001we are now live all right so this is the opening of the Santa Rosa city school board meeting for June 24th and we will open with the Pledge of Allegiance together as a community would you please stand and pledge allegiance to the flag with us I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible and Liberty with liberty and justice for all thank you everyone for being here tonight and as usual I want to spend just a minute grounding us in our work together tonight as a community as a board and I'd like like to offer that we are an unprecedented time of change We are continuing to be in such a CH time of change and it continues to
002evolve and change with new things coming up all the time um and we know that the unheard and we know that the Unseen and we know that the ignored and we know that the oppressed are being heard now and they need to be heard they're starting to share their voices um I've been in I've been in around for a long time and as a youth you know my voice was out there too and I felt my voice was being ignored but we just had to be louder and we continue on and we continue on our whole lives um I think that we have to realize that this isn't a zero some game and that there are not winners and losers in this game it's not a game at all it's to um Elevate all of
003our all of our situations for the good of our kids because we are in that for the good of the good of our kids and I also want to um reiterate again that we must listen and we must listen to understand and we must hold our own perceptions we have our perceptions we know our perceptions and the important thing is that we walk in other people's shoes and that is how we build community and that is how we build relationships and so with that I urge all of us tonight to keep that in mind as we go through this very important meeting tonight thank you all right where there were no actions in close session um for there are no actions taken in close session we are on C3 we are looking at items considered
004in Clos session for action and Open Session and I'm going to um ask for a motion on student readmissions I move that we accept the recommendation on the student readmissions for case 2018 1946 can I list them all or we do them individually can I list them all I think you can list them all we okay and then 2039 we do them individually I believe they have to be done individually legal so uh I move that we accept the recommendation for student student readmission on case 2018 1946 I'll second okay so that was uh director McCormick and seconded by uh director Sheffield director McCormack hi director Sheffield hi director manary hi director De La Cruz I director close hi director Medina hi president Fong hi next case I move that we accept the recommendation for
005case 201923 I'll second again director McCormick and director Sheffield director McCormack hi director Sheffield hi director manary hi Director D La Cruz I director close I director Medina I hi president Fong hi I move we accept the recommendation on case second thank you director M director shefield director McCormick hi director Sheffield hi director manary hi director DEA Cruz I director close director close hi director Medina I president Fong I and I move that we recommend the or accept the recommendation on case second thank you Dr McCormack I director Sheffield I director Manny AR hi director DEA Cruz I director close I director Medina I president Fong I thank you we're on item C4 are there any statements of exstension seeing none item C5 are do we have any adjustments to the agenda seeing none we
006are now open for public comment and I'm going to say something about public these are public comments on items not on the agenda tonight um there are instructions on the website for to give public comment during our remote board meeting but I'm sure if you're making a comment now you might have already figured that out and so at the last meeting because Zoom is such a different platform than inperson uh I have limited the comments to two minutes and um I am limiting tonight our comments to 1 hour on any particular subject so if we have public comments tonight on any subject whatsoever it is limited to 1 hour and for every agenda item after that it will be limited to 1 hour we want to get as many people in to speak as possible
007all right so um moderator do we have any public comments for us tonight we do have some comments uh we have some hands raised if if you'd like to comment on non-agenda items something that's not on the agenda please click the raiseed hand at the bottom of your screen and we'll let you know when it's your turn to speak please keep your comments to what president Fong how long two minutes two minutes please the first public comment is someone named Tommy Tommy could you state your full name for the record and please unmute your audio Tommy are you there please unmute your audio all right we're going to have to come back to You Tommy we can't hear anything please raise your hand again our next public comment is John Jackson do I talk now
008yes you do thank you okay you well I I wanted to thank the C Roa City School Board of Education for the opportunity to make my comments three of your members uh Lori Jill and Steve I've personally worked with in the past at Piner high school I'm going on my 32nd year of teaching in San Rosa City School the last 29 years of them being at uh Piner and I have a concern that I'd like to bring uh to the Board of Education during the recent distant learning it became evident to me that some of uh the students took advantage of the learning While others did not or some didn't have the opportunity some of my students had to take care of the younger siblings I remember one student who only came once uh to
009the meeting and or our class meetings and she was bottle feeding a one-year-old sibling uh I assumed her parents were at work uh there were others who didn't have the technology and still others who uh did not receive the support from their home to continue in the distance learning I say all this is a a backdrop because by not having school on our campuses this fall this is nothing more than a form of racism those families with money and with technology will have no problem with distance learning however some of our those of or low income will struggle and what will the result be the gap between the Haves and the Have Nots will only increase I guess the question is are we willing to do something to lessen that Gap in our city regarding
010education and my proposal would be to have those schools in our district where parents want their kids to stay home due to their ability to provide adequate technology and concerns or if they have concerns over the Corona virus let them and however those that can't do this Shuffle the students around to our schools where smaller class sizes uh for Learning and take place as as well as those could catch up uh we as oper we as Educators have uh the opportunity to do something I think other than just talking about it I'd like to see these kids back where we can deal with them where they're not hindered from learning anymore thank you thank you John and our next public comment is Denise Ayah Yen please unmute your audio hello there can you hear me
011right yes we can hi so my name is Denise Ilah Yen I'm a parent and a teacher if schools were to reopen with in-person hybrid learning while adhering to to covid-19 safety precautions there would need to be a plan that also aligns with active shooter precautions and drills as of right now covid-19 safety measures and active shooter safety training that teachers and staff received in recent years directly conflict whereas in the past masks were not permitted at school for identification purposes now masks are necessary to limit contamination where single points of Ingress and egress were deemed necessary to limit campus access now multiple points of entry and exit take priority to limit interaction where drills once required students to Cluster now students and staff must maintain social distance local and National statistics show increased depression
012anxiety domestic abuse among our Societies in addition to Growing racial tensions and civil unrest so I am highly concerned that the environment is ripe for an incident we all of us do not want and that we are unprepared and lacking a plan as to how active shooter precautions dovetail into safe School hybrid reopening strategies so my question is how will active shooter precautions meet covid-19 precautions I'm eager to have a proactive procedures so that we are all physically and mentally prepared to best manage ourselves and our students active shoed precautions need to remain a part of the conversation if any hybrid reopening model is further considered and while covid-19 health and safety requirements AR in effect for our schools thank you so much for your time thank you Janise our next public comment is Micah
013Carlin Goldberg uh good evening my name is Micah Carin Goldberg I'm a sixth grade teacher at stean elementary um I wanted to say thank you to the school board uh and to The District administration for working with SRTA around uh how we're gonna how school is going to look in the fall I've been participating in that from the SRTA side from the beginning and it's been nice to have the level of communication that we've had I do have a couple of concerns um my concern is that the people's need for daycare is going to overwhelm our need to keep our students their families and our community safe and that quote the economy and families needs to have daycare are going to push our state our County and our school district to accept guidelines that put
014too many students in our schools with not enough precautions we are already short staffed on custodial on custodial staff I have no idea how they're going to manage to clean as much as the guidelines that we're looking at will require where's the funding for additional staff where are the people who will take those jobs at the rates of pay that we're willing to pay which is way too low um so I'd like us to think about that so that we actually can safely open in the fall additionally last month I spoke to you about the fact that the only srcs employees who are not being paid were not being paid dur in the Clos Ure was our daily substitutes and I have yet to see anything that says that we've taken care of our people
015no matter what way we look at opening in the fall we're going to need substitutes because CO's not seconds we're gonna need subs and they're probably not GNA want to come back since we left them high and dry when we closed thank you thank you Micah our next public comment is dele Carmona Benson hello I'm the the vice president of UB which is uplifting black leaders and I'm also a strong member of the BSU at srjc and I want to tell you that from experience kova left even the college students that are disadvantaged behind I myself am a re-entry student 50 years old going back to school the first semester despite the fires and the shutdowns and whatnot I still arose a 4.0 student kova left us all behind those who didn't have computers those
016that couldn't uh learn to zoom and and the teachers weren't prepared I mean it was just a holy ter mess I end up at the end mostly getting W's and having to drop the majority of my classes I don't understand how you're going to be able to facilitate all the kids going back to school without all the safety measures in place when you already were undercut and underst staffed um my concern will be what children now are going to be left behind yet again what disadvantaged students what students of colors are also going to be left behind the next um point of interest is having to make sure that our future students have some ethnic studies in their curriculum so that they learn that this movement that's even going on right now is a course
017of change of History it's time it's time that we start teaching all students ethnic studies why should they have to wait till College to find out that Christopher Columbus is a dirt bag like why are we continually teaching our children lies de we black lives matters de can you hear me yes we will be taking up ethic studies later on in our meeting and you're invited to comment again on that okay I will bring that up but I am really concerned also about the children that's going to be left behind with not having the equipment and the technology that's going to be needed to continue education with the co and I agree with all the previous speakers thank you thank you for speaking tonight our next public comment is B aaro um I want to
018confirm is this the time to comment about the school resource officers or is it or is that later that later okay so I'd like to comment on the re-entry for the students um I do agree that it's not distance learning isn't equal some students have support at home some students don't some parents work and can stay home to support those kids and some don't in terms of um having the kids having like a hybrid model where they're only in school part of the day that's a big concern of mine because for the parents who don't have that flexibility to leave work in the middle of the day to drop off and pick up their child I don't see how that can work for a lot of parents um so I would be curious ious to
019hear if the district is considering some options in terms of transportation for those children especially the younger kids my daughter is going into high school and even still I wouldn't feel safe um having her take two buses to get to a school um considering she would be near mosino Avenue for high school so um I would just like some more information about what the hybrid model would look like and what options and resources would be available for parents because we all know that not all parents are equal and the resources that are available to each parent they're different and the support system has Mel 15 bet Bay were you finished I am done thank you for commenting tonight moderator be can you hear us yeah my computer froze I need to re-enter the meeting Mel
020okay Beth's computer has frozen she's gonna reenter the meeting I'll take over I I'll take over so um shoot di I can yeah okay or I can Tommy I Tommy has his hand raised again Tommy if you are ready you can unmute and state your name oh Tommy moved down all right Tommy I I promoted Tommy as a a panelist and so Tommy if you can hear us please unmute looks like we're still not able to hear you Tommy I'm gonna move on to the next speaker the next speaker is Muhammad Muhammad if you could please state your name for the record and unmute hello Muhammad are you there please unmute um moderator betsa Bay is still a panelist it looks like yeah that's a part of um Beth's computer freezing so everyone please be
021patient with us I think I think we're actually having some um issues around uh connectivity because we're getting Frozen and periodically uh booted off so it's been going so well other meeting would you like me to try another speaker okay the next speaker is Kristen Reed Kristen if you could hear us please un mute Kristen if you could hear me please unmute your microphone sorry I I didn't hear you I was looking at something um yeah my name is Kristen Reed and I teach at Montgomery High School and one thing that I wanted to bring up um was that when it comes to the desire to return to in-person classes um there are a lot of reasons that people have mentioned to do that and one I'd like to speak to is related to um
022the idea that by default teaching and learning in person will automatically be better no matter the circumstances than what we could do through digital tools or online learning and when I think about the reasons why I would want to be back in class the activities that seem like they would be more meaningful and better in person like Socratic seminars or group collaboration on projects I then think about doing those six feet apart and how do I do that with Fidelity or in a meaningful way and so the question then becomes is that time and the the need for those activities is it better to try and find a workaround in class or to figure out a way to still be able to have those meaningful convers ations and to collaborate through online platforms there are
023plenty of ways to collaborate online digitally we've been having students do that with projects before so it's just something that I think um has not been mentioned or brought up or that um folks who are not Educators may not have considered people may assume that when your kids go back it's going to just be school like it was before and we're going to do all the same activities in all the same ways and that's just not going to be the case because of the Restriction 15 seconds 15 seconds I'm back thank you very much y thank you Kristen yeah welc back our next public comment is Jasmin please State your full name for the record Jasmine hi um my name is Norma Jasmine Gino mosa and I want to comment on the distance learning um
024subject I went to um Elementary Middle School in high school I believe they were all center of the city schools um and I just want to say that during my time in school um it was very hard to study at home even to do my homework my parents had only first and second grade education from Mexico and they didn't really know how to best support learning environment at home so even doing my homework even having a quiet clean like surface to put down my school materials was a challenge and it prevented me from being successful in a lot of um my time there and I think that for students now who are in similar situations as I was where they they were at a disadvantage already distance learning creates a bigger Gap and I think
025when we think about how to how to give access to learning um there's got to be a little bit more consideration for that and creativity in how we extend access to students that already have a difficult time studying and doing work at home and will'll continue to do that due to um income and you know lack of access to technology and support at home thank you thank you our next public comment is Ross house can you hear me are we through okay my name is Ross F I'm a sixth grade teacher at Luther Bank Elementary School uh I just want to say a couple words tonight regarding uh the sro's and advocating for the retention um in our district I just wanted to um I do understand that there's a lot of variety of emotional
026responses on on the issue Ross I'm gonna have to stop you Lori president bong go ahead sorry you're muted president oh still muted still muted saved for agenda item oh okay um all right I will probably email you those just because I'm out of uh the area right now so this is the best time I can do this so I will send those to the board for my thoughts to be considered I appreciate it president Fong there are no more hands raised all right is there anybody else who'd like to make a public comment on an agenda item not on anything not on the agenda and um Beth b the um Christen Reed is still on the um video page when you give it have a moment or I'm not sure if maybe melan is
027doing that and there is one more hand in the U attendees and one more hand Keith R is the next person to comment Keith please State your full name for the record this is Keith Reinhardt and off the agenda uh may I mail in my comment for item number four E4 yes you may I didn't see that as a choice shall I send it to you Miss president you may thank you very much then I will no long I will not need to comment in the future thank you very much thank you all right I see two hands the next public comment is from Stephanie star hello can you hear me all right yes thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak um I am a employee of the bookstore at JC and I
028am super concerned as was another person who brought up the issue of in-person learning my concern is with the library hours and how shorter hours and further distancing is going to impact those who are disadvantaged um the the library on campus is always always built to capacity there are no really slow times because so many of the students don't have access at home how or are we going to address the issue of those students not being able to have access to the libraries thank you very much thank you Stephanie you're welcome moderator do we have any more comments there are no more hands rais all right I believe someone named Deborah just raised a hand let's hear from Deborah Deborah please State your full name for the record hi my name is deor V and
029I have a quick question I have two kids in Cesar Chavez Language Academy and my question is about how you're going to provide support to the parents on distant Learners thank you thank you we'll take that question into consideration you know we're not going to be answering that now I president Fong I will uh like would like to let the parent know that that is a part of the planning process about how we support and train parents thank you s super intended okay we see one last comment and we're going to take that comment and then I'm going to close this oh gone gone no more hands thank you all right public comment is closed um is our interpreter to okay okay all right we are at the point in our uh meeting where we
030are hearing reports and the first report we would like to hear from is um CSEA CCA has no report tonight and the next report would be from uh SRTA Santa Rosa Teachers Association hey hey everybody can you see my profile picture that is Dr kidura and I at the Halloween celebration shortly after uh we came back from the fire this fall and I just like that picture because it's a symbol of us working together and uh that makes me happy uh good evening president Fong Dr Kore members of the board and the community I'm Will lion I am the President of the Santa Rosa Teachers Association representing over 900 Educators in our district I want to begin these comments sharing a quote with you from Neil degrass Tyson he's an an astrophysicist a teacher and
031a wrestler so you know he's cool um among other things and he said one of the great challenges in this world is knowing enough about a subject to think you're right and not know enough about the subject to know you are wrong I'm working hard to avoid that the Educators I represent and I imagine many of you are experiencing whiplash as we learn about the changing Health guidelines the spike the spikes in the co numbers the last few weeks the associated budget woes and the possible parameters of going back to school safely in the fall and we have a desire to strive for excellence as we wrestle with our country's systemic racism and how we can work together to be anti-racist Educators in an anti-racist District I don't know what I don't know about how
032we can open up schools safely in the fall I know that in some places they have decided that they are opening up all the way in the fall no masks no rules business as usual their position is that it isn't a change of working conditions and they don't need to negotiate or even consult with the Union at all our County and superintendent of Education Dr Steve Harrington was quoted this week in the paper explaining his intent to lower the safety guidelines for the number of students in a classroom and action with CTA members across the county opposed I am so proud to work in a district that is taking the exact opposite approach to reopening safely Dr kenura thank you for taking the time to create a process where we can learn as much as
033possible before we make the hard decisions where we have spent literally tens of thousands of man hours working on these many challenges together with hundreds of stakeholders it's really special and I and I'm grateful thank you in advance for a real seat at the table as we make those decisions together in the coming weeks still working hard to have a tenative agreement by June 3 to share out with our members for ratification and with our families and our community so we can all prepare for the year to come thank you for making the safety of our students staff and Community the top priority as we move forward I don't know nothing about nothing but I know we will make better decisions working together than working against each other I don't know what I don't know
034about racism the new SRTA book Club has met three times now we have picked how to be anti-racist by Dr ibram X kendi as our first book um anybody who's looking to pick a book to uh improve your own racism or anti-racism I invite you to join in with us we are currently on chapter six of 18 a lot more to read a lot more to learn my experience reminds me of a story we learned in the Peace Corp training there are these yellow people and there are these blue people and the yellow people see the world in a yellow tent through a yellow lens and the blue people see everything blue and one day the master teacher arrives and she says hey yellow people you've got to put on these blue glasses so you
035can see the blue people's perspective and the yellow people did and they looked around and they said oh I get it to the blue people everything is green however hard we see the world from a different however ever hard we work to see the world from another perspective we will always bring us and our own life story wherever we go you can't take off your yellow lens I don't know how to make our district an anti-racist District but my hunch is it isn't a list of check marks on a social justice Warrior's resume but a commitment to a to a sustained practice a marathon not a Sprint that will take sustained effort and humility I do know that SRTA is committed to doing that work so that every single one of our students and every
036single one of our colleagues are safe and feel safe in our schools every single day regarding ethnic studies and SRO I'll reserve the bulk of my comments for the actual agenda item but no that based on the extensive survey of our members this past week SRTA executive board has voted voted to endorse the district's ethnic study committee's five-year timeline which does not include a graduation requirement but does put our district in a position to offer strong uh ethnic studies program K12 that will serve our students well we did not take a petition on director Medina's proposal to add an ethnic studies graduation requirement but however that goes a five-year timeline created by the committee will serve as as well SRTA supports the proposal for a two-month pause in our SRO program and the creation of
037a committee to evaluate the program and hear from our students and families and staff especially those of color and to our peace officers serving as SRO so that we have enough information to make the best decision possible for all of us we request that the makeup of the committee have parity between the stakeholders thank you all again for everything you're doing for our students and and our staff and our schools I believe all this heavy lifting is going to make us all stronger thank you thank you president lion uh do we have a report relationship building okay the long one relationship building and communication improvement process report yes we do um and maybe Dr bardi can uh unmute and show his uh um start his video um this as you remember is the process that
038we agreed on within our tenative agreement and so we were able to do a little I think our first meeting and then you know everything kind of broke loose after that uh but um I it's been great to have Dr Mardi to um observe our process through our return to school committees and specifically our executive committee because I I feel that a lot of what we're doing in in the executive committee by bringing together you know all the different stakeholders um is uh a continuation of this actual committee and and kind of a precursor we're we're still going to continue with that the this committee but in the meantime um I find it extremely valuable to have um his process checking and observation uh under the guidelines of this um committee so Dr mcari would
039you uh would you like to say a few words yeah certainly uh uh Santa Rosa Santa Rosa city directors superintendent Kimura SRTA and CSA leaders District staff and committee members Dr ketura basically summarized U my work with some of the trustees and um with District staff and it was sort of uh interesting that we had one meeting talking about developing teams and we were exploring well what kind of decisions making process that are going on in the district could we be examining to improve relationships and to build trust and things of that nature and all of a sudden the co situation occurred so Dr ketura asked me to be a process Observer and that role means that I don't get involved with the content uh there are many teams that are doing that but I
040look at the team process and I thought I would share with you uh just some of my observations and basically that I look at basically multiple teams and how do those multiple teams work together and there are some key pieces that have been mentioned by some of the um by some of the trustees tonight as well as by some of the uh community members who make comments um and one of the things that I look at is the whole concept of voice and I don't think that any of us need to be reminded over the last month about when people don't feel that they have a voice really strong reactions occur and so that's one of the things that I look at uh when I observe the executive team working on uh the back to
041school process is does everybody have a voice and that has been so um key stakeholder groups uh both Elementary Middle School High School uh special needs students English language Learners parents um everybody is has a seat at the table and that's very important because when recommendations are made to the board we always want to make sure that was everybody's voice included and the people who brought up concerns tonight um to at the board meeting I believe all of those concerns are explicitly being addressed in multiple committees the other thing I look at is we have many committees operating but do they talk with each other and they do and that's very important because people have to specialize but they also have to share out what they what they are finding and so there are grades
042span committee members of elementary middle school high school um and and uh Will lion mentioned tonight and he has mentioned repeatedly uh that the associations feel like they are full partners and that's very important for any recommendations coming to the board I think that we always have to keep in mind that any recommendation coming to the board no recommendations have all the details listed out so when when the plan goes forward back to the school sites people need to be fully engaged in the implementation and the fine-tuning and I think everything has been set up from my point of view to make sure that it's going to be a rigorous implementation the other thing that I think is really critical is how is it that we go about making decisions who decides and based upon
043what and one of the most important things that we know about decision making is that we have agreed upon criteria and at the last meeting there was terminology used it was called preferred versus required criteria so everybody has ideas the question is which ideas are vetted in science and and then that those criteria for making dis decisions are explicitly shared out so that when community members call board members board members can say we looked at that we use this criteria it's based upon science and by the way I'm impressed by how many different resources these teams are looking at there's no one resource that says it all and judgments have to be made and these teams have great criteria and I would think that that would be well communicated uh the other thing that I
044just mentioned is the whole notion of communication and this is going to likely be one of the most daunting challenges coming forward it's being explicitly addressed but how is it that we communicate the decisions that are made why they're being made and to all the groups and I know that everybody is working very hard to on the Committees to also talk with their friends and the people they represent um I know that the associations have parallel processes to make sure that the associations are up to speed and I think that that's really critical again for implementation and the other thing that I found most interesting about this from a organizational perspective is this is all being uh looked at from the point of view of a positive mindset you know we know that things are
045going to be changing and there's some positive things and I'll give you an example looking at maybe emphasizing real life learning we know that the kids are not going to be and the students are not going to have as much time with the teachers then whatever they learn really needs to count and making sure that things are more real life and applied for their future is probably a re reasonable uh approach and then the other notion is flexibility and will line mention this we don't know what we don't know uh if you listen every day to the specialist things are changing and flexibility is used a lot in these committees so I end my comments um I'm really pleased to be a process Observer um and I would say as a as a community member
046and also as a grandfather who looks at this from the point of view of a student um I think that the district is doing everything possible to make sure that the best recommendations come to the board and that the best plan is laid out for the community I end my comments thank you Dr mccardy for um sharing your observations um and continuing to work uh for on this community this committee um even after we get this all completed so that we I want to fulfill what we said we were going to do in the tenative agreement and I'm sure the board feels the same way thank you any any for like you know there any questions of Dr mccardy if not it's fine but just because he's here thank you for that report Dr mccardy
047um I want to make sure that our interpreter has had a chance to really that was a lot yes okay so um thank you Dr mccardy thank you very much we are going to hear from um the superintendent uh a report and then we are going to take a break for an interpreter switch and we are going to take a five minute break because um the board has been sitting here for two hours and for health reasons and and body reasons I encourage everyone to get up and move around for five minutes so thank you hura thank you president Fong was that a cue for me to keep it short um I'll try to I'll try to um has which Dr mardy's uh report as well as president L's report really speaks to the work
048from so many people on the return to school committee um I'm very very pleased to report that right now it is actually in the writing phase uh director Kelly Dylan is leading that charge with um representation from all the subcommittee chairs um working hard to get a draft To Us by Friday night um the um cabinet plans to work on it over the weekend in terms of you know any kind of edits uh for a meeting back with a return to school committee on Monday um and so we can finalize uh begin to finalize what this plan will look like because then the plan is to uh meet at the negotiations table for a couple of days and and Hammer out how we can agree together to uh move the district forward in in the
049midst of all of this uh I'm sure you heard and you will hear from Deputy superintendent uh Edson about the agreement between the governor and the legislature in our ab77 education Finance trailer bill um as president lion said it feels like Whiplash every time there comes a guidance or a new idea or new rule well the governor and the legislature have continued on that path and so there are some definite um uh there's definite language around in-person school and um distance learning there are some definite requirements for both as as a means for accountability because I think that was a very um big issue for the legislature um and so the this 90 page trailer bill has that in it um and so more to come on that around the expectations the accountability the um
