001e like to call the meeting to order uh good evening everyone this is a meeting of the SEL Union High School District Board of Trustees I'm calling Open Session to order uh today is March 12th and it's 7:00 um depending on which clock you look at you're correct roll call trusty Chavez present trusty Jacobson present trusty Lan trusty Andra Zuniga pres okay and I am here uh tonight we have a team from Hannah interpreting as our Spanish interpreters for those who would like to attend a meeting virtually in Spanish that option is available Hannah interpreting would you please communicate that for us this evening thank you good evening in order to provide language access this meeting will have simultaneous interpretation in English and Spanish to enable the interpretation if you are using your laptop or
002desktop please locate the icon shaped like a globe at the bottom of your screen click on language interpretation and then select English if you are on your phone iPad or similar device then locate the three menu in the upper right corner of your screen click on language interpretation and select English bues thank thank you if you wish to view close captions of this meeting please view the meeting on smuh hsd board meeting YouTube channel the link to the YouTube channel can be found on our website you may view the cap in English as we live stream our meeting tonight and you may view the captions in a variety of other languages if you choose to watch after this meeting has ended viewers May addition May request additional accommodations by calling 650 2201 that's 2201 for
003our deaf and heart of hearing Community we have a team from Hannah interpreting services and they will be interpreting our meeting this evening we would like to ask everyone to speak at a clear and reasonable pace for our interpreters thank you okay we're going to move on to the Pledge of Allegiance I'll ask the student board members to uh lead us of Al to the FL of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God uh report of actions taken in closed session there were no actions taken in closed session item J adopt the agenda the Board of Trustees May either adopt the agenda as presented or make a change to the agenda through a motion second and majority vote the brown act prohibits any additions to
004the agenda without a 72-hour public notice for for any regularly scheduled board meeting are there any questions or comments from the Board of Trustees our superintendent with respect to the agenda okay I'll call on myself okay I'd like to propose uh and we're trying something different tonight and um you know we'll we'll figure it out I'd like to propose that we have item K4 the superintendent report actually moved to the to the first the first item under regular reports which I think is the way it normally is sequenced so will'll uh will anybody entertain that yes I will make I'll second your motion okay okay all in favor I I Okay so we've adopted the agenda actually were there any public comments on that there were none okay and student board Representatives this the first
005time I forgot to call on you separately but probably won't be the last time tonight but how do you vote on that I I okay thank you regular reports of the uh regular reports this report of the superintendent thank you very much um just a couple of uh announcements here to begin with we first we celebrated the completion uh of construction of the baseball multiuse field at Aragon high school on March 4th uh thank you to board vice president trusty Chavez for speaking on behalf of the board and for trustees Jenifer Jacobson and Leia Andra Zuniga for being there to share in the celebration uh the board of approved the budget for this project which was $8.4 6 million and the work will be completed uh uh on budget there's no way we could have
006done this without the support of our community our voters and taxpayers who supported measure L $385 million General obligation Bond back in 2020 so big thanks to the community big thanks to our facilities team our bond program team our M Construction management team all the contractors it it really takes a tremendous amount of teamwork to make projects like that happen especially uh on budget so I really appreciate it U Mr Hawkins your your whole your whole team there so thank you um Mills High School uh we decided to postpone unfortunately our ribbon cutting at Mills High which was scheduled for 5:30 pm tomorrow uh due to the possibility of the weather that we're experiencing and we didn't want to Sosh around and you know all of that uh so we rescheduled the event for May
0079th at 4:30 :30 p.m. May 9th uh just before the school's La Fiesta event and we'll uh we hope for sun your skies obviously and we will be uh really really excited to unveil uh the the new front facade uh and the improvements uh at that time and if you haven't been by there it's it's amazing uh it really really looks great um so I look forward to ouri ribbon cutting back on May 9th um just on on a couple of more dedicated superintendent topics I I just returned uh from the Association of school superintendent National Conference on education uh where I was able to connect with superintendent colleagues from all over the country um I got to sit at a table with Nebraska and Wyoming Virginia uh Texas lots of different cities in Texas
008um Idaho I don't know the list goes on and on and it's just um both eye openening about the issues that various superintendents in various sizes uh I sat with a super intendent from Lumpa County in Virginia 92,000 students 90 schools uh and got to sit one-on-one with him and talk a little bit about controversial topics and board policy and and all those kinds of things uh I appreciated the opportunity not only to learn from uh colleague superintendant but also I think just as important to be reaffirmed on the things that we're doing really well in this district and I got a lot of that uh actually um they these conferences they give give me the opportunity to reflect on the district goals that the board uh has instructed me and and my teams to
009to to to work on um and that are aligned to the to the lcap or our local control accountability plan and I want to spend a few moments just kind of reentering us on on those goals you know we have two and a half months left of school that's it 10 weeks 10 weeks it's not very much time at all uh and there's still a lot to get done and um I was sharing um with some colleagues of mine the other day that you know we are in the the heart of March and it is a tough month to be in no breaks it's long the weather's turning uh people are tired and uh I have a lot of Educators who are you know working through the leadership and the management of this particular school
010year but simultaneously planning for next next year uh and and so that takes a toll but going back to our goals because I think it's important that we revisit these quite a bit especially at board meetings um to help us communicate to our constituents and remind one another you know what we're here doing what we're trying and what we're trying to achieve our first lcap goal is a safe and connected Community it reads we are dedicated as a district to creating a welcoming culturally responsive and supportive culture and community in our schools and across the district effective learning environments are created when students staff and families are emotionally physically and socially safe our second goal entitled humanizing education all students will participate in learning experiences that are joyful uplifting empowering and validating of their identities
011and that one and I've shared this a lot with the trustees and my colleagues that particular goal is so personally important to me and it's not necessarily what I experienced in parts of my own high school career uh and it's I would say it's reflective of why I became an educator so that I can help through the support of our teams and our Educators uh across the district our families the board uh that we can help students experience joyful uplifting and empowering opportunities in the classroom and goal number three empowering staff ensuring that staff have and utilize the tools resources training and professional learning that promotes a culture of well-being and learning among students I talked about how we only have about 10 weeks left our our focus and we've I've talked with principles about
012this I've talked to Cabinet about this we we have to graduate and support our seniors uh we have a motto in this District all students graduate that's what we're aspiring to all students Thrive that's what we're aspiring to and we have 10 weeks to make that work especially for our seniors uh I take that very very seriously uh it's it's a conviction I hold behind all the work that I do here uh and we're going to really focus on that over the next 10 weeks but we also have other topics uh that the board has placed quite a bit of emphasis on and I appreciate it because it aligns with my own values as well and that's our support for the students that when we look at the data are either the most marginalized or
013struggling the most either academically or socially or behaviorally attendance we can go down all the data points but our Latino students Pacific Islander students our multilingual learner students and continuing to work hard to develop initiatives meet them where they're at help understand their families uh and what the needs are their across our district and we'll continue to do that work lastly not leastly is how much work we have in the next 10 weeks to plan for the fall of 2025 I'm really excited about the fall of 2025 and welcoming a whole new crop of uh freshman students from our feeder districts and working with them but we have a lot to do between now and then the amount of hiring uh of exceptional Educators uh uh I'm really proud to announce that the positions that
014we've posted we have had multiple multiple multiple applicants for not I I would argue that most school districts can't boast that um and and I I'm proud to be able to say that that that's what we're experiencing I know our principles and our counselors and our assistant principles are working hard at Master scheduling uh and that's important work because we want to make sure students have the courses they need uh in order to thrive and to graduate uh and lastly and Yancy like that I said this uh the amount of work that we have in front of us budgeting and making sure or ensuring that we have a healthy budget we have a healthy budget for negotiations we have a healthy budget for the initiatives we want to Champion moving forward uh so that we
015can achieve our goals uh I'm proud to be part of a professional uh cabinet professional set of educat Educators a professional set of governance team uh I say this all the time with anyone who will listen I love this District it's a very very special district um and I'll leave you that with with this one of the key pieces that I learned from this conference is that our role as District leaders are to be ambassadors of dialogue that we need to lean into conflict lean into dialogue uh be listeners be open and one colleague of mine at the conference shared with me that that it's important for superintendents and I would say this for everyone but he was talking to me is in my role that it is so important that anyone I come in
016contact with in the educational setting whether it be a parent a board member an educator a student uh we all have a found a foundational um parallel a foundational connection with one another and that is it doesn't matter what our points of view are were all here in the care of students that board members wouldn't run for office if they didn't care for students it's a thankless job it's a hard job Educators wouldn't be in their roles if they didn't care for students and families wouldn't engage and certainly wouldn't come to the podium even if I disagree with what they have to say they wouldn't come to the podium if they didn't care about kids and I think it's something we can hang our hat on and uh find some common ground with and it's
017something that's been bolstering me over the last couple of days and I've been trying to shout it from the mountain tops a little bit with everyone that I've spoken to um I I think that's important and I think it will serve uh students and families in the long run so thank you for the opportunity to speak uh looking forward to the rest of the board meet thank you report of the district Teachers Association Representatives oh it's new to me um Zoom doesn't work that way um good evening president Griffin members of the board uh District cabinet and um uh colleagues in the audience um I'll be brief tonight and I'm going to share some of my time with Carlo Cordy our uh uh negotiations chair uh in light of the reaction to my comments at
018the last meeting I feel compelled to set the record straight my primary purpose here tonight is to clarify my serious concerns and objective position to the trustees as it seems that others have misunderstood or not read my comments it's unfortunate that I have to do this any careful reader of my letter to the board or any active listener to my comments would understand that most of the reaction is misguided misdirected and unfounded as I stated unequivocally in my comments I respect and Champion the right to free speech and free freedom of expression my comments were not focused on trusty Jacobson's personal opinions or perspectives on any particular issue to be clear I mentioned ethnic studies exactly once to express support for teachers and the public and Democratic process that the board undertook to approve the
019curriculum that's it it is as if the trustee and her supporters have conflated two very different issues one the concern I raised about trustee roles responsibility and Duty and two their apparent disdain for the ethnic studies curriculum simply stated ethnic studies has absolutely nothing to do with my concern over trusty Jacobson's comments at the recent Forum after the last meeting and reflecting on the recent samto Daily Journal article including U many colorful letters to the editor that continue to perpetuate a false Narrative of our position I remembered back to some of the comments made at the December 15th 2022 board meeting when trusty Jacobson was sworn in I recalled the significant praise expressed for outgoing trustees Hanley and Le dwire commenters included truste Griffin trusty land former superintendent superintendent Skelly supervisor and former trustee Dave
020Pine and multiple principles and other electeds I confess I had to go back to YouTube to remember the full list um as I watched the speakers I was struck by the consistency in their message in some way all of the speakers noted how important and impactful that while handling Le dwire had such strong opinions and often disagreed with other trustees as we always sometimes do always sometimes uh and always vote but they always voted their conscience and they always supported the board decision they were praised for many individual contributions uh but what was most valued by those who spoke was hanley's and Le wire's admirable stewardship of the district according to California school boards Association trustees have a responsibility to among other things keep learning and achievement for all students as a primary focus understand
021that Authority rests with the board as a whole and not with individuals value support and advocate for public education act responsibly and be responsive to the values beliefs and priorities of the stated Community it was this Con in this context with which I well I'm sorry it was this context and with this perspective that I criticized the trustees actions trustee Jacobson did not s simply communicate Avail options available to parents instead she stated quote as a school board member the best way to elicit action by District officials is to raise official complaints she mentioned no collaborative or informative paths trusty Jacobson went on to suggest lawsuits and OCR complaints with Express goals of tying up valuable resources and funding to get attention to cause an act cause a response as a trustee I'm sure she
022can think of more productive ways to raise concerns she chose not to instead she chose to recommend no advocate for actions that will all harm students learning and achievement trusty Jacobson noted as a school board member that we have activist teachers teaching unauthorized lessons without providing any proof trusty Jacobs indicated as a school board member that she lacks confidence in public schools in general she advocated for school choice initiatives which divert resources from all students speciic specifically she implied that she lacks confidence in our Public Schools when she indicated that she may not enroll even her own children in the schools which she governs these statements and actions are harmful to all district students these actions do not represent good governance these actions do not represent Noble stewardship of the district and its Community considering
023the csba guidelines and principles these actions demonstrate conduct Unbecoming of a trustee finally and most importantly this is not personal again I respect truste Jacobson's right to free speech and free thought my position regarding her action would be no different if with any other trusty involved my goal in raising these concerns is simply to ensure that we all act as good stewards of this District thank you I'll turn it over to Carlo good evening president Griffin and members of the board it's good to see you all again um I'll quickly mention a few things about the collective barg process on your agenda tonight you'll see uh that we have shared our Collective bargain Proposal with the district and the district has shared them their proposal with us uh I will simply say we look forward
024to a productive bargaining season with the district um I've been on the bargaining team for 18 years I've been the chair of the team for 12 years it seems like a really long time uh Dr Black and I spent a lot of time together in rooms and and I have found the district consistently to be respectful cordial and we disagree about a lot um but I think we disagree respectfully and I look forward to to working with the district again uh that that's not why I'm here tonight though um I have worked for the district for 25 years and both of my daughters are currently students at Aragon High School where I'm also a teacher when trusty Jacobson spoke at the California Forum on ethnic studies on February 25th my first reaction uh to her
