WUSD School Board 04/20/23

001[Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] thank you [Applause] foreign [Music] oops [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] and uh what about you this is foreign [Music] thank you again you put this on Earth yes so it's the lady who is don't don't do it okay he told me all right ladies and gentlemen thank you so very very much for your patience we had a number of things happening in closed session which we'll be reporting about and uh very much appreciate your Indulgence um in the future to the extent that we could unfortunately a number of them we have to report about in Open Session uh in the future we'll break it and we can go back into closed session for things that aren't immediate that need to get done

002and we would have done that had we been able to but um we wouldn't so apologize we actually started closed session uh before five o'clock and still what an hour and a half okay uh with that if we could have a roll call please president Adams here Christy Carnation here trustee could go now here student board member Jackson Caligari yeah uh trustee Ahmad and trustee malanali uh sorry Lopez uh absent tonight okay thank you very much Jen and our flag absolute will be learned by led by Paul corgano Paul 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 thank you a report on a closed session do you have anything superintendent Decker no

003I don't have okay I have a few things um I I do want to uh acknowledge and thank we had a safety discussion uh under item 1.6 a closed session with Chief Roush and our student resource officer Deputy Tamayo um and really appreciate their candid we have the ability to talk about means and methods tactics and sort of behind the scenes information um that would perhaps not be safe to have publicly described about how they respond areas that we can work on they're called means and methods in law enforcement and emergency response we have an extraordinarily close relationship with the Windsor Police and particularly through our not just Deputy Tamayo but um his predecessors and we are the only School District since late 90s that have had a student resource relationship with our law enforcement

004agency for those of you who don't know there was an incident that resulted in a lockdown at uh Windsor Middle School last Friday um if you haven't seen it we can certainly get it to you there was a variety of communications a number of Lessons Learned but particularly I want to thank Heather Bailey our our Communications and public information officer who late in the day put out a very detailed chronology amongst other things that law enforcement was on the scene in two and a half minutes we need to do some work about helping our families understand that if it's a lockdown that means even though you're intuitively may want to come to your school at that point you need to not come to the school and we're going to work on some of those things

005but I cannot express enough on behalf of both the the district office our principals the staff and your Board of Trustees about how pleased we are with how that how well that went um I don't know if there's folks who would like to talk about that a little bit at public comment I do have one letter that was sent to us that I want to read interestingly Enough From A Commentary of a windsor Middle School Parent we also had a an expulsion and a readmission we're going to start with the readmission first um one of the worst things I mentioned this last month as well when we get to the vote on expulsion one of the hardest things we do uh as school board members is the discipline related to expulsion of students it is

006rare we are very fortunate in that regard um but I will tell you the flip side of that is having readmissions where a student is expelled for a period of time and he or she has met all the requirements for readmission are back on track and we see that student a year later usually and we were able to do that with one of our students today it is a very powerful thing so kudos to them and their family so on consideration of student readmission case number zero three zero three two two uh could I have a motion please on whether or not we were going to readmit that student I make a motion that we readmit that student okay trust incarnation second okay by trustee cordigano all those in favor aye okay that will pass

007three zero two uh and and well done okay uh we then had an expulsion case this is case number zero two one six two three in an expulsion we have to take a two-step process publicly one there are findings of fact from an investigation uh usually it results from a suspension which then has an administrative process and if the findings of fact are upheld there then is grounds that we can consider the expulsion so in consideration of student expulsion case number zero two one six two three is there a motion to accept the findings of fact I'll make the motion to accept the findings effect okay and I'll make I'll second that motion okay and all those in favor aye okay that'll pass with three eyes zero no's and two absent in consideration of student

008expulsion case zero two one six two three is there a motion to uphold the principles recommended for recommendation for expulsion and in this case I will make the motion to uphold the recommended for expulsion the recommendation for expulsion and that that's expulsion will be suspended um with the student to remain placed at uh their current School uh with that motion uh is there a second I'll go ahead oh second okay we have a motion a motion then for a uh upholding an expulsion for a year period and that to be suspended all those in favor uh okay that'll pass three zero no's two absence no explosions is there anything else that we need to do about that can we can we cover that documentation at the end of the meeting so make sure that it's

009filled out properly okay thank you I do not believe there is anything else that we need to cover out of closed session no that was it okay thank you it's been a busy hour and a half ladies and gentlemen um okay any uh adjustments to the agenda um do we know uh Mr Decker do we have a group of people or something on a particular agenda item that we might want to move around all agendized so everything is everything is accounted for I believe with the individuals here so I don't think we need to move anything around okay I love all good okay then we will go to three points to celebrating success volunteers of the year and who is our here we go come on down friends I want to save it I don't

010believe I've met um Mr Carnation I'm Jeannie Acuna I'm sitting in his principal at Maddie Washburn for the remainder of the year with Dr Kruger and I am here to acknowledge and and to celebrate uh Mr Craig Hartline who has been coming to Maddie Washburn on Fridays he comes sets up science lessons for the K2 excuse me kindergarten through second grade children brings all the materials presents science standards-based science lessons for them demonstrations and I understand cleans up and sets up cleans up and does it all on his own um and this is remarkable in itself if he were doing this for a year you've been doing this for 12 years now I understand yes and I also understand that the kids are so excited about Friday because they absolutely love love love love everything

011you're doing with them and I understand Lake county is trying to pill for you so we are going to have to have words how about that aha well we'll we'll just see I guess there are there are there are five days there we go all right well thank you very much and we really appreciate it comment I'd like to mention that I appreciate a few things here my wife Donna has helped set up organize uh getting the science stuff set up and I appreciate the administration and the teachers being tolerant and working with them and Craig and Donna and principal Acuna if all I think there's five or six of you if you could all stay till the end we have one for each school and then we'll get a picture with the whole group

012if you don't mind staying for a few more minutes yeah just at the end of this section yeah yeah you're here and that'll be about that they'll be about 11 30 at happy hour yes ma'am hi I'm Annette Saccone principal at Brooks Elementary and we have an outstanding volunteer that we want to recognize and she's so busy and outstanding she was unable to make it this evening but we want to recognize Annie falbo who uh shows up more than once a week and is extremely supportive of our garden education program our garden teacher Raves about her and so I just wanted to read a little bit Annie is a superstar volunteer she's up for anything we ask whether that's making copies washing dishes breaking soil pulling weeds serving Garden samples you name it she will

013help she's consistent and communicative and her positive can-do attitude is such an asset to our garden classroom she's also very flexible and jumps in if things don't go as planned which happens in Garden she's a true garden angel and so we want to recognize her and I will deliver this and let her know that we appreciate her service at Brooks thank you very much Amy Ziegler principal Windsor middle school and our volunteer to honor this year is Lucine Luna and she is shows up at our school at least once a week she helps out with the copy center she helps out with orientation and any of the events that we host and she says just call me and I invited her to come tonight and she says I don't do this for the recognition I

014do this because I love school I love the students and I want to help thank you all right good evening everybody I am Patricia Chadwick principal at Cali and I am here to proudly speak about Miss Kelly Gillingham who's right here um she wears many hats on our campus one of them is that she works uh endlessly with our PTA um on campus as well as off campus um most importantly she helped us plan and execute our first in-person open house in almost three years um from making sure that there were um uh beautiful places on campus for art to be displayed um a food truck kind of Pavilion area for parents to come camp out enjoy food and be on our campus and then get to our classrooms and even making sure that teachers

015felt appreciated in the midst of all of that she has been working so hard at Cali um she also comes through our office and just always welcomes people with a smile when she's on campus and is already planning with us as admin on how to improve and do more work looking to next year um she's a valuable thought partner and also just a really important part of our community and we're so grateful to have her so thank you Kelly [Applause] I want to say something I know I've been in here a few times very heated I get upset I'm very emotional I care about my school and I do care about Windsor Unified School District I love this town and um and I just I just want to show and let you know how much

016I do appreciate you guys doing doing everything and I do love Cali and um and like I said I do like the town so much that I am um The Parks and Rec commission committee also so you'll probably see me around some more so thank you thank you Kelly for your leadership [Applause] all right tonight for Windsor high school I want to recognize Vincent Angie Siegel you notice Vince is not here tonight because he felt going to the Warriors game was more important in this great honor uh recently I learned that Vince's mom Fosters orphan kittens uh which makes me think that Vince is not as great as I once thought he was but now Angie though is absolutely fantastic Angie's a registered nurse uh and all through covet and even today she volunteered her

017time uh to work in the health offices for Cali the middle school and the high school she now works for us not for the money as she very well knows uh but for the fact that she can't say no to Pete Sullivan um so together the seagulls um have been an absolute Powerhouse in our district um they donated the stadium speakers and installed them uh they redid the speakers in uh the gym so now we'll have great sound systems in there um they've hosted our big annual fundraiser for the poker poker night twice once in their home and then another time in their shop um you know if a golf cart breaks down a trailer just shows up and it comes back fixed so absolutely just great uh humanitarians and volunteers and I'm so grateful

018for all the work and that we have them in our community so thank you Vince well mostly Angie and Vince Siegel thank you Angie oh stay stay here for the picture Angie hi everyone uh so I'm forced Harper principal of North Bay Med Academy in Windsor Oaks Academy and I would like to honor uh Holly Sheehan uh she has been coming to North Bay met and Windsor Oaks for years now and she's instrumental with helping our Native American students uh be comfortable and accepted at our school she helps run our indigenous native student Alliance our insa group it's such a strong group that actually on Fridays we have Marcie Becerra Academy the continuation school from Healdsburg come and visit us and watch how and they've been observing for the past semester how a insa should

019run so that they can help run their Zone next year and then also Holly is great with working with our garden with students and this is really shows how powerful it can be when you are involving students and helping plant native medicinal plants and Holly's out there on her hands and knees working with students pulling weeds planning and it's pretty amazing so thank you so much Holly cool I just want to say um thank you to the local Pomo community and to a lot of the inter-tribal community that have um volunteered their time to come in to support the native student Alliance groups and to come and work in the garden and Madonna is one of those people which is why I dragged her up here it's Madonna from Round Valley and Lakota and um

020so thank you so much for us we really appreciate you and it's been a such a it's a joy to work in the schools so thank you and you're coming up on the next item I think yes I am cool is that everybody okay if we could have the honorees and their principles and you know Amy and Annette you come up too with come on up here we'll do it in front of us and then we'll stand behind you um come on up guys scooch on over a little bit to your right yeah are we good one two three who are we looking at all right we're good thank you guys thank you guys hey Craig you were also voted outstanding you won Greatest Hits yes you went from the water to now you're like

021Superman all right well thank you that's always a feel-good and I want to thank the principals for doing it thank you of course to the volunteers and uh director Sullivan and HR and just this sort of ethos that we're going to do our best to reach out and say thanks to folks it's a doesn't happen automatically and we're really trying to institutionalize the credit and really to Jen Cox who keeps us all going where we need to go thank you Jen for helping helping with that but you know it takes a village and part of it is simply the culture we're going to say thank you to people and take a minute to step back and say wow how do we get all these cool things going all right all right with that uh we're

022gonna move then to uh item 3.3 an update from Holly Sheehan and Warren Parish on the wusd Indian education program uh for this item and for the next item uh trustee Ahmad wanted me to let you know she is down in Southern California on a previous engagement but she is watching and involved and wanted to make sure that you knew that as I know she's been a an active involvement involved trustee with this program so love to hear from you thank you and welcome yes thank you and I appreciate all of you guys uh carving out a little bit of time for us to come here and speak and give you a little bit of update as to what the program is um just tell a little about myself my name is Warren Parish I

023am a parent and uh three children in the district um I my wife is the educator in the district my mother was an educator and administrator in Sonoma County school districts and the lady that's on the screen there is my grandmother um my grandmother was instrumental in actually creating the uh library of Native American Stage related to Pomo um for the University of California Berkeley and so what uh what some of we're going to be discussing a little bit today right is I guess maybe some a little bit my roots related to some of that I'm going to move this up because I have I'm a little bit taller laughs um and uh so that's a little bit about me um in terms of what we're going to be discussing here um and really kind

024of a little bit on a journey of where we're heading to today um so the introduction of what we're going to be doing discussing today a little bit of executive summary in terms of uh the highlights of what we're doing some background as to why we got here a little bit of planning moving forward and then hopefully by the end of this it has generated some questions but hopefully answer some questions as well too so uh one of the things that I think that's been thrown around right is that is the title six uh Native American education program right um a little bit about that right so as established in 1965 you might say we're a little bit behind the curve a little bit right um but nonetheless right it's better here started now than

025never right one of the aspects about the program though right is uh is to meet the culturally related academic needs of Native American students within our district um one of the other aspects of it too and related to that is the languages and tribal histories uh traditions and cultures um but one of the I think the more important aspects of this too right and you'll hear this come up again later in the presentation is to ensure that not only uh we're providing that material for them but also supporting our Educators and staff um with those pieces because as I said earlier I am a husband of an educator in the district right I understand how overworked educators are at this point and the last thing that we really want to do is to add more

026to their plate um that's where I think that our parent advisory committee can actually be a good resource for them and as I said earlier with the aspect of the building of the library of material that my grandmother helped with for the University of California Berkeley this is much in that same spirit so a little bit about that part too so uh in terms of some of the the teeth if you will that's go along with this um there's also the California Department of Education aspect in terms of Native American studies and ab167 um the intent of that uh for all of us right is the model curriculum uh that they're developing and the University of California Davis has offered to be the housing authority of that curriculum uh for Statewide offerings what kind of

027presents us in a very unique position um here in the Windsor Unified School District is is that we are actually a little bit ahead of the curve in terms of having our our pack built um with that piece because what it does is it presents us to have a very unique position in having input as to what goes into the housing that curriculum at the University of California Davis so we do present ourselves with a very unique spot in having some input in that so you might ask a little bit hey what is the pack right what is the parent advisor who came to the Native American Education Program currently right now it's four board members myself being the chairman um there are two parent Representatives one tribal representative one teacher representative and the lovely

028Jenny Cox is our District representative um she's been very instrumental in actually providing us a a great path of communication to superintendent Decker bringing some of the considerations to the board for us and uh and really kind of has been really instrumental in helping out in that direction so we're very thankful for that um so some of the things in terms like what is the pack going to do what is the intent of our program so the the main four goals that we have identified there are culture and language collagen work Readiness health and wellness which sort of really ties into all of these and then also professional development so you might ask yourself hey how is that going to be accomplished with these uh these next elements are the items that we plan to

029do that with so align with the federal and state standards of title VI but also ab167 partner with the Windsor Unified School District which superintendent Decker along with uh Jenny Cox have been very instrumental in terms of supporting um creating dialogue and it really overall having great communication um and supporting the program to get it to actually where it is right now um the other part too is to ensure accurate representation of Native American curricula for students and staff and what I mean by that is that um as as a Native American has grown up in the school systems right really what we're talking about is is moving away from you know the days of cutting up paper bags and using them as headdresses right as a part of our curriculum we are talking about

030moving away from that and actually creating more accurate representation stuff where kids can actually see themselves in the curriculum right rather than being characters of the curriculum so that's what we're a lot of what we're talking about and looking to establish um so when we look at that right how do we how do we best service The Windsor Unified School District um some of that is through grade level appropriate material right and that has to do in conjunction with having good communication with the administrators in the district which we were able to lucky enough to be able to present today to the principals about this same material that we're talking about today so beginning that dialogue log the other part too is to collaborate with with the leadership in The District in order to help

