assess ourselves right periodically not like every week but you know maybe every three months right what just more often right once a year is is not enough right to be able to to to to bring um awareness the awareness part right because maybe you know to cabinet right or maybe to us something's going okay but no like are we really going okay is this really working right is this program working or is that working um being able to reflect and to have the documentation that you know the data on you know is it really working is there some neat you know need for improvement um i think is is this key just in everything especially in the direction we're you know we're moving into um i do remember the time where they did show that same presentation and i i maybe they have something new and it was like you know then to this spreadsheet okay what are we looking at i know if i'm asking those questions i know the community's asking the same questions and i know it's very very detailed and i know you guys are working very very hard because it's a lot i mean we are just not driving you know a little porsche here or a little red corvette right we're we're like we have like tons and tons and tons of like you know like a big truck with bunch of cars everywhere like that's us right now we we're you guys are moving so many pieces and you know and yeah things are gonna happen but at the same time just being able to go ahead and um us be aware of what is working what is not we're spending money on this pro you know she had mentioned we're spending money on this program well you know maybe this program is not working maybe this program is working and um again it comes down to them in general including with our board it comes down to evaluation and self-reflection so gabby i'm going to use this as a teaching moment for you because i started to stop you but i wanted to let you go this is where your passion comes in that they've talked about and then you just keep going and going to get excited so you have to to say say what you're gonna say you said it and then we were all like okay and then you kept going and going you were just saying the same thing you were repeating the same thing and please time in if you think you know what i have told her and show me i told her debbie write everything down when you want to say so you know you're focusing on this and she said she would and she doesn't so she just that's what she wants to say and goes it's going but i have told her write it down so you're hearing this you know when you stop spider you're hearing this from an outsider so just make your point and then you're done but you'll go on and on and yeah what you said and what you said you said this let me hear what they said just what do you think and what you can say simply i agree with yolanda and sheena lee and that's it i just went down the record if that's what you're going to say but you don't have to re with our just state your points and feedback move on then when you have something more to say like yolanda said i live within i have one in my car right every so anybody else have any anything else to say on that or you have some another topic uh well i just want to make sure that because shilling you had i imagine more than one thing was that does that exhaust your list what's the piece i want to talk about just in terms of what's on our agenda what would you have any additional follow-up from that particular item any follow-up questions or requests well i think i i struggle with thinking about how do we how do we do that without and without i know our doodle feeling like it's like it's like they're telling me to do something but they won't tell me to do it so it's like i'll know you know you heard that phrase like i'll know when i see it right and um and so i i don't i just i i don't know how we how we have that come to the agreement of what what that's gonna look like um to your point about more often right there were times before and yolanda will know this like where we've had like governance retweets twice a year we did them four times a year at some point right and those are very reflective meetings not only talking about our interactions but also the work of the district um but it's hard to want to have that if we meet weekly right it's too much but we actually i think we've there's been like i think march was the first month this school year that we didn't have a meeting every week because they texted our dude i was like it feels weird we're not we don't have a meeting today yeah well keep in mind wait till july and keep in mind that you guys are going through a lot right now you come out of coving in the school closures and you all have had a lot on your plate but i do want to go back to what you said real quick about the um assessment of programs and what's working and looking at data keep in mind that as a board that any time the superintendent and his team come to you with the program that they're going to implement one of the questions that you as a board should be asking is okay if we do this what does success look like what are the success indicators and that way you know okay so this is what we said but we were told that this is the reason they're doing this program is to improve you know a client z so then when you get your report you can go back to that and say okay we met that benchmark but not that one and we met that you know because you've known all along what the success indicators were and for our superintendent and i know you know this the superintendents get busy if um something changes like they're in code but there's a whole lot that changes and success indicators look totally different from what we might have originally thought they would be and it's hard to remember to keep people updated but when you get this update then if something has changed where it's like hey we're realizing already that this isn't going to work you know but these two parts are still working but this part here is not working this is why so we're tweaking this and changing this to that and you'll get your updates that way so you know make sure that you ask those questions from the beginning what does success look like how do we know if this is worth so i'm me 30 seconds so arturo i think one small thing that could be helpful is we always ask how much does it cost when is it going to happen how many kids like those kind of quantitative measures we're always going to ask so if that could be kind of part of your automatic part of the presentation that'll that'll eliminate probably you know the first five questions speaking of speaking of time and speaking of having meetings every week uh you know every every month this this it's 3 48 um so we are we're scheduled to go as as late as five if need be we may not need to go as late as five uh maybe we maybe we need to um but all that to say are there are there any other items we could we could discuss well one are there any other items to discuss in regards to things that we want to evaluate or discuss from from the evaluation one two uh that can't that can't wait that shouldn't wait there's the first piece the second one is in regard to our board um handbook and and protocols are there are we wanting to crack that thing open and begin working on that and use use our time and go up until five to be able to do that um or are there are there any other pieces that that others are feel strongly that that we it would be the best use of our time to go all the way up until five and and go into something else what i would like to go ahead and address is that um just like as we take surveys right and um there's things that need to be have improvement i i would like as a board to um one of the things that ms price said is is to how how are we as we're going to um strengthen in the area of growth you know how are we going to move forward with this are we going to set goals um well i think sabrina made the suggestion that you guys do many seconds maybe like every four months or so do a mini check in um like mini evaluation to see where you're at are you guys making progress from what's here but that's one way the other way is that you guys will see it it'll be visible in how you interact with each other how long you talk at the meetings stand on task the time when fast so all of those things will will be visible and you'll know that you're making progress on some of them and then the other ones you can see from the mini evaluation and if you see that there's something as president where you're like why is everybody still saying we're not good on this then that's maybe when you guys may even want to just reconvene yourself just for like maybe schedule an hour or so to talk about it you know say hey you know we've done two of these and we haven't changed so what's the issue what's the deal let's get it out right now but the other stuff as far as the inter a lot of this is today was based on interpersonal relationship and communication we've talked about it right we've addressed it um you guys are going to have some separate conversations as well so those things should start to dissipate that's my hope is that they will and you'll know okay i'm i'm feeling better about this yolanda i need to step on make a call because i tell my brother i'll pick him up at three he's at work and then i told him okay i'll be there till four and he's waiting for me and my son can pick them up well what is it does anyone have does anyone have anything on there as we're looking at what we need to do does everyone feel that we need to dive into the board protocol so our kudos looks like that's a yes and uh yes it's a comment okay uh well does anyone feel that and or are there any other items that are that we've not discussed that you want to bring in just to the board first so i don't know if your question is are we gonna get out the board handbook and redline it now or are we just highlighting areas that we want to work on so if we had if we spent another hour here what would be our goal and outcome so let me ask you go ahead i just want to add just a logistical right i'm not advocating for five or not five but our next governance meeting is october 11th so maybe it is helpful to forecast and say okay october 11th governance we should have done a selfie a mini self-evaluation everybody should arturo please put in the keyboard packet the handbook uh with you know some ideas just throwing that out there logistically uh october 11th is our next governance and so you know maybe that's a factor into your guys's conversations and decisions is there something quick to add only because i know yolanda you wanna maybe i don't wanna if you need to make a phone call because i was gonna i was gonna help to clarify what she wants to know about the time here's my suggestion to you you don't wanna rush through your protocols i would suggest that everyone go through um like arterials that make red lines that write in what you think what you think is not relevant maybe change what you think the wording should be and then when you come back together everybody should be prepared and then you can move forward effectively you won't have time to do that in an hour today so cool right right and i agree so can would would you all be good if if um would it be it could be me or me and another board member i mean our tutor craft just one statement to add to the to the to the board protocol manual about the the presidential redirection piece that we that we discussed here so we will i agree so we'll add that or or we can create language and and and maybe our you can you can send it out and get some some feedback that we're adding it to the protocol manual can what do you guys think would be the best appropriate would it be like every three months that we would do a self-evaluation on the board or a mini um quarterly orderly yeah yeah and i think using some of these existing items yeah right so we have it's comparable so what it sounds to me like from this meeting there will be some there will be some follow-up questions that our arthur can reach out to each of us for to ask things like what from these questions should we ask get