025words were frustration and anger that she would as a Schoolboard member encourage members of the public to sue her District my district my daughter's District and potentially drain its resources it felt like a personal attack on the work that we do here however I've had some time to think about Miss Jacobson's comments and I've tried to understand them as a statement of one person's limited perspective of one thing that we do in this District because that's what it is one perspective an important perspective but I would like to offer three other perspectives on the subject matter that Miss Jacobson spoke of um with the hopes that hearing these perspectives helps all of us understand the issue more clearly first I want to share the perspective of my daughters um I understand that Miss Jacobson's child
026did not have a good experience in their ethnic studies class from what your comments said um both of my daughters took ethnic studies at Aragon high school when I asked them what they thought of the course they gave me a very prototypical adolescent answer they said it was fine and so when I when I proved a little bit further and pushed a little bit more they said they learned about people from different backgrounds and their experiences and struggles uh the course helped my daughters understand not only the challenges of many groups in our country but the roles my daughters could play in addressing some of those challenges and the effects of those challenges but more than anything my daughters said the course helped them understand themselves and helped them put the world around them in
027context I asked them specifically uh a question that they responded to which was that they never felt targeted belittled judged or dismissed because of their background they said they felt valued throughout the course the second perspective I'd like to offer is that of a colleague um Miss Jacobson said that when the ethnic studies presentation was given to the board it felt like a sales pitch all of the teachers giving that presentation to the board are my colleagues and many of them are among my closest friends and you should know that they were terrified before they had to give that presentation their work had been attacked especially by people who have no connection to the district and they had suffered personal attacks on their intelligence their integrity and their honesty and it was questioned with no
028basis this sales pitch consisted of an explanation of the ethnic studies curriculum and the artifacts shared where a student work the board requested to see the work of the class and that is what it was presented to dismiss it as a sales pitch further diminishes and minimizes the hard work of my colleagues and friends as a brief addendum to this point and I apologize for bringing up Dr Ki in this um in this situation I I saw the pain and exhaustion of my four colleagues who teach ethnic studies at Aragon when theyed an email from Dr Kempy saying that due to the kind of public records requests that Miss Jacobson has encouraged they will now need to go through the last three years of their lesson plan sylli assessments supplementary materials digital resources and teacher
029development developmental sorry teacher veled materials and figure out the most efficient way to share them all and make them understandable to a third party that seems to have bottomless resources that school district can only dream of so on behalf of those colleagues I have to tell you the immense waste of time and resources that you're encouraging surely you would agree there are better things for teachers and administrators to do in this district with Excuse me with our time uh finally just a personal teacher perspective um I have been a social studies teacher in this district for 25 years I've been on the social studies Council as a department chair for 21 years this means I've taught over 125 year-long courses I've taught over 4,000 students in this District I've been to over a 100 social
030studies Council meetings I've been to over 70 district-wide professional development days I've run and attended countless School dep school meetings department meetings professional learning committee meetings I have been in a lot of meetings and I really really like talking to people I really like engaging with people in all of those meetings in all of my time as an educator I have have never ever been asked or encouraged to Advocate pro-israeli or Pro Palestinian stances in any of my classes I have never been asked or encouraged to make students feel bad about themselves based on their background I have never been asked or encouraged to ask students to dislike or disrespect their country or any country I have never been asked or encouraged to espouse any political or ideological beliefs I have never been asked or
031encouraged to turn any of my students into activists I have never been asked or encouraged to teach the grad level concepts of critical race theory in fact that phrase has never come up in any of my professional experiences the only time it has come up is in lunchrooms where teachers joke about not knowing anything about critical race Theory even though certain media Outlets accuse us of teaching it I've never been asked or encouraged to limit or silence dissenting views in fact I have frequently and often been encouraged and taught how to incorporate as much student voice as possible into my classes and to provide opportunities for civil disc course I've never been asked any of these things and I promise you if you know me you know this already if I have been asked to
032do any of these things I would be here complaining about it in 25 years I've only been asked and encouraged to treat each of my students as individuals who deserve care attention and the best possible educational experience I hope that these three perspectives are useful and help Advance this conversation to a meaningful place and I wasn't lying when I said I like talking I'm glad to talk to any one of you about any of these topics any member of the community any member of the administration any member of the board any of my colleagues I'm always open to talk about these issues because they're deeply important to me this is my life's work I appreciate the board's time thank you thank you report of CSEA Chapter 519 representative take a deep breath good evening hello
033my name's Dale Brewer I'm the uh CSEA president I'm an electrician not a public speaker so please bear with me um I wrote it down I'm gonna fumble it but let's have some fun here okay good evening board members student board members and District um officials uh again I'm Dale Brewer CSEA I'm here to speak tonight on behalf of our 500 members I'm proud again to remind remind you that as this storm passes through our district CA has been assessing the power issues internet issues water damage and countless other weather related occurrences all to provide our students staff and administrators a safe learning environment CSEA does that we are the ones the district counts on when things go wrong when something needs fixing or cleaning but we are also the ones that keep everything running
034smoothly day-to-day CSEA does that in the classrooms we're the ones that work handin hands with students to provide a smile a safe place to talk we're allies and we're Advocates CA does that we keep the district and its programs running financially we perform duties that from budgets to supplies attendance to payroll we keep our student athletes safe be it on the bus or on the field that's what CCA does we serve transfer students from all seven high schools and student services to enroll them in GED high school diploma or ESL programs and we serve a large population of parents that actually go to our adult schools of these students that's what CA does like our student population we are a very diverse group as well we identify as Latino white black Pacific Islander gay straight
035Christian Muslim just an m a few and with all of our diversity we leave space for one another to not be judgmental but to be curious about each other cdaa does that I want to thank you for your time God bless you thank you repor of the uh SEL Adult School Teachers Association they will have a report due to the change in the evening tonight okay uh report of the student board Representatives welcome hello um my name is Reese I'm actually filling in today for Lippy who is feeling under the weather um anyways I'm from Mills High School I'm just happy to be here today to step in and be with Emily hi everyone I'm Emily and I go to Aragon High School some updates from our school just last week we welcomed dozens of
036presenters for our career day on March 7th it was a really amazing event we were super grateful for our CTE and career coordinator Miss Queeny H the Aragon ptso and the career day parents committee for organizing this awesome event which included presenters who were Olympic athletes and FBI agents and it was just an incredible opportunity to speak with people who had careers that students were interested in pursuing and additionally a Deca member placed first in fincial Consulting at the DECA State conference qualifying him for the DECA International Conference which will take place in Orlando Florida in April we wish him the best of luck and finally our theater program will be presenting much ad do about nothing at the end of next week yeah um as for Mills we are in the middle of our
037March Madness Tournament um which has been great to see all um the students from their fourth period play as well as against uh staff will teach team so seeing all the teachers and admin play has been very fun as well um and on the topic of basketball our girls basketball team recently won CCS which is really exciting because they were runner up um last year in 2024 and they had won in 2023 so it was nice to get that Redemption um and similarly on April 28th we also had some students compete but not at Deca at FCA um and we had at the state leadership confence we had Katie Lee suan Lynn Ali man Sophie homman Jessica Lee and Heidi Lou all win first place in their Star Event so congrats to them um and
038we have also we have a interm assistant principal Fred wolfgram who has been great to get to know um very nice guy and I got to see him dance and kind of have fun at our winter formal um so that was really great and he was enjoying all the music um so yeah and last but not least we're also putting on our drama um our production of Mama Mia that Mr huddleson is being a part of so that'll be next weekend yeah we got tickets oh let's go I hope Dr Jones Aragon's principal also dances at our next dance coming up that would be great subtle hit subtle hit to the board we also um Aragon students also have some more exciting news to share on the topic of college admissions um while a lot
039a lot of results are still on their way specifically for example the uc's many haven't been released yet so far students have been accepted to schools including UC Berkeley the Savannah College of Art and Design Claremont McKenna college and the University of Colorado Boulder congrats to all of our wonderful students at argon and of course we're also super excited to support all of our students who will be entering the workforce directly attending trade school taking a gap year joining the milit or choosing any other plans for their next Journey After High School yes as for Mills I can also share a more personal perspective as I am a senior um this process has been super overwhelming but it's great to finally see the results of all the hard work everyone has been putting in um
040so as March is flying by um the as she was saying the UC UC decisions are coming out each week and there's been a lot to celebrate and I will say personally I have noticed that some peers have been facing like unexpected wait list even at schools with relatively High acceptance rates um but yeah like I said we're still waiting I think most are set to come out next week or in two weeks um personally I have gotten into UC Berkeley which is really um and I got to do an overnight program there and yeah it was just a really great opportunity and so yeah looking forward to the next few weeks nervous but also exciting for the next four years and and yeah um also our College and Career Center and school counselors have
041been invaluable and we're also doing a workshop on um voices of Valla career speaker series and this week we're having some professionals from trades and public service so definitely being supported um from the school no matter what path we're looking for after graduation so yeah and as for the events going on with the student board council at our next meeting we're excited to welcome Dr Julia kmy she'll be coming to seek some student input about the instructional instructional framework we're excited to share our opinions and ideas and collaborate with her and student board council members were asked to contribute or suggest edits to the four upcoming proclamations um which are the Caesar Chavez Day National Arab American Heritage Month Autism Awareness Month and adult education week and yeah these four will be coming to the
042board for approval at the March 27th board meeting and one final word from us um we wanted to help promote an event that was first mentioned To Us by Mr huddleson Pride prom will be happening on April 18th at the College of Sano it'll be a fun night for students to take a break from academics and extracurriculars and all the other stresses in their lives and enjoy the night with friends and also meet new students within our district we know especially in light of of recent events those of the lgbtq plus community may feel hesitant to fully Express themselves so we hope that this event allows them to celebrate their identities and just have a blast thank you thank you well that was well rehearsed yes that was very informative thank you and Reese you
043kind of you picked up speed as you were going there you're kind of getting with the program Emily's just like she's fitting right in yeah welcome welcome welcome okay governing board comments uh trusty Chavez thank you president Griffin I'll make this brief um I was going to talk about the Aragon High School um ribbon cutting ceremony with M uh superintendent Booker already touched upon that I wanted to thank everybody who came out um including our former uh trustee Linda Le DWIs was there which was amazing as well as some of our other folks in the in the neighborhood here council member Lisa Diaz Nash was there and of course um all the couple students that spoke and and also um Greystone West and BHM construction and Cuchi Associates um so it it was it was
044a great event and of course um trusty I want to thank trusty Leandra Zuna and um trusty uh um Jennifer Jacobson for attending and I would I would be a Miss to not um thank our amazing uh Laura chocy who put everything together and also our facilities folks right who put everything together it was just just amazing and I also wanted to uh touch upon something that was already mentioned about the storm okay I'm not a weather person I'm not a me meteorologist but I was just watching the news last night and I was glued to watching the two different news channels to watch the news just for the weather three storms coming in back to back um and I know we have amazing staff so thank you to CCA and and everybody involved in
045keeping our schools safe so I want to give a shout out to that and one more thing is um there's a lot of our elementary our feeder Elementary School Districts have Outdoor Ed um and people put pictures on Facebook it's great because I remember when my kids were in fifth grade it's really exciting and they have a video of the bus driving away and of course I see Sano Union High School District on the bus and I know that's again our amazing CSA staff so I want to thank staff for always being out there and our community serving and um yeah that's about it thank you thank you Jacobson um yes thank you uh yes I did attend the uh Aragon High School baseball field ribbon cutting which was a wonderful day with sunny weather
046unlike today um I also have been enjoying attending the girls lacrosse games uh my daughter plays for Hillsdale and tomorrow I look forward to openhouse at Hillsdale High School I also want to thank Mr childis and Mr Cordy for their comments um that shed light on their perspectives and experiences and I just want to reassure this community uh that my intent is not and never has been to encourage actions that would drain District resources or harm students as has been suggested rather I want to ensure that all board policies are being followed as is my duty I invite those who question my intent to look at my Collective record since being on the board at the actions I've taken and the words I've spoken in this role to uphold the district Mission and values and
047not judge me based on some comments I made to an audience that extended Beyond this District thank you oh one more thing um I have invited Mr childis and I would invite Mr Cy to to have dialogue outside the boardroom so that we can have a free exchange of ideas and I look forward to learning more from you thanks thank you trusty land um so originally I was just going to pass but I'm getting a little philosophical right now um I've been on this board for quite a few years and I've been on a board for over 20 years in education my whole career has been connected with education and I must say that I know that education is an is an imperfect institution it's a human institution and you know there's going to be
048Divergent opinions there's going to be uh varying degrees of which way should we go what are we going to get into um but what struck me really important tonight was the fact that when we said goodbye to two of our trustees um Linda Le DWI and Peter Hanley it reminded me of the honor that we had of disagreeing I mean Peter and I disagreed so many times on different things on this board um the same with Linda one time just to remind I'm trying to remind myself one time we disagreed so adamantly we were kind of Linda and I were actually almost yelling at each other and then it was like are you giving me a ride home yeah okay let's go you know I mean and I want I guess my hope is I
049know the world is changing it's a very very polarized world right now and for many years I felt like this board was insulated from that problem and I'm hoping and I'm really inspired by what uh trusty Jacobson just said which is like let's have this open dialogue and talk and bring these two two groups together just to have that conversation I hope we can keep doing that I'm hoping that this board can be as elevated as it once was um because there's so much that we can do I'm so proud of this District I just listening to the students listening to the teachers listening to us you know it's not perfect we don't have to vote on everything the same we don't have to agree on things it could be one way or the other
050and whatever but there has to be some honor and respect that that's that needs to be part of this and so I've been really trying to figure out how to get this across and I was just inspired by everybody's words tonight so I had to get speak my mind on that so that's it so that's my philosophy today I'm very proud to be part of this board and I'm very proud of this district and all of this staff teachers employees um and I just want to say great leadership as well so thank you and the board thank you boy between Summer's almost here and your eloquent words I'm ready to uh adjourn this meeting but anyway we got a unfortunately we got an agenda we got to slog through so truste andr zga yes um
