001good evening president vasquez confirming you are there and can hear me i'm here thank you mr allen i don't think it's relevant that i i can't start my video but i just want to let you know that i can't start my video we will make sure that is changed for the general meeting we are recording so the floor is yours if you would like to call us to order thank you i called the meeting of the san juan unified school district board of education to order there is one closed section item on tonight's agenda discussion with negotiator jim schumache assistant superintendent schools and labor relations regarding cse chapter 127 general operations support chauffeurs teamsters local number 150 transportation supervisors teachers and certificated supervisory units and regarding non-representative groups management and confidential units pursuant to government
002code section 54957.6 mr allen will you please give instruction to those in attendance via zoom on how they can raise their hand if they have a comment on the closed session agenda items i would be happy to president vyasas if you are here with us on the zoom tonight and would like to offer a public comment on a closed session agenda item now would be your opportunity to do so you can do that by clicking the raise hand button found at the bottom of your screen if you're on a mobile device at the bottom of the participant list if you are on a desktop client or by pressing star 9 if you have called into the call tonight thank you mr allen seeing no visitor comments for closed session items we will now move into
003closed session and we'll return to open session at 6 30. thank you president viazquez the board is now in closed session and will return at 6 30. uh we invite you to return it that time or you are welcome to wait here until the board does return thank you and we are again recording and the floor is yours president vasquez thank you mr allen i call the meeting of the san juan unified school district board of education back to order the meeting is being audio and video recorded and the recording may capture sounds and images of those attending this meeting the recording will be posted on the district website presenters will via the zoom platform and public attendance is provided via the zoom platform as well as via live stream on the district's youtube channel
004we thank you for joining us and ask for your patience as we use this format in an effort to maximize access and participation during this time of physical distancing and other restrictions at this time please stand for the virtual presentation of the colors by the casa roble fundamental high school air force junior rotc color guard authentic hut poor arms forward hearts ready case reason harms ladies and gentlemen may you please join me in the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all order arms ready case forward heart good evening and welcome i'm paul vienkos board president and joining me tonight is dr michael mckibben board via vice president mccreeson
005board clerk ms pam costa and mr salt hernandez board members superintendent kern and other staff members are also in attendance before we begin i'd like to review the two methods that are available to submit public comment for tonight's meeting the first option is to submit a public comment online using the comment form located on the district website at www.san juan.edu board meeting if you wish to submit a public comment on more than one agenda item please submit a separate form for each item on which you are commenting comments received by 6 pm today have already been shared with all board members comments received after 6 pm tonight including those submitted during the meeting may be read during the meeting depending on time restrictions comments may only be submitted on an agenda item up until the
006time that the agenda item has been discussed the second option zoom platform where you may use the raise your hand function when you're when you are called on you may share a comment via audio during the meeting please note that all public comments are subject to a two minute limit or approximately 1500 characters we are now at item d approval of the minutes are there any corrections to the minutes okay uh seeing none is there a motion to approve the minutes for december 15th so moved it's been moved by ms creason is there a second second thank you mr hernandez all those in favor please indicate by saying aye aye that was unanimous we are now at item e1 high school student council reports tonight we will hear from student representatives from san juan high
007school and rio americano high school welcome and let's begin with carmen sagion from san juan and carmen please um correct me if i've mispronounced your name and began when you are ready carmen okay so my name is carmen sagulan and i'm graduating class of 2021 for representing san juan high school and before i start i have my script written on another device is it okay if i read it off that like absolutely whatever works for you i just didn't want to be disrespectful okay so i was kind of intimidating with a lot of the people here but so one you're all good and i'm a little nervous too but whatever works for you you're not being disrespectful and thank you for asking so get whenever you're ready okay so i put change can be difficult
008for anyone and i'm sure we can all agree adapting recently has been quite difficult for both staff and students i personally love school and i'm graduating the top of my class i'm honorable student and recently distance learning has brought me to self-doubt and question myself whether education was the right path for me in the long term i can't i don't mean to stutter but i can't imagine what students who struggled in school began to felt when we started distance learning as well as students who don't get help from home um however throughout time and later however without sorry however with time and good leadership san juan has made it easier and i have seen a positive change the san juan staff has tried their best to stay connected to their students and encourage school spirit
009i am honored to recognize my school and their outstanding efforts during this time especially to the teachers who personally reached out and dedicated time to class and dedicated time in class to help out students who were struggling that helped out not only myself but other students for less alone during this time over time i started to see a change and more students begin to be more engaged coven hasn't taken everything away from our school recently students have been practicing safe sports and attend weekly club zooms i'm in a few club zooms myself and our school counselors run a program for mental awareness for students in our school and student government has encouraged school spirit with once a month weekly spirit weeks as well as fitness activities and many more we have turned into a positive
010direction as a community i'm excited to see more growth and hopefully within time we can take action into a hybrid plan when it's safe for everyone involved again thank you for your time and i'm glad to explain my point of view throughout this experience sorry for studying carmen you did great and um oftentimes people do read so don't worry you did a fantastic job and thank you very much for your report and um if it's okay with you at this point we usually turn it over to just a few questions um addressed to you and and how how you're doing and how all things at san juan so with that i'm going to see if there's any questions from my colleagues miss creason just comment you did great i know it could be incredibly nerve-wracking
011to see so many bubbles and you know titles and whatnot but you did a great job and i didn't hear you stutter i heard you take breaths um so you're good you're good um also just want to say i'm really proud of you top of your class in a really challenging time is absolutely incredible and so pat yourself on the back i say this to all the seniors you're not getting what you deserve you know i wish that you could get all the celebration and you know you've done so much to achieve and get to where you're at and i'm so sorry that circumstances are you know tampering the everything you deserve but i'm proud of you and i'm really grateful to hear you speak tonight thank you i appreciate it you guys are all
012very nice [Laughter] are there any other questions from my colleagues i had just a quick question i also just really appreciated um her report and also just how genuine it was and really letting us know how covid has has impacted you in both in academic studies but just you know as a kid trying to make it through a pandemic um i really appreciated learning about the club zooms and i'm always really thrilled and thankful that people have gone you know above and beyond to keep the clubs going even in a distance learning format and i wanted to welcome you to share um anything about maybe your favorite club or or how that's been going um any other reflections on your club zooms okay yeah so i'm in quite a few clubs and i'm a president
013a few of them but this semester i really wanted well last semester i was working on starting my own club for san juan so that once i leave they could have the club behind basically it's going to be so the zoom is only going to be once a month because i know it's like struggling for students to attend them and there's gonna be different um like teachers are adults from different fields so like someone from a medical field someone from educational so that different students they particularly don't have to be in the zoo in the club but they could attend the zoo based off what profession is going to be interviewing them but i'm climbing my zoom but no i'm sorry okay um and then they're gonna come and they're gonna ask questions and basically
014on the world war questions as well because i feel like high school prepares you for college but sometimes it doesn't really prepare you for the real world so um in my club i want to teach students about taxes and like how to invest in how to save and how to move out what to look out for and for like women i want to raise awareness for women and safety guidelines to be aware of the sex trafficking and everything going on especially with everything like with the riots and stuff i just want people to feel more safe and have a safe environment so that's a club i wanted to start and again the mental awareness club was really cool and then we have an art club for students who want to be creative during this time
015and express themselves to poetry art or music you know sorry you have absolutely nothing to apologize for you did great and i really enjoyed um hearing about that thank you so much for sharing and i don't know if you can i know sometimes when you're set up on a phone or other device you might not be able to see everybody but everybody has pretty wide grins right now um and so i think they speak on behalf of most if not all of us and i say thank you for all the work i mean managing multiple multiple clubs is a lot of work but i also just appreciate it here i don't know if you want um you know a boring board member attending but i love the idea of you know expanding i you know
016helping students expand what professions there are and that kind of thing and so um you know know that we're here as a resource to if you need it it sounds like you've got it 100 under control so don't you don't need to take us up on that but um thank you very much for for joining us and spending some time with us this afternoon um i really appreciate it and we really appreciate it and i know i knew miss creason might want to jump in again because employment's all her jam for sure yeah there's that and i was really excited about um like a lot of your clubs that you just mentioned so if it's okay i would love to loot back with you um offline because i think i would love to offer my
017help if you want it and we can be helpful um i think that was just so great um that you're trying to start a club just for real life experience it's so incredibly important um and i really appreciated what you said about you know um being prepared not just for college but for actual life whether it be that job so we're a resource not just me all of us but we're all a resource to you and i'll be in touch and i want to clap for her president vyasas thank you again carmen uh next we will hear from mclean americano hi um i'm maclean burke and i'm the elections chair and a sophomore at rio americano high school thank you for inviting me to speak with you today i'll be addressing some of the challenges
018and concerns that my fellow students and i have had during our time in distance learning as well as ideas our student government has for the months to come starting with the challenges and concerns the student body feels that the 15 minute zoom periods on wednesdays are unnecessary and not productive time would be better spent using wednesday's hours or optional instruction instead of mandatory class time additionally seniors have a lot of questions about graduation and they haven't really been given any information about what that's going to look like this year and they would just love some clarification similar to the seniors the juniors feel rather in the dark about what is expected of them concerning college prep they've expressed that they feel unprepared and a lot of counselors are giving them very vague and contradictory contradictory
019information student government has proposed the idea of putting together a senior panel giving juniors and underclassmen a platform to ask questions and get answers from people who are going through or have been through the process one of the most concerning issues that was brought to our attention are students with 504s and other modified modified learning plans they've expressed that they aren't receiving the help that they need and were told that they would be given and are often struggling even more with their schoolwork they said that they are unnecessarily having to advocate for themselves and the teachers aren't respecting the policies that have been put in place lastly our student government believes it would be in the best interest of the students and the staff for the district to put out a definite statement about whether
020or not we will be going back to school this spring in the hybrid model most students have expressed their interest in staying online for the remainder of the school year as it would be harder for them and for teachers to adjust and the hybrid model would take away even more instructional time on a more positive note student government at rio has a lot of ideas to improve the community and overall culture of our school we've noticed a large disconnect in the freshman class and they don't have an outlet to meet other students in their classes and many haven't met anyone new this year student government is working on a way to get them together to connect possibly through a weekly support group on zoom led by our students and in regards to spirit we have
021virtual spirit weeks throughout the year like we had one for homecoming in the first semester and we will also be reinventing our traditional gala spirit week this march virtually on the note of virtual rallies and sierra we have our spirit commissioners working to do weekly announcements um posted on our social media pages and they've also put together virtual rallies throughout the year incorporating various programs rio offers like the cheer team song team and band more recent recently rio partnered with del campo and el camino to do a virtual blood drive through violent which we normally do in person annually additionally student government is putting together a student senate which creates an opportunity to hear from a more extensive population from our student body and it also motivates our government class to work harder and address
022more concerns of the larger uh body student body lastly our class has been looking into speakers to come talk to our school in the first semester we had kevin bracey a motivational speaker come and speak to several students over zoom and this semester we've been in contact with robert paler who is a former jesuit rugby player who is paralyzed and now uses his story to inspire others we're hoping to hear from him on january 21st thank you for your time and allowing me to speak on behalf of rio americano thank you very much for that report and at this time i'm going to turn it to my colleagues for any questions dr mckibben yes uh uh mclean maclean uh can you tell me a little bit more about your uh student senate uh how the
023people become senators uh how many per class and things like that um yeah so we opened it up actually just to kind of everyone we put it out on our social media pages just anyone who was interested in being more a part of the school and you know kind of going outside of our immediate government student government those who were elected and we have a couple people working right now to put that together so far i think we have seven members of the student senate and they will begin to meet um fairly regularly and talk about certain issues that they're experiencing and that our student body is experiencing thank you any other questions from my colleagues ms creason i think i saw you raise your hand my background's weird but you don't want to see