031identify what those needs are and and where I see that actually being successful is the way that um by having Jenny Cox as a as a uh as a conduit for information to our pack that that allows that voice to be heard in terms of what are the needs happening at the local school sites how do we best um not only from our perspective deliver good like representative material but also what are the needs that are happening at the schools so how do we best support that right a little bit also a bit about myself too my day job is I work as a battalion chief for Cal Fire um and so um I will say a little little uh thing to whoever said the thing about the First Responders earlier absolutely they did a

032great job and so I would like to kind of put that part in there too um the the other thing though that we want to make sure of is to work with the district in terms of how do we best connect and communicate right that's obviously one of the hugest aspects to to making this successful is the connection and the communication um in terms of that part one of the things I did propose to the principles earlier was that to have site Liaisons and I don't mean sight Liaisons in terms of hey we're going to give this the material they need to create it that's not what I want to do as I said earlier it's not our intent to put more work onto other people what I do see those Liaisons being successful in

033right is that just being a point of contact for those sites right if there are needs that come up it provides a path in an Avenue of communication for the Educators at those sites as well as the administrators it also provides us a path and an Avenue to communicate to those sites when we have newer material that comes up things that support it uh how many Harry Potter Teachers Pay Teachers right just about everybody in here if you look at that model of of how that is delivered that's really what we're talking about right essentially what we are is talking about being the Teachers Pay Teachers the free version obviously is is uh but for Native American curricula right something they can be able to pull off the shelf without minimal effort right and be

034able to teach your students supplemental material that's what we're talking about um the other aspects too that we are looking to uh to develop right is ensuring that there is good educator uh professional development in terms of that piece um that is a key element to all of this right obviously the teachers are the backbones to making this this really all um work and work properly um so ensuring that we are providing them that professional development um during that time hopefully in working with uh superintendent Decker um on that to see how we can further that that along so the other elements to this too right are with every program it has to have a secure funding mechanism right that's that's where the sort of rubber meets the road if you will right um one

035of the aspects that I mentioned earlier in terms of title VI Grant uh funding is is that I'm just going to be completely transparent about this is that um and I was transparent over this about the principles earlier too is title six is is really great and it's sort of what gives us the foundation to work the program um from but in terms of a secure mechanism it is not a very solidified one moving forward um it really ultimately only provides enough dollars really to maybe provide extra pens pencils um that kind of stuff right at the end of the day um in terms of business right it's not a big return on on investment in terms of time spent on on doing it um the other ways that I do see potentially um working

036forward right are there are tribal Partnerships right making sure that we we work on those and solidify those and I think really bring them into the uh the conversation and what this looks like but also partnering with the district as well too right and how we can move forward because really this really is a sort of a a trifecta approach in terms of making this work and making it work effectively but also hopefully creating a ship that that is Unsinkable if you will right um the other part too that was important for us is to look at uh uh with the wdsd leadership in terms of data I'm looking at Trends looking at demographics the successes challenges in identifying future needs which kind of holds us accountable to um staying in line with our goals

037but as I said earlier I'm a battalion chief with Cal Fire one of the biggest things that we always do is that we don't ever fall in love with our plan right because things always change during fires and so is to constantly assess the success of the program that's something that's near and dear to me right is to not is to ensure that we are constantly looking at hey are we still being successful right is what we're doing actually still working right and so that's something that's uh that I will for sure make sure that is a top priority for the program so a little bit of like data in terms of this stuff so and if you can kind of remember this number in the back your head as I kind of move through

038this right so in the 2020 census reflected that 2.9 percent of the total population in the United States reflected as being Native American if you look closer at California there's 110 federally recognized tribes California has the largest Native American population with 311 000. foreign and this data right here is data from your District this is data that reflects number one right as you guys all probably very well aware the declining enrollment in terms of uh students the bottom line trend line right there reflects the increasing number of Native American students that are going to be actually coming into the district um that last number that projections number I actually got a number as recently as today for some of the additional housing so you can probably tack an industrial additional 53 onto that 393 at

039the very end so we're actually talking about a little bit bigger numbers there that are actually reflected here on the data board um So currently right now if you were to look at these purely as a statistical aspect right now we have six percent of the district reflecting as Native Americans or identifying as Native Americans within the Windsor Unified School District and if we look at the overall Trends from where we're at in terms of where we're headed to that bumps up to eight percent of the district which as I said if you remember the 2.9 percent from the overall census no matter what we're still above that right for our district so you might ask okay hey that's great Warren where where are we at in terms of the overall nuts and bolts of

040the program um so the overall nuts and bolts of the program right so the things that we have complete in terms of phase one was developing the pack right which took some time to actually assemble all the members make sure that we had the right people in place um that had right intentions in place in terms of like establishing this and working collaboratively with wsd establishing our bylaws for our pack identified data with Native American student populations and then partnering as I said with wsd some of the other things that we currently have underway are partnering with our local tribes in terms of bringing them into the conversation and what this might look like moving forward establishing the pack goals actually which is complete now and then securing funding streams as I mentioned before to

041actually have a a more secure path forward the phase three in terms of the development part of this we're talking about the site Liaisons and and developing that conversation further with wsd Administration um the curriculum access point or library of information for our Educators to be able to access and then also work collaboratively with the ab intent of ab167 for housing curricula out of UC Davis for for basically all to be able to access throughout the state um and then the other part too is that um as I said before this is my old battalion chief part of me right is to constantly assess our Effectiveness um in terms of how we're doing and making sure that we're currently on the right track so just to kind of leave you with a little something here

042so one of the biggest aspects that we know we have in terms of uh communication and culture right for a lot of Native Americans This is their reference of what working with school systems historically are and a lot of Native Americans are only two generations removed from that this is what we'd like to turn it into right ultimately we want to provide more success in terms of graduation um attendance uh having kids see themselves in the curriculum and really having more accurate representation and so really that's at the end of the day what our aim is thank you very much my name is Warren Parish thank you very much Warren Holly did you have anything to add I think we may have a couple questions and comments from the board and we'll certainly take public

043comment on this Warren that was an incredible column you know uh conglomeration of information and time that you put into that I work with big picture learning Native American initiative as most of you know we have two big picture schools in the district um and I've had the incredible privilege of working in those schools separately from the title Vi work and have seen the impact of having a native student Alliance like we talked about um I think that there are there's plenty of data to show in your District just from the five or five years of working in the all to Ed programs how meeting the cultural and linguistic needs of the Native students and really providing curriculum that accurately represents uh the local communities and and the the history of this place changes the

044success outcomes from native students and and that's data that we can provide and so really I think a lot of what we're doing is taking best practices from what we've developed in all Ed and offering it to other schools um plus more so um please any questions you have one thing I do want to do is just recognize Jenny Cox as as Warren had mentioned like we really couldn't do this without her um for real and so I'm sure [Applause] oh that's almost as cool as Vince at the Warriors game that's awesome um yeah please guys wait there um let's start maybe with Jackson if you have any comments or any other trustees at the diocese and then we'll have anything that the public might want to have Jackson I need to well I was

045I was just as we were as as you were presenting I was looking at at the numbers for before you even got to the slide about the the Native American population I saw that it was it was one percent at the high school and I thought that that was really low and then I looked at the district as a whole and that number said five percent obviously we're a little higher than that but what I can see if we have one percent of the high schools that number is going to keep getting bigger because a lot of our kids are are younger it sounds like so that means that this is obviously 10 years ago 20 years ago 30 years ago would have been a better time to phase it in but definitely got to

046do it while we have a lot of kids coming up that could really benefit from the program so thank you Jackson well yeah Warren I'd also like to thank you for your your presentation and as an as a teacher I would very much be interested in presenting native Native Americans in a different light I I just have to tell you a little quick thing about in fourth grade one of the things that that we always did were were the mission things well one one of my colleagues said well you know that's really maybe something we shouldn't be actually celebrating um because of the horrible things that they did to the Native Americans in in those missions So after talking about it we we didn't get rid of it totally but the teachers had the option

047of doing a gold rush thing instead and I know there's problems with that as well I do I know but it's but it's like okay well you know we'll take one thing at a time right right so um but I just wanted you to know that it's definitely something that I think teachers will will embrace well you know I I appreciate you saying that and uh you bring up actually a very valid point about something um you know me myself I don't necessarily agree with Erasure you know erasing things off the map um because nonetheless they did happen right um for good bad or indifferent um but I think what we do though is is that I think what I'm more talking about is just equal representation of of both the good and the bad

048right um because I think there's something to be learned from both yeah and I think definitely sometimes it's age-appropriateness too at what age can you really introduce what actually was happening in those missions you know you have to consider consider that as well but thank you Washington State Montana Oklahoma where they have in California now Indian education for all okay and all there's been tons of data collection education scholarship that has done like what we talked about real age appropriate right full K-12 curriculum um that the state has now created and will do trainings for districts um so I think I think we're it's not just people I think we're moving forward where you're going to get support from the state as well as you guys are trying to tread through and do a better

049job on your own does that make sense no that makes total sense and I thank you together and making it okay yeah thank you for that yeah and just one thing I just like to uh end with because I know you got a lot of stuff you got to get to here but um I think that you know given the the demographics that are that are obviously changing um and and giving the unique position that I think the Windsor Unified School District sits in I think what it does is it creates creates a a very golden opportunity to have a model curriculum in Sonoma County and be a model for all the other districts that's what I think um I I had conflicting feelings one is I wish this was around when my kids were

050going up so that as native kids this is something that I wish they would have been able to take more and part of on that the great side of this my grandkids they're going to get to be able to take more advantage of these things um so I really appreciate you guys putting in the efforts um I'd like to personally my family wants to take it you know that ADA that Rising number that's my kids are helping those numbers go up um so the uh but uh but in all seriousness this is this is really good and these things don't happen uh without a lot of effort um I I want to say I don't want to say private effort but personal effort by a lot of different people putting in a little bit some

051people putting in a lot of it uh to make these things develop and uh and so so thank you uh for doing that and I think it's just one more thing that's going to make Windsor just that much more of a rich place for kids to to learn and belong and be something and lastly jyn is not only awesome in your group but she is like our mom too she she makes sure that we are where we're supposed to be and we're doing the things we're supposed to be and without gin we'd all be lost so anyhow thank you Jen and Jen thank you she was the one that was texting saying it's 6 20. it's 6 25. um I I want to acknowledge again Stephanie ahmad's listening uh trustee Lopez had some family issues

052and couldn't be here but has started and I know I've seen it at the uh graduation celebrations and thank you Holly and Forrest um about a land acknowledgment and we're trying to figure out to get slowly up to that so that probably is forthcoming uh one comment I wanted to make a few years ago from the off-the-shelf curriculum point that you were making Warren um we received an Arts grant that allowed for artsy integration training for all of our K-5 classroom students our classroom teachers both at Maddie and Brooks and also Kelly kalmek which was you know adding dance and poetry and art and music to substantiate and build upon the existing math language arts and social studies curriculum and I'd like us to take a look to say you know were those kind of

053modules available from a Native American perspective and if they're not we have the tool that's available now in all these teachers that have been trained about 95 of our K-5 teachers were trained on that it's about 1.9 million dollar Grant and it's a very easy place it seems to me to to Overlay that at those primary grades we already have a tool to do that but I thank you this is another interesting creative initiative and thank you for helping us keep the momentum up on that um you know we're we're open to things here in Windsor and I think it continues to bring us success so we look forward to working with you thank you for coming and I just want to say to you that every non-native student in this District taking something right

054from sharing their traditionally usually did you put the mic off on me after you got your volunteer recognition they're like um I also want to acknowledge too that the non-native students in the district and are are benefiting so much from getting to learn some of this curriculum too that and um so yeah absolutely our sum is greater than the components yeah yeah but it's for everybody but before we ask you guys and thank you any comments from yes sir come on down thank you and I appreciate Warren coming to speak at our principals meeting today I want to remind the board that a number of years ago you approved ethnic studies as a graduation requirement for Windsor Unified um Warren's presentation was so timely because we received a grant of forty thousand dollars to write

055that curriculum and a lot of that work was going to be done over the summer um Warren has graciously agreed to meet with our history Department um to give a similar presentation and talk about the resources that will be available um as as someone who grew up in San Diego and every November made that headdress out of the paper bag and did the missions project I look forward to putting accurate representations in our curriculum and knowing that it is a graduation requirement this board can know that every student graduating from Windsor Unified will have access to this curriculum so I thank you for doing that yeah thank you and that's serendipitous thank you very much Warren for taking the time yes sir come on down please you don't have to raise your hand oh I'm

056sorry and I'll say Elizabeth if you could just stand up and then we could go ahead very very excited to hear about this curriculum because for years um I've been changing the way I speak with students I don't say Native Americans native Californians were I say they are and that's so important and speaking from the Arts perspective um would always be about later today but I really see a lot of entry points especially exposing our students to the various forms of native California Native American Arts that we have represented in our community thank you thank you so much Ms Roberts um my name is Jen Williams I'm a fourth grade teacher at Brooks right now and I want to say we have made great strides we don't make paper dresses you know like we represent

057both sides of the story Mission and Native California and so if you need a site representative at Brooks I will sign up for that Megan Campbell has a great curriculum so we so at Brooks we are representing native Californians well and showing their side of the story and talking as current people so we are representing and making strides in the fourth grade to tell the story well thank you Madonna has Elders we you know that have offered to come in there he's going to come get you all I'm saying is we would love thank you for sharing that and that we would love to support the curriculum you're already building by bringing in Community Partners and bringing in Madonna's family or someone to to tell those stories firsthand too and just embellish what you're already

058doing thank you well that Madonna did you wanna real quick and then we'll wrap this one up I think go ahead thank you again my name is Madonna feather enrolled member of Round Valley Indian tribes long time resident of Sonoma County so I would like to uh thank Warren and Holly for all the work that they've done I'm Warren's right hand man on the pack if he can't attend the meeting I have his agenda ready to go I've been the president for Indian education center as a city school district for the last 10 years so I really thank you guys um for my people of your willingness to help us um and I want to invite you to uh the indigenous peoples gathering at the center of the fairgrounds May 20th and 21st I'm organizing

059that event um and like Holly said you know you don't have to be native to come to our to our clubs to our groups um we are we take kids to field trips to Pepperwood to Susquehanna Tribal Council land to Yakima land um and I like what you said about you're working on getting that land acknowledgment um you may have seen me sit down while you say the Pledge of Allegiance and that is to teach people that when we are giving a land acknowledgment the only people standing up are Native Americans so that was just a teaching for you guys um and and I'm here if you want help on getting people to come do a land acknowledgment I do that for a lot of the schools because it is proper protocol that you ask

060a local Pomo to come and do those openings whether it be a blessing a land acknowledgment or a song or um if there's something tragic you know we need some healing in the classroom or for the children um so I'm I'm easy to find so thank you thank you Madonna and thank you very much for the presentation and those public comments we look forward to continuing to hear from you appreciate your work okay [Applause] and item 3.4 an update from Diana post on the Windsor Education Foundation hello Diane and here they are and again uh trustee Ahmad wanted me to mention to you all that she is watching from she is actually on an Arts integration reconnaissance trip down at the Coachella Music Festival so now she's outed it's all right I am in trouble

061when she gets back anyway welcome not bring flowers for Jenny Cox I'm sorry so um so I think we have uh yes we do have a slide deck up there um I wanted to uh provide an update from The Windsor Educational Foundation as you know thank you uh we have been providing support to the Windsor Unified School Districts and students for over 30 years uh and one of the main projects that we're working on now is the we Mentor Heroes program so that's where we're gonna Focus most of our time today um so this is a program that we started two years ago uh in the district and what we were really looking for was a way to um uh meet the needs of students uh who might have slipped through the cracks uh in

