001book good afternoon opening today's meeting of the Santa Rosa City School Board Wednesday September 27 2023. at this time I will take public comment on closed session agenda items speakers will have two minutes each the items on the closed session agenda are as follows B1 public employee performance evaluation B2 conference with labor negotiator B3 conference with legal counsel anticipated litigation before student expulsions I have no blue cards for public comment but we will ask if there are any members in person in the chambers who would like to give public comment on closed session items foreign persons uh in the chamber to give a public comment thank you at this time we will recess to closed session good evening thank you all for attending today's meeting of the Santa Rosa City School Board opening this meeting
002this meeting Wednesday September 27 2023 we will start a meeting with the Pledge of Allegiance please rise and remain standing through our land I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States overall and leading us today in our land acknowledgment is Elizabeth Billy Madonna feather Cruz and Donna Fernandez um I'm Donna Fernandez I'm elim Pomo I'm currently a teacher at Piner high so thank you for inviting us to do the land acknowledgment we acknowledge that the schools within Santa Rosa city school district and the Board of Education meeting are taking place through the unseated territory of California home to nearly 200 tribal Nations as we begin this meeting we acknowledge and honor the original inhabitants of the Southeastern sorry south southern Pomo cosme walk and wapo tribes a land acknowledgment is a critical step
003towards working with Native communities to secure meaningful Partnerships and inclusion in the stewardship and protection of the cultural resources and homelands let's take a moment to honor these ancestral grounds that we are collectively gathered upon and support the resilience and strength that all indigenous people have shown worldwide thank you for this time to recognize the original inhabitants through this land acknowledgment and moreover show appreciation to the current Native American students and staff within our school district oh [Music] thank you Elizabeth Madonna and um Donna thank you and please be seated and Sherry thank you Sherry foreign C3 on our agenda this evening report of actions taken in closed session we have nothing to report this evening item C4 items considered in closed session for action and Open Session um we are seeking a motion on
004student expulsion case number 20 23 2401. we'll move to accept the recommendation second thank you that was moved by vice president Medina and seconded by director Flores roll call vote please director Medina aye director Flores aye director Sheffield aye director De La Cruz aye director McNally aye director De la Torre aye president manieri aye item C5 statements of abstention are there any statements of Ascension this evening seeing none item C6 adjustments to the agenda board or superintendent are there any adjustments this evening seeing none item C7 public comment on non-agenda items at this time we will open it up for public comment on non-agenda items this is an opportunity for members of the public to speak to the board on non-agenda items only speakers are limited to two minutes each during public comment we kindly
005ask that you maintain a respectful and civil tone during your comments keeping in mind that deferring opinions are welcome we would like to warn the public that according to our policy guidelines personal attacks offensive language or disruptive behavior will not be tolerated and will lead to a discontinuance of your comments thank you for your cooperation in creating a constructive and inclusive meeting and this evening we have public comment from a few folks if you would like to please come to the podium when your name is called the first is Micah Carlin Goldberg if you would like to come followed by Gabriel alavera good evening superintendent tranelle and our school board members thank you for taking the time to listen tonight um last year we had a number of unsafe incidents happen in our school district
006some of them incredible incredibly tragic and some less so but still detrimental to Student Learning um and at steel Lane we had a listening session where superintendent Janelle came and listened to our concerns and we really appreciated her clearing her schedule and coming to spend that hour with us and take the time to hear what we needed to say about safety at our site um but I have to say that in the sixth or nine months or how long it's been since then I've heard about a lot of listening I haven't seen or heard much in the way of actual change how are we changing how we're dealing with students who are violent and disruptive at school how are we making sure that the other 25 or 35 kids in that room with the violent
007student who is acting out and needs a different placement how are we dealing with their trauma their need we have students who are in a classroom with a violent student for almost the entire year last year and those kids have PTSD there is no doubt in my mind right you start hearing stuff and you can see the way they react their bodies tense up we did not serve the other 25 kids in that classroom by keeping the violent student in that room right we're supposed to have the least restrictive appropriate placement and when a student cannot be served by the general education population they need a different placement and we need our systems to work faster to get them there right we have non-public schools there are kids that need to be there and they
008need to not be traumatizing all of their classmates and their school with violent and disruptive behavior and we need to actually see change in policy and in how we Implement that policy as a side note um your school board webs are the school district website still does not have the new address for the temporary location anywhere thank you Micah thank you Micah [Music] next is Gabriel Alvarez good evening board superintentional I want to take the time right now to appreciate the work that you all did the last board meeting and cutting off those cowards online as well as um making sure you respond in the way that you did um as an educator as a parent as a grandparent as an administrator at the school the way you guys dealt with it was professional and
009I greatly appreciate it on a different topic I also want to address some of the comments that were made regarding students up here on this Podium and it really hurts me and it pains me to hear the way um some folks in the community demonize our students we got students with challenging situations we got students that come from different backgrounds that we all come from but they're still young people there's still people that we're trying to not only educate we're trying to give them opportunities we're trying to open not only their eyes but their hearts as well and it does take time we cannot get rid of students the way we used to do things 15 20 years ago I don't want to go backwards I want to go forwards we have staff we got
010counselors we got therapists we have folks that are not only waiting to work with students but are willing to work with students and we need to take that opportunity to make sure that we give our students and their families the resources to be successful I think we have them could we use more absolutely um in talking to some of our parents especially on my side at Elsie Allen High School parents you know are going through things as well and so what things that we can do to support them as well uh the last thing I want to say is that if we just all take a consideration and view these students as they were our family maybe we would look at the situation a whole lot differently and I know I do that with my
011students I know our staff does the same at LCL in high school and we hope that we can do that across our district I think our families and our community would appreciate it thank you thank you Mr Roberta that concludes our public comment for this evening thank you for sharing your issues and concerns with us this brings us to our D items for this evening our reports and starting with D1 California School employee Association Santa Rosa 75 report do we have a report this evening great thank you and we'll welcome um president Mary Layman to the podium good evening president manieri governing board superintendent tranelle cabinet members guests and everyone listening tonight online and everyone present I want to thank the board for changing the public comment to in person welcome to all the new
012hires and promotions at the district office and all the new hired teachers 111 to date and the returning classified getting promotion among our rank ranks we welcome new toses new special services and special ed employees too we started the year off with hope hoping for positive things the move to special services from the move of special services ed services state and federal and child care from the district office to Stony Point we hope everyone is beginning to feel settled there CSEA wants to thank the board for approval of the tentative agreement and mou's negotiated with the district at the end of June all items were ratified by our members August 23rd we appreciate the eight percent salary and the medical benefit increase I remind the board that the district and CSEA still have a tentative
013agreement from 2019 that has not been completed the job descriptions are done but the salary compensation study started by Cindy Brennan was never completed and she has retired we look forward to beginning this process as soon as possible last year the Safety Committee was formed and addressed the need for more adults on campus by adding 30 more classified positions edjoin now has openings for campus supervisors restorative specialists family engagement facilitators a student advisor and student engagement activity workers all of these positions still pay less than a living wage except for restorative specialists yes we are thankful classified employees received eight percent salary increase across the board and eight percent medical benefits increase as well after our increase was approved supervisory unrepresentative and administrative staff received similar increases the wage Gap continues to widen and yes
014we still have over 150 classified job openings after the salary increase safety at the school sites continues to be a concern I challenge us to use the resources we already have how can we get more adults on campus again let's use the resources we already have classified employees that are working less than eight hours a day who would like to work a couple more hours to make eight hours total and get health benefits we can start there each site should encourage their staff to help staff may even want to drive over to another Campus Middle School or high school for a few more hours of supervision they can use stop it app to report things the benefits would be adults getting involved on campus fostering a sense of community perhaps contributing to their children's education
015personal growth or simply making a positive impact we know that time can be a concern for adults so flexible opportunities that can accommodate various schedules emphasizing that any level of involvement would be valuable tonight we are approving the site safety plans each school has their own safety plan do they include training for all staff do we have a list of who has received safety training with all of our new administrators teachers and classified support staff we are hoping to foster a more safety oriented School culture a change that is needed throughout Sonoma County Schools California schools and the nation to do this we need to be more informed csea's mission is to improve the lives of students families and the community help us do that thank you thank you president Lehman next is item D2
016Santa Rosa Teachers Association report and I will hand it over to president Howell there will be no report tonight from president Hill thank you Melanie this brings us to item D3 superintendent report thank you president manieri board those who are with us in person and online I'll keep this part short because I have more to share during the safety report so with my tradition today marks day 30 of the school year so there's only 150 more days of opportunity to positively support our students yay uh we had a successful Middle School in High School back to school night the last two weeks so thank you to everyone who supported and attended um I enjoyed helping out with supervision today at Slater Middle School during the lunch time and thank you to the principal and staff
017for all they are doing to support students and Families we had a team from multiple departments support the Vince Harper day and night Festival this past Saturday thank you for all who supported this event all of our staff and for those who came out it was a great opportunity for multiple Community organizations to be present to support our community thank you thank you superintendent tranone item D4 is the board president report I will also keep my report short this evening I was able to attend the elfielen high school back to school night which was really wonderful thank you for the invitation it was really wonderful being able to talk to so many parents and get to listen to all the hopes that our parents offer their children for the rest of the school year and
018I was also able to make it out to one of Elsie Allen's football games um it was really fun and I'm and I'm looking forward to the next one um item D5 board member reports do we have reports this evening I see several so we'll just go down this way and then go down this way thank you I'm up um I did on 9 15 I attended the made in Santa Rosa education foundations back to school fundraiser which was a great event um it was a good turnout I understand they raised more money than they did last year and I got to see our former superintendent uh kittemura and former trustee Joe McCormick at this event as well I was just really happy to see the the turnout the interest in this Foundation that is
019growing year by year it was a pleasure to be there and represent the district um also I just wanted to add that I was in a meeting today wearing a different hat with Senator McGuire or Pro tem elect and this is a really big deal for somebody who's coming from um from this region um he is heading the the California state Senate and we have azir um he was giving a presentation today um about his overview and vision for the Senate and among his priorities he addressed the need for public schools and community colleges and the attention that's needed there he mentioned the hope of um increases in per pupil spending as well um so I just want to bring that up for folks in the in the room who have an ear to these
020to these matters to policy and direction from the state as well as future potential funding opportunities he also talked about CTE and career Pathways um so you know for those who who know Senator McGuire know of Senator McGuire he's somebody who delivers on his word so I just wanted to bring that up I'm very proud of this guy who's gone this far and um that he's very District focused so that's right he started out as a school board member exactly right thank you director Sheffield director of De La Cruz I was happy to be Ed's guests and um table me at the maiden Santa Rosa foundation and special shout out to principal Amber Williams who said and I quote education is key and enrichment unlocks the magic um and so just really grateful for the
021ways in which um our community showed up to really support enrichment in a way that's very Equity focused and really looks at where the greatest needs in our community are where there's the most kind of impact and the most joy that will happen in bringing these kinds of resources to schools that need us the most um so super grateful for that I also got to go to back to school night for my two kids Santa Rosa Middle Santa Rosa high school special shout out to the amazing administrators at Santa Rosa High who had a special gathering for Spanish language speaking parents and just all of the love that was shown to a big majority of parents in our community who really just appreciated the opportunity um to receive information in their language to ask questions
022of a lot of confianza and I'm really grateful for that effort a little bit more needs to happen inside of the classroom because those parents who showed up for that session were also going around from classroom to classroom and um that wasn't quite the same experience audience right then they really you could see the the shift happen where we turn right back into kind of like business as usual English only inside of our classrooms and still some of those parents needing um to find ways to connect uh Santa Rosa Middle did a beautiful job actually utilizing student um student translators who were doing their absolute best it was really beautiful to watch kids love on their skill set um and to be engaged in that way and to be asked to help um to add
023that value to making their parents and um you know all the community members who really needed that translation at back to school night um proud and and to feel super useful so um Adelante I also just wanted to say thank you to the parents who gavelado right so just thank you to all the parents who lifted up their voices with a lot of Pride to ask for their right to be to have information translated for them in their languages and so like is a so it's the goal of our district to make sure that everybody who's in our district is respected and loved on um and recognizing those needs that they bring and also the value of being bilingual and being Multicultural in our in our system so thank you Santa Rosa city schools woohoo
024back to school night director McNally so I was able to attend a few of our Middle School back to school nights and I saw some really wonderful things there at both Comstock and the Santa Rosa Middle School I was able to sit in on some teachers presentations and I just loved seeing how our teachers build rapport and relationships with our families I did notice as director De La Cruz mentioned there was some inconsistency in the translation services offered but I really want to commend the staff and students who did offer that translation and then at ccla I loved how they brought food and music into their back to school night it was a really great atmosphere so I just wanted to say thank you to the administrators and staff who put those back to school
025nights together and to the families who came out to support their children thank you director McNally vice president Medina thank you um first I'd like to report in relation to the collaborative meeting between the city of Santa Rosa and as our district we had our second meeting this past monday it was a director de la torrected de la Cruz and myself um we came together to discuss the prioritization of issues um it was a very passionate meeting we collectively decided to begin to focus on the issue of school safety at our next meeting City staff will be working to bring staff from the measure H formerly measurable funded violence prevention program as we move forward to address issues in a collaborative manner um two things that were mentioned there that I suggest people interested in
026in the issue of Public Safety in our schools and in our community potentially at the October 9th city council meeting there will be a a presentation on the violence prevention program strategic plan and then potentially at the October 24th meaning there will be a public safety subcommittee uh uh me subcommittee presentation so things to look forward to on that I did also want to uh report that um let's see this past Saturday it was great to see at Santa Rosa high school a lot of our students engaged volunteering as as the Mexican consulate was hosted or staff and students really doing a great job helping out it was a there was a lot of people it was a very impactful event it was great to see that I'd like to thank all the organizations involved