024what's behind me so we're keeping the background up so mclean thank you so much for your report and i want to just really call out and show appreciation for your candor um we want to hear it all so i really appreciate you sharing the struggles along with the positive it really is appreciated and if it's okay i would love to connect with you offline as well to just do a deeper dive i know you can only say so much in two minutes right it's a short speech but would love to talk to you um i also just want to acknowledge you know rio has experienced tremendous loss this year um with the death of a student and an alumni i mean i just want to acknowledge the pain of your school um and i'm so
025sorry that you know that on top of everything else that you guys are having to deal with it's a whole lot um um you did have questions about reopening and i'm sure staff can follow up with you because there are some decisions and some plans that have been made there's also a cova dashboard um so we can connect you with the right folks to get you all caught up on all that and what is the plan totally understand you know want to know what's going on um i also wanted to say i got an email from someone over at your school you guys are developing a garden and so there was a fundraiser and can you talk a little bit about that that seemed exciting um so i've heard a little bit about this this
026is outside of student government's control but it's a senior project i believe someone is raising money to um kind of i think renovate like the garden area for the ils program um and make it wheelchair accessible and that kind of that kind of thing so it's really cool but it's not immediately tied to student government it's the senior project got it sorry to put you on the spot like that i was like oh a real person you have a garden coming up so i apologize for that well really excited about what you're doing and i look forward to connecting with you thank you me too any other ques questions i just want to express my sorry oh go ahead okay um carmen did you have another question pertaining to your report um no just for
027one of the things that they needed to answer to i was gonna recommend something that san juan does that might help them is that okay yeah that's uh that's a helpful outlet um we haven't had that before but i guess as long as no one um says it's not okay it's all within the scope of student reports so please go ahead so basically as i'm a senior and i have a lot of questions about graduation as well and i know a lot of students have questions about reopening of hybrid so what our teachers do to not give us false hope but still keep us like encouraged they tell us different color zones that we're in and what colors that we need to be in to be safe and what color zone like we currently are
028in so we have like positive reinforcement of how much we need to work towards and if we don't have a graduation we'll know because if we're in the red we just know it's not safe for anyone and if we're in the purple you know vice versa and it just helps the students have to be more level-headed and know whether it's safe for us to go back or not but we do have our different options available so i know maybe the teachers can tell you guys what color we're in like our teachers do and it could help like the seniors like myself know because being safe is more important than anything you know thank you thank you carmen and um i know that that was um included in some of the information that uh ms creasing
029kind of alluded to so anticipate some follow-up on that for sure but i appreciate the the spirit of the remarks and wanting to be helpful to your fellow peers um thank you both very much for for joining i appreciate having you here this evening um student voice is really important to the board um you're welcome to stay for the remainder of the meeting um we recognize that that you're you're busy so if you um have other things that you'd rather attend to now would be the time to to depart but thank you again very much for both of your reports and for joining us this evening um next we're at item e2 2 um f reports and so we will hear from superintendent kern thank you president viasquez i'm going to touch on uh three
030items one of which kind of was brought up amongst the students and then mr schumacher is going to give a quick report about our our holiday event that we had as well first i wanted to kind of update the community and the board related to the vaccine this has not been rolled out to educators yet we expect it to start sometime in february and when it does our frontline teachers and others inside classrooms at school sites will be prioritized we're working to determine if we will be if it will be possible to use our own staff to administer the vaccine so that we can speed deployment when it is available vacuum vaccines will be voluntary and not required all districts in the county are working together on this initiative in partnership with the county office
031of education and our local health officials regarding returning to in-person learning we're absolutely committed and still planning on returning two weeks after the county reaches the red level of the state's risk monitoring system so far there is nothing in the governor's recently announced plan that would allow that timeline to be expedited there are elements of the plan that may allow us to access and expand testing capacity directly as a school district that we are exploring and then lastly related to mitigating learning loss we're working to develop what additional supports can be deployed to support students with a focus kind of on three areas first our current timeline through the end of this school year then looking at what we would be able to do during the summer time and then going beyond that into next
032school year and into the fall i i had i have to tell the board and the community i had an amazing conversation with my superintendent students advisory committee last week where i just posed the question about how could we better support you as students around mitigating learning loss or even supporting review and other other areas and it was just a really robust conversation and it really energized me to think about what we in this district could do with our partnerships that we have with our organizations getting really innovative and creative around that i think we will be able to do that it is my intent to allow students to keep their devices both the hot spots and those chromebooks that we passed out through this summer and hopefully beyond so that every student in this
033district has an opportunity to do some form of summer program always in the past it's been maybe you know credit recovery or things like that are trying to get ahead but what i heard from my student group was there may be a real need for review so they had some really creative ideas on that so we will have more to share in the near future including an item on this agenda on this item on the february 9th board meeting so look forward to that coming back to the board uh in in a little less than a month with probably more details we'll have some more information related to some of the funding that we'll be getting as well so we're excited about the opportunities that that's going to provide and mr schumacher this time i'll
034turn it over to you sure uh good evening president vasquez board members superintendents kind of him first i i agree with carmen uh this group is really nice so thanks for letting me uh speak this evening as you know our central office staff and departments participate in a day of giving called san juan cares every year it's a great way for us to connect and contribute to our community this year obviously looked a lot different than past years and rather than celebrating in person at the district office we held a drive-through uh event in the parking lot i saw many of you there um i'm happy to report that this year we actually set new records for giving a lot of concern about how the turnout would be in a parking lot during a pandemic
035but we raised 1175 for camp winters that's a new donation record we provided a truckload of new and gently used clothing for our san juan clothes closet we distributed a truckload of food for our san juan food closet and we collected two truckloads of toys for our san juan kids and i'd like to really uh just take a moment to extend a very special thank you to see the csa board and our cse members for voting in november to authorize the purchase of a thousand dollars worth of new toys to support our san juan cares event uh year after year csea supports this event and it's truly amazing as you know events like this require a lot of planning support help uh shortly after san juan cares event i provided the board with a list
036of employees that absolutely went the extra mile to make this event a success i want to say there were at least 20 people that really went above and beyond um this is my 26th year in the district and i continue being thankful for working with such a caring and collaborative and supportive team we're already thinking about how to improve this event for next year and while the drive-through concept was successful i can assure you we're all looking for being back in the boardroom in person and celebrating next december so again thank you for your support of this annual event thank you mr shumake i'm going to do a quick pause to see if any um board members have questions on either the staff reports okay we are now um at items e three through e5
037uh mr allen do we have any reports from board appointed district committees employee organizations or or other district organizations i do not have anyone signed up for board appointed district committees but we do have a speaker for employee organizations uh miss karen smith with csea thank you uh miss smith please begin when you're ready good evening president velasquez members of the board mr mr kern and miss cunningham i'm here to speak on behalf of classified employees when we met with the district for negotiations we were told no bargaining groups were going to be meeting or having discussions about salary or benefits until the governor's budget came out imagine csea's surprise when we were told the district had an agreement with the teachers union for a one percent one-time bonus and a stipend imagine how your
038classified staff feel only being offered a one percent one-time bonus and not the 500 stipend too where is the transparency where is the good faith bargaining where is the equity classified employees make a lot less money than certificated employees and many of these classified employees had to go out and purchase technology upgrade their internet use their own cell phones etc to do their jobs to ensure the success of all students in the district classified employees are also on-site performing our jobs being exposed to covid struggling with child care issues because we are the essential employees our schools could not run without classified staff we are the first staff in the office to greet the children and parents in the morning when they come to campus our nutritional staff feed the children our custodians clean up
039after the staff and students and keep us safe our instructional staff work hand in hand with teachers to ensure our students get the best education possible in these uncertain times there would be no distance learning if technology services did not keep our network running and chromebooks and other devices in the hands of students and our staff our support staff also keep track of attendance for ada monies we are just as important as teachers and we are saying me too we want the same appreciation and compensation that you are giving to the teachers thank you for the your time and have a nice evening thank you miss smith are there any other um district organizations at this time mr allen there are not okay with that we are at item e6 and there are no clubs
040i'm sorry i thought we would have the opportunity to pose questions or was i wrong thank you no and um you'll recall that i invited you to correct me if i'm out of turn so i appreciate that you did we'll back up just a moment um are there any questions for miss smith i apologize um we'll just kind of just keep going in order mr hernandez have any questions um sorry you know i'm gonna yield to uh miss creason i know she has a question so go ahead and if i have opportunity after her or later on that'd be fine but i yield okay i just in the address i'm going to keep going through that through order on each item ms costa did you have anything i had a miss grayson okay miss creason
041go ahead i don't think anyone's ever yield their time to me don't start that habit i'll take it um so karen i just want to first to just acknowledge a lot of what you said some of these are questions um i know that we have an agenda item a business item to discuss this as well and so i'm going to save some of my comments for that but i think some need to be addressed here and i want to say first that everything i'm saying is coming from a place of love but i feel that um we've got you know we've gotten a lot of emails um and i know that a lot of your members are here so i want to say you know respond to some of what you said in this way
042really for the benefit of your membership and i want to start with the we you are your group is so respected and cared about and we understand deeply well speak for myself although i know i speak for others when i say this deep a deep understanding of your membership greatly contributes to the education of our children a hundred percent cannot be denied we cannot do this without you and so um i want to make that very clear because i want all you and your members to hear that there is care this is not a lack of care um it really rang hard in my ear when i was reading the communications and i do appreciate all the communications please reach out anytime but it was hard to read things like um let's show let's show
043the board that you're important you know it's like no we i recognize how important you are so i just want to put that out there um so folks hear it um i also just have a question it's my understanding that csea signed an agreement um so i'm just kind of wondering if there was a problem with the agreement you still need to bargain and talk things out and work it out why was it signed because it seems to if i'm wrong correct me if i'm wrong there was a document that was signed and then we got the letters after that so it puts us in a it puts me i speak for myself in a strange situation but maybe i'm not understanding something we were told that um everybody else was getting the one percent
044and if we wanted to be in the same time frame we needed to sign a side letter for the one percent and we purposely left language in there to negotiate a 500 stipend so this one percent is not a final agreement okay we we didn't want our employees or our members not to get the one percent when everybody else did however our members don't feel that just one percent declassified is equitable okay and so i think i'll have some questions for staff when we get to that item based on what you just said and i'll get some clarification um i want to also just um some language that was coming from some of the letters um and that came from your presentation was this seems to be a bonus you know this is for the
045hard work it's my understanding that the dollars are for reimbursement of expenses and i did some digging and asked some questions my understanding that the district has committed to reimbursing expenses um instructional expenses for all csea members that had to pay i mean you shouldn't have to pay for these things you should you know be provided with what you need to do your job and to provide instruction and so it's my understanding that you will be reimbursed for those items and so i'm wondering because it didn't i bring this up because it didn't seem to be clear in the letters we were receiving that people knew that so i'm wondering do people know that no first off um a form letter has gone out to a lot of our members saying um why didn't you
046come to the school site and pick up supplies well there was a pandemic and our instructional staff they're not given technology they weren't given chromebooks right away a lot of our staff had to go out and purchase technology we have we've incurred the same expenses for electricity for a lot of our members had to get um wi-fi access they had to upgrade their wi-fi access there's they've incurred a lot of expenses and all of your teachers have gotten this 500 stipend not all of your teachers are at home teaching some are in the classroom so um you're i guess um the employees feel that here again the teachers got more of the piece of pie when we're told there's a piece pie everybody's supposed to get the same piece that doesn't seem to be happening
047in the past few years okay um and again i'm writing some notes and so i'll bring some questions back when the item comes up in the business items um because i would like to delve deeper into some of the things that were said but i have to ask nothing that's kind of weird in this item right um i do want to address one other thing and i know you know this of me karen i am an executive director i have my own staff and it is pretty standard to you know like i said reimburse for you know printers paper ink you know whatever my staff needs to do their job at home because they're all at home too we absolutely reimburse that you should reimburse it you shouldn't have to pay for that yourself but
