001and you have we just have to ensure that we have created the space for you to be able to determine whatever it is and to be prepared for that and so i'm very excited for your gap year and the years after that um that's that's awesome so thank you for that as i begin uh my report this evening i'm excited to recognize uh one of our trustees trustee patterson and i know over the last um few board meetings we have honored trustee patterson on a number of occasions and uh unfortunately it's not gonna be for uh duke winning the national i'll rub championship in oh dr whitehurst pain okay um but i wanna recognize trustee patterson um for his um receiving the princeton prize in race relations and i think this is an important recognition
002he is one of three in california who is receiving a thousand dollars and an all expense paid trip to princeton um to participate in a symposium on race and this is awarded to our students for their work in their school and their communities for undertaking sufficient roles in advancing racial equity and so congratulations trustee patterson you continue to represent us well and represent the uc community well and represent all of our students very well congratulations and you should be very proud [Applause] and um additionally as everyone knows and and um as we heard earlier we do focus on health and wellness a great deal in the san diego unified school district and this is a priority and we often talk about students this also includes our staff and this helps strengthen our community and the
003the health and safety of our communities and so this past april 4th we brought back thousands of employees or brought them together here at the central office as we called spring into to wellness and what an incredible event for hundreds of employees so i want to say thank you to nursing and wellness specifically kate mcdevitt our district wellness supervisor as well as the employees of the human resources division for their efforts the employees of the the office of the superintendent and a very special thank you to jessica marrero uh who without her this would not have happened and so many others uh it would it would take our whole meeting if i thanked everyone by name and so i will say everyone who contributed and all of the partners particularly the puppies we had puppies
004here um and uh yes yes we had puppies here so thank you to the puppies and our hope is that when we host events like this that our employees get a chance to get motivated and get in the habit of really thinking about health and um i know garfield high school they just launched a month um where i'm i'm supposed to do a mile a day um to um get me moving andrew you can join me a mile a day uh walking or running um and they're doing that at garfield um high school which is which is great and and it's it's taking the first step to our our um our wellness and our health and we want to continue to do this for our employees as we know they're going to spend many many
005years taking care of our children and we want them to take care of our health i'm also pleased to say that we have taken an important step in health and wellness as we have partnered with our friends at pedal ahead and taking part in a wellness event and reaching their goal pedal ahead has reached their goal in partnership with us and they have provided 54 e-bikes to our employees to san diego unified employees and they have reported that our employees have already ridden 635 miles on these bikes that is another initiative that we're taking on to make sure that our employees have an opportunity to increase their health and their wellness and do it in partnership with with our outside partners and thank you you know to everyone who's making these events possible for our
006employees i also want to celebrate an opportunity that i had with our chief staff dr rodi and bruce bivins area one superintendent we went out to knox elementary our middle school and had a chance to hear about teacher collaboration and visit a mathematics classroom uh along with visiting their restorative justice circle space and it was it was phenomenal i also got a chance to get out to fletcher elementary school and join um with an organization art mural painting with the fifth graders now i don't encourage anyone to go out in a suit and tie and try to paint with fifth graders um paint was flying everywhere uh thank goodness they gave me an apron um but that doesn't cover everything um and so um i did get out of there without paint all over um
007but what a great job they're doing and art mural came out met with our students um asked them what they dream about for their school and really thinking about more green spaces the environment and reading and they take the themes creative mural and then they have the students come out and participate in painting and so great work out there at fletcher and many of our schools and lastly an opportunity to get out to our trace program transitional learning for many of our students amazing work they're doing out there around a guaranteed viable curriculum creating learning domains for our students who are in transition and also a real focus on advocacy and agency as i spoke about earlier community independent learning employment education and training and health and recreation these are the domains uh that are
008being created at the tres school and uh want to thank uh everyone for doing that and um i made one mistake i said art mural it was a mural program through art reach uh thank you um for um for giving me for that uh outreach uh with that it concludes my report and i say ubuntu thank you thank you thank you very much let us move on now to the board reports and we will start with our star here trustee zachary patterson thank you so i had a really incredible few days i was able to head out to boston first of all and be sit in a great group of people at tufts university as we're talking about civics curriculum for the nation give me one second i promise i don't have covet already tested
009negative multiple times thank you um we were able to go over what it looks like to create an equitable democracy and the role of public schools and being able to do that and i know i'm really excited in being able to continue to work with us to try to find ways that we can get our 16 to 18 year olds pre-registered to vote and then 18 plus registered to vote but even more so than just that initial registration what it looks like to more meaningfully engaged students we talk about agency and agency is a foundation for democracy right when we want a more successful society when we want people that are actively participating that means that they believe in themselves at a very young age and they believe that their school systems match the democratic
010process right if we have a we have statistics in our district from just a few years ago where students um 70 of students report not feeling engaged in or not feeling engaged in the processes that create their school system well if that's the first initiation to government they have what's going to encourage them to participate in the future and we continue to work towards that and i know i'm excited to continue work to accelerate that and find ways that we can really break through that statistic and find a way to perpetuate and allow students to create a culture around voting the second piece i was able to participate in a conference with the national council on mental well-being and it really brought to the forefront a reminder of what mental health first aid means and