027Redwood Food Bank umanidad Latinos through Congress the Metro students migrant education and the District Attorney's office for for all the work to put that event on on on that campus which which I think there's interest to do it again in the future I did also meet with some students from Sonoma State this past Sunday um expressing concern about some recent uh tuition fee increases at the CSU which will impact our students in the future it'll be five years of six percent increases so they're asking for support in in helping them to try to reverse these fees by connecting them with some of our state elected officials so I'm working with them to do that because it does impact the future of our students here um and the sad from that I'm looking forward to attending
028the state of Latino tomorrow in Sonoma State and going to the California Latino School Board Association conference this weekend along with director McNally thank you thank you vice president Medina and on this side director delatorre thank you very much um I also had a great opportunity to um was invited by the imagineist to see a production of Casi Casa um and this is a non-profit group of actors that had collaborated with Luther Burbank Elementary second graders to um put together a production that they are now performing this year it was a bilingual product performance it was a lot of fun um consider nature loving abuela meets The Magic School Bus Mrs Fritz um so it was really cool I brought my son and some of his friends and we really enjoyed the experience and it
029was neat to see a production that happened with the collaboration of our students um they are able to provide performances free of charge for Luther Burbank Elementary K through third grade students and that was going to take place I went to middle school back to school nights that was amazing it's just great to see the community get your feet on the ground be a part of the process talk to parents talk to teachers got out to a couple more football games Montgomery High School and traveled with Korea down to Petaluma to watch them compete back to school night for high school I got to be a dad and be at Creo for the night and that was a great experience and I just wanted to end my report with gratitude and thanks to a superintendent
030tranelle and her leadership team and the work that they put in with srpd and the community to avoid some potential dangerous situations obviously incidents have been publicized and in the news and you get a lot of negativity with those situations with these instances the stop at what's used Community member saw some potentially dangerous Behavior reported it and the leadership team was working throughout the early morning hours uh with srpd to investigate if threats are viable and guns were removed from the streets so that is a win those were things that we have in place that work together the Tran the communication between all the leaders involved to ensure our students were safe um was met with my gratitude and I look forward to having active conversations with other potential Community groups that would like to
031work with the district to mitigate safety thank you director delatorre and thank you board members for your report it's definitely been oh one more report all right director for us so um I also went to the imaginist uh meeting so thank you for bringing that up and I just you know I'm not going to reiterate what you said I just want to say Tito and I just would like to uh say thank you to all the classified and certificate staff in the district um uh you are out there day in day out and uh your commitment to our district doesn't go up noticed I just wanted to say that thank you thank you director Flores and uh to to move us along I just want to also express my gratitude to to board members for
032supporting our district in the many different ways that you've done that over the past couple of weeks and we look forward to continuing being in community with the folks that we serve the next item on our agenda is item D6 safety report and I will hand this over to superintendent tranelle thank you president manieri members of the board again those who are with us in person and online I have several things to share um tonight and so I'm going to start with the safety advisory Roundtable or the sart group we have reconvened we had our first meeting of the new school year last Monday I began the meeting by reviewing action items that are involved that are a part of the Strategic plan and the progress on those action items we also talked about some
033of the positions that were built into the plan and also funded and I'll talk about those in a moment funded through our lcap and where we stand with those positions that are filled in those that are vacant we will be meeting monthly going forward and we'll continue to monitor the outcomes of the action items and potentially identify revisions of the Strategic plan because it is a fluid process on that note I would like to provide an update on several fronts first starting with mental health and counseling we kicked off this school year with a theme at every school about what is your hope we asked students staff and families to think about what is their hope for this school year and each School site has found their own way of documenting that and finding opportunities
034to be able to memorialize that feedback we were hoping to inspire positivity and connection with our students staff and families through that process we started the school year by encouraging every School site to consider how they will embed social emotional learning strategies and wellness through the themes in the first few weeks of the school year to reinforce that we have support available and there are ways that we can provide support through these various strategies through the street excuse me through the sart Strategic plan in the lcap we've worked to increase positions at our school sites for example with our restorative Specialists we're still trying to hire four positions 24 positions are filled or in the process of a new person starting and going through the hiring process family engagement facilitators is another position that went
035through this process with the start in the lcap we're still trying to hire nine more family engagement facilitators 20 positions are filled or in the process of a new person being on boarded under Safety and Security to continue the conversation about positions through the sart and lcap process we increased the number of Campus supervisor positions for middle schools and for high schools which is where these positions now reside we went for we have one for middle schools which is an increase from zero to one because middle schools with the exception of ccla did not have campus supervisors we have four campus supervisors for high school and two for Ridgeway that is an increase from two people that was already staffed or Physicians that were established to for her High School um and then uh two
036out of our four middle schools has been able to successfully hire a campus supervisor so far of our high schools have two positions filled and are still looking for two more one of our high schools was able to fill three of the four positions and Ridgeway needs one more so we still have vacancies in these positions and we encourage people to encourage people to look at them and and join our team uh we are deploying district office administrators on a weekly basis to assist with supervision needs at our school sites for additional people on our campuses the Sonoma County Office of Education has offered an administrator from their team to become a permanent resident in our district for the remainder of this school year and this person is currently deployed as an extra assistant principal
037at Slater and Rincon Valley Middle School for the remainder of the school year I also want to talk about other elements of safety that people don't typically think about and one of those is food food scarcity and also connections to our schools so we have student workers in our cafeterias who volunteer to spend time with warm and welcoming adults to learn a marketable skill student workers and cafeterias report they have strong relationships with our child nutrition services staff as the primary reason they applied to work in the cafeteria our menu choice or excuse me I'm not speaking very clearly our menu choices reflect student identities we have some examples and reports from parents and from our students that because of the variety of food choices that they feel more connected in our schools and we're
038hearing very positive things about the new menu options that are coming out of our child nutrition services department and our cafeterias so we very much appreciate that also our child nutrition services department is partnering with our schools to provide resources for teachers relating to food to connect to core academic subjects among them is a social studies lesson plan related to grape growing and the Delano grape strike as an example these efforts connect the food served in the cafeteria to the lesson students learn in classrooms creating more connections starting shifting now starting the school year um we started this school year by asking our school sites to begin the process of practicing safety drills so that our students would know what safety drools safety drills were available as we go out through the year and I
039know that school sites did that in different ways and will continue to enact these drills legally and also respectfully throughout the school year uh with the higher of our coordinator of wellness and engagement we have begun training around gang awareness with all of our administrators and we'll next be offering these trainings at the school site level with our staff we're going to continue promoting the use of the stop it app for our middle schools and our high schools and we are also I'm also getting questions about elementary so I'll be following up with my team on what is available to assist our elementary schools so that our students also have an opportunity to anonymously report things that they may hear and we want to thank the many who have already utilized this app in order
040to help us quickly to reduce incidents on our campuses under the lens of facilities and safety all of the bathrooms that were completely redone at our high schools are now complete there are a few little details that we are working on but for the most part the work is done unfortunately we are seeing vandalism of these brand new bathrooms fortunately based on the materials that we used for these bathrooms it is much easier to clean and get rid of graffiti um fortunately for things that are broken off of the walls and installs and things that does take time for us to replace so I do want to say that it's very few who are doing this and I want to commend our students for being very respectful of the school environment including the bathrooms all
041of our schools also are receiving a threat assessment of the facilities which is through our facilities master plan process we're going to be bringing more information to the board at our meeting in November regarding the entire draft report of the facility's master plan under communication and transparency we are working with our Consultants at the board approved for us to work with to create materials to promote the voices of our students our families and our staff so that we are hearing from the from them directly and so that our community can also hear from them so we are beginning the process of that work we share information via radio stations on a regular basis as well kbbf is one of those platforms that we have a seat twice a month to be able to connect with
042our community as an example we are working collaboratively with emergency service agencies to have open lines of communication no matter the hour of the day or day of the week as I can attest receiving a call at 2 A.M being up and with Emergency Services between 2 and 4 a.m to make sure that our schools were safe on that day and that there were no incidents and that is what we're willing to do day night weekends to make sure that that happens and we appreciate the communication that our stakeholders that our students our families and our staff are engaging with us another example is we don't want surprises and so when we can any Communications that go district-wide we do try and give our staff a courtesy so that they know what is going out
043before it goes public I want to appreciate the recent Communications with the media in helping us to get the word out about various things such as what is happening tonight with the limitation of public comment to in person only and so I just want to acknowledge that as well as we're working with our media um agencies and with that I will hand it back to you thank you superintendent tranelle we appreciate all of the work that you are doing and that you are leading and all of the staff who are a part of this work thank you so much for doing everything that you can and that we can to keep our communities our staff our students our families safe so thank you and yeah we have a question superintendent I I just have one
044quick question about your important thank you for the report very thorough a lot of information we have a pretty sizable audience I'm just wondering if you can like boil it down to like the total number of new positions that places an adult on our campuses where are we at right now yes I know some quick math yes I know and I was trying to tally is here but but yes you've got it yeah sorry people online cannot hear me so um thank you for the question just give us a moment to do some math and maybe I can come back to put you on the spot but thank you yeah sorry I didn't tally it up I just kind of went down to the unique levels of the positions but thank you for the question
045can we add one more thing to that click tally maybe the number of positions that are still open for people to apply to um and where they can find access to those job descriptions and job openings quickly thank you superintendent tranelle and we look forward to that number and two future updates I also understand that in the future we will have other folks joining us for that report for this report or this section of our agenda so we look forward to having conversations with those folks the next item is D7 csba report do we have a report this evening I do not have one okay thank you this brings us to our first action item of the evening E1 approval of resolution proclaiming October 12 2023 as indigenous people's day and I'm going to hand
046this action item over to vice president Medina thank you president monieri um before I begin I'd like to thank our members of the Indian education committee present for the land acknowledgment and for being here for this resolution thank you we recognize indigenous people's Day To Boldly affirm that October 12 1492 marks a profound moment in history not for Columbus's supposed Discovery but for the resilient indigenous peoples who had thrived on this land for Millennia before his arrival Columbus lost in his quest for a new route to Asia unintentionally landed in what is now known as the Bahamas foreshadowing centuries of European colonization across the Americas this day is a testament to over 500 years of indigenous resistance struggle and unwavering determination to simply survive indigenous people's day is a powerful declaration that we honor the
047enduring Legacy of the countless indigenous Nations who have not only endured the horrors of colonization but have thrived in the face of adversity it is a celebration of the wisdom knowledge and cultural richness that indigenous peoples have contributed to our shared Humanity despite centuries of marginalization Oppression and violence recognizing indigenous people's day is an act of solidarity a commitment to Justice and then acknowledgment that we must confront our history honestly educate ourselves and work together to support the ongoing struggle for indigenous rights and sovereignty on this day we recognize that the strength of indigenous communities is an inspiration to us all a reminder that the power of resilience and the spirit of survival can never be extinguished it is a day to celebrate indigenous cultures promote indigenous voices and Stand United in pursuit of Justice
048equality and the rights to self-determination for all indigenous people it is in the spirit that I present this resolution today for us to recognize October 12 2023 as indigenous people's day and in the pursuit of broader education and a deeper understanding of our shared history I did have a request that an article uh from 30 Years Ago by on Gala Baron's notebook be attached to this agenda item and uh it's titled within 30 years the Santa Rosa Indians were gone it offers some valuable insights into the complex and tragic history of our local indigenous communities additionally I'd also like to highlight and invite everyone to read an article published in the San Francisco Chronicle on September 19th it's titled white man's Justice untold story of a killing That Changed History this article delves into the
049tragic murder of Richard Oaks right here in Sonoma County Richard Oakes is known for his pivotal role in leading the occupation of Alcatraz Island in November 1969. uh 51 years ago when he was murdered a momentous this this occupation was a momentous event that catalyzed change and Drew attention to to the struggles and injustices faced by indigenous people in the United States and with that I give it back to you president monieri thank you vice president Medina we appreciate that presentation and the words that you shared um in recognition of this really important resolution this is an action item are there any board member questions at this time seeing none we will move to a public comment I have no blue cards on this item so it comes back to the board for further discussion
050or emotion I see vice president Medina's hand and director Sheffield's hand I like to move that we adopt the resolution proclaiming October 12 2023 is indigenous people's day second and second thank you director Medina that was seconded by director De La Cruz um before I asked for roll call is there any additional discussion from the board okay roll call vote please director Rao aye director Medina aye director De La Cruz aye director Sheffield aye director McNally aye director Flores aye director De la Torre hi president manieri hi thank you item E2 is a discussion item LCL new school model update this discussion item is on the new school model which is focused on operationalizing our graduate profile by expanding a K-12 dual immersion pathway from Cesar Chavez Language Academy to LC Island high school and
051expanding the Career Technical education offerings at LCL high school and we have a great team joining us this evening both from ccla and LCL in high school and I'm going to hand this over to Dr Castro good evening superintendent tranelle president manieri members of the board and the student staff and community of Santa Rosa city schools we're excited to bring you the update for the new school model at lcln as described by President mandaria menieri which describes the continuing development of the dual immersion pathway from Cesar Chavez Language Academy to Elsie Allen high school and building a robust Career Technical education program set of offerings go ahead and turn it over to executive director Tim zelenardo to start the um presentation good evening superintendent junell president many area members of the board that was me
