Board of Education April 14, 2021

001we are now live all right so i got the live signal good evening everyone welcome to the santa rosa city school board of education meeting for april 14th 2021 the meeting is open and would you please stand and join all of us for the pledge of allegiance thank you i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america america and turn into the republic for which it stands one nation there were no actions taken in closed session uh or it opens for for consideration open session either and i forgot i just want to ground us again as a community for being here together those of you who are here with us at the board meeting thank you for being here with us and those of you who may be watching later appreciate it

002and that it's been a it's it's been an explosive week it's been a really hard week for all of us and i think that we all rely on each other and the wisdom of all of us together creating our paths together is what we keep needing to do so i really want to thank everyone who weighed in with with us no matter what um all of it's appreciated so let's continue and we will continue to listen and and make our very best decisions for the good of the students of santa rosa city schools so thank you everyone do we have any statements of abstention tonight seeing none adjustments to the agenda i know that we are going to be deleting f9 because it's a duplicate of f10 i believe right correct and uh trustee medina

003yeah um can i request that item e3 be placed um first in the e-items prior to e1 do we have any objection to that the e3 item is a resolution and i know that a lot of people are here to hear about e1 and i think that this won't take too long okay no objection all right so we'll make that adjustment no other adjustments special presentations tonight student of the month certificate in classified employees of the month for brookhill slater and montgomery high school who gets that tonight i get that tonight all right so how about we start off with the brookhill student um tell you a test first is that yeah she's on her way over thank you i get the honor and the privilege to do this today excited all right it looks

004looks like talia's hi talia congratulations thank you you're welcome so i get to read what your school staff wrote about you brooke hill elementary staff would like to recognize talia tess a sixth grader as our student of the month talia tess has been a bobcat since kindergarten and has grown into an amazing student while attending brookhill talia's love of learning started the moment she stepped foot in the classroom her former first grade teacher mrs smith recalls talia excelling in math especially at a very young age and remembers her love for chapter books ms smith is quoted as saint talia exudes happiness creativity and a witty personality in a modest way talia is not just known for her academic abilities she is also a hard worker she is kind she is welcoming to all students she

005enjoys helping those around her in a way that is supported and comforting her calming demeanor is an asset to any classroom and serves as an inspiration and a model for other students her peers are drawn to her for these reasons talia has many interests and talents talia has been participating in cultural laos dancing since she was six years old with her mother who is a noon duty supervisor at brookel she also loves spending time with her older sister and is always cheering up those around her talia wants to be a teacher or an artist in the future our bobcat staff is so proud to name talia tess as our bobcat student of the year we can't wait to see what her future holds congratulations talia and should we do um all by school or should

006we just do students first we can do by school and uh that's the order on the agenda thank you okay thank you so next uh we have a certificate employee lisa esposito can we bring her in oh already there brook hill elementary staff would like to recognize alyssa esposito 5th grade teacher as our certificated staff member of the month ms esposito has been an integral part of the reason why brookhill continued to excel during the pandemic and distance learning her expertise with technology and her willingness to help her fellow teachers and staff has not gone unnoticed since the moment she became a bobcat staff member you would find her all over campus offering a lending hand this has been even more apparent during the pandemic one colleague of hers even called her the unofficial tosa

007of our site she has hosted professional development sessions for brookhill staff and offered professional development district-wide her supportive nature coupled with her patience and the perfect is the perfect combination for a teacher leader on campus esposito is not only an expert with technology but she also has a great knowledge of instructional content she's a quick learner she is flexible and she is passionate about ensuring her students make academic growth using differentiated instruction within her classroom she's taught kindergarten third grade fifth grade and also a fifth sixth combination class while at brook hill no matter what grade level she teaches she does it with a smile and open mind and becomes an expert in the standards for that grade level quickly additionally she has a great passion for inclusion and adapter lessons no matter the content

008area with an equity lens as you can tell mr esposito is one of a kind we are lucky to have her at brokel and we are honored to name her as our certificated bobcat staff member of the year congratulations mrs fosita let's see next where is my father all right so now let's uh move on to cindy castillo cindy she's on her way over oh here she is hi cindy let's see burke hill elementary staff would like to recognize cindy castillo seja student engagement activity worker as our classified staff member of the month ms castillo or what we know her as misendi is the definition of a dedicated bobcat staff member her roots as a bobcat date back to when she attended brookhill as a student and her passion for our community is admired by

009anyone who meets her miss sandy is not just our student engagement activity worker and never has been miss cindy truly does it all she is a favorite among our bobcat students due to her kind caring supportive and welcoming nature she is trusted by not just students but also the staff her colleagues are appreciative of her willingness to help her patients with students and staff and her consistent ability to go above and beyond during the pandemic missendi's role on campus changed but she took on the challenge with stride not only did she engage students weekly with small group sessions and live enrichment activities on zoom but she was also an integral part of our successful re-engagement team she has blown us away with her ability to engage students from home but then also build lasting and

010supportive relationships with our families from distance miss cendy truly represents what it means to be a bobcat and we are so lucky to have her congratulations miss cindy hey [Music] let's see okay well we are moving on to slater and our slater student is katherine thomas is katherine indiana catherine i'm not seeing your name list out there you are thank you she is on her way okay cool oh there we go hi katie what's kde looks like let's see i gotta get back to my files herbert slater middle school is honored to select katie thomas as our student of the year katie is a student that principal tucker can count on to be the role model for all slater spartans here are some comments about katie from our staff mr tucker katie is amazing she

011always comes to her zooms with a flower in her hair which instantly livens up our meetings her work is thoughtful and well done she is curious and is always seeking out new information she's just a great kid when he provost katie consistently pushes herself to be fanta a fantastic learner by asking questions sharing ideas participating and staying positive that's megan kobe and katie is a bright kind and extremely hardworking student she has received a's in all the classes she has taken at slater including spanish advanced math and advanced english not only is she a stellar student but a talented cellist in our advanced band when i have worked with her in the classroom she is always engaged volunteers and participates she is a wonderful role model for other students she is always positive friendly and

012has a smile on her face katie has a bright future ahead of her and slater's pleased to have been part of her educational journey that's blair murphy katie puts the maximum effort into all of her work for an example i even gave her extra credit on an extra credit project because she did such an amazing job on it katie has done a terrific job of staying consistent and amazing in distance learning also she's a talented writer thank you katie for making teaching a joy that's from miss wesley finfrock and katie is playing two instruments this year including a new one that she just started this fall she plays flute and cello she goes above and beyond in every respect and has done exceptional work this year she auditioned and got into our symphonic band the

013highest level group at montgomery as a freshman which is very rare this shows the dedication and hard work she has put into playing her instruments this year she performs her instruments well above grade level and has taken the time to pursue solo pieces for school concerts and for her own enjoyment enjoyment outside of class katie has a rare gift of both being blessed with a natural gift for music and also being an extraordinary hard worker possessing possessing both of these qualities makes her a truly exceptional musician and student that's from sarah williams there are some students that you remember from the day they enter your classroom katie is definitely one of them she's enthusiastic and excited to learn spanish as soon as she became my student i realized that she met that she meant it

014when she said she wanted to master the language that's from garmin osorio and finally katie thomas was was a stellar student throughout her seventh grade year while in the classroom she actively engaged in all class activities and lit up the room with her positive energy she went the extra mile in advanced english assignments led discussions with her thoughtful insight and provided a model for other students to follow bravo katie for this well-deserved honor of student of the year that's from rachel carrasco congratulations katie it seems like everybody has great things to say about you thank you congratulations now let's see who do we got next uh let's go with um oh where'd it go we have certificated and play for slater joan fox right jonah oh hey jim there you are congratulations let me get

015to the write-up herbert slater middle school is proud to announce that joan fox has been chosen by her peers to represent slater as our certificated employee of the year joan has been a teacher for 30 years and she has been at slater for 28 of those years joan has gone way above and beyond this year to support not only our site but the whole district when it comes to distance learning and technology her students love her video lessons with powerpoint presentations and joan is always so good at letting us know when her students are falling through the cracks what a wonderful career and what a wonderful way for her to cap it off as our teacher of the year as a principal slater um who wrote this i would like to share comments from her

016peers first from carmen osorio we have your patience great humor and wisdom have helped many of us you have done this every day since i met you during distance learning when many of us were lost you found the time to guide us and to teach us you are a true teacher and a great human being i'm so glad you have received this well-deserved award from sandy martin we have jay justifiably essential to all of us oh outstanding organizer a always helps with tech issues and n never gives up on the kids joan then we have from jamie hamilton i had the pleasure of being a seventh grade health student in mrs fox's class in addition to working alongside her at slater i don't know anyone more uniquely qualified to teach middle schoolers and no one

017else who can make seventh grade sex education fun exciting and educational a wicked sense of humor and such a giving heart miss fox deserve this and more then from joslin coltrane we have a well deserved award and recognition for a science queen congratulations joan thanks for all of your help technically figuratively literally practically psychologically etc throughout the years what a way to end an amazing career then from jane tom jane thomas we have congratulations joan you have been a mentor to so many during this difficult transition to distance learning i miss being able to walk across the hall with my laptop when i need help but mostly i miss having lunch with you daily and sharing all the trials and tribulations of our everyday lives i'm glad we are finishing our careers together going out

018with a bang then from logan caper we have joan is not only an amazing teacher to her students she is an incredible mentor to her fellow teachers joan is always quick to support anybody whether they are in her department or not joan has been one of the leaders in revolutionizing our school technology setting setting slater online with chromebooks and google classroom before the rest of the district caught up she embodies the one demand the warm demander that we all aim to be for our students holding kids to high expectations while supporting them the whole way then from rebecca scroter we have joan is intelligent discerning proficient and hard working she's very talented at adjusting to meet her students needs she is someone i can go to on campus to help with work issues and from

019allison ho it's been a pleasure to hear about how you engage with your students as well as how you have supported your students during this challenging time of distance learning it makes all the difference congratulations joe sounds like this is a well-deserved award congratulations joan okay now for allison hall who we just ended on is alison in here yes she's on her way over thank you hi allison congratulations let's see herbert slater middle school is honored to select allison ho as our classified employee of the year allison's dedication and commitment to our students is so admirable she is an amazing restorative specialist and our students and staff are lucky to have her full time at slater here are some comments from the staff from kristin woodruff we have allison is one of the most positive

020people i have ever met she accepts students completely while helping them out to work on areas of challenge she is very thoughtful and observant from lauren page i believe it is allison is an amazing restorative specialist because she genuinely cares so much for every student and is so empathetic to every situation i have had the pleasure of seeing her work with not only the general education population but also with the students i work with who have enhanced special needs and in both populations allison meets the students with respect she is also constantly looking for new opportunities and outreach especially for those in the lgbtqia community i wish i would have had someone like mrs allison when i was in middle school and next from sarah williams allison has been so much fun to work with

021for the pride club this year she's always providing students with lgbtq resources and helping students get connected with lgbtq organizations in the sonoma county community she's extremely open-minded and conscious of respecting everyone students staff community members i have learned so many things from her this year next from blair murphy we have allison is such an asset to slater and we are so lucky to have her she is always positive and willing to help in any way that she can to support staff and students she always creates a safe space for students to share and work through issues that they may be happy she recently started the slater pride club which is a great support to many of our students this is just another example of allison going above and beyond to make slater a safe

022and welcoming place for all of our students congratulations to allison on this well deserved recognition from wendy provost we have allison is always positive kids trust her and come to her for support she's very approachable to all and is the first to help out in any way possible then from maria fajardo we have allison's completely dedicated to her profession allison listens to her students with her heart she's an awesome human being she is a great co-worker and i really enjoy working with her and finally from maddie daniels allison is extremely supportive and kind i really enjoy working with her and she is a very important asset to our slater team she works very hard with our students and families and we are really lucky to have her again congratulations on this much deserved award thank

023you so much congratulations and now we will move on to montgomery and we will start with kayla and rosario student is kayla in here kayla if you're present could you please raise your hand so there's a hand raised but it's not kayla i don't believe she's with us this evening so i can go ahead and share her photo okay but i will go ahead and read off um principal's comments kayla is a senior at montgomery this year and from her accomplish accomplishments one would not even know that our year has been turned upside down during her freshman year kayla founded the stem club at monty this year because the club was not very active they decided to donate their funds to the roseland family food relief fund early this year kayla sent me some articles

024she had written for our school newspaper her articles were picked up by her local media the press democrat and published on her behalf shortly after this i received notice that kayla was one of three monty students who had received a letter of accommodation from the national merit scholarship program i was also presently surprised when i dropped by mr miller's art class where kayla was touching up her portfolio i was able to enjoy many of the beautiful pieces of art she has created this year kayla excels at many mediums including paint sculpture and quilling kayla deserves this award for not letting anything get in her way this year and throughout her time at monty i know she will be moving on continued success after graduation as she will be attending cal poly san luis obispo where

025she will be studying mechanical engineering congratulations kayla and now we will move on to classified employee uh sonia mohica yes sonia uh director medina i believe we actually dreamla france uh next yeah i got him out of order here thank you where's mr la france oh voila a special connection here because he because he taught it elsie when i was at lc congrats mrs from france how'd you i still say lester instead of jim i can't get out of the mister i think you were a sophomore when i had you omar i was a lot younger well i say that mr lafrance has been a teacher at monty for the last 18 years and has been our asp director for two years jim has been relentless during the challenge the the challenging year by advocating

026for students and student events he has been paramount on getting student leaders back on campus and to help plan end of the year events and to help make the monte campus look beautiful again mr mr lafrance is one of the first teachers that i uh monty principal was able to meet in person this year from the minute he talked to him he knew that he was the type of teacher who would do whatever he could to make sure students were always first that would make sure they have been have a bit of normalcy for this year even after students were not able to organize many of the activities they wanted jim was able to work with the asb students to think outside the box and plan a senior celebration for this year we look forward

027to being continued uh well he looks forward to being continued colleagues with mr lafrance as we transition into the hybrid learning and beyond congratulations mr france very well deserved award congratulations jimmy friends awesome and now we go back up to sonia so he guy she in i don't believe sonia's present so i'll put up her photo all right and i'll do my part sonja has been with the mommy team for three years she has been integral to keeping our front office organized and running smoothly this year during this pandemic we have all had to change our mindset and to do things outside the box throughout this time sonia has been a team player and has gone above and beyond the scope of her regular duties to make sure families and students are taken care of

028she has spent so many hours making calls assisting the guidance team scheduling parent meetings and answering individual questions from parents and students as we shift into hybrid learning i know that when i ask sonya to ask to assist me or the school she will always follow through and make sure it gets done thank you sonya for being so positive and keeping the spirits of the front office that high congratulations sonia i hope you're listening and i believe that is oh congratulations sonja congratulations to everybody again thank you director medina all right like i usually forget to do we need to go back to adjustments to the agenda and talk about um actually bethany will let you take this over sure so in the adjustments to the agenda we usually ask members of the public who

029would like to comment on a consent item those are the f items at the end of the agenda if you can let us know at this time that you are interested in commenting on one of the consent items the f items at the end of the agenda by raising your hand i'm going to lower all hands and if there's anyone who would like us to therefore pull a consent item for public comment please let us know now and you will be talking about it during that time not now right and it looks like we do not have any hands raised for comment on the f items all right thank you and um we are moving now to c seven we have school site parent organizations to report to us i think it's brook hill elementary

030and also montgomery high school yes montgomery will not have a report this evening for brookhill we have miss martina cardenas who i'm not seeing present martina if you're present could you please raise your hand and i don't believe she's here this evening so there will be no parent reports thank you all right it is time now for public comment on non-agenda items and because we anticipate a long meeting tonight again we are going to be allowing two minutes for public comment and let's go so this is public comment on non-agenda items something that is not an agenda item so for example the return to in-person school is an agenda item so we would not comment at this time we would wait for that item to come up on the agenda so this is non-agenda items

031only two minutes total please raise your hand at this time if you would like to comment and we're going to start with kristen colgrove good evening i'm kristen colgrove from hidden valley elementary school i'd like to ask how can a worker be both essential and unworthy of a living wage let me repeat that how can a worker be both essential and unworthy of a living wage a large percentage of our classified staff make wages at or below the poverty level these are people who are relied upon day in and day out to make sure our schools run smoothly that attendance is taken that supplies are ordered and distributed properly that take care of the ill and injured these are people that make sure meals are prepared for our students with standards and care these are

032people that watch over our students before during and after school in our child care centers and at lunch and recess these are people who make sure that our schools are cleaned maintained and now in the admin of covid are sanitized daily these are just a handful of the jobs that classified workers perform on a daily basis in our school district funds are constantly found to give cabinet members and the superintendent hefty raises to create additional director positions at the district office and most recently to shell out bonuses to teachers to take on distance learning and classroom learning simultaneous simultaneously but our district does not see fit to start child care workers or noon duty supervisors at a rate greater than 1301 per hour retail and fast food workers are being paid more for their jobs

033than people entrusted to care for our children how can we ever hire and maintain a solid classified staff by offering property level wages to the very people that we expect to keep our children safe last year prior to covet substitute certificated teachers were given the opportunity to cover open positions in the child care center at hidden valley elementary to the tune of 150 for a six hour shift that's 25 an hour but we cannot seem to offer 15 an hour to obtain and retain a new hire it's time for the district to take a careful look at the wages of its classified employees and start paying not only a living wage but a deserved wage thank you for your time thank you and thank you for keeping that to two minutes and we do have