feedback on the uh on on the one item that we do want to add to the board protocol um also sending out the board sending out the board protocol handbook anyway it's for people to be able to highlight redline um and whatnot so so it seems like there is going to be some follow-up stuff uh some homework that our tutorial has to send out to each of us to follow up from this meeting and if you need assistance with that feel free to reach out to me and i'll i'm happy to help the support debbie yes one of the things quarterly um so since we did it in june september that would help with our governance meetings in october december march four times here is that sound good i think the president i'm sorry the president superintendent should set the dates yeah i'm just giving a suggestion yeah i'm just throwing it out there it's not set in stone i think that makes sense we'll send something out oh so i i think it's important to circle back but i also when i was just looking i know angelina you were going to have us look at all the reds remember so i do think that what i just talked about if you look at 38 39 uh 48 and 49 i think those four together pretty much like summarize what i was talking about in terms of like success indicators and outcomes that's true yeah i think those four right there performing and you see there so i would like us to have some hap figure out when we have that conversation and frame it around those four areas sounds good i'm yeah i said 38 and 39 and then 48 and 49 and they're all very much aligned sort of like the last three were put like sort of a line same kind of got it thank you so so the question now that we have at 356 is uh do do our you know are all hearts clear if you will for us to to kind of move on from from this point um i do think that we made a lot of a lot of headway and discuss discuss some things there is going to be some follow-up future work that we need to do but but we uh to enjoy that to your point we may not be able to really get that done we'd be rushing if we tried to so is everybody okay if we if we move forward with some of these homework pieces that that we talked about yes just to close out my final words to all of you will be you know if you've been to any of the migs you know the the little saying that we love unified not uniform being a unified board does not mean you agree all the time it doesn't mean that you all get along all the time it doesn't mean that you don't have differences of opinion what it means is that when there's a vote when there's a discussion you respect other people's opinions and whether you're on the winning side or the losing side of a vote if it's a split vote you accept the vote that happened you don't go out you don't bat-mouth it you don't keep bringing up that somebody voted against it and this is your fault and you should have voted this and i don't know why you did that it is done you get behind it you support it you're unified you do not have to be uniform and then the other thing that i would say is your unity of purpose and gabriella you actually brought this up or you know one of you brought that up the unity of purpose yeah just remember your unity of purpose which is why are you here why do the six of you guys come together you know so many times a month to me what is your purpose to make sure that these students get the best education possible if you keep that at the forefront and always make every decision and every action based upon that you'll be okay it's going to take work but you guys will be okay but thank you guys for your honesty too today i really want to thank you for that i know it wasn't easy so thank you for that thank you well then with that um we will then move to 5.0 which is adjournment uh specifically 5.1 so is there a motion to adjourn our meeting make a motion to adjourn by 0.1 second i'm uh moving by board member rodriguez pena seconded by board member bo and we'll do a hand vote board member rodriguez pena member vote yes or remember cruz gonzalez yes remember adianas yes and i am also a yes um so the motion passes five to zero and we are adjourned at 3 59.
all right welcome to the june 27th uh meeting of the green castle school board and let's bring the meeting to uh with the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag from the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all all right we'll start off with adjustments to the agenda mr gibney yep so one item that uh to add that i provide you board members with is a proposal from new era technology to for the high school intercom and clock refresh that's a part of the big project we invited three uh vendors to submit bids and we need to uh i'd like to move forward with approving their bid tonight so that way we can maintain our intercom and our bell system at our high school which i'm sure our teachers and students will appreciate so we'd like to get that approved tonight so that's my request we add that to the agenda all right um okay so next is do we need emotions do we go do we vote all right all in favor aye all right opposed all right motion passes um so next on the agenda is public comments regarding agenda items are there any public comments regarding agenda items all right and silence is loud all right um okay uh next on the agenda is recognitions mr gibney yeah so we have one of our guests with us distinguished guests but we'd like to recognize dr robin johnson for 40 years of service and that's just an amazing accomplishment and definitely something that we don't see all too often in education it's a rarity and so we appreciate your commitment and everything that you've done for our students and school school community and certainly we wish for you to be a continued part of our school community and mr rogers would you be willing to present dr johnson with her plaque [Laughter] yep it's in the lobby and you also get your your gold pass so you can come uh your complimentary entrance to gcse events yes okay thank you very much thank you thank you very much people and um unable to uh to be with us tonight um but certainly another a great accomplishment nonetheless um elizabeth spencer for 32 years of service she's also retired from gcse and we definitely thank her for her many years of service and what she has done for students and definitely wish her well in her retirement and hope to see her around as well [Applause] all right next on the agenda is the approval of the consent agenda so first we have the meeting minutes from may 23rd 2022 before the executive session meeting minutes and then we have the may 23rd 2020 regular board meeting and then we have the allowance of claims mr yes um in your finance packet you'll see two regular payrolls for the month of may the first one was dated may 13th and beginning last month we now have the details of the payrolls which you've seen there did anyone have any question about the details of the payrolls is this something we're going to have for now on you will her state board of accounts in our last audit so so the the first payroll for may was dated may 13 2022 for a total payroll of 587.12 and as usual we've got accounts payable for payroll taxes and retirement total for um for those items was a hundred and twenty seven thousand six twenty three twenty six the second payroll in may was dated may 27th for a total payroll of 441 000 30.78 and along with that can be accounts payable for payroll taxes and retirement 126.38.16 and next in your packet you'll see the prepays for the month of may total pre-pays 316 000 for 68.74 there's really nothing unusual on this list as you can see energy costs are up just a little bit in the last couple of months as we've had a hot couple of months too and then we had three payrolls in april so of course the state and local taxes were a little bit higher that we paid for april so those will be a little bit higher for for the month of may and then um we're ready to move on to the regular claims dated today okay all right we've got a packet of regular claims here for you dated june 27 2022 did anyone have any questions about any items for this month i did not i do now i haven't done okay all right total claims dated for today uh june 27 2022 190.27 and we're ready to go ahead and move on to the fund report balance in education fund two million three hundred ninety six thousand six eighty three fifty nine balance the end of may 2022 for operations 642 thousand six eighty three eighty eight if you go ahead and go to the last page which is um page five total for all funds is six million five twenty five seven 770 241 and then next in your package you're going to see the depository statement and bank balances for all banks ending may 2022 you see the bank balances there at the top the second rows you're going to see the outstanding checks so bank balances minus the outstanding checks gives us a balance in all funds in all banks of 6 million 525 772.41 if you look at the last page of the fund report you'll see that those both balance and then again per state board of accounts we've got and we've last month was our first month doing this anytime i do a transfer in between funds you need to acknowledge that and sign off on it so you'll see the fund transfer postings for any fund transfers that i made this month and they are all individual but then they'll be the final page that will be the total of all the transfers it's no negatives they should all balance out okay anytime i transfer from one fund to another another that should never affect our final balance okay so the total that i was uh that i transferred this month from one fund to another was 234 994 dollars and 17 cents and then next in your packet you're going to see the expenditures for the month of june out of bond 2021 balance forward from may 2022 was 3 million 859 984 64.
[Music] good evening i'd like to call the uh school committee meeting of the diamonds public schools for june 27 2022 to order if you could uh stand for the pledge of allegiance all right just like everyone know that this meeting is being televised live stream at www.youtube.com backslash ehs tv media it is going to be rebroadcast on dartmouth community television channel nine on uh wednesday and thursday at five friday at six eight wednesday and thursday at five pm friday at six a.m saturday at eight a.m and sunday at 12 noon and then on channel 18 on monday and saturday at 12 noon and thursday at 3 p.m and usually sometimes there are other times that they manage to get things in and we greatly appreciate all of that excuse me uh at this point in time we have allowed 10 minutes on the agenda for public comment for things that are on tonight's agenda okay that's solves that roll call misconception please john nunes yep mary waite here kathleen emerald here shannon jenkins chris oliver here and uh dr jenkins is on a scheduled vacation her reason for her not being here hoping she is enjoying herself and the family all right at this point in time uh i'll turn it over to the superintendent for uh some good stuff some good stuff so tonight i'm pleased to welcome and i know you want to formally recognize some of our new well veteran people who have taken new positions leadership positions in the district and as i stated all along the way every time we had a position come up i always find it really impressive and speaks highly of the district when we can move our folks that are already working here into leadership positions so it says a lot about how we grow our leaders and have a lot of faith and confidence in those people that are already working so i'm going to introduce them once a time and invite that person up to say a few words i don't want to put anybody on a real spot but i'm sure you have something you can say so first of all we'll have mr ross tebow who will be assuming the position of director of teaching and learning for the secondary level thank you dr gifford and thank you members of the school committee i really did not prepare any remarks [Laughter] but i would like to say that i'm very excited to take on this new challenge within the district i really appreciate the opportunity to serve uh the dartmouth