048we don't reimburse for heat you know we don't reimburse for electricity and that's pretty standard too so i just want to point that out outside a district um you know that's i don't think that's unique just to this situation but again i want to reiterate no one should be having to use you know their own money to print anything um so i guess our question is did every teacher submit all their receipts and did they only get compensated for what they've put out because we were told every teacher got a 500 stipend yes but so to address what you just said though it's my understanding that csea was told that you didn't need to provide receipts you could sign an affidavit with the understanding because we wanted to meet people where they at understanding so
049no you're saying that didn't happen this is the first time i'm hearing that okay well when we receive i i will say when i received all you know so many letters of concern it hurt my heart because of course we care about you and i want to make sure that our team is taken care of and so i'm just kind of reiterating the answers that i got was no we are reimbursing you don't have to provide receipts because there is an understanding that you might not have them anymore you just sign an affidavit so it sounds like there's maybe a communication breakdown too and i want to make sure that staff the staff knows what they can do because i mean again the letters that i'm receiving it doesn't seem like folks know what i
050know and so that concerns me but i think we can get there and i think in this time of tremendous struggle um we got to figure out figure this out so our folks are taken care of and we're doing the best we can for our kids um so i'll be happy to do whatever i can to help us get there and i think more will come out when we talk about this item in business um but you know well that's the first i'm hearing that i heard jim has sent out an email saying um what expenses did you occur why didn't you go to the school site in the future yet we've got people who are already out these expenses and that was not communicated in in that way that you're telling me okay well
051i appreciate the dialogue um i know we don't usually do this but i thought it was important that we do um considering um the letters and i like i said we'll talk more when the business item comes up and that's it for me president fiestas thank you miss kristen dr mckevin did you have any questions no questions thank you so with that we are then dispensed with items e3 through e5 and we will move to item e6 at this time there are no closed session actions to report so we are at item f visitor comments mr allen will you please give instructions to those in attendance via zoom on how they can raise their hand if they have a comment at this time certainly president viasquez this item is an opportunity for those individuals attending
052the meeting to offer comment on topics that are not on tonight's agenda if your comment is related to an item on tonight's agenda we would ask that you hold your comment until that item is called and public comment will be offered at that time if you'd like to offer a comment on a topic that is not on tonight's agenda and have joined us on the zoom call now would be your opportunity to raise your hand to do so click the raise hand button found at the bottom of your screen on a mobile device the bottom of the participant list on a desktop zoom client or by pressing star 9 if you've dialed into tonight's meeting you mr alan um do we have any general visitor comments at this time we do have one raised hand
053at this time okay before we jump into them i would just like to remind the public that comments are limited to two minutes the clock on the screen counts down the time and under the ralph and brown act the board is not allowed to comment on items that are not on the agenda so we are not ignoring your comments we just can't respond to any individual comments the superintendent can refer items to staff who can follow up with you and mr allen i appreciate your assistance in advance and making our way through the the raised hands at this time i will let you um let you take over thank you president vyasquez our first comment is from miss alicia nichols nichols when you're ready good evening my name is alicia nichols and i am an
054instructional assistant at san juan high school time and time again this district has shown us that the only thing the board cares about is the bottom line in the board member checks you told us that you wouldn't negotiate until after the governor's budget was announced and yet you managed to pay yourselves and negotiate salaries and stipends with the sjta but what about classified employees it wasn't until december that we discussed our 2020 2021 tentative agreement and i still have not gotten an official district notification of my hours for distance learning and you still aren't going to include a raise or even a stipend for us in our hazard pay if we have to go back and why is it that just teachers receiving a stipend for classroom setup when almost all classified employees had to
055spend our own money on personal devices to use zoom and then had to train ourselves on how to use it you are definitely closing over classified employees yet again we as ias have been given so many new job duties are working longer hours essentially making us co-teachers with our teachers and you cannot pay for us to get stipends let alone give us the cost of the living increase that we need you can not afford to give us the 500 stipend then i would like to ask what you plan on doing in march when i'm supposed to get my raise i'll receive a raise of one whole dollar which will bring me to 15.70 an hour and should be an extra thousand for the year are you telling me there's no money in the budget to
056give me and my classified members the raises we agreed upon in our contracts as well because what we're making now is not nearly enough to live on and you're telling us you cannot afford to give us a stipend speaking of what we make i have a fun history lesson minimum wage was originally designed by fdr to be the amount of money one needed to live and support a family comfortably but while you guys lied to us that raises and stipends weren't in the budget and admitted that you knew that you were paying us below the poverty line the quote for an actual minimum wage has gone up to 22 an hour according for inflation the least you can do is give us the stipend because being told that an algorithm calculated my paid to 14
057an hour that that was too low and then you barely raised it to 1470 which is still not enough for me to pay my bills is soul crushing and speaking of my bills i did a budget assignment with my seniors and i should not be able to afford to live on my own in fact i can't my boyfriend pays more than me amazon employs their warehouse mrs nicole's standards time i'm going to have to ask you to conclude your comments please thank you miss nichols our next speaker is uh kim cell micelle when you are ready my name is kim cell i work at laurel ruff transitional school um on the same subject i want to say i have gone out and bought headphones i have bought white boards i have bought books the aids
058work on wednesdays when the teachers do not do zoom so we are on there ourselves and we're making our own lessons for that day the teacher that i work with got reimbursed for buying his headphones when i asked for the same thing i was told no that aids don't get reimbursed for any of this stuff it's not right and i have to work two extra jobs just to make ends meet and right now i'm living with no heat in my house and it's ridiculous that's all thank you thank you miss cell our next comment is from debbie palucca miss paluca and i apologize if i did not get that name correct no said it the right way thank you very much okay thank you hear me we can go ahead yes we can yeah yes
059my name is debbie felucca i'm a child development assistant and i've been working for family for 30 years as a child development assistant and i'm my seventh month of in person with 10 wonderful preschoolers and i work with two wonderful teachers who treat me just as a fellow teacher i am fully qualified i have mastered teacher permit and my child development degree and it's pretty sad that after 30 years of being dedicated to families and students that i i don't even make 17 an hour and so i've been fighting for the minimum wage i am totally a classified union member and proud of it and i really feel from the bottom of my heart that every classified employee and including myself being on the front lines deserves that 500 stipend just as much as the
060teachers do so please please consider that thank you so much thank you miss paluca our next speaker will be laura kram miss kram when you are ready thank you um i'm confused as to why teachers need a 500 stipend and instructional assistants don't we both had to set up a home office to do our jobs nobody from the school district school board special education office or the school site i worked at in the spring told us to go to the site to get supplies someone should have told us to do so if that was your expectation now in this late hour you expect us to accept a one percent bonus on our limited wages as reimbursement for example in 2002 we made seven thousand dollars more than a full-time minimum wage worker per year and
061now we make nine thousand dollars less than a full-time minimum wage worker per year again denying instructional assistance fair pay and a stipend sends a strong message that instructional assistants are not important or valued i hope this school board will take into consideration our reimbursement with regard to the hard work we do daily to help educate our students please ask yourselves if twenty thousand dollars gross income per year is a fair wage for those educating our students thank you thank you miss kram and president vasquez that is the last speaker that we have uh for public comment at this time i take them back we did just have two hands pop up very quickly there uh if we would like we can proceed with amber b yes please do thank you amber b when you
062are ready thank you so much can you all hear me we can thank you i apologize for popping in there at the very last moment i was briefly reviewing our agenda here and i wanted to name i participate on lcap and something that we have shared a couple of times in our meetings and i wanted to make sure gets back directly here is concerns over navigating the district website i know in particular in a offline meeting i was having with folks at encina um we talked about how important it was to have parents and community voice at the board meeting today and sharing what the topics were going to be and when i briefly skim the website that doesn't stand out to me what the topics or what the agenda items were going to be
063and so from the perspective of parents and wanting to increase parent participation and engagement i wanted to share here tonight on behalf of myself as a parent at starking as well as something that we've been talking about as i said in lcap i'm really prioritizing taking a look at how we are laying out information on the website and how we are making it accessible um to all parents um that's all thank you thank you amber b our next comment is anna quinones uh miss quinones when you already hola buenas noches good evening um thank you for taking my comment last moment i just want to encourage our decision makers to continue on their equity journey by reading into school choice there might be of interest some books by rasul and rothstein research about school choice
064programs these experts in their field find that choice of schools school choice program such as open enrollment uh neither raises student achievement nor enhances equality of opportunity and may exasperate racial segregation and socioeconomic stratification although open enrollment sounds really great it does breed inequity our district is large and nicknamed schools in a specific region the schools on the west and although these schools are simply neighborhood schools within economically neglected neighborhoods without transportation to get to choice schools with specialized programs um and without campaigns to shake negative reputations we have mostly brown black multilingual immigrant and impoverished students at these designated title one schools um open enrollment is the reason why we have as west end school it is not easy to work at a title one school people can apply for title one status when
06540 of the school population qualifies for free or reduced lunch however schools like encina which were just mentioned are 98 for your reduced lunch so please please consider um open enrollment just to plant a seed and to water that and thank you so much for your time thank you for your comment ms quinones our final speaker is aricelli reed when you are ready hello um thank you for taking the time to um hear me out i was calling because i was curious about the raise as well um and the stipend and it seems like we will not be getting it from what it sounds like um but that's not my concern my own concern also is the fact that we were going to be returning with the bridges after school program will be returning back
066to sites full time all day offering a program to san juan staff and teachers um plus the foster youth and um i believe so i just wanted to make sure or get understanding how that is safe for us to return to an all-day program five days a week but our students are not i feel that we are undervalued we are being considered a daycare um and i think that one of the biggest issues that we have is that during the school year we are conventional so i don't understand how again this is um fair for us to go back for us to have a program that runs the full time and i just understand how it's fair for us not to get this um stipend i myself had to purchase a desk a chair um
067specific lighting to have in my house so i can not have headaches because everything that i'm doing now is on the computer i am offering a service to my students and which reminds me who's going to take over my google classroom when i'm working full-time in sites the connection that i have with my students is not going to be there because i'm going to be expected to run a site or you know um and i think that that is the biggest concern that we have as well because we are we created a bond with the students during this time um as small as my group may be they still rely on me to um to provide support for them and you know um this is just all very frustrating thank you for your time thank
068you for your comment and we do have one additional comment uh johanna wright when you are ready yeah hi can you hear me we can we can okay i i also i'm speaking on behalf of the bridges after school program uh the bridges after school program reaches out to so many students that need us we all as site coordinators have been not seen we have not been heard we are touching so many students that need us deeply we have all had to set up our own home offices we have had to utilize every opportunity to learn on our own to set up our google classrooms to do our zooms consistently we are there for our students and we do not feel like we are seen or heard by the district we make a huge difference
069with supporting not only our school staff and our teachers but we are there for our families and i think it's very important that you guys understand that we are making a difference and we definitely should be heard and you guys should be looking at the students that you're impacting making the decisions that you're making going forward regarding the after school program thank you and thank you for your comment uh president vyasas that is the final comment we have no further raised hands at this time thank you mr allen at this time we will then move to item g the consent calendar um do we have any public comments for items that are on the consent calendar at this time we have had no comments submitted for the consent calendar and i see no raised hands
070at this time okay and do any board members wish to remove any items um g1 through g11 miss fiascas uh i would like to pull g1 um and move the rest of the items i'll share i had a request from a board member to have that pulled so when that comes back i'll explain around that okay noted so um with that then is there um a motion to approve items g2 through g11 it's been uh moved by mr hernandez is their second second it's been seconded by ms costa all those in favor please please indicate by saying aye aye that was unanimous um item g1 was pulled um would any uh of my colleagues like to make any comments or questions at this time on g1 so ms fiasco is what i can share with
071you is that there was a question brought up on part of this item of g1 related to employee discipline cl499 they felt like there was more information needed prior to um really making a decision on this so the request was possibly to provide more information background on this before so we could provide that information to all of the board members they would have that information we would bring that back at the next meeting so that they could make a decision on that okay um so there's been a motion and items g2 through g11 have been um approved and so uh g1 will just not move forward at this time and we'll return with more information i believe and i'm 99 confident that removing it in any way it does not require a vote but miss