052unfortunately making a little noise up above as I was getting the webinar set up so sorry so I'm a moment behind now because I closed it so I wouldn't be noisy thought I had it on mute so let me make sure I share my screen and get the presentation going give me one more second all right thank you for your patience so we are here this evening to speak to um the new school model and really just the um approach within Santa Rosa city schools to support our students with opportunities in a multilingual experiences to make sure we're not a monolingual institution and to make sure students have access to multiple opportunities for enriched valuable learning and that being said I'm going to turn over to colleagues and kind of move out of the way
053as we go along and the first thing I'll turn it over to is a history and kind of background which I'll ask Mr Alba Vera to speak to and thank you for speaking this evening before the uh this presentation earlier appreciate the time uh board superintendo uh we are excited not only to be here but to share with you kind of the steps that we've taken uh in regards to our new school model and the support that we've been receiving not only from yourselves but also CTE Foundation I think some of you remember this uh this uh slide we've had it out here probably a couple of times already as we can see the steps since the last presentation most of all uh it was created as we were working with our design team that
054included staff students and Community Partners and at that time it was led by Karina Huey the new school model included all of what we are working on at the time CTE K-12 dual immersion University program ethnic studies Athletics Avid restorative justice and what we came up with was really at the center we ended up having our graduate profile which is kind of what's been leading our work in uh in this program uh so here's our graduate profile again it was created gosh it was almost now two years ago if I'm not mistaken a couple of the students are with us at LC Allen uh that were at Cesar Chavez Language Academy uh and again at that time it was important for the students that it our graduate profile be bilingual uh and so we decided
055to make sure that we had that in all of our rooms classrooms throughout the the campus next slide so what's happening now so this year every year we we get uh with our department chairs to kind of look at a focus for the beginning of the year and this year we decided to again have three uh goals of graduate profile leading our work and then having a student and teacher voice um with the great uh recommendation by uh assistant super Castro in regards to Street data we found it that uh it was a need for our students to have voice in the classroom and we ended up passing that along to our staff as well the profile continues to be refined and implemented uh through our departments and some of our plcs uh and I
056think uh I think Mr raffle is going to talk a little bit about that that's kind of also broken off into uh instructional learning teams as well and so what we've tried to do is get more of our staff involved including some of our newer staff as uh kind of encouraged them to take some leadership roles within our within our school as well student voice and student culture create environments where students are seen heard and supportive in achieving our graduate profile and we try to do that as an administrative team and model that with our staff as well and then in regards to teachers we want to make sure that we continue to offer them professional learning opportunities as well as collaboration cultivate environments where teachers are seen heard and supported as well to grow
057and learn together again we're trying to make sure that we have a pedagogy of voice so that students are given the opportunity to have agency as well as trying to flip our pedagogy to Sender student and teacher voice within the classroom slide um let me change my page here as you can see uh there's a few things that we got going on of course the Dual uh emergent we have a dual version Tulsa that got higher we also have sections in the Dual version pathway that we've kind of created and again it's a it's a work in progress we've kind of been grandfathering these in we have a section in world history physical education and of course the sections in Spanish for Spanish speakers again this assists for our students that are looking for the
058that are coming from Cesar Chavez with the Dual language background as well but it also are assists our newcomer students that are coming without the English uh background but can be are able to take physical education which is a class that's needed for graduation as well as a world history class which is needed for graduation as well uh we also have obviously our ethnic study sections in English drama music and dance uh again they're always extremely important one of the things that came about this last past year out of our youth truth survey was that we were getting some feedback from our students especially our newcomer students that they didn't feel safe on our campus uh and I mean again I I can't imagine coming into a new country not knowing the language and uh
059coming into a school as big as LCL in high school it could be a little bit of a little bit intimidating and so we got some of that feedback and we decided this year to create a newcomer Center above our library to support our students our family engagement facilitators kind of monitor that area we have some resources available for our students and more importantly I think what it ends up giving is a it's a kind of a home away from home we want it to be that that feeling for them we got the idea from uh the couple times that we took trips to Tennyson high school because they have something similar for their newcomer students there and we thought you know let's try to have something here so that our students can feel safe
060um trying to think what else um we've done cross-site collaboration with ccla students at LCL High School uh our band plays uh along with Cesar Chavez's band they do a phenomenal job Mr Thompson and Mr Nala have done this is the thing that we wanted to try to build on and be able to not only do it with band but do it with other programs as well um our admin team has uh gone to coffee with the principal uh with mizuchi's cordially invites us and we take our students some of our students to go present also to the Cesar Chavez parents as well um we want to continue professional development and site visits for teachers classified an Administration again just to name a few we went to the Lindsay trip last school year we're gonna
061go again uh in October we've done uh kabe nabe atdle and they've also participated in Casa events as well as La cosecha in New Mexico and I think and I just want to add to this in regards to the newcomer Center um just to give you an idea of how many more newcomers were getting every year we've taken a little bit of data so in 2000 um I'm trying to find it 21-22 we had 18 newcomer students that came to us at this this same time in that year 22 23 we had 20 newcomer students this time that year so far this year we have 36 newcomer students we just had a phenomenal three brothers that just came to us from Haiti there is nothing more beautiful than to see Haitian students speak in their
062French and learning Spanish at the same time in our Spanish-speaking students learning bonjour I mean it's incredible um it's beautiful so these are some of the things that are happening now uh as we work in LCL I don't know if uh wants to add more yeah so we always appreciate the adminton the admin team I can't talk um Casey and Michelle Rivera to come over and participate in our coffee chats but not only that but um like director McNally said having them come over and participate in our back to school night um having the bands play together and having um our kids come and support them during their football games and things like that is super important and especially because we want to highlight a lot of the great things that are happening at LC
063Allen and we want to do it early before open enrollment um happens right so we're hoping that we're going to have a parent night hopefully coming up soon that's our hope okay and um just to continue that conversation right that we want to support our students regardless of when they're at ccla one of the other things that we're going to start doing and um kind of reciprocal they don't know this yet so it's hot off the press is that we want to come into LC Allen and support some of our students that have gone through ccla who are now at LC Allen so they understand that their hours regardless of they left us right we want to have them know that we're going to be there for them until they graduate and Beyond so I
064know that um AP um our assistant principal Mendoza already went um because one of their kiddos had left their backpack in our office and so we wanted to deliver that but it also gave us an opportunity to continue that rapport with our students and say we're here for you and we want to make sure that um that continues um so regardless of where our kids go they're our students from the minute they step on to our campuses since TK so we'll continue that articulation and then we'll be going to Lindsay in a couple weeks so we'll have some teachers from ccla as well as LCM we really are looking forward to to that continuous work next slide good evening bored and superintendent Anderson my name is Casey Cunningham assistant principal at LCN high school I'm
065not as good as them so mine is scripted but uh for the past month and a half I've been working with two amazing individuals uh our CTE tosa from Santa Rosa city schools Dr Damian Mason as well as our rock star CTE tosa at our school uh Lauren Leota together we've created a template for building our pathway courses which includes mapping the standards for each assignment within the class right now we have been working on an introduction class to our new education pathway which allows us to use the same process to redesign existing Pathways and to create our new ones this will ensure that all of our classes within our Pathways will be aligned with CTE and common core standards they are a through G approved and include multiple opportunities for worst work based learning
066experiences to talk briefly about this new education pathway way that we have we have established a primary design team that is currently completed construction of our first course within the next month this course will be reviewed by our secondary design team and it's made up of students teachers parents counselors and Industry Partners now that this education class is moving forward we are now focusing on replicating this process with our goal of completing our second year concentrator course in our public and Community Health pathway we are very proud and excited of what we're doing and we love to share it for who anybody who's interested thank you good evening my name is Debbie Cardozo I'm a director of that oversees as Career Technical education and yes we're very proud of the work that we've done thus
067far um our introduction to healthcare consists of two sections right now 59 students and so that started this fall um and we're looking to forward to continuing to grow and expand the program and of course there's Agriculture and Public Safety currently existing at the site so we're also looking at continuing to redesign those programs as well we have been supporting teachers with securing their designated CTE subjects credential leveraging grant funding as we're building these as we're building these new programs we need a properly credentialed instructors so we could access additional CTE funding at the state and federal level so that's an important piece and appreciate the district's support and your support around that we as Casey mentioned are expanding work-based learning opportunities for students we had an amazing career conference in the spring last year
068and we're partnering with the CTE Foundation to provide an orientation for our industry Partners to learn a little bit more about work based learning and and get more involved and so more to come with that we have been very fortunate to secure another Grant which I'll speak to in a moment that is actually helping us identify additional early college credit opportunities specifically dual enrollment so we have a really strong partnership both with Santa Rosa Junior College and Sonoma State we have existing articulation agreements for students and CTE programs can earn early college credit through a credit by exam process this is different this is dual enrollment and so it's new it's exciting and we're just I'm really looking forward to expanding again our Partnerships with our post-secondary institutions so our students can start earning credentials
069and getting ready early on before they even graduate and then one of the things I'm probably most excited about is we're exploring integrated pathway development and what that means is we're connecting our CTE courses to our core academic courses where they can do cross-curricular projects and so we have our new public and Community Health program and so they're actually connected this year to a stats for social justice course and as we know in public and Community Health there are uh understanding disparities disparity disparities I can't talk today I'm excited about it I can't wait to share um in population Access to Health Care um lifespan and what's really great is that the stats for social justice course is being used as a lens to analyze these issues and so we're bringing core academic content to
070life and as we're building our new programs and redesigning um our existing programs we are developing um opportunities for for alignment and intentionally linking the standards and so that's very exciting um not only as as practitioners doing the work but for our students and the types of experiences that they will have in these classes director of multilingual Services um we are really excited I just have to share um our dual language immersion tosa was hired this summer and we were fortunate enough to have Marielle montesinos who is a long-term um long time teacher at Cesar Chavez Language Academy so she um knows uh the work that has been happening at Cesar Chavez Language Academy as and now is bringing that wealth of knowledge to the work that she's doing with the expansion of the Dual
071language immersion program at LC Allen with that a lot is underway in terms of um working and scheduling monthly dual language immersion team meetings so that we can discuss what the work is both at Cesar Chavez and um LC Allen she works at both sites during the week and so she's able to be involved with what's happening at Cesar Chavez and then also at Elsie Allen she is also we're in the process of identifying um our DLI advisory team members and they will be a combination of community members staff members parents and also administrators to be able to really help us look at the next steps for dual language immersion we have a goal of having a dual language immersion master plan that will be connected to our English learner master plan and really looking
072at what dual immersion looks like for Santa Rosa's City Schools moving forward we are also in the process of identifying our parents for the because we want our parents voice in the work that's happening daily with regards to our dual language immersion they asked for this program they asked for the expansion and so now we need them involved in how we're going to sustain this work moving forward we're continuing to really work on identifying and encouraging our current teachers who have single subjects that are at LC Allen with encouraging them to get their bilingual authorization so that they're able to teach these Court the courses in Spanish at LC Allen I'm happy to report that we multilingual Services now has oversight of the um it's called North Bay bilingual teacher residency Grant we're excited because
073right now the focus really is on the teacher Residence at Cesar Chavez Language Academy but our advocacy is to ensure that it continues and that it follows a pathway so that our teachers or teachers we can have teacher residents at LC Allen High School um also we're in the process of working on the Recruitment and marketing for our program just in general dual immersion but um highlighting Cesar Chavez and Elsie Allen and um we're excited about the professional development opportunities such as a visit to um Lindsay and then a few conferences like la cosecha atdle which is the association of two-way dual language immersion and then California Association of bilingual education thank you so that's me so we um Grant funds we are in year two of our dual language immersion Grant and so um
074we are really working on the focus of this grant really for us was on the expansion of the Dual language immersion program through professional development through collaboration time and really with a focus on identifying time for our teachers that are teaching dual language immersion courses to have time to be able to develop their curriculum because we find that that is not um available always so there's a lot of planning time in collaboration with our teacher on special assignment to support the teachers at LC Allen who are underway working with the Dual language immersion teachers currently foreign partnership with the CTE Foundation of Sonoma County we were able to secure an arpa Grant so American Rescue plan at Grant last school year very thankful for that funding because it we're really leveraging those funds a lot
075to really transform LCL in high school and as principal albervera shared you know we're focusing on The Graduate profile professional development development of new CTE programs integrated programs and also coinciding with the work that's going on around the DLI and then finally it's very excited to share with you uh just recently we secured a hundred thousand dollar Grant a College and Career access pathway Grant specifically for LCL High School to support the development of dual enrollment partnership agreements with the srjc again to give students access to early college credits while in high school so that's new and we're looking at um leveraging the work that is done at LCL in high school as a model for the district moving forward around dual enrollment and those types of agreements foreign so considerations moving forward we know
076that there's been a lot of great work that has happened thus far but we do have some additional work to do and some things to consider that we'd like to share with you tonight um in regards to um building CTE programs and connecting them to ccla we're really focused right now on building those programs and redesigning those programs at the high school level but also with the lens that we want to connect those programs to ccla so for example and I believe I've shared this before with the education program we're being very intentional that we know that we want our lclm students to go down to ccla to the high school uh or to excuse me the elementary level Middle School level to Mentor those students to tutor those students and so they get connected
077early on in it and it feeds that bridge and that connection that's so important in school and so we're also looking at a possible CTE courses at the middle school level so how can we do some additional career exploration so kids can make a more informed decision before they and at LCL in high school and what pathway that they actually want to choose and so we're excited about that work and that's definitely in our long-term planning and something that we're considering moving forward [Laughter] everybody wants a mic it's like my house no so okay so expanding ccla one of the things that I did forget to mention um one of the works um you know the collaboration so our PE teacher Miss Natalie villagomez who's also a desert dance class has been collaborating with the
