001foreign good evening it's February 14 2023 welcome to the San Marino Unified School District Board of Education meeting here is your board president Shelly Ryan thank you Dr Choi if you could put on the screen what you'd like me to share out okay the screen is up um on your device you might need to swipe to left and hopefully you'll be able to see the screen the shared screen I just see Board of Education meeting okay let me go ahead and bring up the agenda here thank you good evening all meetings of the Board of Education are open to members of the public unless publicly notice as a confidential closed session as Allowed by the law Education Code section 35 147 members of the public May address the board as outlined in the public comments
002section of the agenda the audio of all meetings is recorded a member of the public may be held liable for any Slanders or otherwise defamatory statements in consideration of the board and members of the audience please turn off or silence your cell phones while in the boardroom the San Marino Unified School District encourages those with disabilities to participate fully in the public meeting process if you need a disability related modification or accommodation including auxiliary AIDS or services to participate in the public meeting contact the assistant to this Superintendent at jaydelatory at smusd.us or at 626-299-7000 extension 1310 at least 48 hours prior to the meeting so that we may make every reasonable effort to accommodate you under government code five three point two Americans with Disabilities Act 1990 section 202. oh I've lost you okay
003121 132 sorry document is documents provided to a majority of the board of Education regarding an open session item on this agenda will be made available to the public for inspection in the district office located at 1665 West Drive San Marino during normal business hours in addition such writings and documents may be viewed on the district's website at www.smusd.us and we will now begin our regular open session it is 5 36. call to order Steven do you want to do the Pledge of Allegiance absolutely my pleasure place your hand over your heart let's begin I pledge allegiance of the United States of America and to the Republicans one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you what happened all right uh under the public oh we have to have approval of
004the agenda first I'm sorry uh may I have a motion to approve the agenda I move to approve the agenda thank you Miss Chong hi second thank you Miss skill and so if there's no further discussion I'd like to do a roll call vote um should we do attendance first Dr Troy or just do the roll call vote I think roll call vote is good okay all right uh Ms Chong hi Mr Chang aye Mr skill I Mrs lamb hi and Mrs Ryan myself is I and our student board member was unable to join us this evening next we have the approval of the minutes I moved to approve for January 17 uh Board of Education meeting minutes thank you Mr Chang um I second but there is a correction I wanted to note uh
005the 12 13 22 minutes was actually moved for approval by Mr Chang and seconded by Mrs Gill Mrs Chong I I heard so that you're saying that the minutes were already approved the minutes you know this is confusing so in the minutes it says that the December 13 minutes um that should be corrected to say that it was moved for approval by Mr Chang and seconded by Mrs Gill okay so uh correction on the minutes yes and I've already emailed um Jennifer De la Torre regarding the corrections so she'll make note in the final minute reflection okay so Mr Chang if you can make the motion um with the corrections yes yeah I'm uh make a motion with a correction and I can pull the January 17 minutes thank you Mr Chang and I heard
006a second from second Jane thank you Mrs Chong and so if if there's no further discussion I'm gonna do a roll call vote Mrs lamb hi Mrs Gill hi Mrs Chong hi Mr Chang I Mrs Ryan I and the minutes have been approved as um with the corrections public comment in section three the board of education has adopted board policy 9323b to ensure the Public's right to be heard and any matters pertaining to the San Marino Unified School District persons who wish to provide public comment will have three options to submit public comments first prior to the meeting submit through an online form and at today there were none submitted during the meeting raise your hand the icon during the public comment section and periods in person uh we were in Virtual so not going
007to be able to submit for public comments there okay we'll go ahead and pause for one minute to take requests to speak if you'd like to make a request to speak please press the raise hand icon at the bottom of your Zoom toolbar if you are joining us by phone go ahead and dial nine um and we'll continue to pause 30 seconds remain if you'd like to make a request to speak please press the raise hand icon or dial Star 9. foreign we have no requests thank you so much Dr Troy and next in the next section this is the consent section consent section includes sections a b c d e f g and H with someone like to make a motion I move to approve the consent agenda this is Jane thank you Mrs