community i have absolutely enjoyed um my time as the dartmouth high school principal over the last five years and am looking forward to you know being part of there's a number of challenging issues certainly uh facing the community um that i think that the two directors will be part of and so i'm looking forward to to that aspect of it but really i'm looking forward to being able to focus on teaching and learning um i think that's why people get into education and and so i'm excited for that so thank you for the opportunity thank you congratulations and good luck congratulations thanks thank you you can save all your questions for the end yeah [Laughter] don't leave next up if we have a secondary level director of teaching learning we have to have one for our elementary level and again we thought going in this direction was the right thing to do for the district so those folks can really focus on those various levels so we'll welcome katie paveo into that position hello thank you i'll echo so much i guess of what ross has said um i just it's kind of humbling to me it's my 20th year i just finished my 20th year working in dartmouth public schools and it's gone by really in such a blink of an eye but it's such a privilege to be able to be part of this community and um you know i wear many hats here i'm also a parent my kids go to school in dartmouth public schools and so to be able to give back to this community is really something that i don't take lightly and it's really i just consider it such a privilege so um i will echo so much of what ross said there's a lot of great work to be done a lot of great work teaching and learning um we're at such an interesting time i think kind of hopefully putting some of the last couple years behind us and really being able to focus in on teaching and learning and what our kids are are doing and really taking a good hard look at where we want them to go great that's good thank you thank you thank you and ross and katie have already started transitioning with miss aloe vera having meetings to kind of figure out who's going to do what and how we're going to take do our next step so we congratulate them so we have to have a replacement and at the high school we welcome ryan shea as the new principal of dhs good evening everyone thank you um i too didn't have something prepared but the same thing as the sentiment is it's an honor being a dartmouth grad and never came in this building but um being part of this community is really important to me i think if you look at my kind of career path was always within a goal of being in this being able to be in this position and being ready for it so i'm excited for the challenge as an amazing crew of people behind the scenes that are doing tons of work too and we're lucky to have be part of the school so thank you everyone congratulations i like you did you graduate ryan 0-1 0-1 okay so just welcome back thank you welcome back thank you very much i appreciate that thank you and and ryan um no you don't have to stay i just i'm talking about you but you can um before we had the interviews for the principal job at the high school i did meet with the high school staff numerous times and they have pledged their support in the transition so brian's already set up a schedule of meetings throughout the summer with with staff and some of the topics you'll be discussing and yeah so we um the staff has been incredible um from again top to bottom that everyone realizes coming out of the last two and a half years is going to take all hands on deck kind of one dartmouth high has kind of been our motto right now and we're working towards that but um yeah we're lucky that there's been more volunteers than i can imagine and people wanting to be be a support and understand that we've got some challenges we've got a great student body a great faculty and got all the pieces in place so we're lucky all right thank you thanks ryan thank you and of course we need a principal over at demelo so liz correa will be replacing katie pavello and and she's also done a circle and come all the way back so liz hi thank you this year wrapped up my 22nd year at de mello school 17 years as a classroom teacher there five years as assistant principal my heart and soul belongs to that school i'm really looking forward to moving us beyond the pandemic back into a lot of the work that katie and i have been uh setting forth for the past few years and kind of got derailed a little bit i can't tell you what an honor and a privilege it is to work for the school in this district and i'm just ready to roll thank you thank you and last but not least we as you know mr dome will be retiring after the new year and so we have already uh replaced him with not that we said here's your hat and what's your hurry right [Laughter] but um obviously yeah it's not the truth not the transition and so mr peter rossi has been appointed as that again like the rest of us i greatly appreciate the opportunity i want to thank you for that um replacing mr doane won't be an easy task but we've got a great student body and a great staff and i look forward to the challenge as a former student of dartmouth i grew up here i just finished my 25th year at the middle school but uh growing up here if it wasn't for uh teachers and coaches really taking an interest in me um you know the outcome could have been different so i'm very appreciative and hope to pay that forward thank you thank you thank you thank you and uh both um liz and ryan have been uh working on the replacement for the ap positions and we'll be able to announce those soon i'm sure when that those processes are finished so once again we want to congratulate them all and we're really happy that they've all taken on these leadership positions thank you all right congratulations congratulations congratulations all the best thanks for coming you don't have to stay although we always like you too i always love to have company okay uh any i think any comments from my colleagues before we move on okay good christmas yeah i'll say i'll say a few words actually uh you know i'm thrilled to see all these faces here tonight um i think we have a uh you know a great pool of talent here and this season some very seasoned educators as well as some dartmouth alumni so i'm thrilled to see it come full circle that says a lot it speaks to a lot of the uh the school system in the town and i'm really looking forward to seeing where everyone is going to take us over the next several years um you know you certainly some of these are new positions and some of these are you know you're replacing others but i am looking forward to seeing um all the possibilities and opportunities um that we have especially with the two new positions so thank you everyone congratulations [Applause] everybody else yeah i'll just say you know again i'm i'm so excited i think you know first of all i've been a big fan of these new positions for a curriculum i think it's much needed and i think we have the perfect people in those positions to you know really make a difference i think you know giving um the folks in the elementary school more time like with you know someone rather than being divided over all the schools i think is really important and uh just that that leadership and that focus really now that this is such a turning point and i hope it's really going to be like a positive and i feel that positive energy with the kids that they want to get back to there's some some normalcy and you know and they're excited about coming back i think they're more school spirited than ever because they really treasure what they missed before and uh so i think we have a lot of excitement and you know i i have to say like i look at liz and think you know my daughter was in her last class that she ever taught at demelo and now she's graduating now you're coming in to as principal so it's just it all just feels you know i i'm very very excited for the team i think that the staff is as well so congratulations very good congratulations and all the best all right moving on next we have approval of regular and executive session minutes of june 6.
you've got your expenditures for june 2022 our total expenditures to date out of bond 2021 3 million 950 and 87 cents and i think that might be it pending any questions i'd like to submit for approval with the side of our building missing i imagine that 3 million is going to go up here i was actually thinking the same thing today when i was reviewing this so it's probably going to go up pretty quickly i will make commercials we also have the personnel we do oh yeah so there are uh personnel reports uh one and two which are online and they're also posted on the door um so if anyone has any questions about those or would like to review those so with that um what would someone like to make motion to approve i would finally like to make a motion to accept the casino all right second all right so we have a motion in a second do we have any questions all right all in favor all right and anyone opposed all right motion passes and so like to welcome hi everyone to becky mcpherson and her family becky is was just approved as green castle middle school principal yeah [Applause] all right welcome so moving on two reports from the assistant superintendent dr french hi good evening so i just wanted to touch base on a few things this summer so this month we wrapped up our stem camp on our first hopefully first annual tradition here um for the fab lab facility and so i like the the procedure and the setup that we we created we had high school and middle school teachers that were interested in applying or using the fab lab in the fall come to a two-day boot camp this month and then they had the opportunity to immediately apply that because they volunteered to work the student stem camp and so they had a chance to actually work with kids over what they just learned on the laser cutter and 3d printers and all of that so great feedback from everyone we had just under 20 students um but from the kids from the teachers it really built some momentum and some excitement around that so we're really excited about that hopefully that can continue as a kind of a general summer thing we can scale up so we're excited about that um also this fall we're going to be kicking off our elementary reading adoption for all of our k5 that's an entire year-long process so that'll be made up of committee of teachers and administrators we'll also send invites to the board at different points along the way of that process but the goal is to have a recommendation and ask for your approval early in the spring for our k5 reading adoption we're also going to be looking at updating our math curriculum at the middle school that'll be a much smaller process as we're dealing with only three teachers versus all of the elementary teachers so just as a way to kind of fill in those holes and make sure that we're vertically aligned in our sixth seventh and eighth grade math um and make sure that we're supporting our teachers with as much as we can as they're trying to create not a math teacher a reading teacher by trade but i can't imagine how difficult that would be to create a new math curriculum and keep that vertically aligned at the middle school level it's very challenging so we want to support them in that way and then also you'll have an approval later on an agenda but we are requesting um ap textbooks so they have not been updated in several years um so that's something that we're looking at doing for a few different courses um they are very costly and so we are going to purchase one classroom set and then divide that cost over four years so that we can um help make that more affordable for the families because we know college textbooks are expensive um so being able just to keep a classroom set will at least keep that a little bit more affordable and then we still have the most up-to-date materials for our kids so any questions sounds good yeah i like camps in the summer just in campus more fun than summer school okay thank you all right thank you very much um and now the superintendent report mr