011the importance of formally understanding that when you have basic first aid training you should also have a basic competency on how to handle a mental health crisis and how important it is that all of our educators know how to and i'm excited to continue work and challenge all of us to see how we can do that to be stronger thank you for that report two minutes goes away fast when you're on the timer over here all of us let's start to my left come around um i'll be doing a joint uh presentation with dr mike but i do have a couple things i wanted to say very quickly first of all congratulations trustee zack patterson on your recognition i think it is definitely um something to that we are all proud for you and i
012think this is exciting um second i do want to mention to all of the parents at patrick henry high school and the members of the community at patrick henry high school that i have read every single email i am i've listened to every single voicemail message i'm working with the superintendent and the staff we engage weekly to make sure that we're going to continue to provide quality rigorous education for all students at patrick henry high school and that we will not eliminate any rigorous accelerated classes in fact we're working on this currently and we'll be reporting out in a couple of weeks a way forward also i do want to say how exciting it was to see the point loma jrotc color guard here tonight so that we could all give the pledge of allegiance
013in person um and that's very exciting to be back in school where masks are optional now because of our coveted case rates have dropped so low thank you um and i do want to also uh just welcome any ukrainian immigrant or children into our schools and into our hearts um that they may be able to escape the horror of what's going on over there and our school doors are open thank you thank you trustee well michael if you want to go forward yeah i'm ready yeah thank you uh trustee visor for sharing this time with me but before we show the video i too want to thank the point loma color guard so we could all do the pledge uh together i want to thank our staff for making it possible for me to be
014with you tonight so technologically i am on the big screen behind you in reality i am above you uh in the boardroom but professionally i am with you uh in the work that we're doing here tonight so as a board member kevin biser mentioned we are combining our time to lift up hickman elementary school's leader in me program which as uh trustee patterson mentioned develops student agency so let's please play the video hickman elementary is a small elementary school here in mira mesa san diego california we have 435 students i love our school because we are super diverse we have over 27 different languages spoken here when i came here i noticed that we have a lot of leaders but everyone was working in their own cylinders i didn't feel a sense of community here
015when i first came everyone was kind of on their own little island even within my grade level everyone was just doing their own thing this school was in a pretty big slump it was not enough communication it was maybe a feeling of insecurity almost that people weren't feeling good about their teaching or what's going on we realized that we needed a common language we needed something to pull us together we started doing a book study with this amazing book called the leader in me what if we started working with unlocking the genius in each child what does it mean to actually be a leader and so once we started using it the culture changed i mean it was it was so quick after leader me i saw a definite transformation where students were more involved
016they felt they had a voice teachers felt like they had a voice what i like about leading me in school is that everybody is a leader since the school grammy the kids are also in charge they let you be free and let you do a lot of things it's not just one child is going to be the great leader of the class each child has unique genius that we need to unleash i feel like seven habits help me become a better person and help me influence other people to be too i feel like the seven habits helped me in my life by tel they helped me understand what i'm meant for you can be a leader too at the age that you're at and also you are also important i have triplets in kindergarten and
017just seeing them become their little leaders they come home and they tell me stories about getting to be this class leader a table leader leader in need takes you from leadership is for the few but leadership is for all you lead by setting example for others to try to and try to inspire people to be leaders as well i think what makes a good leader is someone that since it sets a good example and inspires others to be a leader they should probably not be the kind of leader that tells people what to do and instead they actually show them there's a freedom in in learning leadership skills and it's really built the confidence of the of the students but the staff do each of our teachers went through the seven habits training they learned
018that they need to walk the walk and truly be that leader and then how do they release that leadership to their students it's a constant reminder of what i need to do and when i teach the students i'm living when i'm teaching [Applause] [Music] thank you for sharing that with us thank you are you ready mr trustee yeah yeah thank you president whitehurst first of all i want to thank president whitehurst payne and superintendent jackson uh for participating in the las pagnanita celebration that the cesar chavez service clubs had at hoover high school on the friday right before spring break that was both about honoring uh the work and legacy of cesar chavez but also was a chance for the chavistas to talk about the work that they're doing today the advocacy that work that
019they've been doing around promoting mental health fighting for a sustainable climate and the work that they're doing in their individual schools and and then the chavistas honored ann smith who's an amazing member of our community who worked side by side with caesar and the farm workers to negotiate contracts in the early 70s and went on to become a lawyer and represented the coalition of city employees and overturning at the california supreme court the the ban on employee pensions they were able to restore pensions to public sector uh workers uh and i was led by ann smith so that was a great event and again honored to be with the superintendent and president whitehorse payne and vice president vazo last night our sunday night at the uh beyond brilliance awards uh with that the vapa foundation
020brought the community together to support our uh arts and music programs in our schools and we had amazing performances from scpa they previewed tommy they did the last number of tommy so we're all looking forward to seeing the the whole production and the mira mesa marching band scripps ranch uh dance company and then very proud to see the barbershop quartet or barbershop uh uh choir from san diego high school that kayla rogers uh you know really built up and they were beautiful so great event certainly was thank you for reporting on that trustee vice president yes um good evening um i also before i give my report i did want to express my sorrow to steve lux his family his colleagues the music teacher that recently passed away from cancer he was a amazing teacher