051thank you so much I also attended the um Aragon baseball field um ribbon cutting um it just like whenever I go to the different fields it just reminds me of when my kids were playing um it I'm I'm glad that they grown up and are out of the house now to be able to do this uh work here in the district because it helps me to think more clearly um about all of the different students we have here and everybody's needs um I think and just in my experience um we had a great experience here but you know we sometimes focus a lot on ourselves and so I want to make sure that I'm able to be to have Clarity and look at all of the parts of the district um I also um just
052wanted to say thank you um to Miss Chalkley and to ya our facilities people um just all of our staff that's was involved in making that happen um when measure L when that uh when that measure came out um I was serving on the ptso at Hillsdale and I remember Dr Skelly and there was someone else that came with him I can't remember um another member of the measure L committee um our ptso was very instrumental in getting folks to vote for it and to S uh sign the petition to put it on the ballot um and I remember just it was like it felt so far away um and now here we are we have our our Fields almost finished and um we have so many things to be grateful for including our community
053that had rallied around this measure you know people sometimes criticize the amount of money that school districts spend on things like that and but it just improves not only like not only the um not only the Aesthetics of the school but also Al just a heart I think it really does show that we care about our students and about the community um it's it's really nice to see so thank you um I also wanted to um just talk about the I think the situation that you know we've been experiencing lately with um just different opinions and things that are said and unsaid and all that um I too when I joined the board um I saw a very cohesive board um I too didn't agree with everything um but it was really interesting the Dynamics
054of how we disagreed um I remember when we were raising the pride vlag and um we I remember being really mad at trusty Griffin and trusty trusty Hanley and you know uh trusty DWI and trusty land and I we were arguing and you know we were all kind of going back and forth um but at the end of the day the student spoke and when the students said that it was important to them and why it really made a difference in what the boat was um and that's how I see what we're teaching um when our students come to us and say how it's changed their lives how it's encouraged them I mean we have two amazing Schoolboard Representatives here um that are students I mean these are these two people here are an example
055of what our district produces um what we cultivate what we support you know what we mold and I'm very proud of that um so I just want to leave it there um thank you well you know I moved the uh I didn't move anything I I I the comments were moved up to the front so we could to speed through this meeting we all are suffering from deprivation of sleep and everything else I'm going to make my comments as quick and uh as I can you know the the strength and effectiveness of our governing board lies in our unwavering commitment to the to the district's core Mission and I did cut and paste this Les you guys think where' this come from it sounds familiar which is to challenge and motivate each student to achieve
056their full potential as a responsible member of our diverse community in a safe learning environment that promotes intellectual growth Health creativity and respect for self and others now I'm back on me I believe that it is essential that the board remain focused on advancing the mission ensuring uh decisions our decisions align with the long-term goals of the district and the greater good of the district and all of its students while diverse perspectives and discussions are valuable allowing a single issue whatever the issue is to dominate can detract from the broader purpose and hinder our progress on achieving goals uh in this District by prioritizing the mission uh the board can foster Unity uphold its fiduciary responsibility and Faithfully serve its stakeholders with integrity and purpose so forgive me if I sound preachy I'm you know
057my my years on this board are waning so I'm like I'm the old guy and I'm ready to you know let just get on get on with it so I appreciate the uh Indulgence on everybody's part so thank you now we have a public comment Justin cell welcome I've been a student and a student teacher in this district and I'm proud to still serve this wonderful Community as a swim coach and middle school history teacher I'm here to speak in defense of full and accurate history curriculum in support of other public Educators against those who have attacked them and encouraged others to do so as as proposed assembly Bill 1468 threatens to gut ethnic studies restricting curriculum to quote the domestic experience of historically marginalized people in America end quote this bill would undermine public
058education and restrict students view of History to a pale and incomplete picture unfortunately trusty Jacobson has expressed the same desires her lies about ethnic studies and history teachers are Unworthy of the position she holds the ABS and flows of history have never been subject to the lines we draw on maps my experience growing up Cuban American in the United States is fundamentally tied up in the events of the Cuban Revolution and preceding centuries of Spanish colonization just as the lives of many Vietnamese and korean-americans are influenced not defined by but influenced by the history of the Vietnam War Korean War and preceding French or Japanese colonization neither can knowledge of the Holocaust ever be divorced from discussions of what it means to be part of the Jewish diaspora in America or any other Nation all
059history is world history and as I tell my students if you aren't thinking historically you're not thinking critically the Iron Curtain divided Nations to prevent the spread of critical thought honest discourse and ideological diversity AB 1468 and the other fraudulent attacks on ethnic studies from trusty Jacobson and others at last month's Forum pursue the same aim to build up national walls in the heads and hearts of our students against any possibility of a difficult truth challenging conversation or recognition that just maybe we're all people all with something something in common always something to contribute to our common education my family fought in the Confederate Army I've seen the legal records with which they traded human beings including children like they were nothing but farm equipment yet I am not overwhelmed with an inalienable guilt or
060paralyzing shame at the circumstances of how I came to be yes the moral Arc of the universe is long sometimes not even perceptible but it does Bend towards justice so when I learn and think and teach about the sins of the past I find myself overwhelmed by how far Humanity has come overwhelmed with reverence and gratitude for all the heroes all over the world who together forced that Ark to bend a little closer to Justice that's what ethnic studies in history are really all about if you shut your ears to everything else I said please remember this your kids are stronger and much much smarter than you give them credit for thank you good evening thank you are any more blue cards there are none okay are any virtual comments online there are none okay
061that concludes the public comments Communications to the board item n in one yeah we have yes um we have a communication from the Sano County Office of Education this is with regard to uh our first interim report and it reads just very briefly it's a it's a long memo but I'll just read a few sentences the Sano County Office of Education has completed its review of Sano Union High School District first in room report for the 2425 fiscal year pursuant to Ed code 42130 uh they go on to say that the district has submitted a positive certification which means the district has certified it will meet its Financial Obligations for the current fiscal year and subsequent two fiscal years and that they agree with our uh that our assessment uh so while it's just a
062few sentences it's a tremendous amount of work uh by Mr Hawkins and his entire Business Services team so I just want to say how much I appreciate that um we are a very lucky District when we are not entertaining massive budget cuts right now uh or layoffs or any of those kinds of things and I was starkly reminded of that at the con conference I was just at so I'm I'm grateful for the work of our teams the community support that we have um the fiscal responsibility that the board takes on uh and how we all pay attention to the budget the budget is a reflection of our priorities and the fact that we have a positive certification shows how seriously we take it thank you microphone sir there you go boy it came on
063by itself and I don't have have to hit it anymore there forgive me uh item o recognitions are there any recognitions not this evening okay thank you uh consent agenda we are moving on to the consent agenda do any of the trusties wish to pull an item from consent for discussion if there are no items to pull I would like to uh make a motion to approve the consent second we have a motion and a second any discussion is there any any comment on this item there are none I have just a quick comment yes um just as a reminder I want to Circle back that the board requested that we uh continue to work with the student board Council on the women's History Day Proclamation I may have the title of that a little
064wrong the resolution the resolution um and we are doing that we are working on it and we should have an updated version at our next board meeting so I didn't want you to think we forgot about that yep before the end of the month before the end of the month yes thank you sir yep okay we've got a motion and a second all in favor I I I okay let me see student yeah I gotta I got to read to get to the student reps how do you vote hi I okay I have to turn a lot of pages to figure out yeah Special reports and appearance of superintendent Booker thank you very much so tonight uh I'm really pleased uh to welcome my colleagues who are presenting I don't know if Dr Kempy if
065you want to introduce this but this is the student family and staff Panorama survey culture and and before you do introduce it let me just say uh how encouraged I am about the in incremental progress that we're making um it it absolutely is noticed I think it speaks to the work that our principles and educators are doing uh at our school sites and anytime that you see I'm a big believer in this anytime that you see incremental progress in education it's something to absolutely celebrate uh progress in education is often slow uh challenging because we have a turnover of students we have a turnover of Educators uh turnover of community members um so anytime we see progress it's something to celebrate so with that Dr kemin um as a introduction I guess I just want
066to mention that the Panorama survey is the the results that we're going to look at tonight um we've been actually giving this survey for almost five years now so you do see some longitudinal data which is really helpful and is um super intendent Booker mentioned um to see some of the incremental growth in some of the areas is really heartening um there's also some new um data points that um Mr Simmons is going to speak to so without further Ado I'm going to pass it over to director Simmons to go through the um student results for Panorama thanks Dr KY good evening uh president Griffin board members there quite a few slides I'm not going to spend a lot of time on all of them just just to you know let you know up front
067um I'm here I to do this quick Sur uh review of the of the survey results um so this uh this winter survey focused on issues of climate and culture uh as well as student engagement was administered from January 21st to February 27th as indicated there uh this slide gives you a sort of participation breakdown by um by school um well we saw a couple of sites uh with lower than hoped participation we look we were working with those sites on on kind of years on future years ways of improving I mean I think in general most School sites are seeing pretty good uh engagement with the survey uh and again this is our second survey of the year that may have some impact sometimes on the on the on student participation um it should
068be noted here that the Bridge Academy is not included in this overview uh as that program administers a shorter uh Spanish survey uh three times at the beginning of each um uh trimester and so we'll be reviewing those results at the deac presentation later this spring to give you a sense of how students at the at the bridge program at the Bridge Academy are doing um okay uh meanwhile this slide just gives you a breakdown of sort of the representation we want to make sure that our our survey is being uh is sort of relatively proportional to the student population in the district and so in general those those demographics if you will um generally mimic the district representation I would say Latino students are a little light uh they're more like 40% of the
069student population so we're a little we're a little light in in a couple of areas but in general it's pretty representative of of the demographic groups across the district and as you can see our nth graders seem to be the you know the the best respondents of the survey uh so you know kudos to the ninth graders um but anyway and I should say there're actually are more seniors than there are of any other student group so in fact uh the seniors were light um relative to their population seniors Oh no just kidding um so I want to just sort of start by just doing a broad overview of some of the big big takeaways I think from the survey and certainly I'm happy to answer questions once we get toward the end here um
070in the area of improved School climate inclusivity you know we really see some as Dr kmy and um Mr Booker said the data show some real positive movement toward a more respectful and inclusive School environment uh we see a 2% rise in students reporting that peers treat people from different races ethnicities or cultures with respect a 1% increase in students feeling adults treat treat diverse backgrounds fairly encouragingly 76% of students feel comfortable expressing views on controversial topics in class um and again we're going to get into that new one in in some specific detail in a little that new area of the survey that was prompted by a board member uh at the end of this at the end of the presentation um while there's progress is evident uh you know continued efforts are needed
071to ensure that all students feel safe and respected in in our school settings and I think you see some of that data in the details I will say when one of the things I didn't talk about earlier here um in this last uh group of students the confidentiality is protected there's sort of groupings of african- American Native American or students who don't actually have a a race in in in our student information system that's principally African-American students I will just say right because our number of of Native American students is fewer than 10 in the district so I would just say like that's actually a proxy for our African-American student population I would say that that last category just to when you see that group reported throughout the survey that's who that really is um
072the numbers are not reported in in specific groups because you'd actually be able to identify who they are if we actually put them in specific numbers that's why they're protected that way so um and I say that to say to just say that you know we're going to see when you're see the African-American student experience and I'm calling it out in particular because we're also going to talk in a few minutes about our work to support our African-American staff in the district which we think as a direct connection to our African-American students so anyway um the second area here is that we do see uh increased awareness and responsiveness to hate speech uh it's really one of the most encouraging pieces of data I think in this this year um you know our awareness policies
073regarding bias discrimination and hate speech has increased significantly uh five percentage points in one year um which is was a significant Improvement and again I I while I will not say there is correlation here there definitely I mean not causation I think there's real correlation to the work that our sites are doing on on a variety of fronts um to both raise awareness among students and then actually hold students accountable uh for for things that they're saying on our campuses around hate speech um and that students are really noticing adult intervention I think that's the key piece of the puzzle that we've been tracking you've been tracking as a board in one of our as one of our elcap measures um and this growth really suggests that these initiatives um around both policy awareness because
074there's also question in there about are you aware of the school's policy and that saw an improvement um but also um you know ongoing education for and training for staff and for students about about these issues um we're also seeing some strengthening of teacher student relationships um you know 92% of students feel their teachers are respectful that's a really high number that continues to rise right so there's this sense that that students really do feel that their their teachers respect them um across across the board across all demographic groups um however only 72% of students a report having at least one trusted adult on campus and that's when we're really going to start tracking in particular is that we you know we want to make sure that certainly every student has like one per one
075go-to person on their campus this was actually prompted by one of our principles this last fall to start asking this question and so we're going to keep tracking that particular question because it seems like such a great marker of connectedness um and then you know obviously we should continue to explore you know mentoring opportunities you know we have a a pretty robust tier 2 program which is one way we've sort of explicitly tried to connect students um but but in some our schools have advisory Pro you know have an advisory program so I think there are different ways we're trying to get at this question of of connections to school and adults um we've made some progress in cultural awareness and conversations about race uh we have confidence you know students report confidence in discussing