034that clock running um while you're commenting if anybody wants to know when their two minutes are up the next comment is michael vonderporten good evening um sadly tonight much of the public is attending the zoom meeting over in windsor but let's look at the progress of public participation in government we go back to 12 15 we have magna carta the first time anyone challenged royal authority we have a mag mayflower compact called remarkable document regarding the ability of people to govern themselves the declaration of independence the u.s constitution the bill of rights the emancipation proclamation women's suffrage passed 100 years ago the civil rights act of 1965 and the rise of lgbtqi rights 800 years of progress good but not far enough last summer this board took another step in the in that progress you

035turn citizens committees into community communities well i don't think we actually actu asked for uh citizenship the move was right the message was right but as you know all that progress eight centuries of progress was reversed with the expulsion of the public from the school naming committees why would you want to keep those deliberations secret why would you want to keep those documents secret these committee meetings are the only forums where there can be real discussion real back and forth the need where the needs are for further investigation can be identified which can lead to important new insights the more board meetings are necessarily subject to tight times timers specific orders the committee meetings are where the work gets done that takes leadership so we know where the staff down the chain of command thinks

036secrecy is okay but we haven't heard from the superintendent we haven't heard from the board this should not be a legal question it's time to lead it's time to create truly open fair transparent procedures it's time to stop ejecting people from what should be public meetings time for the board to direct those that those meetings and all similar meetings be open to the public and to the full community thank you thank you next is john richardson hello hello hello we can hear you yes uh i wrote a web mail a few days ago to governor newsom i'll read it here i think you should continue to veto any legislation that makes taking an ethnic studies class a requirement for high school graduation in the current state of things today it is very likely to get

037screwed up i don't know the current bill number that pertains to this so that was a late night message and i expressed an opinion and i've compiled some sources that might support my argument about it and i'll discuss them briefly as time permits one of them also uh i'll send links so you can follow up look at it if you want to there's a youtube video that appeared recently called loudoun county public schools teaching critical race theory and it's a classroom uh remote lesson the image is what is race and there's two women on there a redhead then a woman with darker skin and black curly hair the student doesn't seem to want to go along with the teacher who wants wants him to see the race of the students there's another source about a

038third grade classroom in cupertino asking third graders to deconstruct their racial identities then last night this article appeared i refuse to stand by while my students are indoctrinated that's out of a private grace school in new york so i'll send an email along here thank you next is ernesto alban buenas noches uh good evening board directors president fong superintendent kita mota my name is ernesto aubin i teach physical education at piner high school i'm speaking this evening to advocate for myself as well as my bilingual colleagues i'll also be reaching out to our current lead negotiating team for members in our community who may not be aware educators in our district receive a much deserved annual stipend for college degrees above their bachelorette in teaching credential this stipend is provided even if the higher degree

039is not related to their specific teaching assignment though the amount is minimal it does provide an additional incentive to recruit and retain highly qualified educators to support our wonderful students there is however no financial consideration provided for educators who are bilingual i am encouraging both our board members as well as our union representatives to provide this consideration during our current contract negotiations given the unique diversity in our district and in particular our significant spanish-speaking members having teachers fluent in both english and spanish is an asset that we use on a daily basis during the school year not only is it a tool to welcome our migrant community members into our district but it's also a vital resource when connecting our students and their families to the content being provided in the classroom bilingual educators are

040asked on a daily basis for assistance in translating important items to our fellow staff members students as well as a family members of their students families we do this without hesitation without strings attached because we honestly truly care about our community members including the staff the students and the families yes we are provided the services of the language line when needed however we can all agree that nothing can truly replace the direct one-on-one dialogue directly with our students and their respective families in addition the language line service is an additional cost to our district that given these difficult financial times it must be allocated for a small and fair stipend for bilingual teachers who do not depend on these services would far outweigh the costs of having to utilize this resource i ask that our

041board members as well as our union members support this position that directly benefits our most vulnerable community members not to mention the signal it would send to recruit and retain qualified educators in the san jose city schools district thank you guys for your consideration i appreciate it thank you and once again this is public comment on non-agenda items next is joanna keisel good evening first of all i'd like to say that i love teachers i've been supportive of them defended them and done everything within my power to encourage them but right now my focus is on classified staff at santa rosa city schools this statement is not meant to do anything other than express my outrage at the lack of respect and support for classified staff have been on campus some of us face to

042face with students off and on all year we've been going above and beyond for our students our schools our staff and our district yet we do not make a living wage get overtime or have enough staff today we were notified that teachers are getting a bonus for returning to campus yet we've been there all along maintenance staff has been on campus every day working very hard i would be very happy to see a bonus for them and our office staff where's the two thousand seven hundred and fifty dollars bonus for classified this is a slap in the face to hard working staff who have been on campus this whole time in addition to this district has added a third yes a third director of hr and is creating another director position yet we are consistently

043told that there is no money for classified staff to be hired and or given a living wage people you should be outraged at the way this money is being spent when our campus supervisor starting pay is 13 an hour we should not be handing out bonuses and adding to administration thank you next is micah carlin goldberg excuse me good evening my name is micah carlin goldberg i am a teacher on special assignment with santa rosa city schools i'm also here to speak on behalf of our classified employees i saw today that the sonoma county office of education has posted flyers to get people to take their special education assistant a special education aid positions and they are offering 18. and one penny while our school district is offering under 15 an hour for the exact

044same job that's disgusting uh we've been talking to the school board and to the school administration four months now about supporting our cse brethren the way they need to be 18 months ago you all sorry the board at the time 18 months ago voted in favor of supporting the fifteen dollars an hour minimum wage in santa in santa rosa city which our members our staff are exempt from because of whatever legal loophole that is last year you put forward a resolution supporting 15 an hour for your own staff and then had to pull it back if i remember correctly because of legal reasons around bargaining so you know paying our csca brethren under 15 an hour is flat wrong and yet i have yet to hear of a proper offer to csea to bring their

045wages up to a living wage and a living wage in sonoma county is not fifteen dollars an hour our lowest paid people should be making eighteen to twenty dollars an hour we have a bunch of open positions in our district that are currently open with nobody applying for them because we do not pay a sufficient wage if sco can offer for a sped assistant so can we make it right thank you and next is lynette lynette could you please state your last name for the record lynette are you there yes i'm here sorry about that hi everybody i had fat fingers there in the bottom of my screen could you state your name for the record please it's lynette casey i work at santa rosa high school yeah i wanted to uh read a letter

046that i feel like i've received this week dear classified employees in an effort of being transparent we felt it's important to relay some facts to you we do apologize that we are so many years delayed in this communication as a district we have tried to make it as clear as possible that our classified employees are not important and have no value we the district and the board don't really care about you or your positions with our school district unless of course it benefits us in some way as you know we have been successful in avoiding you as much as possible and are not ready to start meaningful negotiations anytime soon to be clear we have no intention of negotiating fair living wage with you we've been able to avoid paying you minimum wage and will

047continue to keep our classified salaries excuse me as low as humanly possible truth be told we don't care if you earn a living wage we don't carry that we don't care that you have to carry extra workloads to make up for all the unfillable positions you know as well as us that these positions are open because our starting salary is far below every other employer in santa rosa please know we will always send out a beautiful introduction welcome letter when a newly created position is filled with a higher earning director at the district office we don't care if you have pleaded loudly from a place of experience and genuine concern hoping to make a great school-wide and community partnership for the security of our schools and our students regrettably we must leave you front and

048center to take the bread of the load on your own we know your work day is very busy and fast-paced you must always be prepared for whatever arises along with any additional duties we toss your way please note no overtime will be granted and by the way we think you should be grateful for the extra 60 cents per hour we offered you as an add-on duty to attend the isolation tent classified staff we know you care deeply about our students and staff you are both the front line and the backbone of our schools and until your back is actually broken we will continue to add your load without any meaningful support thank you thank you all and a president following there no more hands raised thank you to all of you who have taken the

049time to comment to us we um csca report chapter 75. do we have president alfonso here with us tonight she is on her way over good evening president fong school board members and student board member tammy afonso president of csea chapter today started as a normal day and then it started to change why my text was going off i have my gmail to our csca on my phone started to receive phone calls what is going on and then i was given the good news we were being told how happy our staff were that they were going to receive an incentive to teach their students both in class and at distance and in distance learning at the same time this is the second time in less than a month that this has happened our guest teachers

050previously called substitutes are to receive up to 2 500 commitment bonus for 49 days of work our teachers now who choose to work in their with their students in distance learning and in the classroom 2 750 dollar incentive this is all at a time when the district cannot finish negotiations with the classified employees oh that's right it's not until after the may revise our classified or paid at under the 25th percentile in the state of california we have been at work keeping the district open feeding students getting the district ready to open seems kind of odd how is it that the lowest paid employees receive a verbal acknowledgement for their dedication to the students and staff of in the district once again we are not considered equal or with equity sorry our members are treated

051as non-essential workers we deserve the to be treated treated and respected as all other employees of this district we should be at the same range of pay as other stakeholders which is from the 79th percentile to the percentile our members are constantly having duties added to them reclassifications are turned down duties are not taken away they are not compensated for the jobs that they are doing last year the board said that they would do everything that they could to make it right whatever it took was a statement it's time you need to take that step please our classified people are essential they are what kept this district open and running for the last year they are the people who kept the children fed who got the schools ready to open up and continue to work

052for the students and the staff of this district we hope that you will take everything that has been said by our members and myself tonight and just think about how it is that we the classified employees of the district the first people that the parents see the last people that children see before they go home many times we're the last person to leave the office and our principal or our director has already gone home for the day why is that something for us to think about thank you thank you president alfonso we are taking that seriously um we have srta report right now president lyon please president lyon is on his way over good evening good evening uh president fong dr kimura members of the board uh president fong i want to apologize for not

053talking about it sooner but i'm realizing that almost all of my comments are about return to school and i think it would be prudent to make those comments during that agenda item if that's okay with you and put move my report to that location we can do that okay well then the only thing i'll say now other than i'll cheat just a little and say really excited about the successful launch that we had with elementary and i'm also pretty blown away of all the things i just heard from the csea so i'll leave it there but just you know that srta is 100 behind closing that loophole 18 months of fruitless bargaining and not paying the minimum wage i'm sure you feel just as bad about it as i do it's time to close that

054loop i'll make the rest of my comments briefly and respectfully um at that agenda thank you president thank you president lyon uh superintendent uh dianne kitamura it's time for your report thank you um for the past few months or excuse me few meetings i have not done a report in order to save time and kind of included it in the return to school but with everything that's been happening locally and nationally with regards to anti-asian hate crimes and shootings and um mr dante wright and the shah the um george floyd um the trial about his killing and and then local things that are happening here it's just absolutely um overwhelming and tremendously tragic and sad um that we are in a state of um humanity that we're in and so i really felt compelled to

055um talk about how thankful i am that amongst all of that that's going on and everything that we've heard already tonight i still believe and have so much gratitude and thankfulness um [Music] in my role as a superintendent and as a member of this community um both the santa rosa community and the san jose education community um so i'm going to just go down and talk about the things that stood out to me about my thankfulness um i am so grateful and thankful for the hard work and dedication and the patience of the entire school community that is to be commended for a successful return to hybrid instruction that includes both in-person and our distance learning programs i am thankful for the coveted 19 vaccine that we were prioritized for our elementary and secondary staff

056so we could return on april 1st and april 26th i wish it were sooner for the secondary but those that's when our vaccines were available and the teachers would have received they are going to receive their um second vaccine by that 26th so i know there's been some questions about why secondary is not opening at right now or at the same time and that that's why i am so thankful for the 4499 elementary students that came back to hybrid learning and i'm also understanding and think i'm also thankful for the awareness and understanding about the leadership it took from everyone to make this happen you know we could have been one step behind fremont and newark school districts that have decided to remain closed the rest of the school year but that's that's not what

057we chose to do yes it was a bit delayed but we still did it and kids are back and i couldn't ask for anything but those happy faces that i saw from both students and staff i'm thankful for the return of 10 cohorts of secondary special education students and the staggered start of five cohorts of el students um we had to stagger the start for el cohorts because of a substitute shortage but i'm glad to say that we did were able to get five cohorts um i'm so thankful for the elementary teachers who have come back with a gusto to for all of their students and i want to give a shout out to those elementary students about my gratitude for choosing to do simultaneous teaching which is teaching both your in-person and your distance

058learning class using technology different pieces of technology in order to do that it isn't as simple as just teaching your class inside in in your classroom and then the classroom outside it's utilizing various tools and techniques and technology in order to make that happen so i'm thankful for that for for their willingness to do that i am so very grateful and thankful to the 15 esam elementary prison principals district i.t staff and district directors who worked all night friday and into saturday the day the weekend before the rosters were to go out for elementary because we wanted to keep that promise to parents that we were going to have the rosters out this group of individuals that cross certificated classified in management worked so diligently even not even their schools their own schools rosters but

059other peoples to help out in order to get those rosters out to our families i'm thankful for the 308 teachers so far for secondary as of today who are choosing to do simultaneously teaching when we come back and again that is a situation where technology is going to be used to teach both classes and what it does is it really um number one it provides a connection to their students that they don't have to be separated from the students that they've had it reduces the number of substitutes that we need at the secondary level and so we are thrilled and thankful for so many of you willing to do simultaneous um i'm thankful for the srcs board and srcs in general we're recognizing the needs of different families in various situations and why they've made

060the choice to be in person or in distance learning there are so many factors and so many risk factors about why people are choosing to um be in the learning option that they are i have data that shows uh who what groups of students are are choosing online uh what's what are choosing distance learning all by school districts by race by ethnicity um and i'll share those after the meeting um i don't want to go through on these but what i can tell you is that the range between some schools in some areas are 50 and 50 in person and online to other schools that are 25 um online and 75 in person and so please keep that in mind when we're talking about the variations and differences in our schools and our families and

061our geographic locations in our case rates all of that is considered as we move forward to full-time opening of school in summer and in the fall i am so thankful to the partners that have worked together with us to provide cohort um teaching and learning before we open for hybrid and as we brought our kids back as well i want to name a few of them because i want to show you the vast amount of partnership it takes um to be able to pull off what we pulled off on april 1st and so a big big big shout out to dlac dac our district advisory committee our rts committees sco sonoma county office of education our feeder elementary districts whom i work extremely close with um as we coordinate what's going to happen in our

062area of santa rosa city schools in santa rosa the boys and girls club chops team chops teen club the city of santa rosa north bay children's center our cohort volunteers the the volunteers that came out to help csea srta la plaza redwood credit union kaiser permanente rayleigh safeway press democrat land paths s-a-y lifeworks forget-me-not farms cross point bayside promise center church of the nazarene just to name a few um i'm sure there are more but i just just started writing the ones that came to me as mentioned about our our crew that is fed kids i am thankful for our cns crew have served more than two million meals since march of last year when this all has started i'm also thankful for rafael san abre san na bria and his crew for reading reading

063our campus um in ways that were much different than before um and and really helping to get our kids back into school i'm also thankful to our i.t department working with a skeleton crew preparing and distributing 10 000 chromebooks and 2400 hot spots for our students and under the direction of adrian bika and for our cns crew under the direction of ed burke and for our um our um custodial crew and rafael under the direction of um eric oden so i'm also thankful for the principals co-principals district administrators for the behind the scenes preparation for hybrid learning remember we haven't done this before and no matter how many best practices we tried to emulate and and steal from we are preparing when you're preparing for your own school your own community your own population your

064own um um varying beautiful degrees it's challenging and i'm appreciative i'm thankful we didn't have to lay off any classified staff beginning from the tubbs fire in 2017 and throughout the pandemic and paid staff when schools were closed paid our certificate are classified staff when schools are closed or not operating i'm so thankful for that i'm thankful that we've reached an agreement with srta on summer school the summer school and mou talks about and and is going to is going out for ratification um students will attend in person there will not be cohorts there is no talk about distance between students um surveillance testing we're not doing surveillance testing nor temperature check so such such great movement with our srta partnership for summer school that's going to head right into what i'm thankful for thankful

065for next and that is that the board passed a resolution on february 24 2021 that affirms that the start of the 22 school year will be five days a week full-time in-person instruction i am thankful for the federal funds that have allowed the resources to support the reopening of schools and i'm going to reiterate the fact that these are temporary funds that can pay for temporary types of support and resources not long-term things such as salaries and and benefits so i wanted to make that clear um based on some of the things i heard that yes this money that we have received is paying for some of the things that you've heard about in terms of bonuses and that this is money that the same kind of money that can't be put towards long-term expenses

066um so i'm thankful that we're able to target during school opening direct service support and services for children social emotional and academic support i am thankful for the parents and guardians who have heroically been partners with our teachers to ensure students are engaged in continuing to learn in different ways with different tools at home or in their remote setting and finally i'm thankful for the students who have persevered through a very challenging time of change isolation and anxiousness about the future i appreciate the honest and thoughtful descriptions of the impact this pandemic has had on you to the students i also my admire how you have shared the sentiment with me the heck with the circumstances i will create my own opportunities and i'm not sure if you know this in those of you that

067had said this in variations of this that that's a famous quote from bruce lee whom i love so um those are my thanks and my thankfulness in this time of utter turmoil nationally and locally um and i hope that all of those here tonight can understand that in every way that we move forward as a district there is no male intent towards any of our children to be back full time as quickly as possible we are committed to doing everything within our ability as a district to make that happen the timeline for that may not be in agreement with everyone um but i can assure you that as a district as a board of education and as a superintendent um we want what you wanted that is our kids back in school so with that