078dance teacher and the PE teacher at LC so we're going to be taking some students over there and um doing some collaboration there but also starting a color guard um at ccla to join the band because you know you can't have the band without our color card so I did forget to mention that but one of the things that um as I began this work last year one of the questions was how do we support the LC Allen pathway dual immersion with the numbers and the setup that we have right now for ccla and honestly the question is do we need to expand it and the answers yes because as as it stands right now we're graduating last year we had 30 students graduate from our dual language immersion track in eighth grade and this
079year we have 60 but that's going to be the cap as ccla is right now with the numbers that we have so the conversation needs to be how do we expand our dual language immersion program to be able to have the numbers to be able to feed into LC Allen so with that along the lines of the new mou that you is later on in the meeting is really working with Sonoma State University along with Napa Valley Unified with that grant that we have and our advocacy is around ensuring that Sonoma State understands that we now have the expansion of the dual immersion pathway and that we need to identify teacher residents who will have a single subject and bilingual authorization to be able to support the work that's happening at LC Allen if I
080could add that real quick so when I came on board at LC now six years ago we had about three staff members uh that were bilingual um we are now at uh 14 staff members that are bilingual of those 14 uh yeah we we've hired 10 in the last four years and we got one bilingual staff member in each department right now we've been lucky to grow that we've had folks coming from outside of the area Southern California phenomenal teachers we can still build on that but we just need to make sure we get that support as well all right good evening board superintendent tranelle I'm Erica raffo I'm the vice principal at LCL in high school I wanted to share with you a few challenges that we're experiencing relating to enrollment and feeder patterns
081um I want to preface it by saying the CTE Foundation has invested an enormous amount of time and money into helping us transform our school we keep using that word transform as has you all of you and our district our administrators our teachers and our district office staff have also invested countless hours as we work together to create a school that can offer a truly transformative educational experience for our students as we move forward we need to consider the policies the practices the communications that either intentionally or unintentionally encourage students to continue transferring away from our school our enrollment has continued to decline over the last three years um 21-22 school year we had 1091 students 22-23 last year we had 1042 this year as of today we have 995 so that's an overall decline
082of about 96 about 100 students this last year 150 incoming 9th grade students transferred away from Elsie Allen to other District high schools 15 percent of those incoming 9th graders attended ccla in eighth grade and 85 percent of them attended other middle schools within our district so as an educator who has spent her entire career with Santa Rosa city schools and at Elsie Allen High School I I believe passionately in our students and in this work and so these are just some things I think that we need to think about along with Mrs Diaz has shared with us about possibly expanding dual immersion just to that um and thank you so much um there were actually there would have been more because of the transfer process that we allow in our district but we actually
083denied any late requests which is one of the first times that we've done that in the past we've allowed everything and so we realize that we need to build back and support Elsie and that also means supporting our other schools and our home schools I just want to add that detail can I just add one more little thing to that you know a few years ago when we made that change with ccla I don't know if you guys remember a lot of our staff was here saying this is going to happen I was ones that's not going to happen and now I have to my words in regards to that so I got to be transparent about that and we need your help in order to stop that we if we're going to have a
084policy let's follow through with it good evening again Tim zolonardo executive director in Educational Services and what I'll end with in a brief two minutes is the following um some sobering information at the end but also lots of uplifting heartwarming and kind of really intense true really focused work that was shared as well about what is going into um all the lives and the family in the community of LCL High School so I was thinking recently just today about some ways in which um as you know Mr Blue Vera and Miss Rafa were mentioning like holding up Elsie Allen and one thing is we never want to have our schools compete with each other but we are doing something else down that is distinctly different it can be trumpeted from the rooftops it can be
085held up as something unique it respects and encourages a recognition of indigeneity that we don't have necessarily held up to the same level in our other schools it does as I started push back on monolingual systems and recognizes the fact that we should be multilingual and of course definitely in our area at least bilingualism with our largest populations it also holds up these Notions of cultural and linguistic wealth in the sense that our communities and the families that inhabit them bring with them Riches of experience that are indigenous kind of epistemologies that are not necessarily recognized by mainstream culture we can trumpet these things we can hold these up and we will not in any way be sliding any other school or any other efforts in our district and I think we should consider that
086as an offering for us to reflect on other than that I thank all the folks who are involved in the work and our students and families for the trust they place in us and we thank you and open it up to the board of education for follow-up questions foreign thank you thank you so much for for that presentation and all of the work that's been done up until this point I I definitely have a lot of questions but I'm happy to open it up to board members first so we started this way last time we'll start this way during this item uh thank you for that very thorough uh that was me right thank you president for that very thorough uh presentation um I've only a couple of questions here um in terms of the
08760 graduates from ccla uh what was our enrollment at Elsie Allen from those 60 students that graduated so just a correction so we have 60 8th graders now that would be matriculating into LC um or their home school or you know wherever they're choosing but last year we had 30 students that graduated and of those how many enrolled well we have six of those students at LC Allen okay so because I heard that numbers were low so and I just want to make sure that we're transparent and then I heard what you said uh um I was going to call your President Obama you're going to call me that's all right the president's fine too um you know so what sort of things are you looking for in in order for for us to support
088you know the feeder pattern into Elsie right because uh I don't want I don't want to rehash what happened in the past but this is one of the concerns that this board this is before I got on the board right um I had in terms of uh feeding into Elsie so I'm asking you maybe I'm asking the superintendent too what what sort of things do you need or so what sort of policies do you want from us to to ensure that our you know uh program uh is well um enrolled I think there's a few things but um going back to what yeah says expanding the program she's got a waiting list of students in kindergarten even right now that can expand that program and if we have to look at another site as a
089possibility you know we don't have to make it to charter school anymore you know I mean I think it could be expanded into an elementary school um because then you're then it's a true authentic program that would go k through 12. um I would say that I would say the other I would be uh and we're doing this right now we're trying to do a lot of PR going down to CCA again great conversations with uh some of the parents that go to um coffee for the principal uh but the parents that are there are predominantly Elementary School parents not very many Middle School parents are at those so we we're not able to get the the uh the word too much out but uh we would like director said we went to the back
090to school night had a couple tables there had some teachers there you know our teachers are very passionate also of making sure that we have that pathway for students as well um and then again the policy of transfers um we got to work on that that's like I said I mean that's this is just a small piece of the students that are leaving it's the students that end up going to another school because of the charter that then in turn go with their feeder pattern to that specific high school that goes there and I don't know if anybody I also like to share anything else it's not here either when this uh was developed however from what I have read and what I understand is when the advocacy happened um for ccla to be at
091the cook campus there were some agreements that were made in that process with the individuals involved and a verbal commitment that by doing so that Elsie would then be the pathway for our students and what we're seeing is that that is not happening and so I think we need to you know look at that I think we also need to look at our policy and we've been talking about this as a team I think the first step is holding true to the if you didn't meet the deadline you know it's a no unless there are some sibling cases things like that the things that we can do um also you know we're kind of beyond the choice schools process and former um hindrances by the state so I think it's time for us to look
092at our policy and look at how we hold with our homeschool numbers and also supporting our schools in all of our areas at the same time I just want to add I was here when we were going through this process and and you know there were folks there was a lot of support from the the school community that um really directed pushed us guided us to the decision that we made and now we're committed to this um I don't know I think Gabe you you were using the term Street data you know I don't know how we can pulse check that that street data right now um but this is this is our investment this is impressive the work that you do and I don't want to jump in but I I I I would
093like to find a way to hold some of you know these folks you know to their word to their commitment um and I'm not and supporting them and bringing them in and keeping them engaged that's can I can understand a couple things so looking at the numbers right so when I look at our school or in ccla you know the Dual track right we have our neighborhood kids and then you have the Dual language and by the capacity and now that we're looking at the facilities master plan and when we're looking at that it's I think it's a great opportunity to look at can we increase because our kiddos that our neighborhood kids that go to ccla very low numbers go to other places because I think um Ms Raffles said 15 of our neighborhood
094kids that were a ccla um so that means that um I can't do math 85 85 of our students that were at ccla from our neighborhood schools ended up at LC it's our dual language immersion kits out of the 30 that only six were there right and so to be able to increase our dual language immersion program at LC um because I think that you know we've done a pretty good job of um showcasing what else he has to offer to our neighborhood kids it's increasingly we can't expect because I'm a parent as well right and I see the parent side is that out of 60 let's say there's some attrition and let's say only you know 54 kids or 50 kids and graduate through the Dual language version track from ccla that's still not
095a big enough number to be able to hold a dual language immersion track at the high school level I mean the numbers just don't add up so either we're going to start creating a bubble to increase the Dual language immersion track and where that's a whole different discussion because um ccla right now can only house so many students by the buildings and that's why I mentioned the facilities master plan so we have to be strategic of as we're talking about facilities and we're talking about expansion really looking at what what does that mean long term right and so just wanted to add that thank you director Flores did you have more questions yeah you answer the I mean those are my follow-up questions right you had to do yeah no no that's perfectly fine thank
096you thank you for bringing it up and then lastly um what is our do we have a ninth grade cohort class right now at ccla in the dual immersion program because we started that last year right to high school thank you yeah yeah so we do we do have a group we do have six kids who came over so those students are taking world history in Spanish they're taking a Spanish for Spanish speakers course which was determined um based on their level of Spanish acquisition they they're either in Spanish for Spanish speakers one or two um and then we also have a PE course uh pe1 which is a graduation requirement that's also being taught in Spanish for them and we've included our newcomer students in those courses because I'm not going to open a
097class for six kids um right and that was my next question because we talked about a seventh period day right last year about in order to accommodate for for this program right and did that happen so we do have a seven period schedule and these students are those six students are in that dual immersion track okay so you have those six kids plus our our newcomers are part of that okay so um okay thank you more questions on this side yeah director Rowe um I just had a few questions um you mentioned student feedback um like for improving the a through G course proposals how did you um like get that feedback from students was it a survey or was it just talking to them and how did it like influence um your a through
098G courses yes great question uh so last year we had a design team that consisted of ccla and LCL and high school students as well as staff from both ccla and LCL high school and um other other folks and um It ultimately influenced what we were offering and the types of experiences that we were going to provide in those courses and the need to redesign some of our existing courses to meet what our kids were telling us that they were missing and so that relevancy that meaningful learning experiences that applied learning they they want to do internships they want to do job Shadows they eat all those different types of things and so as we're redesigning courses and planning for new courses we're always looking for student feedback in that process as well as other
099stakeholders like industry partners for example okay um thank you and then my other question was about the dual enrollment it sounded like it was a new thing and I was just wondering if you were going to offer any like workshops or anybody to help the students understand like how to register and how dual enrollment works I know that there's a lot of paperwork with it and it can be kind of confusing um so just trying to make sure that like students understand that another great question I'm glad you're on the board uh yes so dual enrollment is uh new uh as far as a College and Career access a Pathways Grant um what's interesting about that is through that type of agreement you have those college courses on the School site at the high school
100and they're limited only to high school students and so other um other community members can't enroll in that course and that's an agreement that you have with the srjc is what we're looking to develop and explore developing definitely education for students and parents that were fortunate enough that the board several years ago approved College and Career Centers on each of our comprehensive School sites as well as our continuation high school and so we do have dedicated staff already that can support our students through that process and then our our CTE toasted this past summer actually was able to support students in I'm enrolling in a JC course through another partnership that we had for students in agriculture to do internships during the summer and so that she also was able to help them with that
101process so definitely a need and as we look at expanding that we'll definitely have to ramp up and we'll have to look at systems and structures to support that okay thank you I'm um super excited that dual enrollment is becoming a thing um at this high school because I've taken a few JC classes and I think that they're really fun and a really great way for students who have specific interests that maybe aren't offered at um High School classes can like pursue that so I'm really excited thank you director Rowe this way director Sheffield do you have any questions um I I don't I think I was really going along the same lines as ever I just did want to add and um I know Debbie we had the conversation last summer but you know
102it health systems are really really I if I can leave you with with one really hot tip you know is health systems are are interested in in expanding their Workforce so meeting the needs the the needs so they're there conversations are already happening I'm aware directors electric and then we'll go back to director Flores thank you so so much for a beautiful presentation and uh director what you said reminded me of something that said Chavez said which is that uh to preserve one's culture does not require contempt for somebody else's culture and I just love that this you know asset frame is really what is I don't know embracing all of this beautiful work before us um so a couple of questions um I know we have a a couple of years of graduates from
103the dual immersion program at the ccla who didn't get a chance to kind of go into LC are we looking to pull any of those kids back into this program I took the opportunity to pull a couple um of our current 10th graders in um to the world history class normally um ninth graders don't take world history so by adding that class to the dual immersion pathway we accelerated High School a little bit for the current ninth graders which I thought would as we build the dual enrollment down the road that that would offer them opportunities to be able to take advantage of that dual enrollment because they'd be a year ahead in their social science um and then I'm wondering is there any way of kind of letting ccla dual immersion grads who decided
104to go to a different school then I'll see is there a way of pulling them in and saying like this is an opportunity for you to continue that pathway in a in a school so I understand we're not trying to necessarily compete but there is something special happening here for kids who really are dedicated and for families who dedicated that time to you know that that pathway and so kind of like figuring out how to continue to put them on that you know Camino um just feels like you know another way of attracting um attracting interest um the other question that I had is uh what are what are the kind of plans to expand the dual immersion classes Beyond PE history and Spanish for Spanish speakers well our hope is as we work on