076race related topics that actually Rose by eight percentage points uh students more students feel their teachers encourage are encouraging to learn about different cultures uh up from 53% from last year um and these numbers really suggest a shift toward a more open I think inclusive curriculum and and environment for students um but we've got obviously got to continue to work to to and professional learning for teachers and support for students so they can continue to feel this inclusivity you know I think our areas for growth are really continue to be engagement and belonging it's it's a it's a it's a lagging um indicator when I get to this particular piece when I I'm going to take a moment to focus on this and I am going to say that as I think I've said in
077years past in general high school students don't like high school um and so that will be borne out in some of the data that I think it's easy to put it's important to put it in context that while our students are you know we'd like them to be more engaged and connected to school they're not unlike many of their counterparts in other places um and that's important context because it's easy to sort of say oh my gosh it's terrible unfortunately it's not great anywhere um I said that fa bluntly there um this so this so then inside the survey so that was sort of a high overview of sort of the big takeaways I think from the survey and you may have your own Reflections when we get to the end here um I would
078say that this slide is really a summary of the data in that first section of the survey related to school culture and climate these are sort of the the the four interrelated elements there's about four or five questions in each one of those sort of uh areas diversity inclusion hate motivated speech Etc um so then I'm going to move us ahead to sort of each of the each of those chunks has a has kind of a longitudinal set of data that I wanted to take a minute to show you all so the overall favorability in the area of hate motivated speech this is one I was talking about earlier I mean so if you remember we it's hard to we kind of don't want to remember uh this the beginning of this because uh this
079was the beginning of the pandemic we were actually in the heart of the pandemic when we first administered this survey in the fall of 2020 um and this gives you this longitudinal picture of how you know students improved sense of how we're dealing with issues of hate motivated speech so how how it in this specific question um when there are instances of hateful dehumanizing speech at my school I see adults respond in a way that makes me feel safe you know we've got three quarters of the students responding favorably to that um there's there's there are subsequent questions about homophobia and um and um SE sexism also and students similarly feel similar about those as well and those are those are covered in the memo um with regard to cultural awareness and action um this
080really is is related to these issues of how how often students learn about and discuss and confront issues of race and ethnicity and culture in school um you know um and in general we see an upti this year that puts us sort of back to where we were in 2022 but in general we're seeing you know generally good uh favorability in this area overall so then I'll move us into sort of the you know connectedness belong in elements of the survey um and this this really gives you a sense of the sort of subcategories inside that broad area that I described earlier um and in general you're seeing some of those Trends as I said engagement which was really about you know how do you feel about going to class kind of questions those are
081still the lowest um in our and the and the and then yeah so then we'll jump ahead so in teacher student relationships we see this um this first area and again as I say you know how strong are the social connections between teachers and students within and Beyond the classroom and again you're seeing you know so in in the sense that like students feeling in general like they have a connection they and they feel respected as we saw in that previous uh slide you know I think there is this connection overall and that the students feel um they feel engaged with their with their with their classes I think in general what it is they don't like to go to class that seems to be the specific spot um but again I point out here
082on this slide that you know even though our you know 57% of our students have this this relationship as you see here uh in the panana data set you know our students are in the 80 percentile for Suburban high schools right so we're while our students are not where we'd like them to be they're relatively high in terms of their favorability in comparison to their other Suburban counterparts um in terms of their sense of belonging we saw we this one I felt really good about because we're seeing some improvements around this and some of this we had we were worried and maybe this is us beginning to see that because we started this whole thing during the pandemic we were worried that maybe this was related to the pandemic that students feeling of because students
083felt very disconnected from a lot of things during the pandemic and so I think that's that's one of the things that maybe is showing us that we're beginning to sort of hopefully come out of that that fog we don't have data from before the pandemic so it's hard to know what it was like before but we'll see hopefully we'll get back we'll get to a new a new a new high going forward um with regard to engagement this is the one that I was talking about before this is again an important data point here right so even though 27% of students um you know how attentive and and invested are they in classes that you know we're at 27% but again it's in the 70th percentile for the for the sort of for similarly demographic
084Ric schools Across the Nation and and I will just quickly say that uh Panorama has about a million students in its data set so there's a lot of students that are that are um not all of them are in Suburban high schools but there's a there's a very large group of students taking this assessment so then I'm going to jump ahead to this last chunk which is the this final section um is was requested by a board member earlier this school year and it's it's an area where we are generally also interested in hearing about from our students and that's related to how inclusive and supportive our classrooms are for dialogue and discussion um and so you'll see here sort of broadly speaking these are all these are the and I lay this out in
085particular for this area because we've never had these questions before but these are the five questions related that we asked in this area um and I'm going to go through each of them individually um but the first one is about how do you um how often do you do you self-censor in your classes uh when you're having a discussion and in general we're seeing students generally uh have a positive uh responding favorably in this area and again in general across the the the demographic areas as well um secondly how comfortably would you feel expressing your views on a controversial topic during in-class discussion again we're seeing mostly you know 3quarter of the students feeling uh somewhat comfortable or more or better uh throughout the throughout the uh the the the the population of students um
086this one is related to how they feel um expressing their opinions um in the context of teacher or administrator pressure right and so this one only had a at a four-point scale and so you essentially see 73% of students responding uh favorably they don't feel like they're going to get any pressure from folks and then this was about how much pressure they would get from their from their student colleagues uh around having a expressing their opinions in the class and getting pressure from their from their from their student counterparts and again 80% of them more or less 79% uh responded favorably in this area and then the last one um is related to whether or not students feel pressure to avoid conversations in classrooms um and the vast majority of students do not feel that
087pressure um I know you've had a you've had a chance to look at the memo so I'm not going to go any more detail I'm going to stop there and see if you have any questions does the board have any questions comments uh trusty Jacobson yeah so I really do appreciate the addition of these new questions um this year on the topic of students comfort in expressing themselves in class and um I did see a discrepancy in the way that it was reported in the memo versus the slides so for all of the other questions the standard in the survey is that the top two answers are are favorable and the bottom three are not favorable but with this set of questions and that's how it was reported in the memo with this set of
088questions but then in the slides somebody changed it and yeah yeah I did you you did so so we had a we've been going back and forth because again these aren't these aren't questions that are that are given to us or set by Panorama we created these questions as we went back and with them and on our own internal team we felt like when we looked at the actual you look at the distribution of the questions we felt like see we could debate whether occasionally or not and again we want to be be transparent and say like the the spread is the important question here right what is the spread of the data so it's true like we we decided to add the the middle answer as the because it is actually the the middle
089answer if you look at some of our other questions the middle answer is the is a favorable question is a favorable response so it's the middle question that it's the middle answer that we we did change to be because we we felt like occasionally wasn't enough of a of a it wasn't often or very often it was and again I think the average often people when they respond to these kinds of liyer score questions they they pick the middle answer if it's sort of the middling answer it's not a big deal so that was our thinking but again we're giving you the full spread so I think it's important to look at the full spread it is and I appreciate that I just wanted to point that out to the audience because they probably haven't
090looked at the memo sure and if you look at the memo it says not 75% responded favorably but it's like 30% and I apologize for that because we had made the change we were working with the platform to get it changed and it wasn't changed in time for the memo submission so we we it's now in the in the in the actual platform it's changed that way this the way that it's reported here uhhuh yeah thanks for that explanation there you go trusty Travis yeah I want to thank you for the survey uh well the survey putting putting together the survey and also um presenting on on the results um I want to I want to thank you and staff for putting together um the comparison to other high schools because just like you said
091I know the pages aren't numbered but the overall favorability in this area over time 27% but then that's we're that's still if you look at all high schools or the high schools that are included in Panorama at that's at 70% so that puts it into context because as you mentioned high school students some of them don't want to take a survey I mean I have two daughters and I'm sure one took the survey in 2022 as a senior and the other one didn't take it probably as a senior in 2024 that's just just just the way it is and um and also um the part about uh feeling comfortable speaking up um again every student is different uh I know my two daughters were completely different and what what is I'm going to ask the
092student reps what excuse me I think it's called Socratic Socratic seminar right well one of my daughters I'm sure she did fine because she likes to talk that Apple didn't fall far from the tree but my other daughter oh I don't want to do Socratic seminar and I would ask questions about it and I pull data like data I'm sorry I worked with data all day I would try to uh you know like probe for for why don't you like that what is it all about well it's talking about your opinion and and a trusty L would would say this a few times that no one here we have a board that's not afraid to share their opinion right for all of us sitting here at the DI gu um but I just have you
093know so every student is different and some students um just want to listen or I don't want to say tune up but just want to would rather listen than than uh provide their opinion and and speak up so um I just appreciate the slide deck and just keeping in mind everyone is is different but the Socratic seminar that's where everybody in class you're you're discussing your opinion and your Viewpoint and I mean like an internal debate sort of right your opinion yeah um so we have Socratic seminars which are more sort of assessment based ones generally that would be at the culmination of AIT orhs a book that we've read and so the discussion will be centered around topics that were discussed in that unit and otherwise we'll also generally have discussions about smaller things
094like a lesson or a chapter in a book and I'd say that based on my experience of course I can't speak for how other students have perceived this but based on my experience my teachers and other students have generally been accepting of differing viewpoints and um I do feel personally I like talking as well I'm talking right now and I do enjoy it so um I think that I feel generally comfortable speaking how I feel but also I wanted to point out that sometimes the um people's sort of concerns about speaking in a way that doesn't agree with others isn't specifically because they're in a school setting sometimes just generally interacting with people on a day-to-day basis people will be less um willing to engage in that or could sort of feel more hesitation about
095um creating that sort of conflict yeah just piggyback being off of that um she kind of touched on a lot but I do want to tell you guys I've done something called a micro lab so as opposed to everyone speaking at once I've sat with a table of four and each person gets a minute to speak uninterrupted and when the next person speaks you don't comment on what they say you kind of just say what you have to say so I've done this on books or on like poetry you read so we each get an uninterrupted minute and your groupmates just kind of sit there and write down what you have to say and I feel like for me that has really allowed me to like absorb what people have to say as opposed to
096I also like to talk which is partially why I'm here um so you know really making space for other people instead of always putting in like your two cents and needing to like ask questions or ADD your opinion it was really great to like sit back and absorb someone's opinion so those are definitely great too thank you thank you both for for being here for being our student board reps and thank you for speaking up now thank you for your presentation can can I mention something does any other comments I do trusty andr thank you um I really appreciate what the students just said because a lot of this information we dissect really thoroughly in the in the equity advisory committee and all of the questions we have to really think about different scenarios within
097the question and so it I although you know the metrics are the data that we see here but there are some things that are just not quantifiable and so in terms of like anotal information or things like that and so it it it's really interesting in this in that committee the type of questions that we do ask and the different uh the different is an opinion in that group um because it does get to really dissect what these percentages mean so I I appreciate that and it made me think about that with students thank you Christy Lan so um first of all I'm gonna just repeat thank you great report um I'm glad that we had the extra questions I know we've talked about them in the equity committee I know we were talking about
098adding things on and I'm I'm glad we did that um I'm going to look I mean I'd like to talk talk a little bit about the data because again this is should be data informed instruction so let's look at the data I love that we're having trends that are heading upward for the most part and I think that's great I really do believe that connectedness and belonging are critical comparing what happened prec covid and what happened during covid and the lack of connections that students have I mean that is something I think is critical that but I do see that we're improving and we're getting higher which is great which is means we're heading into the in the right direction I think the one takeway from this whole thing is about engagement yeah um I
099think if we really look at the 27% yes it's heading in the right direction barely 27% and I think it's not an indic indication or it's not about just us but about school in general and how we need to rethink School sometimes and I think we need to be disruptive and it's a suggestion that I'm trying to make and we've talked about before about how do we learn how do kids how do students learn how can we try and I do believe that student teachers are trying and just the two examples that we talked about with micro lepson and Socratic method you know seminars um yeah well Socrates is pretty old but I mean but I mean trying new things and trying to engage students in different ways I see teachers trying it all the
100time I just think this is something that we have to really devote focus on in curriculum and instruction and um so I know I'm emphasizing this over and over again but it I'm really trying to make the point that engagement is critical to learning and this is something that we have to keep just asking ourselves how do we change what do we do try what do we try new and I'm not sure that anybody has the answers because again this is indicative of the nation and the panoramic right this is nothing new we're not extremely low compared to everybody else this is indicative of of all all student right I just need to hear that because I would just quickly contribute that that the I was just happen to be working with some of our
101our instructional lead teachers today we've solicited um uh Exemplar exemplary lessons that reflect the five principles of the of the framework and every one of the five they're sort of all they're hitting on all five of the principles in all the subjects one of them was about I it was some crazy biological term I can't remember what it was but anyway the point being that the the lesson descriptions that we got just in these sort of overview descriptions were the kinds of things you're talking about and I happened to be in a focus group early this week in students at Aragon and students were saying the same exact thing about you know I'm most engaged when I'm doing things when I'm when I'm up and I'm and I'm participating in activities or discussions so I
