Shasta County Board of Education Regular Meeting - November 12, 2025

001I'd like to call this meeting of the board of education to order. The time is now u 5:34. Um, as always, we will start with the pledge of allegiance. If everyone will please rise and face the flag. >> 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, with liberty and justice for all. >> [cough] [clears throat] [snorts] >> Uh before we uh move to approve the agenda, uh I have a uh an announcement. We will be tableabling action item 8.1.1 until December due to the government shutdown. So with that, uh we'll go to item three, which is approval of the agenda. I need a motion to approve the agenda. >> I move we approve the agenda. >> And

002a second. >> I will second. It has been moved and seconded that we approve the agenda. We will do a roll call vote. Abby >> I. >> Jessica >> I. >> Jackie >> I. >> Laura >> I. >> Michael >> I. >> Teresa >> I. >> And I affirm as well. It is now time for public comment. Public comment for all items and on matters that are not on the agenda that but are within the jurisdiction of Shasta County Board of Education um will take place during this item. Members of the public are invited to fill out a speaker card and review the speaking to the board handout available at the check-in table in the back. Uh a reminder, the board is not allowed by law to take action on matters not on the agenda.

003Uh with that, our first speaker is Randy French. My name is Randy French. My first paycheck from Shasta County Office of Education was in uh April of 1978. I was a substitute custodian in the Enterprise High School. I went from there to uh Project Silia Elementary as a substitute custodian. worked at NOVA 15 years as a custodian and I was convinced by the teachers I should become a teacher. I then I went back to school in 1989, got my teaching credential, taught at Anderson High School, 15 years, moved to Oakview High School, the independent study high school, retired in 2022. Uh, and I have drew my last paycheck, but not the last one I'm going to get from you guys, uh, Monday of this week. I am a uh, retired teacher, but I am a

004substitute teacher, and I work when I want to. The reason I'm here is I am frustrated with the way payroll is done. And I know you guys can't make a decision on it, but in 1978, [clears throat] the pay period started on the 1st. It end on the last day of the month. And on the 10th of the month, I could go in 9:00 in the morning, pick up my paycheck, go deposit in the bank, and everything was good. And [clears throat] that was before all the fancy stuff. I speak with my hands sometimes. uh before all the fancy stuff that the district uh county has for money. Well, I know that you can move money from one account to the other, but I can't get my check until 3:00 in the afternoon. They used

005to let me get it a little bit early with the promise that I didn't deposit. Well, there's a few people deposited their checks early, so now we don't get our check till 3:00. Exactly. Uh my feeling is is the money should be put in the bank on the 9th. I should be able to get my money on the 10th in the morning and deposited. If I'm working, it's not a big deal because I work until 2:40, which I'm working at West Valley High School tomorrow and Friday till 2:40 subbing for Mr. um Pixler. I forgot for a second. Anyway, I know you can't do anything about it, but I think or today, but I think you guys should consider uh having it cuz you know, if I'm working at North Valley and it's a collaboration

006day and I'm done at 12:30, I live in Oh, man. I live in Reading and I don't want to hang around for three hours when I get done or two and a half hours and so I have to drive home or go sit in the park for two and a half hours and then go back to the district office to pick up my paycheck and I only sub for Anderson High School District because I retired there and they pay a little extra for us retired teachers. Times up. So, thank you for considering it and I hope to get my check early next month. Thank you, Mr. >> Frank. >> Keep those stories to yourself. [laughter] >> Facebook. >> Thank you. [clears throat] Are there any other members of the public who would like to address

007the board at this time? Seeing none, we will move on to item five, which is a uh present presentation from uh Northern Summit Academy. Julia. >> Okay. Well, the the troops come up knowing my tech abilities. Thank you. Hi everyone. So glad to be back here another year. Um I'm so glad the government shutdown doesn't involve all of us. I think COVID was all any of us could take. So as usual, posting our vision and our mission. I know you all got the reports ahead of time. Um, I just want to point out that we take our vision and our mission seriously when we're considering curriculum or programs or anything that we might be looking at. We literally do take into account our vision and our mission. It doesn't mean it might not be tweaked

008in the future, but at this moment in time, I think it really is who we are. Oh, did I do it right? Yes. Sorry. All right. So, these are just some pictures again of us. And um probably most notable is um our little vet assistant clinic room. It is a replica of what the kids actually experience when they're doing their 150 hours of internship out in the veterary world for our vet assistant program. And then our music program which is uniquely available to TK through 12 at our school. Revenue, of course, we know our revenue is good because Skoey takes care of it. Um they don't generate the revenue, but definitely the business services we get at Skoey help us stay all on the above board. Um Deianne is going to retire for real allegedly

009and so we have Tina working with us now and we have 100% confidence in her. Uh we've been working with her as Deianne is transitioning out again and um we're loving her. We're loving what she does. Our revenue is good. Our reserves are good. Um we're we're frugal in the right places. And then some of our programs are pricey. Um notably parseek for crunching our data is is expensive but it's very valuable to us and we have contracted for parseek reel which I'm going to bring up in a little bit. Um how it's benefiting us right now. All those kinds of things are expensive, but those are priority choices we make with our budget enrollment. So, we don't really have the bar graph for 20 the bar for 2526 because no names mentioned. Somebody was

010left to do this part alone. Didn't know how to do the bar. So, so I will just I did change the typing. We were at 207 on census day. We are up to about 217 right now. And this is the way our life flows in the independent study world. It open enrollment, so constantly enrolling and um our different groups are staying relatively the same. And then the um um percentages are mostly the same also. So that part's not really not really changing. So you've all read these things and I really want to emphasize that I think it's the variety of opportunities for our kids. Even though we're tiny, it's the variety of opportunities that allows us to be the personalized learning program that we want to be. And the newest um the newest one of

011the items, we had a graduate last year who actually graduate as a licensed CNA. And that was a super exciting step forward for us. And then we have just photos of the different things going on. I want to point out the insane importance and I think probably all of you know this, the insane importance of having kids stay in one school and we have a lot of turnover and um Parseek Real is going to I hope help us discover some of the reasons but um without this continuous enrollment our data just looks tanked all the time because we are constantly getting a huge number of new students in the fall. That means we don't even always get a full school year with them before they're contributing to whatever our CASP turns out to be. It's

012ve it's very challenging. Some more pictures. These are some of our partners. Um, I think what we're going to do is squish some more on for next year because our career fair is extremely well attended. We now have businesses call and ask us if they could participate. So, um, we may end up with two pages next year because we thought it might be nice if we put them on there and give them uh the appreciation for helping our students. So enrollment insights um I think the notable part on here number one we usually have probably close to 50% turnover in our enrollment if you include graduates. This year on census day 37% were new which is still high but we see it as a gain and 62% returning. and we're trying we would love to

013retain more and then increase the new so that we could hit a higher enrollment. We'd like to get to 300. Um it's kind of a pipe dream in a way, but that's what we'd like. And here's one of the insights um um which I'm going to talk about more because it's one of our challenges for this year. There is an increase in students this year. I mean a very notable increase in students who are receiving letter number one at our school and that in case for people who don't know what this is in independent study we cannot just warehouse kids and have them sit there doing nothing. So if our uh independent study policy, board adopted policy mimics the dashboard, the 90% so that we don't drift into um attendance problems. If a student doesn't

014do 90% of his or her work in a week, they get a letter number one. The student h is it's outlined. It's very detailed. The students told this is what you have to do to avoid letter number two. You have to make up the work. you didn't do and you have to get back on track with turning everything in. And there is an army at our school of people who are willing to tutor and support kids. So they're not being told you have to catch up and make this right and we're just sitting back waiting. We we're offering every support we can. If the student gets letter number two, it's the same thing. Here's what you haven't done. Here's what you need to do. And this is by this date. Letter number three, they are

015referred back to the district of residents. And that is honestly um I've been doing this for 47 years and I really like I don't like that maybe they're going to go somewhere else and just fail, but I really like that they can't just take advantage of an independent study program, sit home on YouTube, and nobody's paying attention, that they're actually not being educated. So our goal always with this is letter number one is hopefully a wake-up call. Do you like the freedoms that independent study brings? Do you like this kind of program? Okay, there's no free lunch. Let's step it up. That's what we hope letter number one will be. This is preliminary cast scores. And the reason it's preliminary is because when Parseek pulled data for us, we wanted certain breakdowns that if they

016used just the dashboard that we couldn't get the discretion that they were able to pull. So our scores are um not actually super shiny and um we just keep plugging away at everything we can. With the huge turnover, it's very hard to affect this change even though we definitely want to and we're definitely always looking for ways to improve our intervention and support our students. And here's this is about um the contiguous enrollment. So if you look students all students are on the far left and then we come into kids who have been with us for their first year and then the second year and you can see there are changes in their performance and to be honest um yes I think our program is fantastic for s certain students works really well but any

017child who stays in one school over multiple years is prom probably going to do better than what whatever change there is for that child. The school is important that it's the right fit, but so is the continuity of just being settled. >> Julia, can I stop you real quick? So, uh, so for the board, included in the agenda item is kind of a decoder ring for acronyms. >> Oh, I'm sorry. >> DF is that's okay. Uh, DFS is distance distance from standard. And so as as we see uh as we see acronyms on the slides, uh you do have some additional information there to help you. >> Yeah, if if I put anything up there and you need further clarification, I have no problem with stopping. Um the diff distance from standard is a little

018bit tricky. So last year we had let the board know that we were pushing towards showing proficiency towards standard or percentage towards standard and parseek is still refining that and fine-tuning it so that we can see so for instance if little Johnny is 50 points distance from standard in other words below the bottom of that standard fine. The next year if little Johnny is 50 points below standard at the next grade level, there's honestly no relationship. So this is harder to glean progress out of. And that's why we're working with Parseek so that we can take advantage of the work they're doing to show that if little Johnny was 50 points below standard in fourth grade, now he's 50 points below standard in fifth grade, what does that really mean? Is he actually closer to

019being at grade level if we look at all the points in a different setting? Does that make sense? All right, do stop me if you have questions. And then this is math. And our math teachers have worked so darn hard and they've gone to so many trainings with Skoey and even the summer computer and math sessions where they went to Anaheim and Santa Cruz and they're all over the place and it's just so tough. It's very tough and one of the identified issues it well we have several that we focus on in the afternoon interventions. One is the students do not have math fact fluency and that's kind of like still being at the decoding stage but you're in a fourth grade social science book. So if they don't have math fact fluency, everything is

020slow slowed down and everything's a stumbling block. The other thing is they don't have a sense of place value and we're working really hard on that in intervention. Uh I don't know why but they we we use money. I mean money is the best place value ever and they that's just a tough one for them. But then we are in a world of Venmo and debit cards and I mean all these kids have these things too. They all have Venmos. So that might be contributing race and ethnicity. The stars indicate those kids that improve from those groups that improved from last year. Um this was one of the reasons we had to use the preliminary CASP because our subgroups are so small they will not be reflected all the time on the dashboard. We have

021for instance only two e kids in our school and here's some more groups. So you can see that um actually most of the kids are making as groups are making some pretty good progress. By the way the yes and no the yes means that that is reflecting the scores of kids who were with us on census day. The no means it's a group. It's just everybody. They weren't necessarily with us on census day. This is our NWA which we continue to use now. Um sort of sad but oh well we're got to figure it out. Um NWA reormed this last year. So the scores this year do not necessarily correlate to what happened last year. I I can't fix that. It's just what is. And then here's some more of the NWA. We still love

022the NWA and our NWA is used literally by every single student in K through 12 in our school for personalized intervention. So the WIT score is put into our LL and a personalized learning path is generated and the students are required to complete um a certain number of skills every week depending on how they scored in NWA. So th those students who need more intervention have to complete more skills in the LL. And this is just the percentages for last year of of growth. Here's our shining star right there. college career coordinator. So, um I know in the report we wanted to see what were some notable improvements. This is definitely one and we do make a huge focus of um college career at our school. Last year or not this last year but in

023232 24 we had 12.1% prepared seniors. Um according to the definitions for the dashboard. This last year we had 25%. So, it was a 12.9% increase, and we're super proud of that because students do not come to us saying they want to go to a UC or to Chico or something like that. Most of them don't have no clue. When I ask everybody, "Oh, what do you want to do after high school?" It's usually, "Oh, and then and then it's like, okay, well, let's figure it out." Melissa works so hard on providing career exploration from seventh grade up and then that leads to the writing a 10-year plan and making lots of field trips and hopefully going into a CTE pathway or RO and um that's what that growth is all about. So, the other

024thing that we've learned from besides that Melissa is doing a great job, the other thing we've learned is that reading and math intervention are the key to CTE success. I mean, not that common sense wouldn't say that's a case, but we're really seeing it in action. We're using the Paxton Patterson uh kits. We have 14 of them and we're seeing the struggles from the students who really don't have strong reading comprehension and fluency. So, it's we're really doubling down on that. This is from air reading which some of you might know um about Ignite and it's a similar program. It's been very successful. We're now using it for K through three and for students who need more intervention than read naturally or some of the other things that we're using. It's very phonexheavy, very science

025of reading. And so the kids access this online. A lot of them are in the center when they're involved, but we do have independent study students at home who are accessing the air reading. You can see this is a fairly short window and you can see the increases. Air reading is awesome about documenting and keeping track of what's going on. So our challenge is as we're moving into our new school year where we have 78 new enrollments. That's a lot when you're only at 217 today. And then um many of the students continue to enroll in large credit deficient states. 10% of our kids are homeless. for that. We have a whole little closety room that we've used homeless money on and other things so that we can if they have problems with literally clothing,

026toothbrushes, toiletries, whatever, we can give this stuff out to whoever we want to that needs it at the time. 20% of our students are students with disabilities. They're 100% integrated into everything in our school. Uh they tend to do very well with our school because the personalized learning means that pretty much all 217 students have unofficial IEPs. We look at their weaknesses. We look at their strengths. We look at their styles. And so we do much the same for all students that we would do for a student with an IEP. Then um we have 66% socioeconomically disadvantaged right now which is similar to last year. We were at 67% on census day I believe. 38% new certificated employees. Doesn't that sound scary when we are so little? [laughter] But we're growing. Um and just like