050the rules which we have to abide by in order to be a portioned our Ada and to be held harmless and so um we right now have because that document is so um Rich we have it with legal counsel to provide an opinion um not really opinion just a summary of actually all the rules so that we know that we're working from uh a basis to create our return to school plan from a legal aspect um so more to come on that uh that is going to be um a pretty fast timeline to be able to get a return to school plan to the board on July 8th um and we're we're really everybody's working hard to meet that deadline because we know students staff parents want to know what's happening next year um but
051also please know that it's going to be multiple kind of options because who knows what's going to happen it isn't going to be this one thing set set in stone we're going to have different options based on um where we are with the um the virus so there's that um I just want to I I can't help it I can't help myself but to give just some major shout out to the Child new child nutritions services staff and their director Ed Burke from March 23rd I just want to tell you they have served 400,000 meals 400,000 meals and our district our district is committed to standing by our mission vision and priorities and we will continue to serve meals all through August and we're finding a way usually Child Nutrition takes a break in there
052but I think Ed is trying to be very uh creative Bert to uh not have families students go without food until school uh starts so um I just have to give that shout out and then finally um I want to say thank you to chops um for being invited to their youth conversation um I had said to the board in my Friday update um it hadn't hit hit me until seeing the faces of of students and kids what's gone on in these last few you know few weeks and um the statements that that the the statements that have come out and the statement by the board myself around black lives matter um it really it really was so wonderful to hear their questions their concerns their their angst and their their desire to really make
053a change uh in our world and so um I'm just very thankful for that invitation and hope I get invited again uh with that I turn it back to you president F I just want to reiterate the return to school committee uh it's a Herculean task in an uncertain future so thank you to every single person serving on that committee it's generally summer break right now for folks and they are continuing to work and I mean the question all the board members get asked constantly is what are we going to do about school what are we going to do about opening and then I then we get an opinion and you know we just keep referring to the Stellar Committee of 200 people doing the work uh with the right criteria and with relationship building
054and truth-telling and transparency and superlatives are not enough thank you thank you and uh also once again they said we couldn't do it and look what we've done so and then we're getting hit left and right by all different kinds of uh conflicting information so that's also very interesting so this is a very short timeline and we need to do it because people need to know so really everybody on that committee Diane your committee thank you so much all right we are going to take a break um when we come back I sound like a commercial um board member reports and then we'll be moving into our discussion action items and we are going to come back at in five minutes and we will also be switching interpreters we cannot dismiss it because it doesn't
055come the way we're used to or the way we communicate so I I just want to uh appreciate that and that um you know if we ever stop learning we need to just stop so we can't stop learning and I I count myself a person who continues to learn and and I hope I continue to grow so I want to thank everybody who's who's written in and weighed in and and said things and and everybody gets to talk from their own perspective because that's their own lived experience and there's and it's the truth it's their truth but again as I said earlier how do we maybe it's that blue green the blue green tent thing um walk in somebody else's shoes and listen to understand so I will keep doing that so board members by
056show of hands who's got a report to make tonight um that would be director McCormick and then director close we'll start there and director Manny thank you president Fong um so I just want to say a couple quick things I know that the urgency of making a decision on how we're going to do school in the fall um during this crisis is definitely the priority right now but um I do want the issue of redrawing s Roos City School boundaries um looking at balance and balancing out our um our numbers on our campuses which I think would help us in the covid crisis and um formally beginning and requesting a district consolidation study through sco um to be I don't want it to be put too far back on the back burner um I know
057we are in crisis situation with several issues right now but I just want to say it out loud again um so to just keep it in the narrative this summer as we move forward and I also want to say again um how important I feel it is for our district to find a way to support and maintain and perhaps even grow um our extracurricular programs uh during this time of getting back to school regardless of what that looks like um I'm specifically referring to Athletics music and Performing Arts and other clubs and organizations that help to connect our students and build our community Through investment and performance and I think it's really important um that we be Innovative and supportive in allowing these programs to go um continue and move forward in new and exciting
058ways um because we need our students to feel connected to their school communities and then um finally just a h a business item because I've had a lot of people ask me this so um I'm a member of the NCS um the CIF NCS board of directors and I want all of our student athletes and their parents to know um that all of the updated information that is coming out daily changing daily like we've been talking about um regarding return to practice plans um in general for the North Coast section I'm not specifically talking about Santa Rose City Schools but in general for CIF and North Coast section the documents and guidelines that are coming out of there um they are all posted in two different places one is um cifstate.org so again that's cifstate.org
059or cifn cs.org so all that information is there and again it's updated regularly it's changing daily weekly um but there have been a lot of questions from student athletes and parents regarding that issue so they can go to those websites to get more information thank you thank you director McCormick and director Diane director Diane um there's been a request um for uh for all of you to speak a little bit slower uh or all of us to speak a little slower me too I'm involved because the translation they're having a little bit of a hard time keeping up in Translation uh the other thing um director McCormick we met with legal counsel this week uh about those issues you just described um and we're goingon to have a timeline and we're we're we're getting busy
060on it you know right away the other thing is with the um Sports just be sure that parents and athletes you need to understand that there's also County regulations that we must abide by as well as local school so all right I think it was director close thank you president f um sorry about the weird lighting um I um my report I'm going to tell you a little my report is about what's been keeping me up at night and I am generally a really good sleeper I sleep better than anyone I know um and and very it's very rare that things keep me up at night but this reopening of school is keeping me up at night and I'm obsessing about it all day long and like lots of people I'm reading everything you could
061possibly read and um I could make um a really good argument for about 10 different plans um which means that there's there's not really a very particularly good one um uh and and I've been thinking about it a lot and I and I um and the other thing is like like will and his book group gr um I've been reading uh how to be an anti-racist and um and and so thinking about reopening school and thinking about our values as a board I have been thinking a lot about equity and and uh I have to say that I find myself s agreeing with um the Pioneer teacher who spoke I think his name was John Jackson um today uh and saying that there is a real Equity issue in returning to school um or doing
062a um doing a doing a hybrid plan that the brick and- click part dist distance learning part not there are some families there are some kids um who can do just fine distance learning at least for a while nobody's doing just fine in the world right now right everybody is doing less than fine for the next for the foreseeable future for the unforeseeable future right for six to 12 months or so everyone's doing a little bit less fine um but some people do better going to school some people do better distance learning there are some amilies who are better to um deal with it at home there's some personalities of kids who are better to deal with at home and then some who really need to be in school um and so I don't think
063uh however we go forward I I and I haven't looked you know talked to Legal about this or anything but I feel pretty confident that we can't tell people uh what they can do we can't tell people who should come to school and who's not and so um what what I'm going to do personally this is just one board member talking um is to request and this is going to be my sort of um anti-racist um Act of the day is to request that the people who can and who who can support their Learners at home for the next year um and whose kids can handle it um they you know under understanding their personality and their their uh their assets abilities and challenges um that they consider doing that in order to help make
064this easier um for the school district there's going to be options of independent study there are going to be options for distance learning I know that the that this committee and and administration is working hard at creating all kinds of options um but no matter what the whole system is going to work better the fewer students we have actually at school um and so I would really implore parents and students to think about what they need um and compare compared to what other folks need and to and to make a decision that is just like we're all wearing masks in public and doing things different in public not just for ourselves but for the community that you make a community-minded decision um so that is that's my request of you is for you to think
065about that that's all thank you thank you director manier thank you president Fong um I just wanted to to take my time um um to let folks know that um there is still assistance and the disaster relief assistance for immigrants project um available um and this project is going to end in five days on June 30th but there um there is still assistance available and so I just wanted to let people know um to please call within the the hours of 900 a.m. and 7:30 p.m. um to our local local organization doing this work um and this phone the phone number that people can call is 707 1338 again that's 707 228 1338 and this is um this is assistance for immigrants folks who don't qualify for benefits like unemployment or who who perhaps don't
066have workers rights um and have lost time off of work who have lost wages um and are immigrants to our country um all of the information is kept confidential um and we're the the organization is not sharing any information with the state that will identify the people applying and so um I just highly encourage folks to call um if they qualify and if um and if if they have time within the next five days to do so thank you that's all Stephanie can you repeat that number we want that number one more time yeah it's 70722 8 1338 thank you director Medina yes thank you um I just want to make a few comments just report that um um I did participate in uh the right school board meeting to to express my offense at
067some of the comments that were made but also invite them to get to know what our schools have to offer um the schools uh uh exist in their area that are available to their students um I also just wanted wanted to express my my joy around the DACA decision um thank uh uh director de Cruz for for her efforts and and having information about that and what DACA um um how to access DACA earlier today and in a zoom meeting um I also just wanted to just on reopening I'll keep it really short but but I think there's two things that I really want to um focus I think uh our collaboration with teachers is critically important I think we got to have their buying in terms of getting this right but we also just
068got to really make sure um that we focus on on the student and that they have the right environment to to receive the education that they need and that we do the best that we can to provide any and all support and I and and I Echo uh director close's comments I think that's you know I'm there with you um so I'll just leave it at that and and I know we got a long meeting ahead so thank you thank you director Medina other reports tonight seeing none hi yes I I I I just want to be very brief and I just how just want to say how much um how delighted I was to really see so much Community Support around celebrating juneth um and this includes the education of the general public to
069know the significance of that day um and just a shout out um I I I did participate in in a few of these um but I really want to shout out um the French Charter School um they uh I was invited to attend and it was um a socially distanced very carefully planned event um that the the um the community the school Community there put together um I brought my kids I walked on down the street and we kept some distance and um it was really sort of a special event right on on Soma Avenue um very visible for the for the afternoon of the 19th and um I I just love it I just wanted to to shout out principal Anderson and um and the U my understanding is said it was a parent
070that had organized all of this um and just want to acknowledge and appreciate all of that work thank you and Director D Cruz just a quick um shout out to folks who won a big victory this week with DACA um and we as Dr Medina mentioned held a zoom earlier today to um announce uh services that the Sonoma County secure families collaborative is offering um we were planning for the worst case scenario and gearing up to do free consults with every single doca holder in Sonoma County through this collaborative and its free legal services that it offers to find people um an alternative Pathway to to adjustment of status um in the case that daaka is no longer available that is still the goal um the Supreme Court decision essentially just laid out a road
071map for how to end doca legally um and so what we really want to do is make sure that uh folks who need high quality free legal services have access to them so please everybody go check out Sonoma secure families.org um to set up an appointment and to get free consultation with highquality legal services as we move forward to continue to protect um and to make sure that our neighbors and friends and students and employers and employees all have access to this wonderful service adante would you give that website one more time sonomacounty secure families.org thank you uh director close do you have a csba report for us tonight I do not we have a legislative committee meeting on Friday and I might have a report after that thank you all right thank you everyone
072we're moving into our uh discussion action items and we're going to begin with uh item E1 which is an action item approval of a resolution for the governing board elections November 2020 and I'm going to turn this over to superintendent kidura so um first of all I'd like to thank director Medina for his help this was a this was an agonizing board item over the uh weekend with uh Lori kich moving on to her new position and uh so I greatly greatly appreciate his help um this is is really to enact the ability or the um legal requirement for elections this coming November it speaks to us having uh four seats open uh the term the length of term the um cost which is actually no cost to to the individual who uh runs in
073terms of their um their uh translation their statement of their statement their candidate statement um and then also puts into uh writing the uh way to resolve a tie so it's the cost responsibility the tie and then who whose seats are up for reelection um and those are trusty areas 135 and seven and the terms of Jenny close alria De La Cruz Ed Sheffield and Lori Fong so um that is what's present that is what is this that is what this item is um about and I turn it back to you president pong for the board's um discussion board members have comments discussion uh Omar is that director Medina yeah sorry I just want to uh make a motion that we approve uh the resolution of the trustees ordering a regular governing board election under
074by truste area election system and ordering consolidation with any other elections I second so that was um motioned by director Medina and seconded by director manieri Mel director Medina hi director AR I director de Cruz I director Sheffield I director McCormack I director close I president F I thank you that passes thank you um director Medina for your assistance on that we're moving on to discussion item E2 it's a resolution to add ethnic studies to the Santa Rosa city schools course offerings uh superintendent koraa yes thank you um president Fong um so this is uh in support of ethnic studies um here in Santa Rosa city schools and actually I'm going to let uh Dr Gusman uh speak to this item and um then we will uh entertain any questions uh good evening uh superintendent
075Kar president Fong and members of the board um thank you Elizabeth Evans will also be uh um with me on this item this is a resolution um to at ethnic studies to the Santa Rosa city schools course offerings um and I've asked uh director Evans to read part of the resolution because I think it's really important to hear some of the language I also want to um honor and recognize um all those who assisted with the resolution by sending examples providing feedback so I thank you for that as well and with that I turn it over to director Evans good evening everyone this evening we're bringing forth a resolution for ethnic studies courses to be included in our course offerings at Santa Rosa city schools some context in Spring of 2015 Santa Rosa city schools
076launched an equity init initiative which included providing a variety of professional development activities designed to bring our dedication to all students front and center of all our work our professional development our thinking collaboration and study created a powerful mind shift within our community that is now beginning to impact the work that lands in the students hands we appreciate that in the last two years the Santa Rosa City Schools Board of Trustees has been deeply supportive of this work and that our new Mission Vision and priorities put Equity at the Forefront this is our Turning Point substantial research done by the National Education Association and Stanford University found that high school students who participated in an ethnic studies course showed positive academic and personal outcomes for students and we shared these with you last uh two
077weeks ago but I want to say them again because they're so important they found that the opportunity Gap was closed that excuse me pardon me there was a reduction in student frency student retention was increased Dropout rates were reduced there was an increase in graduation rates and there was a developing sense of self-efficacy and personal empowerment because ethnic studies humanizes all people by honoring the cultural wealth of historically UND underserved groups by critically analizing systems of Oppression and by promoting action in solidarity with others to transform students lives and communities we believe it is important for Santa Rosa city schools to offer ethnic studies and we hope you will approve this resolution thank you it's turned over to the board now superintendent yes all right so it this is a discussion item correct an action
078item oh it should say it's it should be an action there was a mistake I we're seeing this now on the agenda so I'm hoping that we can amend that this should be an action item okay I don't we can't if we if we've indicated to be a discussion we can't okay so we we will have to bring this back I I I do want to say that uh it was asked you know you know we've got the um board policy no excuse me yeah the board policy requirement coming up and so why would we do a resolution um I just think it adds more strength I mean it's just it's there as a resolution um and so I I still think it's something that we should do um so unfortunately it is a discussion
079item but we can bring it back and next time Dr oop sorry president close Dr Medina has his hand up um yes president close president president f um we look so similar yeah right director Medina thank you um I you know I I don't know about your thoughts about this um superintendent kidura but I did submit um that other resolution in relation to the in the the commission's model curriculum draft do do you think that that might be something we can also add to this um resolution or would that still separate well I would actually ask uh you and um uh president Fong and director manieri because you you guys had some meetings around that and so if you think it is a uh something we can combine uh in this then I we can
080do that and we can um put it you know on the next agenda um so but you you I haven't met with Alex I believe his name is I'm meeting with him on Thursday oh yes that's right director um Evans also met with him so you give me some what what you think about that well in in looking at this resolution I think you know it talks about the curriculum within 2K to 12 um I think the model curriculum draft presented by the institutional um um Quality Commission of the state um does kind of integrate that and alludes that and has that as part of the state plan for ethnic studies and so I think they're aligned with this resolu solution um it also just adds some more clear definition as to what ethnic studies
081is um from the the perspective of the model curriculum as presented um and again um I think it also by by adding it maybe we could add an item that includes what that draft um the State draft is um that that shows that information is available for board members to to review in advance um but but I think they're definitely in line and so I would be supportive of including it as part of this resolution could you could you president Fong um director monari um speak to uh the addition to the model curriculum that that resolution is asking for the other resolution not this one tonight but the other so when the draft model curriculum came out there was some opposition to it so it was kind of tabled and it went back to the
082legislature so now there's a huge committee working on it and I think they're supposed to bring it back early fall I think that's when it's going to be voted on and so um right now people are just kind of putting their fingers in the pie to try to figure out okay what should be in this you know how can we make sure it represents everybody and um I would agree with well yes well isn't it isn't it that this that there are specific groups left out or they that they there there's they want assurance that specific groups are included um Sor go ahead go ahead I was just gonna say the you know it basically the the model curriculum draft was composed by experts within ethnic studies in higher ed and K to 12 and
083and it was presented um and and there was concerns about um well why didn't why didn't we include these groups why didn't we include those groups and so basically that the ask is to um us support the model draft that was presented by the experts in ethnic studies and and and to ask that that be passed in I believe it's in late August when it'll be presented um and so to us also express our support for that draft that was put together by experts and and a as defined um within the current uh draft of the model curriculum for ethnic studies which is you know um part of what AB 2016 um dictated um and is also part of of what would be required to be taught if AB 331 passes later this this uh
084the [Music] summer um director Manor yeah so I'm actually taking a look at the the resolution that other districts have passed um that um that Alex the person we've been um communicating with shared with me and it's it looks like it's really as simple as adding um a a resolve therefore be it resolves that srcs affirms support of the California ethnic studies model curriculum draft um and then if if we wanted to it could also include be a further resolved that srcs and this is where it gets specific affirm support for Pacific Islander studies a American studies Central American studies and West Asian American studies and their continued inclusion in the esmc curriculum okay so make sure Diane I want to make sure that our ethnic studies uh curriculum committee this is where they're heading
085this is what they thought about I think they they have a lot to say about this yeah I I think that um the spe spe specificity of the addition the second resolve you know um Pacific G all that I don't know that they they've spoken to it at that de I have to believe that it is not going to be an issue uh I just have to believe that's not going to be an issue and now I'm reminded of my asian brothers and sisters who have contacted me about the inclusion of the different different um segments of the Asian population it's very very different and and I think that sometimes not some times I do believe that um we are lumped into one group and so this would help further delineate the the differences um
086and then Pacific Islander also gets lumped in and that the delineation of that as well so I think between now and um maybe not the next meeting that that the meeting after that we could uh talk about this with the ethnic studies committee even if it's virtual you know it's going to be virtual anyway so talk with them about that I just can't see that there' be an issue and that that we bring it back to the board with those those additions those couple additions and if I could just add it's it's part of expedite in the process this was supposed to be done March 31st 2020 this year right but because of these delays um it has been pushed back to up to or as late as March 31st of 2021 um if we
087can get support and approval um of this you know maybe it could be completed and done in August which then allows the development of curriculum to be focused on these final guidance lines that the state provides so I think that's the important part you know getting this done and finally approved so that curriculum that's being developed has guidelines that the state has developed and recommended yeah I I agree I agree so um I'm gonna put it I'm gonna um hand it back to Dr Gusman and her team to um let's talk about this confer see when what date we can bring this back with those additions uh and then talk with the committee about those additions yes definitely we will do so and I will give you those timelines Dr K thank you very much
088so let's echo echo that sooner than later yep all right so that was discussion any other board member would like to weigh on this discussion see no hands getting back to my agenda on multiple screens okay we're moving to E3 a discussion ethnic studies followup in first reading of the board policy 6146 point1 graduation requirement to include ethnic studies again I'll turn it over to Dr Gman to um provide the presentation good evening again yes uh based upon the last board meeting wanted to bring back some of the suggestions that were talked about um when we brought um ethnic studies to the last meeting so uh director Evans will be presenting what those changes look like and also adding some language 261 46.1 um by adding a graduation requirement under ethnic studies um and so
089with that I turn it over to director Evans thank you again I'm going to share my screen so that I can pull up PowerPoint that I'm going to share with you the brief PowerPoint I'm sure you'll be glad that it's going to be a brief one let's see if I can get oops hang on just one second okay here we go all right can you all see that can you see the PowerPoint yes you can see it okay great thank you so good evening again uh members of the board president Fong and superintendent K mura we're here this evening to provide the updates that were requested on June 10th to our ethnic studies presentation and to int introduce language for board policy 614614 now the categories read race ethnicity gender sexuality ability class and Nation
090it was also requested that we develop the student Advisory board for ethnic studies sooner so we moved that action up to August and currently we're Gathering names of students who might be interested in participating and of teachers who might be able to recommend students we also received suggested board policy to make ethnic studies a graduation requirement by 2025 we're advocating for a range of ways to satisfy that requirement should it become one we recommend for the allowance to develop a range of ethnic studies courses in any subject area this approach best allows us Frozen do we lose her looks like she FR on us so um I'll continue um I will um can you guys hear me yes yes okay so um I apologize so I'll just continue that um as um director Evan stated
091that being able to add it in any of the a through G requirements um as a um year-long oh there's Elizabeth now oh sorry did I did I get lost somewhere okay it's okay you dropped off just continuing um okay if you want to bring up the PowerPoint I'll continue to speak to it yeah that sounds great I'm going to I'll let you happen to it so there are um four suggestions um adding it to social studies adding it to English and then um adding it to any other C through G offering um in which um that um that could be a requirement under 6146 point1 um I think director Medina has his hand up so so just a second director medinaa um Elizabeth a you're going to share a PowerPoint you going to continue
092yes uh yes yes um did can you tell me where was it in during the budget it was actually dropped off during um the recommendations about where this should land in 614 6.1 so it's slide four oh okay great let me just back up a little bit sorry about that okay technology tonight right um D can you share your screen please I'm sorry goodness me okay let me oh sorry let me just do this again sorry I had that all pulled up I think I have to go back to here and then to here try that again okay let's see if now it will come up and I will go there and back okay can everybody see that that yes okay I suggest maybe director Evans that you actually turn off your camera so that
093more B is to the presentation okay you know what I'm not oh I see where I can do that all right there we go okay great thank you you ready yes okay thank you um so um I'm just gonna start back with this what we had said about this particular slide so we had received suggested board policy to make ethnic studies a graduation requirement by 2025 and we're advocating a range of ways to um satisfy that requirement should it become one through our extensive exploration of successful ethnic studies programs throughout the state we recommend for the allowance to develop a range of ethnic studies courses in any subject area this approach best allows us to capitalize on student interest and teacher capacity at individual sites we believe that flexibility is the key to a successful
094and robust program and then moving on to the budget as we move into the new school year here are the projected costs of implementing ethnic studies in 2021 the budget includes the ongoing Crush trainings as well as ethnic studies professional development we've also provided time for teachers to engage in ethnic studies course writing then in the 2122 budget we continue with the crush and ethnic studies trainings as well as an increase in extra Duty time for those interested in writing courses because we believe there will be an increased interest this budget though I need to say does not account for any AD additional elective sections so we want to thank you for your support of ethnic studies making a place to share our stories strengthens our community and our students educational experiences we know we're
095going to do great things for kids and now I'll turn it back to the board you're on mute Lor board members we are going to um just take clarifying questions right now because we need we have public discussion public comment uh so if you just have a question to clarify and then we'll listen to the public comment and then we'll have a discussion uh director McCormack and then director manary um on the list of uh ethnic studies options on that slide number four uh is it possible that students can double dip on graduation requirements in one class like yeah English credit and ethnic studies credit at the same time that is correct okay thank you director maner thank you president Fong um my question um director Evans you you mentioned how flexibility is really key
096um in making this a successful program and so my question is um if the addition of the graduation requirements as it stands as it's written right now in this presentation um if it offers that kind of flexibility in your opinion and in the committee's opinion in the committee's opinion um we we talked about this extensively and and also the research that we did showed that those uh school districts that allowed for ethnic studies even the ones that had an ethnic studies graduation requirement when they had flexibility about how students met that graduation requirement it was really beneficial to the students and students tended to take a lot of courses that did either they were an e ethnic studies course or they had the ethnic studies lens um applied so um we found that that that
097was a very uh positive way for the students to engage in ethnic studies so yes so for us for our committee we would like to see greater flexibility um rather than less rather than focusing it into a specific subject area so that's what the committee is is interested in and and I guess just to clarify that do you feel or does the committee feel that this policy does that that's it offers that flexibility I I mean I just may I know that we're not supposed to have discussion right now but maybe I can clarify my question I just want to make sure that we have the best policy in place um so that this is successful so that we can have graduation requirements at work um so I just want to make sure that I
098understand um whether or not this is something the committee feels is is written well the committee is really uh like I said is they want to make sure that there is flexibility um there was at first there was some concern because it was the courses were focused in just the social studies or an English language arts area and we felt like it was important to provide opportunities a through G not just with A and B courses but the a through G courses and the committee would um they definitely felt that it was important that there was a broader representation of those courses in the curriculum does that answer your question yeah thank you okay I think that I I think that um Dr marer I think you asked a great question that I think that