102think absolutely our teachers are doing it and we're trying to capture as many of those those exemplars as we can align to our framework so it's also not untethered to something important to us so our values so do know that like that work is underway to try to give people more and more tools uh and any ideas for how to actually do the kinds of things you're talking about and you touched on some of the examples that I was I wanted to hear in the focus group so my that was my next thing it was like we should focus on focus groups to really talk about what the engagement could look like to really improve engagement you're already doing it no it's great our Equity visits have that as part of the protocol hearing from
103students about that so anyway thank you well it will be really interesting to hear how the bridge program um how their answers look with this survey so I'm excited to hear about that yeah don't they have a different survey or they have a different survey and it but it does get to their to their General experience about what how do you feel connected do you feel engaged in the work you're doing so yes we ask in a little more simplified form but yeah I have a question um how can we increase the participation rates at Peninsula and get cap up I was kind of particularly Peninsula uh because I want to see you know make sure that voices are heard you know that you know that they feel like they do have a akake and
104it's important yeah I mean I think I've I've talked with Mr Cenna and I you know I think we're continuing to to work on that it's been I think they're trying to incentivize it with like food and some other things I think the one key thing that's happening um at it's really about attendance to be honest like that's really the the the big divider and that students are just challenged by attendance there so getting kids to school and then getting them to do the survey like that's been the challenge like are you here on the day we admin so having a a bigger window I think is One Piece of It from insula like having it really maybe even have their window be four weeks so they have more time to capture kids when they
105when they Capt capture them um yeah so I think we're still we're still struggling I think that c Mills I mean cap had a bit of a they had some hiccup that happened this is the lowest that they've ever had so I think they just had a particular hiccup this year because they're doing it during their home room time we tend this is not like hey students here's an email please do this survey students here will probably tell you they do it in a space where they're sort of told to do it they don't they don't have much of a choice so we really do that's how we gotten these level if we were just asking students like like any of us to do a survey we would you know whatever we would do it
106or not yes so we we kind of used our captive audience spaces to do it but but in general I would say you know and that's been a pretty effective uh uh approach but I appreciate your point um and we'll keep talking about like how we can get those two particular places uh to increase their their participation because we really do need to hear from those students in particular okay the other the other question and maybe it's not it's on the um the progress and cultural awareness and conversations on Race you know that that's low although it's picking up um those are really difficult conversations and I started thinking about um how how do we how can we impact our message you know like in every class walking in the Halls talking I mean how
107how do we impact uh the attitudes how Ian well I'll just quickly say that we Our intention strategy which I'm going to actually say a couple more words about in a few minutes in the other presentation is is ethnic studies we want to give kids common language to talk about these things in a way that's that's respectful but also academic right we want to have students be be thoughtful and not just pop off about whatever they think about whatever it is and so we really want to ground students in a common experience that is the purpose of that of that ethnic studies class in many ways is this right so that as they get older they they've got this common vocabulary with which to have these kinds of you know conversations that be very difficult
108about experience or people feeling targeted in some way or other because of what they where they come from or what the color of their skin is and so we really want to give students that that ability and that's at the heart of what ethnic studies is about so I would say that's our our approach is to give students that common vocabulary that common experience and and then draw on that as they go through their through their their experience in in high school well you know that's kind of difficult I mean just restricting I I hate to say that it it's difficult if we're only going to you know it's history maybe and ethnic studies and the the other five I mean I'm not the other five six of the day doesn't exist you know not
109my world well you should ask them if that's the if that's well I I am in a second here because I want to hear their comments um well one of the things that occurs to me and I don't know if we do it on all campuses uh I have to draw on my samil experience you know we have all these these cultural festivals Food Fest with really good food that people really enjoy and you know you can uplift all the PE all the members of the community and they have stuff they can be proud of and then you're kind of open I mean you know there's got to be more things that maybe we can do that are built into our uh our daily lives at school you know absolutely I think we all hearing
110that I think and I'm underst stating or under selling I mean I'm talking about the academic program of the schools but our schools have tremendous clubs you know experiences and engagements and on our sports teams I mean our sports teams are these amazing stews of kids who who play you know and get to know each other in really meaningful ways right so I think it is a it is a I think there's lots of ways I was talking about because your specific question was you know seemed to me formal academic conversations about RAC I mean thinking how how do it does a teacher or an administrator impact somebody's views I mean you know and okay yeah there's the traditional classroom instruction but you know the whole day seems like Well there must be a lot
111of opportunities there and you know that we're probably that that are happening and maybe we're not conscious or maybe we don't promote that stuff enough or maybe we don't share ideas between campuses about hey you know we got this thing over here it's great you know so uh can I ask you a question trusty Griffin yeah are are you trying to say I just want to make sure I understand are you are you trying to say that you think it would be good if the students were consistently talking about issues of R race ethnicity and culture in every subject throughout the day no I'm I was trying to figure out that's it's a very small group that would talk about those issues but I'm trying to figure out how do we impact the students how
112do we you know the campuses impact the students so they can feel free to talk about race issues without feeling like a fight's going to break out maybe less talk is better just putting it out there rather than more talk about I mean I think people have a lot of aspects of their identity Beyond just skin color and race that people can connect over okay I me that's all I'm saying no I I mean I I understand what you're saying and I guess um my 60 year old experience happened to be everybody could hang out and you know you had your own identity but you know it was like you also could talk about things like uh the Buddhist Church and the people worshiping on Claremont Street when I was a Baptist living a few
113houses from the Buddhist Church we also had people whose parents had been involved in uh World War II on both sides and we we dealt with that without animosity and bad feelings so I mean that's I'm I don't have the answers I'm just searching can we do a better job because those percentages are low but race is a fact of life and differences are a fact of life student board members help me they're contempla me too me they're thinking I actually can speak to something outside of classroom experiences as you're talking about culture clubs and celebrating identity um we're actually doing a it's called who we are assembly it used to previous L named I think it was just a cultural assembly or International and we moved from that language because we're giving various groups
114the opportunity to perform um personally I'm half Filipino so my club we do a traditional dance called the nickling with bamboo sticks um so that's a really great opportunity um because we all have like an assembly type deal where we all sit in the theater and watch a different like fun dance or singing performance and like I said not restricted to cultural clubs I believe they invite as well as our um gender sexuality Alliance and just give various um groups the opportunity to showcase something that is Meaningful to them and as someone in the audience which I haven't been but from backstage at least um seeing these all these other groups you know really like I said you just have appreciation and I think you know seeing what other people are participating in forms you
115know builds empathy and stuff like that too so I you think assemblies are a great way that at least we're doing at Mills and I hope more campuses can do some kind of celebratory or like a showcase or something very great that's cool at Aragon we don't have a specific assembly but we do have a lot of clubs that center around different parts of identity so of course we have clubs for different ethnic groups or um but also we have clubs that deal with like Miss Jacob Miss Jacobson said different parts of our ident so if we have shared Hobbies or shared interests then those are also ways that people can Bond through clubs and express different parts of their identities as well as we have a GSA Club as well and fun fact our
116PE program actually does I can't pronounce it right but we do tling tling as part of our PE program so that's really fun I enjoy it it scares me a little bit but overall I do have a good time and can you tell me what that is I don't know what that is wear thick socks that's all I'm going to say my shoe fell off once I was doing it's um we actually introduced it into RP curriculum last year and I got to go in but yeah they're like bamboo sticks and yeah so it's like one two three and you your feet go in kind of to an ability ladder yes I've seen it but yeah we started doing it for PE last year and like I got to come in since I was a
117junior last year since I didn't have PE and teach the under classman people were scared but it was very fun and it was their final and we got a lot more participation after cuz everyone didn't PE and was like wait this is so cool I want to try so we have non-filipino members that just like to dance too and it's really great that's cool Rees and I will teach you guys next time we bring it in it'll be a board activity all the the I'm down I'm in all right well I've seen the dance many times performed and I'm I'm I'm an an observer I think I'd probably fall down but I'm kudos to everybody who does that and sorry if I could sorry oh no you first sorry if I could add one more
118thing about the way our clubs are structured at Aragon um a lot of them they'll focus on specific cultures but it's not restricted only to people of that culture for example we have like it's ex culture appreciation clubs so we have like say Korean or Japanese culture appreciation Club so if you really like anime or you really like K-pop but even if you don't personally belong to that group since you appreciate the culture you are more than welcome to attend and learn more or just drop in and have a chat even if you don't you don't have to know everything you don't need a specific background everyone's welcome to just come in and learn more yeah no I just wanted to say my club is we're literally called the Filipino American Alliance and as for
119many clubs even if their wording isn't that way like you said you can just come in and when we're making our like mission and vision statements especially in someone on the council um we're encouraged to refrain from using any restrictive language that is saying oh for people to celebrate their Heritage while it's also for that we want everyone to learn about it and appreciate it as well so yeah trusty land great first of all I think my my late mother-in-law would be so proud of this meeting she's just talking about tickling she's Filipina and just it's her birthday today so I'm just really kind of touched by this conversation um but what we're what to to really talk about what we're saying is with this with this um statistics and data we're talking about you
120know all these clubs and how we're talking about in you you know identity so we're trying to elevate everyone's individual identity but at the same time we also have to figure out how to stop the hate and stop the hate speech and and things that are going on and how do we bring us together and how do we and I love some of the conversations that I just heard from the students where it's like it's not just X it's X Plus whoever wants to come in this openness this welcoming and I think we have to celebrate that the more we do that the more we're going to understand that it's not just me versus versus you is us and but but but me is different than you and we have to appreciate those differences and
121honor those differences and I don't think our history has done enough of that and that really is the essence of this whole meeting in some way from the very beginning to right now um so I'm hoping that we can take what we've just learned and talked about here and use this data to start really thinking about how can we make this better because again while I see great statistics improving we have a lot more to do and that's just you know and and I see some bright spots when I hear the school board members you know the student board members say stuff like this and thank you for both sharing um so anyway I think the data again I'm just going to reiterate the engagement component is the most important piece that we need to
122really think about it's just a reflective thing that we have to do as our as our as an institution you know so we can get better thank you boy we had a convers conversation about diversity and everybody was smiling and that that disappointing you know the the thing I would say in the future we ought to make sure that we hear from the Stu you know like incorporate them into this so we know more fully what's going on out there not just the data on the report I actually had that reflection myself when I was I was like maybe we'll just actually collaborate with them and have them do the presentation I'm not I'm not kidding next time like yeah yeah what was also really interesting is hearing just I mean regardless of his comment
123the gentleman that was was here that was a new teacher or a student teacher I mean that's really interesting because things change and evolve and so it's nice to hear their perspective as well is like well this is how we're doing this now and as opposed to how I learned it it's just kind of kind of interesting thank you a good report I don't have any more any comments any there are none okay thank you thank you here we go Q2 anti-bias Grant update sorry yeah I just want to welcome both of you back up here uh to give some feedback uh on how the grant is progressing the activities that we're doing I really appreciated last year's presentation I thought it was superb um so take it away yeah yeah I'm going to get
124us started uh board president Griffin trustees cabinet I want to say uh Candace Thomas who's the the U coordinator of this grant she's uh she's unable to be with us tonight she's not feeling well so she she otherwise she would have been here with us tonight and she's been facilitating the work so we're really just of I'm just I'm playing her part tonight so um wanted to uh we're here tonight to provide you with an important update uh on our antibio grant I'm going to do a little bit of framing here where this work fits into kind kind of the and we did this on purpose right we situated this after the the Panorama survey um results uh on purpose um and this where this we I'm talking a little bit about where this work
125sits in our broader racial Equity policy uh implementation and strategy work uh and then we're going to talk a little bit about the purpose of the grant specifically uh and then some of the activities that we've been engaged in uh over the course of this year um to enact uh the grant um so I just want to get us started by reminding us that that this $200,000 Grant which we secured uh last two summers ago 2023 was like an eon ago um it was was secured in order to further our efforts to enact our Equity mission and vision at its heart um this this uh vision and Mission as you can remember uh was approved by this board it's crazy five years ago now which was I sort of looked at that date I was
126like oh my gosh five years ago time flies when you're pandemi um the particular focus of the grant is on making this a welcoming environment for bipo students staff and families and and ultimately that we eliminate opportunity gaps for our bipox students that's sort of at the heart of the you know in line in in alignment with our Equity vision and Mission um I just want to get us started by by reminding us all that that sorry I just said that uh this grant is part of this broader set of strategies which I referred to a little bit in the previous presentation that we as a district are undertaking um to ultimately have schools that are humanizing spaces in supportive of all of our students including those who have been historically underserved the four broad
127strategies that we're kind of undertaking are certainly uh in in many ways primarily for the for the instruction Department our new humanizing pedagogy instructional framework that's at the heart of our work right but also our ethnic studies courses uh at the ninth and upper division levels are also Central to this to this work to try to create a more inclusive and and humanizing space for our students our also our work um to counter dehumanizing language across our campuses is also Central to this work uh we have student Equity councils we have campaigns we're going to talk a little bit about those actually in this present ation um and some early if you if you if I were to give you the data about individual School sites there's a couple of schools that are seeing some