008Chong a second thank you Mrs lamb if there is any further discussion no all right I would like to take roll call Mrs lamb hi Mrs Sean hi Mrs Gill aye Mr Chang I Mrs Ryan I and the consent section has been approved for sections a to G next we have action items this is the resolution number nine for 2022 2023 this is authorizing the emergency repairs and restoration required due to the flooding in the basement at Huntington Middle School which occurred on January 10 2023. thank you both president Ryan members of the Board of Education superintendent Dr delatory executive team and student board member Trent uh item 5A is an action item for the board to adopt resolution number nine authorizing the emergency repairs and restoration required due to the flooding in the basement
009HMS on January 10th due to the flood damages of electrical power Transformers Breakers switches and then HVAC Chiller staff would like to request that the board delegates and authorizes the superintendent or designee to execute contracts as appropriate and as necessary with firms to perform the emergency repairs without further further advertising for or inviting bids and to take all steps and perform all actions necessary to execute and Implement those contracts staff therefore recommends a motion to be made to adopt resolution resolution number nine to authorize emergency repairs and make required Restorations of the electrical and HVAC systems in the HMS placement Dr Lynn is my understanding that the board had an opportunity to read the resolution and had opportunity to contact the cabinet regarding questions and information on this correct that's correct yes thank you anyone
010like to ask additional questions or have comments or want want discussion okay all right may I have a motion go ahead I moved to approve the resolution number nine thank you Mrs Sean and Mr Chang I heard you second yeah all right um if there's no further discussion Mrs Chon hi Mr Chang aye Mr skill I Mrs lamb hi Mrs Ryan I am the motion to approve resolution number nine for San Marino Unified School District authorizing emergency um attention to flooding thank you next we have communications section uh communication report from the Board of Education we'll begin with um Mrs Gill okay so um this past um time since our last meeting I have been um taking the Masters and governance program which I'm finding very useful um very informative uh to understand the governance
011portion of this position and I think it's just been invaluable information to have um one thing that I just so enjoyed as part of um being a board member is touring the four School sites this past week or maybe it was the seventh um with Dr De la Torre Dr Richter and then the four principals and it was just so great to see all the kids and really be able to interact with them and Mrs Chong was there with us as well so we paired up and it was just great so um that's all thank you Mrs Gill Mrs lamb thank you Mrs Ryan Yes um I attended the school site visits on February 6 with Mrs Ryan and superintendent Lyndon De la Torre it was wonderful to visit all four schools and also observe
012the instructions that were taking place I also attended the Huntington's Middle School parent party on February 11th and it was great to interact with the parents of the middle school and get to know the community in that way and I also took the Masters in governance training as well this past week and it has been a very informative and educational experience thank you thank you Mr Chang uh uh as you know the last two weeks was a the weeks so I attend the modern Thai and Elementary and also cover uh do not New Year celebration uh both of both of school they have a different style for the celebration I think it's very good and uh one thing I I want to honor for uh Mr Ellen Chen you know with his leadership at the
013Chinese Club he's able to help the city of San manino first time doing for doing a New Year celebration as you know the it's very successful event and besides that I also want to mention about the set uh uh event I attend as you know I also uh working as a Chinatown service center as a vice president chairman yeah so uh then when they have a mass shooting and and then the CSC they call all the organization and to to to to to to to to do after event uh in the mental issue so then a lot of organization they come to the CSC uh at the Montreal branch and figure out how to help for the victim to to survive and also do the recovery so that take almost about one weeks yeah thank
014you I'm done yeah hi thank you no I had to unmute thank you Mr Chang so um I attended the San Marino schools foundation and um was very interested in all of their work and their hard work to continue to raise funds for our school on the 20th of January Lunar New Year lunch celebration at the school district um thank you for uh Dr Linda De la Torre for hosting that for all of us uh I think it was very well attended on January 20th I met with um uh cabinet regarding block scheduling to get some more information from the superintendent and our principal on the 21st the Chinese School the PTA hosts it uh Chinese New Year's celebration at Huntington middle school and then I attended on the 21st the friends of the library