062the pandemic uh and all of the wildfires and you know we haven't had locusts yet but a lot of the craziness that we've had to deal with uh and what we were trying to do was also find a way to bring in um uh diversity equity and inclusion and have that be an important part of the program so we actually also went over to the high schools uh to uh Windsor High School to North Bay met and have gotten mentors from those um from those schools to serve as mentors to students at Brooks Elementary uh and so we're going to tell you a little bit about that um one of the one of the unique aspects of this program is that we wanted to provide paid educational opportunities to the high school students so we

063do provide a stipend that's actually an idea that we got from trustee Lopez uh so uh so excited that we've um we've had two years under our belt now almost and I'm going to turn it over to uh we'll partner with Mentor me um down in Petaluma I'm going to turn it over to uh yensi and she's going to tell you a little bit about the program and then we've got a couple of our of our mentors here to talk about it as well so oh and I will learn how to do this hi everyone um thank you for having us so I'm with Petaluma people Services Center it's a non-profit in um in Petaluma we serve um a lot of young people and committee members throughout Southern Sonoma County um so we come in

064to do a lot of the peer mentor training and just um uh building out like the infrastructure for the program um so our peer mentors are selected at the end of the school year for the upcoming school year we bring them together and do a two-day training students also have to go through an interview process and submit an application and things like that the mentorships meet once a week for one hour so our high school students are matched with uh Brooks Elementary School students the Brooks Elementary School students are nominated by teachers principals counselors at Brooks um and we do have uh two students here to our current mentors who will share a little bit more about their experience and I just want to give you some quick stats so like Diana shared we are

065in our second year right now um our three main goals with this program is to provide students with connection uh social emotional learning strategies and reading skills so every session that students do has these six components at the very beginning there's like a check-in then they do an select activity during training we go over some breathing exercises some movement exercises some cognitive exercises and students are welcome to bring in whatever they know about as well then there's 20 minutes of reading time and then 20 minutes of bonding activity time so we have um different games in the room that they can do a lot of our students like to paint play chess sometimes they'll do homework during that time too and at the end there's a wrap up and there's an affirmation so the mentor

066will tell the mentee something that they appreciated about them something they did well during that time and then they'll confirm their next session we've had 23 students participate in the mentor training in 33 Elementary School students have been nominated into the program over the two years we've had 18 matches in one-on-one mentoring and I will turn it over to our two mentors thank you for allowing me to speak about my experience this past year in the mentor me program uh the main reason why I chose this program was because I know how much of an impact it can have on a fifth grader just trying to Excel and develop as a student I really think this program should continue because I've seen throughout this whole year how the impact that I've had on my mentee

067Braden has been he's gotten a lot more confident throughout the year with reading just talking just definitely more confident and really becoming himself as a person and I also really appreciate the way the program is designed how it's one hour per week and it's on a consistent schedule throughout the whole entire year so it's really the way it's set up is really nice and it's helps me also become better with being on time and just being consistent with everything [Music] hi I'm Nick Silva I am a mentor in the mentor me program um I really like the program because it's a good opportunity for younger kids in the elementary school to be able to like ask questions and hang out with an older student typically junior senior at Windsor high school and I've really seen

068that my mentors improved with just being shy around me it's one hour a week and just throughout like the first like couple months he's gotten really comfortable around me he hasn't really given me any trouble ever and we give them and we do like a check-in at the end like Nate said that you know what did you like the most at least and I finally got him to say that he enjoyed reading the other day so that was a big accomplishment so I'm really happy with the program and would really like to see it continue so Nick before you step down both for you and Nate come back up I'd be curious for each of you what's one or two of the best things that you've gotten out of this with the opportunity to be

069a mentor for a young fifth grader like I said the impact I've had on my mentee just because I can really tell that it's effective and it's not just like some mentorship it's more of like a friendship at this point like we're really bonding together and just getting along and I can tell I'm really helping him and he's helping me great thanks um I'm really happy that um Preston feels like he's really comfortable or comfortable around me and he feels free to tell me stuff about like what's going on in life you know what he's happy about and he's just really comfortable and it's a really nice friendship thank you gentlemen next I don't know if the yeah so um so we'll we're going to skip the mentee videos but we do um have uh

070uh principal zucconi to tell us a little bit about the mentee experience from what she's seen [Music] foreign I think in my opinion every child should have a adolescent Mentor it's a mutually beneficial experience some of you may know I served for about nine years Napa County Office education Americorps program and we the entire experience was about developing mentors and then they went off and did their magic the students that are referred to the program I don't you know there's confidentiality concerns I you know without saying why or who or when we refer we just you can assume that we're referring for a very specific need that we have found difficult to meet within our resources on campus so I am also a very strong supporter of this continuing and finding a way to expand

071our Mentor development at the high school level and then our mentees who all deserve to have one single person focused on them for a period of time every week so thank you for your support thank you Jeremy's been supportive it's a very it's a it's expensive infrastructure for us to create but um between uh you know um Yancey's participation and we's participation and and the my teachers referral participation it's been successful for those little Souls that have been impacted so I thank you for your support great well thank you so I think uh we're we're still figuring out what the next steps look like uh we would you know we would like to continue the program uh and we'd like to expand in year three uh to serve uh 20 mentees with 20 mentors coming

072from from the high schools uh and potentially expanding to other school sites uh so we we're going to work through we're going to work through that with you all um and with with uh superintendent Decker you look like you have a question I do I want to look at number four there it we've cost about what it costs I know that the we Foundation raises money is this funded entirely by we do we have outside grants does the district contribute where do we see building this Alliance together and you have a nice front row supporters of you know equity for all students and but I'm curious about that because I'm a little bit aware but not entirely I think so the district does contribute funds Diane and I got together really discussed this and tried

073to figure out how we were going to do it the initial thought was we would provide the seed funding uh to get started and I don't remember my investment but I I know it was it was more than ten thousand it was around fifteen thousand correct and so um she was gonna beat the streets find those dollars uh and then hopefully eventually take over what the district had had provided we weren't able to secure the funding uh for this past year I did say that I would I'd stick it out we would do another year uh and then we need to to look at how we can make the sustainable moving forward so that's really what part of this presentation is to put it in front of you make everybody aware that this is a

074great program it's an expensive program per child but it's a great program for those children so it's really um so that you're aware of what's going on okay and Diana if you have part specific numbers that you want to throw out that's fine but I don't have enough members right in front of me but I would say most of it's been coming from the district with um with some uh Pieces supplemented by we Foundation then we Foundation also is paying for the stipends uh for the for the students right um and thank you for that I was aware of that piece yeah it seems to me this is you know leveraging with or matching but reaching out into the community and you know this kind of presentation getting to endowment sources or well to do

075businesses or individuals would say great how many students you know can I support right and just packaging that so I think that is a way that we could get some Synergy on this um so thank you and thank you for the tube interiors that are here and all your colleagues that are doing this because you're where the rubber meets the road yeah and we we are going to take back um and look at are there are there ways that we could do this that would be less expensive um as well so that's something that we're gonna we're gonna work on because we do want to make it sustainable for the for the district any other comments from my colleagues up here yeah well I just want to thank you for the for the work you

076do and those uh those videos that you can watch them online they really are very powerful go to the we Foundation yeah go to go to the we Foundation website and look at those videos they're they're really powerful thank you okay before you all sit down any comments from the floor or did you have something yeah oh we'll jump in buddy I thought you were looking at Jackson first but I don't know if you want yeah thank you um actually I got to have lunch with uh our folks the other day and we went through a lot of this stuff and so I want to start with thank you for what you guys have done so far um with covid um there were a lot of disconnects going on all over the place um it

077was something new for practically everybody and so you guys you stepped in um found a program down in Petaluma took it morphed it a little bit uh took funds got the district to put in some funds and was a nice what I'm going to call I don't know if the right word stop Gap but it was filling a need that that uh was there um and took us to this point and and for that I say thank you and um we've done some good things going forward though um I think that we and now that coven's kind of behind us we can transition back to a program that's already in place um and so we have as we we discussed we've got hundreds of seniors that need to do senior projects we have hundreds of

078Juniors that need to do junior projects and of those hundreds of of at the high school of those hundreds of kids many of them are are excellent in the reading areas that they can now help kids many of them are excellent in math so I'd like to see this program actually expand we were talking about expanding it and how we could do it there might be some kids that need help in reading some in math some in other areas but as I mentioned before we as a district we invest heavily in making sure that our our teachers and our and our staff are good better and best in social emotional areas for our kids so as we go forward my thinking isn't that you know I'd love to get together with folks and and Hammer

079it out more to refine it um and bring in our our experts that are in our district our that are already um have been trained and and taught and and have a lot of working experience in those areas because if you know according to kind of what we're doing right now about two-thirds of the time spent is in that social emotional area and then about one-third of the time is in some sort of academic it's been reading but it can also it can be a number of different things wherever that mentee has a need and where the mentor has has expertise as well so those kind of things and without getting too much into getting into the program I think that we have a program in place that would be um we would reach more

080kids as mentors and mentees um you know I I coach for many many years and when I have kids that aren't learned doing something right I actually make them go out and teach it and when they teach it all of a sudden they get a whole lot better at it because now they actually have to do something versus just what they can naturally do now they have to explain it and they have to think about it more and they become better teachers and then by being better teachers they actually become better athletes and my particular sport but anyhow I think we have an untapped Gold Mine of mentors in high school that also have requirements to graduate that they have programs they have to do every year since I was a coach I've had kids

081say hey hey man is there something what can I do for my junior project what can I do for my senior they're looking right and so we've had a lot of kids going hey you can go coach younger kids so in wrestling we have four five six kids a year that do those things but I think as we I mean who wouldn't want to be the mentee of a guy like this I mean you can be a big old long line and as great as Jackson is we have a whole school full of wonderful kids that are available that if they knew that there was an opportunity to do this which goes to the education board and the thing that I'm thinking of it's sustainable that that's the issue it's it's practical it will work

082we use the resources of of our district already and it's sustainable and and without getting in the numbers too much rough and dirty we're spending about two thousand dollars plus permit tea right now that that's been the model for the last two years it's not a sustainable model which we've discussed it's also not a model that we can expand so if we go to the program where we have these Juniors and seniors even maybe sophomores that may want to be involved that they can offer these Services a mentor and we have the mentees and the other part that's kind of important to me and I just want to throw that I don't believe the kids should get paid it's a philosophical issue I don't believe the kids should get paid to be mentors just like

083I don't believe that coaches should really get you know they come back and they do all their things somebody taught me a whole bunch of things as I was growing up and no one paid them they were donating their time they were volunteering they were being mentors to me and I turned it around and done the same thing to others I think kids that are older I'm gonna say in the high school ages them mentoring for I don't say for free but them mentoring is it's a principle of them giving back and them of being having some gratitude for the things that someone else did for them that they now pass on to the younger groups and that there's a there's a reward in there that's not monetary but it's a different kind of reward

084and and I don't so I I think that we can have our cake and eat it too where we can have our our older students are more experienced students be great examples and help to the younger ones and have that Continuum of experience and support going back and forth whatever money we have in our district keep that money in the district I'd rather have that money go to our teachers that have been trained have them be more uh involved as they already are because we have people that are involved and are in charge of our Junior and senior projects so I think they structures there I think the infrastructure is there um and again it wasn't available for the last two years to the extent that it was and you guys stepped in and did

085a great job and and there are some people even some more than others who really were great beneficiaries of it I know it's easy to say how do you put a price on that you can't but going forward I want to take what you guys have done take that model and expand it but with some tweaks um so that way the mentee pool can expand a lot and the mentor pool can also expand a lot so I'd like to just leave it at that at this point um I think there's a lot that we can do but the it's just we're able to expand it we're able to make it sustainable and it's really more of a time commitment than it is a money commitment I I think at this point going forward there we

086go a couple tries um Nate did you end up using this as your senior project first the reason I heard about it is it was recommended to me by my business teacher for our senior project so that's I hadn't really heard of it before that but I'm really glad that I did that and it made it pretty nice for me because it was consistent throughout the entire school year like I had a consistent schedule rather than just cramming it all at the beginning or all at the end so it was pretty nice the way it was uh formatted yeah I was gonna say I mean it sounds like you did it and didn't have any problems with it I was gonna make sure that we had enough hours to complete the student project seems like

087there were no problems there a nice part about the senior project if you do want to avoid paying students um any money that people do make through senior projects uh they're supposed to donate or supposed to not make money in the first place so that's a nice way to get uh for lack of a better term Free Labor um [Music] The Windsor Windsor High School also has a leadership program that is going to be 120 students next year at at the very least they're all required eight hours um every grading period every six weeks of community service um so I'm sure if you talked to Miss Whiteley she would absolutely push that as an opportunity this is an opportunity to get those hours I think that if you want to expand the program um advertising

088it as hey get your senior project requirement outside of just outside of just Vineyard or advertise it as hey fill in your your work hours for leadership because those are really good students to get this can be expanded past probably 20 mentors and I know that that's obviously the goal because you're going to come up with as many mentees as you have mentors so I think that it's it's certainly a a program that can be expanded a lot if we if we advertise in the right spots and I think that senior projects and and through through leadership there's a lot of people that need community service for for one reason or another and I think this is a really good opportunity for them for for a lot of reasons so I wanted to sit I

089think that's probably the the direction to go if we're looking for expansion I think we should be looking for expansion any latest comments you all for the for the input and ideas and I think we're going to take it back and uh and think about it um and come back come back to with Jeremy and Paul and uh real briefly two other updates for the we Foundation um two of our other major programs scholarship updates uh so we distributed 30 000 in scholarships uh last year for class of 2022 grads um which was went to 25 students uh we raised last year for the so we're gonna we're handing out scholarships this year in the amount of about thirty seven thousand dollars I actually don't have the update on how many students we provided those

090two but we did um we're giving that out and then we've raised forty three thousand dollars um this year which will go for the students next year so this is our biggest program and thank you thank you to the town of Windsor and the business community in Windsor they come out like they support um these scholarships so really really appreciate that it's a really neat neat program um and last uh project hero helping everybody receive opportunities uh we distributed thirteen thousand dollars this year uh to Maddie Brooks uh Windsor Middle School in Windsor High School those are based on um on monies that are donated to those schools uh and and then we kind of serve as a more or less a pass-through for that so that's the we Foundation update that's what we're doing

091in the community and and thank you all of you and thank you for the partnership with the district and really um appreciate all of you thank you thank you very much thank you to the foundation foreign we're warming up on the agenda today we're still in opening items so thank you very much for those two presentations um we will now go to public comment on non-agenda items uh if there is anything that folks may have um yep I see Edna coming forward and as she makes her way forward I would love it Edna if you could give us well you don't get to turn away as I'm trying to tell us a little bit about yourself and how long you were how how how how how long for you you helped do the job that

092Jenny Cox has now tell us my name's Edna Brooks hanza you pull your microphone down just a little bit the main reason was being here is to put faces to the names that um Jenny gave me but now I I Jackson that name is real familiar to me and Paul were you a parent when I was secretary at Maddie no but um my wife oh sorry my wife taught in the district I understand that she's a teacher but you didn't have children that went to Maddie yeah yes we did yes okay she knows you Paul yeah late 1990s uh what would it be no you're putting me on the spot yep yes yes and the superintendent I hadn't met so anyway that was my main reason I'm sorry the two board members aren't here but