gibbon yep so first things first fairly soon we'll be announcing registration for next school year and so for current students it will be july 11th through the 31st that will be open online they'll be in a school messenger go out with that link so families can get registered for next school year and for new students or students new to our school corporation it'll take place on july 21st from 10 10 a.m to 7 p.m and that'll take place at the school those students would attend and we encourage new students and their families to make appointments so that way we can make sure that there's someone available to see them and to meet with them and on top of that we obviously know when that was last month it seems like two months ago or three months ago we just exited our audit with the state board of accounts and so i believe that's been that's now been posted publicly for anyone wishing to uh to see the results so excuse me so continue to continue to do a good job with that and balancing the books and making sure we're we're doing what we're supposed to uh supposed to do appropriately and yeah so just an update on that and then uh he stepped up for a minute i think he had a long drive um but our there he is but our district is buzzing with construction at pretty much every building except this one although we have a garage full of supplies and technology so the transportation center we have our new maintenance building that's going up walls and trusses and roof are up and so we're making great strides there and then at the three primary schools they were about i don't want to put a timeline on it but they're they're heavy into the secure entrance projects and i don't know if you're talking about specifically that but i'm going to turn it over to mike montgomery to give us an update hello everyone i don't know exactly how much time you'd like me to spend i could spend a couple hours talking it all over or maybe 10 minutes would be a good good amount it's a beautiful night so we've got a few pieces of information to touch on tonight one of them is a reminder of the budget and uh because it's it's always good to know that it's holding and there's no surprises so i can zoom in here a little bit that's good you can read it okay yeah okay um you know basically nothing's changed you know we're got the last bid package going out here here literally in a few days and that's going to encompass the middle school renovation work some additional work at tz dear meadow and ridpath as well as the high school parking lot so really the the next budget test is going to be see how those bids come in in a few weeks here and then i know that the next bond issue is planned so to give you a little bit of a reminder of the scope of the work at the middle school you can see the blue area is the renovation at the entrance way in the administration area and a lot of that's because of the the secure entrances that's being installed there the pink area is the media center and library and then the yellow area is the science labs and the designs of all those are essentially complete and about ready to go out to bid at the at the main entrance you can see some of the work that's going on there actually i think i put in the wrong one but it's it's moving a lot of the staff across the hall and creating a new reception and secure entrance area there actually that is correct the area where it's reception is actually that hole in the roof so it'll be roofed over and that was we tried to resist any new square footage but at the end result was this was the right way to do this particular project um this next one is at uh um um rit path elementary school and i'll see if i can well i think i'll just talk about it a little bit um the the the um there's two pieces of work at red path one of them is a secure entrance which is under construction now this last piece of work that's going on with this bid package is a renovation or repair of the exterior eifs exterior insulation to finish system looks like stucco it's really held up pretty well over the years but there's one area kind of the upper photograph second from the right that's delaminated a little bit you can see it's it's it's it doesn't have an overhang which is uh something you'll probably have to do this again every five ten years because it that particular product does a lot better when it's protected and then the other area that's happened is down at the bottom the mowers have hit it so as part of this project the efus is getting repaired and then we're taking a bid for a mow strip so that the guys don't aren't attracted to trying to get too close to the building so that's really the only work that's uh part of this project at red path and then at tazonagas as you know the the contract has already been released patterson horth is working on sealing the building up and the upper right photograph there's another one that's a little bit better coming on they actually there's there were many gaps all the way around the perimeter of the building they are spray foaming this they're putting up sheet metal aluminum sheet metal and spray foaming and it's working great they spray the foam and then after the foam goes up they spray a fireproofing coating so that there's no burnable materials in the in this area above the ceiling and from the time they got it mostly done you could you could start feeling a difference and just as a reminder once they get done tsi energy is going to come back and test the building again because they advised us it was so leaky that there's so many they'll find more once they're able to pressurize the building um so uh we're on the right track here with getting this taken care of this is a reminder at redpath elementary the secure entrance which is the image in the upper right is under construction now it shows the office area floor plan there actually there's not a lot of work here there's a new glass wall being basically there is a glass wall that's being moved back so that the the visitors actually come into the office so they can't just walk straight into the building it's pretty minor but it is in process and the contractor is doing a good job and all this work we were pretty nervous that none of it was going to happen during the summer but because we got a good bid an aggressive contractor and it's working out but most of it's going to get done this summer at deer meadow the lower uh right floor plan is just a kind of reminder that that one was really set up pretty well the only thing that really happens here is cutting a door from the vestibule into the office and moving an exterior camera around for better better visibility so it was the least obtrusive then some of the new work that's going on with this this bid um this is the floor plan of uh tazonicus and around the edges you can you can see the sidewalks and early on in this project we had theorized that some of them some or a lot of the moisture in the building was a result of poor sight drainage that was getting back because there weren't any gutters on the building things like that and then if you remember there was kind of a study of four different areas groundwater through soil borings underground storm sewers through uh sewer cams uh the building pressurization as well as checking the mechanical systems and it turned out that the culprit was the uh the leaky envelope of the building which is being addressed so um we've gone back and really looked at what should you do now with the site and uh what we really discovered was the site drains pretty well um all the pipes underneath are in good shape it's on a hill so through conversations with mr gibboney and the owners rep kramer companies the concrete's in good shape you really just have a few areas there and that's what we're taking care of as part of this and you can see up there just an example in pink um is the walk coming out of the gym door um at the bottom of the ramp they get they get water trapped there so we're cutting in a swale and a uh a uh perforated drain up there the other pink uh that's uh the second one down is a sidewalk and set of stairs that's kind of in bad shape and it's going to be rebuilt as part of this the third pink area to the right is an area where the sidewalk that goes into the special needs area that needs to need some correction there so those are the types of things that are going on with this with this project and then to go on with a few other photographs here oh this is a better photograph of the foam that's going above the ceilings sealing up the perimeter and i think they're scheduled to be done with that now they may already be done with that so it's gone pretty fast some images of the exterior in the upper right is the fascia and soffit at tz and this is an older photograph you on your own you've replaced these light fixtures so part of this project is going to be to paint that soffit and the second photograph down on the right is the fascia which doesn't show up very well but the paint's really thinned out so those are the types of things you've got an opportunity to do here that we're including in the bid um the left two photographs just shows was part of this going back and forth with uh with mr gibboni and the discussion of what should we do what needs to be replaced the upper left is that sidewalk coming out of the gym area that the water backs up under the door the lower left is that set of stairs that's going to be replaced you can't see it well from the photograph but they're all kind of cockeyed and the railings are rusting oh lower right is a glass block and frame into the gym there's a couple glass blocks are actually broken and paint the frame and the upper upper right is really just an example of the quality of the concrete that's more typical at the building actually it's been really pretty well kept up over the years and then this is the high school parking lot and the lower right is probably the more typical condition of the parking lot the upper left is in the northeast corner where it's in pretty bad shape and then you can also see the light pole base the concrete's actually in pretty good condition the heads of light fixtures you've replaced not too long ago maybe four or five years ago but the poles are in bad shape so this project and the pull they all burn so the electrical is fine so this project is going to include removal and replacement of the poles and reuse of the heads and maybe an alternate for new heads but in general the biggest cost is staying in place and replacing the poles and then the upper left that particular area pavement is going to be cut out and replaced all the way down to the base but the rest of it is going to be milled down about an inch and a half and then about two and a half inches put back so it'll be up about an inch and a half on the curve because it's it's not very thick and uh if they mill it down enough and put and repair the deep cracks that go through that that will have a nice new surface it drains pretty well it has good outlets in it it's just cracked over the years and it's repaired this is a site plan of the parking lot and in the upper transfer transfer lot well this is the east i'm sorry no that's the parking lot yeah the east lot at the high school and at the very top is washington street and you can see there's a curb cut that's being added and actually the contractors put one in for a temporary so that the kids can get in and out and that's actually been designed by the city prior to this project really starting to help with everything so that's being priced by the intention was for that this city to partner on that and then basically the parking lot gets milled down and re-striped um that island down towards the bottom there that's right there that's coming out um everybody universally agrees is more of a pain in the neck than everything and then the striping is going to run across up at the top so that there'll be cars parking so you don't get that drive through there's a lot of discussion about that and i'm sorry to interrupt you are we thinking about how students are getting out of there because i know we have the temporary one right