015they are 65 years young at uh supporting the Kroll Public Library on January 22nd and February 12th I continue to volunteer at the Huntington Hospital on the 23rd I attended blackstas safety um look and how they recommend for safety plans and some of the recommendations on the 23rd of January I attended the pisma board meeting and um then the facilities committee kicked off its first meeting on the 26th the Chinese Club also hosted a celebration at Lacey Park I joined Mr Chang in congratulating the Chinese Club Alan Chan in terms of their work and their effort in in in terms of diversity equity and inclusion uh thank you Dr De la Torre and her staff for uh pushing out and informing us about Black History Month and all of the activities that were going on
016and the schools and then on February 2nd I attended a workshop for discourse proportionality and equity on the fourth uh training for new board members I attended that and was a presenter up in San Jose on the 6th of February site visits uh Mrs lamb talked a bit about it but we were able to visit all four School sites and congratulations to our sites for their outstanding work and they continue to work hard but also for Valentine and Carver's award for their achievement and accomplishment this past year we're looking forward Mr Chang and I are looking forward to attending the ceremony the dinner on the 16th of this month um Miss Gill uh on the on February 7th was able to represent me at a PTA council meeting thank you Mrs Gill for helping me
017and then the emergency resolution as needed I was able to ask some questions and was able to meet with um Dr Lynn and Dr De la Torre and get more information on that so I met with the superintendent on the ninth and I will continue to meet with our Asian Pacific school board members Association as they work on looking at the intersection between mental health the API hate and now handgun laws as we're looking at that so thank you that's my report Mr Troy Dr Troy um okay next on the agenda 6B all right do you guys mind if I give my report of course oh I'm sorry okay okay for for chiming in sorry I wasn't I didn't want to wasn't sure if we're moving in a different direction um so yeah we had
018a lot going on in the last um few weeks since it's been a while I also wanted to express my appreciation to uh the staff um for the recognition of black history a month um as we increase our Cultural Literacy within our district we want to make sure um that it's not just about one ethnic group um in um in what we do as a community um on that note I also attended lender New Year festivities at Carver and Lacey Park and found the Lacey Park facilities to be just phenomenal um I know Ellen's really excited about the prospect of doing that again with the Chinese Club um I attended a few activities with the students today was Carver's donut day uh last Friday was required love notes at the high school and then the
019dance and night of choreography um with all the different student choreograph numbers a couple weeks back um let's see here I attended as Miss Gail mentioned the learning walk with her and walked all four sites and that was a great opportunity to interact with the teachers and the principals and see all the exciting things happening on campus um in addition to that um also attended the PTA Association meetings including the PGA Council the uh High School the Middle School um I was always appreciative of the work the ptas are doing um an unusual different thing that came up was an API reception with the API caucus chair and assembly member Evan Lowe last weekend that was a great opportunity to meet with different API elected officials as they start to really think about what the
020agenda of the API caucus might be moving forward they talked about education and um really moving the agenda to to education and to business interests and to gun issues so I think it'll be interesting to see what direction that moves in and how we may or may not want to be part of that a few other activities that are related HMS had their move up day on Friday which was fantastic I'm pretty sure Dr delatorre is going to speak to that so I'm not going to say anything about it too much um but that was great and then it was also bookended with a lot of the counselor meetings as the students are starting to meet with their counselors and so I attended a couple of those Zoom meetings for rising from uh First Years
021and Rising um Rising freshmen and Rising Juniors so um what I found really interesting about all of it was they are doing so much at the schools they're just constantly communicating with everybody and it's really impressive because I can't remember a time where we were ever given so much information and the information constantly changed and yet they always were able to really roll with those changes and really be able to present a very 360 view of all the things happening um and then lastly I also attended the facility advisory committee and it was Apparent from there that uh from that meeting that I attended with President Ryan that it's going to be a tight timeline that we're looking at and there's a lot of work to be done of some people who reached out to