099if it if you can't repeat the policy like just know it with all all those four lines of then maybe it is rather confusing and so um yeah I I think director um Medina and I have had some conversations around this and so I think he wants to speak next to us next but yeah I think I think that we can improve the language actually and still keep the same idea so okay so director Medina has a question and then after that uh director close has a question and then Director D Cruz has a question said I'm next right yes let me see is it possible to share my screen let's see yes I think you can share so let's see director mine is this a question well it's it's tied to to the yes
100it's it's it's a question um so director Evans um so the options that were presented were based on our uh board policy as it's in gamut because it hadn't been updated with the March updates right and and I've updated the language um basically taking everything that's kind of presented here and consolidating it so so this is with highlights but this is kind of what my new suggestion would be I don't know if you guys could see that but basically removing all these different options and just basically leaving it to any ethnic studies course taken must meet a Core Curriculum requirement as outlined above referring to the a through G requirements that are listed above and shall also crew credit for coursework in the subject that course is offered which means it's the double dipping um
101and um and it also has the ethnic studies requirement which I so so my question to director rins I'm seeing this language would you agree that this allow that same flexibility as all of this but simplifies the language and also um puts it stylistically in the style of the updates to the board policy that were approved in in March by the board um director Medina I I think that the committee and and I would also say that this language in the final policy language is less restrictive and the committee definitely is interested in something that is less restrictive and I so I appreciate the language uh that you've included here in this final policy thank you I I would suggest that the um oh the the line around the student advisory committee um be moved
102to the AR put it in the AR around the course course new course selection or new course recommendations would be my my suggestion too can we take this offline to the committee to take a look at it at with more time we will do it between now we'll do it between now and the next board meeting yes um the next person had hand up for was director CL I believe for a question yes actually question I um um I just wanted to ask Elizabeth if she could speak to in terms of offering um I like the spinal language um by the way because it has more more options but if you could speak to um uh how the um range of options um would or would not be easier to implement in the in our
103different high schools and with our different High School teachers like what kind of feedback are you getting from our high school teachers options um the and if we had a situation where uh a teacher could um create a course that was reflective of their particular subject area and they wanted to bring that lens of ethnic studies then I think there'd be a greater interest if we just say okay we're going to have English language arts and we're going to have social studies and ethnic studies is going to be in those two curricular areas Our concern is that we it won't allow for um teacher capacity to really grow not all teachers may want to teach ethnic studies not all social studies teachers or not all English teachers but if there's flexibility then say when I
104was teaching art Quest Dance if I wanted to teach say a class that provided uh an emphasis on ethnic studies in my art Quest dance class then I would be Freer to have that opportunity and there might be more students that would engage in that than say might just take their English class or their social studies class so I think it really um I mean we do need to talk to teachers uh bring to bring them in in uh and get ideas about who really would like to engage in these courses we have gotten feedback from people just um where people have been writing to us and saying yes I'm I'm very interested in this how can I be involved we've seen a real uptick in interest from teachers uh wanting to join the committee
105and wanting to participate in the work thanks you're welcome Director D Chris did you have your hand up I did I um so thank you so much for this good work and and Omar I really do like the final policy language I like the kind of flexibility and I hear that that's a real need um both for students and teachers to do this successfully um Elizabeth my my question is kind of in line with what director close was getting at but I was wondering with a little bit more specificity like do we have capacity currently in all of our high school sites um have do you feel like every teacher or or or every High School site has teachers that are like rare and to go um how like how far away are we from
106making this a reality I can't say that um I know exactly who at which high schools are raring to go I do know that there like I said there are people that have reached out to us that want to participate what I'm interested in doing is for us to put a call out to teachers who are who are maybe curious and want to learn more and want to find out what our thinking is and what our process would be around supporting them in learning how to teach ethnic studies and so what we'd like to do is have a meeting a large you know a gathering and sort of a y'all come see who shows who wants to who wants to hear about it and then find out from there who might really want to take
107the next steps oh sorry I think also you have to take in consideration those who those teachers who have been very involved in crush so yes and and actually thank you for saying that I did want to say too that um I don't know if you remember this detail from Curtis's presentation last two weeks ago but he did point out that we had uh about 93% of the people that that participated in the survey after the crush workshops did say they would like to participate in ethnic studies in our district so we haven't totally carved out what that looks like yet but there is a lot of interest and you're right for next year we have our Crush workshops and we also have some ethnic studies workshops uh scheduled as well I also can I
108add one thing if it's fim may also with having social justice for mathematics at LSC Allen as a pilot will give opportunities for teachers to go and observe even if it is you know a click brick model I think that's really also going to pique the interest of other teachers I think it's an opportunity for as we always want to do is teachers teaching teachers absolutely so I get and my second question following up on that is you know beyond beyond the kind of specific classes that were identified during our last discussion around this um are there are there classes is currently um that you know where teachers are trying or where there's been kind of a a step into this I know that one of one of the um classes that is raised sometimes
109is the Korea World studies class and it's interesting to me that that's actually raised as a as an example um because I understand that the reason why that class was started was to address the lack of diversity at Coro at the time so it doesn't sound like it kind of jives exactly with the values and purpose of ethnic studies being to make sure that we're educating the the majority of the kids who are in our district but I'm I'm just wondering if there are other other classes or other teachers that have already been identified as Pioneers in this area yes in fact um I'm really happy to speak about one of our elementary teachers at the Arts Charter her name is Alice jobson and she works with I believe she works with first graders and
110she begins every day with leesh and she's been bringing uh different activities and exercises to the students around identity around diversity around action around Justice which are the four cornerstones of the uh social justice standards um as they're put forth by teaching tolerance and she has done she did an amazing presentation in our showcase about her work with her first graders and how meaningful starting each day with in laes and making that kind of the the Cornerstone of every day with her students has been just so meaningful um that's just an elementary uh student and I know there are other students uh other teachers that are at um the upper grade levels in fact I just um had an exchange with um a high school uh teacher who was sharing with me her own personal
111Reflections on her process of looking at herself as someone who is she was looking at her own bias and it was it was just so um moving to see how she was looking at herself and really examining what she brought to the classroom and she attributed that to the the the crush work so we see many many um times how meaningful that work is and how it really brings it's just like like what we said at the the at one point earlier this evening about what this brings to the students desk to their hands I mean years ago we were thinking we were trying to change mind you know make a mind shift that sort of perspective is now very focused focused on the students desk and the students reality so we have gone from
112theoretical to the Practical excellent um my last question is you know I I was really moved in the presentation around CCD at the um Elementary School level and saw the kind of very clear connections between you know what teachers are doing with CCD and how that flows right into the development of ethnic studies at a secondary level um and I and I'm and I and you know I am hearing um some concerns that there will be kind of a you know some uh resource adjustments that will need to happen in order for this to really happen at the secondary level quickly in line with our with our um with the urgency that we feel um and how important this is to do right now um and so I just wondered you know how we can
113right size and align both and and support the efforts at the elementary level and make sure that those Contin to be elevated and connected to the ways in which we're developing ethnic studies at the secondary level um so I I I wondered if if you could speak to maybe the kind of connections between this development and what's happening at the elementary level with CCD well we have said for a long time that we believe that CCD is a perfect vehicle for social justice teaching and learning and ethnic studies it's it's so perfect so we absolutely believe that is something that we can do as you know we started this past uh fall with some secondary level uh CCD units in social justice and and also there was one that was particularly focused on ethnic studies
114and then we sort of got a Dr Evans would you please just use toine CCD for our public oh sure it's the collaborative curriculum design and it's a way for our teachers to develop the curriculum that is Meaningful to them and useful to them that is also interdisciplinary and that we have at the ready it's uploaded onto a site where we can uh teachers can access that curriculum so it's it's a wonderful um a wonderful platform for our teachers so yes we would like to see more um social justice and equity and ethnic studies lessons in the elementary I mean some of them are are kind of tweaked in that direction um but I don't know how many were really immersed in that work when they started developing those lessons that was several years ago
115that they began to develop the lessons i' like to also add that CCD units are also at the middle school level and um have been also developed at the high school level and so uh that Continuum is continuously building and so I think that um this will be an added bonus as we continue our CCD units and especially now with the new work um that Elizabeth and Heather have been doing with um the other CCD units so it's it's growing excellent director Cruz I I also think Director D Cruz I also think that is an excellent question to pose to a vertical articulation team around ethnic studies okay so I think there should be an inquiry about that because what I'm hearing the question to be is we're doing this great work in CCD and
116and embedding ethnic studies it's moving up to the junior high what's our assurances that it continues on into the high school so um I think the tnl team that is an I think that's an inquiry that needs to be developed and asked and then put in and basically put into place so and then my last question is a procedural one um does this board item suffer from the same defect as our last one and does not allow us to take action on the first reading of this policy we brought it to you um as a as a first reading and then just so that there could be more discussion understanding that this really was a discussion item this was not a mistake so okay excellent so yay Let's Take Action wherever we can tonight on
117ethnic studies please yeah we we we wanted to um honor our commitment to collaboration and so we knew there could be some changes tonight but we really want to take it back to the stakeholders and the people who've been working on this before we bring it back excellent thank you so superintendent K MOA in light of what said in terms of vertical teeming for ethnic studies uh did I miss or is there anything in that that we can codify for elementary kids to get some of this ethnic studies and not just left up to the whim of which teacher they possibly get um I think that again that can be an AR um let me look at the I'd have to look at the language we we will take that into consideration as we look
118at the new language how that does create policy for prek to uh nine thank you um direct Sheffield yeah this is just a simple question I think maybe honoring our our commitment to collaboration and also taking into consideration the urgency that we all feel behind this I'm wondering Elizabeth if um the the districts that the committee visited the ones that that had adopted a graduation requirement do you know if they did so right out of the gate or was it something that they stepped into I believe that both Coachella Valley and um El Rancho um you know what now let me think about that one of them and I don't know if it may have been coach chill Valley did start with the graduation requirement the other one may have started with a course or
119two and then moved into the graduation requirement but I need to get back to you on that to um give you a precise answer okay and then you know maybe in along those same lines if we can find out if the challenges or the struggles that they may have had if they launched out of the gate on this we don't want to you know make the same mistakes this is so important that we get this right yes okay thank you thank you director Evans at this point we're going to move to public comment and uh director close will take your after public comment moderator do we have any public comments on this I see four um so let me call for it as well um this is time for public comment on item E3 only
120raise your hand click the raise the hand button if you'd like to comment on E3 ethnic studies and if you have called in on a phone are there any there's one person on a phone push star n to raise your hand if you'd like to speak um are our Mo our interpreters okay do we need to do any kind of a switch at this point our interpreters are fine at this time okay great so our first comment will be will Lions hey hey can you hear me yes all right all right um I want to thank you Elizabeth Evans for the thoughtful presentation um I I I had a conversation with director Medina earlier this week or late last week guess and we talked about this and I was telling him some of my reservations
121and he said man we've been talking about this for a long time and if we don't do something now we're never going to do it let's stop talking let's act and uh I understand why you would feel that way that's a reasonable thought um but there are some there are some concerns that SRTA has around whether or not we're ready to do it well on this timeline so we have voted to support the timeline that the committee put forward we did not yet take a position on making an ethnic study requirement uh graduation requirement for the class of 2025 um I do want to point out that what we didn't have five years ago when you know if you're worried about us stalling what we didn't have five years ago that we have now we
122have a functional ethnic studies committee with several dozen people on it who are all committed to making it work um we have strong support from SRTA and I can give you a few numbers from that survey I mentioned 41% of our members who took the poll and we had 500 uh 50 people take the poll so we're really happy that that many people took it 41% agreed or strongly agreed that I already incorporate ethnic studies in my curriculum that's a big upgrade from five years ago um 57% of our members said if I had PD and time to incorporate ethnic studies into my curriculum I would that's an asset and I think that's an upgrade from five years ago um we also have Crush which is an asset and we've now got a a commitment
123for funding to train looks like 60 teachers next year um that's an asset and the crush program is an asset we also have eager Partners from SSU we have um instructors there who teach I don't think it's called ethnic studies they have um the names have been changed so I'm sorry I don't know the exact name of the courses but it looks and smells and sounds an awful lot like ethnic studies and they're will so they're ahead of the curve of our teachers and they've committed to helping those are all um assets that we should take advantage of we we also have some concerns one is is that if those 60 teachers some of them need to be elementary and middle school they won't all be high school teachers so of the 60 I don't
124know what the split's going to be but maybe it's 20 or 30 of them will be high school we're going to need something like 80 to 100 sections when we're all full going and ethnic studies all the way and we're totally rock and roll somewhere around 80 to 100 sections so if we right now this year we had zero courses of ethnic studies this coming up year we have one course we're going to build some of those courses and we're going to land a year from now with our current up Rising eighth graders in a situation where we need to provide them ethnic studies it's a it's a question for us of whether or not we'll be ready to do it well or if we should just okay it's not going to be well but
125let's go ahead and get started so that's a decision that you have to make my request is that you can consider I I understand you're eager to make it a graduation requirement and that's reasonable um the request is that you consider moving that date to the class of 2026 2027 give us an extra year or two to kind of Build It Up organically and make it strong um but the SRTA position is it's your decision which way you want that to go we are also concerned that it is also going to encroach on our electives the classes that are double dipped and you can do English and science or if you can get an elected teacher to do it that's fine those that double dipping will save that money but any if you are also
126going to make a standalone ethnic studies course for middle school or for high school if we don't fund it we are funding it we're just gonna fund it kind of like baseball we're going to trade for a player to be named later and at some point we're gonna give up autoshop or photography or some other thing if we don't plan it out thoughtfully and weon want we want to have a full boat of electives for all of our students and it should also include ethnic studies so um I I think the the general concept should we be doing ethic studies green light all the way we SRTA does endorse the timeline as amended by the committee that is a really thoughtful timeline all these little things that you could stub your toe on if you
127weren't careful they've solved a lot of them in that timeline and I really appreciate that I'm concerned that if we go tooo fast we could do it we will provide ethnic studies for those students will it be as good as if we took an extra year or two that's for the board to decide thank you thank you president lion next to comment is aita Jackson all right hi everybody can you hear me yes hi my name is EV Jackson I'm currently a teacher in this district and I'm a African-American teacher as well um my thought is um I totally 100% agree with um director Medina I believe that uh it should be a graduation requirement and I believe that um we as educators are able to do it um soon um I feel as a
128a woman of color um often times things like e ethnic studies or what relates to um history of colored people um oftentimes get o gets overlooked or it might be said oh I do teach with a ethnic studies lens and you're just teaching Tom Sawyer I would like for it to definitely be a class so that I have that peace of mind that all of our students even if it's only one year will get ethnic studies do I just want it one year no I believe it's both and I believe that uh teachers should teach with an ethnic study slend but we don't know that all teachers will do that and and often as history we've seen that it's not the case right right doing what's right hasn't been the case so at least if
129we have one class we know that all of our students will at least get one year of ethnic studies but again I want to say this again I think it should be both in K through 12 in addition to a graduation requirement thank you very much aita thank you next to speak is deay Carmona Benson um I've been sitting here listening to this and um It's just sad to me it's sad that we would have to wait till 200 what six more years you said you're asking for Asad I think we've waited long enough for one thing for one reason being that you want your students to be successful in life and you want them to strive in this world well being equipped with ethnic studies would be part of that of them being successful
130they're going to have to get out in this world and deal with people of color and them as people of color have to get in this world where they're going to be judged by the color of their skin I took an ethnic study this semester at srjc I only was only there for January and February because of course in March the Corona virus hit and um things kind of went downhill after that um I learned so much in the first two months that I could not even imagine if I was there a whole year I don't think that it's so much that you have to have just a class I'm trying to understand why wouldn't all the teachers want to be culturally comp you know ready to teach ethnic studies somewhere into their curriculum throughout
131the years throughout the year like why would everything have to be of some white person or some it I I'm really trying to even understand this whole meeting or this whole conversations like I really don't understand how this is so hard and why we now have reached the point seconds 15 seconds you know we shouldn't have to be demanding for our culture to be taught but yet you demand us to do whatever we need to do to graduate and we have to learn white studies that makes no sense to me thank you de Shay next to speak is Omar Omar could you please State your full name for the record before you speak yes hi uh my name is Omar Lopez I am the upcoming student rap for the board and I wanted to come
132out and say that I really support the ethnic studies program I'm really excited to see it implemented and I really encourage the board to take this up um I just had a bit of a question which I know the board can't necessarily answer directly but I wanted to put it out there was just what the student advisory panel would look like in the sense of how many students are going to be on there from what school like from how many from each school will it be balance what the plan is for that because as student rep that's part of my concern with this uh beyond that again I really want to encourage the board to go through with this I think it's a really great thing and I'm really excited for this President Fong I
133want to address um Omar Lopez Omar you're going to be a big part of helping um to develop to find out about to work towards the um advisory okay okay thank you next to speak is Michael hail hello can you hear me can you hear me now yes okay my name is Dr Michael hail I'm a professor of English at Santa Rosa Junior College this is a very emotional topic for me um first and foremost because I've lived in Santa Rosa for going on eight years now and I have witnessed the tremendous demographic change that has happened at srjc with an influx of latinx students and African-American students into a college that was and a community that was predominantly white and middle class and so we have gone through tremendous lengths to try to think
134and rethink our curriculum and our support services but a tremendous number of our students that are coming directly from Santa Rosa uh City schools are walking around lost they have very limited sense of belonging and they have internalized racist ideas about their own ability to learn and that they're and that they are ugly and stupid right and so what what we need is ethnic studies at a very young age and it's emotional for a number two reason I am a product of ethnic studies I come out of uh LAUSD and I didn't get this until I attended college at Cal State Northridge and I studied under Rudy aunia and other folks in Cho studies and this absolutely changed my life so what I see as the Nexus of what we need to do to increase
135students sense of a belonging to increase their attitude about their own ability is a curriculum that is responsive to their culture rather than a curriculum that insults their culture with or or disregards their culture with a kind of typical white Western European Canon and I'm an English teacher so I'm very familiar with these Canon Wars the last thing that I want to say is I want to directly speak to uh my union brother will I am a union member as well and I come from a family that is hundred years in the union movement and the Achilles heel of the union movement has been race and 15 seconds and so if we don't take seriously the the the the the speed and urgency to address race in our union movement then we are lost stop
136obstructing and move forward with ethnic studies now thank you next to speak is mitsumasa Walt hi I second Sheila's comments um I second David's hail David hail's comments and what he said about lostness is exactly true I felt ugly and stupid crazy and wrong yet to many people I look white I am a quarter Japanese 2025 is far too far away to begin ethnic studies as a requirement it's discriminatory that POC students regardless of an ethnic study requirement or or not will deal with race and racism whether or not our families speak to the effects of racism on our own lives my grandmother grew up in Tully Lake internment camp during World War II as a Japanese American she was silent on this and as I have grown she has expressed internalized racist wounds which
137went un addressed until opened by my conversations with her she had told me in the past that camp was for our own good as a transgender and mixed Asian specifically Nik student not having the tool to navigate meaning making in school wore away at me slowly the lack of this education provided at home due to internalized racism and assimilation as a coping mechanism led me to develop mental illness to the degree that I barely managed to graduate senior year of high school and dropped out of srjc after a year dealing with psychosis I became homeless the conclusion that I came to is that if knowledge is power and power corrupts study hard and become evil what is the point we don't have a lot of time folks I want to know is there a language
138which can be introduced to what you're dealing with bureaucratically that can also require that all classes and subjects subjects of curriculum be reviewed by this board for eurocentric bias with a goal of critiquing the current curriculum in all subjects to correct for systematic racist policies creating overall white supremacist curriculum because to frame this core andly foundational perspective on reality is a subject versus a lens linguistically incept students and Educators to still not fully integrate an anti-racist framework into school environments leaving students of color as before as a spin-off the regular curriculum white studies introducing a requirement is a good start but we need to rehaul all the curriculum in all subjects and discontinue hiring of teachers who can't or are unwilling to require this will you commit to Center indigenous people specifically homo and Miwok
139people in the language of ethnic studies will you hire homo and Miwok Educators because that is what you should do and we need to stop celebrating Luther Burbank specifically in our schools because he was a eugenicist he was absolutely a white supremacist so issues like this need to be addressed we are out of time M Masa thank you so much thank you for that impassionate play and I ask you to contact me I don't know if you heard that but please please email me next to comment is Mara Donahue hello can you hear me yes great thank you um first I'm very very grateful that the board looks to be moving forward with an ethnic studies program um I commented last time about um asking about the inclusion of people with disabilities and would like
140to thank Dr Evans for the adjustment the definition to include people of differing abilities um thank you to president Fong and director close for your responses to my email um I also support ethnic studies being included PK or K through 12 and definitely support having some component of the program be a graduation requirement um finally I love the visual at the end of Dr evans's presentation all we want is our stories to be taught and to that end I have a daughter with multiple disabilities who would very much like to share her story with you and for her experience with disability and depression to be taught thank you thank you Mora next is Janice Janice could you please State your full name for the record hi can you hear me okay my name is Janice
141Laura I'm at Santa Rosa High School alumni and with ethnic studies I just want to want y'all to acknowledge like it's a privilege to be taught White History um and my question with the ethnic studies is a lot of times with history and like B PC and PC history the history is erased and it's most mostly pal P palatable for white a white audience and the history is erased it's sugar coded so I want to know how accurate is this information going to be and how present is this history going to go up to and I also think it's important to um really raise voices of B POC and POC teachers to be able to teach these ethnic studies I think it's important to raise their voice experiences and with systematic racism and how their
142experiences and their familes histories um have to do with like ethnic studies I think it's important to get their viewpoints on it instead of having like a white teacher speak for them and yeah thank you Janise thanks for speaking out next to comment is Stephanie star I'm sorry can you hear me yes oh thank you very much um I just wanted to voice my concerns um about waiting to implement this as a graduation requirement I too studied under Dr Michael hail and Professor Andre laru at srjc and that knowledge that I gain from that is there's no words for how impactful that was as a person of color it seems like I've lived my whole life with the phrase well we just want to wait until we've got everything perfect we don't wait for Perfection
143to introduce any other subject and that to me is not a sufficient excuse to not put this into action by the time stated we don't need to wait for another year there are more than enough people around who have wonderful knowledge about ethnic studies people whose whose lifetime you can draw on their experiences to help you in how to make this curriculum waiting is also not it's not a good idea we have momentum now we don't know what 2026 is going to bring we don't know what funding issues we will have we don't know any of that it is the time now where all these changes are being made in not just education but the society as a whole and we need to capitalize on this now 15 seconds 15 seconds people of color have
144been waiting long enough and have been under represented long enough we need this now thank you very much for your time Stephanie thank you you're welcome next is Noah Noah please State your full name for the record um can everyone hear me yes my name is Noah Luen I am currently at the be teacher program and will be teaching special education at Montgomery High School this next school year and um I just wanted to say well I was happy to see that ability was included um in the um ethnic studies program um but I did want to voice some concerns just about how ability and disability are often talked about uh there's a saying in the disability rights Community nothing about us without us which basically refers to the fact that so much policy and
145just so many discussions about disability usually happen without people with disabilities themselves and I really just don't want to see that happen in this program there are often times where um we will be told that for instance we have to refer to ability in a specific way like say dis people with disabilities or something without considering what the person with the disability would likes to be referred to as different people like to sometimes call themselves disabled or with a disability or differently abled often times there is something of the overcoming disability narrative that is used that does not always consider how it can be good to uh look at just be able to view someone as a complete deserving person including seeing their disability and also 15 seconds and also oftentimes disability is when it's
146talked about is very whitewashed and when we do talk about prominent people with disabilities there are no disabled people of color who are spoken about as well thank you Noah thank you and welcome to the Santa Rosa family thank you next to comment is Nelson L Nelson would you please State your full name for the record hi there Nelson lelli um I just wanted to um Echo the comments made earlier by an educator that ethnic studies needs to be requirement for graduation um I also want to Echo the comments that it's sad that this is going to take such a long time time to implement um and I also want to disagree with the Union president um I support unions but I I have to disagree with him on this uh topic that we do
147not need more time to implement this as we're seeing a racist as we're seeing racists empowered by eras this as commander-in-chief the last thing we need is time we need the studies now um I just want to Echo that Perfection is the enemy of good so we cannot wait till we get this perfect um to implement ethnic ethnic studies were not offered in my high school um and I didn't take my first ethnic studies class until college and going to college in and of itself is an immense privilege that is not afforded to many um we cannot make ethnic studies only accessible to those that have 10 tens of thousands of dollars at their disposal or willing to take on tens and thousands of dollars of debt and then be stuck with that that for