027for students, working in a school like ours as a certificated teacher is not for everyone. It is a very different job. I don't think teacher pray uh preparing teacher preparation programs don't prepare anyone for teaching. Okay, I'm going to say that. That's just the way it is. You do your book work, you watch videos, you do some practice assessments, or at least I did for special ed. I don't know in general ed, I don't remember now, but you walk into the classroom and it's culture shock to say the least. You walk into one of our classrooms and yes, there are barely any students. Some only have 10 or 12, but you're personalizing everything. And then when your students go home now, you're going to deal with the independent study students on your roster. You're going

028to meet with the families on a weekly basis, make phone calls, review their work. You have to document their work. And that is not what everybody wanted to buy into as a teacher. And so the ones who stick with us, they're phenomenal. And and we love having them. And most of most of the teachers, at least at this point in the year, no, most of the teachers really express loving working in the environment that we're in. So it's it's quite um it really is different. And for those people who've spent any time down with us, the minute you walk in, when kids are there, you can tell it's different. You know, it's different. Um 60% increase in non-compliance letters. Okay, so here's here's the big gripe for us this year about things that are challenges

029and are not going well. Generally, we have had I don't know a handful of non-compliance letters in the first semester. I forget the exact number now. I had it written down on my desk. This year it is constant and we're very concerned because a non-compliance letter says the student isn't doing his or her assignments. This is not about behavior. This is not about we just don't like them. It is about they haven't turned in the work and it's all documented. So we decided to use parseek real. Are you guys using real? >> We're using real in our community school. >> Oh okay. >> So with parseek real I sent out a bunch of questions about 10 days ago asking in different formats about the barriers to getting the work done. I I said in the

030little beginning blurb, we're obs we've observed this problem with an large increase in students not completing their assignments and went through a series of questions to try and find out if we can identify what the barriers are. So, the biggest barrier that has been expressed, and I am going to send out another reel for clarification, even though I'm not sure this needs clarifying, uh, social media, time, playing outside, refusing to do work, sports, errands with the family, and um, general family time. So from our perspective, our little world, we're not at we don't give so much work that they can't get through it in a day. And I can testify to that because my own children graduated from a program like this. I not sure what the cure is going to be for this because

031when people come to our school, the first thing they they enroll, fine, you can come in and then they're going to do a tour. I lead the tour and I give the down and dirty spiel. I'm I deliver the bad news of what this is really like. And I tell them frequently during our tour and talk. Hey, if any of this is not what you can live with, you're not going to hurt my feelings. You need to go find a school that's good for your children. Don't You're not going to hurt my feelings if you walk out. And they don't. Well, no. A few times people have. And we're very We have a list called the non-negotiables. Everybody goes through it with me. It goes through the laws and board policies that dictate how we

032behave, how we run an independent study program. Everyone initials literally every item on the list. And then I explained there are four avenues in our school. One of them is pretty much pure independent study as any of us would know homeschool. So they might be online curriculum. They might have traditional curriculum. They might be taking some college classes. That's one way. Or maybe another way is to be in CTE pathways. Those are four days a week on site and then your academic classes can be either onsite at the college or independent study, you know, online curriculum. Third way would be RO which is five days a week and again the academic classes are handled in a variety of ways based on the student and the family. And then the fourth way is our optional 4

033day a week classes where we focus on the core subjects but all children who are there and any any kids from home who want to join can join art, music and some other activities. This year has been phenomenally different and I I'm thinking it's nothing is ever totally unique to one school, but we have seen a lot of refusals to do their work. We've seen kids leave CTE who we didn't see a a whole lot of that all the time. We've seen kids who are insolent at best and so we're looking for what we can do about that. I I don't know what to say about that. I I honestly at this point, but we are going to use the parseek reel as a way to try and solicit information as well as bring the

034parents on board to help us solve this problem. So that's that's the big challenge right now because we have had a lot of letters and we don't usually give letter number three and see kids referred back to the school of residence very much. we are seeing a lot going back to their schools and so um you know we contract with SARB because it's important to all of us here that these students be in school somewhere but even SARB is overwhelmed and so there are limitations with what they can do it's just been really crazy really crazy so if any of you ever have any ideas come on down and share them because we're really trying to solve this problem. And I I don't think I could be much more transparent than I am at the

035tours. And I've asked various people to sit in and listen to me, including our board president, to tell me if I'm missing the mark somewhere. And everyone says, "I don't know what else you could say." Because to tell you the truth, this summer I did join the we do not care club on Facebook and I really don't care if they go to another school if that's where their kids will be served. I really don't care. What I want is the kids in our school to get a strong education and that's all we can handle. So this is us addressing our challenges. Intervention, we're dedicated to intervention. happens four afternoons a week in our school. Um we're trying to keep building uh the engaging extracurricular activities. We do field trips. The teachers are welcome to do

036uh academically relevant field trips anytime they want to. The career and exploration and maker space activities. Uh we're about to bring on a new employee who's going to be um very involved in that area and pumping up our information technology. And then um Melissa provides the personalized college and career guidance. She will meet with every high school student but focusing on juniors and seniors. We have Shasta College come in once or twice a year. The kids go out to Shasta College. keep that relationship going. Uh we're of course always using grade level standards curriculum. Uh science of reading instruction in the primary grades and then um we're keep hammering away at our outreach. So there professional development. I've always felt we were very strong in that area. And then I heard Deianne tell Tina, "Oh

037yeah, they do a lot of professional development." When we were budget talking one day, so Oh, good. Okay. Um, we do try to find all of the relevant professional development for our teachers depending on what they're teaching and what the school goals are as well as their professional goals. Uh, leadership, that would be Clarissa and me. um we go to some that are really only um applicable to leadership and are generally boring to the teachers. So, we go to those to see what we can clean the um CTE where we're always going for that. Go to and we'll be going to that conference in March down in Sacramento. And then our special ed team, there's actually four of us with special ed credentials. Um I really don't do a lot in special ed anymore. I

038can go in on hot button items or if someone's out I can go in and do work in that sector. But um the other three do it do most of it. So LCAP goals. So I want to definitely give a shout out to um Will Barnett. Will helped us fine-tune our LCAP down to three goals. put all of our the actions are the same but organized them nicely and made sure all of the state priorities are addressed. So that was a big help because I'm thinking that I may have been his challenge in getting that done. There we have there are three goals and they're also in your report that I sent over. Thank you. So, I don't want to get crying. I just want to let you know I'm retiring at the end of

039the year. Yeah. But we're going to be good. Clarissa has been my succession plan for a long time. >> Yeah. And um our staff knows, so it's it hasn't been a secret. Um the board has um been involved in this plan all along. So super excited. I have a big old bucket list and then I only live down Bowman Road so I can come harass them anytime. But um it's been exciting and I am sorry. I am so appreciative to leave my baby in the hands of my staff and of Skoey. I am so appreciative. I'm not at all worried about whether or not they can make it and Skoey has been tremendous in supporting us. So, thank you. >> Hold hold on. Uh, Jessica, >> Sorry about that. Uh, I was told not to

040touch this a certain way, so I'm trying to figure it out. >> Oh, yeah. I can't help you. >> Can you hear me? Okay. Um, I just had some questions. >> Yeah. >> Uh, one of the first things you said was that we should remember the insane importance of students staying in one school. Mhm. >> And then I think you also mentioned that 50% of your school students are not repeat students. So they leave or they they're new students. Right. >> Wait. Say that again. >> 50% of your students are are not returning. They're new students. Is that correct? >> In the past, it's been about that. This year, what did I have up there? 37% left. 67% remain. >> Do you know what the standard like the average is for a typical school? I'm

041not familiar. I do not, but I I can take a guess. So, charter schools started in California in 1990. >> And in the beginning, they were extremely grassroots. >> Even our school was. Our school started in my family room and a barbecue in my backyard. >> Um, that was not unusual. It wasn't unusual. I mean, they were they were kind of small and they were homegrown and it was a bit of a struggle sometimes, I think, for some people to switch from their district school. So, I'm going to say something that is not meant to offend anyone, but since you've brought the topic up, we tend as a community to trust our institutions. And in a perfect world, we should our institutions should be completely focused on the well-being of the people that that are

042being served. What we see when students come to us, and this is not unusual in the charter world, is that students have been often failing for many years in their district schools. Now, this is not trying to cut the district schools off at the knees by any means. This is we have school choice and in the form of even charter schools for a reason. And the ED code said in that when it was first started that it was partly to spark innovation and create competition within the public school system. That is to better all schools. >> My question was about if you know >> I'm getting there. >> Okay. So, but we I'm going to guess that they might have less turnover, but they might have similar in some areas. >> It's harder with a

043district school and and it maybe they could dredge this up. Maybe they keep this document, but kids who are interested in sports are not going to move out of their district schools >> because someone like us offers no sports >> kids who want to travel all the time and not have attendance issues, they're going to come to a school like ours. >> So, I think, you know, if you were to talk to anybody who digs in cowpads, have you ever been in cowpads? >> Digs in what? Have you ever been into cowpads? >> Cow pads. Cow pads. >> I take that as a no. >> No, I have no idea what cow pads is. >> Cowpads is okay, too. Cowpatties. >> I know. >> So, >> I have been in cowpads. [laughter] >> So, >>

044non cowpads. >> So, cowpads is where we have the complete history of what all public school children in K12 have done. We have kids who bounce back and forth between us and the district or they bounce around to multiple charter schools. There there are just some situations where that's going on. That I cannot say is anything to do with a school necessarily. Some kids stay in the district, like I said, for the sports or certain clubs, certain opportunities that a smaller school can't offer. And some kids come to a school like ours because they've failed so miserably. A lot of kids never get out. >> I don't know what does anyone know what the dropout rate at any of the district schools is, like one of the high schools. >> Very small at Foothill. My

045kids go to Foothill. >> Yeah. So, Shasta, I don't know if they divide it down to Foothill, but um we had one dropout last year. >> I And I I think in the district schools, what you'd look if you dig up is some just drop out. >> So, I have a bunch of questions. Okay. So, and my questions are just because you have a serious issue going on. 60% of an increased um students failing their class, you know, their work is a huge deal. I feel like >> Well, it's not failing. No, >> they're not doing their work. They're receiving >> and in a week's period, 60% up until now >> have have received letter number one. >> So, that doesn't Some of them have already turned it around. >> Okay. >> But what I'm

046saying is this is an increase compared to in the past. So I have just some questions leading up to the end question just so I understand better >> and you wanted our feedback so I need to understand better. So that's why I wrote all these questions. >> Um so my next question was what per or let's see >> these ones can all wait. How many seniors do you have >> right now? 34. >> And how many total students? >> 217 the last time I counted. And how many have I I heard you talk about IEP saying that you treat every kid like they have an IEP, but how many have an IEP? >> 42. Okay. Okay. Now, then you said there was a 60% increase in non-compliance with their work and that was during what

047duration? >> From the beginning of the school year till now. >> Okay. And there there's no possibility that um the reporting increased like you are you're purposefully intentionally looking for it. >> It's been board adop. No, this is how we run the school. >> Okay. >> Based on board policy and law. >> Okay. >> Yeah. It's um I actually the majority of these kids um we we know where they're coming from. >> It doesn't matter for this meeting. and we can't do anything about it. If someone wants to enroll in our school, by law, we have to enroll them. >> You know where they're coming from? Where are they coming from? >> Another school. >> Okay. >> Yeah. So the so when kids enroll um at that first tour and meeting that I do with

048families, I often watch families interact and watch the kids at the meetings. And I'm just like I don't want to be negative. I don't want to taint the situation, but I'm pretty sure that if I made little lists at every every meeting, every one of those tours, I I'm pretty sure that I could have predicted most of the ones who are now not doing their work. >> Yeah, because there is bouncing back and forth a lot. My kids also went to charter school and and like we went to Chrysalis and we loved it and very grateful for it. Um, but I just wonder when you when you made the comment about the insane importance of students staying in one school, I wonder what kind of um what kind of if you have 50% of your

049kids are 30 between 37 and 50% leaving, what role do you see your school playing in the community? And would it be better if these kids were staying in their school instead of moving in the first place? >> No, they'll drop out. So, it is a myth that kids who move on to a charter school that if the charter school is gone, they will go back to their districts. They won't. They'll just be in the woodwork somewhere. Um, one student that we enrolled, I think our top winner for not having been in school was a girl who came in beginning of 8th grade. She hadn't been in school for four years, and there was nothing in her documentation that said anybody was tracking this child. So, and I'm not I'm not putting blame on everybody.

050I'm saying we have a systemic problem. Um, and if people want to just sort of drop off the grid, >> it's very hard to track that. It's very hard to have a dedicated staff to just be chasing everyone down. Right now at our school, Clarissa does the chasing for the most part and our registar also. But Clarissa is making all the phone calls. It is a phenomenal number of hours trying to track everybody down and get them back in school. And at the point if they letter out with us at that point, we just want them in school. We're not trying to build the world in our school, >> right? >> These kids need to be in school. I think it's also extremely important that we do have school choice because when some kids switch

051to a different school if it hasn't been successful for them wherever they were truly they've given it their best effort >> and it hasn't been successful sometimes a fresh start is what they need and then if they give that their best effort and it works that's that's what we all want for our children. The problem is one the hoppers >> because those kids are not profiting from anywhere and often when they're hopping from school to school they really haven't done what they needed to do but somehow it's always the school's fault >> and that doesn't profit the kids at all. >> Yeah. Um, one of the problems that I've seen with with the the charter schools and the independent study type programs is the students that need more support following to that and getting uh

052thinking it's going to solve their problems and then it doesn't because they need more support, not less. And um then they end up just like you said, bouncing around to different schools looking for the solution when the solution is really stability in the home. And so when I see like 60% of your kids are socioically disadvantaged, that to me says like these kids need more support. Typically those families are single parent families. Um they're struggling. And I just wonder if um they wouldn't receive better support where there's more services. And and also are you saying that the 50% of kids that don't return are dropping out of school? >> No. >> Okay. Okay. So, first of all, can I ask, have you been in our school when kids are there? >> Yeah, we we did

053I did a tour there. >> Okay. So, literally four days a week, our students are in intervention in small groups or individually. >> There I've taught in district schools. >> Mh. >> There is no way in the world that they would get be in a class of 30 kids in the classroom and get more support. That's right. So, um, I don't think that's the problem because the kid for for one thing, our socioeconomically disadvantaged and our special ed kids actually show more growth >> than the other kids. So, >> they stay, right? >> If they stay. >> Yes. Yes. We don't have very many kids with IEPs that leave once they're with us. >> That's good. and uh socioeconomically disadvantaged. I I it none of that means anything to us in the world of teaching.