021amazing parent my daughter actually he was my violin my daughter's violin teacher at sandburg elementary and i saw you know firsthand how he well how wonderful he was with the students and i was very sad to hear of his passing um so i wanted to share that personal statement and on on a more positive note i i attended and was part of the ribbon cutting ceremony that was at the stanley pool in university city yes or zac patterson's high school and it's also not just a pool but a whole aquatic center this project has been over 10 years in the making and there was a lot of people that made this possible i mean it wouldn't happen if it weren't for a lot of pushing one of those being my predecessor dr john lee evans
022he for at least the last 10 years has been pushing for this project a lot of people in the uc community so i just wanted to thank him also lee dolgarov yep he's here facilities and construction the supervisor for the district is been always wonderful to work with but he was there and has been behind the scenes trying to make this happen for many years as well the they in addition to the pool they have a walking and running path they have outdoor pavilion so it's not only just for the school um but also for the greater community and this was a joint use project with the city of san diego so and i also when i was at the event was talking to the um in the gentleman from parks and rec and lee
023about how we need to move forward with pools and more of our schools because there's a lot of our students that don't know how to swim um and so more and more of these types of programs i think are going to be really important we live in a coastal city next to the ocean and we you know our students need to know how to swim so i think this is a good start and we're going to be moving forward with pools in other parts of the city so thank you that's my report for tonight and thank you for that about the pools because i saw that jackie robinson wise pool is opening soon for the lincoln high student so that's upcoming in not a minute too soon we need that i i personally just wanted
024to take a moment to ditto what our trustee vladira said over here and what trustee uh what all of them have said all good stuff but i i also just want to report on the e-vehicles program that we received 9.6 million dollars 9.6 million dollar grant and we have some buses electric buses come into town for us for our students and they're starting at lincoln high school in that community that cluster because they've noted over the years that the schools that are tend to not be as high scs socioeconomically endowed more children have asthma and other health issues because they have to breathe these fumes so the grant was written with lincoln high school and and schools like that in mind and we get the first buses very proud of that i went and got
025a hat and a water bottle and other paraphernalia stickers and i thought if one student will write me an email and tell me why they think that we should have electrical vehicles and whatnot i'll send it out to them melissa hope you're listening um so we'll send it out to that student who would like to have all of this paraphernalia okay thank you for that and i just want to report on on friday march 15th at 3 30 i've gotten an email that lincoln high school is having a peace march you want to stop all the violence and have a peace march so want more information go on their website or just contact my office and me and i plan to be there to march with them so that we can have more peace in
026the city and with that thank you all for your reports and let us move on now to item e1 which is this is the second reading of our a through g completion improvement grant and we are asking the board to approve this uh reminder we've seen a presentation we had a first reading this is 12 million dollars just over 12 million dollars to extend learning for our students and also have credit recovery and acceleration as well as improve our dashboard for reporting out and support for our teachers and professional learning and so this is the second read from of the board for this presentation we asked the board to prove thank you i'll move item e1 thank you a second on that okay we have um kevin biser trustee and richard barrera to make the
027motion and second it we have no speakers and does anybody want to discuss otherwise i get to hear from dr first the student trustee what is your vote i i and now i get to hear from doctor mike upstairs i don't think yep i okay and everybody else please press your buttons and that passes 5-0 with a student vote concurring with the rest of us so thank you for that look forward to that and we move on to item e2 thank you president dr whitehurst payne as you know we want to provide updates on the implementation of our local control accountability plan for the 2122 school year and tonight's update will focus on lcap goal six where we are designing well orchestrated district-wide support services with an emphasis on increasing communication with students staff and
028families and presenting this evening chief public information officer andrew sharp maureen mcgee our director of communications and samurainaji facilities communications supervisor so i'm going to turn it over to them to begin thank you sorry is that working perfect thank you very much um uh president dr whitehurst payne uh vice president bazo trustees superintendent esteemed colleagues thank you very much for letting us share tonight um in keeping with protocols of the board this is as you see uh referred to as lcap goal six um because part of what we do in communications is translate the jargon i will say that really we want to present on our main commitment to the city which is um as we like to say our schools make san diego a better place to live and that's really our fundamental commitment
029to the city we in communications do that um mostly through transparency and by holding ourselves accountable to the highest standards so people know what to expect from a great education at san diego unified that enables them to then hold us accountable to delivering that great education and so we like to say that you should be able to count on san diego unified to receive five particular things we we talk about advanced academics we talk about advanced technology talk about arts and music we and we talk about civics and we talk about athletics and those are our five big commitments that we like to highlight all the time because they really go to how we make the city a better place by providing students with those opportunities and then in terms of accountability obviously i i
030couldn't i couldn't share all the uh all the commitments we have to transparency and equity and everything if we didn't have a great team and in terms of communications that's certainly the case and i'd like to introduce my colleague our communications director maureen mcgee thank you andrew and thank you to the board and superintendent jackson okay thank you andrew thank you to the board and to superintendent jackson oh yes next slide please um anyway thank you for the opportunity to have this conversation about the goals we have set with the community it's important to be clear that tonight's presentation serves as an lcap update but these goals are broader than what appear in the lcap goal six well orchestrated district-wide supports services and communication these schools live throughout the lcap and throughout district documents we