072simply please um jump in at this time to correct me if i'm wrong i just got an affirmation from superintendent kern that that's the case so we will see this item returning to us at our next meeting will the rest of g1 go forward that was my question correct so i see fun moment so i'm only we were only pulling that one part of related discipline right right right right and take action on the remainder of g1 if we can move the remainder of g1 excluding the pulled item so yeah okay it's been moved and seconded it's been moved by miss costa seconded by dr mckibben uh is there a motion to approve the remaining items of g1 all right i all right thank you that was unanimous and so um the that pooled item
073for g1 will return to us okay we are then at item i one equity update part two dr calvin please begin when you are ready thank you evening president viasquez members of the board superintendent kern and ms cunningham tonight the equity team will present their second equity update for the 2020 2021 school year the presentation will include a summary of our fall actions and established support from our various working groups we will begin with the director of equity diana marshall and program coordinator lori vine who will summarize the work that occurred this past fall good evening board members president viazquez and superintendent kern the eight-point commitment provides us with labor laser focused clarity on our equity actions as a district this in combination with the equity lens and the work around leading for equity is
074truly manifesting an equity mining culture across our district where policies procedures and practices are being changed and improvement plans across sites clearly have equity at the core so when looking at our fall actions there was three large buckets of of actions that that took place this year so first i want to start by again thanking you for your for supporting the equity work through your approval aboard policy zero four one five i do believe that this policy provides just another tool for our system that reinforces that diversity equity and inclusion are imperative for us to shift to something we do to something we are at this time i would like to introduce lori vine who will share more about the professional learning as well as the integration of the social justice standards lori thank you
075and good evening as a result of the listening sessions this past june and the launch of the eight-point commitments to educational justice another need was overwhelmingly voiced by our san juan community the need for more training the district felt the responsibility to provide leadership training to support all district employees as well as to create supports for the inclusion of anti-bias and anti-racist education and so through a shared commitment with san juan teachers association it was determined that certificated staff would be required to engage in nine hours of professional development this year administrators and classified employees are also being offered a wide variety of professional development opportunities what began in august was six of these nine hours that were created by a district committee of stakeholders to help establish a baseline understanding of equity and the
076work that we have in the district towards an anti-bias education the baseline began in august with a three-hour introduction to the social justice standards that all participated employees were given at the same time and then in october we were given the opportunity to think about how our students lived experiences impact what we need to teach in the classroom in october and november we had dialogue at the site level around site-specific strengths and areas of growth for those schools and finally in april we will be concluding the year with another hour related to empathy understanding and equity the remaining three hours of the nine hours are basically given to sites to decide how they want to implement those hours currently we have 41 different schools engaging in whole site pd presented by our equity liaisons each
077site have the opportunity to choose three sessions from a variety of equity related topics the remaining sites have selected individual choice and so their practitioners will be given the opportunity to embark on their own journey in selecting their own three hours of equity development equity professional development from our equity website and i think and then yes as we've mentioned before the integration of the social justice standards has been an important step in providing an anti-bias and anti-racist education for our students and for those of you who are not familiar the standards are essentially a roadmap for anti-bias education at every stage of our tk12 education they're comprised of anchor standards and age-appropriate learning outcomes and they provide a common language and a structure for educators to help guide them in their curriculum development across all
078grade levels and all content areas and they're really meant to help make our schools feel more just equitable and safe our work with the standards actually began began many many years ago back in 2014 i believe 2015 with a collaboration with california state university sacramento we have a social justice institute that we partner with them on and our educators go through a year-long program with them where they learn about the social justice standards and how to embed them in their curriculum we've also had the tremendous opportunity to send hundreds of our staff to the museum of tolerance in los angeles and have built a partnership with the museum over the last several years in providing a deeper dive into the standards in fact we've created a partnership with one of the writers of the standards
079and she has come to our district to tailor training specifically to us for our staff and finally this summer uh with distance learning at the front of all of our minds we decided that we needed to offer our practitioners an opportunity to dig into these standards in a distance learning way and so a virtual model was created and over 460 of our staff members have completed that module as well all of this leads to a joint commitment with san juan teachers association and the district that was developed in september this is a joint statement highlighting our collective responsibility to provide anti-bias education which includes the integration of these standards into the classroom and across our schools this is significant because it affirms that san juan is a community that we are committed to working together
080to ensure inclusive classrooms and schools for all of our students and now i'll hand it back to diana thank you so much lori so as we move into working groups i i really just want to share out that the purpose of the working groups is to really co-create action plans and implementation guides in a transparent fashion that where stakeholders have been invited to be a part of the solution as we move forward there are currently eight equity working groups these groups are actually taking the ideas that were established in the eight point commitment and building those out action and implementation plans each commitment has at least one um working group that is currently in in session or or meeting on a regular basis um there is a common prac process for all of the working
081groups we're following the continuous improvement process which includes making sure that all groups clearly define their task reviewing data and comparing it to best practices in the in that specific area making prototypes going out to get feedback from other stakeholders making adjustments and then finalizing implementation plans and timelines with during the implementation going out for periodic review and reflection each of the working groups are at different phases along this continuum and you will see in each slide that we noted what what part of this continuum they are currently working on in total in the working groups we have 110 different employees supporting these working groups we have classified certified teacher teachers or classified employees administrators parents bargaining unit leaders and community partners who are involved in at least one or more of the working groups
082at this time we are going to spend some time sharing out the status of each of the working groups and i would like to introduce alicia williams teacher on special assignment in early childhood education alicia thank you diana so the task of the indicators of success working group was clearly defined in the eight point commitment this team was tasked with developing indicators of success for each of the eight commitments and metrics to measure those indicators the working group spent time in the first few sessions researching how other organizations were measuring their success a common theme emerged which was the use of rubrics and the team learned that for each of the commitment area there are four to five indicators which the team is currently completing the team will then share out the indicators for feedback
083and make noted adjustments before creating the rubric sorry the student-led social justice forums are being created by a team which includes community partners such as improve your tomorrow says and project optimism all which have experience in providing social justice forms for our youth in addition to bsu gsa leadership and swab advisors along with teachers who are all integrating the social justice standards into their content in this first year especially with the challenges of engagement during distance learning the group has decided to start small the team will be offering four sessions that will support students in creating a youth participatory action research project around social justice topics and that first session will start this week with students from san juan high school and from says and lastly the workforce diversity group while still in its developing
084stages has been working collaboratively to brainstorm ideas about improving retention practices building capacity across the district and then developing targeted retention practices specifically for our employees of color additionally the group is working on developing and sharing out the manager's toolkit to collect feedback as the team continues to develop career pathways the retention hub and training for our hiring managers next i'd like to introduce teacher dana levy from whitney elementary i'll be continuing to describe the progress of some of our other working groups first up we have the equitable schools and programs working group which is focused on ensuring more equitable schools especially around school choice and specialty schools as well as equitable access around courses and programs such as ib ap and gay programs and because this is such a complex topic that is further
085complicated by edcode the team is starting slow with the goal to report out findings by the spring of 2021. the team is interested in finding some exemplars across districts who have successfully addressed this topic some of the goals in mind are to replicate the success of equal opportunity schools initiatives in middle and elementary schools for example using a holistic approach to admissions for all children and looking at students potential for growth rather than only static numbers and grades and with the hopes of putting plans in place to ensure every school is a great school where teachers and community members are eagerly sending their children the team has a plan to engage in empathy gathering surveys where we can speak to all stakeholders about their decisions to send their children to a neighborhood school versus using
086a school choice voucher next are our equity teams the equity team working group began by defining what an equity team is and its goals at school sites as well as district-wide and thinking about the potential challenges and barriers that we might face first members spent some time gathering research about the best practices from around the country and comparing them with our own district by working with our community partners in epic education we've been designing the teams and laying the groundwork for site level execution right now we're thinking about the makeup of the teams how to make sure they're representative of all school community members and stakeholders as well as how to ensure equity work is centered and seen as essential to all aspects of school life lastly our identity safe protocols working group is in
087the process of creating a toolkit for sites to use in order to take a close look at their school and community populations and ensure that all stakeholders are represented school sites possibly facilitated by equity teams will have the opportunity to complete identity audits curriculum and classroom audits when they will think about staff and students asking themselves who are we and who are the students and families that we serve their next steps are then to ask themselves how are we responding to our school populations looking deeply at the books we're reading the language we're using and if students and families truly see themselves represented in our classrooms one schools identify places for improvement we plan to provide a menu of offerings such as site-specific trainings and resources that will further our work to be inclusive i'll
088send it back to diana we'll explain more about accountability thank you dana so one of the clear actions that we heard not only in june but from previous stakeholder listening sessions is that we need to implement a system to be able to report racism and inequities for all members of our community to hold each other and the system accountable to our eight-point commitment the structure of the reporting system was relatively easy to identify and we are looking at incorporating it into using the problem resolution system that already is in existence in our district from there the um the district has created drafts on how we are going to communicate that this plan and the accountability of it and that the training and a training plan um in addition in in the plan is a transparency
089component where there will there'll be a a team of stakeholders that will review patterns and trends four times a year on the the problems that have come in and make recommendations for further action if appropriate to the district the team is hoping that by the end of january to be sharing out these draft plans through the structured feedback loops that we are creating so that's the update on the accountability for all and at that this point this is the conclusion of our equity update part 2 presentation and we are available for any questions thank you thank you dr calvin uh miss marshall and to the team for the presentation mr allen do we have any public comments on this item at this time we do have one hand raised at this time for comment uh
090we will start with uh debbie palucca and i will remind uh all public comments are limited to two minutes which will be shared with the timer on the screen and actually uh debbie has lowered her hand at this point and i see no other hands at this time nor do we have any submitted comments however another hand has this one up mr chris shields and again two minutes when you are ready mr shields hi guys um i have a question about the upcoming school year i work at northridge and with the covid the way it is i was wondering do you guys know if the kids are gonna come back to school or are we gonna cancel so chris i'm gonna i'm gonna ask you to pause this is actually public comment for uh this
091agenda item on the equity report so this would be a general comment that you're offering or questions so we'd ask you to hold that to the general comment period that's towards the end of the meeting at this point okay thanks guys sorry about that no problem thank you thank you mr allen and yes i was also going to offer the same reminder we do have agenda item l visitor comments which is another um general visitor comment section for um individuals to raise items other any questions related to items other than our business item at hand mr allen are there any um raised hands for this item there are not okay um with that i'll turn it back to my my colleagues um and we're gonna um go through what would typically be our dice seating
092order for any questions or comments so we'll begin with mr hernandez thank you i just want to make a comment more than the question i just want to thank you for your work um it's it's very exciting to be able to be part of a district that has an equity department and that we're striving as diligently as we can to help um educate because that's really what we're trying to do is educate equity as a district and did uh i don't know how other districts around us are doing but i clearly with the bottom of my heart i'm so proud of our equity department and for one and i'll be very honest i remember when i went to the uh the museum of tolerances to on my trip and uh i had no idea with
093no expectations and i walked out of there a different person i really did and it was just by pure education by uh and then taking a step back and just looking back how i can be a better person and that's what we're what we're trying to do so thank you very much for your work thank you mr hernandez miss costa i'd like to echo mr hernandez's comments the team has done a remarkable job this is a very comprehensive plan and i think as we move forward i i have great hope for our district to finally take the steps that lead to every student every family member every staff member being treated in a way that is respectful and also understanding of each individual so thank you for your work i will be excited to hear