054We're teaching. >> Sure. And I didn't mean morale moralewise. I am just saying that statistically families that are struggling need more support and their kids need more support in school. >> Right. And so, you know, I have to say, um I can't speak for all charter schools. Um I only know ours really know ours >> but I do know that there is a phenomenal amount of support. Uh the families come in once a week to meet with their teachers of record. They get tutoring. They get whatever they need and they can come in more. It's to a great extent whether people are willing to do the work. >> Yeah. And that isn't unique to charter. That isn't unique to district schools. >> Um, work ethic is something that is somewhat weak. Well, the self the

055self-starting part is unique to independent study programs because you have to be a self-starter. You have to have the support at home. uh you know when my son went to go over to Reading the the Reading High School one you know they very much were like do you have time at home to and I was like no I don't >> you know I I don't so we didn't end up choosing the charter school for that reason. Yeah. But I think sometimes families think they do and then they realize well it's a lot bigger deal than I thought. Quite a few of the families that come to us this year, they're actually trying to keep their kids out of what would have been disciplinary situations. >> Yeah, that makes sense. >> And we're not I always

056tell them at those tours, we're not an escape hatch. Don't come here because you're tired of the phone calls from the school or whatever it is because >> we're going to be more on it than they were. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to answer all my questions because I just encourage you come down and uh just hang out. That way you really see it >> when when the kids see a tour coming through, which I do take tours through. >> There will always be some that kind of straighten their backs and go, "Oh, she's she's showing us off." >> Not the eighth graders. >> Yeah. Yeah. No, they're they could be pretty. No, this year's eighth grade crop are really cute. They're nice, but um but if you come down and

057they just ignore you as a fixture, >> then then you'll see it. >> Yeah. Yeah. I enjoyed my time there. We actually considered it for my ch one of my children and um I thought it was a great school. I'm just con concerned about what's happening and hoping that >> Oh, we're concerned, too. That's why we're trying to reach out and find some answers. >> Great. Thank you. >> Yeah. Thanks, >> Teresa. >> I think you answered my question. Oh, >> cuz I was actually wondering when do when do you contact the parents to say, "Hey, things things aren't going well." >> Oh, constantly. >> Yeah. So, >> so it's not just a letter in the mail. No. >> Yeah. No, I I kind of you you answered that question because it's, you know, um

058but you know, coming from the background of being a teenage nightmare high school dropout, I would have loved to have had the opportunity to go to Northern Summit um during my school years. I didn't we didn't >> it up myself. >> Yeah. We didn't have that option. >> No. >> So, um and I've I've been to I've been to your school a few times and I love it. I love it. >> I love the fact that there's that change especially for kids that don't learn in a um in a in a typical normal setting. >> So, and some kids do learn beautifully in their district schools. >> Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. But not every kid learns the same. >> So, thank you. >> Thank you. >> Is that it, >> Michael? Um, I just had

059a quick question. What are your um which math curriculum do you use? >> Right now we're using a program in the K8 called standards plus. We chose that. It's 100% pinned to the grade level standards. >> Um, and we can even pull out the power standards so that we know which ones we need to really shore up and support by scaffolding up. Um, the thing we like about standards plus, almost no one's heard of it. It's not something you'd see in a district normally. Um, we like it because we're personalized learning. The teacher teaches the day's increment, the standard, and then there's enough time left in a math period for the teacher to use professional judgment about reteing or spiral review or whatever she or he needs to do. They have the time after they've

060done that initial lesson. >> Does standards plus provide reteing or anything like that any intervention support in the curriculum? >> Well, it's not wrapped into the curriculum. Um, that's why we have our personalized path and it's why the teachers have time in the classroom and then four days a week there's an hour of strictly math intervention. >> Okay. And then the 60% increase. So, do you know the actual numbers on that? Because if you have 10 and it's 60% increase, now you just have 16. >> Oh, do you have like an actual >> somebody who gets it? No. >> Yeah. >> Now, in the letters, so 67% would be more than, you know, 100. >> So, you had a 60% increase in the letters that you were sending home, right? >> Letter one. Letter. Remember,

061letter number one, the big dream is >> wake up. Yeah. >> Turn this around. And in most cases that will happen. >> Mhm. >> But I don't actually remember right now. Do you remember number threes right now? >> How many? >> Yeah. So when when um we get to letter number three and the student is withdrawn and referred back per ED code to the district of residence, at that point we start putting on the crown of NAG because we're calling the family constantly trying to get them to get the student enrolled in the district or if they choose another charter school, that's up to them. And then we've had a small number go with the private school affidavit which um >> yeah you file >> you know that's a whole another topic because some people

062do an amazing job with that and some people don't. >> Yeah. Yeah. Uh and then do you know are these the letter number one are they IEP? You said the IP students don't leave. Are they the homeless population? >> We've had any IEP kid get a letter have we? >> I don't think so. >> Okay. Do you know which populations that increase is happening or is it just happening across the board? >> It's across the board, but it's not it's not the kids with IEPs. They actually really thrive in our school. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Yeah. >> Is that it? Anybody else? >> Jackie. >> Hi, Julia. >> Hi. >> Um I figured you wouldn't be doing what you're doing that much longer. You've been doing it for a long time and I just

063wanted to thank you um for what you've built. You're a treasure in our community. >> Oh, thanks. >> Um really, as many people complain about public education, I wish they could see the things that you and Clarissa and the rest of your people are doing there. >> Um it's it's nearly impossible to augment um uh a home life that doesn't have any structure or support. And so here we are. But I want to thank you for your years of commitment to find a way and to do it. Oh, if I don't, my family will kill me. [laughter] >> Seriously, my daughter. Thank you for thinking outside the box. >> Um, thank you. Yeah, the I think um the community school movement and everything we use the um community connect a lot for our families. The

064distress that's happening for many families is not to be underestimated. Um, and there are so many things. We're not the parents and we're not trying to usurp parent control or their autonomy. Um, we we do all we've got our hands full trying to do us. But, um, the parents need a lot of help and support. We live in a very difficult world now. Very difficult. I mean, I I wish it was as easy as when I was a kid. So, um I think Skoey recognizes that and is supporting the community in many ways and that's that's really great. So, thanks >> Mr. Freeman. >> Yeah, if I could just share two points. Um I I echo Jackie. I appreciate uh the opportunities that we've had to work together. Uh, I thank you for the work

065that you've uh done with Clarissa in transition. I commend you for your heart, for the kids that you serve. I think we have sat here and we have heard from the members of your community how you have built a place to meet the needs of of students that are that are struggling. Um, I also [clears throat] want to uh I want to offer any supports that that we can provide. I want to acknowledge uh Nate Fairchild is here with us and thank you Nate for the support that you provide. I thought you were sick. [laughter] >> And uh I also want to just pro provide some context. You have done a great job of of painting a picture of the challenges that your students present. The willingness of your staff to to find a way

066uh in the context of like when you look at like for example your math performance. If you were to uh if you were to look at other alternative education programs in the county for comparison, you are in that in that realm of uh because of the students because of the nature of the students that you are you are working with. Uh that uh that compares very well with that with that group. And so just for context uh yes, do we want it to be better? Everybody wants it to be better. You're losing sleep. you're losing sleep over trying to make it better. And I just thank you for thank you for the career that you've had. Uh finish strong. We're not done, right? >> Nope. >> Going going running through the tape. And uh thank

067you for the work that you and and your staff do uh with the students and families that you work with. >> I appreciate that. And you know in in context of being comparable to other charter schools like us um and any charter school meeting or conference that we go to. These are topics that are big. I mean the the other charter schools are saying what more can we do? Um, I think it I think just common sense helps us understand that people don't usually leave something where things are going well for them. It could be all Perception is powerful. So, it's kind of like the gold rush. Just because gold was found in California, that's not the single lure that brought people to California, it was also the push of starvation and terrible economics and

068oppression. So it was a push and a pull. And that's the same in choosing a school because our inclination is to trust our institution and to stick with them and the experts. So, you know, kind of like when you go to the doctor and if anyone here has had uh a really bad disease, you trust your doctor and then maybe you give it a second look and you go, maybe I'm not happy with this doctor. Maybe I need to get a second opinion. So kids who are not doing well for whatever reason, even if it's their own doing, they are the ones who might want to shift to another school and then maybe they're doing well, maybe they're not. But if they move because they weren't doing well, they're not coming in and suddenly becoming

069well-versed in math and language arts. They're coming in with problems. And so that's just the nature of the beast. And we're kind of used to it. So when I see lower scores, there's a big part of me that goes, "Oh, okay. What else can we do?" And I know that in the public eye, the public eye may be thinking, "Well, they can't be doing a very good job. Those scores, it's really complex." So thank you. Um, and finally, me, Julia. >> Okay. [laughter] >> First, I want to uh I want to congratulate you on your coming retirement. >> Thank you. >> Okay. Um, the past six years been very informative for me. I've learned a lot from listening to your reports. >> Oh, thanks. Um, Northern Summer Cap, Northern Summit Academy fills a niche that's

070extremely important because of the student population that you serve. Um when when when you're bringing in students with with who are credit deficit who are one, two, three years behind in their education and you're working them to graduate on a timely basis. That's an incredible challenge. Okay. And and so I mean we understand the issues that you face. >> Well, I I know you do and I appreciate that. and and and I want you to understand that that this this board supports you because those are the students that we most need to serve. And uh so thank you for what you've been doing. >> Thank you. >> I'm I'm I'm really looking forward to um your new administration um if I don't see you again before the end of the year. >> Thank you. >>

071It's been a pleasure to know you. >> Thanks. Do I turn this off? [applause] >> Moving on to item 5.2, the countywide 2025 California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress score data. Oh, and it looks like Sherry's coming up. Yeah, we'd like to uh welcome and invite Sherry to uh run through and I want to thank her and her team for the visualization and the work. It's not just you get them in raw spreadsheets and then you make them you make them make sense. So, thank you for being here tonight. >> Yes, thank you. So, good evening. So, yes, just every October uh California releases our state public um assessment data. So, here tonight I'm going to It's working. Okay, it's great. Let me Is that better? Holding it a little closer, maybe it will

072work better. Okay. Um, so tonight I'm going to start with our English language arts data and share with you what that looks like over time in comparison to California. So all of the data will also um be able to be comparable to how our state did relative to our county. So as we look at our first chart, you can see on the left hand side the last several years the percentage of students who did not meet standard and nearly met standard. They're in gray compared to those who met or exceeded in blue. So here in uh in our county we had 48.6% 6% of our students who met or exceeded standard and on the right you can see 48.8% in California met standard. Uh you can also see that we did uh much better than

073we did the previous year uh where we had 46.6. So moving in the right direction for our English language arts and our county. If you have questions stop me as we go. uh math. Uh again, same format of the chart. We had 37.1% of our students meet or exceed, which is the highest amount we've had over the last several years. So that was very encouraging, moving in the right direction. A lot of work to do in that area, but we are moving in the right direction. Uh and then you can see California was 37.3 Moving on to science. Again, very encouraging, moving in the right direction. We had 35.7% of our students in our county who met or exceeded standard, which was the highest amount we've had in the last 5 years. And we did

074much better than the state of California at 32.7%. So again, very encouraging and moving in the right direction. So we heard a little bit earlier when Julia was speaking about difference from standard. So this is just a 10-year glance of the difference from standard which is a different metric, different students um but it just shows what that trajectory has looked like and we again are moving closer to standard. So standard would be represented by the orange line and we want to be moving closer to and then above. So we are uh definitely moving in the right direction. Made a significant move from where we were over the last three years and the same look um with math. So not as big of a movement there. Um but again just uh that tenure glance at how

075our county has moved as it pertains to just difference from standard. >> [snorts] >> So those are the overview uh charts showing ELA, math, and science. And we'll dig in now to the student group level data so we can see how the performance looks of each of our student groups. So again, same look over several years and our socioeconomically disadvantaged group, which is our largest group, one of our largest groups, again making significant um movement in the right direction. and we had more students over the last five years meet standard um as you can see and the same would be true for math for our county. So 30.8% which is more than we've had meet or exceed standard. So again moving in the right direction for that student group students with disabilities. So you can

076see there um the movement same as last year we didn't decrease but more than uh those previous years and then uh uh higher in math than we were the last few years. So again positive movement our English language uh learners. So, um you can see we were better than we were um the previous year in both ELA and math. Uh American Indian, uh we did better than we did last year in ELA. Um and then we're a little bit lower on the math side there for our uh American Indian students. And then you can see our Asian students. Not wanting to move here. There we go. African-American. So again, moving in the right direction there. All right. Where's the trick? Let's [laughter] There we go. All right. uh white student group um again moving in

077the right direction, more students meeting or exceeding standard. Um math was very close but we were better than we were the previous year. [snorts] This battery is going. There we go. uh uh our two plus um and again same story more of our students are meeting and exceeding NELA and math. So that wraps up our student group data uh for our English language arts, math and science. Know what questions you might have? >> Mr. Freeman. >> Uh could you speak to a little bit just the wave that we see? >> It looks like Yeah. As you look at English language arts and math over time, >> there's a little bit of a wave and >> Yeah. So the trend is definitely moving up. We're definitely moving in the right direction. We we are seeing more

078and more of our students meet and exceed standard than we were previously both in terms of our English language arts our math and our student groups. So overall definitely our trend is moving in the right standard or in the right direction. When we looked at the difference from standard the tenure trend also moving in the right direction um particularly for our English language arts um rather than math. We know some things that are starting to happen in across the state around math are related to our new curriculum that we have. Uh so lots of work going to be happening in math. We've been emphasizing a lot of work here in our county with English language arts and um the science of reading, lots of professional development. So, uh definitely moving more so in English language