031have pulled them all together in one place to hold ourselves accountable to each of them as you can see we have big goals and all of them are rooted in excellence and equity because that's what we all stand for thank you we all know that good effective communication is crucial to the entire district and its mission if a parent feels disconnected to what's happening with their students education it's about communication if a teacher feels uninformed about district initiatives it's about communication and if a student feels like they lack a voice in their education it's it's about communication when we communicate well parents and staff the community families are able to engage in honest dialogue and that's when everyone wins next slide please okay again you can see we have big goals but setting goals is
032not enough as our board president likes to tell us show me the numbers so we have uh connected our goals to some numbers to be effective communicators during this presentation we will refrain from narrating the slides but i encourage you all to please look at them as i run through some of the numbers i would like to start by highlighting that our weekly better sd e-blast newsletter that we started a couple years before the pandemic now has grown to 130 000 subscribers that's about ten percent up from last year this year's e-blast open rate climbs from about 20 to 28 to peaks of about 50 percent which is phenomenal it demonstrates that our families and employees continue to seek out information from our schools we also seek out feedback from our audience about how to
033improve the e-blast and we use that feedback to refine and to improve as you probably recall we communicated on all platforms about cobid about level up summer program and with level up more than 20 000 of our students were able to participate in engaging enrichment programs sure you got it thank you will do yes you got it our team has also produced a record number of engaging videos uh which sam ranaji communications facility manager will talk about our supervisor we'll talk about later in the presentation next slide great we are we at the communications department are constantly working with our families uh we're working with students in a way uh they tell us they want information and our numbers reflect that for example we have work to reformat our web content to optimize mobile viewing
034this past year about 50 percent of our web website visitors were came in through a mobile device and that's an increase of about 10 percent the prior year again we're trying to meet our families and students and staff where they are and we're doing more than ever to reach out to students i'd like to give a shout out to trustee patterson who is always pushing us to do more on instagram where we're seeing a gain in followers and we hope to see even more trustee patterson by the way has been instrumental in a lot of our efforts to improve student outreach and to amplify student voice we are directly emailing high school students now to send them information that is uniquely relevant to them in fact our high school seniors should be getting an email
035later this month about a job fair through ccte the communications team also has put together a job aid for all employees the district to use when they want to appropriately email our students what's more student voices are a key part of the superintendent search the school names committee and they are featured prominently in our videos again reaching parents and students where they are is so crucial and we have learned some valuable lessons about that this year during our work with the superintendent search committee the names committee and amid the pandemic community next slide please thank you communicating in the right language we know is incredibly important not only does it give families immediate access to information but it allows the district to build stronger relationships throughout the community with our community partners we have gone
036door to door knocking on doors offering translated life-saving information about covid making forty thousand contacts in the community i'd like to thank our partners alliance san diego the chicano federation and say san diego for their work and i'd like to really thank dr uh whitehurst payne and trustee barrera were helping to foster those important relationships in the community that work was successful because we eliminated language barriers our power school system limits languages that we can record so we have come up with some workarounds we list links to translated materials the top of our communications whenever possible our team maintains and constantly updates a catalog of sample family letters for our principals we are translating those letters now into 11 languages up from four the goal is individualized service so we'll be doing more to record
037parents language preferences going forward in the spirit of meeting our family needs i would also like to thank our special education department for the work they gave parents one-on-one service during level up last summer and coming up again this summer next slide please so we eliminated red tape to let principals communicate more easily and more directly with their families so they no longer need to go through the bureaucracy to perform basic functions in school messenger the communications department will continue to solicit feedback and expand our access points to information we know our families come in all shapes and sizes we listen to our parents to family engagement and pta who told us that families need to expand the number of people who can receive basic information from their schools in the district so they can
038now designate additional people to receive communications accommodating more than just one parent grandparents partners aunts uncles other members of our family units our families have changed and we need to meet them to reflect that next slide please nothing symbolizes our commitment to better reaching students families and our neighbors more than the communi the facilities communication work that that we do and it has become a content producing machine digital content videos mailers so much more communications or facilities communication supervisor sam ranaji can we please go to the next slide thank you equity lives in our commitment to build world-class schools in every neighborhood and accountability comes from transparency and accessibility to information jamie and i my jamie reese my colleague and i started making virtual tour videos to meet icoc requirements during the pandemic who could
039no longer conduct project tours in person throughout the pandemic the types of increase and interest we were receiving showed us students families and staff were still looking for good news out there they were looking for some hope we started sharing the icoc videos across multiple platforms and we expanded on their style we even started doing virtual ground breakings topping out ceremonies and ribbon cuttings these videos have become so incredibly popular that they are now a permanent feature of our facilities communications work i want to give a big shout out to my colleague jamie reese for the excellent contact she's been producing uh we are reaching more people through our facilities communications than ever before and it's not just facilities it's the entire communication team that is producing excellent engaging content that amplified the district's values
040and commitments like the video welcoming afghan refugees to san diego unified and thank you to dr mike for connecting us with sister cities who are featured in that video next slide please and we've completely changed the way how we share construction news we used to send essentially doom and gloom letters out to neighborhoods they were frequently thrown out without being read they were being bounced back to the ed center and some neighbors used to tell us we're sending them bills now they look like that and feedback has been overwhelmingly positive as families come to rely on communications products for important updates about the district and their neighborhood schools people now call in to express excitement about the renovations that we're providing at their local school and those that are not too happy with all the