093why I'm here where's the school bill and the school bill in 2019 was removed from Windsor Creek and I've been assured that it's in a safe place and I think it's time that it be displayed so that's my reason for the email I'm not really going into anything other than that I Know Rich I know Bill Bill was instrumental in getting the venue if you will about the venue we had the Windsor Creek but with the Historical Society of having that celebration of life for Windsor Creek and uh again Jenny for all your help so that's why I'm here for the district I'm parked sorry how many years did you work for the District 39 and how many years were you the superintendent secretary I've seen a lot of superintendents coming down here they cry

094well and thank you I think I think I love all my principles I didn't have to work closely with the superintendent's no offense so thank you very much anyway uh I'm I'm not giving up on this and I'm not the only one that has asked where's the school bell it and I'm sure it's not going to be sold for Surplus or disappear but so in it like I promised you the other night when I stopped by at your house in two and two sections when the Board of Trustees get to do a little report if you can hang around for just a couple minutes I'm gonna make your day make my day yeah but I can't I can't reply to your comment but I can't talk about it in mine yeah so thank you Edna

095we will we will I can run like that away just about five minutes okay anyway thank you for the time thank you and thank you the daughter just for the fun of it well said sit next to Warren right he's very nice he's yeah you don't have to go to the back row okay any other public cop Paul did you have something from okay thank you um we'll get to that okay seeing no other uh public comment on non-agenda items uh 3.6 student board member Jackson Caligari good to see you back thank you I'm glad to be back oh I gotta go grab a little clicker I'll be right back hold on yes so uh this this month this meeting I will be talking a little bit about about college Runnings and and in a

096larger respect um just post grad as a whole and what what students coming out of the district are looking to and how that's changed recently because I just went through that whole process I saw a lot of friends of mine go through that whole process so the timing seems um I'm apt and the first thing that I wanted to talk about is that getting into college is is really really hard and it's a lot harder than it was last year and a lot harder than it was the year before and that Trend doesn't seem to be slowing down there's a graph here that's that's very very small because it's more just to see that it's a downward Trend but that was from like uh 2008 to 2016. that's sloped down a lot more and that's

097UC specifically um I believe the acceptance rate at UCLA this year was was under 10 um pretty pretty uh drastically um of course I remember when I was first looking at College a couple years ago it was 15 um and that can mean that expectations when people start high school um can become unrealistic and that's something I'm gonna talk about a little bit another thing is that getting into college is is really really unpredictable especially at State schools and that's a a byproduct of taking away say or standardized testing which I know there's a lot of reasons for that and I certainly empathize with those reasons but the the byproduct of that is that you used to know essentially if you had this GPA and this SAT score or ACT score you could kind of

098trust that you would get into these schools and you had a pretty good chance at these schools and these schools were probably out of your range that's really not the case anymore you're seeing things that are very interesting the past couple of years I've had a lot of friends of mine that are wait listed at pretty much every UC and then get into UC Berkeley which is not what you'd expect to see but the process as a whole students that you think going in you're like oh I have the the SAT score to get in here but they're not looking at your SAT score anymore and what that means is that there's a lot more emphasis on essays if you're going to UCS if you're going to a CSU you don't write any essays um

099and extracurriculars um and hours put in and that's makes getting into college a process that students are having trouble with a lot of my friends of mine were planning on pretty much going to a UC um and now they're going to go to the Santa Rosa Junior College and the more they look into that that that's a great option but it's certainly leaves them looking at the last four years like what did I put in all that work for um and and I want to talk about changing our perspective on college readiness because something that I think uh that we've done uh very well at North Bay met and Windsor Oaks Academy is is redefining success and at those schools in general we're defining what education can be for as a whole and that's more

100about prepping you for for success in the real world and job in the real world but what a lot of students at high school and especially AP students or honors students and students that want to go to college and pursue higher education is they can think of it as UC or bust and the UCS are not I don't want to say unreal they're not unrealistic options but you can be an incredible student somebody that deserves to go to a UC and not as I've seen a lot of my friends end up doing and what I want to say is that we need to make sure that students think of the JC as a good option A lot of students think of the JC as if all else fails but the reality is if you go

101to the JC in four or five years we'll probably end up with a degree from a UC and a lot less debt than you would have if you went there for four years and I know that a lot of students now feel like they didn't do enough or they should have tried harder or they got unlucky um and that last part is is probably true but we need to make sure that students when they come in or are starting their application process and know that it's really really really difficult to get into these schools and it's not because they're the other students that did get in are are better than you but to a certain degree they get to a point where they're pulling names out of a hat or their picking people based on

102very specific numbers that they want to fill and maybe you're way better than the environmental science student that did get in but you're a computer science major and you didn't invent your own website that gets a thousand people going through it every year um and it's really really hard for for students to to see that and look across the aisle and see somebody that did get into a college and be like I'm smarter than them I'm better than them I tried harder than them and first of all not incredibly healthy but that comes from the things that we've not necessarily reinforced as a district but certainly something that we've kind of let happen where we kind of just say oh these students should be celebrating because they're going to the top schools and and of

103course they should be but there's a lot of students that should be celebrated just for graduating or just for going having a job right out of high school or pursuing higher education in any form and um Mr Williams apparently there's something on the agenda tonight that makes it a little bit easier for for students to get that achievement of of graduating and and that's amazing because what we want to do I think what we should be doing as a district is making sure that every student has something to be proud of and and especially with those College acceptance rates declining we need to make sure that people can be proud of the JC even if starting uh four years ago they certainly never saw that as an option um and I do think there's a

104couple places that we can improve I know that we have a Miss today is a really great resource at the high school for for our college and career counselor but most of what we we learn about college is that you need to do the FAFSA and you need to apply for scholarships and what I found out recently is I was getting my college decisions back is that there are two other um forms that I need to submit for financial aid one of those I did and one of those I didn't and at certain schools that would mean I don't get any financial aid money for my first year um and for me that's a couple thousand dollars and that that certainly hurts for other students that can be the difference between them going to those

105schools because they can't afford one year at full tuition so I think we need to make sure that we're advertising hey there's the FAFSA and then there's this and then there's this and I know that it sucks that there's three different things that you have to submit the same information for over and over again but if students get into an ivy league and then they realize that oh by February 1st I was supposed to send them these documents that I didn't and suddenly I have to pay eighty five thousand dollars when I could have been paying should have been paying ten thousand students could lose out on the opportunities that that they probably should have and again like I mentioned earlier standardized testing really messes up kind of what we originally thought of as how

106you get into college which is get the GPA requirement and get the SAT requirement and now it's really uh a much more eclectic mix um the breakdown that I had always gone with was 40 academic 30 extracurriculars and 30 writing um this graph's a little bit different it has a lot more factors than that but there's a lot of stuff that's beyond students control and that's why students are seeing uh very unpredictable results and there's a lot of things that we don't necessarily talk about as much when we talk about college readiness which is extracurriculars are very important very particular extracurriculars are very important I was very lucky that a lot of the stuff that I do was similar to my major because I'll be majoring in policy I did things like this did things

107like debate and stuff that was similar to my major but a lot of students would apply for engineering maybe and be doing a lot of the same extracurriculars as I am and just because they're putting in as many hours as I am putting in as much work as I am colleges can look at that and be like but that's not really what you're going to this school for uh the core system of the high school also complicates things a little bit because students that want to pursue engineering and go into stem can't necessarily get the AP classes that they want I think that we gain a lot from the core program and I don't want to jeopardize that by saying down with the core program so a couple more students can go to UCI but

108um we have to recognize that it's really really hard especially for those more math focused groups to get into college right now especially when it's a lot of it's about about GPA and we're saying these 90 students get the opportunity for GPA boost for English and history and everybody else that wants to focus on these specific things can't have them and I do think that it's people gain more from stem core than they they lose by not joining AP and that's not what I'm trying to say but I think that we need to advertise the students hey if you want to go to these schools first of all you can do all the things that I'm about to tell you to do and you still might not get in but this is the path that

109you're going to have to take because people can go in at the start of of high school thinking oh I just have to do these things and not realize that they're really only covering about 25 of what they have to complete so I think we need to be a lot more clear about getting into college rather than just what to do once you get in and how to pay for it um and we also like I said we need to redefine success and say that a lot of you might not get into college and that's not because you're not incredible and you're not going to succeed like all my friends that are going to the JC will but it's just because a hundred and fifty thousand students apply to UCLA this year and it's really

110hard to be the top six thousand that they let in and that's not because you know maybe you're even are this uh one of the six thousand best but you're just not the the demographic that they wanted that year um and that's the end of that specific presentation but um I did want to say that college as a whole is changing a lot and the stuff that I brought up today might not be even accurate next year or even tomorrow um because a lot of colleges are trying to figure out we might lose affirmative action in a year or two and that's really interesting um a really interesting aspect of it but we need to keep an eye on on college readiness and we need to make sure that especially Juniors and seniors but even

111from you know your sophomore year your your freshman year uh your eighth grade year you can say to your counselor hey this is where I want to end up and they can say okay first of all good luck second of all you're gonna need it because even if you do everything in your your the valedictorian and you're you know speaking of graduation and your member of honors band and everything like that you still might not get into UC Irvine and then you will get into UC Berkeley or maybe you won't and then you'll graduate from UC Berkeley later but we really need to make sure that we're very clear with our students about where they they might end up and that's gotten a lot harder I know that getting into UCLA this year is about

112as easy as getting into Harvard was 15 or 20 years ago and we still think of UCLA as you know a pretty viable option for a lot of students and I believe we had two students in in our entire senior class at the high school which is which is 387 kids get into UCLA um Ava who you know didn't get in I didn't get in so these schools that we can think of as very likely options uh can really not be and it's just it's it's something that I've seen a lot lately of my my friends taking it as a reflection of them themselves and thinking oh my future is shot or Juniors thinking oh why am I even going to try anymore because I got this 1B three years ago and somebody else got

113this 1B and now they're going to have to go to the JC so I might as well just give up now and that's not something that we want to be encouraging with our students and of course there's a there's a heavy mix of optimism and and realism that we have to mix um because I want people to think that they can go to college and really really work hard for it because even if they don't all that work that they put in will be helpful to them someday but at the end of the day we don't want students to graduate thinking that they've wasted the last four years of their life just because they're going to college 15 minutes away instead of two hours away um and I guess I should mix in my own

114my own College news with this because that's been a topic of uh undergrade scrutiny from the board recently I was I was very lucky to avoid a lot of this I mean I I definitely missed some predictions some schools that I thought I would get into I didn't um but I was lucky enough to get some offers from some schools that I honestly wasn't expecting to get into um and if weightless hold and I don't get off any of them um I will be attending the University of Pennsylvania in the fall and that's something I'm very excited about but you know we can't just say oh we have a couple students that go to these uh good schools and point to say oh we're doing a good job of college readiness because these students are

115going to schools when we have a lot of students that whether or not they're going to college can feel like failures when they do go to where they go um and of course we don't want any any student that that walks off with the diploma which is an achievement in itself to think that they didn't achieve something in the last four years so they didn't achieve what they wanted to achieve so that's a lot I know I talked for for much longer than I than I wanted to and probably didn't probably restated myself about 40 times while saying something interesting or valuable about three or four times but I hope that those three or four things can help us change next year and the year after because this problem is is likely going to get

116to get worse before it gets better but the sooner that we can see it and and want to address it the sooner that we can start to change the problems that I've that I've seen in the last couple of weeks so so thank you hey Jackson I wanted to comment a little bit I'm a former high school counselor so I did that for many many years and watched this phenomenon happen over and over again with top students and them feeling crushed and feeling um like they wasted the last four years of their life which was never the case um so it's refreshing to see a top student talking and uh reflecting upon how incredible our local junior colleges because it is one of the top in the nation and it always has been it will

117continue to be um it's an amazing option um there are agreements that that students can enter in once they get into the JC to automatically transfer to a UC or a CSU after two years of completion of a specific program and they have a very rich um certificate program for Career Technical education which is a huge chunk of our students at our high school as well so not only is it um a way for students to continue their their college education but it's also another way for students to continue post-secondary education that's career oriented so um I love the fact that you are highlighting the junior college and um it is an incredible school and I would support helping getting that word out more and more and more thank you I do think that that

118teachers and counselors say hey the Santa Rosa Junior College is is a great option over and over and over but I think uh the inclusion of that J makes a lot of students think that it's not and and looking at my friends as they um a lot of them are now planning on going to the GAC a lot of computer science and engineering Majors is those are ridiculously competitive Majors a friend of mine got a perfect score on the math section of the SAT which of course wasn't particularly helpful for him since he can't use that and a perfect score on the uh math portion of the state testing and my friends are so much smarter than I am and a lot of them are going to go to the JC a lot of them

119will be able to get out in two years and go to UC engineering Majors it looks like a lot of them might have to take three years just because of the classes they have to complete but at the end of the day they will walk away with with especially for those Majors what matters which is a degree and a degree from a school that is is highly respected um and I think that if we can go in and and obviously we know this a lot of people that are that are well versed in it uh counselors especially know that the JC is a great option but if we can make students kind of see it the way that we see it and saying that look get into the JC if you want to continue to

120work for it can essentially be the same as getting into the UC getting into AUC and um we have to work hard to to redefine the way that it's seen and it's certainly going to be hard to do that but a lot of students when we post College decisions a lot of students that are going to the JC aren't posting that they're going to the JC because they feel like they didn't complete anything or that's just the place that people to get rejected everywhere else go um and that's not what it is at all I think well it has been but it shouldn't be because what it really is is a very affordable very good option for a lot of our students and junior colleges as a whole of that but Santa Rosa specifically is

121an incredible junior college program so I want to make sure that students realize that a lot more than they currently do and I think that they you can hear it and be like yeah I know I know but I still feel like I should have done better and it's hard to change feelings um but I think that the sooner we start with younger kids whenever we decide that the point to start that is and say this isn't a last option this is an option to keep on the table like when I was applying to a lot of IVs um you know for a while like you could think uh I I would think of the UCS as like yeah if I don't get in better places then I'll go to uc's but what UCS are

122are a really really good much more affordable option and the JC is just an extension of that a really really good really really affordable option um and a lot of students will probably be maybe not better off but just as well off as they would have been going straight to a UC if they go to the JC to start and students will realize that and as they research the JC Moore realizing that they're probably going to have to go there or realizing that it'd be nice if they never had to spend those couple of weeks getting decisions back and being like I really feel like I didn't complete anything because they go into uh High School thinking I'm here to go to college and Jessica's that college has a j before it's C doesn't mean

123that it's not a really really good school um I could quite talk about this for hours but I'm not going to the JC Central Junior College in particular is so overlooked about its magnificence because it's so easy to get in graduate from high school live in our area have a pulse they will let everybody in but if you want to get out of there you better buckle down and you better study a whole lot more than you did when you were in high school especially in the math and the science departments the education Junior College at that level is as good or better than any University in this country in my opinion now how can I say that because I know kids that go there and then they go to those prestigious schools with all

124the status and that's all we're talking about is status and they just cruise through the first and the beginning of the year so I I don't want the JC is something that people look at well first off if you're broke like I was growing up the JC wasn't an option that's where you were we were going to Junior College because we were going to save two years of tuition and living expenses and everything else by going to school here local so Jackson I appreciate what you said because I think you're right I think a lot of kids and a lot of people have pressure on them wherever it's coming from Family Social wherever that if you don't get accepted to school something that that means man you wasted your time you're going to be a