105getting the appropriate credential for our staff as of right now we've had some commitment from some of our staff members right now I think for example in music that are eagerly hoping to get the appropriate credential I think the office of multilingual Services would pay for that to happen but it is kind of us just checking in with our staff to see if they're about you know how we can support them on that we've passed the information out to them and we've gotten some great responses so I don't think there's anybody that said that said no but it's just connected in with our multilingual services to be able to do that so yeah my hope is to have every Department uh have at least one class minimum uh that is going to be to lunch
106man I think I really see the importance of having that kind of you know full range of offerings right to really kind of make the point that this is an entire pathway of your entire educational experience and not just you know Spanish or PE um I mean world history I think is a great to your point director raffle like of I'm sorry AP raffle like to really get folks to see this is also about academic Excellence right this is also about I'm kind of pushing you into these really cool spaces that otherwise you wouldn't have an opportunity to do but for this beautiful asset that you've spent time developing Dr zelner I think I interrupted you you did not at all but thank you for noticing I just wanted to add the bilingual residency work
107as a investment in a collaboration with Sonoma State University for the near term and the long term and the belief that we need to Mentor teachers so we know them build relationships with them but also cultivate the ability for them to have multiple different disciplines they represent and the linguistic skills to work in our skills and serve our students and Families foreign I just had a couple of things I wanted to add so um the credentialing is an issue um Mr albuver and I have spoken with was it the principal at Anaheim High School um so we've we've actually had because of the conferences we've gone to we've uh spoken to other principals Anaheim High School sticks out because they've had a dual immersion program there for a while and a lot of high schools
108struggled to have content um core content area um as part of their dual immersion oftentimes they look at electives because it does depend on teachers um you know getting credentialed so that that isn't you know an area we're looking at but I also want to mention too that um we want to make sure that we're taking care of our teachers as well and so I'd like to be able to continue in social studies and open up U.S history next year but with one teacher in the department ultimately in the end of three years that means that she's teaching three different courses which gives her three different preps along with her English only courses and we don't want to burn teachers out to so I think this residency program is going to become key for us
109to potentially offer as many sections and many courses as we possibly can but I think some of that's up in the air just because we do want to keep an eye on our teachers we want to make sure that we're taking care of them thank you as well so much for that point and that kind of leads to my question what are the kinds of incentives that are in place for teachers to attract them into this path um you know a new certification program that would be paid for by our district sounds excellent are there other ways to you know really again value the asset that a bilingual teacher who's doing a dual immersion track is is able to um to receive as a result of some of those additional skill sets I'm glad you
110asked that uh again going to a few conferences uh a couple districts up north and I don't know why Washington and Oregon are much more advanced than we are they offer stipends just like the bilingual stipend they offer stipends for those individuals that are on a site that is a dual language site so that could be something as an incentive not only obviously for local Educators but other Educators coming from different parts of the state um that would be uh an incentive and innocent again like I said 14 staff members that are not only bilingual but bicultural it is that model that role model that we need for our students of color yeah I can't I cannot emphasize enough the importance of that um and it does play in the connections that they make with
111their students to be so if we're going to look at an education pathway what better way that you have Mr Rivera as your math teacher right there Mr Nava your music teacher right there Maestro Ramirez your your uh vapa teacher right there you know and we can definitely not only be the role models but also the mentors of these young folks that are going to be going into the education system great um I think I have two more questions and that's it so I loved your example around you know the French speaking Haitian kids learning how to speak in Spanish and Spanish kid learning how to speak in French and so this leads me to I'm gonna just keep talking about this right how are we creating dual immersion Pathways for French and Spanish we
112have beautiful programs and creating so much more of like a broader sense of this is a multi-lingual international school that will prepare you to be in the world um is there any I mean I understand the facilities challenges right but what does it look like to you know really continue that conversation with the French American Charter um to to uplift you know the value that Santa Rosa city schools sees in multiple languages being taught and learned in our district uh I'll just say that with that the importance of the recruitment of teachers that are currently or students locally at Sonoma State through the bilingual teacher Residency program not only for Spanish speakers but also for teachers who speak French and hopefully in the near future other languages so we do have models Anaheim is one
113that has a number of different dual language pathway different languages it's just at the core of this is the intentionality of like what we've been talking about like our education pathway so that we encourage our we grow our own and they know they understand the importance they see it and they go to the university and then come back so a lot of work is around really looking at what is already happening around us and then um how are we really looking at maximizing the resources like this bilingual teacher residency Grant to be able to ensure that we're getting these teachers who are identifying them and they're working at our sites currently it's at ccla but the conversation is if there is no position at ccla to ensure that they are at any of our other
114elementaries or when we have the single subject residents that they are at high schools thank you um the last thing that I just wanted to lift up with a lot of love and light on it is the amazing connectivity between the music programs at the middle school level and at the high school level but Color Guard Please Don't Steal anybody from Santa Rosa High School's band um and um but it's super exciting right I can see kids being so fired up to do something that really doesn't exist in any other campus in our district a lot of kids are super excited about marching band it's been a long time since we've had anything like that and so I just feel like that's a huge attractor and whatever you need from this board and we're hearing
115you on the policies um but I think you know thinking about just those those bridges that you're building are so gorgeous and really really grateful to you um can I add one thing about um supporting multilingual experiences and languages and one of the things that I'm hearing a lot from some of our teachers who are not bilingual they would like to become bilingual and how do we support those teachers as well um because we have some amazing teachers and they're trying to figure out like okay can I get Rosetta Stone or can I get what's Babel or what's a commercial um so how do we as a district also support those teachers that we already have who are not bilingual to become bilingual because there is a want there as well yes I love that
116um I also just want to tons of Paras to all of the work at the College and Career Centers at Santa Rosa High also are now teaching parents right they're ESL classes for parents I can't imagine a more beautiful way to really kind of continue developing Mastery over multiple languages and including our larger community and recognizing that we have students of all ages that we serve and leaning into that just is really beautiful um the last question that I had is is there any connectivity that you all are seeing with uh increased sense of belonging and lower lower um lower incidence of violence um are you is there any way of tracking kind of data or understanding the impacts of you know this increased sense of belonging for our students in these in these programs
117that really love on the fact that they are most bilingual we have we have I mean we have it tracked data as connect connections I mean obviously at the beginning of the year we took the first few days to build relationships with our students and our staff and actually just today Mr Cunningham and I were in our office and Mr Petty came in and said that he hears all this stuff that's going on at other places and yet our kids have been respectful and they've we've had some issues for sure but not to the level that we've had in the past few years knock on wood we've been lucky and I think a lot of it has to do again with the connections that our teachers are making with our students that cannot go undervalued
118in any way shape or form and the other part of that too is an administrative team uh our students that have the most challenges we meet with them almost daily uh by the bathrooms and escorting them to class and talking to them and what are you gonna do and let's come on you know this and so and not only that we have meetings with their parents their parents know that they're not alone that we are working with them um and really overall I mean I think as a team not only as an admin team but as a team as a whole LCL and we emphasize how much we care about our students um and that I think our students are feeling it you know and so again it goes back to what we talked about
119student voice um giving them the opportunity to express themselves the things that they need things that they want uh we are there for them and so yeah I don't have any statistical data I mean yeah some suspensions are down like I said but there's some issues but more importantly the campus feels calm um and so we're we we're very lucky that our students feel connected at this point in time uh of the year gracias any more questions on this side vice president Medina hold on I got a lot not surprised first off you you mentioned Mr Petty and I just got to say that that rugby program is amazing and has a powerful impact on those students participating there at LC Island um I didn't want to ask y'all still teach French I don't see
120no unfortunately our last friend teachers had passed away a few years back uh we've been trying to find a teacher um but that's still in the works that's where I got my French passion there listen trying to have me talk French to our Haitian students it's entertaining but I do a good job um and you don't want to ask um I think there's math in Spanish at ccla right do we know when will that come to Elsie so when good so that all depends on Math teachers getting a b-clad and so again that goes back to credentialing we have two Math teachers in the department who are bilingual um and one who's semi-bilingual I think we could say um but it but when they get a bilingual credential then um and and if they're interested
121in teaching a course in Spanish then we'll be able to open that I think one one thing that arose for me in in just seeing kind of where we at where we are at I don't feel like we're far enough and I'm wondering if that impacted many people not going to LCL because I know um like you said uh staff told us this was going to happen and you know I wanted to have that affirmative thinking that it would but but I I also have to take you know my my words back and say yeah you were right um but do do you think part of it is that we were ready I think another commitment that I remember is that there was gonna be a lot of Outreach in the community to really um
122have people go to ccla and I'm wondering is that a part of it and not just UCLA but then transitioning to LC is that part of maybe what we're experiencing exhibition Outreach or I would say a little bit of everything I mean I would say at that time we didn't do we as a site didn't do enough Outreach down to ccla um now it's different because and I uh almost communicate definitely every week we have a good relationship um I think the other thing is that we are still trying to get rid of that stigma that Elsie has let's be realistic um and being on that side of town and it's unfortunate uh but again similar to when I was at Ridgeway Ridgeway was a certain way for certain kids we've turned that around and
123it's been great and I think that you know like they say right I mean you can you can say a thousand great things about a school but you do one bad thing and next thing you know uh it sticks with you for a while so we're changing that I think our students are feeling that right now and so it's going to take a little bit of time but I think we will be able to overcome this and just to add to that um we were talking about you know we talked to parents a lot into kids we're always outside and and trying to you know so they feel connected to adults and and what they're doing and one of the things that we know or that I know from talking to are kids at ccla
124is at the time they hit seventh grade they already know what high school they're going to go to they've already been talking to either older friends or older siblings or their parents have already made up their mind um where they're going to go and even as a parent I can tell you that by the time my kid was in seventh grade eighth grade she knew where she was going to go to high school right so we need to start doing this Outreach to the younger parents right I had a conversation today who with a parent who has twin boys and I was like hey where is your daughter who's in eighth grade who's a ccla track right dual language immersion track and she's like well I think she's gonna go and start mentioning schools and
125I said can I just ask you why not Elsie what's your home school and she didn't know what her homeschool was but I said why not Elsie and she's like well that's a good question I don't know tell me more so then we started talking about the things that LC offers and she's like you know what I'm so glad you were here at this meeting right but I think that's part of what we need to do is making sure that parents from TK start understanding what um Elsie has to offer because if we're doing the Outreach in 7th and 8th I think by that time it's too late agreed um I think I I did want to touch on the it was the dual enrollment and I'm curious on a couple things first the courses
126that are being because you said they're being taught at LC right wondering what types of courses are being taught and also um I think I heard about issues with the faculty Association in terms of teaching courses are there issues that exist in terms of what happened in in that collaboration or relationship so currently right now there aren't any dual enrollment courses taught at Elsie Allen High School uh the grant lit I think we just got it last month if I look at my emails and we got her again um so that's something we're going to have to discuss and um and what's uh nice is is that there is uh multiple high schools in our County that are focused on dual enrollment and CCAP Partnerships with the srjc and so I think collectively uh we'll
127start having those conversations and working that out so but we're it's very very new um we just received the funding so I I guess maybe part of my question would then go to is the idea that it would be kind of like CTE focused courses or would it be like General Ed it could be either um really we have had a CCAP agreement in the past uh in Santa Rosa city schools it was at another High School in the automotive technology uh program what was um what made that agreement a little bit more seamless is that our instructor was also an srjc instructor and so it was easy to kind of negotiate that and get that figured out and so the kids were able to through that program take srjc classes during the school day
128but so that's one model that we have done in previous years but we're certainly open to looking at all different types of courses I just want to add something I just wanted to add that you're asking a a valid question about concerns of Faculty all I can say is in our most recent conversation around the CCAP and as you know Debbie mentioned it's fairly new um the grant awarding um we've heard nothing but kind of like open arms for moving forward with this and there may have been logistical hurdles in in the past that may have stopped us going as far at the JC the JC's always been a really wonderful partner with Santa Rosa city schools but it sounds like the commitment under the leadership there now is a renewed focus in this place
129as well and it's also being fueled across the state as kind of a place of interest and focus to grow so I think that will help kind of mitigate some of those previous challenges and then as it relates to that as well I I took many JC classes while in high school and I also know that one semester course at the JC basic three unit course is equivalent to a whole year of high school um so what will that look like will it I mean in terms of time and the amount of hours expected of homework such a thing are there going to be adjustments um maybe could you elaborate on some of that I think it's a different we wanna where our entry points are and what courses that we're going to offer at
130the JC um for example work experience that's not a year-long course and there's limits on units and um and it's a shorter course and so that might be an opportunity for us to leverage that partnership where we couple that with internship experiences and things like that that we naturally want to embed in CTE so it really depends on the willingness of srjc faculty and wanting to to work with us and where we see those entry points falling as we start those discussions the next thing I wanted to ask about is the University Center the program at SSU I think I hear that it's very underutilized I would say and I'm wondering what are the hurdles in terms of filling all those slots are we what outreach are we doing I think students have to apply
131it when is it like in incoming freshmen what what are the hurdles that we're facing to you know because that's money saved for families getting college credit while they're in high school time is money yeah so I would say it's um there's definitely room in that program um I think that's sort of coupled with our enrollment um woes with a lot of our um home students attending different middle schools other than ccla um the program coordinator and I um visit all of the middle schools we bring brochures we talk to the counselors we've reached out to middle schools that are not within our district um we did the same thing last year really trying to encourage applications um so I think you know maybe some additional advertising about the program but we've got just under