041construction are no longer left in despair they know exactly who and how to reach us if any issue arises at sdusd facilities info sandy.net transparency is key to accountability so we continue to expand on our efforts to help people see the world-class facilities we're producing our project public portal is providing project updates in real time the icoc webpage has a library of quarterly annual and all audit reports we regularly design and publish program and project specific fact sheets with detailed project descriptions and status updates we convert our construction postcards into an email use school messenger to share with families and staff and an ever growing list of facilities partners and thanks to trustee paterson soon to be students as well we even support our colleagues at the city by providing translation and interpretation services at
042some city community meetings and that's thanks really to president whitehurst payne who attends almost all of the meetings in her district and recognized that we should support our families at the city meetings where joint use fields are discussed we also organize more tours than ever before just recently trustee barrera guided the san diego architectural foundation through wilson middle school at the george walker smith educational campus during the first ever open house event at one of our schools and of course our famous ground breakings topping outs and ribbon cuttings in addition to the videos we now live stream each event including our most recent so thank you to trustee bazzo for welcoming us to the stanley joint use jointness pool grand opening uh next slide please as we continue to improve our engagement with students families
043and staff our commitments go beyond the lcap goals following a period of tumultuous national politics and movements for justice which were often led by students including our own the district put out a call to action to better serve students who had historically been underserved and that includes black youth special education students and the lgbtqia plus community we are now proudly supporting the diverse identities of our students and staff amplifying our commitments to equity and social justice with action we now host several annual flag raising ceremonies one during black history month another on pride month and another on juneteenth these flags are then displayed at the ed center throughout the year thank you to trustee biser for always encouraging us to not be afraid of proudly standing up for our diverse student body and we continue
044to build partnerships that help tangibly improve the quality of lives of san diegans encouraging economic development by working with organizations like young black and in business the people's association for justice advocates the black contractors association and the san diego building and construction trades council thank you to president weiherspann again for always supporting this work and prioritizing these critical relationships next slide please we are also engaging in true shared governance with our communities just look at the extensive superintendent search process a collaborative effort between communications the board office and hr that led to the selection of a homegrown leader we've also expanded and revamped the school names committee working towards a more inclusive district ensuring that school names do not negatively impact students and instead become a source of pride like the first ever community driven
045process to name our newest school nipperway elementary honoring indigenous communities we host regular site master planning and design task force and joint use field community input sessions over 507 so far in the life of the bond program we also facilitated the advisory committee and communications subcommittee to increase engagement with underrepresented groups we have continued to improve and i'm excited to welcome back our communications director maureen mcgee to talk more about it thank you sammer that's amazing next slide please so we have showed you some of what communications does to support our schools and families and we want to do more in a way that is strategic and helps the district accomplish his mission one of the ways we hold ourselves accountable to the media and to the consumers of the media is by opening up
046access we are preparing to launch a new series of ed talks these are our forums that are designed to promote open and robust conversations about public education these are casual forums that allow members of the media to talk with decision makers educators and they help us build better relationships i would like to thank every single member of this board for participating in ed talks over the past couple of years our most recent one was on zoom during uh during the pandemic i would also like to give a shout out to terry williams the executive director of the san diego press club uh and that entire organization for collaborating with us and for being our partners for ed talks before i hand this presentation back to andrew sharp i would like to say that our whole
047communications team is is committed to this work i cannot say enough about this team of dedicated communications professionals every single one of them brings a unique skill set to the table and to our collective dan howe who does so much with our e-blast and overseeing the work of our website with our new webmaster and marisa beruman with the superintendent search and our internal communications tara mcnamara has been doing work on covet communications i i could go down the list and and highlight all of the incredible work this team does day in day out they care so much about everything they do and they care about representing you all so well no one i should say um has championed the work in communications more than andrew sharp and so we all appreciate that and i'd like
048to hand it back to andrew to help close us out that's very kind thank you i guess i i would just like to return once again to our our theme of accountability because really that's the that's the purpose of communication so that people understand our commitments your commitments to the city so that we're able to help you inform them of those commitments and then they can help us keep them by working together with us collaboratively and so that's um something that we're very proud of and uh i i guess i'm always struck by the modesty of our team but it's important to remember that they've represented us well nationally across the state maureen and her team just won the award for excellence in communications by school organization for our better sde blast [Applause] and she
049mentioned dan who does our social media as well and so we also just wanted to work for excellence in communication to help parents do make more informed choices when they're selecting schools so it's been a goal from this board for a long time to try to step it up with our website and we feel like we've made a lot of progress in terms of parents being able to uh think about what matters most to them and select schools based on those criteria so we're grateful for that opportunity and thank you for having us here this evening thank you and i we don't have any speakers but i'm sure the board members would love to say something i just want to say thank you all to start with so who's that first dr mike you look