068i turn it back to the board thank you superintendent that was helpful i am only going to say this for my report which is not really a port it's just that i want to remind myself and all of this that we are still in a pandemic that we are have been traumatized for all these many several years and that nerves are shot patience afraid and i want to thank everyone who's really communicated with the board um with heart with facts at your fingertips and and heartfelt opinions and strong opinions respectfully said i i so have to appreciate that i feel that these conversations back and forth on email we could be sitting down at coffee and i actually love to do that but can't do that right now so um the csca comments tonight just

069hit home just hit hard um we're listening we want we want what you want as well and obviously it's taking more time than than we wanted it to take so it's very sobering especially in light of uh what's been happening lately in the news and certainly in our community in windsor and sebastopol it's been shocking and so whatever you can do whatever we can do together to keep building a resiliency and to keep uplifting and to keep communicating is what we need to do so i appreciate that from from every single person i really do thank you um i will give a quick csv a report tonight just to tell you what the california school board association does they actually is a big association they they do quite a bit they're doing a lot at

070the legislative level and right now they're working on full and fair funding for schools which is one of our mission one of our strategic priorities that we need to fund schools not just one time one time every so often when there's a there's an emergency but ongoing funding so that we can take care of the people the way we want to take care of people and students and programs and the second thing they're working on right now lobbying pretty hard in the legislature also along with our legislative folks are uh broadband support that it becomes kind of the public utility and that it's it's a right almost it's not just if you have the money to afford it so that's what california school board is working on all right thank you and i had a

071real quick president yes yeah and i just wanted to add that i am now officially elected as the region 3 delegate for sonoma county and my first meeting will be on april 29th i just want to report that up congratulations director medina represent as well all right we are moving to e-items we are on and we made a change so if you weren't here at the beginning of the meeting we did do an adjustment to the agenda and we are doing e3 first and then after that we were going straight to e1 dr yes so um uh e3 is a resolution supporting people of asian ancestry and condemning harassment violence and hatred towards people of asian and pacific islander descent as i began my superintendent's report and mentioned some of the things that have happened

072that this is way so heavily on my heart um and so uh i actually um it was cathartic to be able to work on the resolution with president fong and to talk with folks in various places about things that are happening to find the resources that are attached to the actual document and so with that i'm going to turn it over to president fong for um any of her comments um regarding this and then uh to the board so this will be pretty short although the resolution is fairly involved and pretty long which i invite you to read on your own you know our board has never shied away from we don't work in isolation we don't work in a vacuum we have never shied away from speaking to injustice when we see it we

073hear it and uh this is one more thing for the aapi um group of which we have many many students um and so no longer i think can the hidden and unspoken stories of violence and discrimination of over 100 years in our state and nation's history these are going to be told these will be told and we have supported ethnic studies it will be a graduation requirement in a few years and the state has uh passed the nothing studies curriculum and the aapi is a huge chunk of it as well and so the only way we combat racism the only way we combat rest racist racism is is through education and so i know that we will continue that and that it's the for the good of all of us for the good of our

074community so um we're proud of this resolution diane anything else no it it speaks for itself the resolution speaks for itself the actions and and the um at the bottom of the resolution are right there um and so uh i i i turn it back to you know public com question questions from the board of public comment um because that's i think what's important right now i think the highlights are we condemn hate we protect our students we educate our students and we work with our uh officials in our country to help stem violence everywhere for all groups questions from the word no questions from the board yes ma'am um diane i i love superintendent i loved what you said during the press conference about the ways in which this board has been very clear

075about our mission vision and priorities um that allow us to take this kind of action and other actions um that are not just words and so i am very proud of this resolution because i feel like it is backed up with those actions and so i would love to know how we are taking our activism our our action-oriented you know selves on the road throughout this county to say this is how you do this is how you educate this is how you support this is what you do to stand up in the face of hatred and ignorance um so that is that's my question with a whole lot of love and pride for you and lori both who just killed it at that place all right you know i that's a feeling that's an interesting

076question director de la cruz because it is maybe indicative of what's happened kind of the microcosm of what's happened about sitting back and waiting and to get invited to the party rather than being you know the one that starts the party um so i think we need to think about that i'm just going to look at the actions um the further resolved about what we're going to do and um it talks about education um it talks about education so um yeah i think we're going to have to talk about how beyond beyond what we're going to do in the classroom what are we going to do as a body that educates like folks like you other board members other uh you know other community organization members um i've been asked already by csva and if

077i will um teach [Laughter] and i said i'm only going to teach i don't want to teach governance i want to teach equity and social justice so that's i mean i think that's one way we get get get the word out there um same thing with uh emsco or north coast they want jason wants me to come back to teach but i'm only going to do i don't i just want to do this kind of work so i think that's that's how we do it um i also think that if it's about asians it's not lori and me doing the educating if it's about latinos it's not it's not alegria doing if it's about african-american it's not ed it's the other one of us the allies that do the educating and the teaching um the

078joel mccormicks that get up there and say hey look i am an ally and dog on it listen to me so uh you know what i think we i'm gonna i'm gonna think about some formal kinds of um advocacy that we need to do so yeah uh more to come on that so it looks like it's time to open this to public comment so this is public comment for item e3 the resolution supporting people of asian ancestry and i see one hand raised michael von der porton thank you i'll be very brief i support you completely in this we stand against hate and discrimination in all its forms and when you talk education i think there's nothing stronger than doing a field trip down to manzanar and we should find a way to get our

079kids on buses and get them into those sites and have them really experience and at least see it and you get a feel for it there's nothing better than boots on the ground in terms of the aapi community the worst name we have out there is herbert slater and the newspapers of the day are available online through the library and through the california digital newspaper collection you should take a look at them herbert slater does not stand as a name we should be supporting thank you very much oh hello can you hear me hi um yeah my name is leilani clark and i my daughter is a second grader at cesar chavez language academy and um my partner her father is chinese american and my daughter is half chinese and um you know and i'm

080not i'm not but culturally it's really you know my her both her grandparents are immigrants from hong kong um chinese immigrants from hong kong and um obviously our family was impacted by the events of this year you we we should i shouldn't have we should have to worry about our elders going out for walks around santa rosa which is like my in-laws favorite thing to do is go for a leisurely walk and luckily they've been very they've never been harassed but to even have to think about it is devastating so i just really appreciate that you have put this resolution out here one thing i would like to see is and i and i appreciate the ethnic studies curriculum that's been added but i want to see the schools teaching like the racist history in

081santa rosa the horrific treatment of um the chinese population going back to the chinese exclusion act and various other things it it's if you look into that history it's it's like really disgusting and i want to see that taught in the schools um i want people to know about that i want people to know about like luther burbank and his membership on the anti-chinese league um and so i just and then you know the history with japanese-american families here that were interned it's it's horrible so i just appreciate this resolution it's not enough we need action um but it makes me feel really good knowing my daughter's going to school in the santa rosa city schools and that her heritage and culture will be honored and not made fun of so um thank you to

082all of you thank you for sharing i think we have one more comment yes uh laura wright i'm gonna have to promote her to a panelist um in order for her to be able to comment i'm sorry i forgot what i was gonna say we're talking about the regulation no no i know um what i wanted to say was that uh asian american history was always being taught in schools like even when it wasn't on the agenda it's just been like other topics that like was on the like school agenda often would be like snowballed over and then we would like learn about asian history like that's almost always happened in every single class i've been in even an english class when it wasn't a history class we learned about asian american history [Music] that's

083all thank you thank you there are no more hands raised all right thank you so let's return it to the board for discussion or emotion director medina yeah i just want to um really emphasize that well first of all to everybody i'll be leaving the meeting after the next item but it was really important to me that um to be a part of this vote um i think that us as a district we completely stand against hate um to me it's something that's disgusting and part of my push for ethnic studies is is to help you know tear down these barriers of ignorance that exist out there to help create a better understanding of all peoples especially um our api brothers and sisters who have you know been experiencing so much violence right now um

084so it's really important that collectively as a board we all be present to take the stand and to make this um statement um because the hate and violence and the salt of all forms that exist out there is horrible and i know that collectively as a board we all stand against it all right so i'm looking for a motion but jill mccormack give your hand up i was going to enthusiastically make the motion that we approved the resolution supporting people of asian ancestry and condemning harassment violence and hatred toward people of asian and pacific islander descent enthusiastically second all right so that was motioned by vice president general mccormick and seconded by director de la cruz and i will say this that i am wearing chinese colors today these are absolutely the chinese colors one

085is red is good luck and this gold is money it's all about money coming to you good having a good life and being healthy and having those resources that's just that's changed all right so we are ready for the vote director lopez aye director mccormick aye director de la cruz aye director moneery aye director sheffield aye director flores aye director medina president fong hi thank you everybody dodgy ashish thank you all and the 10 of our student body who are asian pacific islander out there your board your school board means everything that said in that resolution and so there's anything that is needed by you uh you have eight of us to contact um should you you need to discuss something or tell us something so please take us up on that any other student

086too as well but since we're doing this resolution i wanted to particularly call out our asian pacific islander students all right president fong i think we're moving on to e1 is that correct that's right okay and so e1 is our return to school um update um as promised we will be doing this at every meeting so if you open up the agenda item um i have amended some of the things that are in the agenda item um talking about the things that we're doing specifically to return the secondary school on april 26th to hybrid instruction um so now the focus is on is training is for our secondary teachers um and we do i do want to emphasize school-based therapists that are at our school sites and the push that we are going to make

087for an increase especially as we head into the fall and full-time that there we know that some of the biggest areas around coming back to school are going to be based around anxiousness and um as the the data showed 70 of sonoma you know students have a fear of the future so we cannot ignore that and so we have a steve mizera and his team um and in a partnership with san francisco usf we're we're going to really look at beefing up that whole their our school-based therapist mft because we also know that and this has come from this board as well that the therapists are also having the social worker connection so that we can really go out and do wrap around services you know we really tried the um contracting for community-based organizations

088and we appreciate it we really we really do but we've grown we've grown to the point where we have to build our own community where they're the therapists stay with us and that when they build a relationship with students they're there for a number of years and not coming in and out you know for a half a year or four years so um that that's just a preview of what's to come for that um the safe school plans uh just what i want you to remember is that we'll be bringing bringing before the board by two before june first so be in that last may meeting the plan for the us describing the spending uh for the allocation of funding that we're getting from the state um and fed federal government we're going to keep

089the put the federal government in there too i believe rick can correct me later on when he's talking um that also involves a uh outreach to dak and dlac um srta csea uh different organization different partners that it's required for them to have some consultation so that's to be coming that will be coming the expanding learning grant again just talks about um what we're going to be doing uh the as you can see there teaching and learning will have their exact plans out on april 23rd but what the most important thing i want you to and i'm going to reiterate sorry i'm going to keep repeating myself but is the fact that it is a regular in-person programming except for those courses that are normally online which is something called cyber high and the other

090one is um alice zealous what's that excellence excellent yeah zealous instead of excellence so um so so that will be happening and more we have more elementary we have more middle school we have more uh and longer um because it has to we want to really make up for some time uh for our students um asymptomatic surveillance testing um i'm gonna let steve talk about this because i just don't want to mess it up so um it goes as fast as the different changes so steve can you speak to the asymptomatic thank you as long as we haven't dropped to another tier uh we do not have to do asymptomatic testing anymore once we've reached the orange tier so that includes students and staff as you see we still have conditions for schools for excuse

091me for sports we do not have to do them uh in like example football and outdoor sports but as we begin some of the new indoor sports we have to start that and then we have to do only what's called response testing if there is a positive then the individual students have to come back so otherwise than that we don't have to do any kind of overall testing for everybody and that's significant for the secondary families that are ready to come back that's a big change and so we're very appreciative that all the safety measures we've done in the county to get us to orange i think that really makes it a better place for our families and secondary to come back and then uh assistant superintendent mizera the coveted cases um since april 1.

092do you want to just describe what's happened since we've been back uh in terms of the classroom and the athletics we did we we had uh we had a classroom closure one cohort closure at one of our schools uh that was not a transition at school that was someone that came to and and was identified in the community and the close contact was the one cohort but do our measures the other cohort did not have to close down so that went appropriately and everyone's back and coming back we've had issues in our sports teams we had we had a quarantine of four of our football teams uh for ten days and we had a volleyball program that had to shut down as close contacts in that group but again there's been no spread uh to

093other cohorts we haven't had a cross-contamination or those kind of things so you know it's obviously out there in the community but because we're at a safer level we're not seeing those kind of exposures uh coming back for students great thank you um as i had said also earlier um uh under the leadership of anna trunell we have reached a um an agreement with srta for the summer mou which again is really the path back to full time so that's really really good news so specific readiness for april 26 which is the start of secondary um so uh dr guzman and mr now can you speak a bit about schedules and rosters and staffing yeah i can start and then maybe mr now can help me out because we've been true partners through this whole

094process i just want to say thank you to um families for you know making decisions lots of questions through the surveys around staying in distance learning or coming back in hybrid and that information has been crunched and looked at and evaluated by our vice principals and i give a big shout out to them as well um and the principals and aprons assistant principals at the middle school all of this information with the help of rand van dijk from it has been really being able to slice and sort of dice and really understand how we can create the schedules and rosters and what is going to be the need for distance learning and what is going to be need for hybrid um and so that information um has been looked at and has continued to be

095looked at with the intent to be able to give families an understanding um by the 22nd sort of where they're going to be landing and what their teachers are going to look like and what those schedules are going to look like so it's been a ton of work and in partnership with human resources um uh assistant superintendent trinell can kind of talk about how we're addressing the staffing needs thank you dr guzman and good evening everyone so yes as dr guzman mentioned thank you to everyone involved as we continue to prepare for the return for secondary students and continue to maintain support for our elementary students and schools we are now assessing any additional positions that we may need in order to support our groups of students whether they're in distance learning or back in

096person as occurred with elementary there is the chance that some of our students will have new teachers as they end and near the the school year and we're trying as best as we can to keep connections with teachers and their students currently that they've had for several months now at the same time trying to meet the individual needs of students and our staff so with that is ongoing over the next several days as uh diane mentioned um you know we will continue to work with our teams and continue to do our best to make sure everything is ready and that our families understand those next steps great thank you um dr guzman do you want to talk about the uh parent meetings yeah so as we did with elementary it's really important for the specific

097sites to be able to have that one-on-one time with their families so last night middle schools all the middle schools hosted their parent information nights i have heard some great turnouts they were able to share their videos and talk about some of the procedures and policies such as the verification and also just logging on to parent square to be able to um assess their students tomorrow night is the high schools and again they have the opportunity to interface with their families and to be able to answer questions as we're bringing students back and then next week on the 22nd we're having a district meeting with our dlac families to be able to address any sort of lingering concerns questions ideas or partnerships that can occur as we get closer to the 26 we did the

098same for elementary so this is just a secondary version um and so i'm looking forward to that opportunity as well like we had before i think that'll be a great meeting and again it's just really about you know assuring and being able to answer questions as this is different and as dr kitamura stated you know never done this before but i know that we can do this because we did it already with elementary yep that's right that's correct um the parent student handbook um they're still in the process of being updated specific to secondary um there's actually a meeting tomorrow to do some final work updates are pretty minor uh for the handbook because it was developed for most of it being applicable to all grades um and so that's that should be done um

099shortly and definitely before we start on the 26th um steve on the self-assessment yeah the parent square self-assessment you know we're uh something that manages uh daily from ours our student family engagement office what happens are we are sending out to uh school sites every day a random number of people to check on and make sure everyone did it we're doing a lot of education around it we're doing a lot of um reminding there's been some parents that find it easier on paper so we're adapting our system to be able to do a kind of a paper adaption uh putting that all together you know we've logged over 200 uh parent reminders to do their uh health checks and it's making some great improvements so i think we've got the system pretty dialed in uh

100i said we're we send out random five stu five percent of the students to check daily and making sure that the sites are doing that and then we loop back come back to any students that missed it the first time so uh we expect that to kind of follow up and as parents excuse me as families come back and parents get understanding on the process it's a learning thing and we have to do with our employees too i myself had my secretary remind me the other day it's past nine o'clock steve you haven't done your daily screener so our employees also get a similar reminder yeah i keep i need to put a reminder into my phone um because yeah because once you go past a certain time in the day you can't you can't

101do the screener right yeah it's about noon yeah it is yeah okay so yeah there was a reminder my reminder for me how about the secondary site verifications the same verification teams we went through for the elementary commitments yeah the elementaries are almost done there's a couple schools got a few other things to work off and check off but we're beginning them at the secondary uh that's the process that we work together with our partners to kind of develop teams to make sure all the elements of the return to school plan are being met and so the site teams are meeting and going through those and identifying any needs and that's kind of a strength of what will happen next week so people will understand reduce their anxiety when we have our return on the

102first day of return next wednesday that's one of the things they go over make sure they understand all the items that are in the return to school for their specific school and kind of work that through and so we're monitoring that daily and helping sites that may kind of plateau and need some assistance similar to the parent agreements you know we parent agreements are part of what uh we required our parents to do to make sure they understood these things like as an example if your student goes to the isolation room he's going to be sent home you have to come pick them up and then they have to get a doctor's clearance before they return so examples like those we zeroed out all our elementary with a big push many thanks to patty turner's