022me and I spoke with afterwards were concerned about the timeline they were concerned about needing to make sure that we were really communicating a lot with the community um they asked about the advisory committees and how that work was going to start and how that work would inform the facilities master plan that we would start to work on um and they were interested very interested in finding out what the results would be from the needs assessments that were being conducted by our by the people that we've been hiring so I think there's a lot of excitement around that but I think there's a lot of need to communicate in two directions both receiving information from people about what their priorities are and then community indicating that back with everyone so lots going on thank you
023okay thank you thank you uh board clerk uh Jane we have next on the agenda Communications from the student board member no she's not here today and we have uh Nora Chang who oh okay she's representing okay sorry go ahead Nora no worries okay hi everyone so for this update so for Carver Elementary on January 20th Carver had its Lunar New Year celebration students wore red clothing traditional Chinese or festive outfits a Chinese lunch menu was provided and students were able to watch a traditional lion dance and a Shaolin martial arts demonstration on January 27th Brian leave is a principal for the day on January 30th it was the 100th day of school and Carver celebrated by having Zero the Hero visit students who missed zero days of school on January 31st the fifth graders
024had their panoramic picture on February 6th Oliver chin visited Carver to read his book The Year of the rabbit and on February 14th Carver had their donut date set up by the Carver PCA then for Valentine on January 27th Valentine had their Lunar New Year celebration they displayed traditional costumes Chinese martial arts Dragon Dance Chinese traditional dance and the story of the monster and the uh for Huntington Middle School on January 26th The District spelling bee for the 4th through sixth graders on January 27th the sixth graders had their 90s neon dance on February 10th 8th graders had their move up day where they came to SMH just um to the smh's campus and then for San Marina High School on January 27th the smhs dance Department had a student choreographed dance show called a
025night of choreography on February 8th the sophomore scheduling kicks off with a session with a counselor on February 10th choir had a performance in the foyer foyer on February 11th they had a Science Olympiad competition where San Marino plays second on February 12th speech and debate had their wolf pack invite on February 12th the seniors and juniors arrived at Yosemite for their outdoor education and then on to the student voice reports and due to the busy nature of ASB with move up day Kelly was only able to attain the student voice reports on Carver and Huntington so for Carver here are some improvements they are hoping to see more iPads and tripods so more than one student can engage in digital digital content creation for the school the more Lego spike education the students seem
026to enjoy the interactive education and would like to see more of that in their classroom it allows students to use Legos with a set lesson plan and learning goals and then improvements in playground infrastructure like swings or foldable soccer goals for students to use during a snack break for lunch to introduce language not only the immersion program but an after-school program so the current students have the opportunity to learn languages interests in languages include Spanish Chinese Korean French and more clubs that are sustained throughout the school year like chess club with more tournaments stem Club Science Olympiad board game club coding club and after a coding Club it's an after-school program and if I can now get some feedback on what you guys think of this request what is and isn't plausible and action students
027can take to bring these ideas to life Nora um I so appreciate you um sharing and um bringing all of the information normally for the student voices we we don't respond uh am I correct or you're asking us to respond uh that's just what Kelly asked me okay um so I I think Dr Linda delatorre and I will work with Kelly a little bit more in terms of working with that uh we wanted to bring more student voices um at at our meetings and so that's what that's about but we don't normally respond to um the wish list I got it got it I I can go through the rest of them then too yeah okay okay so then for Huntington Middle School uh to implement CTE curriculum such as graphic design media arts business
028create a dance slash real team and after school classes slash program where middle schoolers can have fun performing with the smhs dance Department I'm also creating an Esports team similar to the one we have at the high school um exploring pre-ap options which is a new curriculum that was recently introduced by college board have geometry be available as a summer course taken before 9th grade so students don't have to choose between statistics and calculus during their senior year and have language available to 8th grade students not only Spanish but students have shown interest in Chinese too and then for Valentine as of right now there's no student council for Valentine's so Kelly is thinking of working with principal McAlpine to start our student council and for the high school Kelly is thinking of working with