now and i understand that that's it's going to be permanent but that's really congested in there when when school lets out so just something to think about yeah we'll have access off percy julian or washington there's no it gets really just gets real there's no best but there's better yeah we're doing we're working with what we can unless state wants us left let's just punch out onto veterans memorial so this the stairs on the left-hand side that go up from the parking lot are taking an alternate to rebuild those and put new railings up there also and then one of the other kind of important topics here is towards the bottom i'm going to point here right in this area here last year when uh the school was describing concerns and things to take care of there's a general concern that that is the transfer lot or the the north end of the transfer lot and when the buses are in there and all the kids are out transferring buses there's not much to keep somebody who was so inclined to just drive down through there and so this project would include barriers electric barriers at the two locations shown here and the base bit is going to be the lift arm but we're going to take an alternate for these electric ballers that actually come up out of the ground on with a remote control if you've you know you don't see a lot of them around here i guess they're at lucas oil stadium which we can go look at and see and talk to them about how they operate but you're not getting through these things they're they're heavy duty and they're designed for military installations in a lot of ways or heavy crowd control and then also there's going to be another set of them at the south end of the transfer lot so you can contain that that whole area whole area through there so there any questions about any of that before i keep going here did we tell our new middle school principal we were going to tear up the building before she could get out of it yes she didn't run away media gone through the centers process and uh our staff's work with the schools and i think everybody's pretty excited about how to turn along we just thought it'd flash these up so you can kind of see some of the design drawings that they've been working on you didn't have to go through the hard work at the time you just get the benefit of it yeah she gets to pick who gets a new classroom versus a non-renovated classroom from that one again you can see the floor plan and some of the other areas are remodeled and it went backwards but you can kind of see up in here there's some remodeling of these areas reorganization with that and then there's three classrooms along here that fill in where the administration was and so this area gets pretty significantly changed and the administration a lot of ways moves across the hall just a few views of some of the things we looked at office area it's nice having the nursing station have an exterior exit out of the building did you get kind of a general feel of some of the color schemes that are going back with the new finishes without spending too much time on each one and then one of the other things you don't have to like this yet okay but one of the things that we we got into was okay what do we do at the at that entrance or the middle school and uh we started coming up with a variety of ideas some good some not so good and then we kind of stepped back and said okay we need to draw an elevation of this entire campus all the way from the west or south end of the middle school all the way to the high school because you've got a lot that's going on at the connector piece of the high school we've got an opportunity to kind of pull it together including the existing south or east entrance to mcinally so we've essentially got that complete and we're ready to kind of start talking with mr given you with it but along with that a company called sign works is starting to work with the group to work on the overall branding and graphics and we thought we could come up with something here but i think we all agreed it would be better if it was all consistent with and there's a lot of interior opportunities for that we do have about 250 000 plugged into the budget to to do those types of things so when you get all done it's not just about the building it's about branding and you know making it have some school spirit to it and things like that so uh so when you say we don't have to like it yet no is that is that the that's not the final one okay okay all right all be all right okay i wasn't sure if you were saying you'll learn to love it okay yeah no that's me saying i don't like it okay you know we go probably like a lot of the debates you guys have you know where the first time they come up again you know this is not no and uh that's when we realized that we were just shooting in the dark you know we needed to have a consistent theme that had a reason to put purple on the outside of your middle school or maybe not once we get done with the process so that that's what i mean i might say that differently next year see on the right hand side the darker purple is that you have four science class well really three with the core area one of them i think is a language and yeah language arts for his history sorry but the design that was uh worked out and preferred by pretty much everyone involved was to go to three rectangular rooms with a prep area in the center and so all of the educational work can be done in the classroom rather than trying to move back and forth from to a center lab and it creates a little bit larger remodel project because it takes that whole area including existing classrooms and remodels them but ends up with a very usable space that i think everybody's pretty excited about and if you remember some of the conversations about the high school it's the same basic scope all new case work all new cabinetry all new plumbing all new you know it's basically new rooms and then the the last component that is being bid as an alternate on the middle school basically the systems are being reused it's not a a new infrastructure project and that was the instructions that was that's really this project it's not an infrastructure project except where we absolutely have to well just a few weeks ago our mechanical engineer had been going through it and they realized that the way the plan had shaken out it would really be beneficial at this time if you could replace one of the main air handlers and they estimated it was i think about 130 000 so we're taking an alternate for that and it sets up on a mezzanine because once all this is kind of torn apart it's the right time to do something like that if we if we can afford it so we'll be seeing that number when all the other numbers come in and on the high school um it's it's it's moving along maybe you saw the south end of the gym was east south end of the south gym was removed um you know we've run into some obstacles but the contractor's doing a pretty good job of overcoming them and moving on so not really no uh negative to report here i might add though that you created a lot of phone calls for us when we uncovered the tiger and the old senior bench the alumni was all meeting in town too social media it was beautiful to see it again after 15 years i think it's been covered yeah yeah we were surprised i was very surprised so do you have any questions on the middle school end of the i know this is a pure guesstimate when are we thinking about the science rooms and when is that construction we haven't even talked timeline um because we haven't got a bit out now certainly that'll be the next thing is we'll discuss sequencing and phasing now that we have our new principal and get to get help with that and work with staff through that kind of like how we did the high school but a lot of that's really going to depend upon the feedback that we get from the contractor as far as order certainly the science labs are going to be much more involved than you know some of the other areas so we haven't gotten that far yet okay michael may asked a question on the senior and the parking lot for construction we enter the field there is there anything we can do about the rocks and stuff and since you tore up the sidewalk there's a lot of people a lot of traffic sometimes that walks across that out there yeah and it's it's kind of a i think maybe a little bit of a safety factor well i know what what your thinking is on but you know it's really since it's going to be there a while it's not very big if it really is an issue there's really no reason they couldn't put in a temporary piece of concrete sidewalk there i think it would help in the long run if we could do something yeah it's one of those things on the plans we didn't really give them a lot of information except said temporary entrance for construction well that's what they put in and i i probably would have done the same thing if i was bidding it you know i'm trying to be below bidder and now that we've lost it for a few months it might uh benefit from a piece of concrete or asphalt or something thank you for that i appreciate it thank you mike okay thank you very much all right some good stuff all right so next on the agenda is old business and there is none uh so we'll proceed with new business and first is uh the approval request the the appointment of uh brittany blackheart to a four-year term on the parks and recreation department or i think it sounds great i'll make a motion to approve second all right let me motion in a second any further discussion all right all in favor uh anybody post all right motion passes um we have an approval request for the appointment of jamie neese to a four-year term to the putnam county public library board so i'll second all right motion in a second um all in favor aye aye all opposed all right uh we then have an approval request for uh standardized food contract and that is they just supply our cleaning and sanitizing products and debbie carrico has recommended made this recommendation so i recommend them board approved solution contract well second all right promotion second all in favor aye aye any opposed all right um next up is updated textbook rental fees for green castle high school yep so this pertains to a few additional textbook purchases for some of our ap courses that were included in last month's text textbook rental uh fees of approval so we were just wanted to update those to include those before we open registration you said that they were going to be for the classroom did the students get to take them home no they'll be they'll be shared so that cost will be divided amongst a larger group okay all right um all right and that moves us to the 2022 transportation um and looks like we have two so uh uses of the buses for perennial express camp which is uh july 11th through the 15th we need to do this both together yeah and also you the use of buses for the putney county summer nurture program which is about over june june 1st through july 1st yeah so both these programs make this customer request each year we've been doing it for i don't know however many years yeah somehow it just wasn't ever formally approved and so that's why we're seeking this approval if you took in consideration the price of gas i hope best we can yes that's a bad question yeah and i think they might understand that buses are driven by some employees our employees yep and then we're reimbursed costs yeah i'll make a motion go through second all right there's a motion in a second to approve both uh all in favor aye aye any opposed all right um and then we have an approved request for special education services that's the 20 20 22 2023 line the low vision services contract with all bernstein and then there's the 2022 the assistant school psychologist contract with jamie landry yeah so these are all especially positions that um mrs sullivan has recommended the assistant school psychologist contract that's due in part to dr ayat working towards retirement and wanting more fewer days and so this will keep dr yet on board but allow someone to help fill in some of the gaps and this is actually going to reduce costs to the