128particular improvements because of the efforts that they're making we think and then finally this the work that's going to be described tonight is really related to supporting bipo and specifically African-American staff to strive in their in their in their respective roles throughout the district um and so uh this grant is really it's it's you know this is quoted from the actual Grant application self uh you know is to provide direct support to Black and bipac Educators through professional learning and networking opportunities to sustain them professionally that's the goal right of this of this grant it's a three-year Grant in case I didn't say that um the intended outcome is to is to retain our African American um faculty I was struck uh one of the things that we're going to describe here in a few
129minutes was we were talking with Sam Johnson recently former superintendent of the district and I was struck by The District's longstanding commitment to uh to African to to to to reaching out to African-American staff I did not know that he was actually recruited from Louisiana uh and he had 50s something other um offers and because the district also happened to find his wife a job he he took the job in the in the ear in the late 60s it was kind of amazing to me that the district had done that work even back then to do that kind of recruitment it was I was I felt proud that day um and then lastly the the second piece uh is to make sure that we have uh we continue to attract African-American educators of all you
130know in all our different roles throughout the district um um yeah um so uh we're gonna you know it's really about this notion of we talked a little bit about this last June it's this notion of targeted universalism right is kind of at the heart of the strategy for for this this grant it's like you know we want to kind of support this particular group of of Educators and staff in the district because if we support them well we will support all our staff better that's kind of the idea right of of this idea of of like because someone might ask well why are you focusing only on African-American staff we're not only you know focusing on African-American staff as a district but for this grants purposes we really want to understand and support our
131African-American staff's experience because there are so few of them in the district and so few students in the district and we see lots of similarities in their in the in the survey data that we do of the two groups um we also want to create programming to disrupt and eliminate instances of hate speech and bias and that's related to this because a lot of our African-American staff see and hear the same things all the students and our and our other staff see and hear on our campuses around specifically the use of the nword and then lastly we want to partner with an organization that's going to help us design some of the experiences uh to provide kind of high quality Affinity support for our Educators uh kind of based on the needs so that's sort
132of the that's the um the grant itself um oh and then ultimately uh you know the the organization we're working with the black teacher project uh led by Dr Misha Mosley they have this kind of kind of three-word sort of um idea of affinity spaces that they're really about healing education and advocacy those are sort of the three sort of principles of this idea so this is a picture um of us all uh over at uh the milb library back in February like the 25th I think it was you can see Dr Johnson back there in the on the right um he's on the right in the back anyway he's that was that was after he'd given us a talk on sort of his experience in the district um having been a teacher and an
133administrator uh and ultimately the superintendent um and so we've had a variety of convenings this year and you've gotten a little bit of updates on these in in weeklys over the last few months uh we had our first uh kind of event in the fall and it was just a fun barbecue uh over at Coyote Point uh trusty Griffin was there for that that day and oh and that's right we had two trustees there that day um and so then on November the 7th we had our first uh group meeting um at the all of our convenience have been at the MRE Library um and that really was focused on kind of getting connected and um we had we had about 18 people there from across the the the different roles in the district that's
134a pretty good that that picture there is a really nice representation because we've got there are administrators in there there are uh classified staff there are Adult School staff there are folks from across the Departments it's it's a really nice kind of crosssection of the district it's still a relatively small proportion of the of the population there are about 60 staff across the district so we don't quite have everybody there sometimes because some of the folks can't actually attend when we have the dayong meeting so we're in the we're trying to do some activities as well there's actually something coming up this Friday uh to do something in the in the early release on Friday uh in January we had our second group meeting again we we sort of began to get a little bit
135more organized that day to really start to think about what are the things we want to actually engage in uh and uh Dr Rook is gonna who is gonna say a few things about like what what that what those specific things are and then we had our uh we had and again in some ways I don't know it was if we had I think it said February 7th but it was actually February 25th um but we had a um social Gathering sorry not a social Gathering there was a sorry there was a black hisam on social Gathering I meant about that then there was the Affinity uh group number three meeting so we had like a a a meet and greet on the 7th and then the and then the actual uh this meeting that's
136in the picture here on on February 25th and and the idea was that we we really dug into some key issues in this in this third convening and I'm going to hand it off to you to say a little bit about what we talked about oh and we have a final meeting in in May oh I was like I follow your notes okay so what we uh have accomplished in the short amount of time we've increased participation steadily after each meeting um from November to February and we've also networked out and said hey you know the group is here come join us if you would like um definitely positive feedback from the participants and a sense of belonging and at the end of our last meeting it was just even to sit in fellowship and
137have Community was really nice um two of the concerns for the advocacy action that came up is again like Brian talked about is discussing uh the workplace climate and the misuse of the n-word and then still creating a sense of belonging among staff black staff because of the uh survey thank you so um some of the things that came out of the meeting is put it back sorry all right is uh we want to invest in um in having a pipeline for our teachers that are black and having um them be able to live in the communities and go from classified to certificated we also wanted to talk about formalizing um support for black staff members whether it's networking um mentorship if there's a new member the gift and just let making them feel welcome
138they also talked about a road map to pursuing um High moving up into higher positions how do you become uh an employee at the the district professional level um and then creating Pathways for coaches and Subs because a lot of our um coaches happen to be black men um and then connecting our graduates more intentionally to opportunities to work in the district so one of the feedbacks too from the community was excuse me like I said using the n-word and looking at the data we tried to look at it from um School uh sites and and we still need to decipher that out a little bit better um and then looking at it is there a difference between if a site has more uh black staff or not and then how are we documenting the
139inappropriate use of the nword and then just being transparent and consistent around accountability so what we are asking is to continue to invest into the um black staff that you have here yeah you're welcome and so um you know I think one of the pieces that we wanted to I think there's two actually schools here so we have two schools that I want I did want to call out quickly Aragon and I've I I took some photos I because I happened to be there on uh on Monday I was like oh my gosh here the here are all these here are the posters I've heard about um and so they've had this they have this P campaign going on maybe you've maybe you've seen these posters they have there's about 20 Carlo maybe you know
140the 20 about 20 students um who uh volunteered to be have their their photos taken and there are these sort of images of the students and sort of their I think they're actual phrases that the students say about about their uh the sort of things you'll hear about oh it's no big deal it's not that you know it's not that important or it's not a oh I didn't mean it that way that kind of stuff and it's really I think they're really they're really provocative U posters they were created by staff and and so it um and then there's actually there was a classroom that I happened to be in um that has this clearly it was like some kind of activity where the where the students were asked to just like kind of name
141what they feel when they actually when when they encounter dehumanizing language um on campus and so that's what those Post-its are up there on the right um and I I say that to say you know we're seeing in Aragon a particular uptick Improvement in their perception of their of of of hate speech being dealt with effectively the other school um that we noted um I happened to because I was uh preparing for this presentation and also I was looking at at uh at some of the Panorama data and I it occurred to me to sort of uh have our student services team give get a create a report of how many incidents like what schools are are are are at least documenting via the the referral process um uh the n-word as a you know
142hate speech on their campus and honestly the reporting is incredibly low like most schools have very few uh reports it was in the like 10 to 15 except for cap cappuccino has a large number of of reports like significantly more than any other school and cap had the highest growth of any school again it was we'd hope to get more more participation but the point is we saw the highest growth most amount of growth in their students saying that they thought uh they saw adults responding affirmatively when there was hate speech and I was like oh again correlation not causation but didn't see it seemed like maybe there was something there there so clearly the the recommendation on the part of the of the of this of our group um aligns with actually what seems
143to work uh and that is if we hold if we if we do document and hold accountable students as as challenging it may be I mean I think initially it will be a lot for us because there's a there's a lot of it right and so it will be a lot for the schools to have to absorb I think we'll have to talk about what that might look like from a a resource allocation perspective to actually um engage with it because I think it would just be one more thing that administrators and others and and Deans and others would have to sort of take take responsibility for but it is so important to us to end this that I think we're seeing like evidence that if we actually hold students accountable it has an impact
144on both the students perception and actually I think it diminishes the actual occurrences um so um that's it for our presentation we use that as an opportunity to also talk about some some improvements that we see happening as a board trusty land sorry I been holding off now I really want to talk so as a partner as a principle of a partner District in middle school this is my biggest struggle when we talk about hate speech and the nword and how to address it so I'm just reaching out to you now taking my hat off as board member and putting my principal hat please please let me know what's working because we need to figure out how to do this at the middle school level too because it starts there it actually starts like late
145Elementary and really goes into middle school and so anything that's successful anything that works and I'm I'm begging you guys to to reach out to me I might just email you like like now and just get it because I'm really proud of the work that that encompasses and that was really one of the key elements in the in the Grant and I remember when we talked about it God whenever we first talked about it I I can't remember remember you know was it five years ago you know the Grant's not quite that old but the but the work is certainly started a long time ago right but you know so again I love the examples at the end that you were talking about I I mean and I just really want to learn that so
146again I appreciate everything and I'm really being selfish by saying hey I want to learn but again I'm really learning from something that you guys are actively doing and I'm really proud of the work that you guys are doing so thank you can I ask oh go ahead you go first sorry um I wanted to talk about you guys talking about the referral process um because I'm actually one of the leads of our student Equity council at Mills and we have started a campaign and we hosted an assembly and before the assembly the week prior we picky backed off the Panorama survey and conducted our own survey actually and we discovered that a I don't have the numbers right now but a very large portion of at least Mills are not we not even aware
147that there was disciplinary action for this so I I think awareness is something we should definitely be considering and while it was our survey question we also figured out how to present it to our audience the next week so on a cahoot we were like oh did you guys know that there is like um displ in action and there is a actual procedure to take place after this and most people would know and it was a like shock amongst the crowd so I did want to bring that to your guys' attention because obviously like teachers an admin do have to do it but our students aren't even aware of it so awareness is definitely something we should be taking account of too yeah and I wanted to kind of piggy back of what uh trusty
148Lan was saying have you what what have you heard that our feeder districts are doing um and because they their eighth graders are becoming our ninth graders so they're coming in maybe with some bad habits or way to like ways of not knowing how to address these things um what have the other schools been doing and I don't know if you've heard of anything now that you went to this conference with other superintendent um but it's just interesting yeah either anybody I don't think we know enough I I don't know if you have anything but I think we that's a good question that we need to get answered because I think we don't know what they're doing I I know there we know that there are like Equity initiatives of various kinds happening in the
149elementary districts and there's a ton of obviously at the at the Elementary grades we've heard all of our partners talk about positive behavior support and sort of the traditional um yeah Behavior Uh interventions in the in the Elementary grades I mean I think I think it'd be interesting to see what they're doing in the Middle grades because I don't I honestly don't know I don't know that any of us know I just want to mention that I think actually Carlo was one of the designers of the the lesson that happened at Aragon so those pictures of the lesson was designed by Carlo and one of his teaching colleagues so I just want to since he's in the audience I wanted to mention that because I had the opportunity to see the um lesson in action
150when they actually presented it they did it in for all of the students during their Flex time um and it was really impactful I think they did two lessons one in the fall and then one in the spring and then the result was those posters as well so should be really proud of that work so and what are other districts doing in terms of the teachers like of the black staff um is there a way of doing I don't know be like having a group along with the you know the rest of our our sister districts like can we can we like cultivate staff for our District's other you know schools that come in I mean how does this all how does it um connect to the other school districts these are good questions I
151don't know that we have answers to but I think we could certainly um I think we should talk about that I think we it didn't even occur to us I mean it's been challenging enough to get kind of our own folks kind of rounded up and and supported um and I think but I think it's certainly an opportunity for us to to connect um it's something we could even bring to the group and talk about like to what extent could we connect with our our at least our middle-grades partners we certainly could um request of the county to see what kind of um discipline or policy they have around hate speech um similar to what we've done as a district we try to gather that and what our schools are doing so I think we
152could reach out to the county and have them help us I think it's a really good question because you're right and trusty land you know was referencing it is that this is not something that students are learning when they enter high school it's something that is um prevalent in all schools starting you know fifth grade yeah at the black educators conference in the fall mean we're not alone I mean this is this is hurting many people across the nation and it it's just it's embedded kind of in the in the just the foundation of um you know what people have learned and kind of been used to and so um it's just very interesting to see like what people are doing um and how do I how to address it there was one group that
153had talked about it in terms of more of like a cultural like um like a family oriented um more like traditional um in terms of like the culture uh type of education in terms of like you know as as we are like we are a village we are a community and um talking about our ancestors and all of that and where this you know how where the root of this word is from what it means and all of that but just having more like a the reverence to our our elders and so that's just really interesting how they had uh approached this this issue any other any other comments trusty Jacobs want to make sure I understand what you're saying about uh at at cappuccino so you had an increase in reporting the incidents and
154and obviously the disciplinary action that came after and the disciplinary action that came with it yeah and an increase in student perception of student of teachers of adults doing something about hate speech on their campus so that's uh it sounds to me like deterrent at work yeah and disciplinary action at work who would have thought right thanks trusty Chavis thank you I want to thank you both for for presenting um and I wanted uh pigy back off what trusty Lance said about Middle School um and looking I mean we have six I think six fer school districts five because we have fer cities two cities but one so we have five feeder school districts um and I know from my own experience um being around my own daughters and their friends that something happens when