094the next report and see where we are in terms of our equity teams and the things that are happening at school sites so thank you thank you miss creason thanks i have a couple of comments and just one question and you've heard me say some of this before but just very thankful for the long game you know i can't say that enough that it's not just we're gonna have everyone read this one book one time and call it good we're not going to do this one training one time and say hey we address the issue that we're doing that deep dive long game across the board and really very meaningfully including community in that work and we're leaving spit you're leaving space for course corrections or changes as um you know community provides their input
095from my perspective you know there is no oh we did this great thing look at this shiny thing tell us how we did it's it's authentic and it's meaningful and you know being a woman of color being a black woman um especially i mean all the time but especially in this time i mean just knowing that we are putting this energy because it takes a lot of energy and a lot of staff time while we're in the middle of distance learning we didn't put it to the side we continued to put this in the forefront and i am so incredibly thankful from the bottom of my heart that this has continued to be um a focus of our district so thank you thank you very much um i wanted to say too it's my understanding
096until recently and it isn't the case in many other districts this isn't unique to sj usd that um teacher training is usually in a model where teachers can choose you know what they want their professional development on um so it seems to me that it's quite unique that there is an agreement with our teachers to have a mandatory training in this space i think that's huge and profound it's not an option um the question is did i hear correctly that classified staff it's not mandatory for classified staff do i understand that correctly my understanding is is that at this point we have been offering training we offered um classified training separately to just understand the eight-point commitments in october we're offering another follow-up training that they've tried to give um they've had an opportunity to
097give feedback on what would be valuable to them because that's so an important piece of equity training is doing what's valuable to the the consumer or the participant and those will be happening again in february as well as in april many of the site classified staff have been participating in the site professional development and i do not have there's a miss in in me being able to track who has who are the ones who have been participating that way but we have been tracking in the pl system all of all of the people who have been attending the training so we have that data thank you thank you for that clarification and it's great to hear that classified is joining in um you know at the school level and we're just casting that wide net
098so i just hope we can keep doing more of that and adjusting as times continue to change and i hope that as we figure this thing out that maybe we can even expand this out further i know you're already doing a lot i'm sorry i don't even say this out loud but you know i think families also need this right like how how do we really put out those tentacles so we really have that change um i know i have heard um some feedback from our work in equity what does this mean to my community maybe a community that doesn't see them as an impacted community and i just want to call out that when the most vulnerable among us is taken care of and um valued and disparities are addressed we all thrive your
099whole community is better um when the most vulnerable among us is taken care of and so i just want to point that out for folks that might not see themselves in this work because it's about all of us thank you that's it for me thank you dr mckibben uh again i want to congratulate all those people the uh the the many people that went through the training what was a 460 and and what was 110 participants in the in the work groups and support that's that's a real uh evidence of our commitment to this sort of thing also i'm looking forward to the uh um the student-led uh social justice forums over i think it's the next two thursdays and and looking forward to seeing what what they they come forward uh on i do
100have a couple of questions related to i was really impressed that that one of the things that that school districts don't always do is use the initiatives they've had in the past to bring them forward and i noticed that you're using the material from the equal opportunity schools initiative that was mostly a high school piece and bring it into the elementary and middle school uh uh i believe uh dana mentioned uh the holistic approach was one of the things they were thinking about are there any other kinds of things that came out of the equal opportunity schools that you think that the elementary and middle schools might uh uh might benefit from in particular uh how how would the teachers in the elementary and middle schools know about some of the really remarkable things that
101that were done in high schools on equal opportunity schools how did how do they learn about them i so i think so one of the reasons why that has been brought up as a data point is when we were looking at the data and looking at ap and ib numbers especially the demographics and then comparing it to our honors honors demographics and then our rapid learner demographics there was there was some we we closed some gaps when we're looking at the ap and in i think the team really attributed it to the um equal opportunity schools program and so i i think some of the things that i know of is that identification and that mentorship of of though those individual students who have the characteristics for um success right and and how to build
102that relationship a one-on-one tapping on the shoulder uh hey we think you would be really good for this that that that common mentality i i think might be very valuable and and it's a very simple task if you think about it but how how can we carry out that mindset further down in other programs i i don't know all the answers we are at the beginning stages of what that are you are you thinking about about you you talked about mentorship are you thinking about one of the things that i was really impressed with uh was the trusted adult notion and is that the kind of thing that you're thinking about uh bringing into uh middle school and elementary exactly okay because we're looking at all of the best parts of eos and how might
103we um how how might we transfer what what what skills would be able to be transferred or what practices or strategies could be transferred at the other levels but most of it's in terms of giving confidence to those young people and talking about colleges and and things like that that makes that makes a lot of sense yeah one of the my last piece was i appreciated you talking about accountability and and listing the people uh that you were going to bring this uh group back i did notice the school board wasn't on that list we can invite you i will invite you if you'd like to be a part of it absolutely and but but the whole idea is that that i as uh miss creason said that if we don't have a amount of
104accountability and come back and talk to us about us and talking about about the things that we're doing frankly warts and all uh that that we can't get to where we need to be so congratulations again uh and i'm looking forward to the uh reports in the future this is great stuff thank you dr mckibben thanks dr mckinnon and i'm just going to take a moment to kind of both uh say thank you to the team um echo my thanks as well but also just acknowledge the um like very strong unanimity that you have amongst this board and how remarkable that is frankly particularly given the moment of time that we are living in frankly um i i hope you all um take a moment to acknowledge um uh that how cool that is and
105really never take that for granted because um that's probably not my best and um you know did some some litmus tests across the board so to that i also wanted to say thanks to my colleagues um and uh note that this work and this effort um and you know there's been a little bit of a refrain as we've started discussing this even through the summer this work has continued and a bit of a refrain of how can you be focused on this when there's so many other things to be focused on and the commitment of it's not an either or it's it's both it's an and because the work is that important um it still is still strongly supported and so i just want to take a moment to just appreciate that both as a
106group and i hope you all as professionals in this work um you know see how significant that is um i do have just some kind of questions and more reflections on the presentation um specifically and that's around that accountability for for all peace um i feel like one of the pieces that we have struggled with um a little bit just as a system given the size uh frankly is whenever there's an event of significance that happens everyone responds a little bit differently and it creates a number sometimes some confusion but um more more often just ambition within the community and so i really kind of appreciate you know it looks like building into this right is you know current problem resolution protocols i feel like built into that is an assumption right that there will
107be protocols established and everyone can expect um the same level of response um when it is necessitated by an event and i wanted to welcome the team to um weigh in a little bit more on that if you felt um if you felt compelled to do so but wanted to just acknowledge uh that and mine and make sure that my understanding was correct in terms of the role that that part will play in our response as a system whenever there are um incidences that happen incidentally what happened there was a couple times where you were fading in and out so i i just want to make sure yes there are going to be protocols in place in fact we were talking that specifically at our last meeting really trying to get down to what what
108the what ifs and what if that you know and making sure that that were really clear and and they think where that really tight end is how important it's going to be to communicate what those protocols are and and to consistently communicate that so nobody feels like they're being treated differently than than any other person who's using the system right yeah you did i really appreciate that and sorry for um and then i also on slide 10 um you know the indicators of success and the matrix laid out there for me that's probably one of the harder parts to tackle on this and so i wanted to see if anyone had any more um context or or kind of meat that they wanted to add to the bones on on what that looks like because
109a rubric on such a on a topic like this seems pretty challenging to implement in a meaningful and consistent way but um i appreciate the work going into it and that that's not stopping us from trying to tackle it i i welcome any more additional um text or feedback on what that might ultimately look like when fully built out so so like as alicia mentioned that each of the each of the commitments so for example commitment number one there might be three or four different indicators right so there i only gave you examples of one on on this powerpoint so there would be a variety from having trust in caring adults to uh that i you know that students feel that they're represented at in their in in their classrooms you know along the walls
110or a variety of things i i'm just speaking off the top of my head right now and so then from there once in and this is one of the reasons why i wanted to make sure that we sent out the indicators for feedback before we went to rubrics because i think it's going to be really important to get really clear on what those indicators are and in having a lot of feedback will be important because i think the more clear we get with those the easier it will be to identify rubrics whether what does it look like if a site or an individual is approaching or are they meeting that standard or they are they exemplifying that standard and so similar to the way that um system of professional growth set up those rubrics for
111the essential elements is the same type of model that we would be looking at so it's it's not going to be a cut cut and dry thing there's going to be nuance to it but i think it will be able to help us to reflect on where we're at in our journey to becoming successful great thank you that's that's all for me so um thank you again to to the team really appreciate the updates and like my colleagues look forward to future updates thank you and thank you for everyone who participated so um with that we are now at um item i2 the science textbook adoption for grades um tk through five miss bassinelli will be presenting this item bassinelli please begin when you're ready good evening president fiasco as members of the board superintendent
112conan cunningham tonight we're bringing to you report two of the transitional kindergarten through fifth grade science textbook adoption for your approval this is an action item and it was presented to the board for discussion on december 15 2020 myself and staff are available to respond to any questions the board may have thank you miss bassinelli mr allen do we have any public comments specific to item i2 science textbook adoptions for grades tk through 5. we have not had any comments submitted nor do we have any hands raised at this time president vyasas thank you mr allen do any board members have questions or comments this time mr hernandez miss costa rican i just wanted to call out we discussed this um at the last meeting but um the curriculum and standards it's my understanding the
113curriculum and standards committee did review this and get unanimous unanimously approved this job adoption i'm sorry i cannot talk right now you know what i'm trying to say they unanimously approve this adoption is that correct that is correct thank you dr mckibben yeah uh uh uh miss bassinelli i don't know if paula's there but i i did have a question and and a comment that i was that uh in terms of when uh when you move to a new curriculum you know such as this new science curriculum uh what are the attempts that are made uh to preserve some of the best elements of the last curriculum let me give you an example that that this was back in my uh volunteer days as as a parent that some of the some of the investigations
114i believe they called them at the time and that's the thing were fascinating things that the kids were given a great deal of freedom and that sort of thing and it seemed to me to be the kinds of things that i hadn't seen particularly in in elementary classrooms and the one i remember was when it was a tide uh tied uh uh uh investigation and so forth are there any opportunities uh when we're adopting a new curriculum to make sure that the best of the last curriculum aren't lost doctor i do have paula bockham program specialist for science with us and so um i'm going to defer to her to respond to your question thank you yeah thank you for that question and our our last adoption um for the last couple of cycles has
115been foss the full options science system produced through the lawrence hall of science and it was a very hands-on program where students did have the opportunity to do lots of hands-on investigations i would say that the benefit of our new adoption is it does have those same types of hands-on investigations but it also brings up the inquiry piece um i think to a higher level so it embeds the science and engineering practices which are part of the next generation science standards um really thoughtfully into the curriculum um which weren't always as front and center in the prior adoptions so i would say it really does hold that at the heart is the inquiry-based approach as well as multiple opportunities for students to really dig in and do those really critical hands-on investigations thank you i
116mean i just don't want us to lose some of the really good parts as as we go and sometimes we just kind of flip the switch and don't appreciate you know uh what we had yeah i appreciate that i think um we will see that that is all in you know those those great pieces that were in our old curriculum for the hands-on pieces are really strongly embedded in our new curriculum that we will um be looking at to adopt this evening yeah this is it looks like it's really good stuff uh thank you thank you thank you dr mckibben and thanks to the team as well as was noted earlier this was a discussion item at the december 15th board meeting and tonight it is an action item seeing no further questions or comments
117is there a motion at this time to approve report two related to the new textbook adoption for science tk through five it's all moved i'll second it's been moved by dr mckinnon and seconded by ms creeson all those in favor please indicate by saying hi hi that was unanimous thank you we are now at i3 gateway international school renewal petition ms wagler please begin when you are ready yes good evening president vyasas members of the board superintendent kern and miss cunningham on november 30th gateway international school submitted a charter renewal petition to the superintendent's office the superintendent is recommending that the board hold a public hearing for this petition presenting the public hearing information is gateway international school principal joy decoy and gateway community charters deputy superintendent jason sample so mr coy and mr sample