148years in order to learn about ethnic studies I want to also Echo the impassion comments made earlier and ask that these studies when they are implemented to not be whitewashed and not be taught in a in a way that is glorifying white people or glorifies white people or is through a white savior lens I want to make sure that the broad truth is coming out and being taught as it happened and that's it is because I have had to do so much unlearning in my adult life as to what actually happed and the impacts that were made um to people of color and Indigenous people um I also just want to take the last couple of seconds to note that uh these meetings are really not accessible to the vast majority of people it's 8:30
149p.m and we're barely at the important topics so I also want to encourage you to re-evaluate your agenda in terms of which reports get made first thank you thank you Nelson next is Gabriel Al Bava hey how's everybody doing uh hope everybody can hear me um first and foremost I feel like a proud principal uh again Gabriela principal LC Allen High School proud principal to have Omar Lopez on board and listening to him get uh uh students involved is going to be really a turning point for our school district so I really appreciate that uh and I got to say that um I wanted to just touch bases that um listening to some of the comments this is not new we've been going at it for almost five years this is not something that is
150going quick we've been working for a very long time so I want to make sure that everybody knows that this has been a work in progress for many many years um and the one thing you know that just reminds me of unfortunately when I hear let's take a pause let's slow down is when we started implementing restorative practices uh it's almost The Identical rhetoric as students of color were getting disproportionately suspended and expelled and I'm hearing some of that same rhetoric and I want to turn it around and just say you know I want to applaud the board let's go forward let's continue with this uh and do whatever we can I I I I've been much like some other folks I've been reading and getting myself up to date with some some real interesting
151H books one of them being Robin d'angel white fragility and that really comes to mind right now when I hear some of this discussion is um is one of the things that she says and I'm quoting this but until white people understand that racism is embedded in everything including our Consciousness and socialization then we cannot go forward we have to realize this and I think we do but let's then now there's more than just I'm not racist we have to be anti-racist let's flip it over let's turn it around and let's work together to really start making an impact not only on our students Liv but in their learning I guarantee 15 seconds if this was implemented way back when we would have definitely had less students of color getting expelled and suspended thank you
152appreciate your guys' work have a good night thanks Gabe next to speak is Kimberly Coleman hi can you hear me yes okay um yeah so my name is Kimberly Coleman I'm a lifelong Sonoma County resident and a student at Santa Rosa Junior College um I on this so I apologize if I'm a little bit all over the place but um I just wanted to say that I agree with all of the other speakers um that have spoken thus far on this and um I wanted to say that I agree um that K through 12 it it it's really important that ethnic studies are a requirement um I have to say that in these past few weeks uh it's been brought to my attention that this really has been missing from my own education speaking you
153know um as a white woman I didn't know what juneth was before before this um I didn't know about black Tulsa I didn't know about EMT till I didn't know a lot about the Black Panthers there's so much being brought to my attention um that I I did not know and that you know that was missing from my education and I'm a college student now and uh I I'm you know that is a privilege in itself uh and I I'm grateful to be learning about this now but I could have been showing up as a more educated Ally as a better Ally if I had have this education um so I I just wanted to to say that and put that out there I think it is super important um there's been a lot of
154talk about showing up as an ally you know that we can't show up perfect we just have to show up and I think that uh that holds true to this situation as well I don't think that we can wait on this I think that we need to implement it as soon as we can and uh you know we'll we'll see what's not working as time goes on and and we can make those changes and and make those uh fixes 15 seconds um so yeah that that's just what I wanted to say and thank you and and thank you everyone before me that is uh spoken on this here today Kimberly thank you for speaking next is moroto moroto would you please say state your name for the record Mor Modo hello Lauren moroto um from
155Sonoma State a professor of Kinesiology so I'd like to thank the board for taking this on and I would like to advocate for making ethnic studies a graduation requirement on two counts one um I am a True Believer in education is preparing students for active participation in a Democratic Society and if you look at the streets today it's clear that to understand and make sense of the world our students need to know what is happening and putting it in context and ethnic studies can help with that the second reason I would advocate for it is purely practical I believe the CSU will make this requirement the House and Senate have t have approved making um ethnic studies a graduation requirement so I think this will also help students prepare as they enter into four-year universities
156um your f one of your first speakers talked about how tun state has changed the name to the of the requirement and we have we've changed it to critical race studies which was a whole big argument that no one wants to hear about but um what I would bring from that argument is to be careful on how ethnic studies is actually presented so ethnic studies as a field as a discipline isn't hey let's just add brown and black people and stir it's about teaching from a critical perspective and while intersectionality is important so I'm glad to see sexuality Nation ability what has to be Central when we look at ethnic studies is we need to put at the center the experiences and history of the marginalized racialized groups that have really been 15 seconds US
157history and that would be black Americans Latinos Asian na API and uh indigenous and Native people so whatever happens those people need to be at the center of ethnic studies thank you so I'm going to break in here on public comment um I've limited to one hour on each item and we have 15 speakers left and we have about 25 minutes left so we are going to close public comment to those 15 people uh if you are in line wanting to speak and um you think that your comment has already been made you can kind of put your hand down and if we have more time we can add it you know more slots we can add a few more people so uh moderator if you would watch that we're going to just be going
158to the 14 people left I think so next is Andrea Korea hello hello bore this is Andre Korea I am the vice principal of Santa Rosa high school and um typically I don't speak during public comment nor am I comfortable doing so so forgive me if I Stumble above my words but I'm listening to all of this and my frustration level is getting higher and higher and I I just don't understand why this is even still a discussion and I know that I speak for the entire administrative team of Santa Rosa high school and I'll even go out on a limb and say Piner higho at that where I spent the last 20 years of my career that ethnic study should absolutely be a graduation requirement it should be right now a graduation requirement the
159fact that we have to wait an additional five years is infuriating um but I understand the policy and the reason for it um I just want to say that as a 15-year teacher of Piner High School Northern California and Santa Rosa in in particular has such a rich history of indigenous people it is the history of California and it ties so well into ethnic studies and um as a graduate of Sonoma State and I took several ethnic study classes we called it Multicultural studies at that time I can think of no other class that I would be so excited to teach and I'm texting the assistant superintendent as this meeting is going on saying I'll teach it I'll jump in right now let me have it and um I just want to say that we
160uh I'm sure most administrators and I'm not like my brother Gabriel who comes on these every week in talks so I'm a little nervous right now but I just think please don't set it off for five years let's move to three make it a graduation requirement we are behind you I think this is an amazing thing you're doing it's it's so um it's so needed and I just wanted to put my voice out there and say yeah thank you and I know that the students of Piner high school thank you too and I haven't known the Santa Rosa kids too long but I'm pretty sure they'd say thank you too thank you Andrea next is Caroline Chu hi can you hear me yes hi my name is Caroline Chu and I'm a proud graduate of
161San Roa high and I've grown up in the San Rosa city schools and I have to say I I I was disappointed thinking back on my uh time at in San City schools that I never learned about these things in a structured environment and never participated in discussions such as these um I strongly urge you to consider how you put this in place it cannot consist of individual teachers especially individual white teachers structuring their classes in ways that they believe are um in the ways that they believe would align with uh this uh outline um presented by uh Elizabeth Evans um it should be please consider hiring um people of color specifically black and Indigenous people to um not volunteer but paid um paid to do research on best practices paid to do research on
162ways to um get classrooms in discussions and engaged at every level um have black and indigenous people of color uh who are um uh who have practice like who have uh experience in education as well um it's just really important that this comes from a black and Indigenous p uh people of color perspective and not a white perspective um thank you for all your work and I hope to see uh some changes very soon thank you thank you for speaking tonight Caroline next is anhel salus dores you hear me yes go ahead M you need to unmute please okay muted again okay can can you hear me yeah yes okay hi uh my name is Angelica salaz Torres and I'm the Spanish teacher one of the Spanish teachers at LC Allen High School and I
163support ethnic studies I'm really excited about ethnic studies um as a future um High School um graduation requirement um we need an next studies now um while wa while wait until College uh I majored in Spanish um and minor in Cho Latino studies at Sonoma State University but then once I M minor in Chico Latino studies and I started having the conversations about race uh ethnicity immigration all these topics that I never had the chance to speak or uh understand or learned about um in high school and um and the other classes um I decided to major in Chico Latino studies and um why wait until then until until college right um uh I took the ethnic studies um class uh with uh ctis a Costa uh and and um um I learned about the
164crash um and the asset model model uh and uh I really think uh we need to to uh start um implementing ethnic studies as soon as possible um in our schools um I'm willing to to cooperate and work together with teachers to create a combo class in World Language um and or combo classes in World Language and uh teach um ethnic studies through World Language um um I've been inviting people from the community such as uh and um organizations such as R's Collective and 15 seconds Community people from the community uh to teach my students and help uh out and I'm willing to work with u um the community and teachers to um create ethnic studies classes so yeah thank you thank you Angelica next is Charity s Holtz [Music] hi I wasn't planning on
165speaking uh during this topic but was so moved by the testimony of some of the previous callers and I could hear their pain and see the um the real need and a of this kind of education by and for bipoc and I'm seeing it reflected on the board members here as well and for all of us I'm a lifelong resident of Santa Rosa I'm a graduate of Santa Rosa High School class of and I have three children now my fifth grader this last fall I took him to a talk in Santa Rosa called decolonizing California history in an effort to balance out his education because it's so eurocentric and uh needless to say it was not geared towards children he was the only person there probably under the age of 30 and it was pretty
166raw but it was um it was powerful and I want to say that I hope that we're also taking a look at our our curriculum in general and at how eurocentric it is it can't just be offset by one uh ethnic studies class we need to be be taking a real critical eye at our the history that we're teaching our children and I really want to thank Mrs Jackson as I said I I grew up in the Santa Rosa city schools and I never had a teacher who was African-American and I'm so thankful for her example that she's setting for our students thank you charity thank you so much next is Zoya Ahmed hello can you hear me hello yes yes all right hi my name is zo Ahmed I'm a rising senior at Mario
167Creo high school and first of all I just wanted to say I greatly appreciate the efforts for promoting an ethnic studies class of course I will probably not be able to take that class myself because I will be a senior next year but I just want to say how much that would mean to people of color to students of color coming from that background um I agree with all the points made this afternoon but one of concern that I really wanted to voice was that in my past experience the extent of the variety of cultures and ethnicities that has been greatly oversimplified um I'm a person of color I come from a Pakistani and and Indian background and I know that while Indians and I might not be the biggest minority group I definitely think
168that different ethnicities that are sometimes overlooked need to be shown need to be heard need to be represented usually I'm grouped with um just Asians and I agree that I am an Asian proud to be one but I think there's so many groups in Asia in particular in different countries that don't get the time and the representation that they need and um I remember that the only time that my culture and my Heritage was talked about was one page in one history class in one year and it was a sentence it was a sentence about Mahatma Gandhi and that was it so I just want to say there are roots and there's Heritage and we need to be heard and um one more thing is that kids and students of color are teaching themselves and
169asking their peers to teach them about their own cultures it's insane to me we learn about our colonizers we learn about the people who conquered our countries and a very whitewash perspective of how they did it but the people of color the victims or the people who have seconds were it it basically history is looked at as a place of winners and losers and to see our heritage be the one from the losing side is very sad to see so I just wanted to see say that if you do consider an ethic studies class please please look at all the different cultures that need to be represented and talked about thank you Zoya thank you so much really appreciate that of course next is Blanca M Blanca would you say your last name for the
170record please Omar Lopez get a hold of Zoya Ahmed hi can you hear me yes yes okay hi my name is Blanca meedi and um um I I agree with um all the comments that have mentioned before in support of ending static starting now um it is an emotional topic and I'm speaking as a mother of Community member but also as a licensed mental health therapist and first I'll speak as a mom of two African indigenous kids um my oldest is six and there's no too soon to learn about ethnic status because going to the store um being treed and seeing in P SE different since you're six years old when your daughter comes back and say Mom am I black like people already you treating you differently how do I prepare my daughter like
171to explain um when she even comes with homework about um Columbus discover in America when I'm active in trying to teach her about her indigenous Roots taking her to learn about that because the school is not going to teach her that and when she spoke up in class the teacher basically said oh yeah I didn't know that go sit down um so like somebody else said the kids are teaching each other and it's painful it's trauma that we've been carrying for Generations um and as a licensed mental health therapist I've seen it mostly treating youth um young adults and that internalize racism that they have that at the end of the day it kind of contributes to that mental health illness that we have because the trauma reflects in different ways depression anxiety lack of
172Love lack of self-esteem um self-rejection so just here in the past um public comments really you know trigger a lot I was but I I I said you know with everything that's been going on we need to teach this because we need to teach Compassion or you know just to for people to understand and again it has to be taught by people of color and not sugarcoated like everybody has said because it makes a big difference um enough so I appreciate you guys making this decision and um graduated from Sonoma State um where we had up the time is up thank you wanca thank you so much for that impassion play we heard that from you next is Amanda Morrison hello uh members of the board my name is Dr Amanda Morrison I also want
173to thank uh director Medina for pushing this um pushing ethnic studies so far ahead and being tenacious about it I teach Cho Latino studies at Sona State University um one thing I also I want to Echo a couple callers Janice and Caroline Chu uh as well as myself were graduates of Santa Rosa high school and got AB I agree I got absolutely zero knowledge about my my own Cho culture the whole time I was there of course that was back in the 90s but I don't know that a lot has changed so I'm a big advocate of ethnic studies and I'm now an ethnic studies Professor um and one thing that's really cool about the discipline is that when you take when you take those classes in college you're usually taking it from professors of
174Co of color it's kind of a for us by us discipline it emerged in 1968 69 out of POC student activism and also one of the magic things about the the ethnic studies classroom is that teacher and students of color get to share not only you know facts and and data and and curriculum but lived experience so that's another reason why having folks of color be the teachers is really important I'm not saying that we shouldn't train white teachers to teach and it's it's sort of for expedien expediency sake um we need to train teachers to be ready for these classes but we also need to develop pipeline programs for young people of color to become teachers I noticed that a lot of college students I work at srjc and SSU and they are not
175particularly interested in becoming teachers so we need to we need to promote that career I think there's concerns about pay and the practicality of it but we know the studies are conclusive when you have a mentor and a teacher who looks like you in a sense or it comes from a a shared a similar background 15 seconds students do better when they have when they have teachers they can relate to also I also we need to look at our demographics our students I believe are majority latinx what are the demographics of our teachers and what are we going to do to change that I'd recommend a pipeline you know Partnerships that are you know CommunityWide between higher ed and K through 12 here Sonoma state has the puera program your time is up thank you
176Amanda thank you we want those Partnerships next is Nicholas Hodson hello um my name is Nicholas Hudson I'm a music teacher in the Elementary District uh for C City schools and I just am absolutely moved by what everybody has said and it's very passionate and I want to thank everybody um including those bipac students and community members that have spoken out and it's really really important I think for them to do that and um that way I'll keep my brief because um they have a better understanding of all this than I do I just have a few topics that I just wanted to make sure that we said is that this should be K12 it shouldn't be just in the high school it should be embedded in everything that we do in elementary and middle
177school so that way they are um ethnically literate by the time they get to high school and there's no question about that um I think you know we're doing a diservice to the community by not telling them about what we're doing in the interm you know we say six years five years whatever the situation is and you know all of a sudden could be fully in place in in five years that's not true there are parts to that that can be built up to that so what are we doing in the inter term you know are we giving PD to the teachers are we encouraging them what ways are we helping them uh give a better understanding of this to the students I want to be a part of that and I think every teacher
178wants to be a part of that as well so thank you thank you Nicholas next is Juan Escobar hello everybody can everybody hear me okay yes yes hello my name is Juan I was born and raised in s Santa Rosa I went to Lawrence Cook Middle School lcen High School Sonoma State then Cal La for masters in mathematics so uh a couple of things I want to address but first and foremost uh I want to address the elll students now uh being me uh being a former uh mini uh through Mig gred uh for the since 2012 um the need is there for our El students our El students are being uh pushed back uh way too much um you know and I think that when it comes to ethnic studies this should definitely be
179a way to help these students feel more included and thus be more productive members of society uh and to convince them that yes uh knowledge is the key to uh a long and successful life and to even just survive um because more and more I see a lot of uh we lose a lot of very talented uh capable uh uh students who fall through the cracks too much and I think that ethnic studies is one way uh to uh help with that now on a on another note again me being from Santa Rosa I have never uh taken an ethnic studies class not even in college um me being a ma you know I was always fascinated by mathematics and science uh that's one thing that I truly always regretted uh throughout my undergraduate but
180again you know with all of my coursework you know I I couldn't possibly F something like that so at least something uh would have been very beneficial for me um uh the next point I want to bring uh to light is that not not everybody goes to college not everybody in in our city is going to college and so you you we have people in Santa Rosa who who don't believe thats which is an absurdity and these people need some sort of guidance some sort of start to uh uh really see because again one section on slavery or one section on the bretal movement is not necessarily doing the job and so I really really hope that you all uh uh uh you know speed up this process and and get it going so thank
181you so much for for your time you one next is Sam Sam could you please State your full name for the record Sam coats can you hear me come here yes no so um I'm a member of the LGBT Qi family groups and I wanted to speak in support of ethnic studies um for several reasons one of them is I grew up in Santa Rosa I'm a native Santa Rosa I grew up in rinken Valley for like 16 years moved around a bit but I been in Soma County my most of my life and I wasn't until I was 30 years old pardon me my kids are still around um they've been listening um I grew up and it wasn't until I was 30 years old that I took anything on ethnic studies and I
182didn't even understand what my privilege was how it worked any of it I had no experience with people col indigenous people I had no experience with um white privilege and how it works and I really want to support the idea of this curriculum being introduced in K through 12 I teach it to my kids I have a five-year-old and an eight-year-old I have an eight- yearold who's non-binary um this stuff needs to be presented intersectionally it definitely needs to be taught by people of color indigenous people people who have lived this nobody can explain it the way they can so I just wanted to offer my support for ethnic studies being a part of the curriculum on all age levels and kids can talk about this stuff my kids do and I'm the one teaching
183them because if I didn't teach them I don't think anybody would not in the schools thank you I W say something I wanna say something let him talk let them let him talk the mouth of babes are next is Sarah andropolis hello can you hear me hello yes Sarah okay yeah sorry um yes I'm also with North Bay lgbtqi families and we as as an organization want to voice our strong support for KY through2 ethnic studies and the ethnic studies graduation requirement um ethnic studies uh as we've heard tonight offer students of color and other historically marginalized groups a chance to see themselves reflected in what they're learning in school and have their stories told which is long just very long overdue and implementing the graduation requirement is critical because it will help to keep
184this curriculum a priority in the years to come and set it up to succeed and the need for ethnic studies uh now is more urgent than ever in providing this opportunity to students of color k be not only lifechanging but life saving and as you heard tonight your students need to receive this support from their schools and should not have to uh wait any longer and we want to um you thank director Medina for his leadership on this issue and we hope that the rest of the board will follow his lead and support a graduation requirement thank you thank you Sarah next is Alicia [Music] Mami hello can you hear me yes Alicia oh hi my name is Alicia Mo Mami I actually spoke at the last board meeting but um I want to speak
185again um so I am in full support of adding like a an ethnic studies group uh or sorry not group um course to the curriculum um however I think that um aspects of ethnic study should be implemented in all courses um and like including like science and math because I think that the contributions of people of color um have um affected every single subject in school and so I think implementing those to show that especially students of colors that they're um that they are recognized in those subjects are is incredibly important and I just want to thank um two teachers at my school Mr Herer and Miss welchel for proving that that is completely possible um and I also agree that we really cannot wait to implement this um this course because um the longer
186we wait the longer we are allowing some students particular those who live in households that teach racism or don't want to talk about these important subjects to project their race project their racism in schools through bullying and in the future because the school district needs to realize that um um we are um they need to realize that um we have whether or not um racist doctors lawyers teachers Etc exist in the future um so yeah that's all I want to say um thank you so much for letting us speak and listening to us Alicia thanks for speaking next is Veronica Hernandez hi I'm here just a second can you hear me yes Veronica okay hi um I'm going to keep it short since a lot of things have been mentioned already I just want to
187support the graduation requirement I used to think that ethnic studies should only te be taught in high school but I believe now that it should be taught in all great levels especially I have a six-year-old that already asked me about uh issues of color so and it needs to happen as soon as possible a requirement as soon as possible but I want to call out to the teachers to embed it in your subject now we don't have to wait till 2025 although I'm calling that it would be a requirement as soon as possible I also want to highlight that this is for all students this is not just for students of color this is for all students and the longer we go without teaching it the more of a disservice we do to our students
188it shouldn't just be one course I hope that it's um required every year just like English 9 through 12 there's too many too many benefits of teaching this and absolutely absolutely no cons from where I stand um our curriculum needs to be humanized now and as I said it needs to be embedded in all subjects we can start now our current social situation and black lives matter black lives matter movement shows us a disservice that we have done in our current educational system and we need uh education to be reformed now thank you Veronica thank you so much unfortunately we are at the end of our public comment time so if you're waiting in line um please email us your comments we will read them and I appreciate you being here and for all the
189people who've commented all right I'm going to turn this back over to the board at this point for our discussion again it's a discussion item uh director De La Cruz so um just a couple of comments I think it's important for us to clarify the timeline that the graduation requirement is for those who are graduating in the class of 2025 which means that we're starting teaching these classes in the fall of 2021 so we're not going to wait six years or even five years this is basically taking next year to develop the class um or classes um and then making sure that those kids um have an opportunity to take them for four beautiful years um so that one one thing so this is this is I'm understanding the fastest way forward there's no there's
190no opportunity to oh sorry we're getting translation crossovers here um there's no opportunity to start this in the fall of 2020 I guess is one of my questions we have a pilot we have a Pilot Course going in the fall awesome yeah so okay sweet um sorry you had more and and training sorry and training NPD right going forward um I I just I am so incredibly moved by um the outpouring of support and recognition of how critical this is um and how critical it is to do now and why it's so critical not to wait um and I want to just throw my hat in the ring to say that even if you're having kids engage with you over a not so perfect lesson um that is an amazing way to engage kids in
191critical thought about their histories and what might not fall well um I know teachers are incredible lifelong Learners and so I really want to challenge teachers to take an opportunity to learn from your students um I am remembering that that was a really critical part of my education not having ethnic studies when I was coming up in high school and college is to really really find ways to understand that what I was being taught was not sitting well with what I knew from my family history and what I knew from my experiences and having an opportunity to be empowered to engage at that level with my education was a critical form of my being empowered in my education empowered enough to say yasta um sorry I'm not gonna swear yast um and and and and
192so I really I you know just want to say like we don't have to be perfect but we need to start having this conversation with our kids they are it's it's too late it's it's way too long so let's let's go do that and have some amazing amazing conversations with kids who are going to teach us um how to make sure that we're teaching them right adante we have to pause for an interpreter switch so just a couple minutes and then uh Jen close had her hand up and Omar Medina had hand up and then Jill McCormick and then everybody at Sheffield then Stephanie maner then me thank you president Fong I believe that this switch has already been made okay Dan is that correct no no am I in the main group can you
193hear me yes yes okay then okay this then okay we're good sorry my bad I see it I'm clear now okay I'm gonna mute myself I already forgot who was next uh J close thank you um yeah I I mean I want to Echo pretty much everything that um Dr J Cruz said but and I think it Bears worth repeating just a little bit even though I'm kind of a broken record on this is that is that these are these are the kinds of things we can't wait on and we can't let Perfection be the enemy of progress and we when there issues of social justice and this is one you you just can't wait you can't wait for everybody to be comfortable um quite the contrary I think it's really important to move forward
194when people are feeling uncomfortable um that's critical part of this really um I really appreciate all the comments tonight um particularly from the young people Professor hail thank you for your comments really really good um and I'd love to hear from you more um maybe you'll become a regular at our meetings I feel like your vo is is would be a good one here um uh so at any rate you know full steam ahead as fast as we can the other thing is that I see that like this is a uh an opportunity to try to um collaborate with our elementary feeder districts um even though we're talking about a graduation requirement we are talking about the things that all of our feeder districts are going to be required to do um and I think
195Elementary School teachers in terms of like the embedding of ethnic studies are a little ahead in this way um or at least some of them are many of them are um and so I I think that's a great opportunity to engage in um our theater districts and collaborate on that and so I hope I hope that that can be be part of this um part of this K2 M but really Preparing People for the graduation requirement um so you know it full scheme ahead um really exciting and um and and love the the enthusiasm around this this is really uh is really important it's been really important and um glad to see that we've got everybody on board now thank you director I'm not sure was next director Medina go ahead okay I'm going to
196uh share my screen really quick again um just to touch on two points um first on ethnic studies I I as I mentioned before Justice too long delayed as Justice denied came to mind um because of how long it's been I wanted to you know will t t talked about uh you know it's been four or five years for me it's been a really long time I wanted to focus first on a couple quotes that I found November 1393 this was uh at the first meeting of the second Latino student Congress held at Sonoma State I along with other students we discussed the need to teach and incorporate into our courses especially history about Mexican-American culture um in that Congress I was fortunate enough to attend the National Association of Chico studies conference and a
197quote by me Omar Medina of Cook Junior High told the seminar that he is going work towards getting a class on Cho history in his new school LC Allen High School he said it is important for us to learn about ourselves on our past so that we can understand and work towards a better future we have to know where we came from before we can know who we are so if anybody knows anything about uh Cho time apparently I'm on it because I'm very very late I've been procrastinating because I was supposed to do that over 20 years ago but one of the things that happened out of that you know I I I gained hunger for this stuff and and and these three books right here are books that I you know I saved