079arts than we were the math. >> Thank you, Sher. Oh, I'm okay. Teresa starting to get questions. Well, I I've submitted one. Did it show up? >> Hasn't shown up yet. >> Okay. Sorry. Um, just an observation. Like I do appreciate the idea that it's moving in the right direction, but I think like the headline >> would still be more than half our students aren't meeting the standards. So, I think that's like a person that's in our community. I would look at it like, oh my gosh. >> Yes. Um but then I guess my other my question would be if it is moving in the right direction what's behind that why are we seeing that? >> Yeah know it's a great point and that's why I always like to put us alongside California. So are

080we unique in that movement or what is happening across our state and we are very similar to what's happening in California. So yes across the state we have a lot of work to do. Um I think every year when we take this assessment we are looking at why why it's important to look over over several years because one single year is not going to show you maybe kind of what the bigger picture is. So that's kind of the reason for looking at a trend. Are we moving at least in the right direction? And we are. Some things I attribute some of that growth to definitely are around the work happening uh around English language arts and reading and literacy in our county. um big big emphasis in that area for a lot of our our

081schools and they've received a lot of training in the um science of reading. Uh several different areas just to help really um get kids reading and understanding the phonetics that are needed at the younger grades so that kids have the skills as they get older. So that's I think where a lot of emphasis has been placed in our county and what I would attribute um the movement in the right direction towards also when we look back we know COVID was a part of some of the previous data. So in looking at that 10ear trend too you can see those years of COVID where we our scores suffered. Um so kind of feeling like we're coming out of that a little bit too and those those kids are um you know starting to build momentum too

082and pick up um a lot of the skills particularly when we're able to look from the younger ages all the way um on up. So that's what I would attribute it to math. You know what I had spoke to there was we're not seeing the gains there that we are in ELA, but we have a lot of work happening in that area now with a new framework and curriculum that's coming. So >> Teresa, >> I was just looking at this and I it just floores me the money that California spends >> on education. And we are this low. >> We're this low. I mean, we get a lot of money from the state of California, too. >> Why are we so low? I think we're dealing with lots of things. We heard from Julia some

083of the struggles and in families and home situations. So, trying to implement too um supports for students, interventions for students. There's it's just multiaceted. I think it might need to start with teaching these kids how to parent. >> Um, teaching parents how to parent. >> Um, because when you got these kids that are growing up in the socioeconomic, >> I hate that word. >> Um, children learn what they live >> and then they live what they learn. >> So, what are they really learning? >> Yeah. I just was looking at all the money that that that's thrown at the education in [laughter] and we're still kind of the the joke of the United States, you know, the lowest in here. I mean, it's we're we're small. We're Shasta County. We should be better than that.

084I mean, it's the way I look at my county. We should be better than California. We should be blowing California out of the water. We got some smart kids up here. We got some smart teachers up here. I don't and may and maybe it's you know handcuffed and hamstrung. I don't know. But all I know is I remember my education was I mean yeah I was a teenage nightmare and a high school dropout. But when I went back I had teachers man they walked beside me. They they encouraged me on a continual basis. I think these classes maybe maybe they're too big. I don't know. All I know is that we're throwing a lot of money at this education. and it's really not even making a dent. >> That's what I'm kind of looking at.

085>> Yeah. Yeah. >> Well, people are working hard. There's definitely people that are um I think to your point like building relationships with these students. We know how important that is, what what gets kids to school every day. Uh we know many of them are coming, you know, with with with lots of things that they've dealt with before they even arrive. So getting them to be able to focus on some of the academics is a challenge too. So there are lots of challenges. Um no doubt. Um I but I I I hear what you're saying and I agree like we we want to be the best here in our county. We want to be doing the best that we can do for our students and I think we have a lot of people working really

086hard to make that happen. Do the best that they can to make it happen. Um, you know, I think it's looking at what additional supports can we continue to offer, whether that is, um, you know, oftentimes interventions, finding ways to provide students with additional supports. Uh, we don't want to supplement and provide these things during the day because that means they're going to be missing another layer of instruction. So, we we don't want to do that. Uh, you know, some of the challenges uh related to that can be after school there may not be busing. So a parent may not agree or be able to pick up if they stayed after for interventions. So there's some of those kinds of challenges when we try to provide additional supports. But um I think it it takes

087a community to to make this happen and um there are lots of challenges that we are facing, but people I think are working really hard to do the best they can do and build relationships with students and families and find the best supports that we can offer to um help make this happen for our kids in our county. 30 >> author >> other questions. >> And thank thank you for providing this data. It was really really good. I'm just trying to figure out how to use this thing. Uh yeah. So when I was looking at it, I was just wondering, we did compare ourselves to California, >> but I I like competition and I like to see how other counties are doing it. And I was wondering if you could provide us with uh something

088like this, but showing who what counties are leading the charge, you know, who's kicking it >> kicking some butt here at these these levels and and what are they, you know, maybe what they're doing. We could follow in some of that. But just to see what they what's out there like is someone really like >> like Laura was saying is there someone out there that >> they're killing it and they're like 60% plus on math English and science and uh maybe we should we could learn something >> from them. I don't know but if you have a comparable data on that I'd really appreciate it. >> So kind of by county across our state and which yeah we there is um >> there is a dashboard that displays that. So, we can definitely provide you

089with that. >> Okay. >> And and there's also another um >> tool that's referred to as similar schools and dashboard. So, a district could look for just what you said, a district with a sim similar population who maybe is doing really well so that I could maybe go down and see how what they're doing to make that happen. it's a comparable population of students and that allows um districts to then you know uh kind of sort through whether it's by English language arts whether it's um attendance. >> Yeah, that's beautiful. Yeah. Yep. >> Because we do that as a corporatewide thing and even though we have small hospitals in our chain and we have bigger hospitals, >> you know, some people are just scoring really well and >> yeah, >> you know, the culture and

090the way they do things is a little bit different because you can do things on a smaller level that you can't do at a big level, but >> right >> we can all learn from each other across the state. >> Absolutely. And and I think we're notorious for that. Like [laughter] how'd you get that to happen? Um definitely definitely things to learn from each other. Sorry chair at the uh risk of being out of order. I just wanted to share out what >> uh we have on the screen is is a CASP map for English language arts and Matt to to author's question. So I I am with you 100% Teresa like I am not okay I'm not okay being at or above or below state average. I'm actually not okay with this, but it

091does put it in perspective. Uh that, you know, so obviously we don't want light, we don't want light green, we don't want green, we want to be the darkest blue on the map, and we are the second. Uh but that's still not that's still not amazing, right? I'm with you that a whole lot of effort, a whole lot of resources, a whole lot of energy is going into this. and and while we are trending in a positive way, it's rather glacial and I don't think anybody is is okay with with that. And I think that um that's the work, right? That's the challenge. And how do we how do we accelerate the learning? Uh uh Sherry spoke to that pre we're just getting to pre- pandemic, right? We weren't killing it before pandemic. We're just

092getting to prepandemic. And again, this is grades three through 11. So this is in the aggregate. There are there are pockets where we are seeing and in our in our districts across the county, there are pockets of growth that that are outliers. Um but I thank you Sher for for holding the mic and sharing those results. I don't think this is lighting anyone's hair on fire like look how amazing we are. I think this does provide some com comfort in context, right? And we can always drill down like to some of your questions to like this is just the overview. So what we do is we still continue to drill down in the data to get more specifics, right? We can drill down by grade level. We can drill down by claim. There's there's other

093layers of data to kind of continue to drill down. Um so just wanted to say, you know, what we saw here was just that overview, but it doesn't paint the whole picture either. And to Mike's point, we you will see where there are definitely good things happening that are stronger than others. And that's when we can go ask those questions of others, you know, to learn what they're doing and learn from them. >> Jessica, >> okay. Uh Jackie. >> Okay. All right. Thank you, >> Sher. Thank you for your presentation. Um, it's nice to have tools to work with again. [laughter] Um, very well done. Thank you. Moving on to item six on the agenda is the approval of the consent agenda. Consent agenda items are action items that are of a routine nature or

094items for which no discussion is anticipated and and may be acted upon by a single vote. Board members may request that any item be removed and given individual consideration. Do any members of the board wish to pull an item or from the consent agenda? Then I will uh we need a motion to approve the consent agenda. >> Motion to approve. >> I'll second. >> Has been moved and seconded that we approve the consent agenda. We'll do a roll call vote. Teresa, >> I. >> Michael, >> hi. >> Laura, >> hi. >> Jackie, >> hi. >> Jessica, >> I >> author. >> No, >> I'm sorry. I can't remember your name. >> I [laughter] >> Abby. >> I >> Oh, I Jacob, I am so sorry. [laughter] >> Oh, and I approve as well. Oh, item

095seven is information. Um, the information items are items that that are purely for anformational um of of and for to inform the board of of the items. Um, does anybody have any questions on the information items? Then we will move on to the action items. Action item 8.2 Two is to schedule our annual organizational meeting of the board per board pilaw 9100. I believe Tom might have something to uh to to add or share regarding the uh annual organization meeting of the board. Um, I think there might be corrections and retractions needed [laughter] for for our planning. For some reason, a lot of the published material has um a different window in a non-election year. Um, but the education code does require the organizational meeting for a county board to happen after the second Friday

096in December. Um, I think people debate it because there's a different statute for K12 districts. So if um the board can hold it in the following week, great. Um so it would be the week of after December 12th. [snorts] So I guess one one question that I have is is this is this a new is this a new development? Because our last non-election year, we did hold it on our second Wednesday and not the third. A lot of county boards are still doing it that way. I believe the legislature amended the statute in four or five years ago because I can see it got amended and it was one of those routine like in the middle of a 400page bill amendment. So I think that's where it came from. Um I think you know if

097if it's not workable let's keep it on the 10th but but know that we need to um consider adjusting it for future years. So, I'm going to look to the board members and their calendars. >> I'll be gone on the 10th, 11th, and 12th. >> Can Can I ask a quick point of clarification? Are we are we asking about scheduling a special meeting for the board organization or are we talking about completely rescheduling to December meeting? because we we have first interim due December 15th and so pushing it back it conflicts with our budget calendar where where we need to get first interim approved and so I just want to make sure that everybody also understands we have another pending deadline to the state of first interim budget approved by the December 15th deadline >>

098and I I do I recall this conflict uh being discussed as well, with our with our district friends. And so we currently have it scheduled for December 10th. Uh you can look at you can you can look at ED code uh 35913, I think, and that's where it falls under districts. For the county office, the statute is 109, and that's what puts us on the after the second Friday, which is in contradiction to a first interim budget deadline. So we can keep it on the 10th. Uh on the 10th works for our budget deadline. Uh on the 10th works for us if we we consider ourselves to be an LEA and we can consider consider later uh to make a pivot in a non-election year. Um I think that we've all had it on our

099calendars for the 10th. There's a budget study session attached to this meeting. There's also a county committee meeting that we would want to be discussing uh as well to to land on on the date that we we approve for our uh organization meeting. So, I'll hand the time back over to uh President Brown and we can have a discussion as to where we want to >> put our organization. I'd like to remind everybody to please use the system that we have in place so that I can recognize you before you speak. Michael, um I I see no reason to move it, but before we can discuss it, I move that we accept uh the scheduled annual organizational meeting of the board as written. >> I'll second. >> What author, did you just second? Okay. Um,

100you're next up in the queue. Do you want to discuss this? >> Yes. >> Can everybody hear? >> So, we have a motion and a second. Let's go to discussion. >> Okay. Can I Can everybody hear me? I'm just making sure this works. >> I think you got to pull it closer. >> Closer. Okay. I'll put it down here. No, I just uh my question was I think you you might have already answered it Tom and and Mike that even though it's written in to the some kind of education code, we are still able because we're an LEA to move it to where we want and so there's no there might be a conflict but there technically isn't one. So you I think you explained it already and so I'm I'm fine with keeping it

101on the 10th. Thank you, >> Teresa. >> Can we start the meeting earlier on the 10th? >> I mean, if we're going to have a whole bunch of stuff, >> but I mean, that's a question for the entire board to answer. Well, that's that's just I'm asking we can either start it early or I mean since we have such a a packed day, >> Mr. Freeman. >> Uh so the current plan would be county committee at 3:30, budget study session at 4:30, and our general at 5:30. So it would be a eat your wedies kind of day because the organizational meeting the December agenda's pretty pretty uh pretty full. >> So maybe we actually bring the waties and we have pizza in a back room somewhere hidden. >> Okay. Um >> Jessica >> Oh, sorry.

102>> Oh, I was just gonna say what you said. >> Go ahead. Yeah, I'm sorry to be updated. >> Correct, Jessica. We will need to update that. >> On our agenda packet, it says 30:30 county committee budget and you'll find in this. >> Okay. [snorts] It has been moved and seconded that we move forward with the uh annual organization uh of meeting of the board on December 10th uh um with the timeline of first uh having our um county committee meeting, then our board study budget study session. Uh and then the uh regular meeting of the board. Um and the time to commence that would be 3:30. Correct. >> It's been moved that we that we accept that and uh we will proceed with a roll call vote. >> I'm I'm sorry, Laura. Do you

103have something to say? >> I'm just trying to clarify. We're we're not voting on the whole schedule. We're just voting on the one setting the organizational meeting if I'm understanding that correctly. The motion That's the agenda. >> What's that? >> That is the agenda item. The organization. >> Yes, correct. The the for for the organizational meeting of the board at 5:30 is the agenda item. Yes. Further discussion then we will proceed with a vote. Jackie >> I. >> Laura. >> I. >> Michael >> I. Teresa, >> hi >> Jessica. >> Hi >> author. >> Hi >> Jacob. >> Hi >> Abby. >> Hi. >> And I affirm as well. We'll now move on to item nine. Uh student board member reports. Uh do either of you remember who went first last month? >> Oh, do

104you? Thank Thank you, Carmen. Jacob, you get to go first. All righty. Good evening, everyone. Uh, sorry for being late today. I had a school competition that finished up late. Um, but I'm excited to be here tonight. Uh, last week, uh, Monday through Wednesday, Abby and I attended a conference named SABE, which is short for Student Advisory Board on Education. around 70 students across California gathered in Sacramento right in the capitol and we were tasked to form a proposal that we present to the state board of education regarding an educational issue within our state. The 70 students were divided into seven groups each with their own focus point and my group's focus point was postsecary preparedness. I was even chosen as my group speaker where I spoke in front of the state board on Wednesday.