118you may begin your presentation thank you great thank you director flagler uh i assume that you can see my screen at this uh point in time just want to make sure very good uh again good evening uh president velazquez members of the board of education and superintendent kern my name is jason sample i'm deputy superintendent for gateway community charters as well as a proud el camino high school alum i am here tonight uh with gateway international school principal miss joy tucoy and uh we are here to present to you on behalf of superintendent dr cena peterson the lead petitioner for the renewal petition for gateway international school uh in addition to our lead petitioner and superintendent dr peterson we also have uh our chief business official as well as our assistant superintendent uh our chief
119business official mr thornsbury and our assistant superintendent dr mccormick there we go so as the capturing kids hearts national showcase district gateway uh community charters has over 18 years of experience providing high quality school choice and collaboration with our local school district partners such as san juan unified as well as twin rivers yolo county office of education sacramento city unified in elk grove gcc manages and operates successfully nine charter schools with 19 sites within the greater sacramento region as the gcc we provide all the central office services such as instructional support human resources business services accounts payable professional development to all of our charter schools we have over 500 employees serving approximately 200 students in both tk through 12 seat base as well as none classroom based program models we have an annual budget of
120over 77 million with positive uh annual fiscal audits and reserves well above the required three percent minimum and finally as evidenced by the high staff retention that we have uh the gcc is proud to have received the best places to work in sacramento uh this designation in the year 2015 1718 and most recently in 2020. uh now i would like to introduce principal joy de coy who will share more information about the academic and program success of gateway international school mr coy thank you jason good evening president vazquez board members superintendent kern and miss cunningham it's once again good to see you all well and healthy and thank you for this opportunity to present i appreciate the grace you've shown to all the presenters tonight and i might need a little bit of that as
121well we have some great things happening at gis as you can see listed here but i'll highlight just a few first this week it's as though gis is getting a brand new school on thursday we will move into our final phase of modernized classrooms and i can hardly express to you how thankful i am every staff member every parent and every single student you have gifted us with many improvements but most notably the portables new hvac systems remodel classrooms and bathrooms these updates will allow us to excel in instruction and services to our students gis and gcc appreciate the partnership with san juan to make this happen i'd like to thank some key san juan staff for that i'm frank carmada nicholas arps laura leet and mitch buchan for their direction through this process working
122with me directly and to the board and to superintendent for your commitment to this project since we were last before you gis has achieved three very distinct honors in five years we received two international baccalaureate authorizations the primary year's program authorization for tk through fifth grade and the middle years authorization for sixth through eighth grade we also received a full six-year accreditation from wasc the western association of schools and colleges while these are very rigorous processes that require much work from teachers staff and students through it all we maintained a high retention rate for employees and a high level of parent and community satisfaction gis has experienced success with distance learning as well as some challenges that i'm sure you know well but we were ready to move to distance learning we were already working
123with one-to-one technology google classroom a go guardian supervision program and other digital programs and we were able to get our students connected to their teachers online daily and less than a week of school closure in march this school year we had a phased-in return to school starting in october with a hybrid program following all safety and distancing requirements from the county health department teachers instruct from the classroom to students in person and online we are extremely proud of our teaching staff for making this happen knowing the challenges they face with it every day next slide because of the pandemic the most recent school data we have for you is from spring of 2019. this chart shows progress over two years related to our california school dashboard indicators and compares us to the state and the
124district gis is in the first column of each year and it shows that we improved one color level for english language arts chronic absenteeism and suspension rate and improved two levels in math excellence the next data chart gives detailed results for our account scores over two years for english language arts 58 of our students met or exceeded the standard and in math 47 of our students met or exceeded the standards all subgroups included including english learners sped socioeconomically disadvantaged groups all made significant progress in getting closer to the standard coherent instruction has been a focus at gis and within gcc over the past few years with an emphasis on writing and we think this is evident in our academic scores gis is closing the achievement gap moving forward gis will continue to focus on quality
125instruction during distance learning by eliciting feedback from all community members and adjusting as necessary to meet their needs we have intentionally supported our students with social emotional weekly lessons which we know right now is more important than ever we're committed to our action plans for ib for wasp and for lcap all of which align to provide support for both teachers and students and of course we look forward to working with san juan as we put the final touches this semester to modernize our campus gis has a bright future thank you again we are very appreciative of the partnership and collaboration and the collaborative relationship that we share with the district we truly consider ourselves part of the san juan family finally tonight we have uh again in this virtual environment we have uh over 100
126supporters who are in attendance tonight via zoom our youtube to share their support for gis and tonight we also want to say thank you for your time and we look forward to having you on campus with us as soon as health regulations allow uh very soon thank you very much and we're here to answer any questions that you have thank you for the quotation i declare the topic of the gateway international charter school renewal petition a public hearing and it is now open for public comment mr allen are there any public comments at this time we do have two hands raised at this time and a few more going up as i speak our first speaker will be anya var kinton whose hand just went down so we will start with april solar when you're
127ready april i'm sorry i was muted good evening my name is april atkinson-schuller and i've been teaching third grade at gateway international school since 2016. upon arriving at gis i knew i had found something special from the very first day smiling faces and hands greeted me everyone wanted to make sure i felt welcome and comfortable during my second day of school when i needed help dealing with a troubled student a first grade teacher literally jumped my aid i had never experienced anything like this before it made a huge impression on me and is what's kept me and many other teachers coming back every year we are not colleagues we are family when one of us hurts we all hurt a few years ago the teachers began calling each other marigolds because our superintendent once told
128us that marigolds helped things around them grow like the flower the gis marigolds seek to help each other grow in many ways we listen help offer suggestions share ideas and reflect together you will not find a group of educators more dedicated to our craft at gis teachers have the freedom to express themselves while executing a rigorous robust ib program we provide our students with rich learning opportunities suited to their needs while ensuring that our students feel safe loved valued and challenged we provide agency and choice cultivating a lifelong love of learning this year as we face the challenges of distance and hybrid learning we stepped up to the plate with a smile on our face pushing our students to be flexible patient risk takers who are not afraid to tackle difficult things additionally our admin
129team is extremely supportive making us feel respected heard and valued our principal knows each student personally making every child feel special and cared for gis is truly a school like no other it has been my home for the last five years and it is a place that has helped me grow and continue to challenge and improve myself thank you thank you for your comment our next comment will be from captain 65 when you are ready all right can you guys hear me we can okay cool yep uh you're sorry about i tried to change my name there but out this is randy hackett i'm uh i'm a uh we're the proud parents of uh two boys that go to gateway and i would like to thank uh mrs mccoy and all of her staff for
130their hard work and dedication they put into our kids and and all the other kids as well in their education for the first time we enrolled our kids in to how they are doing now has been a great journey and watching them grow into good young men my wife and i have seen real progress in in their learning and mental development i can't think of any other school that i could you know that could do a better job than what gateway does with our kids right now um they do a great job with the distant learning there's been some glitches here and there but you know parents stick together teachers stick together to make sure uh you know that everything goes smooth during our zoom meetings uh the programs that are offered to help when
131you don't need it when uh there's been you know been great for our kids to stay focused and in tune with their learning we have uh we've been able to work through you know any issues to make sure our kids stay on track and that's a testament to the staff the improvements to the school have been truly refreshing to see where the school was a few years ago and what has become of the school right now has been a wonderful experience the modern look and the classroom upgrades are outstanding and uh we we owe a lot to gateway international and their passion to develop our kids providing them with a safe school environment and i'm proud to say that i i've been on the school site council for a few years now to help you
132know give my input as a parent thank you and thank you for your comment our next comment will be from anya varkinton when you are ready which will be just one moment as i need to promote uh anya to a panelist uh hello can you guys hear me we can please uh start when you're ready okay hello my name is anya varkinton and i'm an 8th grader here at gateway international school something i like about gis is the students that go there and the teachers that teach there the students are almost always kind and they help me with my social life and skills the teachers at our school are always working hard to make learning fun they encourage us to always do our best and never give up gis to music a big international family
133that tries so hard to help everyone feel welcome no matter what culture they're from it gives us an opportunity to keep our native languages alive when i came to this school i didn't know how to speak english but over the years english became my second fluent language it's always a benefit to know more than more one language and that's exactly what our school provides it gave me an open door to a lot of different experiences like student council the stem program girls on the run girl scouts different fun field trips dancing sewing and cooking class one of my favorite experiences was going to other schools to compete in different sports and meet new people all of these experiences helped me be a good communicator inquirer risk taker and to be open-minded caring reflective balanced and
134principled that's something i'll take with me after i graduate from gis to succeed further further down in my life thank you for your comment and our final comment is from chris shields chris when you are ready um hi guys i have a question um i asked tried to ask it earlier um regarding the kobit situation um i work it in the cafeteria at northridge elementary with wonderful staff and everything but my question to the district is is are are we gonna end the school year like we ended last year's um covet thing because of how it's getting worse because my boss told me today bernie elias that she thinks but she's not positive that you know we the district might close uh be like they did last year so that's what my question is i
135i'd like to know so i can make some plans on what to do if that occurs so chris member staff will reach out to you help you with an answer to that yeah because that's why i thought i just asked the board to see if you guys knew anything about it because it is getting worse so that that's that that was my question to y'all to see if you guys knew about it and that was our final comment president vasquez paula you are on mute i was bound to happen i had a pretty good track record i just want to like say that for the record um okay that concludes um the public hearing um for gateway international charter school renewal petition um do any board members have any questions or comments at this time
136we'll go in order and i'll begin with mr hernandez uh no questions just very impressed by anya uh's presentation and her comments and uh thank you it's great to hear student voice talk about their school that's it ms costa thanks no questions ms creason no questions and again i echo um mr hernandez's comments thank you anya for joining us tonight dr mckibben yeah i i do have one uh uh clarification kind of question and that is in the in the material that was provided it's talked about nine different schools and in some cases they're talking about uh gateway international schools and some cases international school i'd like to know are there not are we is our agreement for nine different schools or for the uh uh the programs that were uh described here and the
137the data that were there are the data that were provided for all over over all nine schools or just one particular kind of school yes thank you dr mckinnon i'll answer that so gateway community charters we oversee uh nine various charters there's only one charter with san juan unified uh school district which would be gateway international school and that's the school that is before you for your consideration okay okay uh saying no thank you saying no further questions or or comments um the action is scheduled for for this item for february 23rd thank you all for joining us this evening um with that we are now at item i4 conveyance of the easement at ow how avenue elementary school mr camarda please begin when you're ready thank you and good evening uh president viazquez members
138of the board superintendent kern and miss cunningham uh tonight's facilities item is an action item it is the public hearing and the conveyance of an easement at howard elementary uh the superintendent is recommending that the board call a public hearing in order to solicit public comment and adopt a resolution number 3017 declaring the conveyance of a permanent easement at howe avenue elementary school to the county of sacramento thank you mr camarda i declare the topic of conveying a permanent easement at howe avenue elementary school to the county of sacramento a public hearing and it is now open for public comment mr allen are there any public comments on um our business item i4 we have not had any comments submitted nor do we have any hands raised at this time okay there being no comments
139i uh declare the public hearing close do any board members have any questions or comments at this time we'll begin with mr hernandez it's a quick comment that this item was presented to our facility committee and they thoroughly took this assignment and it was discussed pretty heavily and they the committee didn't outstanding jobs uh uh any job wanting to know the in to make sure to protect the interest of our of the district in this and they did vote uh a hundred percent to support this as well for what it's worth thank you mr hernandez for for that update in addition miss costa miss creason hernandez uh predicted my question so i'm good thank you dr mckibben no questions okay um this is an action item is there a motion to adopt resolution number 3017
