001good evening everyone hopefully you all can hear me okay I think we are ready to begin uh I cannot hear you so if you can hear me can you please just give me a thumbs up and that tells me that we are ready to begin thank you director kin I can see your thumb up so we are ready to begin uh before we begin our meeting uh the board will actually take um a special action item just very quickly uh to approve my um participation tonight virtually and so at this time I'll entertain a motion from the board to move forward with that I move that we include uh president Brown virtually thank you so much director cor is there a second I can second thank you director vasu dev has been properly moved and
002seconded all those fa in favor please signify with the sign of I iers have the same sign extensions the eyes have it and the motion carries at this thank you so much I need to the roll call since you're participating remotely sorry yes ma'am oh please do we will take a we will uh go back to that vote you all um and any vote that we take tonight will be a roll call vote and so uh please pause me if I call for eyes or uh opposers because Miss chz will take a roll call vote for every single action item that we take tonight and so at this time Miss Travis can you please call the role for the vote absolutely uh director anas director vasev we are uh voting on um my participation V
003virtually um so when Miss Travis calls your name uh we are saying yes or no or abstaining from the vote Yes uh director Jen corn yes hi uh director Jennifer shinoski is excus this evening vice president Mike Chang I'm uh president kadia Brown yes thank you very much um all right we will now uh go ahead and get started with our agenda thank you everyone uh who came out tonight uh first I'd like to apologize for the tardiness of the board uh and thank you so much for your patience as we were um handling our Clos session items um our board bylaws caus that we do not begin our Open Session uh before 700 p.m. and so we do have the flexibility uh to begin after 700 p.m. and so tonight we needed to take
004the time um to exercise that right so thank you all so much for understanding and apologies again uh for keeping you all waiting uh at this time we need to approve our uh meeting agenda for uh tonight February 5th 2025 are there any corrections that need to be made to the agenda before we move forward with the vote Yes president Brown I'd like to ask that agenda item 12.9 be moved to action and tonight's agenda thank you so much we will remove 12.9 from a consent item and we will move it uh tonight for Action we will take action uh on this item after our facilities update and so this item will become 14.2 on our agenda are there any other question or Corrections that need to be made to the agenda this evening okay
005hearing none I'll entertain a motion to approve the agenda I move to do so move by director Chang is there a second I'll second with the recommended changes seconded by uh director vasudev with the recommended changes Miss chus can you please call the role uh director uh Mike Chen I'm sorry director Jen corn hi director anav vasev hi um Vice uh president Brown I um a new BTA student rep is joining us on the Das today so I'll be Lea Garcia so I'll be calling her for um for uh for vote as well uh student director Lea Garcia hi vice president uh Mike Chang hi and president kadia Brown hi the motion passes thank you so much H director Garcia thank you so much for joining us tonight and representing your school we are very
006happy to uh have you join as our student board director um and hope that you will find uh tonight's meeting informative uh there will be an opportunity for you tonight to speak um during the board committee comments to just welcome yourself to the community um and say a little spill about um yourself and your school and your plans uh while being on the board and so we are delighted to have you here uh and are very excited to um to work with you so welcome at this time Miss charvis can you actually call the role of the board um director Jennifer shanoski is excus this evening director anav vasev now pres Jennifer K I'm here student director Lea Garcia present vice president Mike changen present and president kadia Brown I am present thank you so
007much director Chang we are ready for your report out from close session uh thank you so much um uh today uh we did have a closed session and um reporting first ly on a special session from last Thursday January 30th uh the board received guidance from the district with regard to 3.1 uh the district recommendation was moved by director Korn and seconded by director badev board voted unanimously to approve with regard to 3.1.2 the district recommendation was moved by director vasad Dev and seconded by director Chang board voted unanimously to approve with regard to 3.1.3 the district recommendation was moved by director horn and seconded by director vasad Dev board voted unanimously to approve with regard to 3.2 um the district recommendation was um mov by President Brown seconded by director vasad Dev and the