105The conference was an amazing experience. Just to put it into a few short words for rapport, it was I loved it. I had so much fun. And aside from meeting every meal with Abby at the conference, we met many people who had the same interests as us. And it was just great. With that being said, over the last month, great things have been happening. West Valley athletics are wrapping up their fall sports with amazing playoffs. Both boys and girls cross country teams were both league champions, making them seated first in our section. Our volleyball team is on their second round of state playoffs. And our football team is in their first round of playoffs playing Orland High School on Friday. Our FFA chapter is officially in competition season as they compete against many NorCal chapters

106to find who will represent them at the state level at their conference in March. And as a school, we kicked off our annual food drive, which averages a donation of over 30,000 ounces to a new organization every year. This year, it's going to be the Salvation Army. The drive will run until the last week of the semester, and our school is in a long competition to see which grade can donate the most ounces. We are also currently planning our winter carnival for December, which is a community event for local businesses and families for a night of games, holiday goods, and lots of fun. I encourage you all to come down if you guys can. And while all this is happening, our seniors are finishing up their college applications and fast application at those as those

107deadlines are approaching very very fast and our counselors are providing time and support for them as they take on such a task. And that is all I have to report this month. Thank you you guys. >> Thank you, Jacob. Abby, >> good evening everyone. Um so as Jacob already mentioned this past week we had the opportunity to attend SAVE. Um so this report is going to be mostly about what um my experience there and like my takeaways. Um so as Jacob already mentioned again the the conference we attended SAVE um is organized by California Association of Student Councils CAS and it is a studentled organization that brings together delegates from all over California to discuss education policy and present reform proposals in front of the state board of education. Um it was a very inspiring

108and eye eye openening experience for me just not just to learn about the policy side of education but also also just to meet students who are genuinely passionate about making a difference in their schools and community. Um so my group's topic this year was about civic education and student advocacy. um which I found especially meaningful and pretty like I've personally connected with because I'm like advocating for students like on this position, right? Um so through our research and discussions, I realized how important it is for students to have real hands-on opportunities to learn about civic engagement, not just in the government classes, but through their education. Um, so many students want to be involved and make a change but often don't know where to start or how to use their voice effectively. Um, one of

109my biggest takeaways for me from the conference was just how powerful student voice can be when it is truly valued and supported. When students feel heard, they become more invested in their learning and more connected to their school comm community. I also noticed that many of the most impactful ideas came directly from students who had firsthand experience with the issues we were discussing. It reminded me that creating spaces for students to share their perspectives whether it is through advisory councils, surveys or even board member positions like um this can lead to real meaningful improvements in our school. Um beyond the work itself, one of my favorite parts of the conference was just connecting with the students. Um, it was really empowering to see how much we can learn from one another and how motivated students

110are to improve the education system when given the chance to contribute. Overall, I came away from the ex um conference feeling inspired and full of new ideas about how we can bring some of these concepts into our own schools, especially when it comes to encouraging civic engagement and helping students take a more active role in shaping their education. It was such a meaningful experience and I'm really grateful I had the chance to represent our county and bring back what I learned. >> Thank you, Abby. Comments from the board. >> Yes, Laura. >> I'm just really pleased that you both went to the conference because every year not the students don't always go. So, I just um I think that's a good reflection on the two of you that you cared enough to go and that

111you got a lot out of it. >> I'm going to pile along with what Laura just said. I'm very pleased that both of you uh chose to uh pursue this and uh uh develop your education along these lines because I mean um public service is a very rewarding field. um you get to help people and uh I'm I'm I'm glad to see you guys stepping out in this way. Thank you. >> We are going to take a short 10-minute break. Please come back at 7:30 and uh when we come back, we're going to uh take our holiday card picture before we proceed with the superintendent report. So, comb your hair. which is the superintendence report. All right. I know I'm excited every month to uh give you an update, but this month is like uh

112historical because we're going to switch it up on you. I've had an opportunity to uh work with uh our associate superintendents and so our superintendent reports instead of uh just hearing from me. You're going to have an opportunity to hear from instructional services and administrative services on some of the things that are are happening. Michael's like, "Wait, that's going to be twice as long." We will be quick. We will be quick. So, here's my wall of fun. Uh October is a wild month. Uh we've had all kinds of things that we'll be hearing from, but that's that's just a a sampling of some of our the work that our communications team does in uh in providing organizationwide updates on Friday. And that's a compilation of the month of October. Uh from our last meeting, I

113do want to I I want to make sure that I'm I'm holding myself accountable. Uh we ended October by sharing out some of the things that I was going to be doing between now and and uh and and today. Uh we are working on the development of the initiative plan and I'll give you an update that's on the agenda later. Uh we do have uh board learning areas. Thank you to the three of you who completed the survey. And uh that means uh it looks like scoring high is we want to learn about dashboard and we want to learn about local control uh funding formula. So, we will be working with our content area experts to bring those presentations to the board so that we can learn more about that. Uh, we did also finalize

114some education or some evacuation drills across Skoey. We'll hear more about that in Austin's report. Uh, establishing safety crew leads across Skoey. That's Aya Tucker and our safety director doing some cool work there. And uh looking at the information that Sherry shared has been shared out with county su with superintendents across the county leading to some uh good discussions on how we can improve uh student outcomes. And we are still working on theou for chiba and the oversight of chiba. Uh chiba is authorized by trinity county but we are working with trinity county and our chiba friends to uh take over some of that oversight. So more to come on that. I'm gonna hand it over to Claudia. >> Okay. Good evening. Can you hear me? Okay. Okay. Um these are aligned to the pillars

115that Mike has shared each time and um starting with excellence in instructional services. So there is so much information um and work that happens in instructional service. under excellence. There were three key things that we've noted um that have happened um over the past couple of months or month is we had Skoey presenters that were able to present at conferences and one of them um included um joint presentation with probation and that was actually at a conference for um for probation officers. You can see them sitting up there. the probation um chief of probation um officers conference um Andrews is one of our teachers um there our principal Jill North and um Jeremy Kenyon who is um he's the director there probation with the education so that was really neat to be able to present

116a partnership and how that model is working in addition to that we had a couple counselors presenting at an associ association of school counselors and then our principal at Excel at the um SULPA um inspire shasta podcasts. I don't know if you've listened to those and checked them out. Carrie Shudy and a team do an excellent job with that and I just wanted to highlight the last two episodes because they uh feature more than after school our project share programs and also to be released soon um an addition on alternative education and then excellence in 100% 100% of the um step goals and first semester observations have been completed. that is step is our system that is used to evaluate teachers within our own Scoie programs and so Carrie Webb and her team um use

117this system and have 100%. If there's questions along the way you want to ask or anything, please feel free to chime in. Uh safe for all. Um so we have this is an area Austin's going to have a lot of highlights. I couldn't resist though putting a picture here of how our infants evacuate during a fire drill. So that picture below is I happen to be at our early childhood um services building and there was a fire drill and so the babies come out in the in the crib and with the folks holding them. So we are um practicing drills in addition to other training across all of our um departments in Skoey. So that has been great. In addition, we also host a Northern California school health connection and that involves school nurses not

118only from Shasta County but also Syscue and Tah County who come together once a month to network and join with health agencies um and have many training sessions as well. Also completion of crisis intervention prevention training. that training um really emphasizes deescalation um in addition to also in the event that one has to do a physical restraint but that we've completed those trainings and of course you will hear a lot about substance use youth prevention that initiative next month because Jen will be here to share all the things with Rocky where he has done that that during that week um including a prevention summit and then um the art contest um happening again this year with already 300 entries and 18 districts participating. Oops, wrong way. Okay, successful. This is this one. There was a

119lot here, so it's hard to choose. Um the top pictures show our lights on events. The lights on. Um, this really features it's a it's a nationwide day that is dedicated to really recognizing after school programs in America. There are 7.6 million children that go unsupervised after school. And so we are very grateful to have those programs and to and to offer them. And they really drew in the community this year. They had a chili cookoff at North Cottonwood. You could see at the top with the police officer. They um had a color run in Fall River. And so they kind of paraded down um 299 through the town. When I heard 299, I was like, "Oh, wow. [laughter] That doesn't sound safe." But it's right, you know how it runs right through the mountain

120towns there. And you can see uh the vice mayor in the Batman suit made it to Meadow Lane and the fire department visited Aigga Ono. So each of the schools take on their own flavor, if you will, to celebrate the lights on event. It's pretty cool. and everybody gets that yellow bright yellow shirt. So, we are thankful for those programs. We are looking at hopefully expanding those offerings to five additional sites. um UFly um University of Florida literacy initiative is a it's a phmic awareness phonics skills program and so we have really we've supported in training going to sites whether it's training teachers or pair professionals um and this here just captures some of the impact that we've been able to gather from teachers um here's a primary teacher just sharing how engaged the kids

121are and also just the growth that they see. There was another um caption on a student and a teacher sharing that she had a third grader that didn't read and now the student is reading whole sentences. And so that's really exciting to see the growth and the impact that that has made. Um and then the state seal of biiteracy. And so this re this is a gold seal that is placed on high school students diplomas if they show proficiency in reading, writing and speaking two languages. Um that has increased from 27 to 99 from um over the past couple school years and that includes sign language, Spanish, Vietnamese, those are the top ones in our county. Um one in Latin as well. Um so that's yeah and then um supported in the area of supported

122um this is broken down into coordination and connections and so the coordination work really emphasizes our work in preschools. We're hoping we are expanding adding a preschool that will be skoy run at Millville and then we'll be expanding at Gateway. They have also engaged in literacy training. And so, um, Brandy Groves, who was here earlier as a preschool director of early childhood education, she was just sharing how much more education is going on around letters and letter names and sounds um, in the preschools, reading pals. That work continues. And Laura's been great at highlighting this with our literacy initiatives. um 11 schools over 70 volunteers and there's a great picture there you can see of a reading um a person who's become a reading pal a volunteer our um it was great and Carrie Shy

123has done some advertise some writeups for us and enjoy magazine the open house we were able to recruit folks in including her own mom who was very excited to become a reading pal once she left the open house and encouraged others and so There there's a training coming up December 9th and then um it was also a holiday celebration and then there'll be another training on January 12th. So we'll continue to train volunteers and get them into schools. Um and then Imagination Library over 21 over 2100 have registered so far. So that's awesome. Um connections with Shasta College. So the picture you see here, the reason why the students faces are not showing, these are students from our Tri Mountain Academy. And so we had um it was six or seven students that attended um

124a field trip at Shasta College. They were able to like work with brake systems with rotors and do other hands-on things um there. So Try Mountain Academy is our school if you remember that um at the juvenile court school that we have renamed. Um so that was exciting that the students were able to go there. We also are promoting parents um and families to attend Shasta College. And so we have um a person who is housed there that works um one of our connectors that works with the independent study that will spend time at Shasta College. really um encouraging parents to take advantage of the education there. And Souls for Souls, that was a donation, as you may recall, uh over a thousand pairs of shoes and 300 pairs are out there on feet. So,

125that's exciting that they're getting distributed to to students. Um and then district visits. And so we wrapped up our district visits as you know including um visiting our our three authorized charters. Some of the top themes there were academics, behavior and admin support. And um what's was really exciting was we created a system where as we we had a spreadsheet so as I went out and visited was able to plug in hey this person's interested in coaching and Julia for example she was interested in afterchool and having someone look at her intervention system so I just put it in this table and then um Lauren who works with in our ESS here in this department would take it and she was able to okay we can get somebody to contact this school and It was

126really exciting to see us create a system to be responsive to those needs there. And one of the things that evolved was multi-grade teaching. Um that was something that came across if you can imagine at our really small schools there's a one teacher that's teaching multiple grades. It's not combo teaching. They're very specific to say it's multi-grade teaching. And so in hearing that across some of our littles um we connected with um somebody from the state and now there will be a it's launching a statewide support for teaching multi-grade. So that was really exciting to make those connections. Yeah. So stay tuned. Always there's a lot of work and and all our departments that we do across our organization and it's always fun to share and celebrate and show pictures. Are there any questions? [laughter]

127[gasps] >> Well, details. [laughter] >> All right. Uh so on the administrative services side uh in the area of excellence um we had uh unudited actual reviews uh go through our district fiscal services office. Um and so I just want to be able to highlight and call out that team for the incredible amount of work that it takes to complete those audited actual reviews. And so essentially um our district fiscal services team is looking at all of the financial statements for every district, every charter, our ROP as well as uh joint power authority in the county. So 37 separate entities. is they're looking through all of their financial statements and they have a short period of time of how when they need to get that turnaround done because they're due to us by September 15th

128and then we have to have them reviewed to the state by October 15th. And so it really creates this time crunch. Um and so in those reports they're looking at um making sure that they're all uh properly formatted within the California school accounting uh manual guidelines before they go to CDE. Um they're making sure that all fund balances are reconciling correctly uh with the LEA's prior year reported fund balancing where they closed. Um they're also looking for any material discrepancies um between each interim report uh and the year-end report. Um and then they're also looking to ensure that districts are meeting their minimum reserves um that's required in statute. Um and then also doing a review of uh restricted and unrestricted funds uh and looking at deficit spending trends. And so um that's a heavy

129lift uh for the district fiscal services team. Um and I just want to applaud the work that they've done um in getting those unodited actual reviews done uh and completed and over to the state. Uh in terms of the other side of the hallway, um I wanted to give a shout out to our internal services business team. Uh we've talked a lot here um about the Shasta County contracts inquiry and I think we've given you kind of updates along the way with that. Um and so for the last several weeks uh we've gone back and forth with some really good conversation with the county. Um and I I just again want to applaud um our internal business services team uh for their responsiveness in thoroughly addressing each of those questions. Um, and so I'm hopeful