140conveying a permanent easement at howe avenue elementary school to the county of sacramento so moved second it's been moved by ms costa and seconded by mr hernandez all those in favor please indicate by saying aye aye thank you mr camarda um that we thanks for joining us sarita okay you watch it a little bit soon i appreciate your work we are now at item i5 side letters of agreement with sjta csea sjpec teamsters and supervisors related to a what a one-time off schedule payment mr schumache please begin when you are ready good evening president vasquez board members superintendent kerr miss cunningham i'm here tonight to present the sidelines of agreement with the san juan teachers association the san juan professional educators coalition the san juan supervisors association the california school employees association and the team
141search for a one-time off-schedule payment these payments were negotiated with each labor group and are supported by the superintendent and his cabinet additionally i'm presenting the proposed 2021-2022 school year calendar which was developed collaboratively with the san juan teachers association per their contract if it's okay with the board i would like to take a few moments to address some of the correspondence the board has received about the additional 500 stipend for teachers as you know i've personally responded every single email the board or superintendent has received and i'm working with any and all non-sjta employees that incurred instructional or clerical related material expenses to explore reimbursement for members listening tonight if you need instructional or clerical related materials to do your job you should be getting those from your work site if you feel you
142had instructional or clerical related materials expenses as a result of the pandemic and the district's response please work directly with your school principal or supervisor to discuss options for reimbursement and as you know in mid march 2020 san juan unified school district began to grapple with the really the unknown impact of this worldwide event it was the onset of a pandemic and it required drastic and urgent changes to all aspects of life including the way we educate children this quickly affected students families communities business partners and of course our employees the district acknowledges and appreciates the collective and individual contributions of all of our employees during these unparalleled times and in response the district has offered a one-time off-schedule payment to all regular employees equal to one percent of normal contract earnings while all educational
143employees been labeled as essential some were required to work on-site others were allowed to work from home and others did not work at all every employee has continued to be paid regardless of job-related circumstances when the state protected three specific classified employee groups from the effects of layoffs namely custodians bus drivers and food service workers san juan chose to preserve all positions no employee has been laid off as a consequence of this pandemic and i'm really pleased that the board took that and the superintendent took that position two groups of employees seem to have been more impacted by the rest and have been or will be additionally compensated accordingly this is beyond the one percent payment for all employees described earlier first are front-line workers who could not work from home providing essential services described
144above those providing those important services who could not perform their jobs from home were paid 50 above their normal wages while working on site during the early months of the pandemic while their job functions remain fairly consistent our district acknowledged and their added burdens and potential risk of working closely with the public many other districts throughout the state did not offer any pay adjustments for these services second our teachers were asked to quickly and effectively alter their instructional practices perhaps no other group of employee has had their routines changed so drastically this required most teachers to spend financial resources beyond their traditional contributions while these suggestions began in the spring the district is just now acknowledging the important contributions of that second group their additional compensation will be allocated in a unique manner different from
145that of the first group described above again the district i want to be really clear the district appreciates and respects the various contributions of all of our employees from those who have bravely and reliably served our students in public in person during the early months to those who waited patiently at home would be called to return to work each one has played an important role in fulfilling our mission to serve the students and families of san juan thank you for indulging me at this this time i'm happy to answer any questions if needed thank you mr schumacher before we jump to questions um we're going to see we're going to jump the public comment first consistent with the other items that have been presented tonight mr allen do we have any public comments on this
146item at this time we've had no comments uh submitted in writing after 6 p.m for this item and we do have two hands raised at this time so we will start with our first comment uh which is from amber b hi can you all hear me we can um thank you i i don't know actually if this is allowed i i work with mutual assistance network and i'm hearing a lot of concern about um the expense which is a very valid concern of staff um i wanted to just plug mutual assistance network offers a cali it program knowing that taxes are coming up um you can claim having to work from home the space that you used as a tax write-off and i would be happy to connect with anyone offline with how to connect
147you to that program that we offer and we also have a program through the financial empowerment center that could also support individuals who are impacted right now from covid and and all of these expenses that we have had to accrue i know it's been really challenging for myself distance learning having a fourth grader and so i definitely feel everyone's pain um and again sorry if that's not allowed i did it anyway plug that real quick for mutual assistance network thank you thank you for that comment amber our next comment will be from kim cell when you already when you're ready kim i would love to know how to get in touch with amber she just said to reach her that would be very helpful um also um somebody said that um we could the aides
148could get paid back for what they have in expenses like i said i had to buy my own headphones my own whiteboard and stuff like that i went to the principal of the school and asked and she told us no that was just for the teachers we had to pay for it out of our own pocket that's all on this subject our next comment is from miss alicia nichols the chromebooks that rias were provided were were completely incapable of allowing us to be able to do the new job that we suddenly had to do if we were able to even have just been given the same like hp or laptop or macbook that our fellow you know teachers get we would have been able to just do the job that we need to suddenly do
149because we are practically co-teaching and stream moderating at the same time now which is a lot not only a lot different than what we used to be doing but it's a completely different ball game and it takes a lot more time and effort and that's all i'm going to say on that thank you miss nichols and president viaskas we have uh no further hands raised uh missel as you've already spoken on this item and previously uh you have used your time at this for this item thank you uh president vasquez that is our final comment as we have no hands raised at this time okay um with that i'm going to turn it to my colleagues for questions and discussion we will begin with mr hernandez uh first of all mr schuman i appreciate you
150starting out your comments the way you did i think you clarified very clearly to uh some of our our labor groups who may or may not have understood and so i appreciate you clarifying that and for the record uh and it sounds like too many of our ias who who have sent us uh emails and comments tonight and uh you said that if they have had expenses in reference to material items that they can't get reimbursed if they have their receipts and if they don't they are able to provide an affidavit and uh am i correct is that right uh yes and if they have any issues it sounds like micelle there's a misunderstanding from the principal in this cell missile i will reach out to you i have your email as you sent me
151one earlier today i'll reach out to you tomorrow to work on rectifying that situation and let me just finish with this i i'm not sure why um some people weren't aware of this but i do know mr shumei as we use we saw your responses to some of those people that were inquiring that it was pretty much general knowledge that if they did that that they would be reimbursed so i'm glad that we cleared that up tonight and uh thank you that's all i got sure and um mr hernandez after hearing some of the comments tonight clearly um there needs to be some improved communication from our site leaders to our instructional assistants so i'll be working on that first thing tomorrow to make sure that our site leaders are personally reaching out to our
152uh instructional support staff to determine whether they had any instructional materials that the school typically would provide for instruction that they could be reimbursed for and and jim i think what we could do as well is is craft a message centrally working with trent and his team so that it is very clear and that we're not pardon me not leaving up to any um confusion um the the our site administrators everybody has enough on their plates right now so if we could work on that and try and get that communication out to sites and and employees who would have been in those categories within the next week or so we can work on that as well sure thank you for the clarification yeah ms costa i'm really grateful that this has been clarified tonight i
153think that it will make a big difference to employees who use their own funds to serve our children so thank you very much for the clarification i really appreciated what you said in the beginning of your remarks mr shumake i don't think there is an employee in this district who hasn't given everything that they have to make this a success for our children and i think that we are really blessed to have the employees that we have and to know that they are working so hard on behalf of our students i think that our families have really tried to support their children as well so as we go through this horrific period of time in history in san juan i really just want to say thank you to each employee and one percent is not
154enough but it is what we have right now and so i'm glad that we can at least say in that respect thank you for what you have done during this pandemic so thanks that's creasing thanks um just a couple things and some of it is echoing um i'm really glad that there's going to be that clarification going out um it just sounds like people just don't know um what their options are so i think that would be really really helpful um earlier i heard a comment about concern going to school sites for supplies and i'm assuming that there's going to be if there probably is already and if not i hope there can be safety measures put in place um you know we have kids that go to school sites to pick up food i
155know we do that safely um so that there's just a quick in and out people are hanging out i'm sure that's already in place but if not i hope we could go there and i could see you know i can understand why people could possibly can be concerned about that so maybe even um you know school sites letting staff know you know this is the process that we're taking to keep you safe and this is what you need to do to come get your supplies might be helpful um regard you know i just i want to acknowledge you know in my day job i look i work in workforce development especially for communities um that have been left behind in economic development which is a huge issue in throughout the nation and in our state
156um so i recognize and i hear you know there's some groups of employees that have been frontline workers or more exposed to the virus for a variety of reasons and i want to acknowledge that and you know pay is huge in all school districts not just here and i'm i think impala i'm sorry president vyasas correct me if i'm wrong but i believe california is like 48th in our nation for student spending and i just note that to say i agree people deserve more everybody you know um for what you're doing across the board um and that's something that i would love to advocate with all of you on um that's something that's beyond this individual school district's control how we're funded but i think that you know i just want to raise that i'm
157not sure how many people know that um again it's like 48 i believe it's 48 it's definitely not that much higher if it changed recently um in our nation and we're california and the more resources we get the better we can do for our staff um so that's something i would love to talk about and advocate with you alongside you side by side because change needs to happen but we can't do it by ourselves um i think this was addressed earlier but i just want to make sure i heard it correctly so i did hear too that there was a staff person that was told no so i'm hoping that in the communications that go out um maybe we could also share well what do you do if you have trouble like can they connect
158with you directly jim i know i'm speaking out a term i don't know what the process should be but you know what to do if there's questions that they can't get answered i think that could be helpful as well and i think that's all i have and i just this is hard stuff pandemics are hard and i just appreciate everyone that we have on this team to take care of our kids the best that we can because it really does take the whole village to make it happen thank you dr mckibben dr mckibben you're on mute yes it has to be at least once uh mr shumay thank you for all the the the work that you're doing uh the connecting one by one with these people to make sure that they get what they
159need indeed uh that we we know that that that indeed uh our our teachers and and aides and that sort of thing do uh take money out of their own pockets uh uh whether it's there's a pandemic or whether there isn't and we appreciate that uh i want i well what we're uh what we're talking about here is um i was confused uh during the the district organizations piece uh we have signed contracts i believe from all of the uh uh people all of them but it sounded like when the uh president of the uh of the district organization representing uh classified was saying that they did indeed sign but they're going to continue to work on on this is this done through a side letter or or that that confused me a good deal
160where are we uh on that contract is i guess my question sure i'd love to clarify that and i'm not exactly sure where the confusion came from related to this because it's pretty spelled out in our um in our language i also heard an employee several of the employees that have written to the board have indicated that they were told there would be no money and then all of a sudden there was um and that's actually spelled out in our contract so in november during our bargaining um we as a district um informed all of our labor groups that we are not in a position to bargain any ongoing raises until we better understood the impact of covid and on the governor's budget so every labor group had an interest in getting a raise there
161wasn't one that did it but we told all of them we weren't we didn't feel like we could commit to a raise with a very unknown budget approach and of course this was back in november we know a lot more now at that point every single labor group agreed including csea and we signed with csea on november 5th they agreed that there would be no ongoing raise we al we wrote right into the contract with csea the parties agreed to return to 2021 negotiations no later than march 17th to negotiate a salary in our district benefit contribution if any that was that was a reference to the fact that the financial picture was very unclear at the time and we both acknowledged that we both signed that document and we both agreed that once we
162heard from the governor's budget there's a reason we said march 17th it was to give us time to process the governor's budget and come back so i'm not sure um why anyone is indicating that they were told there was no money and we would not come back we we said there's no money for an ongoing raise subsequently we have finalized bargaining with everyone except for excuse me except for sjta at that time and sjta came back with a proposal to use federal monies for a one-time off schedule payment and at that point we felt like we were in a position because the federal government had given us one-time monies and that it complied with um what we were going to be giving with the the one-time bonus our one-time payment we agreed that that was
163an uh appropriate use and we signed that agreement with the teacher association on november 14th and on november 14th i called all seven labor leaders to let them know the great news that we had that we were not able to come up with an ongoing payment like we had agreed but we were because of federal funds able to offer a one-time uh payment and it wasn't today to your point i'm sorry i believe that was december 14th i'm sorry what did i say november 14th yeah yeah thank you um appreciate that uh and then so as of today uh every labor group at that point signed within about four or five days um for the one percent uh off schedule payment i hope that clarifies that question thank you dr mckibben and thank you uh