103team bernice and daisy who actually went and did home visits to make sure we got some of those uh parent agreements and we're making great progress on some of the high schools we already have a couple high schools that are at zero just because they've already had this and worked hard kudos santa rosa high school as an example they've they've really done a lot of preemptive work on this and for the parents they're they're they've got everyone so far so a lot of good work wow it's great um rick meals and technology and transportation yeah i'll take all three um good evening everyone i'll also uh add comment to superintendent kate amara's comment earlier about the funds uh including the reopening funds and the expanded learning grant funds uh those funds along with sr1 2

104and 3 from the federal government will be presented in may uh with a recap of spending uh as well as uh future uh spending based on uh the input and need that we received during this time period moving forward so that will come back in may uh with with elementary opening uh we got to have an opportunity to look at some of our processes and procedures uh on a smaller scale as compared to a high school or middle school and with that our food services or child nutrition services uh as well as technology uh eminem custodial all made adjustments on the fly and continue to do so as we prepare for our larger campuses uh to come back uh with in-person instruction um which uh includes changing meal distribution times and pathways if you will

105uh making more accessible to families the bundle pickups and ensuring that all students have the opportunity to have meal service as a reminder meals are free of charge to all students um 18 years and younger through the end of this year and there's current legislation in california that would keep that going even longer that we're closely monitoring uh technology the same preparing for students coming back in general and then also the work now that the entire department's doing uh in coordination with with site staff uh to ensure that classrooms are ready to go uh to facilitate uh hybrid instruction or simultaneous instruction for those futures that are choosing to do that um transportation uh similar to uh elementary's coming back or working with west county transportation uh to make sure that the routes that were

106used pre pandemic are available uh when our middle and high schools return uh and based off of ridership after the first uh three to five days uh the routes will remain the same as the stops may adjust um as we continue to move forward but uh we're on track to have that uh operable on the 26th as well great that's great okay so that's that's our readiness for april 26th um i i wanted to talk about the start of the 2021 school 21 22 school year and to reiterate both the resolution that's already been passed by the board and in this board report where it fl it states full five days um five days a week scheduled for the start of next school year um i know in the in the um resolution it talks

107about learning options that's not about the five-day schedule it's about the school sites working together with um teaching and learning and the cabinet in general along with um srta around you know such things as bell schedules and um you know it you know the possibility of looking at um i mean none of this is written in stone so don't people leave here going oh this district's going to go to a 8 by 16 schedule for you know the fall no we're looking we want to look at the different options um for next school year um especially because of what we're going to be facing when we come back in terms of how we need to do things differently and i want and included this article accelerating learning as we build back better by linda darlingham

108and it's a it's a link on here and and i would ask that dan i know you might be listening but also teaching and learning if we can get this translated to spanish i pretty much i would very much like that to be uh on the minutes so that people can come back to it but also we can put it out on the website because i i think it's a wonderful letter by linda darling hammond um state board director that when we come back we have been so profoundly changed as a result of what's gone on with the pandemic that trying to do school and teach school like usual is really it's really um futile i mean i i really think we have to we have to realize the fact that if if i was

109teaching and i wanted to come back and teach uh my butterfly unit i would have to really rethink about how i would do that um with the way that we have we're gonna return to school so um that's some of these bullets on here you can see i'm not going to read them to you but um it really is going to be that work those kinds of learning options that will present to you um as i promised before i leave in june um that we're talking about we're not talking about the full five days that is a given um if we're and we're also talking about um people are asking about a mou i i do not believe we need an mou because it's back to school as usual now mitigations because we may still

110be in a pandemic we've got those down and we we're getting to practice of these last these last two weeks and we need more practice with them um in preparation for summer and then in preparation for fall um and i i i have suggested and we're gonna work on this um that what we've been able to develop in terms of mitigation actually becomes a part of board policy and that if there's anything beyond that that we need to look at on an individual basis depending on what crisis has come upon us then those might become mou's with both csc and srta so that's kind of the thinking moving ahead um but for sure our preparation right now and what we're doing right now is building upon summer then building upon fall and so i i

111want those of you that have written this and measurement messaged us um that that's the plan that that's what we're working on um and so uh with that i'm happy to we're happy to answer any questions for the board uh prior to opening up to public comment but i just um can't reiterate enough that as the numbers keep going down in terms of case rates um and keeping in mind those areas where case rates are not going down and being very sensitive to sensitive sensitive to that that the school year and and the government or the the um the powers that the state have already said we're gonna need to offer an option for distance learning okay but it's an option it's a choice and as a district that's one of the things that i

112think is most important is that we can come back full time a student can choose to come back full-time they can choose to stay in distance learning um and they can choose to stay in distance learning which i hope will be a part of this re revamping of what we do where it doesn't mean they're all alone that there are opportunities to come together in laboratory formats or project-based learning formats uh in order to have their education in a way that's meaningful for them so those are all the things that will work out in terms of learning learning options but in terms of schedule and coming back right here black and white in in writing also on the resolution [Music] all right thank you superintendent ford opening up for questions dr sheffield thank you um

113i will be brief i just um thank you so much for the update i'm glad that we are doing this and taking the time to do it um at every board meeting um i really appreciate um rick you keeping us posted on the transportation issue um my question is around the um now that we're seeing some students back around the socio-emotional well-being um some type of update what's going on you know i know that with my little monsters um the transition anxiety is there um they're doing okay but it's definitely noticeable um new routine and all i get that i'm wondering how we're doing on campus how we're doing um face-to-face are we able to better spot the the students that need um additional support yeah steve i'll let you go first and then i

114can fill in [Music] uh you know we had things in place before we left and we're magnifying those and doing better we anticipated as you recall in the mou from the summer about some screeners we're getting ready to do that again when students return uh where you'll see when we present next board meeting about some of the additional resources that we're bringing and part of it is just kind of coordinating our focus so we know where students are specifically and by name and by subgroups and then developing resources around that so we can kind of get those kind of supports where needed so we'll explain uh that while we have a lot of systems that we've built now we're going to do some personnel changes and some real focuses to make that happen but direct

115answer yeah we are moving resources to the elementaries and then to the secondaries to make sure we can address the students that are in high high need yeah and then in addition to that making sure that we're not losing focus on those students that have stayed in distance learning as well not just making a pivot to those that we can see and reach out to but making sure that we're continuing to work with the students and the families that remain in distance learning because we know that there's a lot of support needed there as well absolutely yep and additionally to the summer uh director sheffield absolutely yes we're building those programs our social emotional our counseling programs will be attached to each one of our summer programs so if you attend one of our summer

116programs you will have access to a live person and uh clinical supports so good to hear thank you and the screener steve is very it's a very simple you know like three question screener correct it's not it's to start off with but we have a we have a committee that's reviewing that with our clinicians and counselors and school psychologists and they're recommending a kind of a more thrill one that we bring into the fall okay okay and then my second question was around the 21 20 school year as we're having these discussions into the summer and knowing that we're looking at um at different options and i'm wondering if that includes um discussion that we had a while back around outdoor yes we um i thought we had a line on a way to have

117more outdoor eating space as well as outdoor space for teaching but they are not dsa approved i am devastated so rick is on the hunt because i want to basically cover two two areas with one source of funding uh we know that school sites uh at the element well actually even at the secondary too not enough covered eating space um and so i want that along with spaces outdoors that the teachers have the options to go out and teach and and groups do group work like if you have a couple of groups you can have one outside so yes that has not gone by the wayside thank you seeing no other hands up no i think director de la cruz had her hand done i'm sorry did you read it i did it but i

118took it down because director sheffield asked my question about outdoor teaching and learning um but i guess i do have a question i would i would love to know a little bit more about what specific outreaches we're making to really understand people's needs for next year and i know that we've had a number of folks who haven't responded to efforts to reach them electronically and so and then you know specifically with learning house i understand that learning house doesn't have a parent engagement um specialist and so you know i think that is a population of kids who have chosen to stay in distance learning and that combination of you know both staying in distance learning and not having that parent engagement capacity um you know really i'd love to just know a little bit more

119about what specific supports are being um you know put in place to reach those parents and uh to support those kids who haven't who haven't quite responded yet steve do you want me to start on this are you starting to see if there's anything that i can think of steve has been um and elizabeth hernandez our state in federal person who is also absolutely wonderful um they are really taking the consult of the state um the state and federal fundings um title fundings about how we really should be allocating those funds and how we shouldn't be supplanting and how we should be allocating by you know um universally and then additional for those kids who generate those funds and i think it's going to be a part of some future work on the board in

120terms of policy and a potential resolution about how we're going to you're going to um equitably allocate resources in a way that talks exactly about what you're saying um director de la cruz that uh a school what i'm just gonna say as uh elsie allen uh every every high every six all the high schools have one family engagement facilitator facilitator let's say i can't talk to you but due to the title one funding the lcap supplemental funding they should actually be allocated and this is hypothetical so lcl and if you're listening hypothetical as an example we have to look at the numbers an additional and get family engagement facilitator so so so that's what we need to do in terms of structure and what's going to be on the board's work in term when we

121bring this forward um i think that what we are um well and that so that was my point steve that you're reworking it's it's not only that thus it's the therapist it's the counselors it's the uh family engagement we talked about we talked about the restorative specialists you know how are we truly meeting the needs of the students not by cutting the pie up equally but really where it needs to be where the greatest number of resources needed to be while not lessening what the other schools get as well and i'm talking about aces i've talked to stephen are talking about aces i mean anything to do with supports um how we can how we can uh allocate the resources differently so go steve yeah no you're you're our you're obviously talking about universal and

122also the these supplemental kind of supports and the board has kind of established the baseline either through lcap or base funding what we want to support at school sites about family engagements and then it's up to either centrally we decide on parent participation as a standalone program or the each school site meets the needs at their schools and funds those additional services so that's exactly the model we're moving towards it doesn't lessen where we are it allows either by choice by the district in a centralized way or the school system plans to put resources and where they choose to do them based on the community needs whether it's parent participation and they want to have more home visits and i want to make that a real strong part of their communication or it's around clinical

123time and counseling and supports and you know the resources they have we have to do a better job of expending site resources for students in real time that are made for the students that in that school year and we have to do a better job of that and some of our proposals will bring that forward yeah and i think what we learned i think from the safeway vaccination um event and i learned this through director moniedi is that it we can't be stopped by people not responding what we have to do is we have to canvas we have to walk we have to go to the places where our our students and families are and stop waiting for them to come to us so if anything i'm going to impress upon the policy side of

124this before i go is that fact we we we can't sit with a thousand students who are not responded we've got to find out where those thousand students are um and if they're no longer in the district okay they're no longer in the district um but we don't know they're the steve's team is finding out um i think we are one of the districts i think we're a district that really goes after kids to see exactly where families are um and that that home visit work is happening so i i've kind of all over the place but in con if we bring it all together and you think about the policy the board needs to enact for that to happen that's that's what i want you to do that's what i want you to continue

125with so and we'll we'll bring it formally um i'll uh if we can't do it in the time i'm here i'll be sure to put it in my notes for the next superintendent so um so my second question i feel like you've kind of touched around it but i want to just ask it right what what would be the process and the timeline for returning to five days a week for elementary so for um elementary i think that the timeline um as and i said is my and i said in my as i said in my wednesday update for those of you that have got my wednesday update that we've been analyzing what has happened in the first two weeks to determine what's working and what's not working um and so the timeline now would

126be to see the um data that i that i've been asking for that the team is working on that if we push together then a and b cohorts um how that would fit in our current facilities what one of the struggles are and just just to be very transparent is in places where we have fifty percent of the students online and fifty percent of students in distance um in in person compared to where we have seventy five percent in person and twenty five percent online so where it's 50 50 we can fit we can fit students without in a classroom putting them together pretty pretty closely without moving the six foot i mean there's gonna be some give and take but if it's fifty percent um that's what bellevue does so i have got some

127messages about bellevue's going to full every day bellevue's been every day because 50 of their students are in distance learning they can do their uh four days a week teaching at six feet apart so so that's the difference we can't we are our classroom spaces and our numbers um don't allow us to do the spacing that's needed based on our mou and so that's the part that we're trying to figure out and analyze so timeline wise you know we're looking i would say at least at another couple of weeks to get to look at all of the different locations and and see if that works um it'd be a conversation with srta in terms of our mou um there were some other logistical pieces that i put in my wednesday update um that isn't you

128know sometimes we get caught up in talking about our size um and i think we really what we really need to talk about is our complexity and our level of risk um based on that complexity so that's the part that takes a little bit longer for us to analyze in order to make a decision because we're not talking about 500 kids we are talking about a diverse diverse diverse diverse community of almost five thousand elementary students that it it you know it's not one size fits all i know that's a cliche but what what we can do at one school we wouldn't be able to do at another school and so how then is that fair um how you know how's that fair and take into consideration families and what their needs are i mean

129i have heard every scenario under the book that you could imagine for how families are coping with distance learning hybrid so back to the long story short that that would be the timeline and so a couple more weeks before we could um do any kind of movement but it would also also be negotiating with srta as well as just watching what happens with secondary trying to get started so remember in all of this we got to get secondary going and all of our resources right now the district and site levels are going towards that and that's part of being a k-12 school district um so i i can't neglect we can't neglect what we have to do for our secondary uh kids to get back into school so another two weeks before we can even

130begin to you know put things together and we're getting dangerously close to the end of the school year for that um so the question would be from the board is do you you know where do we prioritize uh when we know we want to run a robust summer school and then ensure that we are open full-time for the fall okay no more hands questions all right i know we're gonna have public comment we have a lot of parents who are going to be asking a lot of questions and i think this is the time so for public comment for this return to school item we traditionally lower all hands and ask that any students in the public who want to make public comment have first priority so i'm going to lower hands right now and

131ask only students who want to make public comment on the return to school raise your hands at this time so we'll just give them a minute in case there are any students out there all right so now we will open it to general public comment please raise your hands at this time this is for item e1 the return to in-person school update and our first comment will be ian o'connor good evening i just wanted to take a moment and thank you guys for your time um in regards to return to school i wanted to comment that the parent square health screening check-ins have been absolutely wonderful to have that available through the app but as a staff member who travels from site to site rather frequently um i do feel some concern that the communications

132mostly go through the site that you are registered for um our director adrian bieke has been absolutely wonderful at forwarding all communication about any potential exposure to us but given the option i know that it would put a lot of us who uh travel between sites at ease if there was a little more granularity in being able to report what sites we were at on any given day um just for example like right now where uh the technology team is preparing our secondary return to school and in the course of the next six days i have to work with 53 teachers that will be across several sites and so uh having the knowledge out there that i will be working at elsie allen and piner and the district office would allow me to receive those

133communications uh instead of just receiving the ones for the district office where i'm registered i just wanted to let it be known that if that was an option i know that a lot of us would appreciate it and once again wanted to say thank you for your time paul are you there oh yeah sorry i didn't hear you say my name okay your next poem okay okay sorry there's like some weird echo is that better no no i think could you have something else logged into the meeting well we can come back to you paul can you hear me now now we can okay thanks sorry about that um yeah good evening board members superintendent kate murrow district staff in march a california supreme court judge issued a restraining order on california's school reopening plan

134the parents group lawsuit specifically disputed requirements for four split spacing of students and instructing them to stable cohorts neither of which is in accordance with current cdc guidance cdc guidance since march 19th is that industry school distancing should be three feet not six as of april 5th regular service cleaning requires only simple soap and water per the superior course ruling our school district may not prevent or delay school reopening with arbitrary guidelines the arbitrary now includes outdated six foot distance guidance and outdated over cleaning procedures the details of the current mou in these regards are frankly moot due to the court's ruling currently our district is surrounded by 506 as of this evening six other districts that have announced return to non-hybrid in person four or five day a week or four-day wake school csrcs

135has not and as such is subject to lawsuit lacking faith in our school board to take the appropriate leadership steps parents are currently 60 complete in three days and raising the necessary money to launch the first step of legal proceedings against srcs we don't want to do this but we will we beg you to instead restore our faith and render the legal effort unnecessary by immediately as soon as possible maybe an emergency meeting next week ordering our schools back to in-person learning do not have to figure out the mou yet the court says you have to get back you cannot have arbitrary things stand in your way that's it thank you next is veronica jordan hi good evening can you hear me yes great hi dr kitamara and the board my name is veronica jordan

136i'm a parent the kindergartner and fourth grader at cesar chavez language academy um i just want to start by saying nobody none of us signed up to live and work in this pandemic i recognize that very deeply to the bottom of my soul as a parent as a health care provider as a teacher as a community member and this has been impossible work for everyone and i know that everyone has been asked to do the impossible and then switch gears and do it again that's not unique to santa rosa city schools that's been for all of us um i've been here at every single board meeting going back to july and august and every single board meeting you board members have said we don't have control it's the numbers of covit it's the department of

137public health it's the governor it's the it's the regulations it's the public health officer you've said that over and over so here we sit now as of last week in the orange tier the governor says it's safe to open the public health officials say it's safe for our children to be within three feet of each other so that they can get back to school and tonight instead of centering your conversation around getting us back to school as soon as possible we're talking about the fall quite honestly i don't trust that what's going to happen in the fall is going to happen because none of us have a crystal ball we are not a small group of parents asking for something ridiculous we're asking for what is now as of this week going to be the

138standard in our county five day a week instruction for our children for our now almost second graders who cannot read for my fourth grader who hasn't gotten a chance to see his best friends at school for a year come on guys every day counts you tell us this every day when our kids are in school don't take them to a doctor's appointment take them to school every day counts please urgency thank you thank you next is donna prak and thank you all for watching the two minute clock hi so hi so what i gather from we can't hear you donna could you try on meeting again well donna um i'm going to try calling on you again next is mr adrian juarez okay good evening president superintendent members of the board thank you for the