130that we're in a place with the county, um, where they feel confident in us as a partner, um, because we do a lot of really important work with the county, you know, specifically when you look at child care funding in the county as well as some of the supports for foster youth uh, through schools. And so um, we want to make sure that all of our partners um, have confidence in us. And so if there's ever questions that we can help um, answer to make sure that people are feeling confident about us as partners, um, we're happy to engage in that process. Uh and then Claudia mentioned a little bit about the open house. Um I think that rightfully so. Uh majority uh we are highlighting our instructional services departments, right? Uh the open house

131was an opportunity where every department at Skoey was represented. Um, and so it was really cool to be able to see the administrative services staff be able to man those boots and talk about the work and the passion that they do and the really important contributions that they're making behind the scenes to support instructional services and all of the educational practices uh that are going on across Shasta County. Um, and I want to give a special thank you to uh Trustee Roberts uh for showing up to the open house. Um, it meant a great deal to our staff that we had board member representation at our open house. um and that you spend a great deal of time talking with them and learning about their work. And so I just wanted to thank you for

132attending in the area of safe for all. Uh Claudia mentioned it as well. Uh we had our first in what I can remember in a long time fire drill at Magnolia. Um and so there was a lot of work that our safety director Ayah had put into um it's it's not as simple as just hey we're going to all go outside and we're going to have some clipboards. We're going to take some roll call. um she actually has to update evacuation plans. Uh she has to designate a staging area. She has to get all of that approved by the fire marshal. And so she has gone through that process. Um and so now that we've completed that process with the fire marshall, uh we were able to do an updated fire drill with that new

133staging area and those evacuation plans. Um, we've talked a little bit here about a school building numbering and mapping s system countywide that would kind of help law enforcement um have a uniform system that schools in Shasta County approach um how we are numbering and mapping all of our classrooms and our campuses so that it will be easier for law enforcement to be able to um come onto campus and know exactly where they're going in the event that they need to do that. Uh and so AYA has launched um we had our first uh working group meeting uh made up of superintendent uh as well as uh representatives from law enforcement, both the sheriff's office um and RPD. Um and so the the hope of that group is to start building a collective um approach

134to how we want to do that where um it would be unanimous buyin from everybody at that table about here is the mapping design that we are going with and then we would be asking districts to opt into selecting that. Um that it has been vetted both by a committee of districts uh as well as law enforcement. Um and so that will come later in the spring. uh on the HipLink positive contact. Um some of you may not know, but we have uh a system called Hiplink um that allows for a text message to be sent to all school staff uh that sign up for HIPLink notifications in the event that there is a school lockdown that is triggered by law enforcement. Right. And so Ayla uh had come to find out from her work

135with some of the districts that in some of the outlining areas of Shasta County where you don't have the cellular reception that's needed for those text messages to get through, we weren't always getting timely notification through HipLink to school officials that needed to get that lockdown information. And because of our over reliance on hiplink, positive contact was no longer being made by like, hey, we're going to do the hip link thing, but we're also going to call the school office, right? So AYA um put together a roundt discussion on that. Um worked really closely with RPD as they oversee Shasscom. um as an interim solution um they are going to be working with Shasscom dispatchers where anytime that a school lockdown comes in the hip link notification will go out and also the dispatcher is

136going to call the designated phone number um to make positive contact anytime that a school lockdown is designated um and AY's working with all of the outlying schools to be able to provide that number because sometimes the school office number that's provided may not be the best direct line of contact for Shascom in terms of it might go to a phone directory or whatever that looks like. So Ayla is going to be providing those uh contact informations to Shascom and we're going to be moving in the direction of being able to get positive contact. Um and that's the interim solution. Um they're also have in the work some other solutions for ongoing um to permanently address the positive contact uh through um some satellite um communications that law enforcement already has in place in the

137area of successful uh we've talked at our last meeting about uh our transportation director Katie Martin was retiring. She is now off in the sunset and I just wanted to highlight uh the importance of succession planning and how successful that was. Um Sam is now fully in his transportation director role. He's been co-directing with Katie since July 1. Um and I think that that succession planning uh had a huge deal with uh him being ready to jump into that role and so I wanted to highlight that there. Um, of course we have talked in this space about first interim budget planning, right? Um and so a lot of work has been conducted uh now that we've gotten through unodudited actuals uh on turning our focus to first interim uh and I want to thank the

138internal business team uh for working with Mike as well as with the cabinet team as well as with program directors um so that when we come back here next month uh we're able to deliver to you a plan that chips away at that fund balance um and we have uh really well thoughtout uses uh for those those funds. Um, and then we couldn't talk successful tonight without putting in a note here about the new microphones that we have. Um, I do think that this is the most successful meeting we've had in terms of audio. Uh, and so James, thank you so much to you and your team. I know this has been a long time coming. We've been talking about this here for months. Um, we need to get new microphones. We can't hear. We

139now have new mics. Um sounds like the recordings are also capturing capturing the audio um crystal clear now and so hopefully um this will address our audio uh problems moving forward. In the area of supported uh last spring we had got some feedback from superintendents in the area of like where can the county office do more to support districts. Um and one of the things that they asked for was more support in the area uh of legislation right in the wall of legislation uh that particularly small school districts are feeling. Um and so one of the things that we did in response to that was uh we now have twice a year we have uh representatives from uh Senator Dolly uh and Assembly person uh Hadwick's office coming to our chief school administrators meeting. And

140so we had our first meeting uh with those two offices uh at the October CSA meeting. Um and so it was a really great opportunity uh for the representatives to be able to talk with superintendents about like what legislation is really impacting your school campuses and then to be able to engage in a dialogue back and forth about what the strategies are in Sacramento to be able to help address some of those things. Uh and then we'll be doing that again in March. Um, and the March one is ideally aimed at looking at, okay, what new legislation is on the docket in that uh, cycle. Um, and how can they get feedback back to their representatives that will help guide them in those conversations when we're talking new legislation. And then last but not least,

141um, it has been out supporting uh, French Gulch in a huge way. um the support for French gulch um being a single single site um they've worked through with them getting multifactor authentication up um they also had several devices that were operating on Windows 10 and Windows 10 is coming to the end of its lifespan and they weren't able to get necessarily necessary um they needed uh they needed to get uh security updates for Window 10 um and they weren't able to get those done and so it helped them with that as well as with some uh licensing for some of their network. So thank you to it for the work that took place at French Gulch. >> Thank you Claudia. Thank you Austin. That's a lot right? I mean you you think about the

142work that we do. Uh I'm so appreciative of of instructional services and administrative services and for all of the amazing things that uh that our team are are making making happen across the county. Couple of other highlights. Uh the dashboard uh this California school dashboard is releasing tomorrow I think. Right. So that's that that's big news. That's a board learning topic. So we'll learn more about that. But that that looks at student outcomes across uh districts and then based based on growth. Uh they they're assigned kind of a color designation and we we don't like red. We really like blues blues and greens. Right. And I think we're I think this is breaking news but I our student programs uh can I Yeah. Yeah. It's embargoed but it's it's released tomorrow. Tom, >> maybe I'll

143say it off mic. Uh, our student programs have no reds. So, there's that. Uh, the first interim budget Austin spoke to that, but I I can't say enough to our team making that happen, and I'm I'm excited about the conversation we'll have in our uh December budget study session. Our team is working hard to also support districts as we look at a math curriculum adoption coming. the state board of education released out uh the uh the list of approved uh publishers and so we are in the process of vetting those and working with districts on that. Uh we're excited to announce that the pro there has been progress on the Mountain Union Whitmore feasibility study. Uh so that will be I'm so glad that we landed on the 10th because uh Christy White, our consultant

144and our legal counsel will be present on the 10th to be able to answer any questions as we get ready for that decision. Uh the ideally we are making that decision on the 10th after we've had an opportunity to review that that report. Uh a to this is huge. I just want to say this right. We've actually had representatives in the American Indian Advisory tell us stories about their tribe, their tribe name not even being discussed when they were kids. And in our last American Indian Advisory, I got goosebumps all over right now. In our last American Indian Advisory, Shast Junior High School District announced that there will be an A to G certified winu language class on their academic calendar in the fall of 2026. So students tribal or non-tribal will be able to

145take a class and learn when language. >> That's cool. Is that going to fulfill a language requirement? >> Yes. Careful when you call it I think we call it world languages now. We don't call it foreign language because if I'm a member of the winu tribe that is not a foreign language, right? I I I'm I'm learning. But that that was history in the making and it was a really cool uh thing to be a part of. So that is uh that is my report. President Brown on to other things to make happen. >> Questions from the board. >> [laughter] >> Moving along to I [laughter] to item 11 item 11.1.1 is a report from our bylaws ad hoc committee. Um did the committee members choose a spokesperson? >> Yeah, they chose me. >> Mr.

146We're lucky. >> Yeah. >> Uh there's some papers here. If you guys take one and then pass it down. So we this committee was formed in July to meet and review the policies affected by the Supreme Court decision in Mahmood and also to look at board bylaw 9005. So, in this packet of papers that we came up with, I'm just going to quickly go through the things that we added or why we added things. And if uh author or Jackie want to comment, feel free to jump in. Uh the first thing that we included under board policy 5020 would be a exhibit of a parent opt out notice. And it lists out several things that parents would be allowed to opt out of. And this would be sent home with the with the child for

147the parents to check which things they wanted to opt out of. I'm not going to read them all to you because you guys can see it. Uh the next thing that we did was we revised board bylaw 9005. We took out some things that were redundant or Yep. Do you have a question? >> Actually, yeah, I'm in the hopper if uh you want Okay, cool. Um actually to help out with this uh we've actually taken uh if it's if it's existing policy we've actually taken and redlined uh the changes that the the policy committee uh has made so that you can look at one document that shows language that has been added or striketh through. So, I I'll go ahead and pass that along. >> That that might help with with Michael's >> reflections on

148what's >> Yeah, I think ours has strikethroughs as well, but we can >> Oh, okay. >> But we can do that. And there is red on here, too. Is that the same? >> I had a stack of papers under my thing when I got here. So, is that given by you? >> Yours is a copy of what you sent. >> Okay. And then this this actually has the CSBA policies and maybe where you >> Oh, okay. Okay. >> So, on the MAMU Taylor's uh CSBA provided some policy uh update recommend recommendations and so we're just taking the recommendations from our ad hoc subcommittee and putting that in comparison to what came out of CSVA. >> Okay. So, anyway, on 9005, there's some strikethroughs here because we felt that some of the language was redundant. or

149unnecessary like the uh not being able to eat food that's not provided. I really don't want to eat cookies all night. So, we [snorts] would we took that out and so people can bring snacks. I think that's just All right, that was 9005. We also are proposing adding two other board policies which would be one on controversial issues and [snorts] one on where is it? Recognition of religious beliefs and customs. Those are two new policies that we are recommending adding that were part of the CSBA email that we all received earlier in the summer. There are some on 6145 the superintendence policy and the board policy. We're proposing adding a clause that just reads, "Parents, guardians shall receive prior notice of instruction or activities that may substantially burden their securely held religious beliefs and may

150request in writing that their student be excused from that portion of instruction. No penalty or stigma shall result from such excusal." And we are also adding that to 6184. And then the final one that we looked at was board policy 6142.3 which we added some ED code language in there. It's about civics's education and we cleaned up some of the language just correcting some things in there that we felt we needed to have. So, I know that was a lot to say really quickly, but [snorts] if there's any questions or comments, and I know this is just discussion, so we're not taking action on this tonight. So, when next month when we do, we can amend or things like that when it comes time for that. >> Yeah. And I know everyone needs to look

151through it and so that's why we I don't think we can really have much of a discussion without being able to read all of it. >> I I apologize. I was reading so I didn't see whose hand went up first. >> Laura. So, um, is our attorney gonna look these over, too, or has there been any kind of legal review just before we would adopt them that we would make sure that they're okay? [laughter] If the board wants to frame a request for us to look at all of it or some of it, we'd be happy to. we can give you some some comments and if there's any suggested edits. Michael's nodding so I'll take that as a yes. >> Thank you. >> Sorry board president. I did not >> request to speak. [laughter] >>

152Thank you Tom. Further discussion Jackie. >> So with that though I believe um would we need Robert to give Michael permission to speak to you? Can we do that now? >> Thank you Jackie. You are actually um describing the proper procedure. I Michael, you have permission to talk to Tom. >> Thank you. [laughter] [snorts] >> I would highly recommend that everybody read through these both of these carefully um in the next month because I mean we're going to have to come to a uh um a decision about this in December. So, be diligent, be thorough, look at what you're looking at. If you have questions, >> Mr. Freeman. >> Yes, sir. And and remember, you can offer amendments and things if there are things you want to change and we can vote on that. That's

153part of the work that we do is debate, discuss, amend, vote, and that's perfectly fine. And so just keep that in mind that that is something that is allowed to be done. >> Okay. Just be careful not to create serial meetings. I know you're on that. So >> yeah, I mean at the meeting, not during the monthly. Yes. >> Did you have Jessica? >> Yeah, >> it's author. >> Oh, okay. Okay. I got it. Author, you're up first. Yeah, I uh appreciate the work that Michael and Jackie put into this and as well as the staff members are providing both of these for us. Uh I think we have more than enough time over the month to look through this and see if we want to make amendments or change things. U and I'd like

154to make a motion to add this as an action item to our next uh regular board meeting. >> Um you're premature with that. So I but I I appreciate I hear that that you want to make a motion. You're just premature with it. >> When would be the appropriate time to make a motion? >> It it it's scheduled to be an action item anyway. So >> well, how so >> but wait till we get done. We're still discussing. >> I think the motion >> somehow or another we're not >> uh the motion still stands. I'm still making an motion to make this an action item at our next board meeting. >> I mean, I could fail for a second, but I'm just asking for a motion to be made. >> More discussion. >> I put