164mr schumacher for the for the presentation and for the tremendous amount of work that's gone into this and also um your extensive efforts to work to to clarify um timelines and what might have happened i think one thing is clear we all as both a governance team as as the board but also the superintendent and cabinet team we value all of our employees and there's no doubt that this has been difficult and i actually really appreciated the public comment about um assistance pieces that are coming through the community every day to help serve because we live in a community and there are people every day stepping up to um serve in this community and i think um i have been very thankful that um we as a large employer in the uh made and stood
165by our commitment to not um lay off any of our employees i don't i couldn't continually i know we couldn't consciously do it during a pandemic have people um without without a job and and there's a number of places where that that's the case now is there more work to do always absolutely a hundred percent and i appreciate that some of the clarification pieces that you've made and you know i want to go in a little bit more on this distinction of ongoing commitments versus one time because that is both a piece to just really really um is important to clarify but also isn't a surprise like we've made that commitment and have stated it time and time again as a governing team that we will not make ongoing commitments with one time dollars and
166this is this is in keeping with um with that with that commitment and stays true to that so this um this refrain that somehow um folks were told that you know all money was off the table i just i find that um a really i find that a challenge i don't i i don't anticipate that that would be communicated because that's not what any of us have communicated um so appreciate the the communication on that piece um i also just want to reflect like yes there might be some communication challenges in this sort of pivot that we're doing to make sure that folks who have incurred expenses are appropriately compensated i really appreciate the team being open to that and switching gears quickly to um to accommodate that and i know that we have directly
167asked for information related to these expenses from our union partners and i'm glad that we're going to kind of remove that bottleneck and just make it clear to everybody because it seems like there's some inconsistent communication happening so we're going to take the opportunity to clarify that and i appreciate your commitment to that this evening as well so all in all i think a lot of progress has been made um as always there's a little bit of room for for improvement but on the whole um we all share the commitment in half throughout this incredibly difficult time prior our existing response as well of doing right by our employees and we will all continue that commitment and i don't have any doubt of that so i want to just at this point see if anybody
168has anything else to add because if not we will um be able to dispense with this item uh miss creason that background just i'm sorry i didn't make note of this and i meant to just wanted to point out mutual assistance um has been a partner to sjusd for a long long time and i just had them up to share you can google them and they come out it's mutual mutualassistancenetwork.org is their website and if you just put them in google they come up very very quickly mutual assistance network and they're locally based in art and arcade just wanted to throw that out there thank you for raising that and i think maybe we can also put a perhaps into the resource hub or other items you know i think come this spring there's often
169a lot of resources that come again with especially um around supporting uh you know obligations related to filing taxes etc um and so you know maybe that's something i i hope that that's something staff can take back in terms of building in as a resource and do appreciate lifting that up um at this moment in time i see no other questions or or comments um so tonight this was a discussion item and action is scheduled for january 26th so with that we are at item i6 one time off schedule payment for sj a cabinet confidential apps mr shumate please begin great i'm also here tonight to present the one time off schedule payment for the san juan administrators association cabinet the confidential group and our unrepresented group these payments too are supported by the superintendent
170and his cabinet at this time i'm happy to answer any questions if needed thank you mr schumacher mr allen do we have any public comments at this time we've not received any comments for this item i do have one hand that just went up so i will remind folks that we do have two minutes four comments which should be on this item however the hand just went down um so we do not have any comments on this item president of vasquez and yes i'll offer just another quick reminder to our visitors who are still with us we do have another section for visitor comment it is business item l and we will likely be there shortly um seeing no public comments at this time do any board members have questions or comments on this business
171item no comment i'm seeing universal no miss crease i just want to double check with you it doesn't look like it okay all right seeing anything i mean i'm sorry okay so just apologize go for it i'm just you know i want to make sure all of our staff is taken care of you know and we heard a lot tonight from one group um this is another group that has a different situation at sjta um we haven't heard from any of them you know they they seem to be cool and rolling with i shouldn't say cool but they seem to be taking care of it i just want to make sure that they're aware of you know i mean i know these are the administrators so they probably know but they know the benefits that
172they can get if they need additional support and that's it jim is nodding is it yes so yes i'm sorry okay i just assume she's looking right at me sorry a lot of boxes it's hard to find i don't know who i'm looking at i should have realized that yes my apologies no i appreciate it and i'm sorry i don't mean to i hope you understand why i'm raising it it's just you know we haven't heard from any other group you know and um there's a lot of um everyone else is in the same boat right um so i just want to point that out and make sure everyone is aware thank you okay saying no further questions or or comments um this was a discussion item and action is scheduled for january 26th um
173we are now at item i7 williams complaint reports ms simlik please begin when you are ready thank you and good evening president vlasquez board member superintendent kern and miss cunningham as you're well aware education code section 35186 requires that district staff report to the board of education at a regularly scheduled board meeting concerning any william williams type complaints that have been filed with the district and the resolution of those complaints i am pleased to report for the quarter of october through december 2020 there were no williams complaints filed with the district thank you to mr allen do we have any public comments on this item at this time sorry to curtail your presentation there a little bit miss missed him like that was unintentional uh mr allen are there any public comments on this item
174no president vyasas we have not received any comments nor do we have any hands raised at this time do any board members have any questions or comments mr hernandez miss costa miss creason dr mckibben okay uh thank you very much mrs simlick for the report thank you we are at item j board reports are there any board reports at this time mr hernandez no reports ms costa i don't have a report but i have a request to pass on from pam lipinski from the san juan education foundation they are looking for a board member to attend their board meetings they are once a month the first thursday evening of each month uh by zoom from 6 30 to 7 30 p.m and she suggested that maybe board members could rotate so that a board member
175attended once a month and then another board member etc so i don't know if we need to agendize this or just have an informal conversation and see if somebody would like to attend on behalf of the board on a regular basis or at least attend for one meeting so i will pass that i have passed that on to my fellow board movers thank you miss costa and i'll just um add to that point um at some point i was the regular kind of um board member that was attending those meetings and i just wanted to take this opportunity to acknowledge the hard and tremendous work that the foundation does um i'd certainly be interested in a rotation i don't think it's something i could commit to doing on a regular basis so um if it's
176not a brown act violation in any way maybe we can coordinate what that response might look like and i'm willing to also participate in a rotation and i did also serve as the regular board representative when i was first on the board so uh i think that it was i am very proud of the work that they've done on behalf of our students as well and i think perhaps the rotation is a better way to go because it would allow all board members to be in the loop hearing what's being done on behalf of our kids but i am willing to take a turn in the rotation as well so thank you for letting me bring that forward and perhaps mr kern could pull that together for us yeah i was going to say board
177members president vasquez what i can do is work with miss cunningham to get the dates that they have and times you know we've we've encouraged them when they were in person where they actually hold their meetings are aren't necessarily convenient for people because they're one side of the district um about as far away as you can get and i've talked to them about finding a place that may be a little bit more convenient that that really works for board members as we have folks at work or in the case of dr mckibben that could be a probably a 40 minute to an hour commute in the morning um so we'll we'll work on that and get that information out and then maybe we can have you guys sign up so i'll work with stephanie on
178that thank you so much mrs creason i want to use my board report time to [Music] what's the word um take a moment to honor um normal pyle who is a leader in csea who has passed um i was so happy to have the opportunity to get to know norma a bit when i was running for this position i mean one of the warmest people i've ever met in my life and funny i mean that is one funny lady um and i really felt like i connected with her right away um i didn't know a lot of people you know and she really just kind of took took me under her wing and really was there and to answer any dumb question that i had and um just really had this kind of mama bear
179spirit about her that i really connected to so i just want to take a moment and remember her um it was really tragic news and um we're gonna sorely miss her thank you miss greason dr mckibben no report okay saying um no further board reports we are at item k uh future agenda items um do any board members wish to add any items to the future agenda okay um seeing none we are at visitor comments um item l mr allen are there any visitor comments we do have two hands raised four visitor comment at this time and i do have two written comments that have been submitted we will start with our commenters who are with us here on the zoom call tonight again reminding you for the two minute time limit we will start
180with miss alicia nichols please don't let the clarifications on reimbursements negate the fact that we deserve a stipend just like teachers and a cost of living increase there also needs to be more communication between the district our union our admins and instructional assistants and quite frankly all classified members the fact that i still haven't been notified of my hours for this school year the fact that no one could answer safety questions or hazard pay for classified employees and the fact that i could apply for welfare while educating the future of our country is just depressing please think about our struggles with affording to live especially during a pandemic have a good night thank you miss nichols and our next comment is from anna quinones buenas noches annoyable good evening once again um i really appreciate
181that you all stay on so late and you are so dedicated to this work um i just wanted to leave a comment about the equity department's report earlier this evening i tried to reach the button i just couldn't reach in time before it was closed um just uh thank you to the equity department i'm super grateful as an educator in this district it is a massive district and with all of the professional learning opportunities i've certainly found a home and very close friends professional relationships have been formed from opportunities that have grown from the equity department um it is excellent work it is excellent to be meeting other educators who understand and see education as such a critical and important profession and they just want to improve their practice and continue serving students and figuring
182out how to best serve students and making education really accessible to all students um and and opportunities for leadership have grown from there and um and we are a leader in our in our region because of our equity department so that's all i want to say and thank you so much and i hope you have a good evening thank you for that ms quinones our next comment will be from kim cell um i wanted to say dale shared the um i guess it's called the diversity training with us i want to say it was fantastic it gave us some of the right language to use and it told us it was okay to talk about it i thought that was fantastic i think all aid should have it i wanted to say are we going
183to have any opportunities for any training where we get paid like we used to get paid for going to lori vines talks or the talks about violence things like that we're missing those um i'm also wondering where you talk about the 50 above wages the staff that is on campus right now at laurel ruff working with students who are violent and refuse to wear masks we've had a lot of uh covered right there at that school do we get the 50 right now um talk about the history of intolerance the museum do i age get a chance to go to that and it's sad but you get paid more to work at mcdonald's we do this because we love it but we need to make a living thank you and thank you for your comment
184uh that is the final comment from those who have joined us here on the zoom call tonight we do have two comments that were submitted for public comment president vasquez at this hour would you like me to read those or would you like me to send those to the board uh via email and just to clarify those were submitted um prior to or after 6 p.m those were submitted after 6 pm will you please read them mr allen i'd be happy to our first is from mary stoke beauties who writes i want to thank miss quinones for her concerns around open enrollment particularly without transportation support for students in high poverty neighborhoods i would like to see both my students and my family members who attend school in the district to have equitable desirable schools
185no matter their income access and ability to travel i also know the enormous value of our classified staff and i hope they receive due consideration when it comes to equitable living wage and benefits we have a staffing shortage and pay truly makes a difference in keeping dedicated staff in our district thanks for considering these issues our final comment for the night then comes from fong cha who writes please reject the proposal to use the bridges after school program as a temporary daycare for the children of san juan staff or for students that are not part of the regular bridges program for each site we have worked hard to create a program specific to our own students and parents students and parents outside of bridges will not understand how we operate and i fear many problems
186will arise such as behavioral problems and a lack of appropriate activities we would also be abandoning our current students in their time of need it is wrong and illogical to abandon my current 60 students to support 15 or so non-bridges students and that is our final comment thank you very much mr allen and we do not need to return to closed session uh prior to adjournment i do have one more comment i'm going to ask that my colleagues that we um adjourn this meeting in memory of norma pyle and tom lathe who we've both lost um and um we are holding their their families and our school communities impacted by these two individuals um in our hearts and in our thoughts so um with that thank you very much and we will see you in
187two weeks we are adjourned right right good night the next regularly scheduled meeting of the san juan unified board of education is set for tuesday january 26th public session should open approximately 6 30 p.m we do anticipate being on zoom and youtube as our normal practice has been for the last several months and we hope to see you there thank you