139opportunity to speak tonight um um so uh mr freddis is saying that he's really um looking forward to the strides that we've made to move to the order and with that comes um a renewed dedication by parents to um come in to school five days a week um i wanna make sure i'm capturing everything uh [Music] as we go through and analyze these questions around distance and making sure that we know all the possibilities about returning to school he just wants to make sure that he is able to understand the analysis that the analysis is shared with parents who really are curious about some of these questions and making sure that that that those voices are elevated in this conversation [Music] so i'm speaking you know primarily when i ask about this um need for

140analysis and information on behalf of the parents who are interested in returning to school um but i'm also making sure that i'm including in my in my comments the concerns of parents who have children who continue in distance learning and who need additional support to make sure that they are able to be successful in that in that place as well um thank you also for having a forum for middle school and high school about what it will feel like to return in hybrid for two days member we just want to make sure that everybody understands that the dlac committee and other elect committees are open to anybody who's interested so that includes the president and staff and members of the community who are curious about making sure that they are hearing the voices of folks

141from the doolitt community uh we're also raising concerns parents from the dlac that we haven't received very much information about what summer school is looking like what the plans are for summer school and so we'd like to invite people to come and share with us what those plans are for summer school at the dlac meeting so one of the other concerns that we have is for the middle and the high schoolers for those children who are going to remain in distance learning uh high so one of the things that mr juarez is grateful for as his daughter is in distance learning at the elementary level and with the move towards simultaneous teaching she has not had to have any disruption to her learning and he's i'm curious as to you know the plans for being

142able to continue simultaneous um teaching and learning at the middle and high school levels because these are such critical years of instruction um and to you know reduce the disruption to children who are staying in distance learning is critical and of concern to the deluxe parents um those are my comments and our concerns we are always looking for additional support and information everybody is welcome to the dlac and the elac meetings and thank you thank you so much director de la cruz our next comment is stacia okura good evening dr kitamara school board i'm here as a parent at ccla to ask that you open our schools immediately for full-time in-person instruction four schools in santa rosa announced full-time instructions starting in april public health guidance changed in march to allow our schools to reopen

143full-time you're obligated to return us to school full-time now to the greatest extent possible other k-12 districts have done it nearby we're not that unique we're really not please do it now but i want to ask dr kitamura about a specific comment that you made about the february 24th resolution you said that resolution adopted a fall program with five days of regular school schedule and that it's a given for the fall that when i read that resolution it contradicts what you just told us and it undermines my confidence in what you're saying to us about the fall from that resolution page four paragraph four whereas the 2021 school year is planned to be a full-time and in-person instructional model hybrid in-person and distance learning are alternate instructional models to be implemented if directed to do

144so by the state county or federal officials as a result of covid19 data page five paragraph three section four the board of trustees will reevaluate and decide on those instructional models for district schools for the 2021-22 school year on or before its july 14th board meeting it clearly mentions hybrid in that resolution and contradicts what you just said that five days and fall is a given and this is where my trust is under mine and i'm really needing full transparency and that's you know full transparency about really what is happening really what are barriers pass a resolution that has no mention of fault and just say we're absolutely going back all full time and no no caveats thank you for your time thank you next is natalie hoyt natalie are you there yes good evening

145can you hear me all right yes awesome uh first i just want to say thank you so much for passing the resolution to bring kids back full time in the fall i genuinely appreciate this commitment from the board as much as i totally dread speaking at these board meetings i'm here tonight to advocate for my child because that's my job as a parent with that said i am in support of a return to five school days a week now is the time our coven numbers are low and state guidelines now allow for us to get kids back on campus every school day we are watching as all of our neighboring districts are preparing to return to a four or five days per week model and for some reason santa rosa city schools is not moving

146in the same direction i was told by president fong that the santa rosa city schools is a larger entity with more moving parts than neighboring districts and that is why our schools cannot add additional in-person instruction to this i say san jose city schools has always been a larger district with more moving parts you manage that on a daily basis obviously the work to get kids back on campus after being closed for a year is not within the normal scope of your work and i understand that but it is a challenge for every district and yet other districts are managing it not only is it safe to bring students back on campus but you're legally obligated to provide in-person instruction to the greatest sign possible the mou is not a legally binding document it is

147essentially a handshake deal with the union although it is honorable of you to work to honor it if the six feet of distance is the hurdle to getting our kids back in the classroom full time then you are not in compliance with the law as a frustrated parent my ask of the board tonight is to please publish a list of hurdles to returning to five days a week this month vague statements about your student population district size and the desires of parents within the community only serve to frustrate me further transparency goes a long way and i think that we would all appreciate more of it thank you and thank you all for once again watching that clock the next comment is tamiya tenkai yes thank you um good evening um today i would like

148to talk as a concerned parent as well as well as a concerned mental health clinician in sonoma county i heard a couple of um words today that that make me curious i heard about providing safety i heard about protecting i heard about meeting individual needs and i heard about building resilience this past year i noted as a clinician that this past year has brought on some considerable degree of fear worry and concerns among certain groups and in this past year that certain group was served well but what about the rest of us the main psychological impact to date is elevated rates of stress anxiety and depressions measures such as quarantine and shutting school down affected many people's normal activities routines livelihoods levels of loneliness depression child abuse self-harm and suicide rates are on a rise

149we talked about building resilience well how do we do that really by keeping cool school closed and not opening five days we are not doing that what we are doing is modeling and teaching children to fear further fear is not exactly the best way to raise a generation that's that's supposed to lead us so it's time to us to model something different it's time to us to show them that being at school is not a fearful place to be being at school is where we grow where we learn and it's also our responsibility to teach them we can provide that and i think with all the schools that are opening and surrounding counties as as well as in sonoma county i think it's very important that we could do the same as them since they

150are leading us and showing us that it's possible thank you very much thank you uh next is donna prak donna we're gonna try this again thank you so much i was driving home from a baseball game trying to talk to you on my uh uh whatever you call it my on my in my van but no thank you i mean i we've made progress to get back our kids back in school but we're in the orange tier there should be no hurdles we should be following the guidance and the cdc guidelines from six feet to three feet and we're not doing that i mean if we care about our kids and we really wanted them to have a better opportunity and then what they've been dealing with for a year like we would be doing

151that but i don't see it what i'm seeing if i want my kids back in school five days a week i have to move them to a different district and i want to do that i like santa rosa city schools i like the people who represent me i love my school i look maybe a little too much and it's probably unhealthy how much i love my school but i love the school that my kids go to but i need my kids back in school for their mental health for them to be around kids and god forbid to get off their freaking phones because i work all day i can't control that so please for the love of everything that's good in this world do it three feet back in school i mean it's a little

152embarrassing that we are the largest district and we can't get our together sorry i shouldn't have sworn profanity but come on people thank you next is rochelle porzio good evening thanks for taking my call um i do appreciate some of the work that's been done but i am here to pony back on what everyone has said that i think that children should be back in school five days a week as soon as possible every day counts and we've lost what someone counted up 391 days that these kids have been out of school and that's it's shameful and um i'm frustrated and angry and sad and upset and i see my daughter struggling and i see other kids struggling and they need a routine they need to be back to school as soon as possible and

153i i urge you to make that happen it's i know it's difficult we've all had a difficult year this is this is your job and i would like you to get these kids back to school thank you next is christina cara hi can you hear me yes my name is christina i have a daughter who's a freshman at mario carrillo high school i could go on and on about what a rough year this has been for my family she's previously been a straight a student who's reduced to barely passing some classes while she's used to measuring her success based on academic achievements she's currently measuring her success based on her ability to navigate technology a ridiculous wi-fi a number of opaque processes that have continued to obstruct her ability to learn her ability to focus

154and her sense of herself this has been a disaster these kids need to go back to school they deserve it the numbers suggest it's safe we have to make it happen that's for my family looking at this hybrid model my concerns are how are working parents going to pick up kids for a half day program the impact goes on and on it creates a further divide of socioeconomic single family two working parent scenarios that furthers the stress and the chasm my concern is how are we going to recover ourselves i piggyback on what my other peer parents have said we need schools open now please please please consider your options i appreciate your help i appreciate your hard work i know it's been hard for all of us but the kids need us to rise

155up here thank you next is katie katie could you please state your last name for the record waylon thank you i just want to reiterate what everyone else is saying you know mousse are not legally binding they're not enforceable and they're not a reason to stay closed for three feet to be the cdc guidance to be the guidance from our health department we have no reason to not reopen the only reason that seems to be the issue is the mousse that's a problem it's very disappointing that this has been a continual issue since the start of the pandemic but that is where we are and just you know we just submitted today a letter with over 250 signatures of parents in the santa rosa school district that are saying you need to open now thank

156you katie and next is anastasio i'm guessing this is anastasio tovar rose please correct me if i'm wrong that's correct thank you can you hear me yes first off i want to thank director alegria de la cruz for being the first and only only board member that has brought up the issue about returning back to school hopefully after this more members have asked more questions about this i want to thank uh president of the dlac avidian fighters for speaking up for our land community because it's been rumored that a lot of families do not want to return back to school so we've all heard it tonight that there is a lot of interest in going back to school and i want to reiterate what everyone's saying tonight if you want to go back four or

157five days board members are elected by community members community members vote for these people so board members i ask you to hear the voices of our people of our community that we want what we want we want what other school districts are providing thank you and next is will lyon srta president who had reserved some comments for this item hello hello can you hear me yes i don't see my picture up that's a benefit to everybody um thank you for allowing me to make my srta report now instead of in the normal time since most of what i need to say is based on return to school um so president vong and dr kitamura and members of the board members of the community my name is will lyon i'm the president of santa rosa teachers

158association um with the famous mou that keeps getting brought up we represent 900 educators uh in our district um and we're part of cta which is also represents over 300 000 educators in our state and so first i want to say congratulations we launched april 1 should be celebrated um if i'm not mistaken this is our this is our first school board meeting since we launched and there's the somber tone that we're not doing enough but i'd just like to take a moment to celebrate that us opening up on hybrid on april 1st for our elementary students and for some cohorts for sped that is to be lobbied that is a major upgrade for education in our community for those families and those students who chose to go back in and it was by all

159accounts a very successful launch i was at proctor terrace the first two days and i watched those kids come in and i watched those teachers and i talk to those teachers afterwards and since then lots of our educators that are then and it was joyful you know borderline jubilant for those teachers to be back on campus with their kids that's exactly where we want to be that's where we're supposed to be that's where we're all working to get to so we we did the right thing by launching on april 1 and even just a few days before that it was under the question it was not like a slam dunk easy thing right governor newsom made his comment or his uh proposal december 30th and we launched april 1 and we needed every single one

160of those days to get ready and we were right to do it and i'm glad we took the risk and i'm grateful for all the the work that people did to make that a success now right now today we are hyper focused on april 26 so that we can launch hybrid for our secondary uh students and for those teachers and i think those teachers are every bit as eager to get back in and see their kids and teach in person um but there's a lot of work to do we have seven school days left before that and we need rosters and schedules we need subs we need cse staff in place we need all the safety mitigation locked in the way we did it with the elementary it looks more and more like we're going

161to get there if you had asked me a week ago i probably have given you lower odds but we are making progress every single day i say we i know the union's been working hard with the cabinet to solve the problems that inevitably come up when you're trying to turn a ship this big around and i'm proud of that work i'm so proud of our teachers for stepping up and taking the risks and doing the extra late tons and tons of overtime off the clock with no compensation and you couldn't stop them if you wanted to because they're all about getting ready for their students and i'm grateful for that um an example of that was mentioned earlier with the bonuses for some of the teachers that are teaching simultaneous and a quick reminder our

162mou didn't have simultaneous in it for cause simultaneous is much harder to do and in general is less effective for the students and so in our mou we agreed with the district it's not like we forced it we agreed that that wasn't best practice and then shortly thereafter as we were ramping up the teachers initiated not me teachers initiated at the elementary level that they wanted to do simultaneous and they knew it was harder but they also knew they had relationships with those students that they built over eight months and they were not ready to give those relationships up and they wanted to stay with their students and they they came at uh our own members were like ah you gotta let us do simultaneous and we did we accepted that and it um for

163zero dollars for those who wanted to do it and now as we're getting ready for secondary it just turns out we do not have enough substitutes so even though uh 250 of our secondary teachers had already agreed to do simultaneous for zero dollars the bonus is to replace all the subs that we were unable to find in order to to launch on the 26th so i i follow the csta members who are upset about that because they've worked every bit as hard as the teachers have and i won't go down the compensation road but if you happen to determine that in order to retain the current employees which is allowable under the state laws for this funding that they deserve a bonus too for sticking it out pre-authorized approve our approval is not the right

164word but we endorse that idea we're grateful for every csca member who stayed and if you end up working with them on that don't worry about hurting our feelings we already support it but the reality is if we weren't about 100 subs short that bonus probably wouldn't have been offered and if our members didn't take it we probably wouldn't be able to launch hybrid at all so i'm grateful for the state for providing money i'm grateful that we're choosing to use that money exactly the way we're supposed to which is to open schools so we can get as many kids in as possible and i'm great i'm hearing that a lot of teachers are accepting that so that's what's happening right now those that's an example that was like a monday tuesday thing that's that's

165happened this week so we could get ready seven days from now to launch going forward i i do hear parents and others talking about five days a week um i understand why you want it i want it to um that's exactly what should be happening a student should be in their schools five days a week with their you know pre-covered teaching and learning is what should be happening there are some considerations why that isn't something that can be done easily i'm not sure it can be done at all at least not done in a way that honors our commitment to safety and honors our commitment to the social emotional well-being of all of our students so our current mou which just got renegotiated that took three months to renegotiate we only have seven weeks left

166so there's a consideration we just last thursday finalized an ammo an mou on summer school and let me tell you just a little bit about that if you haven't heard about it it starts on june 7th so if you're eager to get your kid back in the classroom and two days a week isn't enough please look into our eight separate summer school programs for your students and see if one of them fits for you and get them back into school you don't have to wait until august we're gonna do our very best to provide as much summer school for every single student that we can and to the educators out there god bless your souls i know you are exhausted and if you can find it in your heart to work summer school one of

167those eight sessions don't do all eight of them that would be overkill but if you can do a few extra weeks in the summer to help these students out srta is encouraging our members to look for that and do their best to try to support a robust summer school which by the way that mou dials back some of the safety mitigation with the idea that the guidance from the state has been dialed back so as it is now guidance is three feet our summer school no use says we follow that guidance so summer school will be a dial back towards normal so if you if you're really eager as parents are i know you are please look at summer school teachers please consider it i'm considering it my wife's considering it um it's the right

168thing to do if you're not so exhausted that it's impossible and at the same time if it's impossible because you're exhausted god bless your soul and take care of yourself um august has been mentioned several times we're looking at five days all the way and i am unaware of any movement in our union who's trying to prevent that i don't know that it'll be with or without an mou i don't know about the board policy uh ar that dr kitten moore mentioned but the idea that one way or the other we are still going to need some safety mitigation or our students will not be vaccinated um a few of them will be some of the secondary ones will be but our littles won't be so it won't be a totally you know mou the

169um covert won't be gone but it might look and feel an awful lot like it used to if as governor news suggested we can you know get rid of the tears in june 15. so that's that's august we're dialing it closer and closer back to normal hoping uh and some of us are praying that we win the race with the vaccines and the variants um but it's looking better and better every day that that's what's gonna happen and the union isn't have any interest in blocking them um i also have to mention another consideration is that we still have a quarter approximately of our elementary students and it isn't finished out yet but the the writing on the wall at the moment about 50 of our secondary students are going to stay on distance learning

170for the year right so when you add those up something like approximately two-thirds of our students and when i say all of them right this is a elementary secondary district we're not trying to do what's right for one or two or ten or a hundred or a thousand students we're trying to do the very best thing we can i say we i mean all of us for every single one of those students so when we have half of our secondary students a quarter of our elementary students who are staying distance learning we have to take care of them too so the bandwidth that it would take to open up five days every day for those who want it that will directly compete with the bandwidth that we need to support the kids who are choosing

171distance learning and i would love to see the hard numbers on this i've seen them in other i've seen them regionally in state and that kind of thing i don't know what ours look like but i predict ours will look a lot like everybody else's that the families that are choosing distance learning are much more likely to be families of color and families of lower uh income and so if we're going to take our limited bandwidth i don't know if we have any left to be honest we are we are burning the midnight oil already but if we actually do have extra bandwidth to burn i hope we'll consider focusing on those distance learning students who at the elementary level by far the most students who got a new teacher when we did the switch

172those are the distance learning kits right so they need if we got banned with the support students i think we should look at the social emotional uh work to support those new teachers a lot of them are subs some of them are veterans but now they've got four five six different classes schools their class now has kids from different schools if we have extra bandwidth we should consider making sure that our distance learning kids are being taken care of for the rest of the year um the last thing i'll say is well i mentioned this the vaccines aren't over we're not done yet i read in the paper today almost 40 people in sonoma county have contracted covid after they were fully vaccinated so and they have fewer symptoms and things are better and we're

173not done yet and our kids won't have vaccines our littles we don't know when exactly they just started the trials the the predictions uh that i've heard from the past i don't know when it will actually happen um [Music] but it's it's going to be like next january so we are not and that's if we can beat the variants and we do it and it looks like we can a lot of good things are happening those are all some things to consider right so if we're gonna do and we haven't launched like i said we haven't lost secondary yet we got seven days to get that off the ground and it's it's gonna be close i think we can do it uh you have the teacher support to do it um but we are not