029the principal with the student Titan advisory committee to receive a diverse pool of opinion and she is planning on contacting principal kirstenbach wow some wonderful ideas and I I think our cabinet Heard lots of things that they might want to share with the site principles and then continue um working with the student and hearing all student voices thank you so next I think we have Dr Linda De la Torre right our board superintendent yes thank you so much president Ryan members of the Board of Education student board member representative Chang and our executive team um as board member Sean mentioned earlier um we did have a highly successful first time ever high school collaboration with the middle school and it was a high school move-up day so all of our eighth graders were able to
030come up and spend the day at San Marino High School this is a wonderful opportunity for them to be acclimated they were met in the front of the high school with the band playing so it was very much a celebration of all the wonderful things and programs that we have on the high school campus so they were split up into groups we had link crew leaders taking all of our students 8th grade students on a tour of the high school campus we also had kiddos going into classrooms wherein counselor were able to talk with them about our graduation requirements and all of our programs our course offerings with PCC dual enrollment courses currently we have five and we're going to be adding to that with the implementation of our Medical Arts program that was talked
031about as well so it was just a wonderful opportunity for the kids to set foot on campus and and I think it was successful in terms of sustaining enrollment so really excited about that also I attended the Huntington Middle School parent party on Saturday it was a huge success I did see board member lamb and board member Sean there and board member Gill so luckily they weren't huddled anywhere so there was no violation to the brown act just so you know I can vouch for them but it was really well attended and it was a great success in addition to that on Sunday I had the opportunity to go to Hansen Dam and see one of our Huntington middle school students who is representing the middle school as an equestrian and so she was jumping
032hurdles and there was a competition she did exceedingly well I was so impressed prior to you know a few weeks ago I didn't know that we had equestrians at both Huntington middle school and San Marino High School representing those schools in the inters Scholastic competitions and so I just thought that that was very special and was so pleased to um to see that in action um we did receive our joint Regional Intelligence Center report for all four schools I know uh the board uh was waiting for that and we will be talking with the board about those issues um so we're looking at our our School site safety reports and we are constantly working to improve our safety practices the board may be aware that we are having more and more lockdowns um there's been
033a lot of activity recently and this didn't happen you know two three years ago and it's becoming normalized um and and that's unfortunate but we have to deal with what's in front of us so we are going to work really hard to partner with the city and uh the local police department Chief and Cointreau has been a wonderful partner um and we have been working really really hard to strengthen and improve upon our current procedures and practices to keep our kids and our teachers safe um so we're working on that we're also um in that vein we are working on uh Huntington Middle School fencing right now that project is underway um so we're going to fence the entire uh front of the Huntington Middle School campus um to limit access to only those who
034should be on our campus once that's done we're going to work on the the Sherwood side of Huntington Middle School to make sure that we are closing that area off as well to keep our kids as secure as they can possibly be um we are making great strides in the implementation of the Dual language immersion program at Carver Elementary School Dr Linda Richter has worked exceedingly hard um to work with the the committee and hire teachers I know Dr Rose has been closely working with Dr Richter to make sure that we have secured two highly qualified teachers to be able to serve the needs of the students in that program and there will be a lottery if there are more students interested in that program then there are spaces available and just to reiterate to
035the board we are going to be following primarily our current board policy with respect to enrollment so that program will be made available to Residents students first and if there's space available after that then we will accept inner districts in the program um there will be some testing because we have to have at least 50 percent of the students who will be native speakers and 50 of the students who will be English only so Dr Richter and her team are going to coordinate those efforts but we have um we've heard a lot of positive feedback from parents that they're really excited about that program and I mentioned earlier or the medical arts program which we're very excited about it's already being talked about with our Rising freshmen coming in next year we are super excited