198up the little money that I had and I bought books you know drink Cultura by Jose Antonio Baga soldados chos in Vietnam by Charlie trillo zsu and and some of the other players by L vales um this started just like you know just blowing my mind like I was getting a whole different perspective and so I was very fortunate and lucky to have this but it wasn't within the school curriculum but but this is type of stuff that I think um could be inspired you know some people talked about not everybody goes to college and and I think that feeding this hunger can also be an inspiration to move students to maybe go to college knowing that there's more of this more in depth in college um I wanted to really bring up this this
199uh presentation because I wanted to talk about this so with a graduation requirement for the class of 2025 it means that in 202 one those freshmen um see this is the class of 20 25 that's when technically it should be available for for that class that starts in the 2021 year as uh director De La Cruz stated um but in modifying the language requirement making it more flexible my goal is that um courses are developed that allow students to maybe even start taking classes in their freshman year um I I don't want it to be so focused on well maybe 11th grade is the right time to take an ethnic studies class um I think that we we need to really create a diverse curriculum on ethnic studies um and I and I feel that
200it's important to make it a requirement because I don't I don't know what'll happen in the future um I don't know what kind of board we'll have in the future and I don't want it to be a program that's so simple to dismantle I think uh Dr aosta talked about it at our last meeting about you know Napa you know they're they've lost their program because you know it wasn't as institutionalized as this and so I think making it a graduation requirement is very important um I think we we need to look at um you know how many courses we develop um I didn't see in the budget um cost about supplies and books and things and maybe what what else we can add to our librar I think those are things that we need
201to also add and consider um I think our previous resolution addresses a lot of the speakers concerns about you know the the K to 12 um and ensuring that it's part of the uh curriculum at those various levels and again um the the model curriculum draft by the state I think has a lot of that in it and the way that this graduation requirement is written it alludes to that very specific section and education code that goes to that so you know I I I don't know where all the board members stand I feel like there's a lot of support for this I hope um nobody's opposed to it um but but I but I hope that this modified language works and that when when it comes back to us it's like a modified language
202that I suggested um that allows for that flexibility um and you know I hear people's concerns about waiting and we don't need to wait trust me I've been waiting for a really long time um and and so I think we've traveled a long way to get to the point where we're at now but we we can't be better equipped than we are to make this happen and I think we're there so I hope the board can support it who's next Jim M cornic um I just want to say again that I really appreciate um the stories feelings truths that were shared in our public comments um I am very much in support of our ethnic studies program and I am also in support of it as a graduation requirement as we have on our timeline
203here um I understand uh we've said the term a few times tonight about teacher capacity and I know as a teacher that um teachers are feeling very stretched and in the red right now as far as teachers capacity goes um with covid and everything else that's happening but I don't think we just don't have the luxury of time to push this kick this can down the road we can't we cannot do it we have to move now um and I know um it's not the case in Santa Ros schools that there is no um ethnic studies right now um but it sure sounds like from our public comments that a lot of people had that as their experience going through Santa Rosa city schools um at different times and I really feel like anything is
204better than nothing um and we heard several stories of nothing until College maybe um tonight so I just want to say that I'm very much in support of this and I understand that our the issue of teacher capacity is a real um is real right now people are at their limits and this is a heavy lift um but it's important and I think we need to do it and as I've said before Real Change Is Real hard um but we shouldn't be deterred because of that so um that's it thank you director McCormick and director Sheffield um first I just want to say hats off to Omar Medina for his passion and his dedication since junior high um and continuing to this day um very very much appreciate that um I full full fully support
205ethnic studies I I um think most importantly that the time is way past due um we owe it to previous generations who have fought to tell their stories um just to have it washed away um so that every time you know an incident or an action occurs in this country like uh George Lopez or or bana Taylor that we don't have to repeat the process of re-educating our population on the untold histories over and over again um I want to say to the public comment from the college student on juneth um you know I'm a person of color and I didn't know juneth existed until I was in college um and it's my own Heritage and I had to educate myself um I do want to say that I have some concerns about the graduation
206requirement that I hope we can flush out um because I don't want to wait for this um the first is the obvious that the reality that we have a mostly white Workforce at our schools um and I'm not in any way hating on this I'm just saying that there's going to be some re-education challenges um meaning that we need to dedicate resources to this um this means training and the time that it takes to develop classes which has been brought up um from teachers um and teacher capacity that director mccor had brought up um these are the costs associated with doing it right um I appreciate the the um the slide on the presentation that showed the projected costs and I wondering if this is enough um if you know maybe it's enough to get
207us started but we're going to have to allocate ongoing costs um associated with this um I also want to stress that it's it's done with student input it was great to hear from Omar Lopez um this is really the key you know um also family input and you know lastly it needs to be done with teacher input and I'm going to say it because um full uh partnership full participation was brought up a few times tonight and I don't want this to be another a through G conflict um I said it said um this is too valuable uh to put good intentions and needs over potential challenges that it could create if we don't get it right we don't come to an agreement on this um we need to get Buy in and I'm hoping
208that we can work on this continue to work on this in discussions um with our staff with our teachers um you know and again I I I just want to underscore the the the value of having a a student voice on um on our board um because I think we're going to be turning to him quite a bit um as we move forward on this one so that's all I'm gonna I'm gonna end there thank you thank you director I'm not sure who was next uh director manieri yes I think I'm the last one um so I I also want to express my my support for um for the new timeline that includes the graduation requirements I think that um you know we've we've heard a lot tonight um from students that have really been
209impacted by not having ethnic studies um in their curriculum myself included I didn't learn about a lot of things until I went to college and um and we've heard right like college is a privilege um and and not everyone has that opportunity to to go um and receive a higher education and learn about yourself and learn about others um in in that kind of environment uh so I just really wanted to elevate that and to say that I completely resonate with with that which is why I'm an in full support um and I also want to say that making I think someone already said it during public comment making it a requirement is is making it a priority um and clearly there are lives that depend on this and so it needs to be a
210priority um and I think that you know I'm I'm really grateful for the ethnic studies committee and the people at Northway organizing project and Omar for doing this work for so long um and you're all completely right that it's just taken way too long for us to get here but we're here now and and this is a it's not a moment it's a movement and so we need to push through the uncomfortability and the whatever barriers there are to talking about um race and in our classrooms um and and making this a reality for our students um I also want to say that you know anything worth doing is worth evaluating and so I would love to also see embedded in in the plan um a timeline for evaluation maybe um in 2025 when it's
211a graduation requirement maybe we could get some something similar to the youth truth data um around how ethnic studies has had an impact on students because I I would love to see that kind of change over time so that's all I wanted to add did I miss anybody um the director Medina I just wanted to add two things um just you know looking at the time I just wanted to really acknowledge the leadership of superintendent kitamura even before she was superintendent she was part of this process part of that campaign and you know I really don't know not having someone like her that's supportive of this as superintendent I don't know if we'd be here today so I just really want to recognize that um also um one thing that was brought up was about
212the student committee and that composition um I I think you know from models that have been developed committees that are developed with students um using again um some of the student groups on campus uh that are you know like the metaz or the BSU be part of the the the structure that's institutionalized for the representation I think that that's a suggestion to look into in terms of development um with that said um I'd like to make a motion to extend the meeting to midnight do I have a second on that a second all right can we have a roll call vote on that please that was uh director Medina and seconded by uh director manieri director Medina hi director Manny AR hi Director D Cruz I director Sheffield hi director McCormack hi director close hi
213president Fong hi so before I close this item because it is discussion I will add two things um well three things number one thank you to the committee director Evans and uh teacher on special Simon Heather Garcia Rossi also of course Diane and to Omar I can just imagine you as it what 16-year-old at SSU talking about this yeah I bet you were super cute then you're still cute okay um the pain that we heard tonight was palpable when we don't see ourselves in the education and and that was my case as well growing up in a very diverse city of San Francisco um I'll leave it at that so that's why this is vital that that's why this is priority and then this is actually to teachers uh having had many many teachers teach
214many many things and scheduling them and asking them to do new things and teachers no longer do teachers have to be the sage on the stage you do not have to be the expert you have a learning community and your learning community is your classroom with your students and your students may be the experts and your students may be the teachers and when you work on inquiry together and there are many many tools for these kind inquiry when you work on inquiry together you are all growing together so don't think that you're not qualified because most of our teachers are white right and so there're there's going to be a lot of nervousness about can they teach it can I teach it but again you are not the stage on the stage so we is
215calling for different kinds of teaching and learning modalities and I want us to really get that that that you don't have to you don't have to know what you're doing practically if you're reading and you're learning and you're thinking and you're going to the workshops that were're offering as a district and you're educating yourself and you're participating in those book groups that cool book group SRTA then you're going to be prepared enough because we are at the beginning stages and we are we have to start and we have to make the path by walking it period so I wish this were an action item but it's not it's discussion all right um we are we are closed on this item and we are going to take a five minute bio break and when we'll come
216back for item E4 so see you soon all right everybody there let's see one two three four five six seven okay good um and and I'm here too uned all right we are gonna um director Medina would you like I would like to entertain a motion to um wave our board policy to extend our meeting just once because we have time sensitive issues that we must address tonight my suggestion is let's wait until we get to closer to 12 o'clock because maybe we won't um and then and then make that motion so that would be my recommendation president Paul okay all right so we are now on e4 it's an action item and the title is pause the school resource officer program at all secondary schools and form an ad hoc committee to review the
217Santa Rosa city schools Santa Rosa Police Department partnership to bring recommendations to the board for consideration in August of 2020 I will turn it over to uh superintendent kinora for a presentation thank you um president Fong um this item has been brought forward um for re action and review and discussion um to uh what at this time rather than say a lot about it I'd first like to just go ahead and turn it over to assistant superintendent maera uh for presentation and then I will add comment along the way um but at this time I'd like to turn have turn it I would like to turn it over to assistant superintendent and for him to also introduce um his coordinator thank you uh president Fong Dr kidura board members I will share my screen now
218and as I do I will share uh you with my colleague uh Sydney Smith Sydney Works in our student family engagement office she assists me in daily contact with with assistant principles uh student discipline exposion and Works hand inand with our SRO as well so thank you everybody uh we're going to do just a brief presentation of kind of the history and the partnership we did a pre uh presentation earlier in October and it was around some shared facilities we're going to dig a little deeper in discussion of the kind of work that we do with school resource officers and give some background as we come across this item as with everything we do as with everything we do my kids we go now it's going too fast as with everything we do we screw
219up our PowerPoint um we have the lens of our mission and vision uh it is very important as we guide ourselves through these times and policy kind of conversations that we keep this in mind this is the work that guides us this is the lens that we move forward with um those mission and Visions have a strategic a strategic plan and the priorities and those priorities of course have a focus and so I've outlined in each of these little components that we have guidance in the areas of our safe environment and safe schools uh in each of these priorities we have a strong sense of student safety um as that gets defined and how we go forward as the lens for which we use uh these other priorities around our environment obviously those are big
220topics our student safety and sanitation and things in these needs and our family engagement and Community Partnerships that's another example of the kind of work that the board you have directed us to keep in mind so we we say that is kind of guiding ourselves as we move forward this discussion the um history of our relationship is long with Santa Rosa city uh police department uh began back in as early is 1996 uh it is a kind of a component that worked with some grants they began with two officers and then build out the program uh there was a time when the srcs did provide some funding for it and in our first budget early recession of 2008 2009 we did not were not able to fund that and since that time srpd has been
221the fun of that program we currently have a relationship established at each of our five high school patterns and this we have school resource officers that are assigned to the high school and the middle school feeder um of course there's also some Elementary connection to that and they serve elementary schools based on their capacity as well uh we have had M Us in the past we had anou that expired that was not renewed for this year some of the things that uh we're talking about is is our our work with the SR SRO and srpd as I mentioned they are funded by the sen rosic police department they are supervised and evaluated but there is input both in an interview process and uh in the work of of the individual officers that happens uh in
222our process naturally um we just recently uh we were on an interview panel and a tier one panel that was going looking for the new officers that are scheduled to come into place and take over their shift we had not only myself School administrator in there as well but we had two site administrators that are involved in that process and so srpd has uh strongly recognized the need for our input and kind of share the needs that we have and so they have met those needs uh SRO come into the S Santa Rosa School District with kind of a different lens than students on the on the beat uh they have a strong basis in restorative practices that has paralleled where we have gone over the last five and six years they do do a
223lot around youth Based Services um as I mentioned they're supervised by a standalone sergeant that works with the SRO and coordinates with us that Sergeant Works to the cabinet we have short-term immediate and long-term plannings that we do uh the sergeant and sro's work with our principles as needed and have provide uh important professional development and then they also part of incident command centers and lison for the Emergency work that we do on a regular basis uh additionally some of the examples of what we currently have SRO doing is they provide feedback to our site administrators on their school safety plans there as you know there's been a strong um push and movement for the need for a greater active shooter expertise and training uh they carry that expertise they bring it to our administrators
224we've had a couple occasions where they have worked with our principles as a whole and then many of them have worked with their individual staff and have done staff training both to students and staff around them during these last couple years another important piece for our our school resource officers is the work around mental health as you all may be aware I think of the board perhaps keenly aware that there has been some cutbacks in County Services and what um the police services and SRO specifically are able to do for us is they still give us that link both to what's called a mobile service team uh they help us in the analysis of uh when we have concerns that are kind of greater than our capacity they're called in they come in and do
225a self analysis and help us with the harm to self what may be commonly called 5150 analysis um they also are very important for us to help deescalate parents and sometimes uh students non- students that come on campus and they're very important for us to use um traffic patterns uh helping us around campus as in an example in the last graduation round um we had uh our drive-thru plans were coordinated with the Santa Rosa PD to make sure there were no egress issues traffic light safety Community issues so it's very important to get their feedback and kind of coordinate those those plans uh we use them of course in our what's called SAR or student attendance review board they're very helpful to emphasize the importance of attendance so that's kind of the top tier that
226we work with you know and I'll mention it here and and again the uh the drug and alcohol education the the Highlight that they do is something called every 15 minutes that if you have not witnessed it's a very strong and powerful drug education we do we rotate that amongst our high schools every year and that's really kind of a a strong piece of really working with the community and a strong presence of what sen Rosa Sr do for us um they're also very kind of behind the scenes and work with us strongly on Public Information information you know uh we work hand inand if there is a situation where a student is in the news we work hand inand to try to keep that as generic as possible where we try to make sure
227it's not uh as legally required however still sensitive to the issues of our individual schools as best we can and of course we try as much as we can and as s officers are in classrooms upon request and work with presentations as much as they can um I'm going to move these next areas to talk uh to Miss Smith to kind of talk about the relationship just in laws in general for Santa Rosa's PD and SRO uh Miss Smith thank you thank you um good evening everyone um as Mr maera mentioned my name is Sydney Smith I'm a coordinator in the student and family engagement office and I am going to talk a little bit about the laws related to police on school campuses um you'll notice that these references are to law enforcement in
228general they don't specifically call out SOS but they are applicable to SRO um so you can see that there are several um legal requirements um that that we have to follow um Education Code of course is the law and um we don't have wiggle room on that um we are required to notify law enforcement when we have certain kinds of incidents um you can guess what they might be they are the major incidents that we don't want happening um things like assault with a deadly weapon um any kind of weapon um possession or selling of controlled substance um when an employee of a school district is attacked assaulted or physically threatened and then any kind of sexual assault or battery on the next slide um we continue uh with legal requirements um you can see
229here the first bullet point is about SB 395 um and this is actually a nice thing that builds in some protections for students It's relatively new but does build in some protections for students um about related to being questioned by law enforcement um and then of course um students if they are um arrested they they must be read their Miranda rights the next couple of slides are um the board policies that we currently have that have any kind of reference to law enforcement or SRO in them um the first one is about the comprehensive school safety plan um which was already mentioned that you know we have to work collaboratively uh with law enforcement especially on the tactical response portion of the school safety plan uh the next policy is board policy 5136 this is
230around gang activity in affiliation um School administrators shall exchange information about Gang Related activities um on school campuses or adjacent to um and then the last one is questioning and apprehension by law enforcement um so we currently have a board policy that says that officers May interview and question students and may remove them when appropriate the last um this next Slide the last one on board policies um does include an AR and although an administrative regulation is not a board policy of course um we wanted to include this um just to remind the board and the community that um as a district we've already taken a stance on this issue um and additionally Santa Rosa Police Department acknowledges this and works with us to support our policy um the last one is um perhaps not
231you know hugely important but in the spirit of transparency we wanted to make sure we included this board policy just because it does have a reference to law enforcement and allows um consultation uh with law enforcement during closed session so those are kind of the issues that kind of bring some some background here to our issues before us tonight um We Are Tonight considering some of the developments about an ad hoc committee that we were reviewing uh we want to promote of course like we do uh true to our listening circles and resor of practices that maybe a way to kind of address and listen to some of the concerns in the committee uh there's a proposal to have this ad hoc committee come back in August 24th meeting and of course at any time
232board if there's anything that's in a board policy level we can promote that bring that forward back you know as see as you see so with that I'd like to bring it back to Dr kenura and you know any things you like to add before we come to board um no I I'm I think I'll I will I'm sure interject as we go go along uh but I think it's it's really a time for board uh discussion or board questions first board questions first sure Mr Med Dr M well president Fong sorry can you thank you I think we're going to take public comment first and we're going to squash our questions in with our discussion because we generally do that so yes yes that's fine hang on everybody and uh we are open to
233public comment now um moderator and again I remind everyone that uh people are limited to two minutes and given the late night be succinct and um we want to hear from you but if your comment has been shared multiple times before you can also email us so moderator president Fong I I'd actually like the opportunity to ask some questions that may impact public comment and I think our traditional process and how we amended our board policy establishes that as a process yes it does but we haven't really stuck to that so is this a question director Medina yeah I have a few questions for for uh Mr mazera go ahead Omar so the first question was on restorative justice conferences um just really quickly um the short of Justice conferences they're about bringing people together
234to the same power level and asking folks to show up as their vulnerable human selves would you agree with that yeah I think there's there's other things that were by products of that but around the concept that's exactly the the point of a circle that we're all all equal we all have voice and we share that voice would you agree that someone with a badge and with a gun doesn't put people at the same power level I don't think I could automatically say that I I can understand that perspective and that perception from something that's in there I I wouldn't necessarily say automatically that disallows the point of a circle but I'm sure that's uh subject to opinion of the people in the circle do you know what the cost of an SRO is maybe
235versus the cost of a mental health worker is I do not know the cost of an SRO I I can tell you the cost to the district of a marriage and family therapist a fully licensed marriage and family therapist in our current district is about 85 to $889,000 and do you think you could safely say that's less than the cost of an SRO I'd have to defer to them I I honestly don't know their their package are you aware of what the city C voted on today in terms of their uh commitment to mental health workers if we are to vote down an srl that they've committed to um taking the money that's spent on srl's to instead in invest in mental health workers do you know about that or can it yeah I read
236glimpse of it but I don't think I I can speak to the entire part of that certainly love to get it back to you on that would you be able to comment on whether having mental health workers are a greater investment than having law enforcement officers I think they're different uh we you as a board have really expressed the need and we have met that need through our elap and I have increased radically some of the clinicians and the counselors that we have um you know I don't think I could speak to there's certainly can speak people at school sites that can speak to both those needs uh but but at this point I certainly think both those needs are very important is there in relation to incident logs and interaction with sros do we
237have like demographic data that maybe shows disparities you know we're just at the early stages of gathering some data for you um we have data of incident data we haven't made it demographically available we'd probably need more time to get that but we think it would be available to us um we have a lot of qualitative you know input uh of of SRO interactions and police interactions we'd have to quantify that a little bit and we could certainly bring that back I I I can can I answer can I respond um director Medina um in a meeting that we had this week with um Chief Kalise Navaro and elected from the city council um they they um hold on let me find it the the police department is going to be mandated by law to
238begin take uh collecting demographic data they're not set to collect it until 2022 but um what was shared with us was that they were going to start the collection as soon as possible in probably more like 2021 but at this time we we can't break up our own data by by uh demographics and in relation to instructional minutes and instructional minutes loss related to interaction with SRO do we have any data and do we know um uh how much risk the board is um in terms of comped claims I I don't know that we've kept it kept track of it that way you know I you can probably speak to it better than I can assistant superintendent misser yeah you know in terms of of required time comp time you know any student that gets
239pulled out of classrooms whether it's not srpd SRO relation you know that obviously has an impact in the classroom a special education student that gets suspended for you know an education code violation that does not become a comped situation in that window uh because they have violated a rule we have you know we have the offer for them uh they they by violating an education code they pull themselves out of that offer so we don't have to make that up in those circumstances outside of the special ed education kind of world I wouldn't really be able to speak probably strongly to the comp Ed replacement of a student that's been suspended or a student that's been under uh citation or something from srpd I'll leave it there for now thank you all right so board
240members any other questions at this point clarifying questions director close this is I'm asking question I think kind of everybody if anyone knows the answer of this just in response to um Omar's question around the city council's discussion is it my understanding about the city council's instruction I'm or discussion and let me know if anyone knows differently is not that they would take the money for SRO and invest in Mental Health Care Professionals for our schools but in invest in Mental Health Care Professionals for the city is that is that right that's correct the the decision that the city tonight was to um reinvest those resources into Mental Health Services for the city so specifically to respond to um mental health issues on the streets and to the homeless population homelessness right primarily okay I
241just wanted to make sure I had that right thank you I see no other hands at this point moderator we are going to open this to public Ela did I see your hand yeah I just I just had a quick question about um whether or not there has historically been any kind of srcs Le um or SRO Le restorative circles around things that have happened in the community so I'm I'm wondering if there is any history of you know um sro's providing educational resources around things that have happened in our community whether it's the shooting of Andy Lopez um whether it is um you know change in policy for example I'm aware that there was a policy for some time where we had police checking people's licenses when they were picking up their kids outside
242of school um checking families checking families licenses in particular and um I I know that some of those policies were enormously hurtful to specifically The Immigrant population um so I'm just wondering if there's if there are any examples of the police department engaging in healing at all with communities after change in policy or after kind of significant events in our community you know I don't think I can speak to change in community I can talk about incidents at schools and you know when there's been incidents and I know things around the active shooter drills or things around um perhaps some uh uh bullying and harassment there have been conversations in circles with officers you know specific to a location I don't think I can speak of and I don't know if Dr Kim or you
243have a greater greater view of a greater Community kind of coordination on that but I do certainly know that at individual schools for incident individual circumstances there have then definitely been those kind of circles and those listening moments yeah I guess my question is more not not necessarily kind of like General Community issues or issues that happen specifically in schools it's issues that you know police polic policy or police action have created a a a a set of feelings and um reactions in um in communities and has there ever been kind of you know have sro's ever engaged in our with our student body or or or within our institution to address the ways in which those policies or those activities or those actions have impacted students in their their understanding of police or their's
244understanding of police yeah I I don't recollect any in my time here I do not recollect any um yeah so I'll comment further as we keep going about that nor do I alria but I think that that question is hanging out there and I think that if anybody knows anything principles or as S as they can write to us well I do need to say this then is that is the question I think brings up the fact about the times now you know where we are now and that some things that we you know just answering that we hadn't taken data on certain things just brings forth the idea of coming together to talk about that and making changes you know wherever that whatever that's going to look like but I just want to call
245it out to the questions are bringing up the fact that we have been operating in a in again in a way in a partnership that has evolved over time but have We examined what kinds of impacts what kind both positive and negative and maybe what kinds of changes on both for both the uh the district and for the police department that need to be discussed so that's what I'm that's what I'm coming up for me on this so okay sorry president M Cola that was that was it all right moderator are there any public comments there certainly are um this is public comment for item E4 only please raise your hand by clicking the raise hand button at the bottom of your screen to comment on item E4 um comments are limited to two minutes
246and we have a couple of phone call listeners if you want to raise your hand you push star n if you've called from a phone our first public comment is Juan tro good evening School Board um my name is Juan Carlos Gonzalez I'm here to speak to you tonight as a former um City Schools student and now a new employee um I was raised by two amazing immigrant parents in Northwest Santa Rosa and I um graduated from Piner high in 2015 um I'm so excited to announce that I have recently made my way back as a Spanish teacher for for San of high school for the 2020 2021 school year shout out to Mr maera um so today I want to talk to you guys about your decision of wanting to remove the school resource