155they cross the line from elementary school to middle school and just it's like a warp not Time Warp but just walking through that door of going to middle school they just become different I remember in elementary school wanting the kids wanted everybody to feel um included right if you talk about a birthday party you tell to every your whole class one year I had 30 kids at my house and I had to push everybody outside cuz you you have 30 kids and you have all the parents and I don't didn't think they were all going to come sure invite the whole class I said why not they all came including the teacher so it's just funny but then you go to middle school and then you get into the clicks I'm I'm not putting anybody
156on the spot could happen to to any um any campus it happens to any of the middle schools clicks and you have peer pressure you have your adolescence and then to come into our school district and we try to peel that off and say go let's go back to when you were in elementary school you know and let's be kind and considerate and respectful and and I just feel like it it does um it will it does start in the Middle School um and it's no it's just that's that's I don't know we have to Greg speak up in the middle school can you fix the middle school no all of I think I already did oh you did no I'm no no so I just think going back into the middle schools uh with
157our there's no easy solution but I but I do think reaching out to our middle schools to all of our feater school districts to find out what we can do um to have that partnership there to really help thank you and thank you for the presentation both of you thank you I think we have an opportunity that just just to piig back on what Terry's saying it's like there is an opportunity for us as a district to be leaders and kind of bring others the partner districts into this because I think we are much ahead of where they are and so I think it's an opportunity that we might want to try to do this and help the all the districts in the area so I got sorry it means more work I got a
158comment and I'm gonna try to piggyback on whoever keeps piggy piggy bagging so that's okay that's okay you know uh and I hope Sam Johnson and come pound me into the ground um when Sam came here um it was a really unique it was a whole different world and the the fact that I think we have there three kids in my family and we all attended schools here we had two African two African American teachers and we just thought that was real I mean it was just like cuz we had never seen anybody I you know and and we felt not me our parents felt as though they could communicate to them they could they could you know they could understand the issues at home they could talk about deficiencies and you know and and
159the interesting thing my brother uh was in a class with another I can't I've named my brother but anyway the the the time my brother got held back with another African-American student was by an African-American teacher who thought it was important that they really know what you know they they know the course content before they got sent off to the next grade to start creating deficiencies in their learning now when Sam came here he was he he's probably only a year or two older than me and he was right there as I was getting out of school he he ended up living with family well with a family in north central because he really didn't have a support network he didn't really know anybody out here you know and it was it was difficult I'm
160sure and I'm sure he had to learn a lot of things you know coming out of Louisiana that uh there was no hand hand book there was nobody to tell you anything you know and you're just and I'm you know kind of like okay what am I going to do and you know and Sam's full of confidence and uh you know he did a great job but it was not easy and I'm glad to see we're trying to support you know the the the teachers the staff the what they call it the staff the facult yeah yeah that we bring on board so I mean I think there's a there's a a good good purpose is being served there I enjoy the other thing about the uh the events and stuff I and I enjoyed
161them um it's a good lising session for trustees because you know the one I was sitting at Boy you know you know that people let you know what's going on you know and and that's good that's healthy uh if you want to really know people's attitudes you hear in a a more informal session you know more in informal surroundings and stuff and and I think that's good for everybody I just wish that you know and it's not it's not for me that you know the the all the things are right after school which tend to be like 4 o'l you know and and they had the all day staff development because I wanted to participate but I got other obligations you know I would do more if I could but thank you for the presentation
162yeah please let us know um you know in advance with it I know you do but just keep it coming because like he said I I would like to attend and and be a part of the listening uh aspect I had sorry I had one quick question um I remember earlier you mentioned that you noticed an uptick in sort of a positive view of like the language being used on campus at Aragon and this might be sort of a big ask I don't know if you know off the top of your head but is there any specific data I don't know if it was from the survey you don't have it there so I can send it to you you're W there's a there's a there's an Aragon set of data if you want to
163see the Aragon data that's fine and we've sent it to your side Administration already but happy to share with you the Aragon specific and I can send Mills too so yeah thank you problem I'm part of my school's leadership program and I think one of the impacts that your Grant I send it directly to miss busy then I'll just send it for thank you yeah but like through our leadership program I think one of the impacts of your Grant besides the work that like Mr Cordy and other teachers have put in miss busy has also been sort of helping to have the whole humanizing campaign sort of it reverberates through the entirety of the leadership program I think um this year as soon as we came on to campus miss busy was telling us about
164you know the results from the data and how we needed to sort of make um mitigate this problem and so it's been something that we've kept at the Forefront of our minds throughout all of our events and even through the bulletin boards on campus we had one specific month where every single bulletin board it had to tie into a concept that was related to humanizing all the people on campus and creating those connections it also it impacts the way that we try to communicate with our like our class members during school events and even how we communicate with them through our class social medias and so yeah thank you a lot for this I think it really helped to bring light to an issue and it really did make me happy to hear that you
165noticed a positive uptick because um I remember recently during our leadership class we were actually talking about this and like full transparency we were sort of we didn't feel that encouraged it felt like there still was hate speech based on just our personal perspective but to hear that like based on just the data and objective fact there is Improvement is really encouraging okay thank you that was great thank you okay we're going to move on to item R anything to we'll just move right through it to items to vision and Human Resources yes the human resources consent agenda consists of the Personnel actions a revised job description for the director of student services where the principal of Middle College is removed and many 504 uh Section 504 Duties are includ are added and then the
166third one is a uh correction to the administrative manager salary range of a um inadvertent deletion of a position I'll make a motion to approve the consent agenda for the division of Human Services second okay a motion a second any discussion any comments there none okay all in favor hi hi Mr Kino you know I almost channeled you and called you miss McNay who Charlotte Charlotte was here several several people go I don't know I was just kind of you know I I guess I'm just reminiscing a little too much tonight I think we all are we're gonna you just say that today is Miss ao's birthday I said I well I said can we just say that I guess I just say happy birthday M just did Happy Birthday J yeah uh item T
167division of Human Resources the first item is the personel action there's no specific recognitions so we recommend approval I make a motion to approve the Personnel actions addendum a second that okay we have a motion a second and any discussion any comments there are none okay all in favor I I thank you it passes unanimously T2 the uh T2 is the res resolution of non- Reemployment as an introduction the district thoroughly reviews the performance and conduct of all probationary teachers each year and makes a determination whether or not the employment will continue into the following school year this decision does not uh if the decision is not to continue in the following year it's called a non- reelect and after a multifaceted in-depth examination of our probationary teachers this year the districts has had two
168non- reelect probationary teachers um the official step in the non- reelect process is a non Reemployment resolution therefore the district recommends the approval of this resolution for non- Reemployment uh for one probationary teacher as the other non- reelect was um was on the resolution at the last board meeting there is there a motion so moved there a second second we have a motion in a second any discussion Miss Miss aino there are none okay all in favor I uh T3 okay T3 is the district's proposal for a uh new contract or successor contract with the Teachers Association this year the collective bargaining agreement with the Teachers Association um has all articles potentially open for negotiations there's 20 of them the district's proposal contains revision to seven of these articles a major priority this year is
169addressing the medical insurance cost and coverage in 20 for 2025 one of our carriers increased premiums by 20% these types of increases are extremely challenging in terms of the district's fiscal responsibility ities the Teachers Association and the district realized this and both parties agreed last year to undergo an educational campaign for our employees regarding the effects of increasing premium costs and share the viable option of considering an HSA plan and we intend to lay the the framework for this joint educational campaign as we move closer to 2026 in terms of the district's proposal uh there's a lot on there but I have six highlight to share one is to increase the allotment for Ed Specialists to proor student academic assessments and increase that from 10 to 20 periods include clearer language of the expectation that
170teachers attend professional development days increase the amount of professional experience the district recognizes for newly highed teachers moving that up to a maximum of Step 10 on a salary schedule provide payments to employees who wave medical coverage for themselves and or their spouse clarify the expectation of teachers on leave in terms of substitute plans and maintaining their teacher of record status and providing reproductive loss leave to employees there's others uh but those are the highlights okay the board have any questions or comments okay that was for information that was for information okay and we'll move on to uh T T4 the T4 this is the um for information as well this is the cemeter Union High School District's Teachers Association proposal for the successor contract um there are 43 bullets on there some um you
171know are just Corrections and revisions uh but there's a lot of meat on their proposal and um so it's this is just for information unless Carlo you wanted to say anything okay got it very any comments questions okay T5 is a public hearing um there's a public hearing on the uh the San Union High School District successor contract proposal for 2526 and the S Union High School District Teachers Association successor contract proposal for 2526 I'll open the public hearing are there any comments there are none okay I'll close the public hearing and we'll move on to T5 T6 excuse me yeah T6 would be the approval of the district's uh successor contract proposal motion yeah I'll make a motion to approve the contract propos I'll second that okay we have a motion and a second
172any discussion any comments no none okay all in favor I I okay thank you we'll go to nothing in you nothing in v and we get to W the division of Business Services the highlight of my evening and he's so good at being concise which I love he's so good at S I don't know if that was a sarcasm or uh I'm just going to assume it wasn't um because we are so excited Al righty uh as we're pulling up the presentation tonight uh I want to first uh thank uh the fiscal Services team led by Valerie Miller Vanessa castano um and Christina Tang who really uh support this process as I've noted many times before they do 99% and I'm probably putting a low number on that of the work related to this so
173I want to thank them uh we're at second interim um and second interim uh is really the Turning Point uh in the fiscal year where we move uh this is the last presentation that you'll get that primarily focuses on the current year um and as we move forward we'll really be focusing on the 2526 budget as the current year budget kind of takes a backseat uh as we finish the year off tonight I'll go over some key thing themes and takeaways uh look at the budget calendar talk about the couple of significant changes since first interum um go over our budget assumptions um look at the second interim financial report and the multi-year projection which are required in the interims uh we'll also talk about the positive certification that staff is recommending that the board
174approve um and then talk about the step down of onetime expenditures uh and as always we'll end with uh future considerations so overall I note in my key themes and takeaways if you if you if you stop listening to me now which I know president Griffin will not be stopping listening to me now but if you stop listening after this slide uh take this uh as the the key takeaways um we're still looking at the long-term impact of the one-time covid-19 funding we'll hits on some couple slides at the end uh around those uh step Downs um as we have significant commitment in positions funded by one-time grants uh we still have continued negative pressure from State mandated pension rates while the stir the stirs rate has uh leveled off uh we still see uh
175projected increases in the pur rates um we look at inflationary and interest rate pressures and and I'll add to this um you know there's been a pretty significant uh stock market losses over the last few weeks and so it'll be interested as the state of California um is very reliant on capital gains and stock market uh gains for Budget uh the state budget um I also want to note that we're in a strong financial position to face these challenges um I'll note later that we have uncertainty regarding some federal funding um and I think that the the board um has really kept the district in a really strong financial position in order to not have to um rush into anything we can even though there is some uncertainty at the federal level of where the
176funding is going to be um the district doesn't have to immediately jump and and make decisions without all the information so I want to note that uh the governor's proposed budget as noted in I believe at the end of January uh the only two uh real important notes are uh that there's likely uh to be um some onetime funding um although the ongoing funding not really uh included uh but more information on that as we get into May uh I also noted uncertainty regarding Federal funding um we are not as a district overly reliant on federal funding um so I think that's important the largest area is under Federal Ida or our special education funding which is a little over $2 million a year uh we also have a little under a million dollars in
177the other title funding uh two things to note that we'll be looking at um number one is around the inflation reduction act where there's been a lot of talk about uh making some adjustments to that uh we are reliant on that for one of our construction projects um and uh so we'll look at that uh that is the the project uh so we are looking at about a $4 million expectation uh from the federal government on that and the board just passed uh a contract at the last meeting to uh move forward with some of that and the other one is uh around bond issuances and the tax exempt status of that there's been a lot of talk about that um and so we're going to look at uh what options we have in terms
178of the series d uh issuance of our measure L bonds uh moving forward in terms of the budget calendar we're at the second interim Point uh which as I noted is the turning point of the year as we focus start focusing on uh the 2526 budget uh it captures all actual activity through January 31st in the district um and it has to be adopted by the Board of Trustees including a certification by March 15th of every year in terms of uh significant changes since first interim uh the first thing I'll note is a not significant change is uh property taxes uh no changes since first interim uh the updates from the county uh is no update from the county um and then the two larger changes as uh uh as Mr Black noted uh Health
179and Welfare continues to be uh a negative pressure on our budget uh and based on the 2025 cap and open enrollment changes we saw a $1.5 million increase uh in the district's contribution uh to Health and Welfare for second interim um on the flip side uh uh we saw special education uh Savings of about $900,000 uh primarily related to uh placements and contracted services within that department so uh I want to thank that department for their their hard work and really uh bringing our students uh back um you know into our classrooms uh to serve them in terms of budget assumptions I know this is a bunch of numbers so I will just hit on a couple of them uh assessed value um is the biggest driver of our property taxes and especially secured property