district for what we paid for during the 21-22 school year i'll make a motion for improvement all second all right let's motion in a second all in favor all right all opposed all right we'll surpass this um and well we've had a lot of good information this meeting this is always one of the best parts but uh so we have approval requests for donations uh there is hutton county community foundation to green castle high school band in the amount of 712 dollars and 11 cents snap mobile inc to green castle high school track and field fundraisers in the amount of 3580 and west central solid waste district to green castle middle school kitchen in the amount of 400 with the hefty thank you i make a motion to accept them second all right so motion in a second all in favor aye and anybody opposed all right that motion passes all right what um all right and so we do have uh other business yep so mr gibbon yep so seeking approval of the high school intercom o'clock refresh project through a new era of technology at a cost of 94 137 we currently work with new era on our current pa system and bell system and so again this was in the larger project and as a line item and so i'm just seeking approval to move forwards with that we did invite three vendors to bid but ultimately only new era submitted a i'll make a motion that we approve it's not in no they haven't done the work yet no no no i mean like it was an initial thought process yes all right we have motion second all in favor all right anybody opposed all right emotion passes all right well if there are any other comments all right well then um that brings us to germany so we just need to make a motion to adjourn i'll make a motion to attract i'll second all right hey motion a second all in favor all right all right that's it thank you thank you very much welcome yes welcome yeah you
so i'll take the regular minutes first so removed we'll find this weight second by mr oliver on the motion any discussion hearing none all in favor aye aye opposed motion carries four to nothing uh executive session of the same date june 6 2022.
um so move mr chair with the stipulation that the matter in which they were intended be held thank you get a tattoo of that you know i know i still can't get the wording right yeah after a while it just rolls off after how many years john 32 but who's counting all right moved by mr oliver second by miss weight on the motion any discussion chair hearing then all in favor aye aye opposed motion carries unanimously all right uh next order of business is the superint superintendent's evaluation presentation okay say that three times just pulling up one thing yep let's see because one of them i didn't print out yeah just one of the goals so i got all that so okay so thank you and um just as i'm hoping everybody was able to access the link for the shared folds there's a lot in there so we can just go over a little bit of that but i'll just present the highlights for the work that we did this year so i i thought along and hard on how to uh title this years and so of course i just started as embracing the transition back to continuing to become normal if you will so before we do that as i'll just say we always like this this we call the summary grid or progress monitoring whatever you want to call it because it the entire team will add to it in the various areas and we've kept these over the last six or seven years so it continues to show a history of all the work that's gone on but then we for this night we usually then keep like the red is from kind of last year or so into this year and then the new in the blue so just so you know and then the goals are there i also included the work that the schools have done as i asked them to just provide a little update on how well they did with their school improvement plans because as you know our work was focused on those four areas fostering relationships etc and then i provided you with a narrative it's like how many ways can you explain the same thing a narrative of some of the highlights the major points and with the documents that are attached that you can link into so hopefully you've been able to find pretty much everything that you you'd be looking for so we talked a lot about over the last i would say two years or so about how resilient the staff and students had to be to really survive if you will and and continue to press forward during the pandemic so i always like to put some kind of description of the things that we felt were important during those times and of course we focused on the community we had a lot of compassion we continue to think about those mental health issues that staff and students are also struggling with had struggled with confidence that we our team could move forward obviously commitment to doing that and centering centering what we like to call our true north what's the true north and really doing what we can the best that we can keeping students at the center of that work so i just wanted to remind you about um the thing when we worked with desi this year in the beginning of the year we talked about and even last year we started to talk about not so much at as closing gaps we didn't want to say that everybody had fallen behind as much as we were finding ways to accelerate that learning and if you recall which i think i have in here later some of that work we started off actually with our admin leadership team in the beginning of last year with the deci explaining to us about that acceleration learning network and pathway and then we asked the schools to really think about that as we move kiddos forward and one of the things i think really the important thing was about taking them from where they were and moving them forward with the right scaffolding and supports rather than say what did you miss what did you miss what did you miss but kind of close those gaps in an acceleration manner okay once again as a reminder you had the schools came forward and did the school improvement plans and they focused in on these areas which were the overarching priorities so as i said i provided you with in the in rather than try to just recount it and summarize it all of the schools provided me with the progress they've made so that is in your the drive as well so as you recall we asked everyone how are they going to do what were they going to do in their schools to foster that sense of belonging and partnership among students and families how are we going to continuously monitor students understanding what methods where would would be using and ensure that strong grade appropriate instruction as i said a minute ago with just-in-time scaffolding and the proper supports and strong instructional practices oh that's kind of small but that's a little small i may not even be able to read that myself let's see so some of the things and again this is just highlights and and the rest of the work it the rest of the information is in that drive so under standard one instructional leadership and i won't lead everything underneath it of course i'll just highlight a couple of things but as i just said the use of the acceleration map and thinking about how did we provide training for our team what the school improvement plans went ahead and focused on those priority areas and one of the highlights i think also is the grade 8 civics and humanitarian studies which you you would see in the middle school synopsis that i put in the in the drive of course we adopted the bridges math program and that started with some research into various programs math coaches working to look at those and then rolling that out with pd et cetera in in the schools and um we actually had a leadership meeting this morning and they were talking about how one of the principles saying how they were happy about the amount of pd that we provided and especially through the math coaches that were helping teachers learn about that that program because a lot to it a lot of manipulatives etc uh and of course the alignment of the elementary literacy curriculum units of study as you recall we've had the cia teams and the l3 teams working on these kinds of things um beefing up the phonics area for that area as well some of the secondary updates continuing to vertically align the content areas thinking about long term especially that vertical view if you will and the social studies curriculum as i said the middle school especially with that humanitarianism and just some more updates to how are we and implementing things in the classroom the focus on pre-tests the feedback the targeted interventions and some of the work about continuing the work that we had done before with highlander and the project-based work it throughout the schools that was important for the folks to think about as well and then some of the updates to the evaluation system what we kind of mean there is we had taken a little bit of a less structured approach to evaluation in the covert years and um that was with agreement with um the union as well as the leadership and then so we really got back into because people weren't here sometimes as we know got back into what evaluation should really look like just a few highlights in in standard two with management and operations once again even though kovid was coming to an end we still had to work to make sure and jonathan misskellshaw and his team continuing to take care of all the technology devices we have in the district and the repair replacement et cetera and as you remember we still had deci with the cdc guidance still coming at us in the early part of the year we we were implementing the test and stay program and that that was a big transition we then had the test to give out take-home tests so there was a lot of organization through all of those things and i put transition to normal school and thinking about technical versus adaptive because we had the technical pieces where we started to bring back for example lunchrooms looking the way they were taking away seating or having all students in at one time having them in the specials things like that those movements around the building and of course the mass came off but the adaptive changes i think are are as difficult for folks because as we know the the pandemic really took a toll on people's emotions um just all of that and the anxiety so think about that adaptive piece where okay you're now masculine is there still a pandemic is there not how do i care for these kids how do i care for myself so trying to be supportive for folks in those areas was part of our work as well and just recently we've updated finished updating the comprehensive emergency management plan so we involve the schools in that our nurses etc etc we sent it off to our fire department partners and our police partners and um we're actually waiting for one signature on that and those that will be going out and for um publication and for us and then of course we're planning for days of training right off the bat in that area with our staff when we get back as it says drafting plans for that analysis and shifts just support in the personnel are folks that are for example the speech and language would people coming and going or not finding people but we feel we're in a good place now but that continual analysis of who we have and who do we need and how do we get those people on board of course successful grant writing you recall we had the academy acceleration academies jonathan got a big technology grant and of course essa jim is still struggling with i guess or managing i should say um we made another uh round of team chair training this year so because we felt it had been a couple of years ms townsend's crew did that for us and so we had veteran people who had had the training in a couple of years ago uh had a different schedule than brand new people that hadn't been in dartmouth and and received that training so that their their training was a little bit more extended and then of course personnel issues the ongoing whatever it might be through human resources um whether it was people's leave for for covet or or resignations or whatever it might be just handling all of that so china uh standard