247officers from the campuses um so in light of everything going on in the world it is impos it is impossible for us to ignore the injustices that occur in our own Hometown with that being said I proud I proudly stand with the black lives matter movement as I know you all do too however the removal of the um SRO from our campuses is not the answer I understand that this is an extremely sensitive topic for everyone not just Latinos not just African-Americans everyone however I think that we must reconsider the way in which we're going to create a welcoming environment for the students without removing srpd from our campuses during my time at Piner High we went through two different school resource officers the latest being the amazing officer Amanda sinera um she made the
248students feel welcomed and she provided an overall feeling of safety as much as we hate to admit it we live in the the day and age where we practice lockdown drills because we don't know when our next school shooting is going to be I'm sorry that I'm being extreme brutely honest with that but that's the truth um our school resource officers provide guidance for our administrators and staff as to which steps they need to take in order to ensure the safety of the students and staff everyone around the campus um so rather than doing away with the sro's why don't we look into ways in which we can have the 15s um that's what the students long for the most is those connections with the utmost respect I ask for you to please consider keeping
249sro's on our campuses thank you so much Juan thank you thank you for being our teacher thank you welcome back one thank you Mr M um president president Fong we have um 26 in the uh chat waiting I I'm suggesting that that is the limit to your your one hour limit that we keep with that so just letting the other folks know we have closed the queue for public comment so we will take everybody already in queue next is M Ruiz would you please State your full name for the record hello am I audible yes okay hello good evening um my name is Vanessa Ruiz I'm a teacher for six years in the district and also apparent to a fourth and second grader removing SRO from our schools without alternative supports in place would do
250nothing to provide valuable services to those in need and it reinforces a paradigm that our SRO are to be feared or are out to harass our students and would eliminate an opportunity for transformative Community Building to change police policy and to address racist policies headon instead can we reach out to each other and Bridge a divide and improve Trust please work with our local law agencies and students and community members to build positive relationships and and work on ending racist policies please also see the studies that I emailed you from the Dolan group the educational Equity leadership group and the ACLU on SRO best practices can we also incorporate a discussion on the root causes of the fear and Trauma around law enforcement officers and how to amarate those directly please budget for more counselors
251and fully fund restorative justice program and bring social workers to campus to meet the needs of our most vulnerable populations without asking them to wait weeks to see someone I do not see that having these services for our students is at the exclusion of sometimes having our SRO on campus and I do not want our students to have fear around law enforcement turning our backs on SRO just doesn't feel right in this moment when we should be working towards less divisiveness and more togetherness please consider your position carefully on this very complex issue please choose a path of com Common Ground towards healing thank you for listening also as a half Japanese person married to a Latino person super excited to hear about the ethnic studies not only as an srcs teacher but also as
252a parent thank you thank you thank you for being our teacher next to comment is Kimberly kle good evening uh members of the board my name is Dr Kimberly clel and I am uh happy to be here tonight to uh speak a little bit on this topic um I want to talk from the perspective of a veteran education uh person I've been teaching and working in education for 24 years um in my experience unfortunately I've uh had to help students into ambulances I've sat with them in the ER I've watched them cuffed and put into police cars I've gone to juvenile hall um I've gone to court um I've even had to say goodbye to their ashes as they were scattered and seing bodies put in the ground of students I really want to thank
253the board for their leadership and active consideration that they're displaying here and undertaking this very difficult conversation of an intersection of race orientation and gender with the presence of law enforcement on our school campuses tonight my comments will focus on adding to this dialogue and helping to answer the question is this a good partnership for our students and schools Santa Rosa city schools has for some time had SRO embedded in schools to provide security and protect students from threats recent tragedies have made these priorities urgent and even newer and newer atrocities have raised concerns and scrutiny for this partnership is this a good partnership the presence of law enforcement in the schools has many critics as well as many Advocates systemic inequalities in education and the justice system and the existence of both actual and
254perceived racism heterosexism privilege really do present complex variables and influence that we need to consider once again the real question is is this partnership good for students or perhaps the more nuanced question is is this a partnership worth working on I would posit that we should consider working on this relationship and I hope that the board uh will join in doing that work I would like to keep SRO on our campuses thank you thank you Dr kled next is lesie Thomas okay can you hear me yes oh perfect my name is Leslie Thomas and there are so many passionate and valid opinions on both sides of this discussion thank you for honoring all of them I've been a teacher for 20 years in California the East Bay the Central Valley and Cinema County I'm the
255parent of a middle schooler and of a fourth grader at a feeder Elementary and you can hear this is very emotional for me teachers and parents cannot erase the things that are hard and difficult for a child but we have a duty to support them guide them and help them through it taking away SRO from all of our schools because some students don't feel safe doesn't actually help those students to be safer we need to support them we need to help them have dialogue we need to empower them and help them feel heard otherwise those negative feelings that they have and those are very real very valid feelings they will perpetuate into adulthood where they will not be resolved give those students a voice support them I Envision something like coffee with a cop only
256on a modified level but really whatever it looks like a voice a connection something that they can take into adulthood and feel empowered and as Mr maera said empowerment and working together is in this the district's Vision um one of the school board's members respond resped to me and paraphrasing they said it's the board's job to ensure the safety of all students even the small number who don't feel safe I agree I agree it's your job to keep all students safe it's not an easy job and I acknowledge that some students don't feel safe help them don't just take away the sro's help them feel empowered this is so important to me I think about my own student my own children I think about students that I've worked with I think about my children's classmates
257every child on that campus seconds 15 seconds please keep sro's on campus keep all students physically safe while helping the fearful students build trust and positively affect their Futures too that's how you can serve all students thank you thank you lesie next is Lynette Casey Lynette please unmute your microphone Lynette please unmute your microphone there I'm sorry I wasn't um I didn't actually raise my hand so but I'm grateful to speak um yeah I work at St ARA high school and I um just want to put in uh just a word about sro's how valuable they've been to our students and to our staff um you know they uh are there to support us in so many ways and I think I want to make the point especially that we do need to have police
258officers uh come to campus when we have a students with mental illness or 5150s or weapons or all those things and I know personally I prefer to have a a officer that we know that the students know that we feel comfortable with rather than officers that we don't know um these student these officers have very close relationships with our students and we really rely on that did she did you finish Lynette okay I think we lost her next comment is from Kyle Boyd can you hear me yes Kyle my name is Kyle Boyd I'm a father a coach a Community member and a police officer my wife is half Hispanic my three children are one quarter Hispanic I have proudly served the city of Santa Rosa for nearly 18 years I've been the school resource
259officer at Piner high school and hilard comto middle school for the last three years I worked for some incredible administrators and staff members at both campuses we rely on each other to support students yes the students we do it without an agenda or grandstanding we do it because we love the kids and we want to see them succeed we are all aware that our country is in crisis and discussions need to be had regarding those tragedies not one police officer or Community member that I know thinks what happen to George Floyd was justified not one however all police officers are now being painted with the same brush the rhetoric that kids feel threatened or terrified when they see a police officer on campus is something I have never been told it is possible that the
260students who feel threatened or terrified are the ones committing offenses that may get them in trouble either with the police or administrators the tragic happened the tragic incident that happened in Minneapolis was 1600 miles away was this an issue before Minneapolis happened I think not I think that we are in a era of called political opportunism where we are bringing this to the Forefront over the last week I've watched the June 3D board meeting and also one regarding ethics studies and school resource officers I heard a lot of statements by some board members that started with I think when talking about students feeling threatened or terrified by having a uniformed police officer on campus well I know how a vast majority of the kids feel why 15 seconds because I'm a campus because I'm on
261campus daily talking with and interacting with students I just hope that some board member MERS would come to campus and see the see the great things that we do with our kids and staff members thank you Kyle next is Will lion hello hello uh is it possible to share my screen please yes oh good I'm will Lon I'm the president of Santa Rosa Teachers Association uh represent 900 of our members we had oops it kind of it blipped it blipped because you needed to be promoted in order to share screen well I'm a panelist I want to go quick sorry um thank you for letting me do this the I wanted to share the results of the survey that we worked on this week so this was uh towards the end of the survey we
262had 58 people in our members answer this question the question was asked before this agenda item came up as a pause we were expecting it to come up as an elimination action item so we're grateful that it came up as a pause we support that pause we obviously need to have conversations about this um we definitely have work to do but I followed the several people who went before us and and and uh and SRTA follows that and we're ask we're supporting that pause and we want to be a part of that conversation here's the data 39 people said we should eliminate our sro's 205 said that we should keep them and then these other two I kind of want to put together one is I don't have enough information the the side the other
263one is we should do some research and tease out the benefits and issues and then make a plan that fits our districts and students and so of the people that took that survey if you add those last two together that's 52% of our members and then another 40% that want to keep them so I don't want to ignore the systemic racism in our country especially around police I don't want to ignore the real feelings that I believe people of color have when they're around or could have when they're around police officers um but we want to have that conversation there's we think there's a much better chance that we can take what we have and improve it and we're worried that if we were to get rid of it and then we did the work
264and found out oh shoot this is a really valuable program we won't be able to get it back so I'll leave it there thank you for letting me share my screen so I'm sorry will but we didn't get to see your scen screen um but we listen to the stats fair enough thanks for trying next is betab aparicio hi thank you so in 2006 I was a student at Airway continuation school in San Rosa a student spread rumors about a shooting that would happen after school nobody believed him and sure enough a young guy drove by with his weapon and a blue bandan he shot at students who were waiting at a bus stop including me two students were shot luckily no one was killed if we had a resource officer things may or may
265not have been different but having the option of having a resource officer and having dialogue with someone that you can trust may have changed things now imagine yourself as a high school student and the trauma and the pain that you would carry for the rest of your life for experiencing something like that our kids have grown up in schools where we have had to teach them to shelter in place for active shooter drills we traumatize them when we have them practice keeping quiet so that nobody can hear them our children have grown up listening to stories about school massacres yet we expect them to believe our schools might never be targeted we clearly know acts of violence in schools are real why would we ever have our schools and students be even more vulnerable I'd
266like to know what measures will be taken to ensure our kids safety I urge the board to survey our kids and parents and get input from the kids that are sitting in those desks I ask the board to please be methodical with planning our kids safety just ask our students just listen and see what they say good saabi thank you we're going to do a quick interpretation switch thank you we're all set next for public comment is Jasmine Jasmine could you please State your full name for the record hi yes my name is Jasmine Gino I graduated from LC Allen in 2011 during my four years there was an SRO with a permanent office there also during that time my career counselor Betsy hoffstead was fired and never replaced police presence at our school never
267made me feel safe nor did it improve the quality of my education it only played its role in the school to prison pipeline designed for defiant kids I was one of those kids I skipped class I smoked weed and I went to night school to graduate I thought I wasn't good enough for school but in reality school was not good enough for me it did I didn't see myself in my teachers nor books and I didn't understand how to advocate for my needs there was no place for me there privileged luck and caring teachers helped me make it out and kept me out of juvenile hall last month I graduated from UC Berkeley Magna klady and even at the University level in a progressive institution resources for black indigenous and students of color are painfully
268lacking not the cops at Berkeley nor the SRO in our school can fix this or any of the other reasons that make school hostile for us studies show that armed guards are not the ones who stop active Shooters cops are not mental health experts or restorative justice practitioners or Community Builders cops at school serve to punish regulate and police they make students see themselves as criminals as I did and then help fulfill that prophecy I didn't end up in jail but many of my talented intelligent and valuable peers did further data shows brism permeates every step of the Criminal Justice System including its arm of resource officers at schools gang databases masks incarcerate black and brown kids which then masks our inability to serve their needs because it locks them away hidden in a Cell
269racism goes beyond positive interactions with one or two SRO it works through institutions and structures abolishing cops from school can reverse the school to prison Pipeline and it's a critical step in dismantling systemic racism in education San Francisco and Oakland School seconds San Francisco in Oakland has done it board it's up to you abolition will come eventually and In This Moment is in history you choose where you will stand whether you want it or not it's coming so you choose if you want it now or you want to be on the other side of History J mean thank you so much next is Nicholas Hodson hello my name is Nicholas Hodson Elementary music teacher for C rosa city schools thank you board and uh for listening to myself today I just have one thing to
270say I'm not here to um encourage or to discourage you from having SRO just because I have no experience with this I don't teach at high school and I don't know any students that have had any interaction with them um teaching at the elementary I would like to see them more um if they do exactly what they say they do so it's it's my understanding if 90% of what they do is through student Outreach and community outreach and that's great but I also noticed that on the ad hoc committee um 11 srcs not including SRT or CA would be on that committee and then 15 student or parent Community uh members would be on that and I think that there needs to be more representative of the people who actually deal with Sr on a
271more day-to-day basis not just the administration but the students who are involved with that uh and I think it's important so if you add in the SRTA teachers and csca um members who work for the district as well that's um near 18 so that's more than the 15 that has the student and parent community so I would suggest more representation from them for them and also you know don't just reach out to survey to students but seek them out they need to respond and you need to hear more and hopefully you will hear from more students not just former but current students right now thank you thank you Nicholas next is Nelson L Nelson will you please State your full name yes hi Nelson lelli um I just want to express my support for pausing
272the school resource officer program and urge that the ad hoc committee that will be formed um seriously reconsider the program and provide us with Alternatives that don't necessarily involve having an armed officer one armed with the deadly weapon on campus I think what many of the previous speakers in favor of keeping the program have failed to realize is the trauma that is brought upon by the presence of officers and the inherent systemic racism of these programs you don't build trust with an officer or fear them less by re-traumatizing students as I was ret traumatized as a high school student by doing it over and over and over again you build trust by not perpetuating white supremacy everything that the assistant superintendent said in the presentation can be done without having an an armed officer on
273campus it can be done by a social worker a mental health provider or someone else which is I encourage the ad hoc committee to explore Alternatives nothing in the board policies on law enforcement directly rely on the need for an SRO but can be done with communication with the police department I support positing the program and request that the ad hoc committee provide us with the data on how many students are being disciplined for what violations and give us that information broken down by demographics it's absolutely absurd that this this program has been running since the 90s and we don't have this data already and the earliest that we can get it is by 2021 like that do you know how absurd that is personal not I just want to say that I have never
274in my life felt safe in the presence of a police officer even now as an adult whenever I see a police officer even while grabbing lunch I actively fear for my life I go into automatic shutdown mode so please pause the program and have the ad hoc committee really study this program see who it's hurting and who it's who's actually benefiting thank you thank you thank you Nelson next is Omar Omar please State your full name for the record hi it's me again Omar Lopez um I wanted to come on here and say that I'm glad that the board is paing this creating an ad hoc committee to really analyze the effects of uh the SRO program because I think it's really important us for us to make sure we have all the facts before
275we make a decision on sorry Omar we lost you for a minute okay um are we good awesome Yes uh so the I had two questions just regarding the student representative part of it um just regarding what that process would look like um I Al someone mentioned it earlier I feel like six in reps I would hope to have a couple more but um understandably if it's six I am able to work with that um beyond that I also had a question about uh who constitutes as a community member and what that would look like as well like what the process to get them on that committee would look like and that would be good for me one more thank you next is Charity s Halls hi um I wanted to rorate concerns about can
276you hear me yes yeah okay great uh about the school the prison pipeline as well you know Chief Navaro during the protests stated that he didn't believe there's racism in Sonoma County and to have or or Santa Rosa and to have that level of denial at at the at the police chief level doesn't bode well for me as that filters down into your resource officers um I wanted to encourage you to survey parents and students but it sounds like you guys are doing that so I appreciate that and um the last thing I'll say is I know a resource officer not at s Ros City Schools but in the area and uh was having a casual conversation with him and asked about you know was just sort of making a comment like oh you know
277it must be nice to be able like help these kids and reach kids and his response was well you know most of these kids get in trouble they're kind of lost anyway like there isn't much hope for them and that kind of attitude and and uh towards the kids to me isn't a very positive um presence on campus thank you charity next is Melanie Maza hi can you hear me yes Melanie hi my name is Melanie Maza I'm an alumna of Montgomery High School class of 2011 um I'm commenting tonight in favor of pausing revisiting and ultimately removing sro's from Santa Rosa city schools um I want to lift up um Nelson and Jasmine and the firsthand experiences they shared of how they felt around police officers and just really um ground Us in the
278experiences of students because that's what this is all about so definitely urge you to listen to your students as much as possible and I know we're all here because the student safety and well-being is Paramount to all of us but um both qualitative and quantitative data show us that SRO are not the way to achieve student safety and well-being and that Alternatives such as positive behavioral interventions um actually really do work I understand that the funding for um the SRO does not come from uh srcs but instead from the police and while I understand that I think that this is the first step toward ultimately shifting those resources um from the city and as president Fong said at the top of the meeting this is a moment to listen and to realize our blind spots
279and Trust the voices of the people who are affected this is a moment where the black lives matter movement for far too long has been unequivocal about the importance of removing police officers from schools and cities across the country have already moved to end these relationships um I also want to lift up up the um the concept that this isn't an issue in um Santa Rosa city schools I had an experience I'm white and I had an experience at Montgomery where another white friend and I were sneaking off campus to cut class and the treatment we received when we were caught for doing that it was made very clear that the treatment we were receiving was because we were white we got off incredibly easy just a phone call home um a phrase I remember
280is quote you're not who we're worried about so any concept that racism is not happening here is not true um and school really cannot be a place where of white safety takes priority over black students indigenous students and students of color being criminalized and feeling afraid for their lives thank you thank you Melanie next is Cecilia Cecilia please State your full name hi Cecilia Shan um I'm calling because I was surprised to hear the amount of police sympathizers calling in today um I want to make sure that that everybody is paying attention to what's happening in the black lives matter Movement we are not blind to the abuse of power happening in police forces Across the Nation if not the world if you don't know a kid who's been afraid of a cop you aren't
281talking to the right people and you are in a bubble police train for weeks not years and they are not equipped to handle many if not most of the situations they are called for getting pulled out of class by a police officer as a kid is absolutely terrifying especially for a student of color who hears what happen to grown men his skin color only a small percentage of school shootings have been stopped by police you can see the stats for yourself over half the time it's over by the time police show up I request you end the partnership with the Santa Rosa Police Department school resource officers and focus instead on having mental health professionals and other forms of support for the students there are far better trained professionals who can help young people in
282the schools I strongly urge you to begin the movement to a to better support your constituents with actual support and safety and not a system that is rooted in racism and abuse I yield my time thank you thank you Cecilia next is Lee Lee could you please State your full name Lee Vander can you hear me yes go ahead thank you um I know that we have a limited amount of time and Cecilia just pretty much uh summed up everything that I was going to say say so I want to yield my time but also reflect that I too would like to see the end of the relationship between the police department and the city schools I'm a former school teacher um I'm still in touch with many of my students and I uh would
283like to see these uh funds diverted to Mental Health crisis and into the community so I'm yielding my time thank you thank you Lee next is Gabriel Gabriel ala good evening board um Gaba principal High School um I'm a little uh um conflicted about this topic but I do feel like I need to express um the side that uh I've I've had situations family members within our SRS srcs community that unfortunately have been um at not treated well by law enforcement some of our SRO but on the other hand um we've been lucky enough at least at LC Allen High School the time that I've been there we had Officer Larry Mari officer Wade alred officer Orlando msas who um went through a lot during the Andy Lopez situation got things thrown at him by
284community members but yet he served firm and polite and respectful to the community um met with students met with students without his uniform uh and had circles with him uh right now we have officer AJ Armando haigi um two Spanish-speaking officers who are more uh important because of the role they play as Role Models within our community it is a vision of some of our community members to see positive role models in this case we have both Armando Hari and also orando msas um our community comes to them uh because they are Spanish speaking uh they'd rather go to them at our school than to go to the police department to be honest um and I'm not going to say that there isn't some situations where um sometimes they have to do work but as
285administrators it is our job to make sure and I've made it a commitment of mine to do my best to not contribute 15 seconds to the school of prison Pipeline and both when I was at Ridgeway and at LC Allen I minimized if any I don't even think we had any arrest at any of those sites while I've been on there as same as at at LC Allen so I I'd really like for it to continue but with discussions because needless to say it is very um needless to say a health a health professional is not going to help when a student is violent time time is thank you thank you principal Gabe next is Pamela van Hela please unmute your microphone okay hi thank you I'm writing to support the pause for the school
286resource officer program and to and the forming of the ad hoc committee to research and make recommendation in August I am concerned about the way in which the ad hoc committee members will be chosen so I urge you to have an open and transparent process for appoint appointing members to that committee and I urge you to have a committee that reflects the many shades and ethnicities and the economic spectrum of srcs families I urge you to consult the latest research in the school to prison Pipeline and take a stand to dismantle it I urge you to listen to the families of black and brown kids in our schools who disproportionately are impacted by police brutality I urge you to listen to mental health professionals and Child Development professionals who are knowledgeable about the impact of
287trauma on the growing brain and body I urge you to consider What alternative models have been successful in helping schools provide safe and nurturing environments children who struggle need teachers who are on their side children who struggle need counselors and nurses children who struggle need school to be the place that believes in their future and open doors to opportunity teachers need to know there are resources in place to help kids so that they can do the work of of supporting each child learn and grow thank you for reducing suspensions and adopting a model of restorative justice in our district this is a model that could be expanded to be more preventative and actually the flavor of the school's culture and not just a tool for when a rule is broken keep that culture and make
288it the norm grow it feed it invest in it teach it to every child and support parents in learning how to reinforce it at home build trust and respect it's very hard to build Mutual trust and respect when one 15 seconds when one side has a gun and the other side is a child in pain I also believe that the school cannot do this in as Silo the school is part of a community so as a whole our community needs to do more to invest in human dignity let's work together across the city and let's start stop criminalizing poverty stop criminalizing mental illness and build Bridges to create more opportunities for Youth and their families I'm Pamela thank you next is Aaron Gomez uh good evening my name is Aaron Gomez Ramos and I'm a
289public Middle School teacher of 14 years in somoma County um I'm making a statement in support of removing police presence from public school campuses and I just kind of need to take a pause right now and reflect on the fact that one of the resource officers that called in made a comment um saying that the students who were fearful of police were probably the ones who were committing crimes so I feel like we need to chew on that okay to begin with it is my belief that having police officers on campus perpetuates institutionalized racism statistically police presence is almost always at schools with high populations of non-native English speakers those that are socioeconomically disadvantaged and or ethnically diverse this criminalizes students in their families and makes them feel suspect by demographics alone secondly schools are
290often the only place of safety and consistency for many students police presence detracts from the sense of school as community and transforms it to one of fear many of your youth have already had negative experiences with law enforcement either personally or from having stood witness to acts of police brutality via me media in order for learning to take place our students need to be able to trust the adults on campus police officers are simply not equipped to handle the intricacies of Child Development and the complexities of trauma lastly there are many positive ways in which we could reallocate Financial Resources we could divert this money into hiring more crisis counselors train specifically in Conflict Management deescalation trauma and restorative practices we could purchase more anti-racist curriculum hire Educators to teach ethnic studies classes or provide
291sensitivity training for staff in addressing bias and education 15 seconds bottom line not belong in our educational setting the Learning Community should utilize restorative practice is not punitive or intimidation tactics in making a safe environment for all thank you for your time Ain thank you next is Charlie Charlie please State your full name my name is Charlie kirtley and I'm a parent and also an employee of Santa Rosa city schools I just wanted to say a couple things I am minority I have two children they are also minority um and I am begging you to please keep the sro's on campus people keep calling in and saying will the sro's get there too late after lockdowns no I have been in two lockdowns both for guns one for a shooting at Ridgeway our SRO was
292on site he sprung into action the kids that I had care of were relieved and glad and felt safe knowing that he was there taking care of business and keeping them safe um so I think that we need to do a better job getting out what the sro's actually do and how helpful they are the other thing that I don't think people are quite understanding is that some of these kids are going through serious um issues and problems and restorative justice is a huge part of that of which the SRO are also a part of they are taking part in those kinds of things and making sure that these kids have what they need and have the tools that they can progress in a positive manner a lot of the sro's and especially the one
293that we had at our school went out of his way to make sure that he was meeting these kids where they were at he was talking to them about concerns that they had about family members being deported um deportation and he was talking to them about physical abuse and mental abuse abandonment from parents and homelessness and options that were available to them and where they could go for assistance and help 15 second really looked up to him and taking this resource away from the kids is a huge disservice to our students so you really need to consider keeping this program alive thank you Charlie next is Step Basel hi this is Stefan Basel you can hear me good um I'm educated my whole life in Santa Rosa um I live in the Santa Rosa School
294District I'm a father of two School aged children I'm a coach an srjc teacher a police officer and RPA president um I don't support The Stance of pausing our relationship I support a stance of maintaining evaluating and creating a program that could be used as an example to others in addressing issues of systemic racism and social inequality that exists in our in our communities these issues are issues of an entire community and it's going to take an entire Community to solve them we must work together and at the heart of that solution is engagement education empathy and unity a decision to pause or stop a relationship is counterproductive and regressive by its very nature the data that supports a decision to pause our relationship is weak at best the argument in favor is based on