132100 students in all four grades you know in the program right now and it is it is a really good opportunity for kids to earn college credit and for families to save money um and I don't know how well known it is in the community but I I do think that we can certainly um you know continue our Outreach efforts um but I think like Mrs has said a lot of students by the time they're in eighth grade they've already decided Well before which high school they're going to but yeah we can continue Outreach efforts for sure I want to add um in addition to the Outreach efforts we've been utilizing Grant funds to create marketing materials to really tell the story of LCL in high school in a nice snapshot and so uh before
133the back to school night at ccla we had um they called a z-fold uh developed and it really highlighted all the programs very nicely and we're also working with the CTE Foundation to record student testimonials about their experience at LCL high school and so I share that to say that yes there is definitely room for a growth for outreach awareness about the programs Beyond just ccla but in the larger Community as a whole which I think will help address those very issues that that we're seeing and thinking in relation to its marketing materials I highly suggest if possible use some of the funds to also market via social media um in terms of the Community Health program I did want to ask I know the Wisconsin High School Foundation has their support of the srjcc
134CNA program is running collaboration between those two actually we just had a conversation about that um yesterday with our counseling department so we're I'm using those there's 59 students enrolled in that Health course right now and two sections and so our College and Career Hub counselor is going into those classes I'm checking in with the Juniors who are in that class because that's um the target audience for that CNA program so she is checking in with them um our health center also the Santa Rosa Community Health is looking for student feedback on some projects that they're doing and so I connected them with the instructor for that Health course um because I think those are ideal students to give feedback particularly when it comes to Health Care issues and since you brought up the Santa
135Rosa Community Health um I I saw today that their lab applications open right now for their future faces in family medicine mentorship program for high school students or you know working with them and they're coming in to do a presentation at lunchtime this week cool um you also brought up tutoring and I'm wondering if with tutoring comes pay when I was at Cook and I was a tutor I cooked I got paid any okay let's do it yes I mean definitely as we're developing those programs incentives are good for kids you know and so that there are mechanisms or supports that we can get uh to help support that uh definitely I think that that would further incentivize students um in doing that work Beyond just you know uh wanting to do it just because
136there's a passion there so absolutely and if I can add to that we did meet with Marin promise um and they are working with San Rafael high if I'm not mistaken and part of their work is getting students to do tutoring but not only do tutoring but also support the local middle schools and elementary schools and giving them classified positions and then also being able to build the possibility of more classified folks every you know High School a college student needs a little side gig that they can make some money so they're starting to work on that we got that idea uh again it's it's just an idea for us right now but we would definitely like to grow our own to be able to support a classified person and then hopefully get them into
137some sort of University where they can get their teaching credential and in addition to add on adamantly uh meeting with the srjc education and part of their um their Early Childhood Program is hours with students and so if we look at how we are connecting and braiding all of our efforts intentionally to where students maybe not only could get paid but also could earn credits and stackable credentials while in high school that's also another incentive that we could build into the program I think one of the other things that I wanted to bring up as it relates to ccla versus LC Island um I think is parent engagement I think at ccla don't you have like hours that you're required to volunteer because it's a charter but we can't do that at Elsie and and
138in terms of rental engagement do we see it kind of drop down as we move to LC is there more that we need then we can do um how's that going I think I'll speak to that just today in our ed services team leading team leader meeting we were definitely discussing this and the collaborations and just the connections that we have with Santa Rosa JC and the adult school and their interest in really increasing classes at our site so that definitely is something that we are looking at because we understand that if we provide those opportunities to our families they'll have the opportunity to then be able to support their students at home so we're definitely looking at um sites that Santa Rosa JC says that they've seen a lot of parent interest and then
139working to collaborate to ensure that there's classes that are being offered at those sites after school or in the evenings for our families and going back to the language I'm wondering are we looking at the possibility of like students that are getting all this language experience potentially getting um certificated in Translation and things coming out of high school like what kind of programs exist that they could already come out of high school and potentially get paid for translating there's a need out there and I'll speak on that today that we um had through back to school night and director De La Cruz mentioned it what's happening at Santa Rosa Middle School and there are courses in the UC doorways that are in Translation and so just today with our secondary El Specialists we were having
140this conversation especially with Annie Scully who really wants to spearhead and look at what other courses we were looking at what are the courses that are being offered through what department because we are interested exactly in this on being able to provide students the opportunity to take a course that then they can be able to use not only within our schools but also skills for them to obtain as they're moving forward so it's just interesting that you have these questions because those were two topics that we discussed today that we are definitely interested and determined to make sure that we see how they can come to our district I guess I'll just kind of end with the wait list there's a huge wait list meaning to me there's a huge demand for dual immersion and
141I know it's something I want to see throughout and and I I don't know what it means in the big picture but I'd love to see it in our entire District um basically most of the workshops that I I'm attending this weekend are all about that um but I do Wonder in the context of ccla like if we move to dual immersion at all our Public Schools does that mean we should move away from ccla as a charter it's just a question that I think needs to be asked as as we have that discussion and we look into that into the future um I love ccla but I think if it's a question that we need to address and look into um but I'll leave it at that thank you for the presentation and hopefully
142get more students thank you vice president Medina um I had a lot of questions about a lot of than we're already at so I just have one question The Advisory committees that you mentioned in the presentation who can be a part of those and if that's open to community members and experts in these fields how can folks get involved I'll speak specifically to CTE advisory committees so if there is anybody interested listening right now they can reach out to me and I could definitely connect them not only with LCL high school but we have a lot of CTE programs throughout our district and we're always looking for folks to in the community to serve and help inform our programs to make sure that we're meeting the needs of our uh of our County and really
143preparing students for those high-wage High need high demand jobs yeah so please reach out to me Debbie Cardozo CT director thank you thank you and with regards to the dual immersion advisory I would also say anyone interested is multilingual Services director will definitely jot the names down and then be in communication with them thank you well thank you so before we oh yes one more question and and a lot of them have been asked actually um thank you I love you uh one last question as an English language learner myself I came here as a teenager um what are we doing with in terms of you know measuring and language acquisition for our English language Learners who are in the dual immersion program right so these are high school students who are coming into this
144program right so how are we making sure that their English language acquisition is up to par so maybe you don't have the answer that but I mean that's something I'm interested to make sure that we measure to make sure that they you know they are also fully bilingual by the time they graduate high school so support for thought oh and also um regarding the dual enrollment um one idea that some high schools have have done one is you know making sure that we've also plant you know um our you know class of certificate staff right and and two since we had this agreement of the seventh period day uh something that we're doing up north is having a seventh period you know ASL class right uh in lieu of that seventh period uh something that
145we could potentially think with srjc in terms of you know dual enrollment courses um in the in the near future so just FYI thank you director Flores so we will now move on to public comment but I have no blue cards for this item so this comes back to the board for any further discussion or questions yeah um I just want to add that um two things one just to reinforce on the Dual on the DLI or the Dual language immersion uh piece of the program I just want to reinforce what was being shared that for teachers who teach in this program they have to have two credentials they have to have their single subject credential and they have to have the b-clad or and they have to be bilingual so there are multi-factors here
146um that are giving us some pause to think about how we grow individuals so that's also going to consider our recruitment right as we grow positions um as well and then we already offer a stipend uh we offer a twelve hundred dollar B Cloud stipend currently so if that's something we can add to the narrative to encourage people we already offer it thank you oh one more thing um based on the location of ccla the only way that we can maintain the Elementary grades is if it's a charter uh and that is because ccla is not in our elementary boundaries thank you for that reminder director Medina um I think there's more question for you superintendent for now I think is there a plan or what's the process that we as a board have to
147go through to begin the discussion to really Implement dual immersion in our other elementaries I think that is a matter of working with the team on the probability because to grow that means we have to do exactly what we're doing here I'm not saying it's impossible I think it's a beautiful idea for us to consider but we have to grow the number of people who have those multiple credentials no matter if they're in elementary or secondary so we just need to there is no current plan for that but based on the discussion tonight we can definitely go back and talk about the probabilities on doing something like that and also the languages that would be involved not assuming that it would all be Spanish oh yeah I um I was also going to ask um
148what can we do to start to do to if we're planting that seed to start doing those things whether it be with CSU I mean SSU or was it the North Coast uh School to to to start getting that pathway of people that are getting those credentials that I mean I think anything we can do to get that moving I I know I would appreciate but I think the demand is there I think the interest is there too aren't you sad that at least you know going to speak to them with The Residency program I think we're on our way I mean I know that my goal is to keep all my teachers and then um we do have right now for um resident teachers who were hoping to keep right so they're going to
149be b-claded multiple subjects and so at least in the elementary and hopefully we can increase that in the middle school and high schools um to continue that conversation with a Residency program through Cinema State because it is an asset regardless of whether how fast we increase our you know if we increase our dual language immersion program to have teachers who are bilingual at different sites but but I think I also say the challenge isn't just getting them trained but then getting them to stay here because the demand is everywhere and I'll just add that as like any training that you offer uh staff it's an investment and if we were to go so far as to pay for credentialing it cannot it does not guarantee that they'll stay with us right we can have contracts
150and other things but at the end of the day they could technically on the way that we've invested go elsewhere at the same time yeah like I I know the county when I was there they have a program where they'll help you go through the MSW program I think through Berkeley or somewhere but then you're required to work like one or two years with like CPS and stuff so maybe looking at something like that we can look into grant funds as well um that would also be a carrot for how we build the program with some um opportunities to guarantee certain number of years of employment with you know the benefits of the stipend Etc I just wanted to mention the bilingual teacher Residency program when they participate in that they are signing on to
151um work in our district for four years now um that those are conversations so that is part of the intentionality behind this grant if they are part of this residency then their agreement is a minimum of four years working in our district and if I can add just anecdotally talking to staff that we've interviewed they appreciate that we are valuing the Spanish language they don't get that in other school districts right so I think that is another re another incentive another piece of the puzzle to attract teachers especially bilingual by cultural teachers they don't know really a lot about that especially when they got the single subject that they need to be class so we have to inform them that but when we definitely like the experience that I've had with Erica and talking to
152our teachers and we say would you be interested absolutely they say uh so that investment in them of course we're going to hope that they stay with us we don't have no guarantees but I think they appreciate the fact that their Spanish language is b and also honored the same way that our students do thank you yes go ahead so maybe that's why it started over saying speed it up um I am just sitting here trying not to get emotional because coming into this role as superintendent seeing the productive struggle that it has taken Beyond years to get here the visits to other locations the ability to understand the Dream Team to put it together the ability and willingness of our staff to jump on board that has taken all of you and your efforts
153and your passion and your love for students and for dual um multi languages and seeing that as being a definite benefit to connect to humanity and I just want to lift this team and recognize as I was reflecting on two years ago when we were trying to bring information forward and just the growth that you have assisted in making this possible so thank you very much thank you thank you for your presentation thank you for your beautiful work and we can't wait to see all that comes after this and I guess so whatever we can do to support this and support your work please count on us gracias thank you item E3 this evening public hearing regarding sufficiency of textbooks or instructional materials for 2023-24 grades k-6 staff is presenting for public hearing a resolution
154for textbooks or instructional material sufficiency the Williams versus State of California settlement requires that the public hearing and certification of textbooks or instructional materials occur within the first eight weeks of the school year and I will hand this over to Dr Castro thank you president manieri superintendent tranelle members of the board and student staff and community of Santa Rosa city schools Education Code 60119 requires school districts governing boards to hold the public hearing and determined by resolution that each pupil including English Learners has sufficient textbooks or instructional materials or both that are aligned to the academic content standards and consistent with the content and cycles of the curriculum Frameworks adopted by the State Board of Education in the following subjects English language arts including English language development history social science mathematics and science um this
155uh we have this for k6 and 712 we have two public hearing items and two actions for the sufficiency of textbooks and instructional materials this is the first one for the public hearing thank you at this time we will open public hearing on item E3 regarding sufficiency of textbooks or instructional materials for 2023-24 grades K through six is there any public comment this evening for this public hearing seeing none we will close this public hearing and move on to item E4 our action item on sufficiency of textbooks or instructional materials for 2023-24 grades K through six Dr Castro anything to add on this item just that the board consider the approval of resolution number 2023-20 Hyphen 24-10 for textbooks and or instructional material sufficiency thank you board this is an action item so we are
156looking for emotion or any questions or discussion to be had director De La Cruz I got a question um from a constituent around um the process to add new textbooks or new things to our curriculum and when that comes to the board um there was an interest specifically to stop teaching To Kill a Mockingbird and to bring in new voices something new and so I right so they were like what what is this thing and when can we actually hear about other cool novels that are being included into our textbook list so I just wanted to I just wanted to ask a question because I thought it was a good one from constituents we were trying to figure out like well what is this thing versus like yeah so I'm gonna actually first good evening
157more good evening superintendent Chanel I'm going to first answer it in twofolds because first I'm going to answer it TK through six so for the TK through six we do an adoption so that looks a little different than I think what you're asking for the middle and high schools so for example currently right now we're looking at foundational skills programs for our elementary to actually um is to explicitly teach reading so with that we have a team of teachers representative from each site piloting three different curriculums not this not all at the same time but the three during it throughout the year and then it'll be presented at each of our grade level releases it'll also be presented at staff meetings and then discussed we then do a recommendation we will then ask staff what