050like you're ready well i definitely want to thank our public information team for the outstanding work that they've done i know when i first came on the board the primary issues were transparency and accountability and knew that the solution would be in better communications both inwardly to staff as well as outwardly to the community i think andrew sharpe and the team and getting maureen and um on board so we've got we've got a terrific team here thank you sammy as well i know a lot of people there need to be acknowledged but for one person um here and on the board seeing it from the inside and receiving it on the outside you've done an outstanding job and thank you thank you everybody else uh yes trustee patterson yeah well i'm super excited to see
051what we've done and what we're working towards i think it's a great vision one of the things i mean my whole purpose up here is centering us around students and thinking about how can we do a better job at reaching students directly what are the platforms we're not using right so i look at this presentation i think instagram we're doing great that's awesome now we want to think about who's who's actually following the instagram account right so if we have asbs that students are following the instagram account of them how do we get those students actually follow the district account and what's the information that's very relevant to them in order to make that happen one of the other things i was thinking we should really look into having a student intern in the communications
052office getting someone out there that's receiving compensation that's able to meaningfully contribute and it definitely would not be me because i have no skills in that realm i don't actually say that sarcastically but we i mean we have major influencers in this district we have very very relevant students that have thousands of followers that know how to connect with students and for us to not tap into that pool is just a waste i mean we really could revolutionize communication but said light nicely it's it's not going to happen with um so many x amount of years age gap i see what i did there said x amount of years so i think that if if we look to move in that direction and really get someone in and a student i think we could really
053transform this and then i'll also bring up what we brought up a few weeks ago let's talk about an app let's see where we can go and i'm excited to hear from the superintendent whenever he gets to it on the app that we're looking to look into and to hear a report back on that thank you thank you nice singers here my singers yes i said zingers you know like seniors say that i heard both of those okay francis is making note i'm sure um yes i wanted to follow up on what trustee patterson mentioned about an app being available to so that also there could be one for parents and for students because i think going back to the uh you know more student centered outcomes um it would be great to to have
054that available and then um you know individuals based on what school they go to they you could even have it filter down for students or i'm sorry parents and students to be go to be able to have a specific page on the app where they get information but i also wanted to say thank you so much um i know you guys do fantastic work and i and you know very much appreciated and also i think it's so hard to keep up you know i mean i i mean i was i think most of us up here were born you know when computers weren't really aren't really a thing and so now um i think we've had to catch up a lot and it you know the technology just moves so fast and i think you've
055done a fantastic job and keeping up with that but also with regard to social media i know a lot of parents get concerned you know when you have kids in high school even middle school elementary school and social media can be kind of a scary thing but instead of ignoring um pushing it away i think a lot of parents have the sense that oh no we need to just block it but my sense was always we it's go it's here like it's not going anywhere so yes we need to be in control of that but we also can use it to our advantage you know um in some cases and make it a positive thing but um it's you know that difficult balance of using the social media but i think it's important to have
056those outlets because that's where we're gonna meet really reach our students and so thank you thank you trustee pereira yeah so first of all i just want to obviously thank andrew and maureen and sammer and the whole department it's it's really kind of overwhelming to see the scale of the work that your department is doing and particularly in the last couple of years when the need you know for parents students in the general community to have clear and direct communication from us has just never been more important i mean it's been i'm really uh you know life-changing decisions that people have had to make and they've can only do that with the right information and so whether it's been coveted whether it's been our anti-racism work which has influenced you know the the names committee
057and and other issues i mean there's this has been a big couple of years where people have needed us to step up and and you've done that and while you've done that you've built an infrastructure that allows us uh to do some things going forward that we really have never been able to achieve and i think in particular so everything about you know what trustee patterson was talking about um and listening directly from students and and trying to develop uh you know communication tools that work for students um i think about the door-to-door work you know that we've been doing you know to be able to reach out to our communities to parents um in different languages in a setting that oftentimes we [Music] we think we're communicating with people because we're putting information out
058but if we're not listening back in real conversations um then we don't you know actually know that what we're trying to communicate is is coming across and then we miss the opportunity to listen you know to our to our families so that infrastructure of door-to-door communication which was necessitated you know this year by covid uh is the key to expanding enrollment in preschool and universal uh transitional kindergarten it's the key to telling the story of our neighborhood schools so that families feel confident that they can uh make a choice about sending their students to neighborhood schools because they're actually listening to what's happening and we're listening to them and so many other issues which have been you know really difficult for us to get to you're building that infrastructure in the most challenging time uh
059to not only help us through this time but to make us better going forward so i very much you know appreciate your leadership it's a long time coming challenges as andrew talked about that you know we've been trying to get to uh at this uh you know district for over a decade you're making it happen um so just can't thank you enough thank you president whiterspain um i just want to say thank you um for years communication wasn't something that san diego unified we didn't do very well and then this team came together and we it is night and day and you know that i know that they know that and a lot of people and parents and teachers know that you guys have done a phenomenal job i i'm not surprised at the number