125failure you didn't do this and this and this and none of that is true none of that is true ultimately everything your success your success everybody's success all comes down to how much effort you want to put in to doing the things that you want to do doors get shut on people all the time of nope you can't do this you can't do that and you just go different places and but if you keep working you will get there and so um the um so it's not a thing about Sandra Ginger College we just happen to have we're blessed that the college that is near where we live is just such an amazing educational institution so um anyhow I think the points that you bring up are really good and that we need to help

126our kids understand that hey where work your work as hard as you can and wherever that door opens up for you and whichever doors you are opened up to you that you go through you just got to keep working hard and the harder you work you'll be surprised in life that more and more doors open up for you and so anyhow um thank you for well congratulations they uh you know uh honestly I'm impressed by you I don't care where you go to school you're going to do well and you're going to be somebody I think that's why we're all curious not really of where you're going to school but just where's your next step on the path of you becoming that Superstar down the road so anyhow okay um I I want to thank

127you congratulations on Penn Ben Franklin's University good job um thank you for your gravitas and your articulateness and your contributions to the board and pointing out the truth when you were talking it was striking to me that as a parent and have three kids who went through here and went to four-year universities every single one of them taking two three four five junior college classes while they're there to get through uh the rules changed when you started school to when you got done right you're an eighth grade or seventh grader doing I met you back then and you know we've changed we pulled the carpet out from you and those like you and every other school who are now 12th graders both in California without so um I'll just say thank you you have set

128the bar high for the position I think there are things we need to talk about with the administration um I've always not liked when we say College and Career ready I'd like us to say career ready college is a way to get a career I sat last night at the senior projects with a stem 11th grader who was in the Build Academy he is an apprentice Carpenter is going to graduate with no debt start at 75 to 100 000 a year will be a journeyman by the time he's 20 making 150 with overtime and he said you know people say why don't I go to college he said I don't really like school I like building that thing that's in the parking lot and that's what I like to do and there is a path

129I hope for everybody in our in our system um but I think we need to be candid about how how the rules are applied now and I think you said a good point that may change again in a few years but um just thank you for everything you're doing before we see you again in May you will be going again is with your three-time reigning state championship Odyssey of the mind for your second straight we're in going to the World Championships this time at Michigan State for the Odyssey of the mind so not another small thing probably helped for Pennsylvania like's creative people but thank you always for the the time you take and the seriousness that you approach this position it is a valuable thing and unusual frankly for boards in this County to

130have the continuity of student Representatives like you and your predecessors that we've had these four five six seven years so good luck to you and thanks for sharing yes oh yes one of the really really outstanding wrestlers down in the Bay Area is at Penn as name's Jeremy Ridge his dad is is they're big into music he's a professional musician and I will get you his contact information so he can show you around and teach you the ways of pin thank you and I know I appreciate that I'll get that from you at the end of the meeting I know I was long-winded so I'll make sure to keep this incredibly short but the same thing Rich that you said about about me how you have a an inclaim that I will be be successful

131and college is really just a step on that on that path and that's something that I was thinking about when choosing to college is is what sets me up uh best for my next step but I think that that's the way that that I feel about all of my friends they're going to every college that they're going to because our our students and my friends are in all incredible in their own right um and I think that that's something that we all feel about other people a lot of the time and and really what I I could dilute this presentation down to and maybe should have from the very beginning is that's what uh I want every student to start to feel about themselves is that wherever they go it's not a indication of their

132success or an indication of their quality or where they will end up it's just a step on the way to where they will end up um thank you you are wise beyond your years with that superintendent match that I think for the sake of time I may hold mine and we can move forward uh so let's move on to staff Association uh uh is he still here you have driven away Mr Jolly from the union report it might come back okay um let's briefly briefly briefly with a Board of Trustees report and what where is our construction report on our agenda you are you on are you on the consent items or are you an action item okay we will do you first in action item and you are first so thank you there for

133your patience okay go ahead so staff uh trustee reports all right Edna it went out isn't this bringing back great memories the uh anyhow the I just want to let you know I did go over and I did see the Bell actually I don't know if you guys can put it up on the screen Okay so okay it's coming you guys let me know when it is here so I went out there so the Bell is alive it is at the over up here at our district yarn where all the buses are so we looked at the belt today and it's sitting there because it's so heavy that it's it wasn't able to be sat on anything so I actually have some really heavy duty pallets that we get pumps and things that come on

134so I'm arranging with the folks up there and we're gonna go over there and we're gonna set it on a pallet the stands and stuff and we're gonna then do a little bit of an inspection on it then I'm gonna break come back and bring to superintendent Decker some of your well he read your thoughts but I want to bring it to the board I think we can restore this because I have people that work for me that are Specialists actually one of the guys Andy went to Annie high school and he's a blacksmith and knows how to fix some things and another guy that I hired that is a fabricator that is an amazing guy anyhow we're gonna get it back in working order and I we have some ideas based on the pictures

135that you gave me of of how we can do something so I'm going to bring it to the board and and get some ideas going so I just wanted you to know that not only is your you know uh not as your your years of service to our district is appreciated your history that you know about the bell and everything else also and we are going to make sure that we uh take care of that thing and do something really nice [Music] athletic books School master of a school that was in 1853 down at the cemetery the Pruitt school and that's the story of school but it's um I'm not the only one that has been asking where is the school bell we've got word yeah but I do feel and I hope it gets

136put someplace other than just on power right yeah we're just gonna put it on the pallet just to get it up off the ground but uh we've got some ideas that I talked to you about before and I'll bring that before everybody and and we'll get it so anyhow thank you for bringing that bringing that back to the level of everybody's Consciousness and and hopefully we're going to have something as Stephanie uh our trustee Stephanie mod says she goes I want to make a decision and I want to get it done quick so she's wanting to get some things done quick and we're going to work on this and I think we can get it done quick I would imagine we will probably have a bell somewhere invite you and your colleagues from the historical

137society around the beginning of school let's just sort of have an aspiration that we can we can do that thank you for your patience Edna it's always a joy to see you because nobody could steal it it was anchored to the ground so well so thank you very much God bless you and thank you Rich for that report the only other thing I got just real quick is that I was appointed to be the csba representative for Sonoma County to the CIF NCS Board of managers group I know it's a big old long thing it took me a while to actually figure out exactly what I was doing but uh anyhow they go over all the different uh issues regarding uh extracurricular activities in the North Coast section so we went down there Friday uh

138Brian and Jamie went as well and um so I tried to get him to move one future meeting they said no so Brian's going to go in my place for that one so we already got it dialed in but anyhow um so I want to let you guys know so that way if there are things of interest or issues uh about anything extracurricular let me know and go from there okay in the interest of time I'll be very brief as well there's uh over the last month there's there are a lot of exciting really good things going on in this District attended an mtss joint meeting with uh with Mark West and Healdsburg and was very impressed on the presentation when I first heard the term mtss which is multi-tier systems of support I was

139like this I'm a teacher I've heard all this stuff before I don't want to you know don't tell me then after the meeting I was more like this and as I learned more about it I'm more open to to the to the idea um a lot of things going on I I went to Maddie Washburn for the wax museum which I thought was very it was cute it was it was not it was a great the kids were really well prepared for it I thought that was a really good thing I went to Cali open house saw the artwork displayed uh looked like there were lots and lots of people there there were the the food trucks and it was it was fantastic um and I think I've done other things too gone to the

140high school to to meet the the people coming in for the senior project so a lot of things going on um a lot of good things going on be good at that oh my only comment is we'll probably hear Jackson's name again next Thursday is the senior awards at the high school if anybody's available at six o'clock it's uh absolutely inspiring our friends from the we foundation will be giving out almost as many scholarships I think as the Rotary Club does so it's uh it's really inspiring to just get that laundry list of the amazing things that our our students are doing and uh and there's concerts and open houses at all the schools between now and school will be out in how many days but like six weeks or something like that so okay

141um we have had a long meeting so far and we're almost to our action item ladies and gentlemen almost um so if we could uh briefly do the minutes and we'll do the staff uh recognitions if we could perhaps do it slightly briefly on the narratives however you'd like to do that but yes let's make the mention here I think that's valuable for us to do it so on 310 then let's do the approval of the minutes of our March 9th and again as uh Paul mentioned we did have a joint meeting in here a couple of Mondays ago uh with two sister districts and again want to recognize assistant principle Ferreira and principal uh Decker on the leadership that we got on that there's so many things that happen that you know it's amazing

142here and it's really cool when we meet with other boards of uh trustees and their superintendents where they say boy we sure wish we were you guys even when we were meeting over there the room was cool and they were green about that so I'd entertain a motion then if we can do both at the same time unless there are any changes approval of the minutes of March 9th in the special meeting on April 10th no you just say I have a motion yes okay yeah okay thank you in a second and I secondly okay all in favor aye aye one three zero two uh okay Peter good evening so continuing the theme of success uh that we have had tonight um I'll be presenting not fully though uh the Windsor Unified School District staff

143recognition for April uh for those of you that don't know uh we uh the Windsor Unified School District are committed to recognizing our staff's effort and Excellence each month uh so although you'll not meet your honorees tonight we will meet with them Tuesday the 25th of next week at North Bay Med Academy and I think you've already received the invitation but if you haven't I'll make sure there is one in your inbox by the end of uh tomorrow and we're going to be recognizing uh two of our finests from North Bay met so for the classified staff we'll be recognizing uh bilingual liaison Nora Luna and form the certificated staff we will be recognizing the uh the triple threat Windsor Unified School District teacher North Bay met teacher in Windsor Oaks teacher Nate Thompson and

144I'll be happy to read those to you when we meet on the 25th thanks y'all thank you and what time is that on the 25th Force yeah 8 A.M for your staff meeting I I will say that uh the three of us here in trustee Ahmad was also able to go we were at the high school at 8 A.M in the library uh for the first two honorees both the certificated teacher and a classified employee um was very heartfelt it was nice I know both of them and what was cool is doing it in front of their peers it seemed to really resonate with taking again that time like we recognized the volunteers and I two days ago when we started the meeting um it's it's just a valuable thing it takes a little time

145but it's not that hard and it carries a huge message and so we look forward to you know with your team over there for us on Tuesday morning at eight o'clock okay uh with that um trustee Carnation would you like to lead us through the consent items do we still want to pull four three yes okay so we'll pull forward three and do that in a second okay um I like to make a motion that we approve consent items 4.1 through 4.18 excluding 4.3 um that would be my motion okay I'll second that okay um all those in favor right that'd be one three zero two all right okay we do not have to have public comment okay okay and so let's go then we have pulled for additional discussion at uh trustee corgano's request

146uh 4.3 uh the out-of-state conference in Vancouver and I don't know if Jeremy or Sharon or who's gonna expand and I know you've spoken to Paul um I don't know maybe let them start and then we can have the questions or comments about about 4.3 thank you and then we will have a separate vote after that before we go to the sure by is it freezing cold in here so uh this is a conference that Miss Robertson has attended for the past I don't know if it's been five years because of covid yeah so she's got her level one and level two already the district has funded part of the conference um and so has Cali calmekuk in the past because um she works uh in our district schools and also in Cali school that

147um has a separate budget um so she approached me about it um again this year and um you know one of the things I'm really proud of this district is that we do take a professional development seriously especially for programs that were highly invested in so for example Avid we send um a substantial uh group of of teachers to Avid and administrators to Avid every single year and we pay for that and pay for their hotels and their travel um there is a p3cc Consortium preschool to third grade Consortium that we have been funding as well as far as professional development we do through Kali we do something called kabe which is a California Association of bilingual educators so we fund a lot of professional development where we know that our investment in that teacher

148or those group of teachers is going to come directly back to our students and that is how I feel about this um petition from Miss Robertson to get her third level of um or sorry there's a little bug right here um it is out of state this year she actually took it in um San Francisco sorry San Francisco when was it last year the year before and then because of kovid right at the end they shut it down and they didn't give her credit for any of her work so um she and I sat down and talked about this I felt that it was an important investment I did tell her that I didn't feel comfortable covering the um cost of the car and the food for her so I asked her to absorb that

149cost um and if you want her to talk a little bit about this I'm sure she would be more than happy to okay thank you you are the ones with the questions sir yeah that really wasn't my concern I mean my concern is that a lot of teachers take professional development I took professional development all the time and I was never compensated for any of it so I just want to make sure you're doing this for Elizabeth that you're going to be doing this for any teacher who wants to write up a proposal to go and take professional development well I don't think she's being compensated for it she's just we're paying for the um it's compensation if you're paying for her airfare in her hotel that's compensation and we do do that for teachers

150like I said Avid we pay for the hotels okay does it have to be a program that you are that's your pet program is that is this is not a pet program of mine yeah I think Paul that's a little bit extreme okay let's let's maybe scale that okay okay but what can I reject so the our principals have discretionary funding rights their site funds and I would say ed services also has discretionary funding so when we're making these decisions we do trust our administrators to determine what's most important for the district to fund um and I mean of course if the board wanted to have a different method of of making those decisions that's within your purview that would be a policy issue but currently we do trust our administrators to make these decisions

151on what they think is most beneficial for our teachers and our students was this um was this training available anywhere else why don't you come up to the podium I also want to make a point that that Elizabeth teaches in multiple at multiple sites and is overseeing our Visual and Performing Arts program district-wide so I do feel like this is um a wise investment so this program it's the third level and the third level actually it leads to certification um knowing that I'm not asking the district to compensate things like um I'm not asking for units or anything like that I'm not taking those um it is an advanced level and what it does is it would be it would actually in the long run it would allow us to train additional teachers um and

152um it was only available this year in two places in our on the West Coast Vancouver which is essentially Portland is Vancouver Washington and then it was offered in San Francisco well Carmel but this is the reason why I didn't want to and Sharon I talked about this so the program in Carmel is an excellent program but it is it follows the international method Portland Vancouver follows the American method and I'm choosing to do the American method because it's more relevant for our students and um unfortunately I did do my first two levels in San Francisco and the um third level focuses it has kind of devolved into focusing on um very specific political beliefs of the teacher instead of the pedagogy um so I really felt like the quality of the program in Portland

153was much much better and would be a better um representation of what we wanted to serve our students with hey thank you yeah did you no but do you have any other questions Paul I know okay Elizabeth could you help me um what is the difference between you said the international or the whatever I didn't realize there was I thought music so there is um this is ORF shoverk um it's been around since the 1920s it's a method of music and movement um it's actually not a method it's an approach to music and movement instruction with students that um follow this approach in which students experience before they hear and then here before they they create before they after they hear and then they learn to read so it's a developmental approach um preschool through

154um 12th grade um it's also um but it's a method started in Germany and in the 1960s this was brought to the United States when it came to the United States it became um it became more blended with some of the other um educational perspective that we have in the U.S so for instance um it has been blended with traditions of vocal music in the U.S it is also focused on um helping prepare students for instrumental ensembles in the US the um International method does not do that it focuses only on the playing of recorder and xylophones and then also does not allow for um the last thing does not allow for um bringing in other supplemental techniques thank you so Paul I appreciate thank you for it before we vote on it I think

155you had raised some good points what I'd like to do I think because I had actually asked Jeremy when I got to the closed session before a little bit about site-specific and PD and at the high school there's the cores have CTE and then you have some budget I understand the assistant principle and curriculum education and maybe we could get an update about um you know what the policy is or is I may not be a policy of me how it's applied right where those resources come from um and also perhaps some input from I'm sorry that you know Paul was waiting patiently here so stand in for two and a half hours but also a sense from our uh wdea Partners about where they are and their understanding I think that you you raised