158their feelings are and then we go with the we vote we do um we hold it you have to make sure that public get to see it too before you adopt and then that's the process for I would say the curriculum for K through TK through six as far as English books is what's what you're asking for seven or seven twelve so that's been an interesting process um and we are really actually um Steve Irving our district librarian is pulling a lot of data about that and it's often a steering committee and it could be math it could be um for for books what they do is they actually read the book they ask okay I would like to offer this book and then they have the steering committee um like I'm gonna say like
159Montgomery wants to add a book to their list they then have the principal sign off in it they then go to the steering committee and then go to the English steering committee each member of the steering committee would then have to sign off on the book too and then they would go and purchase it so the question that I have is around like when does the public get to get involved or to provide that is when we're doing a full adoption of a whole curriculum so two years ago we adopted the CCD units and so that is when they're on on public display and that's so it's a full adoption um in the past in the olden days there used to be always adoption Cycles um and so we are actually pulling all that information
160Steve is putting together a spreadsheet of everything that's been adopted and when um to really look at that so then we are going to look at how we need to move forward what is really um I would say urgent and now with the new math framework we know that Publishers are going to be publishing and you know to adopt to a line to the new math framework and um we as a team we're discussing that today and then figuring out actually a board policy around that great thank you so with that I just want to add to that actually um as a natural part of the development of the ethnic studies program there have been a number of additions to um the texts that are used in the classroom that would then naturally move away
161from what's considered the European Canon I also want to add that um I've noticed that coming out of the shelter in place and the pandemic a lot of the systems and structures that we normally followed may have gotten a little yeah so I've asked for a full revisit to the protocol and the Cadence and the cycles of um adoption of curriculum and textbooks we'll be going through that this year as well yes so I have two questions the first is just clarifying so for an English Department to adopt a novel you're saying that's only approved at the site level that never comes to the district it does go through um all of the steering committee chairs throughout the district so in the novel is not something that is district-wide and that is why I believe
162it's been done and once again as as Dr Castro said we're really looking at that um and then I'm wondering if we have any kinds of protections for teachers when they are adopting new novels if there are parents who are opposed to those novels how how do we handle that how do we protect our teachers from complaints that's a really great question and I could answer it first from the principal point of view and that would be really going and talking you know that is part of the principle's job is really to make sure they're supporting their teachers it was chosen for a reason and a purpose right and so making sure that is known and then also our support as well director Medina any questions on this item and you know no um on
163the complaints I thought I just saw something that the governor asked about complaints and like things going to the stake and do you know about that could you elaborate I don't know the exact title of the bill but he is um you place a a legislation on book bans that's what I was going to say but yeah so with that I'd like to move to a proof I think we have a if it's okay we have a couple of questions on this side director Flores yes thank you um in the attachment we uh we see uh uh visited the finance summary we have the different schools that were visited by school right and then it says material sufficiency so sufficient the next to that column it says school facilities uh overall reigning right um could
164you elaborate about what these ratings mean um and who visited right and and what those reported fitment means in terms of facilities because we've heard over and over here not only from teachers but our own students you know talk about you know problems with our facilities so could you elaborate a little bit with what this means before Lisa does that or Miss August does that I just want to clarify just so that the board isn't wondering for tonight by law we do need to bring this forward to the board for potential approval by the eighth week of the school year and that does require the board to focus on the instructional materials part of the report the report that we receive encompasses the full sort of package of what Williams requires and so while you
165see the report that includes the facilities aspect tonight you are actually being asked to approve the instructional material sufficiency which is not covered by the facility site Lisa thank you um yeah so sorry Clark Flores great question about the facility the fit is the facilities inspection tool it's actually a document that you can find on the on the cde's website that essentially we they go site by site room by room and check off based on a rubric and then those rubrics you know it gets added the different ratings get added up and it's a percentage so I know there's a specific question about you know some of our school sites and why they were say marked good when they're not necessarily in in Tip-Top repair it's a difference between safety and Aesthetics sometimes sometimes it's
166about cleanliness it could be any number of things but it's the overall rating so we do have one school when we get to the high school to the secondary that it was rated good rather than fair by point eight percent and that is just the way that that based on the number of check marks in each category so again it's the facilities inspection tool it's required to be done at least once a year sco comes around and they review some of our sites and then and compare those to the fit to the facility inspection tool and that's where they're getting that information we did make a move this year from having an outside agency that's come and done it for us for about 14 years at a pretty substantial cost we did move that to
167in-house to our facilities our maintenance department with specific training to be able to go through and recognize and really look at it with a critical eye and then utilize that towards developing our deferred maintenance plan so looking at taking more ownership of that rather than having a third party that's kind of just always come along from outside of the area so you will notice a couple changes and dates some differences in the dates on there that has to do with it was included like the 12 31 22 or not 31 12 of 22 that was from that fit inspection from the outside company which was included in last year's sarc so the the school accountability report card is actually where you as a board will see the fit information reflected to you this is just
168goes kind of check as the county office for what they're required to do for oversight and and lastly um it says Fair uh for Elsie Allen does that uh does that mean that there are any uh set of safety issues that we need to be worried about it doesn't necessarily mean safety it could be I know that we had issues with the bathrooms which obviously we just addressed some of those so without looking at the particular report I couldn't answer that off the top of my head but I can definitely take a look at that and get that information to you all right thank you thank you any last questions okay we are seeking a motion on this item move to approve the sufficiency findings second that was moved by director De La Cruz and
169seconded by director De la Torre roll call vote please director Rao I director De La Cruz aye director De la Torre aye director Sheffield aye director McNally aye director Flores aye director Medina aye president manieri hi thank you item E5 public hearing regarding sufficiency of textbooks or instructional materials for 2023-24 grade 7 through 12. staff is presenting for public hearing a resolution for textbooks or instructional material sufficiency and again I will hand it over to Dr Castro thank you president many area president superintendent tranelle members of the board and the student staff and community of Santa Rosa city schools please bear with me as I read this into the record Education Code 60119 requires school district governing boards to hold the public hearing and determined by resolution that each pupil including English Learners has sufficient
170textbooks or instructional materials or both that are aligned to the academic content standards and consistent but the content and cycles of the curriculum Frameworks adopted by the State Board of Education in the following subjects English language arts including English language development World Language health history social science mathematics and science the Education Code also requires the Board of Education to determine the availability of Laboratory science equipment as applicable to science laboratory courses offered in grades 9 to 12 inclusive thank you Dr Castro at this time we will open public hearing on this item are there any members of the public who would like to give public comment on this public hearing seeing none we will close the public comment I'm sorry the public hearing and move on to the next item E6 an action item for
171sufficiency of textbooks or instructional materials for 2023 24 grade 7 through 12. are there any board member questions seeing none we are seeking in motion I move to approve resolution number 23 or 2023 24 11 for textbooks and or instructional material sufficiency second thank you that was moved by director Sheffield and seconded by director Flores roll call vote please director Rao I director Sheffield aye director Flores aye director De La Cruz aye director McNally aye director Medina aye director De la Torre aye president maniri hi thank you Dr Castro and team item E7 this evening is an action item approval of district and School site safety plans the board will consider approval of elementary middle high school and District comprehensive school safety plans for the 2023-2024 school year and presenting this action item are Dr
172Vicky zans and Patty Turner foreign but um I'm here um president manieri superintendent for now members of the board and members of the Santa Rosa city schools Community um tonight we are here to present to you the school safety plans and site safety plans for the district buildings as well and to present these items to you I'd like to introduce Patty Turner and John Jones good evening president meniere members of the board and our superintendent internal we are pleased to present to you our school's comprehension school safety plans for the 2023-24 school year for your approval just a reminder that these plans are a living document they are modified as lost change and concerns arise on our campuses to meet the needs of both our students and staff and all that involves safety and any
173comments no I think Miss Turner is being very humble the process perhaps you can unfold for the board including our partnership with our Emergency Services certainly um we have switched our timelines from a couple years ago uh maybe two three years ago where the plans were approved almost close to the end of the year sadly and um within the last year and a half we were able to bring it into a timeline that made more sense plans are like I said modified as needed and they are approved during the Spring within their safety teams each of these campuses and present it to their school side Council and or safety team to approve if the school side Council decides that they would like to go ahead and allow the safety team to be that entity then
174it is a safety team that approves for the school uh during the summer all of these plants are presented to our fire chief and our Santa Rosa Police and depending on who's dedicated to do that responsibility they review the plants all 23 of them and then bring them back to me and say you've got the thumbs up and then during the beginning of the school the only piece that gets reviewed and or revised according to the staff turnover is their incident command system staff chart they fill in the blanks for those who have left or the new staff that have come into the school and that is presented during the very beginning of the school year at the majority of the time their very first staff meeting sometimes a couple of weeks later depending on
175the agenda and how large it is after that then it is brought to me and I'm able to but package the uh the plans and then bring them to you the um wonderful piece is that we are constantly having communication with our partners Our Community Partners in many areas of I mentioned beforehand Law changes uh one recent one that just came in to take effect July 1st of this year is the parent notice of um the safety of firearms storage and that will be coming out soon as an example of things that come up down the pike to us to be able to put it in place in our plans um otherwise I believe that is it are there any board member questions I see vice president Medina's hand and director de la Torres after
176I'm just curious in I know that we just moved to the Stony Point side is there something specific to that site that's been developed or is that in development so that would go to our district safety plan and Jon Jones who's in his new role we will be looking at our district safety plan and making adjustments for a new location where we are leasing right and don't have um full uh ownership of the that entire property so we also have to work within what the owners expect so that will be happening but all rules considered our safety plan still covers our employees wherever they are thank you other questions director delatorre thank you very much for the exhaustive efforts for these very thorough plans um all plans are great but follow through and ensuring that
177these are working is extremely vital is that on the sites themselves what is the accountability and checkup on these type of plans to ensure that they are working or like you said it's a living document things would need to be changed if necessary this is a plan and a lot of them look very identical to each other but many of our sites are asked to present a little bit more detail to some of the emergency procedures because of the differences of campus to campus and we don't some of those details we don't really want to make public we're asked by our police officers and Fire Chiefs not to make public so um some things are not on the document but the plans for working towards making our schools ultimately the safest it possibly can be
178is everyone's goal and if we're missing on some training we will work on that we have safety meetings with our administrators our safety teams every month we have discussions some of them are a little bit more active than others depending on their staff their desires of their teachers to want to do more and the flexibility of their time but since the last two years I've seen a lot more dedication coming from the schools so I I'm really very pleased to share that the other piece that you will be seeing more of is that we're creating a district Behavior assessment discipline team um we are still training ourselves we went through a training just last week but we're excited about that effort so I'm really interested in in checks and balances and I know it is
179so hard with such a large District um but we are getting a lot of obviously safeties on the top of everybody's Minds including all of our families in this community um so a lot of these questions are continually asked we don't want site admins inundated with questions um if we can make information readily available and continue to educate our community on what's in place and ensuring they understand the Avenues of how to communicate and we if we put that all on esite administrator of 1700 students and you've got 23 different sites on variant levels so completely understandable if we don't put all the information out there to keep our students safe but ensuring we have enough educational information out there to our families so they can understand the process and know how to communicate their
180concerns so that our administrators our teachers our staff can and do the work they need to do not continually trying to answer questions that may be readily available with some education thank you it's a real good point but I also want to be completely honest in the sense that um it's not just site administrators they're also getting some of this uh scrutiny for lack of a better term it's also you guys the board as you know of course you get a lot of a lot of things coming your way about uh security and and safety on our school sites um one of the things that we've been involved with uh pretty much from the get-go is uh working towards improving our Partnerships with the community that includes uh first respondent Personnel first responder agencies and
181one of the things that comes up frequently out of some of these meetings is um this term uh developing muscle memory in response to emergencies and that's great coming from people whose job it is to respond to emergencies but our staff and our Personnel we don't thankfully we don't engage ourselves in emergency in crisis frequently enough to develop that so that falls upon an intermediary element that comes through the the resources that that you're reviewing now and I have to acknowledge and thank Patty for her very diligent and tireless efforts in providing that for us not just for um accessible uh uh resourcing but also something that moves on the Fly that that is a living document to respond to the needs as they come up you know certainly not uh not when you not
182not yesterday but it's moving forward and learning from what we what we've gained through these experiences and provide um better responses moving forward so thank you Patty for all you do thank you thank you any other questions director Medina I think I just kind of want to get a Clarity um timelines because this is for the 23 24 school year and I know in the process like the date for reviews by March 1st and so I'm thinking well if it's March 1st that's already the second semester of that Academic Year so is this supposed to be um a safety plan or the current year or is it for the for the next year this this is for the current year because the March 1st deadline is the state uh requirement deadline for the current year
183but we've moved ahead and made it more and sensible to approve it in the beginning of the year to make this plan our our actual plan for the for the running year of beginning of school if I can add once the board and if the board approves the process begins all over again tomorrow right so it's a fluid process so there are constant reviews uh with this monthly Committee of what's working what do we need to shift changes in law reviewing what's in the document also updating those who have different positions at the school site right for incident command if you will and so it's a fluid process every month that includes our drills Patty and John that includes our drills which were required to do by law at various times of the year thank