three increasing family and community engagement we found that one i guess benefit from kovid was the ability to have virtual team meetings in for various areas and uh we've taken advantage of that and and especially team meetings with parents we've found that they've been being able to attend more readily it's they have more access to it so that was good and collaboration with organizations such as smack they provide webinars they provide some pd and they're always connecting with us on that and of course the new one which you know about is the partnership with the cook center so that's taken off and we had a webinar on that and quite a few folks attended we know there are a number of folks that have taken advantage of the private counseling yep so that's good and of course our ongoing collaboration with town departments especially around the budget budget time when as we know this year they once again the town was very generous i would say very supportive of our budget requests and just the rest of it that the normal the week we continued with the weekly backpacks and all the other communications that we had initiated prior and then the conversations we're trying to have and have had some with our um our native american folks and once our directors are on board we'll get that going to the best of our ability as well okay professional culture same kind of thing professional development as i said with deci we've taken advantage of some of their things as uh example was the acceleration road map and other webinars that they've provided the cdc um excuse me the um i can't even think of the covet now the group we worked with along with desi had numerous webinars as well so maintaining our knowledge in that area ongoing support pd support for the curriculum special education technology all of that mental health and um just skipping down a little bit as you know we've we are now in negotiation sessions with the all of the units and of course we've handled grievances and other other things other issues regular dea dlt and cult meetings and um let's see oh uh one good one with the professional culture as well is just really looking at our school libraries and enhancing diversity with the book choices that we've had and always inclusive budget meetings and as i mentioned just the hiring practices where even myself if i don't meet with them like i know like the principals now that are hiring their assistants always reach out to the staff and have folks help out with those processes so that's kind of a high level highlight and once again i always like to end with quotes right so we're not a team because we work together we're a team because we respect trust and care for each other so with that as i said that's kind of the highlight i one thing i didn't give you which i'll i'll get tomorrow and send also is the the forms do you remember we did the use those forms for the summative so i did not put that in the in the drive so i'll do that and um oh there was one more thing i was going to say so that i got everything else in there the improvement the one improvement goal that one goal we did not you'll see it we really didn't do what we said we were going to do and it was um because one of the district was the acceleration it was the one when we thought we were going to be able to update the professional development tab that we had started uh offering different things we did we actually started it during covid so people would have access to that we really didn't do a lot on that to be honest and um the other one was the district the comprehensive audit that we had so that's in there with some of the documents for that so that's it so i thought given we will have a meeting in july that usually i guess would be you and mary would get together once folks submitted so you can set a date for what you would not do it actually it was was it mrs amarillo i can't remember yeah okay yeah kathy kathy and i did the last one so okay that's it somehow down the line we volunteered to do it again so whatever you want to set as a date that you would expect your colleagues to submit their write-ups to you and then um i think we could have it ready for the july meeting what's the date of that july 27th oh that's yeah that's plenty of time yeah any time july 25th i was close okay i was close the oops yeah and i want to thank karen scorpio in the office for helping do all the little links and attachments because that's where i break down sometimes at least you can move it through it i wouldn't even know where to start okay uh questions comments mr oliver thank you mr chair uh so while i do have um several comments and questions um i think i'm going to hold off uh personally if we could just talk about the time frame i guess talk about the time time frame of course first there's obviously a lot here today you have to digest um and i'd like to see and this is just my sole thoughts on this is for the july 27th that we say july 22 july 25th meeting that maybe we could come back now that dr gifford has pre has preformally presented everything publicly if we could come back just and ask questions at that time um i'd like to see maybe a meeting in august where we put together our you know by then have the responses sent and then you you have the um the shared um evaluation report ready for the for the august meeting um that's just my thoughts on it just because i'll be honest with you i haven't had a lot of time and probably vacation right july yeah with vacations and everything else going on i mean i was gonna i was gonna think about that because i mean you know dr jenkins is is a way everybody is right you know it's summertime no this is probably a good idea you know if you kind of did some in july and you know even if this with all due respect bounces to the first meeting in september type of right it would it would be good that way i mean so nobody's stressing themselves out over the summits relax recharge the batteries go at it that way that's that's my opinion okay yeah again yes i understand what you're saying i appreciate that yeah no just my two cents on yeah i thought if we can just so i can't enough give this okay if i can just give this the time yeah that it deserves and yeah no absolutely i i do want to thank dr gifford for for the presentation and for all the information yeah and i think the last the last slide sums it up regarding the team that um you know it's kudos to to you and your team yeah it's absolutely a team because it does take a team especially during these past several years so thank you yeah i mean i've said it before and you know you you have done um with the help of karen and her you know hyperlink uh uh yeah help and and everyone that has helped in this process you uh oh god my voice is echoing it's so disconcerting um anyway thank you for this is a lot i mean you you you bring us what we've witnessed and what we know and what uh you know we trust and we're you know proud of um i wondered you know with we talk about that accelerated learning and the messaging through desi which i thought i i understand um but knowing like parental fear around well what did my kiddo miss out on the last couple years uh it might relate to management operations relate to like family community engagement do we have a formal mechanism i mean i don't know that we do but perhaps we could and i and i know we don't have like maybe the person to sort of do this but to feel those kinds of so you know parental fear stems from miscommunication yes we communicate in multiple ways um but that doesn't always reach families we've we've experienced that feedback from from the community during the last two years i wonder if like the cpac we we do welcome comments and commentary and i meet with uh beth townsend you know month well we try to meet monthly we met this morning and maybe i should have asked her some of these questions that i have but we had we've had a very productive meeting but you know i would love to find a way and i don't know what that is to be a little bit more um a mechanism for to allow for parents to be part of that loop in a in a more in a more meaningful way like we i feel like we do a lot of telling them what we do and they're not there are not maybe enough opportunities yes we hear them we we i hear from them in the community i get letters as a school committee member and as of today my town email works so you can email me from the town of dartmouth and i will receive it after all these years yeah yeah i gave up on it but i decided to reach out to sarah in like two days from her vacation she fixed it but um so i don't know if there if there could be something i'm happy to help out with that i certainly feel those myself but i i there's nothing to lose and there's much to gain from allowing the parents to be more of that team or i don't making them feel that their voice is heard more than just saying we read your email that sort of thing i don't know yeah no let me um chat with the principals because i know we've done various things over the past but it might be a nice idea like you said since we're kind of really returning to normal and and kind of how folks feel that transition has been and um because i know like you s we have done surveys in the past and we get some pretty good responses we did a number of them so even i mean maybe it's not impossible yeah maybe i'm on the loop maybe the the parent yeah councils at each school could be a mechanism for getting a little bit close to i don't know i just i just think it's important and i think it can do that help in building you know coming together again and seeing one another again and um getting ahead of it rather than being you know sometimes it comes off as a defensive or well we are doing that and we are doing that but we always can do better but thank you for that um sure and then just a question about the emergency management i know we've had a forum and i know this is do we plan would that be something we could have a presentation or perhaps mr i don't know if there's plans to sort of get that out to the community in a way again maybe not a public forum but we try to be careful like exactly i know some of that's confidential yeah i know that yeah i think what the community will like to hear is when we have a schedule of more regular uh drills etc things like that i think that's because they they've heard from us over the past couple of years even from when we had that big forum that time you know some of the things like the camera updates the monitoring of that the ability of the police department to look at all of our cameras and see if there was an emergency they could see where this person might be or what's going on those kinds of things that we have done the emergency management plan of course addresses numerous issues and how to respond and who should be involved but i think i think knowing that we have that updated but that we have a meeting with our police partners etc and that we have some training plans and because that's what we're doing now is right off the bat what are we going to do because yeah i mean once kovid was there and then we were out of school in school and then we kind of just you know get relaxed in a way absolutely so so i think that will be helpful yeah i know i found i found it helpful yep you know i having a child who you know does have significant disabilities and um i i was reassured during a presentation of how that is handled and i know going into it i was sort of like how are you gonna you know sure there's no way you know my kid was to say i'm here you know and i was reassured in terms of what that means and what the data and the statistics around that so yeah um just thought yeah thank you i don't really have anything else all right at this point just thank you for all of this okay information yeah so i i have taken some time to look at this but i certainly agree with uh you know chris mr oliver over here that i wouldn't mind a little bit you know certainly i appreciate to kind of delve a little bit deeper i do think it's you know it's so clear as we look at this you know how much we did around covin and the