060of awards that your department has received for your work i mean hashtag better sd that is phenomenal um you know being recognized by the conservative san diego taxpayers association year after year after year as being one of the highest rated school districts for a transparent bond program that is something that we all can be very proud of and thank you to everybody involved in that effort the 2022 california school public relations association award of excellence that is phenomenal we have a fiduciary responsibility and communicating that is important i think you said it the best is that accountability comes with transparency and easy access to information and i am personally grateful for the discover school choice website every year parents would want to figure out well how choicing into different schools because parents need to have
061that freedom and flexibility to have their child go to a school where they feel that would be the best fit for their child and that is something that is now easier and more accessible to parents all over san diego i just want to say thank you very much for a job very very well done and i'm very excited about what's yet to come thank you all and i personally want to say that i've watched this department transform itself because uh in the beginning we were we were just complaints complaints complaints and come to think about it i haven't heard any recently but i just want to say this as an example on the superintendent search from the beginning you ask chris right now chris rising and he'll tell you oh yes that communications department he
062went from complaining to getting things done and now he's a supporter so i say thank you to that thank you for moving forward and helping us to move from four languages to 11 languages that's very positive we kept getting complaints i'll call dan out you know i'll remember dan i called him out and moved to 11 languages and that's a positive and i do appreciate that on the app why don't we just have students to compete to do some apps we could find can we find some money to give them a little competition here you know i'm sorry you're a superintendent let's do it tonight yes yes but whatever app it is i'm sure they can figure it out and would love to do it uh dr randy ward's son um is his name james
063james james has worked on something let's let's unloose them and let them go forward and they'll help us to figure out whatever it is and i think your son can probably help us too andrew sam can can help us sami uh and then one thing that i would like to really applaud the communication department on it and that is when we get calls from the elementary institute or this organization and they say i can't get through principles are too busy the messages are bogged down your department has found a way to make the community folk happy because you found a way to get right into the parents send the messages out they get their slots filled to attend the elementary institute on a scholarship or whatever it is because they know about it and they
064don't have to go through four or five layers to get there you're just going directly in with a an announcement a phone call or whatever quick announcement and it's working so that's the kind of thing that i think it's really exciting and what you all are doing yes samurai i try to make all of my meetings unless i'm out of town or something and we we do try to to meet our community's needs in that sense and i just want to say thank you on behalf of the board for your embracing all that we are trying to do to help our students and our families to make this community a better place so thank you and with that we will move on to our consent our board consent i'll move item f123 thank you in
065a second on that thank you the bees over here have it today okay um no request for public testimony and we'll begin with our student hello i i uh dr mike i i and everybody else please press your button so that gives us five zero passes and we have the student board member concurring with us thank you that moves us on to item g we have none none for h and we're at the superintendent's consent agenda so emotion on that please so moved is this a b and b again visor and i'm waving berrera okay thank you a little coercion here okay uh there are no no comments on that either i will begin with uh trustee patterson no suspension in sport and explosions tonight yes okay i'll i vote i with the abstentions on
066i-10 and 11. thank you and the rest of you please press your butt oh dr mike i i okay and everybody else that passes 5-0 with the student concurring except on items i and 11. thank you and that moves us on to our administrative assignments d2 with the superintendent thank you very much president dr whitehurst payne uh this evening during closed session the board did approve and appoint a new chief of staff dr enrique raucho and they also approved in closed session uh the deputy superintendent that we will be bringing forward in the organization dr fabiola bagula this evening i will be appointing and moving forward principal of mckinley elementary school and welcome patricia aarons who will be joining us from anchorage alaska welcome and lastly i will be moving forward associate principal at logan
067memorial education complex romeo mobampta congratulations to logan memorial and i think this is a great addition and i look forward to the work of the associate principal at logan memorial education complex thank you thank you and that moves us to our public agenda public testimonies i believe we have three in person and three on zoom let's get the in person folks first mel brewer goldwater and michael goldwater on two different issues i believe so you each have three minutes please come forward in that order now brewer is mel brewer present vaccines mandate okay not here michael goldwater welcome michael no one second can you hear me now yes you can michael water school mount nervous academy most of you know me honesty integrity and honor a lot of rhetoric tonight i didn't hear any of
068those words now i'll get to what i'm going to talk to about i applied for the position investigator after nearly six months i was denied dr whitehurst payne you and i worked side by side who raised human relations years ago in investigations i have over 400 investigations over 25 years i'm collegially trained and i was told today i believe it was today yesterday i was not qualified there's not a single candidate within human resources on paper that is more qualified than i am honor integrity honesty is greatly missing from human resources dr jackson you were human resources chief of chief at one time you know that department the department is corrupt i'm i would like to ask you no i'm demanding an investigation of what's going on and i want results i am qualified there
069are two positions open i am qualified i was denied could be many reasons maybe my 12 years involved with the union maybe the contract language people still don't like that are it's still in the contract i don't know but i am qualified honesty integrity and people say well you don't know the law i do know the law i study the law i know the law i was not given an even break you have a corrupt human resources please do something about it that's my first subject you want to start the timer again ready my second subject san diego unified has said many times and it's all over the united states let alone in the state of california we have a teacher shortage in this particular school district we don't have a teacher shortage we have