155a thing. >> I'm sorry, Michael, you're up next. I think I put that in a while ago. So I I can yield to Jessica. >> Thanks for yielding. Michael, [laughter] >> so my con my confusion. And I guess my confusion, that's not what I would say, but my I would like some clarification about um the attorney looking this over and if we're making a motion to put this as an agenda item for action at the next meeting and then he reviews it and there's things that can't be legal then how does that work? Do we need to do will it have to come back again or should he review it first and then let us review it again so that you know >> no it will come back at the next meeting as an action

156item and we can discuss motions to amend during that meeting. So >> so we're we're reviewing a document. We don't know if it's legal. >> Well well I mean you can review documents and make any kind of of of of >> amendments. Amen. >> My suggestion would be that it was written by the attorney through the board secretary >> review it. >> Yeah. And just through my Mr. Freeman. >> If you have an idea, don't communicate it directly to the board members. Communicate it to Mr. Freeman and we will avoid a serial meeting. So >> my question isn't about that. It's about the the attorney reviewing it the document. Didn't we just discuss that? >> I'm sorry. I'm not understanding your question. I thought we just had a discussion about whether the the attorney should

157review the document, didn't we? >> Yeah, we're going to review it over the coming month. >> Oh, the attorney is >> Yes. >> Oh, and then is he going to let us know or are we going to discuss the legality and our ideas all at the same meeting? >> I believe we will discuss the legality and the motion, any amendments all at the December meeting. So, okay. Prepared. Thank you. Yes, sir. >> I yield to him. [laughter] >> Thank you, Mr. President and board members. If there's something that requires a confidential legal update, I can transmit that to you as a >> as a confidential update and you can take consideration for >> open session discussion we'll have later. >> That would be great. Thank you. And as as I've mentioned a couple of times,

158um there's a lot of questions that we talk about in open session, but some of them are appropriate for a confidential memo or even occasionally close session. So, >> okay, >> we'll get you the information. At least I hope at least I hope we'll give you all all that you need. >> Thank you. >> Further discussion, >> questions. Okay, Mr. Gman, now's the time for the motion. I'll make a motion to add the ad hoc committee's proposal to the next regular scheduled board meeting. >> And a second. >> I'll second. It's been moved and seconded that we add the proposal to uh the uh December agenda as an action item. [snorts] Discussion. >> Action item discussion. >> Seeing none, we will do a roll call vote. Abby >> I. >> Jacob I. author. >> Hi

159>> Jessica. >> Hi >> Jackie. >> Hi >> Laura. >> Hi [snorts] >> Michael. >> Hi >> Teresa. >> Hi. >> And I will affirm as well. So it's December is going to be a very long meeting. Everybody come prepared. [snorts] Item 11.1.2 uh.1 our board initiative which is the staffing shortage. Um so we we are in the midst of planning on that Mr. Freeman. >> Yeah. So this is an update an opportunity for us to maybe discuss uh discuss some things get some board input in our in our next steps forward. Uh I just love this this idea from John Dwey. We do not learn from experience but we learn from reflecting on our experience. And as we think about this initiative and launching into this I just want to highlight we have done

160uh we have actually internally reviewed work that we feel has had impact as an organization. Uh I want to thank Carrie Shudy if you remember these Carrie. Uh we've actually put one pagers together of the work that we have done that we feel has made a significant uh impact in in our county whether it's community schools, community connect, reach higher shasta, healing with our American Indian advisory, our homeless education, our foster youth services. Uh we've done some work in science of hope. We have several districts that we're working with on positive behavior intervention supports. This is for dramatic effect. This was not for me to actually get into the details of any of these any particular program. Uh we've also done some work um coming out of the pandemic around uh Calhill FEMA and our

161social emotional learning and then uh prevention programs was one of our recent initiatives. So, as we've looked at this over time, we've actually distilled it down to a blueprint. And this blueprint is is what we we believe is kind of the recipe for for doing work that has an impact. And we want to as we step into this new initiative, I I would just love to keep this in front of the board. What we have found is when we go through these steps and we go through these steps with fidelity uh with collaboration with intent, we we land on work that that has impact. And so we think about think about as it relates to the staffing shortage. We had conversations as a board and we looked at several problems. We have definitely heard from

162our districts. Claudia mentioned our our district superintendent conversations. We know that there's a staff shortage problem classified, certificated uh across whether it's small, whether it's big districts, everybody is feeling the pinch of staff shortage. So, we're going to check that. We move on to learning about the problem. We look at best practices. We start with a pilot or small group and then we determine how to scale that up. And that's kind of how that's the story behind all of those programs that I just shared on the previous slide, right? We've actually distilled, we've looked at how this work has had the impact and we basically developed a recipe so that moving forward we can make sure that we're doing work that's going to have that same impact. So as we think about staff shortage, I

163want to apply it's not a presentation without an Einstein quote, right? So like if I had an hour to solve a problem, I'm going to spend 55 minutes learning about the problem and then I'm going to jump in and I'm going to work on a solution. And so I I don't want to be hasty in in rushing to a proposal of an initiative of a plan to to attack staffing shortage. I want to make sure that I am doing that we as a team are looking at this from several different angles so that we can actually do work that has an impact. So as it relates to learning about the problem, what we're currently looking at is that we're it's starting to coalesce around three lanes, right? Attracting, retaining, and supporting. So So right now

164we are in the process of conducting a comprehensive needs assessment. So that's everything from analyzing local HR data, surveying districts to identify what are those high need areas so that we might be able to exert some uh some some unified effort in in a focused way. When we think about the collaborative partnerships that are going to be required, we are either longestablished relationships with these partners or we are having conversation like for example chamber of commerce. We are now a member of chamber of commerce that put myself and Donnell Evans uh in a mixer uh last week maybe uh last week two weeks ago where we had a room full of accounting interns. Right. So, so that is putting us in places where we can address staffing shortage. Shasta College, Simpson, CSU Chico, we have

165other higher education institutions. We're we're establishing relationships with our smart workforce centers. So, we're trying to look at like how where where are the relationships needed, where are we strong, and what can we do to develop new relationships where it matters. So, currently, check this out. uh we're we are having internal conversations because when you it's like I want to buy a white car and all I see are white cars, right? When you talk about staff shortage, we start to see work that we are currently doing in this area and the impact that it is having. And so part of our plan will be take that work, grow it, grow the good, throw gas on it, 10x where we're seeing some some progress. So assessing current programming and partnerships with these partners I think I've

166shared the teach the website that's on our website basically that shows pathways right if I'm interested in a classified position if I'm interested in a certificated position am I a college student am I a currently a school employee like a paraprofessional and I want to go in the classroom I love Mr. French being here Mr. French's story about I'm substitute custodian and teacher start saying hey you should teach right and so I think that that I think that that was a that was a powerful spontaneous example of what we're what we're trying to do so check these numbers out uh we had zero people in a grow grow our own program classified to certificated grant world in April we are now currently at 52 people that are looking at a grad looking at a bachelor's

167degree. Granted, we are looking at certificated and classified in the staff shortage. So, this might be intensive certificated, but the work needs to be balanced as far as classified and certificated because the staffing shortage is universal. It's across the board. Whether Cole Rumpford is looking for maintenance and operations, whether Lindsay is looking for internal business and and accounting, James is looking for it, everybody bus drivers. Um, so, uh, currently eligible and taking courses, we are 21 attending. We have a tw we in Shasta County, we have a bachelor degree problem. We are 13 percentage points below the state average for bachelor's degrees in this county. So programs like REACH, here's a cool uh Sacramento State's about to come online with this work, but just an example of our partnership with Reach University. Reach University out

168of pocket for a total $3,000 someone can walk away with a bachelor's degree, right? So like if you're looking at I'm I'm currently a I'm currently a maybe I'm a paraprofessional. I'm an instructional aid or I'm a yard duty supervisor for a district. you can enter into the reach university program and and for a reduced cost come out with a bachelor's degree which helps us address some of that staffing shortage. Uh I I had the opportunity to participate on the advisory board board for Simpson University and Simpson University is looking at innovative programs like a teacher mentorship, right? Everybody knows one of the challenges with teachers is you got to student teach and student teach isn't paid. So you got to take it, you got to leave your profession and you have to jump into

169a a student teacher program and you are forfeiting earnings. They're looking at uh Simpson University is and I don't know this is this is linked when you get the slide deck so but I don't know if this is like public public but I grabbed it from the breakfast and was like I'm going to share with the board because this is this is this is relevant to the conversations that we're having. But you would be hired as a student teacher and a paraprofessional in the district. Part of your week would be spent in the classroom. Part of your week would be spent as a pair professional outside of the classroom. So you are earning money. You are contracted for a year and as you as you evolve in your teaching expertise, well in your teaching experience

170in the classroom, you're eventually becoming the opportunity of going from a mentor with a classroom teacher to co-eing to solo teaching and the whole time you are working with kids in a district. And so they get to know you, you get to know them. So it it's a very promising thing as far as addressing the unpaid student teacher aspect of things. The other drastic example, if I'm not a student teacher right now, the only option is I'm an intern, which means I have no experience teaching and I'm in the classroom and I have I have kids coming at me all day long and I have no idea what I'm doing. Like maybe I can speak from experience like circa 19 uh maybe 2000 Foothill High School, Mike Freeman maybe wasn't the best Spanish teacher in

171the world because I had seven periods, no prep, 210 kids coming at me and there was no relief. There was no support. I was crying to work. I was crying home and I don't know if anybody was learning Spanish, right? But eventually we had a good time and we we we got through it. But it isn't something that we need to get through, right? If we're talking about a staff shortage, rule number one is retain who we have. And if the new teachers aren't feeling support, we're going to lose new teachers. If veteran teachers aren't feeling support, they're going to say, "Peace out." Like this is this is too hard. So, props to Simpson University and for this this type of thinking, right? They were able to get feedback from us. room full of superintendent,

172our own student programs was there and I think we were able to provide some some feedback to to help this program uh in the development of of their plans. other things like uh Claudia and I are kind of lit up talking about this idea of teacher residency ormies where districts in Shasta County could hire a new teacher and in the onboarding they could slide a piece of paper across and say we're partnering with Shasta County Office of Education and here is your first year teacher support for new teachers and it has the plan they can have everything calendared and we are in partnership not necessarily us doing it all we are we have we have amazing people that you've met districts have amazing people how can we provide the support for new teachers in a

173in a comprehensive way and when we're looking at actions and services and budgets as part of this initiative we can provide stipens for incentive and completion right you can say cool first module is going to be on classroom setup and systems and routines that are going to help you manage student behavior you complete that successfully Cool. Here's a stipend. Right? So, those are the some of the innovative and it's anchored in researchbased. This isn't just like the world according to Mike Freeman or Claudia Sylvester. It's a cool world. That's a cool world. But, right researchbased, the art and science of teaching by Bob Marzano, Doug Reeves, like there's researchers out there that are tried and true. And I think going back to that as a foundation. And then the beautiful thing about a model like

174this, it's a cohort model. So there's internal support. I go in and I'm part of 20 new teachers in the county and we go through what we go through together, right? And that you form that that community. Ironically, this this model is right under our nose. Several years ago, we had lack of local candidates for admin positions. We created an ad administrative credential. The administrative credential is kind of like this model. And yeah, I think uh 12 13 years later, hundreds of people have successfully completed it and I think that that model can work for for new teachers. So that's exciting. Uh other high school so on the on the recruiting, right? Or on the attracting like what are we doing for the high school for the rising generation? I think it's some kind of

175crazy fact check this, but 80% of people that teach teach within 20 miles of where they went to school. That's wild, right? So, like our future teachers could be in our very classrooms right now. What are we doing to inspire them? What are we trying to do? Hey, Abby. Hey, Jacob, be teachers cuz it's super cool. I don't know if it looks super cool right now, right? If you have a teacher that is not supported right now, it may not look like I don't want to do that. So, how can we how can we do some of those things? So strengthening strengthen or create that career and education's pathway early give kids early experience right dual enrollment looking at uh educator r like here's some cool here's some school screenshots there's this club you can

176actually bring onto campuses called educator rising right so similar to an ROC similar to a uh FFA like FBLA some of those clubs are steering kids towards certain careers and education we're not doing any of that, right? So, that's that that's one possible solution. We have had some success over the last two summers. We've had a summer internship with an early childhood education partnership with Shasta College Reach Shasta. They get uh an hourly wage. They get Kohl's vouchers for like interview clothes and some some cool things that are happening there. I think last year we had uh we had a combination. combination of health care and early childhood education and we're continuing that program. So, some of the things that we're doing that that's called career quest. Cool opportunity there. Again, on the staff on

177the on the classified front, the the internship uh through Shasta College for accounting um it's actually the acronym is asset accounting services employment training. Bus driving. We've been looking at all of those strategies. So paid training was a huge difference maker for us on the CBO development front. I think that's what keeps us up at night a little bit. When you look at school finance, like what are the next wave of school uh business officials? Um you look at child care, IT maintenance operations, what could that look like? So those are some of the things that we are doing in the planning and the development of an initiative. what it's going to look like. We would love to conclude our needs assessment in no in in December, develop those actions, deliverables, and budgets. December's agenda

178is a little heavy. So, bringing this in January to that January 14th board meeting where we can say, here's where we'd like to take it countywide for Shassa County as far as staffing shortage. My question, maybe I can leave you with you. I don't know how how the appetite for discussion at 8:30, but like this idea of things that board members can do collectively and individually to be involved. Right? In that September planning, we talked about clarification of our roles, your roles as board trustees in a board initiative, what what could that look like? And that's what I would love to leave you with as far as where we're at with staff shortage. I'll turn it over to President Brown. Michael, >> I think he answered it already, so I'm good. >> Okay, [laughter] Jackie,

179>> thank you. Mike, what was the name of the um the pathway for the high schools for educators? Was it Rise? >> Educators Rising. And we So, we don't have any any high schools with that club now? >> No. So, we have a K16 workforce grant and we are trying to promote educators rising in the in the high schools this year. This is a new idea for us. And when we get when you get the slides, that guy's linked. If you click on it, it'll take you to it'll take you to the website >> author >> for the career quest. Uh what is the age [snorts] requirement? Yeah, you said high school kids, but must be 16 and up. >> Great question. Junior, seniors. Yeah, >> senior. >> I have a question for the board