174it's not like we're running around twiddling our thumbs because we don't have anything to do so i definitely feel for the parents and the teachers who want to be five days right now they're they're not wrong to do that i think they may be underestimating um how difficult this work has been and in some ways that's a tribute to the people doing the work that they've been able to pull it off in a way that that looks easy if if it looks like it's easy good for everybody who works hard to make it look easy um lastly i'll say our mousse are binding yeah just in case i heard a few people say that i want to fact check that rmius are binding we operate under um eera which governs ed code and the era

175which governs educational labor law we are the exclusive bargaining representative for all of our members that's in state law we have the right to negotiate wages hours and working conditions which is what that mou is that's the negotiation doesn't mean we get to decide it means we get a seat at the table with the district and we make an agreement that agreement was ratified by 94.7 percent of our members and 100 of our school board members so and it's a good agreement it's an agreement that focuses on students and it focuses on safety and it focuses on emotional well-being of our of our students and our staff so i'll leave it there i know you guys are working as great just i know everybody's just crushing themselves to get this done i am so so

176grateful for all the work that's happening you know at the app from the admin level and the board level all the way down to our csca members who we can all agree or deserve a raise we just got to get it done um i'm really proud to be in the organization i'm glad that april 1 went so well and yeah i'm going to do everything i can and the teachers are with me on this to make sure that april 26 is just as successful for our students thank you very much for letting me i know i went a little long but just those are just so important things i'm glad i got a chance to sing to you thank you next public comment is patrick bailey uh good evening dr kitamura members of the board

177administrators my name is pat bailey um you've heard a great deal about a spring return to school i concur with everybody who is pushing for it and pushing hard i provided a detailed letter about my thought for my about my thoughts a week ago um the gist of it is i really really really want kids in in school as soon as possible uh if i was completely confident that we would be going to school in the fall full time i maybe wouldn't be as nervous but i'm still not convinced that we will be as a follow-up to the previous caller of mr lyons who emphasizes the caveats about returning to school a teacher from the french school begged to be allowed to do simultaneous teaching several months ago the previous speaker called it educational malpractice

178at the time i'm glad he's now for it private schools are doing it i have a modest proposal to simplify this logistical nightmare of returning educational uh elementary kids to school full-time let's combine cohorts go to school five or i suppose four days a week um let wednesdays be a teacher's day if if that needs to happen and let's give everyone who needs the time to focus on high school and more complicated problems let's let them do that we've practiced for a couple weeks at the elementary level and we can do it let's not act shocked that high school students are choosing remote i mean they're you know their their world is a train wreck my child in tk at cesar chavez his his school is in roseland zip code 95407 the zip code with

179the second highest covert rate in the county i live in 95401 has the fourth highest covered rate in the county i point these stats out because in spite of that 80 percent of the students at my son's school have returned to live instruction two days a week i'm shocked the number's so high the logistics of getting your kid to and from school for a four-hour day are daunting especially when there are two working parents sorry mr bailey but your time is up thank you for your comment our next public comment is sheila walkett um thank you for that this time i also want to uh just have a couple of thoughts um regarding the the parent uh or excuse me the union uh representative and uh some of his thoughts um i'd like to spend

180a couple of what i i guess a few seconds of what i have to say um we parents know what's difficult we don't need to hear that we don't understand how things operate parents that i've talked to have dropped everything they've quit their jobs they see their kids making appointments to see psychologists and psychiatrists because they're self-harming that is difficult they see that their kids can't read that is difficult they parents that i know tell me they are afraid to talk to boards like yours you know why they're afraid if they say they want their kids in school they'll be labeled as a teacher bully worse than that people are afraid to speak up because they're afraid their children will not be treated fairly in our public schools this is a crying shame open our

181schools all of them k-12 it is safe schools are open there are thousands of schools across this country that have never closed open the schools thank you miss waquette and president fong everyone who had their hand raised has had a chance to comment on this issue all right thank you thank you everyone who commented and um thank you for understanding that we allowed president lyon to do his report on this agenda item because it was pertinent to this agenda item so proximity was was better for everybody's understanding excuse me um bored it is time for discussion um vice president macquarie thanks um i just want to uh um piggyback on president lyon's um comments about the successful reopening of schools elementary schools um a week or so ago and um i got to attend of

182three of those and um it was fantastic and i think um i did hear over and over again from both administrators and teachers that i got to talk to that um there was a high level of um stress and anxiety getting to that point um but once classrooms were opened and they started to flow and drop-offs and pickups were happening um everyone was surprised uh that it went as smoothly the word i heard over and over again was smooth smoothly and um that's great and i just want to that is because of a ridiculous amount of planning that things went smoothly and so i just want to congratulate all of our administrators our classified our teachers everybody who is involved in that and of course our parents and our students who have been uh at

183least the ones i saw were just absolutely remarkable in um just abiding by this these new protocols that um are in place to keep them safe and um yeah it was really impressive and i also think um i i really hear and appreciate uh the push for more more days more time more hours um and i think we are pushing for those things um but it is a heavy lift and this is not just a light switch that we can just turn on and so um i think um kind of an unintended uh positive consequence of phasing back in like we are with the hybrid instruction at least from what i observed was um having these small um classrooms uh has been a really powerful way for teachers and students to connect face to face

184for the first time it felt manageable it felt digestible and it felt intimate and um that connection was there and i talked to several teachers about that and um so i just wanted to say that that was something positive that i saw and um i just also wanted to say that i am fully uh supportive of us being back full time in the summer which is uh four days a week i believe and uh full time five days a week in the fall um and that we should be spending our precious resources now on getting the secondary schools opened successfully like the elementary schools have done and um and then putting our resources towards going back full time with summer school and um in the fall thanks other comments uh director manny thank you um

185i i really appreciate the comments and um like uh vice president mccormick's i think we are um really trying to to think thoughtfully through this process and and how it is that that we return to five days because that that is the the goal um i've heard a lot today and not just today about the latinx community and whether or not they want to go back um and i just want to remind us all that just like any community the latinx community is diverse um and we're not a homogenous group um we don't all want to go back and we don't all want to stay in distance learning um or or want to stay in distance learning so i i just want to remind us that i think that the language that we use when

186we talk about a community is important um and so um i think that we need to be intentional about how we talk about these things and i appreciate um president juarez's comments um where he say where he's he said he stated i represent the the families who are telling me that they want to stay in distance learning as well as those who say they want five days a week and sooner um and so i i just want to uplift that that that is what he said um and to remind us all that that we're not a homogeneous group of people that have the same concerns and the same wants and the same needs and there are different realities um within our latinx community i've talked to a lot of immigrant monolingual spanish-speaking parents who have

187very different concerns from middle-class latinx families and so that's that's just one way where thoughts and opinions can differ um and so i just and and there was also a comment about the 95407 zip code and i've been doing a little bit of research into this um and i found that in in the 95407 zip code um the active case race at to this day um is 13 and um in order for for the county to move into the orange tier we need it to be between four to six percent of active case races and so um we are it's a significant disparity and we need to acknowledge that disparity and have some compassion and empathy empathy for for the families that um have real concerns i mean it's not fear that they have it's

188the reality that they live every single day and that they have been impacted by by covid and by other other experiences that have impacted their families significantly and again going back to data um we only have um so i know that at cesar chavez that the number is pretty high but when you look at cook only about 50 of students have decided to go back and when we look at it by race by ethnicity and race um and so i think that that is also telling of what is going on in our community um so again i just i just want to uplift some of the comments that were made remind everyone that the latinx community is not homogeneous and i know that there's a lot of mistrust and a lot of reasons for why

189families and community members don't um strongly feel that fall in person is going to happen um but but the the district has plans and i think that maybe what we could do a better job at is is letting the community know what what those plans are um because there is a plan for returning to in-person instruction five days a week in the fall so that's all i wanted to say and i know i've taken up a lot of time thank you director director flores yeah i don't want to take too much time i just want to echo but um director manerian and vice president mccormick have said um and i do appreciate all the work that has been you know done to get to this point and i do i would be remiss to say

190that you know we've we've gone a long way and i'm so glad that um uh you know april first was successful and we have a return to school and and we should celebrate that uh and i want to say to the parents that i spoke tonight that we hear you we do hear you and um uh the board is committed to uh to return to five days in the fall we're working diligently with um with us with our directors uh with our district to make sure that happens um and uh we're you know we're aiming towards that goal so i just want to just reiterate that part and you know something about dr uh doctor um director manier mentioned at the end and i just want to say that um so um i just want

191to take too much time on this thank you thank you any other discussion board director alegria that works for me director lori president lori um so thank you steph for your for your comments mad love um you speak for me um you know i think we've all seen kids right i i spent both mornings of the first two days um making sure kids were standing in the right lines and doing the right things and they did um and they were literally shaking with anticipation and excitement and happiness at seeing their teachers and their stu and their classmates again so i don't think that there's anything that we can deny about the power of you know being in your community um with your people and um and we're doing everything we can to make sure that

192that is available for the folks who need it and the folks who want it and we're also making sure that we're doing everything we can for the folks who need more um who need to be in distance learning who need more information who need more outreach and that is really about you know that's that's who we are as a district um we are going to do it all and it's going to be hard and it's going to be a bigger lift because our all is everything um and i'm so proud of that i'm so proud of that's who we are as a district that we can hold space that includes so many different people and i hope that that's something that we're able to celebrate instead of seeing that as something that drags us down

193um that flexibility that pride um and the beauty of what it means to be you know a really diverse district is something that um i know that we we work on every day with love and with pride um and the way in which we are approaching you know this return to school and the way that we've approached it is with the sense of you know targeted universalism right we recognize that when we focus with loving concern on communities that have been most impacted and carry the biggest burden during this pandemic and that we are actually creating a community of teachers and staff and students and all of us in here that that can hold hold that big huge space while still focusing and recognizing the needs of specific community members to have more i also

194just want to say a big thank you to dr jenny fish who came to the dloc meeting the last elect meeting and shared wonderful very grounded information with families who have been um who have been marginalized by the mainstream and who have not had you know access and true kind of dedication of our institutions to speak to them about the things that they're most concerned about and you know i think spending time in that meeting you know while we are not a monolith while we're not a homogeneous uh community the reality is that the latinx community has shouldered 60 to ninety percent of the coveted burden through this whole time and that is real and that is going to result in some feelings that are ours um for us to deal with and for us

195to face as a community because if we're not able to face those things as a community then we're really not holding each other in that same loving respect that we have for each other on this board um i want to raise my voice with my colleagues to say how dedicated we are to making sure that summer school and fall um is going to be as close to normal as we can get um and that means five days in person that's what it means and we are all working towards that goal and um and so while we hold kind of the multiplicity of you know our community in in our stability and our loving responsibility thank you for joining us with that same care and concern and respect for each other and our individualistic choices based

196on our experiences as people so thank you so much okay am i missing anyone uh director sheffield director medina i think has been waiting patiently so go ahead go ahead you know what i can't see your hand because it's like the books i i couldn't see it sorry okay um i just wanted to um take a moment and first off uh thank all the parents that are you know passionately advocating for their students um i think your passion advocacy is part of this you know important process that we call democracy i i feel very fortunate to be a board member with my colleagues that i feel are also just as passionate about ensuring that our students succeed and and i feel that we're doing all we can and i'm confident in our staff that you

197know we are implementing the the adequate process giving the limitations of both human resources and fiscal resources and all the immense amount of variables that exist out there that have to feed into the decisions we make they're not easy decisions um but i feel that that we're on the right path as hard as it may be at times so i just want to really express that confidence in in both our staff and in our path and in our journey and i feel we're headed in the right direction and again thank everybody that's passionately advocating and working on holding us accountable accountable and pushing us harder because i think we all share the same collective passion to have our students succeed and thank you to everybody and and we'll get through this and walk them out

198stronger from it thank you omar dr sheffield all right thank you um i i also i want to thank the parents who spoke tonight we heard from a lot of you and it's it's um it's your passion that is us um and you know so it's very important that we hear your voice we we hear your perspective i've heard from families who've returned to school and who are satisfied and obviously those who are not um i've heard from families who um have chosen to keep their kids in distance learning um and are facing the challenges there some with new teachers as a result i have friends who have pulled their kids out of our district during the pandemic and those who are doing their own home schooling as a result of the pandemic and i

199think that there's so many different variables that we just cannot prioritize every individual circumstance um in just the remaining weeks of the school year um alegria you talked about the targeted universalism i'm thank you so much because i'm adding this to my lexicon this is what we're trying to do in a again in a very short amount of time in in really unfortunate circumstances is how how how do we do this how do we meet all our our student and family needs um i'm committed to five-day in-person instruction doing our all doing everything prioritizing everything um this fall i want to see us take the steps to get into a robust summer program i want us to prioritize on focusing on that focusing on getting these students who who we know have missed out so

200much the school year in person instruction this summer we have more time then to really ratchet down everything to get us geared up to return and fall in full swing with the support of our staff with um the support of our community and with the support of the parents i just it's it's so sad because i'm i'm living it too i'm living it as a parent i'm living day to day seeing the damage that's done to my kids and i want every parent who's listening to know that i you know it it um [Music] and i'm a fortunate one because i have the the luxury of being able to both work from home in my regular day-to-day job and also be able to help supplement the instruction that my kids need i have an education

201background i i i i feel guilty because i'm able to do the things that i know most of our families cannot do but if we're getting back to this targeted universalism that's the only way that we can do it is is is to prioritize all and and it's going to take us steps to do that we can't just throw something together in the in the remaining weeks of the school year and think that that's going to satisfy what we know as parents what we what we know that our kids need because it's it's not it's it's going to leave them unfulfilled um and i i will stop there i just i i listening to to all of the the comments from the families especially this evening really kind of got to me and i'm i'm

202there with you i just i want to i want us to be able to do this right and i want us to prioritize everything thank you director sheffield um director many area would you like to comment again all right no sorry i just forgot to unraise my hand and uh director lopez no i my comment was almost exactly what uh director menieri and others had said um when they beat me to it so uh nothing more than an enthusiastic second to everything and to thank the parents who voice their concerns i think it's important to have public input on these decisions so i'll just close out with this um opening was joyous it was joyous i got to be on campus as well the planning that went into opening school was evidence because it was

203smooth and so many happy faces and parents you did write to us and tell us about your child being so happy to be in school and the teachers are so happy to see them as well so i know that several many parents many parents given signatures on the letter which we all took a look at really do want us to come back and you're passionate and you are our partners but as we think about it and as we have been thinking about it ever since i heard about the three foot difference the different guideline i think all this has said the same thing that i am paying attention to how we got to where we are and we've gotten to where we are with careful careful collaborative work it took a long time to get

204to where we are with and it took months right and so for us to just say we are going to move to five days a week or four days a week and you know double up no more cohorts just double up that will not get the kind of planning that we were able to give to distance learning and hybrid and when we do things in haste like that we skip over parts and when we skip over parts it's going to be a mess it just will and so i know that many parents you are seeing our neighboring school districts do this and as i've said to you in various emails and as diana said there are differences between these just those districts in our district so we are knocking it out of the park in

205terms of what we are doing for social emotional learning we have we have stressed that from the beginning we have stressed connection before content every single teacher has said that that i've ever talked to and they will continue to do that they will continue to do that in distance learning and they will continue to do that in hybrid learning because their students are their priority and we're really talking about quality quality we're delivering quality and it's not in person five days but it is school all five days and the teachers report heart and soul into this um and the mou we do not take lightly it took a long time collaborative time for us to get there and we're proud of this we're proud of this partnership that we have with our with our uh

206teachers um in csca and so parents i understand you were talking about frustration you're talking about your unhappy children and yes i can see that my children are now grown um but hearts go out to every single child in our district and we're providing for every single child and we need to move ahead and we are moving ahead so frankly here's another thing if we were to stop right now and make sure we go to five days a week it would take up all the air in the room and we wouldn't be able to do our summer work our extended learning work our fall work about how we do education differently for kids now that we know what we know about education and all the different ways we can deliver education that's where our bandwidth

207is going because we want to get better and better and better and we want to take our new learning including how we engage how we spend time together how we use tech tools so that there are many many different lanes for kids to have schooling so that's what we're focused on it's the future uh we're not going back to like same old we can't and the article that diane was talking about is an article i think that every single person which every single person should be reading it's by linda darling hammond and she'll put that link up where you can see it someplace so so parents who were working very hard to get us back to five days we i you were touching our hearts you need to provide for your child okay so that

208was a discussion item that was a long one um dr kitamura would you like to weigh in one more time no i think i was pretty clear during my report and um i appreciate the the board's direction and and focus for me and my team and i think one of the things that we can do as well as and if the board so uh desires and if it helps bring some um reassurance to our families we can bring back an item a motion for the fall um and for summer even too uh i i think that would be that will be helpful for families um my suggestion would be for the board to bring it back and do that director de la cruz yeah you know i think we've talked about before how important it

209is you know to speak to the parents concerns about transparency to continue talking about what we are doing every single meeting to come back into summer school four days a week and to make sure that we are sharing all the information about the kind of work and the kind of planning that it takes for us to be back full time in the fall and i think that that you know ongoing conversation is really critical um i understand how frustrated parents are i'm a parent of two kids who are still in distance learning i feel you um and you know and i i do think that some of those some of those concerns can be resolved when we continue to share the information about what's going on in our entire district and to clarify any misconceptions