070a shortage of individuals looking and seeing what's right in front of them you have blinders on your eyes we have between 250 and 300 classified employees in all areas that have degree college degrees who would like to teach here's the problem once you're a classified employee and you've gone up the steps and the teachers pay is so low i believe about forty seven thousand dollars a year nobody in the right frame of mind would go ahead and take a ten fifteen twenty thousand dollar pay cut to use their college degree how to resolve it you have it right here right over the fence bernie elementary you have a gentleman who has a bachelor of science in mechanical engineering physics calculus and chemistry he can teach he's not going to take food away from his table
071of his of his family he's got two children and a wife how do you resolve it reciprocity one for how many years you've been with the district let's say every five years give that person a step raise from the teacher's salary two well i do know we have a program for para educators but only for pear educators why not custodians why not food i know a young lady in food service got her ba her master's and phd in english literature she experienced english as literature i think after 37 years as a as a classified employee bus driver she retired five times she applied five times she was denied why because she was a classified employee some of the best military officers in the united states military were former enlisted the military doesn't discriminate against being
072former enlisted why does this board and you dr lamont why do you discriminate within your human resources department do something about it you have the resources open up your eyes you have the resources right here in san diego unified to do something about it thank you we have three folks on zoom via zoom b ray jacob ricketts and luanne monk and these are unzoom unmute yourself you see any of them hello can you hear me yes we hear you okay hi i'm i was calling about uh agenda item i 15 and 16. okay okay hi i was calling because i it's a growing concern for me to see all the schools start to look like prisons with these fencing that it's being is going up around the schools what i'm finding is that you're spending
073millions of dollars on fencing a school and making the kids feel like they're it's more about it's more about control than it is about education that money can be easily used for making sure we have smaller classrooms better you know teachers salary and that we could i'm sorry there was an interruption and that we can have more access my concern actually is that the parents do not have access to the schools what they're doing is they're going to have just these one entrances for the students to enter and that to me is just gonna again slow down school and as far as as bringing in students the time that it'll take for that and and being able to be in the classroom but my big issue is for the parents i want the parents to
074know that you're getting more and more uh not having access to enter the school and to get your children out and this is just it's already been an issue as far as even like like we said with communications i've had to talk to a bot et cetera also and when it comes to fencing and closing a school you give the image that to the student that they you're not giving them to be empowered you're giving them this idea of that they are less than and that they do not have the capability we need to look at this the way we're imprisoning students and also if there's surveillance i mean is this about control or is this about education we are spending money on things that have to do nothing with education but just about control
075i want the parents to know that to look into that and if you want to know more about it go to teachrights.yahoo.com thank you thank you we have uh any of the other two jacob ricketts or luanne buck okay let's do jacob first um hello uh hello my name is jacob and i am a junior from mara mesa high school one thing i noticed in my school in other high schools was that not many people were involved in district advocacy besides a friend of mine on the student advisory board we need to provide more leadership opportunities for our students especially in middle and high school i remember in elementary school we had a leader in me program which encouraged our students to become leaders however although it was amazing one problem i've noticed is that
076there doesn't seem to be enough district-wide base or enthusiam enthusiasm or even programs for branching out from there in middle school as far as i know it was either the site governance team or school site council for advocacy although obviously students show leadership in local clubs such as the key club nhs or other clubs at school there seems to be a drought and opportunity and students that want to participate in district issues i remember running polls at my school and some students at scripps ranch or whether they know they're a locally elected official such as their amazing representatives such as zachary patterson or sabrina bazoo or although there were a few that knew them many of them had not heard of them i personally am part of the student equity ambassadors because i was inspired
077by people like them um but san diego unified has got to incorporate in its circlum and in schools a way to improve students participation in district and local politics and we have to eliminate hoops and bounds and get mass participation of students because besides just these small groups of students and emphasize making a difference in their education we thought to either massively expand and advertise existing institutions such as the student equity ambassadors in the swear committee to have a congress of students in middle and high school maybe at least 50 volunteers from each school that can all meet together and stand up for themselves and others in order to help our district and led the so many unheard voices of students in our district be heard to inspire the next generation of leaders thank you
078thank you and you move that forward and then luanne [Music] vonk hi can you hear me yes thank you um you all and unanimously voted for this vaccine mandate are you okay with killing or seriously injuring perfectly healthy children for a virus that does not kill healthy children the cdc recently admitted that they do not have data of healthy children dying of coping will you be paying for the damage of injuries and dust since vaccine manufacturers have immunity from lawsuits let me just take a few excerpts from bayers which under reports by 90 to 99 and is months behind in reporting male age 15 heart failure died one day after vaccination 15 a female age 16 cardiac arrest six days after vaccination male age 12 myocarditis died one year after vaccination female age five found
079pulseless and not breathing died one day after vaccinations female age seven found unresponsive in the bed died 11 days after vaccination male 8 cardio respiratory arrest died 8 days after the vaccination these are only a few of the deaths there are 101 children under the age of 18 with only one to ten percent of actual deaths are captured on the cdc database this is the only database to collect vaccine adverse events as a mother of a vaccine injured child i know that vaccine injury is not rare but it is rarely reported how do you sleep at night knowing you could be responsible for even one of these deaths due to your vaccine endings thank you thank you and that is our last speaker thank you then thank you all for listening coming participating the next
080regular meeting will be held on tuesday april 26 2022 at 5 pm thank you this adjourns this meeting you