295outdated information defensive rhetoric and divisive methods and goes against best practice in addressing our community issues and Falls well short of representing the community we serve and the students we serve this is the time in our lives to create a program that will address one of the most challenging issues we will Face In Our Lifetime we have an opportunity to create a program under the most diverse School Board we have ever seen let's create the gold standard of SRO programs one that addresses inequality and inequities let not waste time by pausing a program created over the past two decades vote instead to maintain our relationship create a program that addresses all issues and serves all students vote against this item and we are stronger together thank you for your time thank you Stephen next is
296Armando Armando please State your full name hello can you hear me yes hi uh my name is Armando hrii um I am a first generation Mexican americant um my parents were immigrants into this country uh I'm a police officer with the Santa Rosa Police Department for the past 21 years and I have been a SRO at LC High School go Lobos for the past five years um a lot of good points have been brought up and I don't want to waste a lot of time because I know my time's limited uh but I did want to answer a question that was brought up as far as the roles the sro's have with uh restorative practices or or with the dialogue with the community uh regarding an issue within the community and I have personally been
297part of those uh uh groups uh I am part of the community building initiative uh that's part of the rosand group that discusses issues within the community um I have an open dialogue with them and I think that's very important to uh build better relationships between the community and the senators of police department and I believe that that's the core of what we do at s a police department as a and a SRO is building positive relationships we wear many hats as SRO from law enforcement to counselors and Educators um but the biggest thing what we do is is is building trust within the community we have to build that trust so individuals whether they're students or someone with the community uh feel safe and comfortable approaching an office officer uh we're all human beings
298we're all trying um to do what's best and I think everybody within the board and the San Rosa Police Department and sro's have a 15 seconds 15 have a common goal in uh the safety and the success of of these kids um in our schools and I support that we just continue working with the the San Rosa city schools and maintain the SRO program thank you armanda thank you next is Dr Rome could you please State your full name for the record hi I'm Dr Rome romanelli can you hear me oh we are yes great thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak tonight I'm an English professor at Santa Rosa Junior College and I also teach in the Department of Education leadership at San Francisco State I began my career in public education
299more than 15 years ago working on measures to reduce dis disproportionate discipline in the district office for one of California's largest school districts since then I've taught on K12 Community College and CSU campuses all across the state in 2018 I went back to school for my doctorate because I wanted to research a Public Health crisis called the school to prison pipeline which has come up numerous on numerous occasions tonight uh as a teacher I've been deeply struck by the fact that every school that I've taught at has been able to afford a fully militarized police force but at the same time has not been able to afford critical resources like therapists supports for students with disabilities social workers Librarians and classes small enough so that every student has the attention they deserve and required to
300be engaged in a meaningful learning process while that's just my personal experience I'd also like to share what we know from Decades of research to to say that the research is insufficient is false I studied while working on my dissertation literally Decades of research and the most important thing I learned through my doctoral work is that school resource officers are the primary vehicle of the school to prism pipeline there's a vast body of research which reveals that black indigenous people of color and lgbtq plus students suffer the most meaning they are disproportionately funneled out of our schools and into the carceral system because they are disproportionately targeted by campus police when compared to white or non-lgbtq plus peers there are demonstrable connections between an individual's School discipline record and their likelihood of incarceration we've been
301conditioned to believe that campus police reduce and prevent crime but the actual research shows us that not only is that untrue but that once our students are funneled into the carceral system they're actually more likely to commit more crime and engage in a cycle of recidivism or reincarceration I'm grateful there's abundant research about the integral role that campus police officers play in expanding mass incarceration by feeding young people into the school to prison pipeline but I'm even more grateful that there is now also there's also abundant research about effective alternatives to campus sa uh campus campus safety like restorative justice other things that have come up tonight so I would just like to say please immediately pause revisit and remove SRO from our schools Dr Rome thank you next is Diana Diana please State your
302full name hi uh sorry I had to unmute um hi I'm Diana Kingsbury and I am a Santa Rosa voter and Resident who supports getting police out of Santa Rosa city schools I went to Santa Rosa high school and Santa Rosa Junior College and I volunteered in our local restorative justice organization restorative resources for two years through these experiences facilitating and participating in restorative councils I learned about the school to prison pipeline I heard from a young man who had police officer plant evidence on him we heard from a family where the Latino parents were ignored and disrespected we heard about police racially profiling people and I've seen with my own eyes and heard from Black and Latino people I know how differently police treat them compared to white people the phrase school resource officer
303seems to ignore that these are police with Badges and guns ready to arrest children when we have police in schools we are treating students as criminals and let's face it we are particularly treating students of color as criminals we need to shift funding from police to programs to to support students since so much misconduct can be traced back to lack of appropriate resources and inappropriate ways of handling moments of distress now is the time to focus on prevention and Des and actual deescalation instead of impulsive fixing at the last minute we need to respond effectively rather than overreact with a violent life- disrupting force of the police when things come to a head in other words we need to think Upstream to put it plainly many people are focusing on keeping people safe when there's
304already an active shooter but that misses the point the roots of mass shootings are deeper and often harder to get at yet we do a disservice to our students and teachers by not addressing root causes imagine how many mass shootings could have been prevented by adequate mental health counseling and other on-site preventive measures to have more effective education that empowers students to thrive and participate fully in our communities we need to make school a supportive place of learning and not an atmosphere of fear and hostility which is what the police pre uh presence creates for so many especially students of color and one last thing according to the mapping police violence project sers a police department killed one of our community members not to mentioned the eight other victims of police killings by the sheriff's
305department srpd shot Marcus Martinez who is kneeling recently in protest uh point blank in the face causing such damage that he had to be moved to a hospital in Sacramento for oral oral surgery and as seconds M stagged with rubber bullets that caused major bleeding and she had to be hospitalized the nurse at the hospital said it's a car accident right srpd is not making our community safer for all so we should not have them in our schools thank you Dian thank you next is Lindsay Rose good evening everybody can you hear me all right yes Lindsay so um first I want to um address a comment that was made a little bit earlier um that I heard as the fear of police especially in schools wasn't a problem until George Floyd and I would
306like to you know know address that none of us forgot about Andy Lopez and he should have graduated with us in 2018 and he didn't so to overlook that situation is actually quite offensive but I'm going to get to what I was going to say in the first place I think that it would be in the best interest of the students to pause the partnership with the Santa Rosa Police Department and then reallocate that money to more uh you know Cape counselors which we used to have when I was in when I was at LC Allen and re-evaluate in a couple of years whether or not you want to bring the sro's back because it's worth the discussion but I feel that we have not addressed Mental Health the way that we should have in
307the beginning we have not made a a priority as we should have in the beginning and as much as we continue to say it's important we are not making it our first priority and it should be our first priority and I do want to address as well that it is not the job of a restorative specialist to be a therapist being a restorative specialist and I am a restorative justice practitioner we areain resol but we are not a therapist and our schools need therapists thank you thank you Lindsay next is Raquel guara Banos hi can everybody hear me yes Rael um hello everybody so my name is Raquel gavar Banos and I am here speaking to you as a community organizer I'd like to start off first by sharing something from a student who couldn't
308be here tonight um here it goes I'm calling for the removal of police officers on Santa Rosa city school campuses and a defund of srpd itself having cops on school grounds disproportionately affects black students indigenous students and people of color and puts them In Harm's Way it stops everyone from being able to get the proper education they need what's the need of having a gun latched to your pants on a campus full of children trying to learn I'm calling for a defund of police and abolishment end quote I thought it was important to share that because at this meeting I see a lot of adults I myself am young but I'm not in high school uh at the place that I work we believe that those who are closest to the issue also hold the
309solutions and I would really urge everybody here to listen to the youth right now um because they're the ones who have to see the sro's every day I'd also like to say that black and brown students have to see cops in their communities every single day because we know damn well that they're not policing white neighborhoods the same way I'd also like to just add that I read the statement that was released by the school board on um black lives matter the movement and I'd like to say that that statement is simply a statement without action so we're waiting what is your action if it's not clear already I am completely against sro's being in Santa Rosa city school campuses and for the officer who was on here earlier actually gaslighting students seconds that students
310who um fear officers are guilty I'd like for them to think more about that comment because that right there is gaslighting I yield my time thank you Mel next is Sarah andropolis yes hello yes Sarah okay yes thank you um hi I'm speaking on behalf of uh North Bay lgbtqi families again and we just wanted to say that we strongly support truste Medina's proposal to immediately and the partnership between uh the Santa Rosa Police Department's sros and the srcs secondary schools um as many commenters tonight have um stated police not have any place in the schools and do not make campuses safer um and for students of color who already experience disproportionately High rates of school discipline Studies have shown that having law enforcement on campus often exacerbates this effect leading to the criminalization of
311students of color and in many cases subjecting them to police violence at school the presence of police officers on campus can also be threatening and intimidating for students of color lgbtqi plus students students with disabilities and many others including students who through their own experience or the experience of their families and communities have lived with the fear and threat of immigration enforcement schools should not be another part of our society in which police are carrying out work that should be handled by mental health and other professionals who are there to provide support to students please take this step toward dismantling the school to prison pipeline honoring the lived experience of those who do not feel safe around law enforcement and take decisive action to keep SRO out of Santa Rosa city school campuses thank you
312thank you Sarah next is Michael Michael please State your phone hey um Michael toone here can you hear me Michael what's your last name tatone thank you hey um it seems that without um without demographic data we can't really say that the patterns that seem to be affecting the rest of the country with regard to sro's aren't happening here as well and my impression is that we have this idea in Soma County that we're we're different that we're not as racist here police are different here we have community policing here and we need to prove that we're the same problems that we see happening in other parts of California and other parts of the US are also happening here um I want to see the data I want to see what's actually going on here
313and this is a very serious issue and I'm not comfortable at all knowing that um the school to prison pipeline is potentially affecting students here and I know that in my own high school um I went to Maria Creo high school we had um police on campus um mostly talking about you know drug laws mostly um doing that kind of Ed educating and I'd never had any kind of connection with them um I don't think that we have the right to complain about the lack of trust that exists in our police today um we've seen we we've seen so so many so many problems with um the way that police have acted towards regular citizens toward people of color and um it's not our job to teach kids to stop fearing police it's our jobs
314to put kids in an environment where they're most likely to flourish and to succeed 15 seconds 15 seconds so thank you thank you Michael next is Amanda Ayala good evening everyone you look tired um so just thank you for being here and spending so much time thinking about all of these issues and our students and our community um I didn't want to speak but then I thought man I've had so many interesting um instances where I've I've been in touch with police and youth and seeing how the police treat Youth and it's and it's been so disturbing in Santa Rosa and um I'll tell you a little story one time I was I was at an event and there was four young boys they had had to be less than 10 years old they were
315all brown boys and and they were sitting on the corner and I stood about 10 feet away and I was watching just to make sure they were okay I could tell their parents weren't around and I could tell the police got so angry that I was there standing there and they said you need to leave this is none of your business and I said well I'm here just to make sure that the kids are okay well these aren't kids these aren't just kids and I said but they but they actually are where are their parents and they said that doesn't matter these aren't just kids and you need to leave you need to step away and this is things like this have happened lots of times and I just want I just want you all
316to I'm I'm like a I like to paint and I just want you all to have a little bit of imagination here and creativity and and open yourself up to that child inside of you that that wants to believe in more than this little box that we're in right because I I've been hearing a lot of fear coming from a lot of people around what's going to happen if we don't have police in the schools there's plenty of options but if we don't 15 seconds seconds then we're going to continue to harm our young people and that's what we're doing when we have guns in the schools we are harming our young people I hope you have a wonderful night thanks for being here I hope you dream about this and think of some really
317good solutions that don't include having police in schools have a good one bye thank you Amanda all right we're going to turn this back over to the board for discussion that was our last speaker and our time is up director Sheffield oh wow me first I I saw a bunch of hands go up but um I appreciate hearing all the public comment I'm kind of losing my voice it's been a long day I'm tired I probably will dream of this um but uh just knowing that the whole country is having similar discussions on police reform um so I'm framing the discussion at least in my mind that there's something obviously wrong with the system um and that this discussion's uh reaction to what we're experiencing what I'm experiencing and have experienced time and time again
318um that racialized police violence is a thing that uh there are unchecked biases there's lack of accountability um and now there is a call for Action um and this call is not only coming from black and brown bodies um and uh I think we know as a nation and as a community um that we've been here before and as a community it wasn't that long ago and still nothing's changed not in my lifetime not in my parents' lifetime um you know going back 60 years MLK right um and since then you know Watts uh Philadelphia with John Africa and move and Los Angeles and Rodney King and in Santa Rosa 2004 CCO Deo and Jeremiah chass in Sebastapol 20 2007 and of course Andy Lopez in 2013 and since thin nck Gardner George Floyd Michael
319Brown Rihanna Taylor dang it just goes on and on and on and on and you know as as I was hearing the the the public comment and I was scrolling through the hundreds of emails I've got gotten on this and texts that I've gotten on this just you know since last week um you know it came to mind uh Langston Hees what happens to a Dream Deferred and that it doesn't sag like a heavy load it explodes and that's what is happening right now it's exploding and maybe this is you know a bit of ethnic studies for us tonight um but um my point is that 60 years of good intention and and um through faith in the system and meaningless reforms and policies and laws that are all designed to protect people of color
320nothing's really changed and you know for me out of this movement and out of BLM I want more than just you know an acknowledgement that anima is racist you know I think we can do better than that we need to do better than that what are we going to do that's different this time um and because Jeremiah chass and Andy Lopez was right here um this National call for police reform needs to be a local call for uh reform as well um the kids that I see out protesting are Andy's generation and you know they couldn't Express themselves when they were 13 and they're doing it now as adults right and you know if removing SRO from our school is embedded in this movement I cannot stand in the way I've heard from too many
321voices um we've heard it through the public comment and we heard it through the countless comments that that we've all received all of us the hundreds I'll that um and I think it's unfortunate that sides have been drawn and that sides were already drawn before we even had this discussion tonight right we didn't have a chance to sit down with srpd we didn't have a chance to sit down with with Santa Rosa a week ago we just did it this week we just had our very first discussion on this um but tonight this is an action item and it's calling for a pause um on the school resource officer program um and the formation of an ad hoc committee uh committee um and this is to review our relationship with srpd and I do support
322this action um I want to pause um I want uh reconfiguration um I want kids to be safe I want everything that was brought up from the public comment um and I want an ADD committee that has a lot of Youth input on it um um I'll end my comments by saying that you know my generation we were not successful in bringing Justice to the issue around police reform and my parents generation was not successful and now we have a new generation this is Gen z um this is Andy's generation this is Jeremiah's generation and they have a new approach they're demanding change and I'm not going to get in the way of this I cannot get in the way of this um I'll in there thanks sorry I see elar I see Jen I
323see Jill uh president is it okay if I speak after all of them because I'm probably going to speak for a long time I'm sorry om what was your question I said is it okay if I speak after all of them because I'm probably going to speak for a real long time all right who wants the last word uh director okay thank you president P um I'm going to try to be um pretty sucin I mean this is a uh an actually that's a pause to do a study on something that is needs to be studied so um you know I can say right off the bat that that that I support um I'm super disappointed in um and I hate to bring up individuals um but but when you when you call and make
324a public comment then you're sort of and and say very specific things you kind of put yourself in that position and and um and officer Boyd I've heard a lot of great things about you um and your passion for for kids and and the way you do your job and some of the things you said tonight are super disturbing and I and and I'd love to talk to you about them and um I don't think that there are students who are afraid of uh men and women in uniform I know that there are students who are afraid of men and women in uniform and and and um and give me a call if if you want to know how exactly I know that but um if for no other reason we could talk about Andy
325Lopez um but um or I can say very you know very briefly that that I grew up with two besties who were black and one was darker than the other and I watched the world treat them both different than me and I watched the world treat them differently because one was darker than the other um and same thing with the best friend of mine in college who um got pulled over driving we all black uh while I was in the back seat and um where the cops actually pulled the uh safety or whatever that thing's called that that that opens up their whole and put their hand on their gun um and had no reason to pull them over and um and it was terrifying and that has stuck with me for 30 years and
326I'm grateful for relationships I've had with police officers later in my life to help sort of undo that a little bit for me but I was safe the whole time and still that's stuck with me for 30 years so um I and and and that's just like a little bit of my personal experience so so I bring that to this and I know that there is real fear and I know that the data is real that people of color students of color are disproportionately targeted for discipline the prison P you know the the school to prison pipeline is real sro's you know role in that is real that's data that cannot be denied so all of that is true um and the other perspective I I bring to this is is my um seven and
327a half years on the board during which time there have been some really wonderful relationships with SRO um officer msas I think is probably the the best example that I know of and um and I know that there have been numerous um threats of school shootings that were resolved really quickly are they real are they not do we have to lock down do we not have to lock down you know what level of response we need to bring to this because those SRO had some deep relationships within the schools and some trusted relationships with the schools and I've sat on the Das when when students called and said we want our SRO back or why don't we have sro's um and so it's real complicated um and so I like the idea of doing an
328ad hoc committee I like the idea of doing a a study um and I hope that we do it really quickly um because I think there's an opportunity here you know police are not going away I do think there's a reality of like around building relationships but we are an Innovative district and we have um and we are an an equity uh centered and driven innovated district and so this is an opportunity to to actually change how things are done and if the city of Santa Rosa wants to pay for us to have officers on campus well then maybe we should talk about what we would like that to look like do they need to wear uniforms I don't know do they need to be armed I don't know do they need to have spec
329uh specific training in infl of bias and and or unconscious bias do they need you know what do they what would that look like for us um because I because we've heard from from folks that there's some advantages I've seen some advantages and we know undeniably that there's a problem with how things are done now um and there's absolutely no reason to think that sowa County or Santa Rose is the unicorn in in the country um that's um would be ridiculous so um I I'd say let's let's look at how we can we can do this better and do this differently and protect our students um the best we can in always and really grow and build relationships so I'm for the pause I'm for the committee I'm not I'd rather call it a task
330force or something that makes it sound urgent and say let's get it done before we go back to school like let's be real about this and not let City Santa Rosa put their money somewhere else but keep it in our schools because we can use it and um you know are there cops that are also social workers maybe I don't know but if there are we want we would like them um but let's say let's write this the way we want to write it thank you director close and and I see um director McCormack's hand up um I I very much resonate with both director shefield and director close and um I look forward to hearing um from all of our board members on this uh extremely important issue this evening and um I just
331want to actually make the motion right now so that we can continue um in Earnest this discussion um so I would like to make the motion um to pause the school resource officer program at all secondary schools and form an ad hoc committee to review the Santa Rosa city schools Santa Rosa Police Department partnership to bring recommendations to the board for consideration in August no later I don't want it pushed back um and so I would just like to make that motion and then I would like to continue the conversation and the discussion because the amount of conversation that we have received um both tonight and prior to tonight warrants a pause and a dialogue and a serious assessment a second second I hear uh close close uh Ed Sheffield seconded moved by director McCormick
332uh Mel may we have roll call vote please sure no that discussion no I don't I don't think we have to vote yet I just wanted to I just wanted to make the motion and then continue the discussion because I want I definitely think we should hear from everybody yeah but I just wanted the motion on the table thank you so it's been made and seconded and we are open for discussion still um director manieri was next thank you yeah I I also resonate with a lot of the comments that were um that were made by um by those in the public comment speaking in favor of of this pause um and I wrote down like a lot of a lot of thoughts a lot of notes before this meeting during public comment like I
333was really really listening deeply um and I don't really think that I could say anything better than or or really add more to the dialogue because um like director McCormack said this is a conversation that um warrants time and it and thoughtfulness and you know not having it having it at 11:30 p.m um and so I think that maybe what I would like to express is an interest in being a part of the the committee um that will be having these conversations um just quickly I you know I I have uh family members cousins who are currently in srcs who are part of the youth truth project that have a lot to say around this and I want to uplift their voices um so I just yeah there's nothing more I can add I agree
334I want to see the data I want to have a pause um there's so much healing that needs to happen um and and we need to start somewhere and I think that this is a first step um and I think that we need to recognize ra like her comment is sticking in my brain right we wrote we wrote that we wrote that letter and now there needs to be action um and I think that this is a good first step we have a real duty to break that status quo um and to do better and I think that this is the first step um and I do think that there are so many other models we can look at um I'm I'm I would love to call for like a comprehensive public health model that
335doesn't include cops on campuses um there's a lot of data and information around that but again that warrants a much larger conversation but I am completely um in support of this pause and taking a really hard look at the data thank you thank you director manieri I see uh D Cruz Director D CR please thanks um completely in support of reimagining this relationship um and making sure that it is consistent with our stated values um rael's comment is in my brain um as well as the comments that I heard from so many people um I did talk to kids I have kids in Santa Rosa city schools and I asked them what does it feel like when a cop comes on your campus and the answer that I got was was really meaningful kids get
336scared and they don't know what's going on they don't know what to do they don't know how to behave everybody just gets really tense um that is not an environment for Learning and so we have an opportunity and a responsibility right now and I want to take up another issue that somebody mentioned tonight this is political expediency this is about listening to kids and seeing with our eyes wide open what's happening to those kids right here in our town and making sure that we are taking up the responsibility of keeping them safe in their school making sure that that environment is is a place of learning and of safety and right now what I'm hearing from those kids is that it's not and it won't be if those cops are back in their uniforms with
337their guns doing the same old status quo as we've done before so um you know an equity an equity pause is um is a a tool that Equity design identifies as a really critical moment to just stop and examine and recognize kind of the need and the importance and the weight of the pause and I would say right now you know there is noou in place we don't have a current relationship um and so what we have is an opportunity and a responsibility and um I'm excited about what that means for a re reimagination of that relationship um I I want to listen to those kids that's our job minina thank you I'm going to start off by read reading something I was 16 on a summer night in 1996 I was walking home from
338the local Mini Mart having purchased my routine Mystic peach iced tea walking home I passed the DMV an officer was parked there lights off he calls me over he asked what I was doing and said there was a disturbance in the area I'm frisked handcuffed on the side of the car facing the freeway he places me in handcuffs on my knees I knew something wasn't right the officer then asked me to do a sexual favor I froze this can't be happening I'm thinking inside I kept staring at the freeway saying nothing my heart racing he then puts his gun to my head and tells me I can end you at any time I'm trapped here I am bound with no way out to either be emasculated or killed when I didn't respond he hits me
339in the back back of the head he eventually let me go and said if I ever told anyone he would come after my family and me I was a kid terrified but I believed him I kept my mouth shut for a year before I even told my mom to this day I still break out in cold sweats this was an LS Allen student a student that I went to school with right this is just one of countless very real experiences that come with being a black and student of color a person of color you know recently uh Gayla Baron wrote about uh uh someone that applied for a job at the Press Democrat that was pulled over three times in two days I've been pulled over by srpd three times in one day I wasn't
340driving my brother was when he was in high school but three times in one day I don't remember all the reasons but I remember the first reason was having our turn signal on for too long we didn't get sad Ed we got harassed we got pulled out but these are types of things that happen now one of the things that uh uh you know a lot of people talk about um sros and srpd and I don't I don't want this to be about our sros being bad people as individuals although today I'm kind of questioning how I should maybe I should reconsider some of that but I want to uh provide a comment by a previous SRO uh srpd officer and uh Orlando msas he wrote um just recently in response to what happened with
341uh George Floyd this is a systemic problem that I would call systemic racism he goes on here is how it is a problem in particular to law enforcement and then he writes about his experience here locally some officers would Trump up charges on certain people while not treating others the same Cruise quote unquote tough neighborhoods because it was more quote unquote fun utilize discretion when they saw fit and not during other times or with certain other people now they were not breaking policy or laws so one couldn't really report them or make a different a difference with complaints but their bias and ignorance infiltrated the outcomes that's what he wrote um and and and I bring that up because I I think it's really important to recognize the systemic uh nature of what we're dealing
342with and so I wanted to revisit how did we get here how did the SRO program come into Santa Rosa city schools and then looking back um the the election of 1994 Janet condrin running for Santa Rosa city council she pushed the cops on campus program as part of her election campaign and she ended up winning that was her second time running after losing to 92 but she ended up winning then later um you know 94 was a year where there was a the crime bill by Clinton um and if you recall the well I don't know maybe not everybody was alive then but the rhetoric around that time uh there was a lot of racism and biased built into that that we still live to this day right and so uh on December 19th
3432014 after that election srpd learned from the Clinton Administration that it could get Grand funding for for police officers right srpd police chief Sal Rano at the time uh who believes eventually they could he get a fifth officer um has recommended that the first option for use of the officers be the cops on campus program so I want to emphasize that this wasn't something that was coming from the district condrin was the education director for the Chamber of Commerce one of the main Packers of the cops on campus program um according to the Press Democrat the backers of the cops on campus program included the sers police department the city council members the Chamber of Commerce and the Press Democrat editorial board the Press Democrat itself so one of the things that stood out to