156some good questions and Paul and I did speak on the phone about it a couple of days ago and he gave me the courtesy we'll pull it and we'll pull any item that any trustee wants to I think there's some follow-up of certainly things that I would like to get a little bit more information about about you know where we are how we got here how it is in application right I don't want to have make work but maybe assemble that for us thank you Bill I think I just would feel more comfortable if there was a a procedure in place or that's something I don't know about border policy in place that that I'm unaware of okay let's follow that up and we'll talk about it yeah so so why so I understand so

157what's being requested is that I bring back kind of what the procedure is not a change in our current practice but let you know what the priest yeah I I would suggest that it give us a status quo about where we are right where the money is how much we spend how it gets allocated for example I heard last night that you know in in certain of the uh the the cores at the high school they get CT money and they can go to conferences and and it sometimes it's required that they go right to keep that partnership Academy going where other discretionary money is used to apply and I just didn't know anything about this I was sitting there for two and a half hours with a particular specialty teacher who I've known for

158a while so I I think to give us a snapshot about where we are kind of how we got there I'd be interested in what the amount of money is right if it are we allocating enough money to PD is there unmet needs that are stacking up right that don't get funded or I don't know it just realize it's gonna it's gonna change every year like for instance there are one-time funds that were educator Effectiveness funds right so it depends when we're flush because the state gave us lots of one-time funds we're able to say yes more to teachers but there's often times where we're not so how about if I talk with Jeremy and we kind of crafted this for an update June's very busy with budget stuff so maybe we can just talk

159a little bit about how we assemble this together right I I think it's stuff we already know I mean when I talk to you briefly and and some others it's like oh here's how we do it like well okay I didn't know that I I think to your point I think I don't know that we know I think we assume so I think if we did get a um kind of a a high level view of kind of like you know what as a district we have spent last year X on these type of things um just to kind of get so we got a you know an understanding it also helps us know you know how much are we investing in in our uh our our tools our teachers you know are the people

160that are helping us you know get this into our kids right so I mean I'm kind of conflicted so I I know exactly where Paul's coming from on this issue um and I'm thinking that as my as a business guy I would think a certain way but then my other hand Elizabeth right now is our person in charge of that program correct so is she going to pick something up up there that she can now distribute to everybody else below that's kind of how I'm looking so well we're messing there we're doing it so it's not really clear-cut but I think Paul has kind of brought something up that I think we kind of maybe assume and I think it would be good to just take a little snapshot take a look at it and

161see if if it is what we've assumed or if it's a little different to your point also it's going to change with how funding comes in and if I've learned anything about being on this board if I kind of knew it already from my dad but man there are so many different little pins of money and it's only can pop that balloon or that pin's got to go away it's it's uh this is calculus plus AP so anyhow okay but but to the point if there is only so much money is this the best use of the money I mean there there's the whole thing about the science of reading we're we're failing our young kids in this District so I mean is there conferences on that that we can I'm just bringing in questions

162that are and we've been working with that through p3cc and we're looking at um a uh presenter by the name of Nancy accabon to come uh We've attended conferences that we've paid for with for our teachers for a significant amount of our teachers and administrators so you know I I do have to say it's hard for me to stand up here and I I hear your doubt and I I I appreciate the detail that you're taking when you're reviewing this um I also would hope that there is a certain level of um trust in the people that we have entrusted to run our district and when when we look at the overall package for Miss Robertson who not only teaches many many of our students at very different levels she also is our vapa coordinator

163she's also a an extremely important member of our arts society in our community um you know I think we have to look at the whole picture and um I I just I really need to to stand by her and by this well and ultimate so let me just wrap this up because this is not about Elizabeth Robertson no and that's what I wanted to say this is about this is about a first occasion of a new colleague who said well what's the story about this kind of thing right right and I get that so I think from the fiduciary standpoint that more I I don't want to speak for Paul but from the fiduciary standpoint where we sit here not sort of in the weeds micromanagement at the Tactical level but to say so what

164is our program how are we doing this do we have unmet needs have there been requests to say there were and two got said yes and three got said maybe next time and here's why that's kind of what I'll talk to the superintendent about when we've and you to put this together because I think that's the level that would be helpful and then from there we can say is that something that is in accord with the way we'd like you to do it because I don't think we know how you do it other than if we spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on development and training so um I wanted to mostly say that for Elizabeth who's going up I have a son who's done the first two levels of orif as I shared with

165Paul who's a brand new teacher in his district sent him um but also this was to sort of highlight an issue that came up and it's the reason that we pull things off consent otherwise this would have been sure fine interesting we don't see a lot about estate travel and it it prompted this so please I know Elizabeth personally outside of this situation so this is not a bit about you and it's not about second guessing it's about we need to get a better understanding of how we're doing that and is this meeting our fiduciary duties and the you know there's priorities that's what we're you know we have a curriculum and a superintendent and site principals who are going to do that so um I think with that are we we need to still

166vote on 4.3 okay so um I I there we'll we'll say there was the motion and the approval so this is uh approval for the out-of-state conference is submitted in there it's been explained and discussed um all those in favor there is I'm I'm making it so okay I don't remember but anyway so from from the preferential vote board voting you get to vote first preferential voter okay there's one preparation okay all those in favor of item 4.3 I no okay that'll pass on a one two one that won't pass it has to be uh all three I know but we have to run you still have to have three to pass right so it won't even have an absolute majority yes sir are we sure yes yeah so the I I would um in

167the interest of moving this forward Paul is there something that we could amend can we revisit this next I don't know if we don't know if there is time when is when is your conference function had confidence will be paid so I can go by June 1st oh sweet by June 1st so this could be Revisited in May and the next one okay sweet tables so let me do this would it be acceptable to the board to pull this item and we will table it so there is not a determinative vote one way or the other today and we will revisit 4.3 um in May and we will have a decision so you know so that the right is that acceptable yes okay so we will amend the agenda then we will pull 4.3 and

168not act on it today but thank you very much for everyone and we will have Bill so we should be able to at that meeting when we bring this up again have that snapshot though is would it be awesome do our best I got to tell you this is I'm talking super high level it's going it's going to be difficult I just need you to understand that because you have I'm going to have to dive into principal budgets to really give you a true snapshot of what this looks like yeah it's easy for me to say this is how much we spend on the on these number of days of PD but this isn't as clean as that you're requesting would it be difficult to go back and show how many of these requests have

169gone through that requested I'd have to go to each principal's budget and go through their budgets so it's not it's not clean and easy I just need you to understand that I'll do the work if you want me to do the work but it's not going to be clean and easy so I will say having been sitting here for nearly a decade never have I seen the board not approve a professional development request in-state or out of state in that entire time never because we delegate that to our staff to carry it out how they're doing it I'm not so clear anymore but um anyway uh so we will know if you want me to change my vote then I'll change my book can I just say I I mean the site principles oversee the

170um the PD that their their teachers request right with someone like Elizabeth because she's at different sites she came to me I understand ed services so it's I don't approve a ton um or the the the PD that I am approving is always District level right so it's a little bit different coming from me than it is from the principals I I don't want to make more work for you if you're telling me that this is that I need to trust you then I will go along and change my vote to yes I think that I can still with time provide a better update I'm just hesitant to commit to that by May knowing that this has a timeline to get it approved for example I mean you know how much time we spend on

171the budget and conversations we have a May revise and so no I understand and if you're not doing what you're supposed to be doing I just had questions on how I understand I understand we talk about Sean Paul I think and I appreciate your way being willing to revisit I think we can do both and I think we can approve this one we've flagged it and talked around it and let's get a a thorough comprehensive look because I think the Lion's Share of this is happening at the principal level and I wouldn't know for example again Paul's not here I'm just going to keep pointing behind you Sharon because that's where Paul was sitting you know that is there I don't know I'll I'll put I'll put Windsor High School on the spot Brian I

172mean did you do you approve 90 80 all of them write a single plan for student achievement that this board approves and that's made in in connection with our leadership team we do a comprehensive needs assessment it's first approved by our site Council um it's in connection with all the work that the district does with the lcap that board members are a part of which is also a pretty extensive needs assessment so all of that's put together in documents that then come to the board for approval our hope is that once it is approved that we do have the freedom to take action to be able to execute those plans which we then revise again at the end of the year based on our data and then we create a new plan that we then

173submit to the board and that would be a chunk of money that you had discretionary site correct control over the topic areas okay as well and for example this will be reported in the lcap right this it will be a revision of the lcat because it wasn't written into the El Cap but because it is a big expense it will be written into our annual update okay is this unusual though paying for airfare is this something that no we do it all the time in fact our illustrious as an athletic director conference right now along with you know most of the athletic directors so we we do that when it's necessary but some of these specialty teachers like you know music directors and athletic directors um and they the teachers yeah yeah they have to

174go you know to where the conferences are um and and as was mentioned before we all look forward to going to Avid because it's a wonderful uh but expensive experience um but it's necessary and it was and that's something that was built into our plans from the beginning because we know that we need that professional development where we're quite as you know we're required to have professional development for our wasp status and everything so but yeah just know that there's lots of checks and balances with our site council with our leadership teams and then of course this board has to give the final say when they approve our plans thank you [Music] are you willing to reconsider it yes okay we're going to reconsider and do a quick vote on 4.3 we'll restore it to

175the agenda you're still a one eye you're gonna have to no I'm just kidding no I'm not I get it okay thank you and and so yes on 4.3 and then and Paul I we're so consensus driven here this is not a problem to say I've got a big question about this because I think you've raised a number of points for us to say please help us understand this I mean this is hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars and it sounds as if maybe in your experience up at Cloverdale the flying here here you know was not I did not realize that you know the principal says never so I I personally I never saw it okay so are we going to San Diego or the Moscone Center in December North Bay met sending

176a a ton of uh not students of teachers down to their big bang uh PD and that's very costly as well but it's absolutely essential to keep big picture learning up and running well let's figure out a way that in a reasonable and comprehensive way that we can revisit this so we're I understand I'll think this through I just didn't want to commit to Maine I I think that was my follow-up that I want to say we we've identified and this is good we've identified something that we've assumed now let's get a little bit more information I don't want you to be rushed I know because we do the next month be busy the next couple so so just you're good about remembering what we need to do and then bringing it back so uh

177take the time you need okay but I forget the information correctly yes sir but but I think this is good so yeah it was a good discussion okay 904 and we finished the consent calendar God bless us um what's that conversation for a half hour with the cops that was interesting okay in all seriousness thank you all for your patience as we're whittling the crowd down let's go to 5.1 yeah isn't that Brian are you yeah yeah oh he knows he was really clear to say that he gave me a sign five won the uh Cali kalmatic language transition Kinder upgrades project resolution 23-09 is that corrective did we renumber resolutions Pete I know we were 09 is still where we are on that one okay thank you Austin we were um okay marvelous thank

178you we'll talk about that before we uh approving procedures and guidelines for selection of a lease lease back contractor uh Austin and Brian please thank you for your patience I'm wearing William from hearing from the county Comic-Con transitional kendurum cranes um this insurance is second part to that we've been working with the site and the admins and coming up with a laying down area for nothing a layout area for um the project um and now we're at some point when we're ready to go out and hang out recently smack contractor selected uh so this is just a resolution to begin that process um so if you have any questions I'm happy you might answer I like to make a motion that we approve these resolutions okay that's 2309 a second Paul thank you um any

179questions from the public no any other questions yeah we'll do we'll do a we'll do a roll call um just maybe in the future we could have moved this had we known that we were going to go this long I appreciate your patience Brian you're a real learning you're you're a regular um as streamlined as this was just that's maybe make a note to self on that uh okay uh for a roll call vote then please Jen yes which country yes yes student board member Jackson Caligari yes yes and two apps you could you can sit again we'll be have Donuts in Midnight coffee okay thank you Brian for your patience I appreciate it thank you okay 5.2 approval of District's proposal for contract negotiations with the winter District Educators Association uh superintendent Decker uh

180we've already started negotiations this is to formalize the process we can't actually conduct negotiations without formal board approval um I don't think I need to read through exactly what's been Sunshine we've discussed it but it's there in the article okay any comments or questions from the board yeah any comments or questions from the three of you surviving in the audience okay we'll bring it back to the board uh this does not require a roll call is there a motion to approve item 5.2 I'll make the motion okay thank you okay uh motions in second uh preferential vote number one hi hi all those in favor uh aye aye okay that's a one three zero two thank you number three um is that the fully qualified or ssum okay I'm sorry am I it is the

181correct one um the SSU mou that's an acronym pool it is well to uh Jackson's Point earlier so we have some good news um so any student we've been working with SSU uh for a couple years now actually on this and they have really done kind of an audit of what we offer in Windsor and uh and our leadership I should say and they felt comfortable extending this um guaranteed admissions mou to us so any student who is a windsor high school graduate actually I should say Windsor Unified School District graduate not Webster High School uh who satisfies the AGG requirements with a 2.5 GPA is automatically granted entrance into SSU as long as it's a non-impactive major uh so I think this is fantastic for us uh the only other District that I know

182that has this is Petaluma so it would be some Petaluma for Sonoma State and um I just think it's awesome I don't know what else to say please pass it so we can get our kids at this issue as well as the JC but I think this is a great local option right thank you Jeremy I'd like to make a motion that we prove this how nice Apollo's second okay any comments about how this are you where this is a big deal and yeah that's great I've never heard of it so I would like to make sure that students know about it again they will after this night yes um but also be very clear about what the impacted majors are because you would hate to to make a promise to a student and then

183there's only a couple the ones that they called out were nursing and I think there were two more that they they called out that were very impacted right but I mean yeah no uh again opportunities to um go to college opportunities to make that next step because you know we have the a through G requirements and and it's been said a lot of times that oh complete the a through G's and you can go to uc's yeah and that's probably not fair to say anymore so to say we can guarantee you can go to the JC if you do this you can go to SSU if you do this is something that we definitely want students to know going into high school and even before it so that's uh awesome thank you for those comments

184okay um all those in favor then um do we have a motion yep okay uh preferential voter number one hi okay all in favor aye okay one three zero two item 5.4 approval consideration approval Declaration of a need four fully qualified Educators in the 2324 school year um we have talked about this before but help us understand this director Sullivan yeah we have uh so the the submission of the Declaration of need is an annual prerequisite for um the issuance of any emergency permits within our district and as you know with the hiring Crunch and uh you know trying to get as many qualified teachers and classes as we can we can't always facilitate um the proper credential at the proper time um so each year we submit a number of uh estimates in subject

185areas of need this year specifically have two in math two in English language arts uh an estimate of uh one in science one in special education and one in health and so um this is just something that we will annually do um and um this is our submission for this year or for next year sorry okay thank you Pete any questions by the board of this okay you can wave your hand the three in the back or the three in the closer audience okay seeing none will bring it back to the board uh is there a motion to approve item 5.4 I'll make the motion to improve thank you Paul I'll second it banking by Rich preferential voter number one uh okay uh all those in favor aye aye battle pass one three zero two

186item 5.5 the consideration of approval of position control reduction notice and action he's back okay my squats and my steps to that radio voice that's her that's right it's my radio voice apparently um so I might lean on some of my colleagues here because uh position control is relatively new to me um but just so you know when we open this I would like to say we are not laying off 143 teachers um but it is the amount of extra FTE we have that is unclaimed not viable not used currently in our system which is escape and we use Escape uh in order to keep track of all of our staff and so each one of them is allotted a position number it's called the PC number and so I I like to think of