180taxes uh I want to note that in the myp we've uh projected 3 and a half% um but that will be updated as we uh look at the AV tracker moving forward uh I think as of this morning it was about 3.05% uh for 252 6 uh I'd also like to note uh in the salary increases in the out years uh we do not uh have any salary increase uh projected but as uh noted in the HR uh items tonight uh we will be getting into part we will getting into negotiations with our labor partners and so as we have updates to that we will update our multi-year projections um one thing that I do believe likely will be changing is as we look at the pur rate um the pur rate projections from the
181pur board uh were updated for second interim and they're actually pretty flat um as compared to the last few presentations that you've seen um but I'm very interested to see uh when the Actuarial study is done uh at the end of this fiscal year uh if those losses in the stock market continue uh what what the impact of that would be um lastly uh in terms of looking at the FTE I think it's important to note that the uh the step down of those onetime uh uh revenues and uh commitments is also included in that in terms of second interim financial report overall um from first interim to Second interim we're pretty close um so not a not a huge overall change um and as we look into our multi-year projections um as I try
182to always note that we focus on the unrestricted side of the budget um it shows most of our ongoing uh major programs along with the impact um of restricted programs that require a contribution specifically special education um and uh uh the uh routine restricted maintenance so a big portion of our uh M Department uh is included in the restricted side but the impact of that is included on the unrestricted side uh we note a little bit less than a a 1% excess of expenditures over revenues uh in the current year but I'd like to uh highlight that a large percentage of that um about 1.1 million is carryover at the sites so that's one time in nature uh as well as uh some other uh emergency preparedness of a few hundred, that's a one-time uh
183in nature so I I expect that probably at the end of the year uh we will be about at a balanced budget as I look in the oute uh I see a balanced budget but just to uh note uh the two biggest assumptions the 3 and a half% on the assessed value and that we have not included uh the salary increases in there yet so uh more to come as we move forward in that each uh reporting period uh the board is required by state law to certify its financial position um in terms of being able to meet its Financial obligations for the current and two future years uh at this point um staff is making the recommendation uh that uh we have a positive certification moving forward I do think just to to highlight
184again um you know the district is in a very strong uh financial position um uh as are many of the community funded districts um around but a lot of the state funded districts or what we call cusp basic districts um which are right along that are having a lot of trouble and I think superintendent Booker noted um you know many districts throughout the state uh a majority actually uh are making budget reductions um right now um and not you know small budget reductions significant um so uh you know it is a it is a little bit different um and even some Community funded districts uh that don't have as strong of a financial position are looking at that specifically related to the step down of those one-time revenues during covid speaking of those uh We've
185listed here this is the the same list from our first interim uh presentation but I do want to note uh these are the significant grants um these aren't all of them these are the ones that still remain um from out of covid uh they uh are you know over $10 million in Revenue um and it notes the deadline of when they need to be spent uh we noted in the first interim presentation uh the step down of one-time expenditures um we've got positions sunsetting at the end of this year June 30th 2025 um and then the larger Set uh scheduled uh to Sunset um at the end of June 30th of 2026 in terms of looking at that um process uh we are here in the spring of 2025 uh where we're continuing to monitor
186the budget uh exploring uh funding opportunities including Medical other grants and other state funding um I don't know if I noted it at the um first interim uh but our Title One allocation actually did increase and so that we be able to fund approximately uh one FTE uh from that list so we're continue to monitor that um but here's just a timeline of where we are in that process in terms of future considerations I usually note this is a lot of these are what kind of keeps me up at night but just some of the things that we're looking at in the future uh property tax growth secured property taxes is King in a community funded District so continuing to monitor that almost daily um phasing out of those one-time fundings that's a it's a
187big uh Revenue source that uh came in and was really needed uh but also uh you know is going to take a lot of energy in order to step that down uh in the best way um based on the governor's budget proposal um we have not included those one-time funding opportunities but I do want to note that uh I do expect there to be some form of onetime funding uh but as always the devil will be in the detail in terms of will that be on a parade basis will that be on a uh unduplicated pupil count you know there those are pretty big differences uh for our district um as noted again step down of the positions funded by one-time covid funding uh we're going into negotiations so we'll be updating the myp as
188we have more information in that Health and Welfare premiums as Dr Black noted uh continue to be a negative pressure on the school district and our staff um State mandated pension rates uh enrollment changes um you know the the enrollment reports that were uh that Miss arbizu brought at the at the last meeting actually noted a flattening and actually a little bit of increase um which is a is a change over the last uh few years as we look at that um we'll Monitor inflations and interest rates uh specifically the interest rates as they impact uh our property tax growth um and look at insurance and litigation um with that oh uh with that I'm happy to open it up to questions um but tonight we will be asking uh for the board uh to
189approve the second interim report uh including the related adjustments a and certify that the district can meet its obligations in the current and two uh subsequent fisal years is there any is there a motion I have questions I have yeah I have questions too is there okay trusty Lan no no you you I wanted you to go first but but I'll go when no I mean know two quick questions um Can somebody write a Friday report and explain the potential impacts of the Department of Education chaos yeah if you can yeah um it would I think it would be a weekly with just a big question mark on it right now honestly okay I could tell you what the news is saying in the sense of laying off 1400 employees my bigger concerns right now
190with regard to that and I've shared this with some of the trustees is what does that mean to idea funding yeah that's my bigger concern not to say that I'm not concerned with title funding Federal title funding I am but when we talk about Ida which is special education funding uh how much do we receive and over two million yeah um it's a lot of money and um and a lot of direct support for students so I had a conversation with a trustee earlier today about this topic and uh there are there are very few answers out there I don't know if you're getting answers from your colleagues no I I I'd agree that the the question mark is there um uh I think uh just to note a as earlier um a lot of
191districts are having because of the financial condition they are in they're having to assume that there will be large reductions because they're not in the financial position to not assume that they're going to be um I think my recommendation you know is we continue to monitor it um I believe that we will have likely have some answers before budget adoption uh this year of where they're going um you know uh so I'd been a little bit more of a wait and see approach the funding at least as of now has been approved um uh so the idea and title funding at least for the remainder of this FAL year has been approved uh I'm more worried about the September um 30th 2026 budget of uh what decreases because I do expect there to be some
192um you know whether they be small or large um so I think the 2026 uh fiscal year budget for the uh for the federal government will really be where the rubber hits the road in terms of those funding but I also say that you know I I don't feel great about that usually I I feel really good about um those recommendations okay well see if you can answer this one what what's the impact of the tariffs going to be on our bond program there was going to be an impact um I will say that I'm very happy that um the Berlin Game gym uh and the structural steel that we purchased um is in place and paid for um and that our largest product I mean our largest project um remaining does not include any
193structural steel which is the classroom transformation project um but uh it'll impact our material selection likely so we're going to go in and we're gonna you know meet with sites in the next uh in in the next month to three months um and we may have to pull some things off the table uh because uh the prices are just you know increased too much uh in terms of you know whether that be flooring whether that be uh ceiling tiles whether that be window coverings uh um AV technology um technology so uh we will look at that there will be an impact um at this point um I say that uh that we're hearing structural steel is is really going to is really going to be impacted um and so I'm glad we're out of there
194but there will be impacts but I'll have to say you know more to come on that um yeah um just to re reiterate um Bob's first point is there a way that we could get I know the big question mark is a big question mark but obviously I think you're very good at planning ahead and you did allude to a couple things at the end where it's like hey I think it's really going to be in September I I think a report on that would be good in the and just kind of let us know where you're headed because I think if you have a plan and we know you're thinking about it then we're not going to worry about it too much so I think it just give us kind of a heads up
195kind of we're thinking this way we're GNA be okay D D D D yeah and I know I touched I talked to Doc you know superintendent Booker about this a little bit so I think if you could give us something like that that would help us understand what potentially might happen but again it's a crystal ball thing it's a wh if it's nothing but if you can give us kind of a heads up like what you're thinking I think that would be good um the second one on um on the multi-year so I again I'm really used to reserve percentages I've talked about this before um so I know in the assumptions you talked about the 3% and the 9% which was 23 and I couldn't read the number because I'm too blind um 7.6
196to 7.7 yeah anyway so those are the percentages that we know are the mandatory board approved reserves and then what's the percentage above that right now or how is that I just kind of want to know because I I see the decrease and increases yeah but kind of what's our multi-year projection and the reserves as a result over the yeah over unrestricted and i' I'd like to apologize truste land because you did note at first interim on that and that I just uh had forgotten so I apologize we'll get it in the next presentation I'm just not that great at math I need the percentages yeah so we've been hovering around 19% uh in terms of fund one unrestricted um when you add in the restricted as we've noted those uh uh it's going to
197be higher but unrestricted is the the the focus we've hovered around 19% everever since uh the June 30th of 2021 which is a little bit after I um right after I got here um so we've we've hovered around that um when you take into consideration we're actually about at the state average um School Services just put out an article that the state average for high school districts actually increased about 1% uh in last year they look at fund one and fund 17 together uh we're we're right in there in terms of uh the state average um but that's State average uh is varies significantly um you know from La unified at a very small all the way up to districts with 00% reserves so and again the huge decrease in unrestrict or totals to 13
198million in the second interim is that onetime funding or and that's where we're talking about that shift correct and and to be clear that that's onetime funding that has been authorized and uh approved by the board I do not expect restricted uh at the end of the year actually to go down by 11.2 million but I will say that the board has approved those plans they've approved those expenditures so we've included them in the budget uh I do expect them uh some of them uh to be spent over the 25 26 year and 26 27 year uh but as the board has approved them we've included them in the budget no great great and then the last question I have is just on the step down so you have the entitlements are these what's the
199left what I would say what's left over is that the aot no that was the original allotment so then what's the where we left is what I'm curious about yeah I'll have to pull those numbers and send them in to the board in a weekly I'd like to know where we're at absolutely okay other than that thank you okay Chavez well trusty L that's a great question because uh I was I was thinking that that's the remaining uh amount to spend but it's not um thank you for the presentation to you and your entire staff you guys always do an excellent job and even though you said the most important thing is page two the key takeaways all of us actually review every page so thank you for that um I just have a couple
200questions so in light of what trusty Lance said about the the reserve um I think on page five it's 40.5 million is that right that's the reserve 40 That's the ending balance yeah the ending balance is the reserve right that's that's the reserve that's the projected ending balance like I said I do expect on the restricted side that uh it will come in above that so okay um and then the other question I have is you mentioned that this with special ed savings what's that I know that's what I'm getting at now um special ed Savings of $900,000 um is that captured uh on page six um under Services it would be six and seven right under services on six and seven yeah it would be on within the services line right yeah primarily um
201it's also in a very weird uh any payment that we make for placements uh for students in the County Office of Education um actually uh sit in the outgo um it's a $2.3 million if you see that number um so we do have a little bit of savings uh in there as well but yeah it's primarily in the services um where we have place ments um and so okay thanks and then I have just one more question um on page 10 um the step step down of one-time expenditures the sun setting for June 30th 2026 uh we have a total of 10.2 FTE correct then then there's a note there that says um the district received additional Title One funding and we will be able to cover one of the FTE in the sunsetting position
202so that 10.2 does that include that one I guess so then that does include 10.2 so the number would be 9.2 but we're we're continuing to go through the process so we haven't specifically identified uh at this point uh because we're we're hoping that other revenues will you know come I noted that the state has uh proposed some one-time uh revenues and I know that that is kicking the cam down the street a little bit but it's kicking the can with important services so I don't want to minimize that about uh these are some important services social workers and our psychologists and and mental health we I mean a lot of the a lot of my colleagues here we we can't say enough about how important that is for us so wanted to make sure
203that that was really 9.2 okay well I just wanted to mention this is this is great and I know we have a lot of um school districts uh in the even in the Bay Area that that are having to go through staff reductions and I'm really grateful that we don't have to yeah thank you thank you hey is there a motion so moved is there a second a second okay we got a motion in a second all in favor I I I thank you okay let me see W board operations X yes so uh what we're bringing forward tonight are the proposed Board of Trustees meeting dates for the 25 26 school year a couple of things to note uh we're looking at September 10th as a Wednesday due to back to school night uh
204budget study session on November 6th December 18th would be the organization meeting March 11th that's another Wednesday meeting due to open house on March 12th March 19th the deac study session so for your consideration okay I me is this I I just want to say I have a real problem with Wednesday nights it's really hard for me to do this I know with the back to school one but I have a real issue because I don't want to my open house can't conf my open house conflicts because I make sure it's not on the BHS so then I might have mine right next to it and so that's where I'm having some issues so I I might have to either abstain or just kind of ask for a reconsideration of some of the Wednesdays right
205it's Tuesday yeah we've got two Wednesdays March excuse me September 10th and March 11th I think the March one I'm concerned about next year I'm not concerned about the September one I think I'll be cool with the September one but I'm looking at my calendar and March is going to be a problem and I'm just I know that's personal privilege but I want to be here I don't want to miss meetings yeah give me one second be an option could we do a different Thursday instead of uh that because we've got dck misso and I have gone through this over and over because I know you're I I know what you're up against um we could try to move it to a Tuesday night if you I can try that and superintendent booger I'm sorry
206you also we made sure we didn't hit any religious holidays during that time frame as well yeah I hear you I hear you yeah it's a it's important to consider those things I know that's why I didn't worry about September I wasn't gonna I knew all that so why don't we propose March 10th Tuesday yeah let's try that does that work thank you yeah thank you sorry to be so it overrides my Bible study that that it trumps it excuse me sorry what yeah well we want you to be here Greg thanks we value your presence did okay you got your input yeah need a i a motion in a second to approve okay do we have a so as amended as amended I make the motion to approve as amended with the Tuesday and
207I second as amended all all any comments any online comments no okay all in favor I I I okay I okay passes unanimously now you got me I'll I'm committed okay item y future board agenda items uh anybody need anything added to that okay well I guess meeting a Jour thank you and happy birthday misso happy birthday