210or you know misinterpretations of what is being said um because there's a lot going on out there in the world right now and so continuing to really put our eyes on the prize and to continue you know driving towards that goal um i i really hope we do that for the next for every single board meeting that we have is to make sure that this is on our agenda this is on our radar and this is what we are we are doing together yeah um it definitely will um you know i'm taking to heart all that has been said all the messages that have come in um the comments from the board and the direction that the board has been guiding sorry that penny in the background honey my dog um just agreeing with me

211i think um and so uh the i i will put an eye and my team will put an eye on the return to in-person school updates uh to be nimble and flexible towards what um clearing up any misconceptions um um so so yes and again back to the board about uh bringing forward an action item um that is gives comfort to our community around opening in the fall and summer school would you like me to do that it's something i'm suggesting and offering as a way to help yes okay yes we'll do that then okay sounds good all right thank you we are going to take a five-minute break um i think a couple board members are going to be leaving us for various reasons and um we'll see you at uh in five minutes

212director de la cruz feel better and better one two three four five one two three okay so i'm calling us back to order back into session so this is a reminder that we said goodbye to uh director de la cruz for um illness and to uh director omar medina for a work conflict we are on i think we need a time extension um i will make a motion that uh we extend the meeting till 11 p.m second okay so that was motioned by director mccormick vice president mccormick and seconded by uh director sheffield adina director lopez sorry lori i think we can all just say i if we agree with it for the time extension i seem to never remember whether we say i or will call all those in favor aye opposed okay 11

213o'clock is what we said thank you are on uh action item number two which is a resolution recognizing april 2021 as national library month who's got this one i do uh president thank you so much um supernate kitamura president found members of the board um we're very happy to bring forward this resolution recognizing as you said um april 20 21 is national library month um i have two people joining me tonight dr ronnie goyle who's a director in teaching and learning and steve irving who is our district librarian presenting this to you tonight so with that adina bring them over and i turn it over to dr boyle thank you dr guzman good evening everybody good evening dr kitten murrow president fong members of the board the resolution before you request approval to recognize april

214as school library month school libraries are an integral part of the culture of education as are the staff who keep our libraries open our library techs instructional material techs and the district librarian have done extraordinary work to keep school libraries relevant pre-pandemic and during the pandemic beyond a comfortable environment for students to do school work meet in groups do some research read and even find a quiet place just to be our school libraries meet the needs of students in a variety of ways such as creating diverse reading collections all our library techs and imts continue to meet the current needs of students they are also looking to the future needs of students they have surveyed students as to what the students want from their library how they use it and how they see its use

215in the future our librarians continue to reflect on what the school library is and how the library can be more than a space defined by walls to discuss the incredible work of our library techs and imts and all that they have done this year to support distance learning steve irving our district librarian will touch upon how our imts and library techs have supported students beyond the traditional library setting during the pandemic i turned it over to steve irving is steve not there he is hey steve can you oh can you hear me now yes okay sorry about that well uh thank you dr goyal dr kinnamura and the school board for considering this resolution oops uh this has been a challenging years for our school libraries and open to not being open to students but

216they have not been just our library technicians and instructional material technicians have been involved with the distribution of students to curriculum during this pandemic and assisting with making library services available to our students my gratitude goes out to the library technicians who have uh recorded with publishers permission and how to do live sessions of story times with students during this uh questioning times and thank you for your time thank you so much and with that we turn it back over to the board do we have any questions yes director sheffield just wondering why we have our library folks here with us um will there be a summer reading challenge uh this summer my boys have enjoyed that um i opportunity for you to plug and promote if you are i'm i'm sorry what kind of

217meeting this summer the summer reading challenge um that has not been discussed yet so i can't answer that i'm not sure okay but i think it's a great idea director sheffield and something that we could definitely bring back because we want our kids to be reading so we will definitely talk about that be promoting it absolutely and i do want to say that our um our county library has provided the student one card to our students so all of our students have digital access so that is something that we can definitely include in looking towards that summer reading challenge um vice president mccormick um i would just like to make a motion that we approved resolution recognizing april 2021 as national library month second and thank you for your presentation thank you and i just

218want to say one last thing i'm sorry i didn't say this earlier but you know um last week was um last tuesday was national library worker month and i sent a thank you out to all of our library texts and i sent them the quote that the most important asset in any library goes home at the library at night it's the library staff and um i just really think we should appreciate the people we have there they're doing a great job we are opening this up to public comment there is emotion on the table and seconded so let's see what public needs to say would love to say about this resolution so if you would like to comment on item e2 the resolution recognizing april as national library month please raise your hand and the

219public's pretty quiet just like they're in a library there are no hands raised um before we take that vote i would like to say i just appreciate sonoma county library and the youth librarian or the educational librarian rachel casa who was a pioneer student of mine back in that day and she's done an amazing job i'm sure she's been out to every single school more than once and she's a great resource for us too and thank you to the folks who are running our school libraries and uh taking that on um tough job and we're missing our library i mean i contacted rachel in the sonoma county library when i first heard about um you know sharing the public's libraries with school libraries and they were we were the first district uh to do that

220with uh sonoma county libraries so um i was happy we could do that and thank you to steve for taking on all the school libraries because uh we needed to get we were not able we have not been able to have school librarians and our school media teachers and that's that's a shame and we'd love to bring them back yes it would be great they're they're an asset to any school district um okay are we ready for the vote no other discussion board all right thank you dr goyle let's take that voted dina please president phong just to confirm his director flores that made the second yeah he's he's not a yes and yes okay thank you um director lopez hi director mccormick aye director flores hi director manieri i director sheffield aye president fong

221i think hi thank you thank you everyone that passes unanimously moving on to item e4 this is this discussion an update on the individual graduation plans and that's probably here's the good news as promised we wanted to bring this back to give an update to the board dr guzman will be providing that thank you dr kitamura uh president fong members of the board tonight i bring forward tim zalinardo director of teaching and learning with him will be andrea carrera she is the vice principal at santa rosa high school currently i'll be going to piner high school in the fall as their vice principal and so i'm looking forward to hearing a sort of an overview some data presented and sort of how this year will sort of end with the igp and so we look

222forward to hearing the presentation for two of them dean if you could bring them over i'd appreciate it thank you good evening hopefully you can hear and see us so thank you for having us and thank you to uh beth burke for her wonderful facilitation timing and movement of all these moving parts for our meetings thanks a lot beth so good evening superintendent kitamura fong members of the board of education as well as our deputy and assistant superintendents i hope we find you doing well and i want to publicly thank each of you on behalf of our community for your leadership in general of course but really most specifically since march 2020 um and guiding us through what has been a time of disruption due to the pandemic out of respect for the 11 o'clock

223time that was just identified i've taken some of the overview and trimmed it down a little bit so excuse my brevity but that might be just to make sure i'm respectful of the board's further discussion and action items so the disruption of the pandemic to learning is why i'm here tonight with you and i look forward to providing you a short update on the district progress with the implementation of the individualized graduation plan to begin allow me to remind you what that is it allows individual students to graduate from santa rosa city schools high schools with reduced course and credit totals and it's an attempt to offset the severity of the disruption of the pandemic to social emotional well-being and academic learning with a commensurate tool to support students during this time with that reminder

224now in place i would like to address three key items tonight so i'll take you through three key things for update i'll begin by discussing a little bit of what's what it's taken to implement the igp individualized graduation plan at which point i'll let mrs caria speak a little bit to the um specific facts of how it looks at a particular high school then i'll go over a little bit of the challenges that we've encountered and then i'll cover kind of next steps so first allow me to begin by articulating and explaining the profound appreciation i have for all levels of our institution it goes all the way from our board of education its support of the igp through our office district office staff and leadership to work on policy and implementation all the way

225to our site level every single administrator every single counselor every single college and career counselor every single classified staff member who helps communicate with families and helps us track information about the igp in our student information system so it really does take in this case a whole community and it takes every single one of those individuals to help the igp implementation take place but to speak to the specifics in a three to four minute explanation of what it takes at an actual school i'll turn it over to miss korea for a snapshot of santa rosa high school and their implementation thanks mr zalinardo i'll do my best to keep it to three to four minutes uh good evening board thanks for having me this evening to talk about the individualized graduation plan which is a

226little bit near and dear to my heart and something that we worked pretty hard on at santa rosa high school and when it came to be possible i know that i speak for our counseling department and all the counselors in santa rosa city schools at the secondary level when we say that it was just a godsend and something that we could look forward to and and uh just gave us some positive outlook on a year that's been pretty crazy and so just to give you a brief glimpse of what the igp has entailed at the high school level uh it really does take the entire counseling department all administration and our classified staff and so we have eight counselors at santa rosa high school in 1900 students approximately 400 of them are seniors and so

227what our counselors had to do is really go into every single senior on their caseload and do a transcript transcript analysis and what that looked like is really looking at what they've taken what has um been approved for a3g what has been approved for graduation and then identifying what they still needed what they're enrolled in and what um they may not be able to make or accomplish throughout this school year and what we need to help them and facilitate that igp with and so once the counselors were able to get that done and that entailed not only looking at transcripts but meeting with families having zoom meetings going back and forth in email getting approvals getting agreements for all of their seniors and most counselors typically have about 50 to 75 seniors on their caseload

228especially at a comprehensive high school then that was the paperwork and so our paperwork we really tried to be very clear about our paperwork and we kept it within um the virtual world in google and thankfully we have wonderful classified staff in the counseling office that were able to hold that paperwork for us we created a google spreadsheet where we itemized all of that information and kept it in the same space and then our registrar had to go into all of those transcripts and really identify who needed jc transcripts or who needed byu transcripts or cyber high and really clarify all of that and then get back to the counselors on that and then once all that was done for students that were on the option two of the igp they had to be enrolled

229in the life ready course and that life ready course had to be created and built and thankfully our college and career counselors at every site have done a wonderful job of helping to facilitate that class and working with those students in that ig in in that life ready course and at santa rosa high school we have 70 students that are participating in that life ready course and so the college and career council has really done a lot of heavy lifting with those students to get them through the course and to make sure that they answer questions about the fafsa or getting into the jc and doing that application or doing applications for jobs or whatever it would be that they needed help with so it's definitely been a team effort but i will say that

230if i could just thank all of the high school counselors who have jumped on this um taken on this extra role and it has been just so much work for them and i know that i i firmly believe we have the most wonderful counseling staff in all of our secondary high schools as well as our elementary middle schools and i'm so thankful that they agreed to participate because without them we would not have been able to do any of this great thank you for that overview from a site perspective the mystery of course will stay with us and be able to answer any questions at the end so it's important to acknowledge that the um fact and the board of education knows this is this is ongoing work the igp is not implemented it's being

231implemented since um kind of december when it first was kind of imagined all the way till now is continuing to be implemented and rolled out what that means is the transcript analysis is continuing because in the second semester interim progress reports and semester i'm sorry and quarter grades are being input and at those punctuated times all of the information that was already reviewed that ms korea laid out has to be re-reviewed with a very close eye to see where students stand and then if an individual student because of its because of their individual circumstances needs at that point to get involved with the igp process that's when the contact begins and the process starts all over again for that individual student and so it's continually being implemented which means if you've looked at the data

232over the course of the semester you might have noticed numbers changing they change because the igp is a living process for our students and to support them that means when appropriate students may end up becoming eligible and may end up signing to complete the igp number two despite all the loving efforts and the hard work that mrs korea outlined of course there's challenges during the pandemic i'll go through the most key ones for you social emotional academic struggle with the pandemic are real and they continue that's definitely one of them a second one logistical barriers caused by remote and digital communication are often and can be barriers to getting through to the igp being implemented with an individual student especially when you're having to help people navigate the complexities of really large public institutions forced

233to go to unnatural environments for them to interact in like public schooling current federal legislation being proposed even right now suggests 100 billion dollars yes i'm going to repeat that 100 billion dollars for high-speed reliable broadband internet which we all wish we had in place in march 2020 when our nation was forced to go into a pandemic induced distance learning environment it's those kind of infrastructure improvements for the public and families that have not been in place previously that would have mitigated some of our ability and would mitigate some of our ongoing ability to make sure the igp gets completely implemented with all students lastly students who might be struggling because of intermittent connection to their learning disruptions in families and maybe living conditions those take a heavy toll and sometimes students will surface they'll

234kind of engage with us they'll sign and say yes i'm going to get the igp done and despite the best intentions some of the disruption and the kind of lack of coherence in their year causes that to slip back and then that re-engagement kind of comes up as a challenge those are some real challenges i wanted to make sure you were aware of those also though it isn't always just that we hit a challenge of something we can't figure out sometimes we challenge ourselves some students when you look at the data have not signed for igp because they've explicitly told their counselor they want to work out a way to get to 220 credits and they're willing to do the heavy lift of some credit recovery and some extra academic effort that many people would

235say whoa that might be too much but they say no i want it so we're there to support them and we do not of course make them take the igp we support them with their own learning program so that's two of the three the last thing i said i'd share with you tonight is that while acknowledging all these challenges it's important to go back and stress again the work of the support for students that's ongoing sanjed i explained earlier the igp will extend through our summer learning programs in our online credit recovery cyber high program to make sure that we extend time for current seniors to be able to make the best use of it so it goes through summer 2021. also please do know that the current information about our juniors who will be

236our rising 12th graders srcs departments will analyze and look at grade and credit accumulations after semester two that's the time in which credits get accrued semester one and two and that data then will cause us to consider is a narrower reduced minimized igp version 2.0 even a necessity and we will bring information in the fall of 2021 to the board around that topic so as i wrap up here i want to again thank you for your patience and providing us the opportunity to provide you an update i want to succinctly point out that all of the quantitative data should be considered carefully as numbers are going to differ between schools different circumstances and behind every number there's an individual story for example if you look at maria creole high school and their total number of

237students eligible it ends up being about 12.3 percent of the total students who are eligible for the igp of the senior class so any other percentage of representation in the data can seem fairly large for a very small sub slice and most importantly i want to conclude by affirming something that's really important the igp reflects the santa rosa city schools district its personnel our students our families and our community and how does it do that it deeply mirrors creativity it mirrors perseverance thoughtfulness grit determination and the fact that every individual of every age i come across including the arts charter youngsters i got to see at the return to school on april 1st that no matter who i interact with they place humanism and empathy first and with that i turn it back to assistant

238superintendent dr guzman thank you thank you tim and andrea for your perspectives and thoughtful uh presentation about the igp something we should be very proud of as a district um being able to provide this opportunity and with that i turn it back over to the board remember questions and i see director flores yeah first of all thank you for this very thorough um analysis um uh looking at the data uh thank you for mentioning that it's a living document because i did i did see the change through time and i had a discussion with um superintendent kitten mora thank you for addressing that uh but looking at the numbers that did change right every single high school did change you know a couple of it went from a couple to like maybe 10 extra students

239from our last board meeting to until now except for maria mario korea high school so that one didn't change so that's one of my questions as to you know is that just an outlier or is there is or is it something else in in that high school so that's question number one do you want me to just ask you my questions and then you can answer those because i have like three how about we just start with the first one if that's okay and i'll respond if that if that works for you thank you for the question first of all and i'm glad that some of the information provided helped you clear up other ones you may have had i appreciate that i'm glad we provide that to you so i did speak to maria

240creo high school specifically mr flores and i did ask kind of about their particular unique story and their vice principal did state with me very clearly that they have been very busy still contacting and working with students but some students at maria crew have said no thank you to the signing of the document so that number hasn't gone up that's because the students have intentionally as i referred to earlier said no i i think i'm within shooting range of this 220 and i want to make that happen even if i have to do a little extra on credit recovery here so that that has been a particular nuance there thank you for asking and the uh another question that popped up uh based on what and um ms correira said is uh at santa rosa

241high school for example there are 70 students in taking the uh the course out of the so um that are eligible so um so i'm assuming that's a trend throughout the district that not all of the students were eligible for taking the uh course can you speak a little bit as to you know what are we doing to make sure we reach out to the students that are not in the courses okay so the 89 that we have on our list are eligible students for the igp it does not mean that they've signed the paperwork it's not until a student signs the paperwork that we actually enroll them in the life ready course that's an agreement that we have with the family and the parents that they will fulfill that life-ready course and complete the

242igp so it could if you go into our if you go into our numbers if you go into the names of the students you'll notice that there are men there are i think about 11 that um did not sign the paperwork yet because we're waiting we're waiting for transcripts from another school we're waiting for jc transcripts we're waiting for other things before we um before we really confirm that the igp is necessary or needed but we put them on the list because we were asked to put all of our eligible students based on the information that we have right now that's one reason another reason is because seven of our students are on level they're on the option one which is not needed for the for the life ready course so they are getting the

243igp and they're going to graduate with 180 or more credits and they will be a through g so they do not need to take the life ready course so you may find that some of the classes some of the schools have students and i know maria creo has a majority of the students that are on the option one igp where they would not need that life ready course okay that's that's clear thank you thank you no problem uh let's see here uh and three well you know the other thing that i noticed is that uh every single school except i do there is one outlier here it's still struggling and making sure that you know uh students are signed up students who are eligible are signed up except for richway i mean richway last month