187those PC numbers as chairs this is how Mary Burkey actually described it to me when she was giving me some help on what it would be to be a HR person and if you can imagine a table with a bunch of chairs if you have a person who is not in a chair you can pull that chair away from the table and it's no longer going to be somebody that you would you you would have there but sometimes if a person gets up and leaves that table and that chair is empty you want to fill that chair to to complete the process we have uh over the last quite a few years have amassed quite a few empty chairs that have not been removed from the table and so what we're effectively trying to do

188this year is through a month-long process working payroll working directly with human resources and a lot of work from my department and Austin's Department we have gathered up every position control number that is not currently uh being used so no one occupies these positions they are not viable so they're not being used they're they're either a temporary funded uh item that never got removed or wasn't termed properly on the PC form that we submitted or perhaps it was a layover of a person who's on leave and then they were going to retire and we wanted to you know get somebody into that position but we couldn't because they were still rolling through so we created a new position number but when they left we didn't end their position number so it's a lot of those

189each one of these and there are literally 300 of them or so have a story and we went through each and every single one of them and then we sat down with our Union partners and discussed exactly what they were we had great discussions with wdea and then I had online discussions with CSEA and they've approved this maneuver to eliminate this effectively given us the opportunity now to run consistent up-to-date reports so we can go to meetings with our site leaders and say you know this is the true FTE that we estimate that you will need to run your school rather than looking at our reports and thinking that they have an open or available 30 some odd you know teachers or another additional 10 bus drivers or whatever for At Any department so this

190will help us um condense all of that down to a usable and real uh report and it was a good explanation well thanks when we all saw 148 said oh my God that's a budget come coming on I was struck when it was first explained to us that at 148 we have about 500 employees roughly that's a 30 sort of shaking the leaves and the trees to say and what struck me is there's so many point ones Point twos Point threes and little pieces and programs changes and schools were Consolidated thank you so much for all of you and you hit the one of the key questions I had was that there was involvement deep and thorough with both the labor groups um and so thank you for for to you and them and everybody

191you know at payroll and business office to just clean the house on this so that we can start fresh any other comments or questions from the board the only thing is is I would next time use the analogy more of like Keys instead of chairs because when you were starting them again oh my God this musical chair somebody got it yanked out for Monday they're all chasing around each other and versus all the keys that you accumulate late and you can't remember what that key went to anymore and you've put it in every it's okay Grandpa it is you know and I have a truck on the side and I put the keys and it didn't work so that one's thrown out so I'm just saying I like that just he ran all of this

192uh he he straddled both departments and he's been leading these 90-day uh meetings with all of us and he really planned it out extremely well he marshaled all the resources LED all the meetings and did a fantastic job so wonderful and any comments from the audience on this and Pete we we were adjusting resolution numbers before we came over here okay so 10 that's 5.9 that's the school we have eight and 5.6 so this is 11 I think okay there there is a resolution number that needs to get reconciled for this gen we will sort out which one it is since we've done them out I think it may be 11. yeah that's fine we had two we were looking at and they were both ten so let's we'll whichever one this is when it's

193left over and we've done all the rest of them but we will need a roll call vote for this as a resolution and thank you Pete for that explanation in Austin for leading the charge on the key chair thing that we did I'm here for you yes yes okay uh we're rolling now 5.6 uh public hearing on this efficiency of instructional materials resolution 23-8 assistant superintendent Ferrera you know we can almost just do it from is this like resolution night or something this is like yeah right and since I knew and it's my first year doing this I didn't realize this had to get done so I'm doing it um normally it would be done earlier in the year and it has been put on the board calendar for next year to be done at

194an earlier time um so this is a notice of public I mean this is a resolution for a sufficiency of instructional materials um we did post a public hearing notice um to alert the community regarding this um and voting on this will basically um uh tell the community that we have sufficient academic content standards covered through our textbooks our science equipment our supplementary material and that all of our students have equal access to these okay so uh in that vein I will open the public hearing on the sufficiency of our instructional materials for item 5.6 any comment from the public on that seeing none we will close the public hearing I think we can bring it back to the board then for a motion um and this is 2308 do we know that for sure

195Jen yes yep okay so it would be a motion to approve then now that we've had the public hearing the resolution 2308 or whatever number ultimate I don't want to second guess the numbers but they say it is a resolution so we would need a motion and a second on that um of all motion okay now Paul is the first and rich is the second Thank you Rich well done um preferential oh so this is a resolution so by roll call please yes yes student board member Jackson yes okay thank you moving on to 5.7 the California minimum graduation waiver which I believe was alluded to and student board member Calgary's report about things change over time talk to us Sharon about this so this is a waiver that we're requesting from the board to

196actually um benefit um specific students who have received special education services and are not on track to meet all of the local requirements they are on track to meet the state requirements but not all of the local requirements um this surfaced partially because of a legislative report that I attached here that specifically called out the need for California to respond better to students with um special that are receiving special education services um and uh to allow for Equitable access for graduation these students should be through their IEP process allowed a graduation waiver saying that they can graduate with the minimum requirements if if we can show that um as a school and as a district we have provided as much support as we could and in the wake of covid about six I believe of

197our of our special education students really are struggling to meet the local requirements but would meet the state requirements and I did ask Mr Williams to come and speak on this because he is seeing this firsthand at his school site and has more information about data and as we're getting close and once you're done principal William I would like the director of special ed to come up if because I want to see if this is a do we need to consider some proactive IEP adjustments and limitations on that but that's the second question go ahead so um you know we spoke about covet and there's a couple of other issues one is that oftentimes that we provide a level of of services that um cannot be provided at our alternative education schools and so those

198students were never moved over um because of the level of services they were receiving so they were kind of kept on the 220 track for much longer than they probably should have and then so this would Rectify it and just in the California minimum you know is Reading Writing and arithmetic you know it's the electives that are removed a year of English is removed but they're still doing two years of science two years of History two three years of English uh algebra one plus or math one plus an additional course two years of PE they're still doing real you know a lot of academics but what we're removing mostly is the electives that we've added which are often difficult if they are receiving additional Services um because so many of our electives are in the

199core program that they're they they did not have access to those either so absolutely moving forward forward we need to make sure that every student has an opportunity for free and public education and the goal to achieve that but out of you know a senior class of you know over 350 we are looking about six students that lost so many credits during coven that are you know they didn't benefit from having that credit reduction that the last two years of students got okay thank you for generally for our IEPs this way is this waiver sufficient to that that we're we're coming up towards the end of a school career for these students and making a change is there things that we should be looking at for next year's senior class perhaps so between I'm just

200wondering if we can get ahead of this and if it's coming up and you know what alternatives are we thinking about so it's not really sort of the answer to this but what it what does this mean are we going to see something like this again and and how can we help with that certification is going to align to whatever um educational schedule the student has so this is a the minimized um credits incorrect me if I'm wrong are available to all students we're focusing on students with disabilities because we know the overall graduation rate is lower um and so whatever the team whatever the parent decides as far as uh credit the amount of credits if they want to go this path we'll align the IEP to meet that students needs in whatever classes

201they take do you see with this action we're taking that we will do some additional inquiry into adjustments for other students who are underclassmen or Juniors I mean there's maybe crops of kids at least if the covet is a is a setback consequence are we going to need to address this and do you need anything for us for that one of the main factors was before last year we had two cores that were called SGI cores we have been phasing those cores out I see and that's one of the major reasons why they were not able to access many of these general education classes so that since Ms Ryan has come on board we've been phasing those courses out which should Rectify it but it will take a couple of years okay thank you I

202think that's a good context for us to have and thank you uh for coming up our other graduation waivers um that are very similar for homeless Youth and Foster youth as well okay any other questions from the board about this no okay um this is good a great that's a great summary that was wonderful um okay you need a motion then for 5.7 the California minimum graduation waiver is explained I'll make that motion okay motion by Rich second by Paul all those in favor preferential voter number one okay one in favor aye aye that's one three zero two thank you you can now go home call uh call the athletic director whatever time zone she's in uh okay thank you and now she's back after being talked about such 5.8 consideration of discussion of the

203vapa Strategic Arts plan superintendent Decker and thank you for your patience in waiting around Miss Robertson as well I mean of course I'm not going to be the one to present this it's going to be Miss Robertson but uh the reason that she's here is because there's been quite a bit of discussion around this plan and she's going to give you kind of an overview of what prop 28 is and isn't and um a conceptual timeline don't hold us tightly to the timeline it's a conceptual timeline that we put together uh to try to give you some some idea of what we're doing who are you looking for Bill yeah was she coming up she yeah oh man okay never mind again okay I'm sorry beautiful assistant superintendent Ferrera is sitting next to me because

204we did work on this together and um Jeremy was then she'd go let me run and talk to Jeremy and then she called me back and we were going back and forth on this so this is something that has been a big career change for me personally I just have to say this I have learned way more about school Finance than I've ever known I've learned way more about HR I'm learning more about budgeting it's been really really fabulous um and really learning about how um this type of funding with a state past proposition can give us huge opportunities to make a difference in the lives of our students [Music] so this proposition 28 information so far has been a moving Target and every time I look up at the CDE site or I look

205at we have emerging experts in this field every time it seems to change a little bit so what I'm going to tell you right now and I think it's starting to settle is what we know so far so the purpose is to increase I'm sorry my dog tripped me so I've got this silly cane um the purpose is to increase access equity and quality in an Lea's Arts education program um the exciting thing is the funding is ongoing it's permanent until it would need to have a a two-thirds majority um in the legislature to change it because it was approved by voters um all the funding must be spent on Arts education I'm going to explain to what is not Arts education a little while um it's intended as a supplement to help to either

206keep us at or if we have the opportunity to go beyond what we spent in 2122 so that's the CDs decided that that's the um year that we're going to use as our Benchmark um the yearly funds will get funds each year um it's roughly um one percent of um the the um prop 98 funding from so we get it's whatever that is of the given year um and yearly funds can be encumbered over three years I'll talk about that a little bit later um and it is a use it or lose it any funds that are not used after three years are returned to a prop 28 general fund so we have to be really really aware that we're using them and that they're that they're going to be encumbered over three years and

207every year there's a new three-year cycle we also know that there have been some current estimates put out this might change with the um May budget revised but at this point this is what we have um there's per pupil spending as well as additional for Title One qualified pupils um this is these are and these are unduplicated and um for us it comes out to about 500 000 um in the coming year the also um there is a requirement of how we spend the funding the funding ratio so it's 80 Staffing I'll talk about this more in depth in a minute 19 materials and supplies and one percent Lea administrative costs we also are going to be required to submit an annual report um about our expenditures and program data and outcomes we're waiting on

208that format from the CDE we're also and then we're also waiting to find out um if it's going to need to be board approved we're guessing it probably will be of course um you got to make sure all the all the all the eyes are dotted all the t's are crossed now we're also there are things that we're still not sure about and there is a CDE um they have a frequently asked questions but they also have a question email that you can send emails and a group of us we met eight different districts at the beginning of the month um are starting to put together a list of questions that we're going to send as a block to the CDE so that we're not um just sending pop-up questions to them so we're hoping

209to get a big group so some of the questions are can we have a centralized process for the funds we don't know yet at this point it says School sites now there is a way to have centralized so that centralized and then working with the school sites but we're not quite sure yet um we don't know what the format for the accountability reporting is going to be um we're not as 100 sure how much money we're going to receive yet because of May revise um the state has not been clear exactly what those one percent administrative costs are we don't know if they can be used for leadership the Apple coordination but at one percent it's probably going to come out to something more along the lines of um administrative costs like our payroll or

210our um or other business services and there's going to be a waiver process we don't spend the money and within three years they haven't told us what that looks like yet and we already talked about the board approval now a lot of schools have been getting really really really creative on what they're calling a vapa expense um critical education though they have Arts Community entertainment are not under this because there's their own funding and after school programming is not part of this but Arts programs can be funded through ellop um enrichment programs are not part of this um facilities and infrastructure are not part of it non-arts programs so you cannot put them towards a gate program or a non's Arts Club or a sport things like that also cannot pay for transportation yes on

211the after school program would a marching band be considered an after-school program even if you have like a if it is Club no if it is considered part of the instructional day yes so if you made it into a zero period or a seventh period Then yes it would it would need to be an actual section when kids get a grade and all that stuff yeah yeah I mean it could be it could be credit no credit I mean well no I mean like when I was in the different bands we had jazz band was the zero period marching band was after but we still got a grade for the class and we got credit for it so it was considered academic it would need to be a rostered class okay um essentially in Aries

212um so Staffing 80 this is a big part of it um we're already having trouble getting teachers but the good news is we can use existing credential teachers in our district and new sections or new grade levels count as um additional Staffing um you can't have new teachers you can also use this for classified so if we have specific instructional Assistance or support people or coaches meaning um instrumental coaches dance captains portfolio assistants those types of things those can be used for Staffing uh materials and supplies 19 these are all of the materials that we use to to deliver and for students to be successful with the Arts it can also include so things like consumables non-consumables like instruments also can be used for repairs and maintenance because a lot of our non-consumables get old

213or get need to be cleaned um Arts related technology that's if it's being used in the Arts classroom so for instance if you are using if you're buying a computer specifically for the digital production class that would be an example um no that's not a good example SCT um for the visual arts art one class for example um curriculum materials and it can be used for Arts experiences this is an important one um Staffing does not include mousse with um Arts nonprofits so in order to bring teaching artists from Community groups we would need to use this under materials and supplies so it can be a guest artist it can be an assembly a field trip those types of things for Arts experiences I know I'm going fast I'm trying to you can always stop

214me I did talk with the Lea administrative costs I won't read it it's similar these are kind of some of the things that might be might be used for um as it has not a lot not a big amount um and then okay we just went through all the prop 28 do you want me to pause and have any questions or prop 28 before I move on okay good so now we're going okay this is coming actually yeah go for it but it's most more to Austin so Austin we know that we now have that prop 28 money it's estimated here now at half a million I think at one time we thought it might have been around 600 Grand what I want to know is yes we got a half a million that's dedicated

215and here it is and I'm sure there's going to be all kinds of strings attached to it like everything else is what did we have taken away from us though um so what we had taken away was the Arts music and instructional materials uh block grant the it still ends up being better for us and the fact that prop 28 is going to be ongoing but when prop 28 was enacted the Arts music and instructional materials block grant was taken away in a chunk that would result in roughly one year's worth of our funding from prop 28. so short term works for us long term better for us okay so it's not an ongoing loss correct Okay so for simple budget wise our first year or status quo we we our block grant got replaced

216with prop 28 but then going forward well yeah but then we still but they're not going to renew that Grant it was like we lost 8.50 and we gained this so in the second year we have a little bit of a surplus third year we're finally netting the full 500 000 if you think about it okay so in three years from now we are going to have a half a million dollars a year plus reminders more than we would normally have gotten anyway so it is a net have so we didn't get the rug pulled out from us per se I mean I kind of feel like Snoopy a little bit you know Ball's gone but it's it was just a for just one quarter we're actually gonna net net long term we are going

217to have money then okay because I was because I'm thinking like wait we're planning on things that we don't really have but we really will it's just it's going to be delayed about a year and a half or so does that sound right rich I will say too this week we were told that this was the first time in history that that's ever happened that the governor um when I say we a group of cbo's for Sonoma County we're told that it was the first time the governor has ever pulled prior year funding that was already given and then um I guess there were within 10 or 15 districts in California that have already spent all of the money and we're gonna have to pay money back yep luckily that's not us but yeah okay