pandemic and how you know we shifted and i really think that as a district we did a great job yeah you guys did a great job our staff were flexible our students were very flexible um you know at the end of the day you know now it's time for them to kind of you know focus on those other skills and i think it's great to get back into that norm and we have a lot of you know positive change that i think that's coming in among our staff so that's uh you know i i give a lot of credit to jim um mr kylie because again everything that was involved in the buildings and coming back and you know crazy pushing seats apart put pulling back together so i think you know to me like that part speaks for itself and we've been hearing that over the last few years everything that we've done and you know i think our staff you know all the change that they made and you know i mean the learning curve with technology and the fact that now we're one-to-one it's just really it's it's astounding the progress so i think that is you know astounding and again you know job well done there um detective mr news and so many things but uh i do agree with um miss amaral though that i think as we start the year since we are focusing as i look through so much around the garbage of accelerated learning i think you know if we can explain that to our parents just to you know really get that out there and say like this is what that means and it doesn't mean that we're not providing you know these other fundamentals but i do think that that would be helpful for folks just to understand what we're talking about you know that this is a this is a positive step and you know we're we're targeting we're making sure that students are learning at their age appropriate curriculum and their access that they have full access to that curriculum and we're making that happen so yeah again those are you know i think again as we i think that's really positive language and i'd like to see that continue but it just might be helpful to interpret that for families but uh but again like to re-access this through the summer i think it's great thank you okay i'll just i'll just echo what my colleagues have have stated and uh as i was watching the presentation and everything else i think there's a few more things i have to go print out because i did print out some of them but i think there's some behind take a peek in that drive the behind the scenes type of deal but i did i'll take a look at it and it was a lot i'll yell if i need help i know mrs oliveira is always very helpful yeah so all right so in in all seriousness uh we'll circle back on this in july to have some more discussion on it and we'll shoot for uh our august meeting or if not our august meeting again depending what schedules are in august uh to uh you know into that first meeting in september if that's again if that's okay with it that'd be great no okay that's fine all righty new business mr kylie maintenance custodial summer projects fun times thank you mr newman's it is fun times indeed it's uh it's busy it's already been uh five days since the end of school we have 43 days left before we start you know before we have a school full of uh people again so we've got 43 days to accomplish an awful lot on this list and it's going to be difficult for sure i'm not going to go through every single thing on the list i provided you but i'll talk a little bit about some specific projects that are exciting and also just want to remind everyone that a big part of what we're doing in the summer is the routine and preventative stuff that makes our buildings last and makes them look a lot better than you might think they they would given their age so um you know obviously a big part of our focus is is on that routine and preventative maintenance but also we're not complacent and what we have isn't good enough um we always want to improve and so we have some specific projects that i'll highlight um library renovations here at the high school so if you look around you'll see a few things starting to change in here particularly in the area over we're starting in the area over there we essentially are gonna are going to upgrade this entire library as we move a little further into the project we'll come back and talk to you about what that looks like in terms of funding at the moment we're okay we haven't ordered furniture or anything like that but we we are in that process and we hope that school choice funds we've actually mentioned that when we've presented on school choice previously to you folks included in an estimate in there but school choice is a great use of funds to upgrade this library and we'll be talking about where right now we're taking things off walls and painting but we're going to be replacing the floor replacing the furniture really making it a user-friendly space for kids and so yeah we're excited about that project so that's a big one for us we're also working on the auditorium lighting and sound systems which have been on our list for a long time um we are sort of in the in the planning process still though on that um but our hope is that we actually have real movement this summer to at least begin that process we do have capital improvement funding to support part of that hopefully all of that but we're waiting for on prices and things of that nature and specifics before we move forward hvac maintenance and repairs we have we have a project that we've been working on in conjunction with the green communities funding that the town has in place and some of their some of their federal funding related to covid so we've been upgrading our our energy management systems we're going to be working all summer on that we've been actually working all spring on it and going to continue with that and really just we you know everyone's seen how important hvac you know has been um and obviously our our old buildings need attention and and we're continuing to address that there um security improvements we're going to be doing a variety of of things and assessing exactly what we need focusing our efforts on you know doors and securing facilities making sure that everything is working properly doors windows so we're going to be doing that this summer also i just wanted to mention although in terms of cost this isn't a big item but we're always focused on installing energy saving appliances lights we're going to be doing a fair amount of that throughout the schools this summer it's just one that i always love to do because it means that we'll save a few bucks for something else down the road um so um you know we're we're again focused on that another big project probably our biggest project is that we're working on refrigeration systems at multiple schools so we've targeted some aging equipment at the middle school the quinn school hopefully the potter and the mellow schools that really really needs replacement both for efficiency and just operational continuity down the road so we're um we're in the process of of making that happen it's a pretty complicated project actually and uh lead times have proven to be a challenge already on that project another one that is not a glamorous project but i think is worth mentioning is we had a number of problems over the last few years relating to our sewer connection at the cushman school we're going to be addressing that with a more long-term hopefully semi-permanent uh solution this summer so that we don't have anybody having to climb in and out of the sewer on a daily basis oh and hoping that we can make it through the school day um so that's that's a it's an exciting one for us believe it or not um and we're also working on some things like grease trap replacement which i've talked to you about so i think it's worthwhile mentioning and the town of course was generous enough to give us funding for that um and we're moving forward with those with those uh projects as well so we we have a lot on our plate um it's a lot to juggle and i think that it is generally a more challenging time to be doing um school improvement and renovation projects than we've ever had before given the availability and the price of the price of products so so it's it's going to be a busy time but we've got 43 days left we'll get it done any questions chris thank you mr mr kylie how are you with staffing because i know uh the last um last time we spoke about maintenance staffing um there was a shortage there were some unfilled positions um do you have any positive news in that we we do i mean we i guess what i would say is and which i i think we we said uh previously it was very challenging to find highly qualified staff we have a full staff right now um we're excited uh that that we've been able to to hire for all of our positions currently and everybody's working hard and has been um we filled on uh i believe it was may 23rd was was um we had two people start on may 23rd and that that filled up our our maintenance staff um and if any i'm sure people noticed at the different events at the schools the year-end events we really uh john bernard our facilities manager really focused on trying to get the the buildings in good shape and ready for all these big events um we've gotten a lot of positive feedback about the condition of the buildings and grounds for those events so um so yeah the community was very supportive which which goes a long way for um the morale in the group so we we love that um but but yeah so we're we're in good shape and we needed them because we're uh we're straight out now no that's great so we're back to the original our original fte account from we are the one had we are moved around yeah okay no that's great thank you very much for your update i think you're welcome samuel this is white also no just thank you thank you you'll be working hard that's good we've got alan's replacement i know he knows next week we do it weeks alan yeah we are we actually brought in um shane swansea who is uh alan braley's replacement um who allen after 30 you know um is retiring and he's retiring in a couple of weeks and um so shane came in on may 23rd okay one of those yeah and he's doing an unbelievable job very knowledgeable guy um on the ground side particularly so we were lucky to find him you know and it did thank you and you know you look at what the maintenance is is doing per se but you also you know you've got the custodians that are you know moving furniture out and stripping floors and waxing and you know that type that type of deal that i know they've already started working on so you know everybody's uh busy beavers as they say that's good thank you for the update sir anything else on this okay all right superintendent update thank you so speaking of acceleration academies and pathways and everything desi once again i think it was friday night they put a grant opportunity for our next to sell acceleration academy um so miss oliveira did get that done so we've applied for that grant it was due like in the week you know the kind of thing but that will be for that august two-week camp that we had last year um it will be for the ela they're telling us it has to be for k through two which is a little bit a little bit funky if you will because we have to submit data and we really don't have data on k you know it's hard but we'll we'll get the grant i'm sure and and all of that and then um the math will be grades three four eight and ten and i think last year last year we had about 120 students that participated so we'll see uh if we get the grant we should know and then we'd be able to advertise for that the curriculum summit was last week and we ran it first grade 6 through 12 this year and we had 58 people participate um working on the curriculum areas health in particular did some really really good work so and those units will be put in a rubicon etc but we're happy that people really want to really want to participate in that curriculum summit they want to be together they want to get some things done and so that's good uh the credit recovery is is going as as you know our regular summer school and then esy starts next weekend we'll have 100 miss townsend estimate 140 to 160.