344me in in the context of that time was the narrative That Was Then created you know the Press Democrat being one of the backers of this program and a letter to the editor from s was a high school teacher at the time um you know I'm quoting he said the editor S at the local papers are reluctant to run stories that show youth in a positive light then quote we have already run our quota of dter stories end quote is a direct quote from the Press Democrat as it turned down several stories from our school regarding the recent floods so again I highlight that to show The Narrative that was being created to push for this program a a teacher from Lawrence Cook Middle School at the time he wrote I queried my students at
345at Cook Middle School on the topic and asked for their opinions they felt very insecure and indecisive about having a police officer on the campus a student from Sena Rosa high school then wrote as a student of s Rosa High School I feel it unnecessary to have a uniformed police officer on campus with the presence of a cop the level of tension would rise and as a student I would feel uncomfortable I may be oblivious to the problems but most students share my opinion that this would be a waste of money the Democrat around that time did a a whole piece on are you safe on school um I actually was one of the people that they they talk to all the students from the S City Schools district expressed that they felt safe or
346like I did said I didn't feel any danger when the issue came up and was presented to our school board uh Jim Gray the the the only person of color on the board at the time he said do we really need it there's no justification for it no justification for it later on several several trustees um ended up saying that they have been shown no need for police on campus right so there was all this political pressure that was being applied so the board didn't vote to support it because it involved um money right we had to spend money on it and the other thing that happened at the same time because I'm trying to like add to the systemic issue of it here you know in '94 Congress passed the gun-free schools act that
347required school districts to adopt Zero Tolerance policies for weapons offenses which I think we saw in some of our earlier language some of the requirements we have but in drafting their own statutes and Laws states and districts dramatically expanded Zero Tolerance discipline to include harsh responses for trivial matters and normal student Behavior you got to remember these are teams uh you know rebellious Behavior come comes normal so later on in 1996 March of 96 uh it was reported and the police did a report police visited Sosa secondary schools almost 1600 times last year that being 95 a reflection of the district's zero tolerance for criminal behavior on campus School official said a report from SOS Police Department says that visits to Santa Rosa's nine midle and junior high schools and high schools were an increase
348from an estimated 1,000 calls made two years ago right so one of the things that was also reflected in in that article was uh it's a different way of trying to solve problems in the past you would sit down with families and other agencies and try to deal with the situation but the system has changed the community has changed and the kinds of violations have changed uh that was the principle of Santa Rosa junor High School police chief Z rozano he said that these new numbers demonst straight that his cops on campus program that last year failed um is still something that is needed and under the program an officer would be assigned to each school to curtail crime and work personally with students which is often times what's reflected so what happened next year
349uh the school was able to get a grant collaborating in May of 20 of 1996 the school collaborated the school dist collaborated with the district and applied for a drug suppression grant that then in June uh was approved right so the point that I'm making is that this didn't come from us had we listened to students at the time uh students would said we don't need this we were never show justification for it the political pressure I think comes from beers and biases that exist that are tied to race so I feel this is deep rooted in racism in policies at the federal level um that that are systemic and that help perpetuate this you know just uh this Monday uh a study came out from UCLA uh from the center of civil rights uh
350remedies it's called is California doing enough to close the school discipline Gap and a couple things that stood out to me there um was one about the having more police uh can predict higher rates of lost instruction but the other part was the hidden problem uh that of the excessive Reliance on school police and and and that being another issue ultimately what you know they make several recommendations but one thing that they point out at the end is and I'm going to read the quote here finally based on our research findings thus far as well as research beyond the scope of this report the Civil Rights project that UCLA has endorsed the letter to Congress initiated by the leadership conference on civil and human rights and originally signed in October of 2019 by over 60
351of the most prominent civil rights groups in the nation the letter entitled civil rights principles for safe healthy and inclusive School climates lists as its seventh principle eliminate school-based law enforcement eliminating the involvement of law enforcement will help transform school climates and help ensure that Educators respond to behavior serve an educational purpose more generally following these research informed recommendations should help serve the public interest in protecting the civil rights of our children and ensuring an equitable opportunity to learn now a lot of what has been presented are the things that that sro's do a lot of the services that they provide and and iue that a lot of what they do can be done without sro's trainings uh about gangs that could be done without us having an SRO program risk assessment on you know
352active shooter drills uh the and trainings around that that could still be done without an SRO program I believe it was Lindsay that brought up a I think it a cape program right we we we need to work to reestablish that with the county uh when I reached out to the county about that uh supervisor saying said that there money that that skull's getting that that's supposed to help with that so I'd like to know more about that um in terms of one of the things that you know has been told to me about this is that if we end the SRO program blood will be on our hands if ever something is happen such as a school shooter program and and and that may be the case and it's something that that I feel
353horrible about but simultaneously I think about all the lives that that have been lost in terms of Futures Futures lost you know between the implementation 96 to 2012 when we've had zero tolerance and we had it till 2014 I'm wondering how many Futures were lost as a part of that Zero Tolerance which could only have been escalated by the presence of sro's you know that that concerns me and that happens I think on a daily um we've made progress by ending zero tolerance in our in our district but but but I battle with you know I'm conflicted with how does restorative justice and having a law enforcement officer like to me there's some sort of clash of those two ideals and things um again the power dynamics I don't see a commitment from law enforcement
354to change right in 2000 the US Commission on civil rights you know the California advisory committee um had a uh they looked at here in Soma County uh policing and engagement with the community one of the recommendations that came out to including srpd was establishing a civilian-based uh oversight committee and that had powers to actually re enforce actions police are not accountable right who who are they accountable to nobody right that's where the power Dynamic comes from and I've had them laugh in my face when I told them that there's a imbalance and power and and they're ultimately not accountable to anybody um they're not and I haven't seen any commitment from them um to that um you know I think police unions are definitely a part of that I I am supportive of unions
355when it comes to this um police unions allow this to continue to perpetuate as an issue um hey Omar can I can I can I can we stop for just a moment and have you catch your breath because I I just want to say that looking at the time we're going to need to make some type of of wave or or motion to suspend our own internal policy on on um extending the board meeting um we need to extend it again we have other agenda items um it's 10 minutes to midnight so I want to make that motion that we wave suspend board policy to extend the meeting I'll second that motion and I and I and I want to just speak to this real quick and just say like I just want to five
356board members so they're going to vote for this uh um already for for for this item and we still have a budget item coming up and three and a half hours ago someone said that our board meetings are not accessible because it's too late and that and we have a budget item coming up so I understand this is an important issue to you but that's I second that and Lori you don't have to call for a roll call on this you can just call for for eyes can I see thumbs up eyes on this okay thank you we'll extend uh we didn't say for how long Ed do you wanna Ed did you have um to get it done I don't know um let's just say one o'clock all right um oh director Medina I
357so I'll just conclude by saying this I want wanted a call to terminate anou that doesn't exist right I am completely for completely eliminating this program I know that I am not going to support police on our campuses until police reforms itself we're told that sro's get special training and treat students differently right but if these are the good cops then what are the other ones are they not treating people right uh why not and by allowing this to perpetuate are we systemically complicit and allowing to for that that's happening outside to continue I would say yes so until something happens with the culture of law enforcement in general as a whole I won't support law enforcement police officers on our campus I want this to terminate my my goal is for the ad hoc
358committee to come back with how do we deal with any gaps in relation to um not having police officers and in terms of funding we don't fund this but this isn't srpd that fund it this is taxpayers that fund it and I think our city council has expressed a move towards uh mental health workers but I think this is a community issue that's measurable funding and collectively we could work with srpd to have those mental health positions here we could have the city advocate for that and I think that should be part of the work and part of the recommendations that I would suggest the the committee to look at so this about a pause was a compromise for me and the that HW I think is necessary but like I said I don't I
359don't foresee any type of recommendation where I would vote to support police on campus I'll leave it at that I'm going to say that um I'm really looking forward to this uh ad hoc committee or task force or what whatever we call it because it is time for as I've said many times transformation and education and this includes every single part of it which includes the SRO um I have had positive experience with their sro's in the past but really we need to listen to what's going on now especially the kids who are talking the youth who are talking um we have to as a as an organization we need to build coalitions we need to build professional associations we need to partner with advocacy groups and researchers and um we also need to advocate
360for change at the state level and the national level because Santa Rosa city schools Santa Rosa city cannot do it alone and we need to look for those Partnerships so when we're building culturally responsive schools which we are well on our way to doing and I'm very proud of this board and and the superintendent and our team uh we're taking those steps so I'm looking forward to this committee full of different people um I'm in charge of this committee and it's a lot of work a lot of work to get done in a very short amount of time um so Stephanie maner you already said that you would like to be on the committee and hold on uh president Fong I think you need to take the vote to approve we haven't even approved that
361this is the way we're going to go that's right that first can I head it myself so I move that we pause the school resource officer program at the secondary school and I already moved it oh it's already been moved moved second just we need a call for the vote roll call vote so calling for the vote um Mel please roll call vote uh director McCormack I director Sheffield I director manary hi director De La Cruz I director close hi director Medina hi president Fong hi all right board members I'm not decision tonight but I'd like to see an indication from you if you would like to be on this committee and if you can't decide this very second if you would just text me or email me by tomorrow actually it is tomorrow by
362the end of the day oh not yet it's almost tomorrow um I see dor director Medina Ed director Sheffield director we is this everybody yes it's interesting to everybody I think and was that close I don't need to do it but I would do it director McCormack was your hand up okay we we need to know exactly who wants to be a part of this because and then we're okay director manieri director Medina director Sheffield director de Cruz okay got it okay and then Lori you your yourself as well I would imagine I mean president bong definitely okay all right so also um I want to State here that at our meeting on Monday with um the city Council um that they also requested a position on this committee so um someone from there the
363city council mayor schw Helm's Public Safety Committee that a representative from there also be on this committee so a new standing committee three people um okay so for the public who is asking about this in terms of the transparency of the committee and who's on the committee um we will be getting that out to you through uh Diane's office thank you Diane you're welcome uh thank you everyone uh director Medina special thanks and uh assistant superintendent maera also thank you for the presentation tonight yes and thank you Sydney Smith those of you who may have not seen Sydney since she first came aboard she's been doing an awesome job and um we're glad that she's here so thank you for the opportunity to present to help present and thank you for the kind words to
364good night night thank you Cindy all right we're in E5 it's a public hearing and uh we need to I'm gonna open the public hearing oh Diane would you like to introduce this first fine go keep going it's okay the public hearing the city schools 2020 21 budget adoption public hearing is open moderator are there any comments anyone who would like to comment on item E5 the public hearing please raise your hand at this time by clicking the raise hand button I see no hands no one it's almost midnight um all right that is my uh teacup we're on um action item E6 adoption of the Santa Rosa city schools budget for the 2020 21 school year Dr kidura yes I'm gonna keep my word short take it over D Deputy superintendent Edson thank you
365superintendent uh members of the board uh tonight we have a presentation on the 2021 budget uh if we could promote Joel dantos as well to the panel I would appreciate it yes I'll do that right now thank you uh before I share my screen i' just like to share that uh in light of what we've been going through with covid and some of the uncertainty uh information that we put together for the budget on Friday um much like for the third interim proves to be incorrect either the next day or a couple days after with new agreements reached by the uh legislature and the governor um in fact that happened yesterday where we tried to incorporate a couple of things into the presentation to give you an idea uh but we did not go and
366revise the entire budget uh until we see the final signed document uh I Believe by the 27th is is what I read yesterday uh with that I will share my screen so on that uh many of these slides may look familiar uh but we do adjust them for each interim report or budget that we do uh circled in red is budget adoption uh what we're at tonight I also took the opportunity to put a star around the budget revision uh for the first time uh in a long long time uh our budget revision it's due 45 days after adoption of the California state budget uh will undoubtedly be a major one this year uh in fact we've been discussing that we may even have to bring another revision uh in September October uh based on
367uh the unknowns now that should become knowns by then uh in terms of federal funding uh and some other factors uh that I'll say cause questions uh as we go into the next fiscal year so in the uh creation of our budget uh and we shared these uh at the fiscal stabilization plan presentation and uh that were updated from our third inum report based on the information that we had uh on Friday as we posted the budget uh for the two 2020 21 school year uh we were still projecting a 2.31% cola based on uh the legislator legislator's approved budget uh we learned yesterday through the agreement between the governor and the legislature uh that the 2.31% cola would not be given to schools uh and that funding would remain at the same level as
368201920 I circled on there that um during revision uh if everything stays as is at this point the statutory Cola uh an augmentation for 2020 21 will be 0% uh for this budget year which does reduce the amount of lcff Revenue uh that we will receive and we'll talk about that uh in a couple of slides uh along with this uh the other assumptions that we were using on Friday uh at this point still hold true uh including the buy down of the Cal purs and calsters employer retirement contribution rates uh and then our hold harmless uh for Ada uh for going back to this year for funding for next year uh a couple of key items that uh we were hopeful for but did not materialize or probably the biggest one is that for
369the 2021 school year we would be funded from enrollment rather than ABA uh knowing that distance learning uh may be still taking place uh but that was not included in the omnius trailer bill so here's a uh representation of the calper re rate increase uh and what we expect it to be this year and in our two uh out years uh at the bottom of the screen I did add uh the savings from the governor's buy down not really a savings but an expenditure reduction uh with him putting that money towards short-term use rather than long-term liability uh our expenditure reduction for Cal Pur for our staff uh is approximately $535,000 uh for Cal sters uh the same scenario uh prior to uh the May revision our anticipated rate was 18.4% for 2021 uh with
370the buy down of shortterm uh for school districts our revised budget rate is 16.15 uh resulting in an expenditure reduction of approximately uh $1.8 million um there is some language in the trailer bill that there is some uncertainty to those numbers in the future that we have on our project Ed uh but as of right now with the best information that we have uh these are the percentages we're using for counselor's employer rate um contributions probably the biggest thing uh that we use although we do have hold harmless in the trailer Bill language using 1920 enrollment uh are our enrollment projections uh for 2021 and Beyond uh as uh we we've talked about several times Santa Rosa city schools is in a state of declining enrollment uh guidance both from uh the county office as
371well as state organizations um as well as what we have already seen through our spring enrollment period uh is that it's likely to decline even at a greater rate uh than what was originally anticipated through our projection process to that point uh for right now uh we are projecting an additional minus 1.5% of enrollment uh going into the 2021 school year uh those numbers uh if they change uh hopefully for the positive will be reflected in our budget revision uh and any subsequent revision to that after the start of the school year uh a quick note uh this slide may be familiar about our fiscal stabilization plan uh I just wanted everyone to uh see what has already been accomplished this year in terms of preparing uh for the uncertainty of uh the budget ahead
372due to what we're experiencing now with the pandemic uh but also the work that we were doing before uh the state economic downturn uh through the fiscal stabilization plan and budget advisory committee process um plans one and two for this school year were presented to the board and approved uh for a total I have it somewhere total of 18.9 million uh in reductions uh including for 1920 through 2223 um so a significant amount of budget has already been um uh looked at for reduction in order to meet our minimum reserve for economic uncertainty and to show fiscal solvency uh in our out years so moving into uh the 2021 budget uh this shows uh from our Sachs report uh our 1920 estimated actuals and our 2021 budget I I will make note and uh I
373apologize I didn't put a circle here but this number here uh 145 023 173 approximately 145 million that number will be reduced with the reduction of the 2.31% cola to zero uh right now we're looking at about a minus 3.1 million uh from that number uh in revenues for lcff sources yeah so moving on this is the multi-year projection uh uh for the 2021 budget as we published Friday night uh showing that with uh the 2.31% cola that we were still uh projecting at that point uh the impact that it would have on our budget uh you can see highlighted and boxed in red were the future unidentified fiscal stabilization measures um that with this uh flat funding uh would put our district in a position to have to make uh significant uh budgetary reductions
374uh I'd also like to share that this is not unique to Santa Rosa city schools at this point um every District that I've been in contct contact with uh the districts that we hear about are are showing similar needed reductions based on uh the economic forecast for the State of California and the proposal for the 2021 budget uh with these Cuts uh important to also remember if the 14.9 million uh in 2122 are identified they would be included uh and as if they are ongoing cuts would be included in line items for the 2223 thus reducing that 19 million 19.8 million in 2023 that would have to be cut uh down to approximately 5 million providing all 2122 Cuts were ongoing uh with those fiscal stabilization measures uh we show that uh we can provide
375for our reserve for economic certainty uh as well as have an assigned ending balance of approximately $7,500 in our oute uh with the information uh that we got yesterday uh we put together what a revised general fund multi-year projection could look like we're still going through some of the nuances of the trailer Bill language uh but as it stands right now uh we would have to identify an additional $257,000 in 2021 uh coupled with 17 million going up um you know about that $3.1 million give or take for 2122 uh with the oute remaining uh the same uh the same that I mentioned on the previous multi-year projection uh ongoing Cuts in either 2122 would carry forward and reduce the number with these fiscal stabilization measures once identified uh we now show that we are
376meeting our reserve for economic uncertainty uh but you can see at the end of each year uh the unassigned uh ending balance is at zero this slide uh moving forward to show where we're at uh was not updated with revised numbers uh we'll we will make the Assumption for the sake of this presentation that revenue for 2021 uh is going to go down by about 3.1 million um and then affect the the outy years as well uh but it's important to note the the downturn in the expenditure line is due to uh the work of of our budget advisory committee in coordination um with the work done by our site leaders as well as our district office leaders uh as we move through this process uh the Blue Line uh also uh dropping uh is
377due to the funding and certainty in California uh as well as declining enrollment and as I mentioned to a level that we're not sure yet for the 21 2021 school year uh this shows uh what our projected ending fund balances will be uh in our other funds uh the one of note fund 13 the cafeteria fund uh we are certainly running a deficit right now with the meals that we are provided providing uh superintendent kenura mentioned uh the number of about 400,000 earlier tonight uh of the work that they're doing and we'll continue to do uh through June July and August in preparation for the start of the school year uh we are looking at some federal funding uh that will help offset that cost of the negative amount uh that would be another one
378of the budget revisions that we would bring forward uh once those funding that those fundings are identified uh the next two slides are uh based on what was in the trailer Bill language and the best that we could estimate at this point um of additional revenue for the district we did not include this in the multi-year projection or the revised multi-year projection um because we know there's going to be significant expenses to offset that cost uh and would have painted a very different picture for unidentified stabilization measures um so once we get full information on how these funds uh need to be EXP spended um and what we can put those monies towards especially in preparation for um our return to school including uh PPE or uh personal protective equipment um including and other Technologies
379uh software and other resources that we'll need to open School uh we'll include this as part of our revision uh to show how these monies are added to revenue uh as well as the expenditures that will be associated with them uh there's three buckets of money here uh one for students with disabilities uh additional funding for lcff and then funding based on supplemental in concentration um uh considered the learning loss mitigation funds uh and we do note on here that the funds are contingent upon the adoption of a learning Contin continuity and attendance plan uh that will be brought back uh as we start to go uh re re-enter the school year uh another one that we're waiting for that we have not received excuse me is the cares act funding uh which right now
380looks like to be approximately $2.2 million to also assist with reopening uh of schools in the 2021 school year with that uh next steps uh tonight uh and the next day are the uh public uh hearing which has already been concluded uh and the budget adoption uh we will bring the 45-day budget revision back uh at the first meeting in August uh and continue to work with the budget advisory committee uh on identifying uh those numbers that we showed as unidentified fiscal stabilization plan measures uh un audited actuals from the 1920 school year will be brought at the first board meeting in September uh along with revisions based on a possibly huge State revision after tax income is realized uh continued work with the budget advisory committee through the fall um and then in that
381excuse me at the November meeting bring back uh recommendations uh from the budget advisory committee and the superintendent uh to submit to the board of education for consideration for inclusion in the 20221 first inform report in December uh that will include uh the board approv fiscal recommend fiscal stabilization recommendations uh as well as of writing on Friday the lcap public hearing and approval for 2021 but there's also language in the trailer bill that changes some of the requirements at as well for that plan uh but uh we will still bring back what will be hopefully newly adopted by the governor later this month uh I will finish by saying there is still a great amount of uncertainty in the funding uh the budgets uh our budget is likely to change several more times as we
382go through uh our iterations based on the information we have and the uh how things are defined through the trailer Bill language and how they can be accounted for uh and if there are any more um opportunities uh the state gives us for um I'm Excuse me I can't think of the word but uh flexibility flexibility in our budget for for 2021 with that I I'll turn it back over to the board uh for any questions that either Mr D or I can answer for you all right I need to see the whole screen again because I can't see whose hands are up for questions I think Mr Medina is that a hand or okay it's hand yes Omar I just um so some quick things that that I'm kind of just more hoping that
383that'll be clear probably the next time around um I know that there's I believe language around instructional minute waivers um but but there's also going to be like additional requirements in terms of how we calculate Ada and like the requirements of teachers to Ada so I'm wondering if if that'll be simple or complex and if it would require like special training for teachers to to have those determinations done accurately um I don't want us to lose money because maybe we're not doing something right um and the other part is in terms of kind of the proposed pl's kind of payment deferral thing I believe I understand that this would come also at a cost like of financing it and do we know how um how impactful or how big the cost of potentially financing those
384payment deferrals um would be uh I'll let me take the first one yeah so there are uh instructional minutes uh some flexibility on that uh for 2021 as it's written in the trailer Bill uh there's also an accountability piece for attendance as as you alluded to director Medina uh and that will be what we work out when we get some more information on that from the trailer Bill language and some interpretation uh that will be included in our return to school committee work as well uh and and discussed in that venue to bring back as part of the update um there was no uh at this point there was no flexibility with instructional days uh but there was with instructional minutes for the 2021 year um there was one more question but my note does
385not address it I don't think can you say the second one direct sorry is about the cost of financing the payment deferrals thank you uh so there there is anticipated to be a deferral of June 2019 to July or excuse me June 2020 to uh July 2020 uh which we have enough cash on hand to cover so we will not have to borrow uh for that essentially one day deferral I mean it'll get paid um in July the the ferral that they're talking about for the uh second part of the year uh and Joel may have the exact months they're talking about deferral uh but I believe it's three or four months if we're in a position where we have to borrow uh from the County Treasury uh or from csba also offers a program
386uh the the cost of borrowing is 1% and we can borrow uh up to uh it was 75% but I think they gave flexibility to borrow up to 85% of expected uh revenues thank you I see no other hands up for questions this is an action item um director Medina I'll move to approve the budget as presented second all right Mel that would was director Medina and seconded by director McCormack director Medina hi director McCormack hi director manieri hi director De La Cruz I director Sheffield hi director close hi president Fong hi thank you that passes thank you very much Deputy superintendent m Edson all right we are on E7 it's an action item yes president Fong I'm going to Amit my words and turn it over to Dr Guzman good evening thank you uh
387Dr kenura members of the board um yes tonight the board um will take action on the covid-19 operations written report as the interim for the lcap until as um Mr Edson just said till it's due in December 2020 um under the executive order and n- 56-20 um the l cap was extended for adoption um however part of that order is as you just did you have to adopt a budget and then the we have to um compile a 300w written report um under covid-19 and in that order basically you have to address three main buckets um how did you deliver high quality distance learning opportunities as you know after the governor Nome declared his order on March 13 immediately we began working on our distance learning plan which our teachers utiliz from March 23rd to
388the end of the school year um we had to provide um how we provided School meals um and during that time um we provided over 200,000 meals to not only Santa Rosa city schools students but also students within Santa Rosa and also how did we arrange for supervision of students during um school hours we partnered with North Bay Children's Center who used our facilities for essential workers specifically um in the health care profession and we also um utilized our partnership with Boys and Girls Clubs towards the end of that time as well and so um we look forward to working with our stakeholders when we come back to school whatever that may look like as we um look at the elcap moving forward and with that I turn it over to the board does the
389board have any question comments I would like to offer good job all around we did amazing things in a very short amount of time and every single Department was there and every single employee pitched in and helped I really appreciate everybody's efforts because I was very proud very proud of our district this whole time early often complete as much as we could and we kept changing to meet the demands as we saw them coming so the flexibility and the responsiveness it was unparalleled and everyone is to be congratulated and appreciated including our teachers and classified staff absolutely all right I'd like to entertain a motion for action for this action item I'd like to move um that we approve the Board of Education will take action on the covid-19 operations written report as the interim
390for the lcap until it is due December 2020 I second all right Jill McCormick and was at alria D Cruz director McCormack hi director del Cruz hi director manier hi director Sheffield hi director close I director Medina I president BR I all right we have consent item F2 through F10 I move that we approve items F2 through F10 second okay so that was Jill McCormick and seconded by aliga De Cruz director mccomic hi director del Cruz I director maner hi director Sheffield hi director close hi director Medina I president Fong I item gen one is the approval of minutes of the regular board meeting held on June 10th 2020 move to approve the minutes of the regular board meeting held on June 10th second move by director McCormick and seconded by director De La Cruz
391Melanie director McCormick I director De La Cruz I director manary I director Sheffield I director close hi director Medina hi president Fong hi item G2 is the approval of minutes of the special board meeting held on June 3rd 2020 move to approve the minutes of the special board meeting held on June 3rd 2020 second second it by oh moved by director McCormick seconded by director de Cruz Melanie director McCormick I director de Cruz I director manary I director Sheffield I director close hi director Medina hi president Fong hi are there any board member requests for information with that unless I'm missing something and someone's going to tell me I am we're closing the meeting and calling it at 12:28 am on J on June 25th have to thanks everybody right