218so thank you so much for bringing it up rich um because I was actually going to address that because as I said I've been reading every single thing I can possibly get my hands on with prop 28 and several of the um the legislative analysts groups and and as well as create California um are saying wait a year they're saying strategic plan do the things that are not um fiscally heavy get your get your feet under you so then when it when the funding starts to stabilize then you start really acting on things that are going to be um require funding and that doesn't mean we don't do things that are positive for kids in the interim there are some things and we're going to talk about in a minute so are we ready the

219really good news is yes I said yes and no but really yes I got rid of that I didn't know came back I wasn't supposed to it was gone um so we are um I like to think of this process as a pyramid with a big Arrow going up the side so really the funding for prop 28 is going to be um it's going to help with our general fund and it's going to help with our site finding Baseline so that includes our staffing and our basic materials for our programs anything above that becomes supplemental it's going to help us find enrollment changes it's going to help us and it helps increase equity and access anything else above that we get to really innovate and play we'll see if we get there but we will

220because in addition to what we're doing in those bottom tiers at the same time leadership's going to be the duck under the water paddling also looking for other ways to bring other Revenue sources in things such as grants things such as strategic Partnerships um and having leadership throughout so that just like we heard in our um our American Indian education program we are constantly going to be assessing and seeing how things work and that's the really what what leadership will be doing we'll be gathering information and um and helping us pivot as we go to make the best choices for kids this is the brag slide we are in I gotta tell you as you said earlier we're people envious we're doing pretty well here we've got a lot of things that we're able to

221do and we're able to hit the ground running a little bit better because we're already being successful we already offer it's not necessarily comprehensive but we already offer things in every Arts discipline within our district we already have um credential music teachers in our district some of our our part our neighboring districts do not have that um we have something that a logistics have we have a really strong AME CTE program so we we will not replace that that will continue to go and that will help go hand in hand with our Arts programs we'll have our traditional Arts programs that are going to help students gain skills and then they'll go to the CTE programs to do applied experiences with the Arts um we have we already have a strategic plan we get to

222revise one so we're not having to start from scratch that's huge um we have some really wonderful Community Partnerships and this is the biggest thing we have an Arts positive School Board District leadership faculty staff and community that is huge that's what I get to brag about every single time I meet other people in the Arts and they or they don't necessarily brag they just say I say they say wow what are you guys doing oh wow you mean you get to actually get things done in the Arts yes because we're all on the same page that's huge um and then as I said this wasn't a no before it decided this slide was different how did it end up like this we look we look at a very different slide and it was the

223one I so what the slides had a vision I'm going to just tell you what this slide said so this is how can we leverage eventually it was I looked at this from a deficit perspective but in talking with Jeremy and in talking with um Sharon really this isn't these aren't deficits these are opportunities that we have as a district with as we start thinking about strategic planning we start thinking about how we're going to leverage prop 28 funding they're opportunities that we have to examine our current practices so for example for example um we're gonna look at vertical articulation we started that process in our first strategic plan experience but we haven't finished it but also that changes as our enrollment has changed in a certain class new classes are coming in um we

224are also going to be looking at it's a huge one and um I wish Molin Ali was here because it was one of the ones that she put back in my ear as well was we want to look at the Arts as Arts education through a lens of diversity equity and inclusion huge thing that we have an opportunity to do we also have a huge opportunity to respond to the needs and interests of students that is one that is so important because what I think Arts education is may not be what somebody who is 20 30 years younger than me thinks is and I'm experienced that every single day in the classroom with it's this almost especially coming out of covid there's some cognitive dissonance and big question is what are the Arts and we're

225going to talk about that um and we have also um we have a really big opportunity and with Heather Bailey now even better um we get to increase communication about the Arts education programs in our district and that's both internally so that the folks in our district know what's happening but also externally with our community um I think these are huge opportunities that we can capitalize upon and we can really use as um idea starters in the Strategic Arts plan process I'm gonna get rid of this I left that I took that slide out so another thing strike out anywhere on these slides that say Vapor coordinator that's going to be something that the the that is going to be discussed at a later date or maybe even taking off the table we don't know

226at this point I'll interject so thank you so Elizabeth created this this what this version that you're seeing and submitted it to Sharon and shared submitted it to me and so what my my direction was you know what while we may or may not support of Apple coordinator we need to go through the process of reaching out to people and seeing exactly how we want to spend these funds versus us making the determination so I said let's not put it in there let's go through our process and then let's see what what comes Rises to the surface completely um so so as Jeremy started by saying this is a an idea of a process this is a process that we could do relatively quickly because we're in a good position but we could also spread

227it out if we wanted to take more time and um and even just include more viewpoints um but we could even start in May um meeting is an ad hoc committee um to start identifying priorities in the Strategic plan um we we also can identify any additional resources we need what other information do we need as we're as we are doing strategic planning um also and this is an important one um even though it really comes to an action item when we get to an action plan about Staffing but we need to be aware of it because if we wait too long we won't be able to deal with any staffing so if there's any potential Staffing changes meaning we change somebody to a different grade level or something like that or if we need

228a new hire somewhere which we may not um those will need to be done within the next few months I would think because or you can tell me not but I would think if we waited too long there just won't be anybody Liz Elizabeth can I ask you a clarifying question because I got new information from your presentation and that other people are waiting to implement because my understanding was that we had to implement next year because that's when we received the funding so if we can wait to implement then we can go through a much better process okay that's new information for me so and that new information I'm sorry it's not in here because I got it after we finished the slides okay so it's new and it's really the talk that's been

229happening in the last two three days it makes more sense um and I think it's great I think it's wonderful um the and then in June um that's when we maybe start to bring in a few more representatives from the community to look at the um proposed priorities and then also um Implement any needed as I said we can even take those Staffing changes if we're not if we're going slower we may not even need that but um but really a chance to start getting Community input um July this is where um we can't we kind of this becomes a a district task of really putting together all of the thoughts in a draft and I know our board may want to be a working board and be part of that but I don't know

230at this point um and to create but in in July really kind of Wordsmith that strategic Arts plan and then also do a draft of potential action items within that um it might have it might include Financial details deadlines specific metrics those types of um of items uh August and we may say this might be October October November December we'll have to see um but the board will approve a final draft of the FBA strategic Arts plan now one thing that might be beneficial to doing it earlier rather than later with our strategic Arts plan is that will give us a plan working in that first year so that we because the plan is ideas and goals and priorities but the action plan is well actually as I said act upon so um getting that

231strategic Arts plan approved is going to allow us to start working on and and doing um laying the the groundwork for the fine the second year in which we actually maybe start spending um also after the board approval of the action of the of the Strategic Arts plan then we start um looking through the um and creating it looking at the action plan and starting to plan some implementation and for the rest of the year starting to implement the things that we can do that are not Financial based so for instance increasing communication that's not going to be extra but because we already have a a person who does um communication maybe it's um creating more communication or more collaboration between two sites that's not necessarily going to cost us more money those types of

232things reaching out to families to have them come and give their input on the Arts not necessarily more funding so those types of things it's kind of like um as a laying the groundwork or getting your infrastructure in before we move into the heavier things um and then also I think even without even if we're not spending more in the next year I think we're going to want to really focus on data collection to see with the things that we have implemented to see what what has happened and to collect the data analyze and then still come back and Report where we are at after the first year and where we're looking to go the following year but I think we're ready I think we can hit the ground running and I think we're ready

233I think at least I know I'm excited to collaborate and ready to go and um we're gonna know even more um my I don't know if anyone else is going but I'm going to um a regional one day mini conference in Oakland Free Conference um that that's gonna be on with some of the emerging Leaders with prop 28 so I'll come back knowing even more and I'll make sure I share out anything I get with the board members in our leadership anybody I'm happy with any questions or anything it was a lot like we have a long time to say it so thank you very much Elizabeth any questions or comments from the board okay um we need to talk about how we start to roll in May I would like to see some incremental

234at least explained as additional investment or enhancements for the 2324 school year something and maybe it's that we spend on planning and strategic planning or uh something something something and you know there's a 100 or 200 Grand in there so we get into the 24-25 and we have 300 000 left from the first year that we're going to get and and add it to the five and just figure that out but I I think it is important from a political and public relations piece to maybe part of its communication that it's culture and communication is not necessarily you know hard dollars you know higher back 21 of those 143 ftes that we cut earlier today but um I I do think that that's important and that that kind of gets to the lcap and waving

235into budget but that as much sometimes and we didn't share but we'll talk when we get the other board members together on that sort of detailed Baseline analysis you did which I thought was very very helpful because I think even promoting some of that doesn't require new investment it's again kind of say hey in case you didn't know we're spending you know 1.6 million dollars on the Arts now on an ongoing maintenance basis or whatever that is when you add in the FTA so just a thought that I'd like to weave in yeah anybody's interested in that document I've it's a living document so um I actually added a new tab I'm I'm now estimating um I'm doing sample um materials and supplies costs I asked um all of our Arts teachers and our elementary

236teachers who do arts integration for sample supply lists and I'm doing um sample how much it would be per good and amazingly our teachers they must have known each grade level is doing about 19 it was right on so so I think if you could send that with to Sharon and Jeremy get that we'll talk next week and we can push that out to the whole board I think I'd like everybody to at least see that we can maybe put some narrative about that those sheets will look at it again I got it after I missed the meeting that you guys had you had prepared it which I'll apologize for again um but I think that would be a valuable thing because generally I think up here there is not that level of awareness of

237what's out there what is costing there may be low-hanging fruit and bang for a buck from a Communications collaboration piece that could roll in you know with the thumb on the scale for 23 24 school year Jeremy chairman you you have that document already it's the same document well put the supply put the supply tab on there though that's a great thing to have yeah that's not yeah it may not be the sexiest thing but that's where across the spectrum of the district it really impacts down that we're following up on I Aspire with that Arts integration brief synopsis or not it's been a mammoth task to try and um coordinate all of our schools and really build a strategic Arts plan that is realistic and can come to fruition so I'm really proud of

238her work she is tirelessly um labored over this and meets with me on a consistent basis to to make sure that our students are getting the best Arts education that they can hold yourself sorry the delay in how they rolled this out it made it really difficult on school districts so we kind of started without having all the information and I know a lot of places just waited right so well and I appreciate that and I would at least want to be clear prop 28 is nice and new what we have in our strategic plan Sharon and and we have things that are off the shelf that are actionable aspirations I think that has set and Elizabeth you know knows about that it sat Mora button for a while there may be utility and parts

239of it there may be place we say yeah we wouldn't want to do that again but there are parts of it also that we never really reached for because I remember back in the day Bullwinkle said I can't believe you got all this stuff in your Arts plan and said what so that we can pick stuff and it got us three or four or five million dollars in Grants so I just think we need to synthesize that because this to me is prop 28 is good it's nice money that is plus and in addition to revisiting and and where we are right and so I'm just so the document talking about yeah um narrative tabs that I went through are existing strategic Arts plan and I pulled out everything that we have not achieved yet

240and I put it in there and then I also did kind of an informal listening tour this year anytime somebody mentioned something to me about the Arts I wrote it down and put it in one of those particular categories that are in this document and what we have are ideas which the committee is welcome to say no or hey that's a good idea but I really have been listening to our um our constituents here in our district okay um so I think this was a report right this is a discussion right no action needed on this um so thank you I mean I don't I don't think and we if we can finish in four minutes we won't have to have a special resolution to go longer than 10. okay all I wanted to say

241on this is that we do have a lot of things that we're not doing we can't afford right now but in the meantime while we're waiting for the funding to catch up to some of the things that we'd like to do there still might be grant opportunities and some other things that we can snag onto to get some funding to do some things a little earlier so if we can keep our eyes open for some of those opportunities that can help us accelerate things too okay five nine resolution 2310 declaring May 2nd 2023 as the day of the teacher Governor State Legislature has determined that May 2nd um extremely hard uh with this resolution to say you know what we care about you and May 2nd is your day and I will share for our

242friend Paul normally we would take the chance to each read a subparagraph of this resolution what I'd like to do is pass on that and the next time we have one of these things again perhaps we take this one and put it up at about 3.2 but it's it's important I think our culture is that we read these things when they are laudatory uh so uh with that any questions comments about resolution 2310 okay would entertain a motion and then we need to have a uh roll call vote Paul gets the first motion I thought the husband of a teacher would want to Second it oh I'll second yes thank you she'd probably still watched on TV unless the Warriors game went long I don't know and then as the son of an administrator all

243all but they have a teacher too he's playing at the Warriors game tonight in the house man okay with that roll call vote please yes outstanding one three zero two finally 510 consideration of the mou between CSEA and wusd the creation of new two new w-e-l-l job descriptions confirming rate of pay and position availability you're going to get the last word is the closer that and clean up all night so here we go um so if the board will allow it I would like to present only part of this the you will notice that the mou is not present in the attachments uh that was not settled yet we have made we have agreements on everything that's contained in the job descriptions including rain the pics of the mou that would support this have not

244been completed but uh in the interest of moving forward and hiring for these positions we would like to get approval for these uh jobs this evening so um I've I've presented some things that are similar to this uh earlier this year but we've been working really um hard to since October really with CSEA to create uh combined to facilitate um some before and after school care Plus uh portions of the day that are spent not working for the well program working on campus for both the mornings and the evenings in order to stabilize that well program and we feel if we are able to create these larger combined jobs these eight-hour positions we're going to have enough people there to support our staff and our students and our families in those morning hours and then

245we have that that same level of support during the day because those people will go from working with the students in the well program to being instructional assistants and in the classroom during the day and then you'll come in with your later hours you'll have your 11 to 6 uh crew who will finish out the day working in the classroom in the middle of the day and then finishing up at the end of the day in the well program so hopefully this will stabilize that program and if we can get these approved we can fly them so let me ask you but that sounds great um do we need to meet specially to try and get the mou expeditiously approved before May 18th our next meeting as a as just a heads up but we

246can certainly gather a quorum if that would be helpful just talking about when we hire and I'll speak to that okay yeah no I don't believe we do so really the mou outlines kind of the process to get to this point with csca uh because we currently have individuals working these part-time positions for instructional AIDS and they only use going to kind of detail that we are noticing them that those positions are going to go away but we are essentially kind of double employing for a year we're keeping those three-hour positions through next year they have a right to the new eight-hour positions but do should they not decide to take them then they will not have a right to a position at the end of the year so they're getting their shred a refusal

247that's really what the mou is going to detail now I understand why the keys and chairs had to make space for a series of well positions that sort of overlap as we get it right sized I'm being completely glib about that but I get it so yeah okay I just wanted to make sure you knew and to say out loud in the event that we have you know the need to get together doesn't sound like there is we we can always do that I think I can bring it after the fact okay and we should move forward with hiring all right so uh need a motion to approve I'll make it um I will move that we approve the uh modified version of item five 10 is there a second second second by trustee corgano

248this is a straight vote preferential vote number one aye okay all in favor aye okay that'll pass one three zero two um unless there is anything burning in people's pockets that needs to get talked about uh I want to thank the the the loyal seven that's eight eight that sit out there uh yeah the magnificence the Magnificent so there's eight yeah um thank you all we are doing so much stuff I think we had some interesting discussion and again when we start 40 minutes late but we weren't fiddling our time around over there across the street either so thank you all for everything you're doing um there is so much of it and it makes it exciting to come in here I just want to end with let us know what we can do to

249help right um you know I think we had some interesting policy discussions today and other things and it's like that's how we approach it you know when we sit down to talk about the agenda is what do you need where are we going you know is there a shift in in Direction so uh with that I would entertain a motion from our Collegiate analysis analyst Justin Jackson Caligari that we might adjourn I'll make a motion to adjourn done [Music]