184you for bringing this forward many many months before the state is asking us to that's very helpful um if there are no more questions this is an action item so we will move on to public comment I have no blue cards for this item so this comes back to the board for any further discussion or emotion can I just say that um I had a conversation with students I believe about a year and a half ago in terms of our dress uh address dress policy uh that seemed to be very um anti email in terms of how we you know addressed our female students and and reading through this it looks like it's been updated uh it's not punitive in in terms of you know what our students or female students can wear and it
185was you know it was brought up you know to me from a group of students and that they said you know this is very you know um sexist in terms of you know uh policies and I'm glad that it's been you know updated to reflect where our student body wanted to be in this in this document so I just want to say that thank you for making note of that any further discussion director Medina something that I just kind of want to throw out there for the board in reviewing uh board policy zero four five zero as it relates to comprehensive safety plans it says when reviewing the tactical response plan the board may meet in closed session to confer with law enforcement officials provided any note to approve the tactical response plan is announced
186an open session following the closed session um so I'm just throwing that out there in the context of all that we're dealing with now if if maybe we wanna take time to look if that's something maybe we want to look at because that's a topic that we have been discussing and you know possibly thank you director Medina noted any other discussion otherwise we are seeking emotion on this item I make a motion to approve of the District School site safety plans second thank you that was moved by director De la Torre and seconded by director Flores roll call vote please director Rao I director De la Torre aye director Flores aye director Sheffield aye director De La Cruz aye director McNally hi director Medina uh president maniri hi thank you so much for bringing this
187to us item E8 an action item approval of a variable term waiver for administrative Services credential for Amy M Fuller the board will consider approval of a variable term waiver request for an administrative Services credential for Amy and Fuller presenting this item is Dr vikasans thank you again for the opportunity president marinieri superintendent Chanel members of the board and members of the Santa Rosa city schools Community tonight I am here to ask for your approval of a variable term waiver for Amy Fuller for the position of program manager and the special services department Amy was a project manager Matt excuse me manager behaviorist that was hired in February of 2022 for the entirety of the 22-23 school year this particular position was vacant and for the 23-24 school year Ms Amy Fuller was our only
188applicant she is currently enrolled in the North Coast School of Education intern program thank you Dr zans this is an action item board are there any questions on this item he's seeing none we will move on to public comment I have no blue cards for this item so this comes back to the board for discussion or emotion like to move to approve the variable term waiver for administrative Services credential for Amy Fuller second thank you that was moved by director De La Cruz and seconded by director Sheffield roll call please director Rao hi director De La Cruz aye director Sheffield aye director McNally aye director Flores aye director Medina aye director De la Torre aye president manieri hi thank you moving on to our consent items for this evening I have one blue card for
189item F5 so we are seeking a motion to approve items two through four and six through ten so moved second thank you that was moved by director Medina and seconded by director De La Cruz please director Rao I director Medina aye director De La Cruz aye director Sheffield aye director McNally hi director Flores aye director De la Torre aye president manieri hi and item F5 we have one blue card for public comment from Micah Carlin Goldberg Mike if you'd like to make your way to the podium um so thank you for letting me have the opportunity to talk about this item um our csca president mentioned the fact that there are nearly several hundred open CSEA positions in the classified staff that are unfilled at eight weeks into the school year because we don't pay
190enough our special ed assistants make less than people working at Target and at in and out still um when you came to an agreement with CSEA in the spring for their eight percent raise it brought our bottom people to I believe it was like eight cents over City minimum wage which they will be under City minimum wage again in January um I'm told that the cost of giving CSEA the eight percent raise is something like six hundred thousand dollars less than the contract that we are now signing to has pay another company 57 an hour so they can find somebody to work for 25 an hour for a job we're paying 19 an hour for how does that make officials fiscal sense this is the board and the school district cutting off their toes to
191spite themselves I guess because you could have given CSEA 16 in the spring for the money that you're spending now to give it to an outside company it would have solved so many more problems how many of these um contracts are we going to sign where we've got outside companies providing speech and language Pathologists providing psychologists providing special ed assistance because we just don't pay enough but we're willing to spend a premium to spend this money for some outside company to take a 50 cut rather than just paying people what they're worth and buy and hiring them directly with our own staff it's absurd we've talked about this before I know it's come up in previous years we have got to think forward I mean I wish there's some way for the board to say
192hey we're just going to decline this contract and spend the eight percent spend the millions of dollars on another eight percent and just give it to CSEA thank you Micah I see director Medina's hand thank you um I guess I would ask um staff is there some sort of making a little sense of that if you elaborate on how we make sense of it or how we justify that I don't have the numbers I don't know if those numbers are accurate but it is uh good point I think to ponder invites Mr mazura to come down I'm assuming because the contract wasn't named I'm going to assume we're talking about the Inspire contrast I would assume as much thank you um so obviously board we've engaged in multiple contracts and we've been doing this for
193a long time and you you've clearly heard and correctly heard the expression that we have a difficult time finding our classified workers obviously there are requirements that we have for some positions that we have to fill legally you know and so we have created a baseline of what our legal liability would be in certain classifications where we have for through an IEP through the state safety regulations where we're required to have a certain ratio of of adults to students and so we've kind of created those in some of our special education positions not all of them it's an example primarily and what it'd be like our preschool classifications our ESN classifications some of our autism classifications where there could be dangers and injuries students so to do that we've had to kind of go out
194to ourselpa and go through contract vendors through our selpa to try to keep those positions filled we absolutely try to fill in inside first we've had every position posted every position and occasionally we get those people come through I'm not going to disagree with any of these sentiments that we should pay more of a market rate for the instructional assistance that I work in every day with our you know some of our most difficult students for sure and of course an outside agency is able to pay a market rate we don't have that flexibility to adjust those rates we have to go through our bargaining units and we've attempted to do that as best we can we came to a wonderful settlement a very appreciative of the work that we've done but obviously it's not
195enough and some of these hard to fill areas you know there's a certificated version of this that Mr Carlin Goldberg mentioned about certain hard to fail School psychologists slps you know and when we work with our uh our associations we have limitations on what we can adjust to the market and you know we get behind in the market adjustments and that's where we have to kind of fill these required positions I certainly would love to engage in a conversation as we have every time we have bargaining units and we we literally have discussed how some classifications might have to have a difference in pay because of the market you know and just those aren't the agreements that we come up to with our associations to pay certain classifications of higher vacancy rates let's say at
196higher rates it's something we we bring forward but it's not currently what we have in agreement with and so I would love to differentiate and pay the market rate that the agencies are able to do yes some of those people are walking out with 24 21 to 24 an hour um that's obviously what the market is requiring to fill those positions you know I certainly would love to find a way we could do it um in this particular contract this particular contract is higher than we've renewed before two reasons have happened there's been a about a four percent self-awide increase in the contract rates um we also had a contract vendor pull out of working with us after a long history we began to put some accountability measures in on this one agency about their
197work about their uh timeliness of their documentation for students and they chose to leave Santa Rosa city schools and the contract vendor were describing decided to step up with us in the spring and has worked throughout hiring a massively busy hiring structure and process so they basically we've added about a million dollars to that contract that was with another vendor previously and then we've also continued to expand our our um uh our special ed programs at local schools and fill that instead of using sco employees and of course we've we've saved millions of dollars through having our own hiring despite the cost of these agencies it is still a cheaper benefit by at least thirty five thousand dollars for every student than to send that student to a non-public school or scope so as as
198expensive as that is uh just on the expense side let alone the program side of having students in a local residence having families have access to their kids and not sent away to different programs so just on the on the expense side of it we are still better off even with those costs than to have students sent to scope thank you um one last thing this is really you know a larger sum of money right um is it a one-time money I mean is this an ongoing sort of expenditure that we expect to have every year because of these positions not being filled um can you talk can you elaborate a little bit more last year we spent about 2.6 million for vendors to fill these basic positions and it's not just instructional AIDS some
199of them were occupational therapies uh speech and language that we're trying to do so our outside vendors were costing about 2.6 million dollars last year and so with those various increases obviously it's rising um to the point of this specific contract we've budgeted just on on our spreadsheets that should cost about 2.8 we're putting a contract not to exceed because there are expansions there are one-on-one AIDS and situations that come up um there are a number of things that just we want the flexibility to be able to fill that entire need and the last thing is that contract does include esy as well so it kind of rolls over the fiscal year which includes esy as well does it also include our uh maybe you answer this already but I was writing out um students
200that end up you know in in those facilities no so this is non-public agencies not non-public schools and so in addition to that we have about 143 students in non-public schools um the cost at a non-public school is different than a skill placement right now it's only about forty eight thousand dollars but right that's I mean okay so I I kind of agree this is a a large sum of money that we need to start thinking about how do we integrate you know our own CSA folks to make sure that they take on these these positions um and uh Micah thank you for bringing this up the the the other thing I wanted to bring up is uh um I got an email about uh our a joint positions to do not mention the fact
201that they have bonuses um is it is it all right so just I'm just making sure that it's there does it say bonus okay great thank you thank you um okay director Medina so just clarify I think I heard you say it's both classified and certificated in in in this particular agency they're not certificated they're bcbas which is still a classified position but just in non-public agencies as a whole we have brought other contracts where we're hiring for some video speech and language or we're doing occupational therapy so just as a general rule is the um the non-public agencies the dollars go out to both certificated and classified but by far the majority of them are classified positions due to unfilled special education Aid positions and I guess the other part is do we continue
202to collaborate with uh CSEA to try to work towards addressing this issue only through the negotiated process if we're talking about that you know that and when that comes up and obviously we we had that um it's always a point of a district um position that we try to modify perhaps based on the supply and demand world and in some positions do that to certainly a goal that the district tries for But ultimately when we finish our our negotiations it comes out the way it is thank you and superintendent tranelle could you just really quickly explain to folks who maybe don't know um why we use certain funds for certain purchases or procurements and why that's a little bit restricted Mr mazara could probably speak to it as well given this is the the uh
203a restricted budget that's been identified when we are looking at salaries and salary increases that is coming from our general fund and that is because we have to guarantee in perpetuity that we're able to pay for salaries so in that when we have specialized Services we look to other pots of money so that we can pay for additional services and support So in this case with restricted dollars we would not be able to use this pot of funds to generally give everyone a raise for example because it is not a part of the general fund and additionally if I could superintendent internal uh president mineri specifically and there's there's a separate funding line for special education dollars ab602 dollars and a separate then from the governors and they specifically do not fund special education the
204totality of all its costs um under mechanisms that have to do with not trying to create an incentive for qualifying students with disabilities they purposely try to underfund so invariably there is a structural contribution from special or gender education fund to special education to encourage us to not identify students to work with mtss processes and all the other things we try to do through our Universal Design and tier one to prevent students from becoming um eligible for special education so that that's just structure some of that is structural thank you thank you I appreciate the responses and what I'm hearing is that this is definitely not something that we want to do but it is something that we have to do to serve our students in this way and there's a lot of work to
205do and on this front thank you okay one more thing yes um I want to appreciate um while I have the bully pulpit here uh Press Democrat did an article about special education hard to fill and I want to just make sure that we all saw that some of our our newest teachers were in that article they were in these classrooms that we described you saw some wonderful pictures and wonderful teachers and in fact this agency they were discovering that I'm talking about right now is one of the reasons that class has been able to populate itself and have fantastic times and have fantastic things the agency has really done a great job of identifying training and supporting that really assist and made that ESN program fantastic we need to highlight them more they're doing
206a lot of great things for us and so that just some of those results come out but to your point Miss uh President moneri we wish we were there are all our own employees thank you with that we are seeking a motion on item F5 move to approve F5 second that was moved by director Medina and seconded by director Sheffield roll call vote please director Rao hi director Medina aye director Sheffield aye director De La Cruz hi director McNally aye director Flores hi director De la Torre aye president Ranieri hi thank you this brings us to item G1 approval of minutes of the regular board meeting held on September 13th 2023 seeking a motion for approval move to approve the minutes and the regular board meeting on September 13th 2023. I was moved by director
207Medina and seconded by director De La Cruz roll call vote please director Rao aye director Medina aye director De La Cruz aye director Sheffield I'm Stan director McNally aye director Flores aye director De la Torre aye president manageri aye board member request for information are there any requests this evening from board members director of electros I would love a presentation or some discussion on the restorative justice Pro program overall and just kind of like an example of what it feels like to be both a practitioner and a recipient of those Services um I know we are growing that program and I'm really excited about um sharing that information with our community noted director Medina um since it was brought up I'd like to see if maybe we could get a list of the approved textbook
208Center books within our ethnic studies classes are there requests okay seeing none our eye items these are listed in our agenda packet I will just read them quickly number one future board discussion items number two board conduct and code of ethics educational acronyms and abbreviations Sonoma County Office of Education letter regarding 2023-2024 local control accountability plan number five Sonoma County Office of Education approval letter for 2023-24 adopted budget number six facilities projects update and number seven revised board governance handbook before we adjourn superintendent turnout any last announcements thank you just to follow up on the safety report we will be happy to bring numbers back to you weren't as quick as we thought because many of the positions had uh partials at various schools as they were spread over various schools so we have to
209actually add everything up to make it whole and then give you the number on top of that so we'll be happy to do it also I want to direct people who may still be with us or if you listen to the recording from our main website you go straight to our website which is and I'm going to pull it up which is srcschools.org and on the front page there is a an application right to the the right hand side it's a circle and it says jobs and so you click on that from there you'll be able to see some information about our certificated jobs our certificate certificated management classified classified management and then all jobs if you click on all jobs it's going to take you straight to a website called edjoin that's where all
210of our positions are housed and if you scroll down you will see in big letters the one thousand dollar signing bonus retention bonus as well as all of the positions that we currently have posted hopefully we welcome more people to our team thank you thank you with that this meeting is adjourned