036Dr Richter and I went and talked to the PT Affiliates board and they did approve our grant request for uh 400 000 to support the the purchase of anatomage tables for the Medical Arts classroom in addition to the virtual reality tool that we're going to be using that transports students into the operating room and allow allows them to conduct mock surgeries Etc so I'm super excited about that also rotary approved our grant request for twenty five thousand dollars and that is going to help with the purchase of 40 iPads that are going to be in the medical arts program and classrooms as well as a charging cart and the and and it will support the consumables and instructional materials Etc um we're going to ask both representatives from the rotary and PT Affiliates to come
037to our March 14th board meeting to formally present those checks to the board of education so we're very excited about that oh and then also rotary did approve not rotary I'm sorry PT Affiliates approved an additional Grant request for twenty eight thousand dollars to purchase a devices as you are aware AED devices are critically important for someone who goes into cardiac arrest we recently had a teacher who went into cardiac arrest and the AED device that the district had literally saved his life along with two community members and a teacher who were performing CPR until the paramedics could arrive and take over so we're going to have AED devices Within Reach in several different locations on every single campus in the event that we need them because we are very keenly aware now that every
038second counts when someone is in cardiac arrest and that's going to cost twenty eight thousand dollars those devices have already been ordered and the PT Affiliates felt that that was an important purchase and so they're going to support that as well we are going to hold on February 28th our state of the district address we're very excited about that and we are going to weave into the program student performances so we're very excited about that that's going to be held at Huntington Middle School in the auditorium so I'm hoping that it'll be well attended we're going to advertise that event to the community and any member of our community any member of the public is welcome to join us on that evening then we will have a special Board of Education meeting on March 7th
039to talk about special education law we're going to have a board budget study session during that meeting and then we're going to discuss the San Marino High School plan for Block scheduling which is still being negotiated between the Teachers Association and our school district a team of negotiators so that's ongoing but um they both parties are highly supportive for all the reasons that we have discussed before but we're going to really dig into the details of that during our March 7th board study session so I believe that will be very helpful to all board members and that is all that I have at this time but thank you so much to the Board of Education for being so active and engaged in what's happening on all of our campuses it was really great to be
040able to go on the learning walks that you've all talked about with the four board members and then Mr Chang will be going um with Dr Richter and myself later on this month it's really impactful when our board is on campus and our teachers are able to see that that you're really connecting with what's going on in the classroom so thank you to all of you appreciate it thank you doctor delatorre and if there's nothing else uh I I do have a something I like to uh share with everyone uh as a doctor territory mentioned about the security issue I I know our school district we all always pay more attention uh to address this issue just like recently you know we we issued the notice about the uh semolina High School lockdown but today
041I I want to uh attention to everyone you know the how we want to do for the pr issue because uh some of the student parents if they not really understand or they don't live here longer they when they just move in they feel the old is that someone you know Community is a safe so I I would like to just bring up this question and I'm not asking about the solution or answer but I think it's a good you know the each time you know the superintendent they send out the message but besides that what we want to educate to our community especially the student parents yeah because I I am not in the other line or WeChat group I I heard there's a 500 people but but I heard today I even heard
042from the overseas they said that do you know your hometown have something happen on the pink so so I mean this this kind of the issue for uh even just suspect that not happen yeah but but I think for PR wise I think we we may need to take care as you know the last lockdown you know there's a one the I think the Stephen palen they did address this issue yeah so like that's a what I I want to share with everyone yeah thank you Mr Chang all right anyone else wish to say something before I join the meeting all right with no further discussion I'd like to adjourn the meeting it is 6 18. so should we say the Happy Valentine's Day Happy Valentine's Day everyone happy Valentine's Day Valentine's Day have a
043great evening everyone you too bye