180members. Is there anyone who's thinking that they would like to take the lead on a committee on this staffing shortage? You don't have to answer right now. Just think about it. Yes. Okay. >> Okay. Did I see your hand as well, Jackie? >> Cool. Awesome. Can I lean out to Can I reach out to the two of you as we are developing that plan and we can maybe just have a a think tank session on are we heading in the right direction? Cool. >> Item 11 1.3, board reports, correspondence, comments. Does anybody have a report? >> Okay. Well, Laura Laura's name came up first. >> Um, yeah, I was just going to report um kind of following up on Claudia said about reading pals. I'm doing that again at Meadow Lane and um really enjoying

181uh reading with the kids, but also just these conversations that I have with the kids. And this one little boy, he's in um second grade and he is so curious. He has so many things to talk about and we have all these great conversations. And then the other day, the teacher who oversees the program down there, she was telling me because she's a kindergarten teacher. So, lots of times these kids in the program, they're second and third graders, but she she knows most of these kids because a lot of them were in her kindergarten class. And she said, "Well, that little boy when he was in kindergarten, he had a speech impediment." And I can still hear it a bit. Um, and she said he just didn't talk at all. He hardly talked at all

182during kindergarten. So, now she's seeing him just come in and I think he's making up for lost time. I guess he has all these conversations. But anyway, it's just um I know the program is about the kids, but I'm getting a lot out of it, too. And um I got to be part of um the Enjoy Magazine interview. There were several of us that were part of that interview and I thank Holly King for kind of putting that all together and the article is supposed to come out in the December issue, which would be in a couple weeks. Um, and then the other thing I was going to report on is that I attended the Reach Higher Literacy group and a lot of the stuff that Claudia covered is what was happening there. There's a

183lot of different literacy events at the schools um like family reading things and I'll see a lot of them on the social media feeds. um the schools will promote them and in um January or in February there's going to be a love of literacy event midFebruary that will be a communitywide event for donating books and then also different reading activities. So look for that. Um right now Reading Reads with Rabba is having book donations. So if you have want a place to donate books you can donate them to Rabba and they give the books to people coming onto the bus. you can read read a book while you're taking a ride on the bus. And um yeah, I think that's that's it. >> Thank you, Laura. Michael uh Debbie Kmenti at the YMCA wanted to

184invite board members to come and tour their afterchool uh program at the YMCA. They are really happy with how that's going. So she asked me to just communicate that as an invitation to board members to come tour that. >> Thank you. >> Jackie, [snorts] >> so as your ACCBE rep, um I went to my first ACCB board rep meeting. It was on Zoom um last month and that was good. I just love Beina. They're working so hard. Um, one suggestion that I made or actually kind of an open-ended question was about the number of emails that we get from them. Um, as your board rep, it it's hard to go through the they they do send out a lot, but I love it. There's a lot of good stuff. So, they are actually now doing

185just one cliffnotee version for the board reps to be able to report on. So, they're going to kind of condense all the myriad of emails. Um, and so I'll just have one to report on. So, that's that's nice. Um, I'm really excited about the legislative work that they're doing. They're looking for people um to to be representatives for them on that work. So, I'm thinking about doing that. Some upcoming trainings that I'm going to I'm excited about is a deep dive on court and community schools and charter renewals and appeals. So, just um understanding those better and hopefully being able to um help our board grow in that. So, thank you. >> Thank you, Jackie. I'd just like to comment on the ACCBE point. It's nice to look at emails that are strictly for county

186board things and not have to filter through all the district stuff from the CSPI. That's [snorts] that that that's a plus. Author, >> thank you. I was able to talk to a couple people up and down the state about uh at risk youth in high schools building tiny homes. And so I talked to this group and then they were in Fresno and uh I said would you mind contacting the county office of education? They said they have grant funding and different things and it just enables they said in the past they were able to even work with kids in juvenile hall as well to build these tiny homes to that they can give out into the community. So hopefully that they reach out to you guys and see if they can partner with you at

187some level with our kids in our programs. Thank you, Arthur Teresa. >> I just want to thank you for that open house. That was that was actually a lot of fun. I spent a lot more time there than I thought I was going to. So, and then I met I mean I wound up catching up with probably seven people that I'd known for years not realizing that they were actually with Skoey. So, that was a lot of fun. And Arthur, were they looking were you talking to the person for the students building the tiny homes or the tiny homes being built for the students? >> No, the students would be building the tiny homes. >> They they were doing that at the you what's it called? >> No, youth build academy. It wasn't tiny homes.

188It was just sheds or whatever. It's the one over there on engine. You know the one I'm talking about? >> Yeah. Cha. >> Oh, is that what it's called? Um, but yeah, that's I mean I always thought that was a great idea for all the schools to get into. >> Thank you, Teresa. Jessica, >> oops, they did it again. Sorry. Uh, I just wanted to briefly briefly touch on um a subject of one of our um well, not one of our programs. I guess it's workability if anybody's familiar. I don't know. Um, but I but I met with the director today, Mike, who um let me know that it actually isn't under the umbrella of this board. >> Is that accurate? >> SPA has their own board. >> Okay. So, so I the the experience

189I had is a personal experience. So, I just want to share with you because I think it's really a kind of a a dire situation. At least it was for my child and um but it's a program we partner with with with Skoey, right? Okay. And um workability is a program for students on an IEP. They that's the requirement. They must be on IEP and it's a program where they can go and get work experience at a local business. And um the intent is to help them transition. It's for 16 to 22 year olds that are on IEPs. And um the requirement, it's a state program. And the requirement is that they be on an IEP. Well, my son um was in the D uh what's it called? DO program last year, which is the

190same thing except for now it's workability and it's done through SULPA. Um and last year he he started working at Holiday Market in um Palisadro and for the first time in his life he was just 360 confident learning like no other. Um a great employee after he struggled his entire he's 18. He just turned 18 after struggling his entire education in school. Um, and so him having the opportunity to have work experience in school and have it tied to school where he had to keep going to school, especially when, you know, when kids turn 18, the the dropout rate goes way up for them. Um, and so it it really changed his life being able to have that work experience. And then this year when it was changed to a selpa to work ability, he

191was refused for the program because they have a GPA requirement for two for a 2.0 which you know for an average student you would think was okay but when you have a child that has learning disabilities and um they struggle immensely in school. My son's never maintained a 2.0. He usually balances between like 1.7 and 2.0. Um and so he was refused to join the program um which completely did a the reverse 360 on his um everything. And so I approached the um the program coordinator and we had conversations but they were very adamant. I was very black and white to them like nope sorry that's our rule. And I'm I asked all the questions where does the where does the policy come from? Well we just made the policy. Can I have the documents

192for the policy? Well, there is no document, but we're going to put that in there, like, you know. And then today I met with the director who um is a very nice man, and I can tell he is passionate about um special education, but I have some concerns about it. Um the conversation was very much, uh well, that's not our responsibility. That's the high school's responsibility. We don't we don't issue a work permit. There's no way around that. It was like very it it was a non- collaborative environment I felt like for this program and I did mention to him like the premise of this program is supposed to be collaboration with parents with um schools with with SULPA it's supposed to you're supposed to all work together for the betterment of the child and

193um I'm just concerned that the kids that need this program the reason why the program was created in the first place that they're going to be and and not my son he's not this isn't a conflict of interest he's not in the programing anymore. He won't be cuz now he's working his own job. But um for other kids like him who really need opportunities like that, to have them refused because of a GPA requirement, I think is completely outrageous. And I want to do the best I can to try and help fix that. Um and so what I learned is that they have their own board. Um and he is going to have some conversations. Um, and then, um, if those conversations don't, you know, create a change that I think is for the best

194of the kids, then I can go to their board and speak with them. Um, but at some point, I'm going to do some more research because some question, some things he said were that he wasn't sure what other SULPASS do in the state and um, that he, you know, he thought they would also have a GPA requirement and things like that, which I don't think is accurate. So, I'm going to find some more um factual information, but at some point I hope to bring that back to here. And um he said we could we could um [clears throat] you know provide some guidance to Mike to maybe make a suggestion to them and what they thought what we thought they should do. So, I just wanted to put that in your ear and let you

195know that I was researching it and um so you're aware when it comes back up again. >> Mr. Freeman. Yeah, I appreciate I appreciate you having the conversation with our SULPA directors. So, SULPA is an interesting uh interesting structure, right? Because uh SULPA and the team of special education itinerant staff, they're all Shasta County Office of Education employees. The SULPA director does have a board. Uh he works at the direction of the board. I work with the board chair and we we uh so I would be I would be the SEPA director's supervisor. So I do appreciate feedback because that goes into conversations that I I have with him as far as policy and those those types of uh those types of things there are going to be dictated by the board and then when

196you look at you know work permit issuance and those kinds of things. So, I just wanted to make sure to clear any confusion when you see Shasta County Office of Education badges on special education itinerary staff working with SULPA. Yes, they are our employees, but it is it is an interesting arrangement and also across the state, every SUPPA >> is structured differently. >> That's weird. What is is really weird, especially when you look at you think about our students with disabilities data that Sherry shared and like how difficult it is to improve outcomes for students across the state of California. That particular student group has a totally different structure across the 58 counties. >> Hang on, Teresa. Do you mind if I jump in before I call on you? >> Do I mind? >> Well,

197thank you. Um, I just like to ask [clears throat] some questions because um, I've been dealing with special education for a long time and when it comes to a special needs child, GPA isn't as important as building confidence and um, so the uh, uh, requirement for workability um, assumes competence. assumes the student can perform the function of required by the job and that is enormously important to that student. Okay? I mean it if if you're assuming that a kid can't do something, they will pick up on that. They will pick up on that and they will follow that down that rabbit hole and never ever get any better, never improve. But if you assume they're confident, if you assume that they can do the job, if you let them show you what they can accomplish,

198then they can they can move mountains. They're they're they're amazing people. So, I mean, it we call them special needs children. Well, one of those special needs is for us to give them the support that they need in the moment, which means believing in them, believing that they can do the job. And that seems to be missing from the report we just received from from from Jessica. So, I'm sorry, Teresa, you're next. Is this are the wages for this is that through the state or does Okay. So the the um the business doesn't pay the wages. >> No, >> I think all kids should have to work at the age of 15 or 16. It's great work ethic. What? >> Austin, you sure? Author Yeah, I was just looking online to see what the California

199state requirement to work is. And uh it just it does say maintain a minimum of GPA of 2.0 from the prior semester, pass all current enrolled classes, have no excess absences, make adequate progress towards graduation, and minors 16 to 18 who are not in high school must enroll in the >> Yeah. But uh but it does say uh minimum GPA or a passing grade. So I mean if uh they stu the school is amicable to get rid of GPA and just say the student is passing their class then they potentially could still work right because it says or passing. So c >> can I just raise a point of order real quick? like this is a comment section, not really discussion on anything. So, it seems like we're just veering out out of the lane

200of what this is meant to be. >> Jessica, >> are we veering? >> You're up next. >> I'm scared. [laughter] Are we veering? >> I'm sorry. >> I I said, are we veering? He made a point of order. Don't we have to make a like a judgment of that? >> No, I I was asking Michael brought up a point of order. So you are reviewing off of a >> um that the agenda item is board reports >> report not discussion. >> Well it's [snorts] Tom >> Michael raises a good question. The Brown Act specifically does allow board members to provide a brief report on their own activities, to ask questions of staff, to refer matters to staff, to ask I'm not sure I'm getting the list right, bear with me. Um, and to, you know,

201ask that things be put on a um on a future agenda, but Michael raises a good point. It is a brief report. And so the practice that I have seen is there's a brief report, then there's brief discussion. I think it's up to your discretion. you know, after a few minutes, the next report comes. I hope that helped a little bit. >> Thank you. We're still on board report. [snorts] Jessica, did you have something else to add? >> No, that's okay. Okay, >> be done. >> Uh any other board reports? We'll move on to item 12, which is reminders of upcoming events. Uh on tomorrow, November 13th, at 3:30 to 5:00 pm, there will be a virtual meeting of the American Indian Advisory Education Series featuring Judge Abby Abanati. Uh November 17th, 6:00 to 8:00

202p.m. here in the uh Ensburg Drive uh facility uh will be the ethics training for board members. November 21st uh from 9 to 2 at the Shasta District Fair and Events Center in Anderson. Uh will be what? >> Well, I didn't put it STEM career. [laughter] >> Thank you. STEM career day. December 3 to 5th. um the CSBA annual educational conference in Sacramento. How many board members are still going? Yay. I'm glad you're all going. I'm sorry I can't join you. I have uh uh some um um I have to be in San Francisco for some medical testing. So, >> thank you. [laughter] Uh and and bring me back some pins with uh uh you know which ones I want. I'm over there. >> Yes, Mike. >> Uh, couple of notes on the reminders. So,

203uh, the conference itinerary is included in your folder. So, thank you, Carmen, for that. You should have received an email from CSBA with the, uh, the link to the conference schedule app. Um, and on the ethics, we are up against the 12:31 deadline. uh 12:31 deadline, elected officials, school board included for ethics, the Keenan videos or the training. That's how we that's how we meet that that that requirement or deadline. And so Tom would love to hang out with you Monday, right? Um or do the Keenan videos, but we want to make sure that we have that requirement done by the end of December. On December 10th, uh at 3:30, we will have our county committee meeting here in in the boardroom. Uh on follow immediately following that at 4:30, we will have our budget

204study session. Um item 13, board member meeting feedback from this meeting. Any feedback about this meeting? Yes, Laura. I would like to see on these um annual reports from our charter schools that we have some kind of time limit on the and I'm sure they were given a time limit but maybe just to reinforce the time limit and when they come up to speak remind them that there's a time limit and then when they're speaking [laughter] maybe do another friendly reminder that there's a time limit >> and maybe a door on the floor. >> [laughter] >> I get a trap door. >> Good feedback. >> Any other feedback from this meeting? Uh our next meeting is December 10th uh 5:30 here at the uh Shasta County Office of Education BDC 2985 Ensburg Drive in Reading,

205California 963003. And with that we're adjourned.