244had a rich weight high school 59 out of 59. eligible and signed up and then for this report you had 69 out of 69 so that's 100 of the kids that's the only high school that has that so my question to you is what is it that ridgeway is doing to reach out to a hundred percent of the families and students that the other high schools may need the extra support to do that i i can speak to that if you'd like so i think rich which way has a unique capacity in the sense that the students who go to school there make agreements on attendance and behavior and participation and i think that because it's a smaller group of students they have no more than i don't know the number exactly but i want

245to say about 249 students or 250 approximately in the school they have much closer relationship i think which is wonderful it's great and the counselors are meeting with those students all the time they have advisory once a week um and so i think that the relationship that those students have with the staff both classified and administrative in the counseling staff is a little bit different and unique to what we would have at a comprehensive high school where our counselors have up to 400 students on their caseload and so i think that that might play a role in that at ridgeway and as well every student at ridgeway is in credit recovery and so therefore most likely would be eligible for the igp because they're already at an alternative high school trying to get that credit

246recovery within the periods that they have and within the variable credits that they receive at ridgeway and at a comprehensive high school we do not have variable credits mr thank you for those uh perspectives and mr flores it's a good question and one that i have asked myself i do think that there is a lot of credibility in miss korea's statement that because of the ongoing credit recovery conversations that occur at ridgeway it may have been much more quick that students were aware of that opportunity just because of their quick turnaround and they're already tracking that in a minutia detail way that comprehensives don't have the turnover of the same data as quickly also number two that is just on the information that has been reported to us from the counseling team on the administrative

247team and so kudos to them and i'm glad that they have that unique system and the turnover of classes are a little quicker and the credit recovery is different and the communication about it that it was able to be followed up on so quickly and lastly i think i have more questions that i thought lastly you know looking at the data it looks like once you start looking at the the different demographics right we have our latinx community uh disproportionately represented in in these right so you have lc allen it's 88.5 uh maria uh montgomery is 51 of those eligible right so uh are we differentiating or are we doing something differently to make sure that we are reaching out to our latinx community because it looks well i mean are we doing something different

248to make sure that those students are being reached i'll let mrs crea give a school site perspective in just a sec thank you for that question so just so you're aware obviously counselors take each individual student that they're supporting really personally which i appreciate whenever i come across them it's a very personal thing so they see it as their job to get through to students and they use our full array of resources that we are fortunate have which could be your family engagement facilitators themselves another classified personnel maybe there's a double outreach and as i've looked through the list there are some notes mr flores next to students names and they typically kind of have notes they're having trouble contacting how many times they've tried and what's going on that's very helpful to me i

249think it's just followed up on a one by one basis with counselors and their students and then they marshal the staff under the support of the vice principal to do extra outreach with those students who need it and they're working really in that guise of i am the counselor supporting this individual student and then i'm the counselor supporting this individual student let me do my best contact from a site perspective yeah i would agree with that mr zolinardo i think that i can say 100 percent that the counselors across our district have gone over and above trying to contact families that they've made multiple phone calls we have our family engagement facilitators making those phone calls we have at san rosa high we have an amazing restorative response specialist who is also bilingual and works

250with our counseling department to help make those phone calls i think that um you know every school has a different demographic we're not all the same and so the numbers that you see at lc allen would be different than you would see at maybe another school but i think that um the counseling department and the sites are they have tried they have really tried and it hasn't been until we've made those you know attempts five six seven times documented those attempts that we would put down on our igp eligibility list like we cannot contact this family and unfortunately one of the ways that we used to contact families is through our welfare checks and with the pandemic and and we have not been able to do that we have not been able to go out

251and knock on doors and try to make contact that way and that has limited us and so um if we were able to do those welfare checks we probably wouldn't need an igp and we'd all be back in school so i think that you know you have to take that good with the bad and and i think that the counselors are really working hard the sites are working hard and um every student that is eligible has been identified at every site i can i can say that absolutely and the ones that have not been able to make contact with these are students that have not showed up all year we've tried multiple different ways to make contact and we just have been unsuccessful and i'll add mr flores to this final thing so that we

252are thorough in response to your questions which i appreciate um in looking at the dashboard for elsie allen for example and their statistics you'll see that currently for their current information their ethnicity group percentages are fairly close to the um information that's in our igp information as well so in this case that's pretty accurate to where they are their general numbers um hope that helps and thank you for the questions again we appreciate them well thank you yeah you're welcome i don't see any other hands up am i missing anybody speak up all right we're going to bring this to public comment so if you'd like to make a public comment on item e4 the update on individual graduation plans please raise your hand and there are no hands raised all right so let's bring

253it back to the board for discussion and um it's just this discussion any other discussion i i just want to say thank you for all of the work that you're doing to try to reach students and you know the data that we got today about how many students we haven't been able to reach and the discharge is is really concerning and alarming and i'm just really grateful that there are staff at at different levels trying to reach students i just want to say thank you for for the work that you're doing it's really important you're welcome thank you for your support and thank you tim and andrea i just also um appreciate this work i appreciate the individualized graduation plans but i want to think about how we move it to individualized educational plans for

254every single student because when we're talking about getting a kid k-12 through k-12 the very best we can possibly do it it takes that kind of individualized attention one at a time is teaching teaching and engagement is one at a time right and um that's what kids need they need that individualized attention so that we can get everyone to the success level that that we are looking for for them and they really want and more some kids need more attention than others and we all know that and that's the equity piece so i would love i'd love to i'm glad that we're going to have the igp with a 2.0 is what you said jim i'm going to shrug at that and say we're going to look and see if it's even necessary and if

255it is what that scale should even be to be appropriate but then we have to trace it back let's trace it back why are they in this okay besides the pandemic because there are plenty of kids in this in this whether it's pandemic or not so let's trace it back where where are we going south where can we make sure that we intervene so i know that's been our work that's the whole um mtss you know system um director sheffield your hands up i just wanted to add and thank you again for the for the update here um i'm i'm just wondering time permitting uh between now and the in the weeks ahead next next board meeting can we get updates on the numbers of participants it would be great to see you know be

256able to track the progress of um of our outreach um plan i guess that might come to us diane if you but just wanting to you know i'm not talking daily but it sure would be nice to see if we're if we're successfully reaching more and more students in general or for the itunes funeral that's yeah yeah no definitely um that and also as i was speaking about earlier uh different ways in which to connect we just have to let go of the ways that we've been connecting and grab a hold of ways that we know yeah so sure right yeah no definitely i i do want to say before you close is uh a huge appreciation to andrew curran and dr kimberly plusselt who really were the um originators the innovators about this idea

257and taking the risk to come to us as district admin and say what about this and you know really kind of keeping honest to not let it go and so um you're down in my corners and also i'm looking down in the corner andrea i am in your corner you are and so i i just i couldn't i can't leave tonight without really giving them some major major major kudos for um just just doing this and deeply because of deeply caring about kids and what happens to them so i appreciate it thank thank you miss correa thank you i'm dr clissel yes dr klissel yes thank you so much all right thank you for your time tonight have a nice evening thanks you too thanks you guys thank you all right we are moving on

258to uh number five e5 that is the lcap timeline and uh let's keep an eye on our clock okay we have 45 minutes right right on with uh dr guzman yes the lcap timeline and our lcap goals align to the mission vision priorities and so take it away yes thank you so much dr kitamura president falling members of the board um i did provide you a bit of a background since 2013 we obviously have been funded differently with lcf dollars which then makes us have to create an lcap local control accountability plan and what's really exciting for us is that in the past we used to have to do two different outcaps because we're two different districts we've again been given permission to have one el cap for the next year and so that's hugely

259exciting um as you know these are special dollars for special scholars and so we have to make sure that we're adhering to the eight areas um with the three categories of conditions of learning people outcomes and engagement this last year obviously due to covid we sort of had a bit of a pause in which we did have to do some updates but nothing as extensive as the actual lcap so moving forward you can see that we will be utilizing our youth truth data and having conversations with dlac and dak and also working with both of our bargaining units to be able to really engage in a new process with new goals and as dr kitamura stated these goals are aligned with your mission and vision priorities and we're very proud that we are sort of

260taking our old goals which in a lot of ways were very siloed um one sort of that looked at academics and one that looked at social emotional and really adhering to our mission around mtss and seeing that these are something that we have to integrate together to make sure that we are addressing the whole student so these three goals with our bullets are provided here for you and you can see that we beg borrowed and stealed from your language in the mission vision priorities but i think there are very strong goals these three goals that really are going to address the needs of what has occurred and what is also going to need to change as dr kitamura talked about sort of with our thinking around some of our great takeaways from this last year

261and how we need to address our students and so we're very excited um to work with these new goals and and to align them in a different way than we have done in the past and so with that i turn it back over to the board um director sheffield do you have a question or is that a leftover hand up all right no other questions let's open it to public comment so if members of the public would like to comment on item e5 the lcap timeline please raise your hand at this time glass call for e5 and there are no hands any discussion board i thank you dr gusman and i'm looking forward to hearing more about what's happening and i really appreciate how um gosh being in this district for so long that i

262really feel that this that our mission vision is um a live document that we are using it is so connected all the time in the past it hasn't been so much that way so um thank you for making that happen thank you and thank you guys for working so hard on such a amazing document and a foundation for our district okay while you're here i want to make one comment unrelated to this um i know that on the information item you have um college career centers update yes so there's a whole presentation there with a entire presentation put on by the counselors the career counselors i think especially heidi pedrozetti correct um tracy belchelder and um [Music] paige paige wilson i want to make sure that we give them credit for having that report and

263i encourage my uh colleagues to take a look at that college and career report which is um that's a great entity and i know when it got started back in 2015 with diane's under diane's guidance and it's it's a great thing solid it is a great thing and it will continue in our elk because it's been such a an integral part of just helping students as they prepare for college and career and again it's truly that whole through line of mtss and wrap-around services for kids so i do really credit dr kitamura's leadership when she was in this role and and debbie cardozo to really making this happen that's right principal cardoza when she was the cte uh director i think okay thanks colleagues for letting me just jump in on that um all right

264let's move to um number six action item acceptance yeah so um before i turn it over to to rick um edson i just want to note that we we were planning and there are other items that we're planning to do as actual reports but we're attaching them in the information because we fear we're going to run out of time during the school year um it's because our meetings are running so much longer and with so much dialogue so just note that would be something that we would actually do a presentation on but we want you to have the information so thus it's in the information items okay second uh now is um um was like who's in our meeting wants our auditors but you wasn't quite sure who you were so uh because i looked

265down and i was going to my doctor i'm going to have to ban you i don't know who you are so sorry i'm going to turn this over to deputy superintendent edson and i'm just going to do this and then he's going to explain why i'm doing this uh in the meeting so thank you uh superintendent kitamura members of the board and the community who is still remaining tonight we are presenting the 2019-20 uh independent audit report for acceptance to the board of education uh joining me tonight uh is our executive director uh fiscal joltantos and ex uh also paul pham uh who i think he's well like the vice president of everything at shaw siobhan and associates uh our auditor um who we've worked with for for a couple of years now uh i'm

266not going to pull up the audit report and go through the 113 pages with you tonight um there are a couple of key things that i want to point out that the audit does look at our um our financial situation along with our federal funds and state funds uh and what we're doing uh as a district in terms of internal controls uh and due diligence um through uh the fiscal requirements that we have to meet on an annual basis uh and it's bigger than just jill's department going through it it's child nutrition services it's calpads state and federal programs it's attendance monitoring as well as purchasing procurement and bidding practices that are evaluated through this process um and it wasn't too many years ago um that we would present the audit uh sales marissa schools

267went to the board uh where there was at times multiple pages of findings uh question cost uh calpads errors things that took place that either made us give back money or money wasn't coming to us uh so it's uh through the work of staff uh through the work of improved process and procedures that were presenting the 2019-20 audit with zero findings uh and an unmodified report uh from paul uh and cheltenham and siobhan and associates uh and with that um i'd like to also note uh that in the back of the audience about eight pages um that are of prior year findings uh that you will also notice hall all of those have been implemented as well uh so there was no findings that carry forward to this year um so before i asked paul

268to say a couple of things and be available for questions from the board i just like to give a huge thanks to joel dauntos and the fiscal services team uh the other departments that played a huge role in this including our data department um our attendance program safe state and federal uh and last and certainly not least our school site administrators and classified staff uh that help us with this process so with that i'll turn it over to paul for uh any comment thank you rick and uh thank you dr kitamura and the board for inviting me out to share the results with you and i am happy to report that yes everything rick said is absolutely correct you guys have done a great job over the past few years of making improvements in the

269internal controls and processes and uh i want to thank joe and his team for the hard work because you know with the coveted restrictions i mean not only having to clear the findings i mean and implementing the uh the corrective action plans we recommended uh you know they they had to deal with covet related stuff so definitely a lot to be commended for for joe and his team and rick and uh and that's across the board you know like rick said it did cross uh multiple departments and so it's not just the finance department but uh yeah to get those uh all the findings cleared it did take a lot of coordination by everybody and had a lot of commitment to make sure that things were being done properly uh so i would just go

270straight to the results but at the end i'll take questions and if anybody wants me to go over standard scope or audit process or any key numbers i'd be more than happy to do that but as far as the results for the financial statements we issued unmodified opinion which is a good thing which means that the financial statements were fairly presented in all material respects with the internal controls over financial reporting and on compliance our audit did not identify any deficiencies in internal control over financial reporting that we consider to be material weaknesses our tests disclose no instances of non-compliance or other matters that are required to be reported under governmental auditing standards and with respect to compliance the district complied in all material respects with the compliance requirements of state programs and so overall

271we had no significant other corrective misstatements no difficulties during the audit other than uh the covert related restrictions so we did end up doing a lot of the work remotely there were no disagreements with management so overall a very good and clean audit and i want to thank joe and his team for the hard work uh assisting us through all of that with that i'll uh take questions or go over anything anybody wants me to cover thanks thanks paul i appreciate you being here uh at this hour uh and we'll turn it back over to the board for uh any questions thank you very much and yes thank you for being here so late with us questions from the board um let's take any comments from the public so this is public comment on item

272e6 um the 2019-2020 independent audit report any members of the public would like to comment please raise your hand and president fong there are no hands raised further comments board stephanie manieri mr everflores um i was just gonna move to accept the 2019-2020 independent audit report second move by stephanie mannier seconded by jill mccormick and uh director flores says hannah for just a comment uh yes uh quick you know i i've been going to a lot of board meetings you know for for every long time and i just want to commend you for for your work here it's it's it's it's good to see that there were no recommendations uh so i just want to say good good job joel the whole team paul um uh where's you're here rick edson sorry so i just

273want to say you know great job you all i was i was in shock i was like what so thank you i'm gonna echo that i've been listening to board a lot of reports forever and i read every page not um to be graded at a plus in public like this congratulations to joel dantos rick edson your team congratulations all right so we have uh a motion before us with a second can we get that uh a vote please dr lopez i director moneeri aye director mccormick aye director sheffield aye director flores aye president phong hi thank you thank you very much to our auditor paul i i just i i just want to say that um in my 38 years uh career in education this is the first time i've been a part of

274an audit where i worked that had no findings so you guys are really giving me a wonderful gift as i retire to have the last audit that i'm a part of be zero findings so is that what zero was right with your eyes that's what this was thank you joel thank you rick and thank you a plus a plus good job have a good evening thank you thanks paul all right we are now at the consent items and we need to uh do number one first approval of absent board members we're going to do two different ones and uh it's going to be a roll call vote for alegria daily cruz who is ill oh how do we how do we make this question diane do you approve the motion yeah you make him yeah

275to prove right right approve the absence of alegria de la cruz um we need a real call vote for dina or make a motion make a motion that so like i i move to approve the absence of direction correct okay so that was uh director manieri and uh director mccormick director lopez aye director moneery i director mccormick i director sheffield aye director flores hi president phong hi all right so the next one is uh the approval of absent board member omar medina and he had a work conflict and that is not a board policy approved absence so you don't need to do emotion on it it just is what it is it's only the ones where you need to declare it a a qualified absence so do we have one record that he is absent

276yes yes adina made it in the put it in the minutes of when he had okay thank you and so that leaves us consent items two through eight and then ten through eleven because number nine was duplicative number ten correct correct move to approve f items two through eight and ten and eleven second so that would be um direct mccormick and director sheffield was the second director lopez aye director mccormick aye director sheffield aye director monterey aye director flores aye president fong hi thank you um approval of the minutes we have two to approve this is the first one was the regular board meeting for march 10th 2021 uh move to the approval of minutes of the regular board meeting held on march 2021 second thank you that was um vice president mccormick and director

277sheffield director lopez i'm director mccormick aye director sheffield aye director monterey aye director flores aye president fong hi thank you uh g2's approval of the minutes of the special board meeting held on march 17 2021 uh move to the approval of the minutes the special board meeting held on march 17 that was confusing uh director vice president mccormick and then i'm going to give it to um director flores director lopez aye director mccormick aye director flores aye director moneeri aye director sheffield aye president phong i thank you that passes are there any board member requests for information seeing none just remember to we are referring you to the information items and dr q tamora would you like to say any closing comments um no i i don't i think everybody i think just uh note

278that um the special meeting uh there will be a special meeting sorry on the 19th and i got some questions about the last special meeting like what's going on why are you having a special meeting and so i just want to be very transparent that this uh next meeting on the 19th a special meeting that you will see um are interviews for your new superintendent potentially so that's what the 19th is and then otherwise we'll see you at our regular board meeting on the 20 i think fourth something like that so okay 20 something but that's it thank you all right thank you everybody have a good night yes director chef are you waving goodbye you want to say something okay kissing goodbye adjourned