008board voted unanimously to approve I'm sorry that's for the second one um uh with the first one the board requested further information and provision of documents to review in order to ensure that the new board is fully informed on this pre-existing matter and with regard to 3.3 um with regard the uh that item the district recommendation was moved by director vasev um seconded by director Chang the board voted unanimously to approve um with regard to 3.4 uh there were two items 3.4.1 the district's recommendation was moved by President Brown seconded by director Korn and the board voted unanimously to approve with regard to item 3.4.2 the district's recommendation was moved by director K seconded by President Brown and the board voted unanimously to approve um with regard to 3.5 the board decided to table this
009to the next meeting U with regard to 3.6 um The District's recommendation as 3.6.1 the district's recommendation was moved by President Brown seconded by director K the board voted unanimously and something I forgot to note under 3.2 um uh with regard to the second issue there there are two potential cases director Chang myself recused himself and I think we have covered it all yes we have thank you so much for your report out from close session director Chang super superintendent for Morel whenever you are ready we will see receive your superintendent comments thank you madam president good evening BD family evening so this is February and this February like every February BD recognizes Black History Month uplifting honoring and celebrating the many contributions made by the black community here in Berkeley and across our country
010and our world this year's theme is African-Americans and labor honoring the work both free and unfree skilled and unskilled vocational and voluntary of African-Americans in shaping and transforming our country and our bu USD our Berkeley Community we are fortunate for the black labor that in its excellence has supported and transformed our district in so many ways and continues to do so every day um as usual we have teaching and family guides to celebrate Black History Month grade level reading list bu USD staff posters and a variety of other resources available on our Black History Month page Resource page and our dist on our district website um recent times we know have not felt easy which is why this week during National School counseling week we take time to honor our bud coun counselor another one
011of the many groups of adults who take care of our babies here in B USD um our counselors Center our students in the work that they do every day time and again these dedicated professionals meet students where they are collaborate with teachers staff and families hold space during challenging moments in our schools and create safe spaces where students can feel seen connected and supported in their personal well-being and their academic goals so we wanted to make sure that tonight we stop and we say be USD counselors we see you and we appreciate you and all that you do do y'all know what time it is it's actually 7:42 but that's not what I'm talking about um this is you heard our Associates who pretend to get excited it is survey time this is the time
012of the year where we do our annual BD planning survey this is a really important survey um we set a goal last year and exceeded that goal with over, 1500 responses from you all from our Educators and staff and from our students giving us feedback on the work that we're doing here in B USD and so each we invite this feedback and we're doing it again this year your feedback really matters not only as we uh engage in continuous Improvement and think about and rethink our Pro our progress towards our lcap goals but it's also very important as we continue to move along the path of creating a strategic plan for Berkeley Unified School District um these questions many of them are required um by law and then some of them you will find are
013just additional information that we think is helpful again as we work together towards our mission and vision um we want to ask again that parents and caregivers and and our students and staff take the time to fill out the survey and you can please check your email starting tomorrow with information of how to complete and submit your survey I know there have been many concerns regarding the encampment at Civic Center Park and our students safety coming to and from high school each day and quite frankly the safety of some of our adults and Educators as well in light of the incident reported to the BHS Community last week in which a student was inappropriately touched BC staff president Brown and I uh met with the mayor city manager chief of police and other City staff
014to coordinate and calibrate and think about an appropriate Collective response as well as how we can communicate to you our community to make sure that you know that we're doing all that we can to keep everyone safe I can share that the Berkeley Police Department has increased their patrols at the park including a bike Patrol um and we are working to work on flyers and information to make sure that our students and our staff know who to call and contact in case of feelings of unsafety or worry um but also we make sure that you all know the various protocols that we're working on together with that in mind Berkeley High School has a PTSA meeting this Friday um and it actually happens every Friday but this Friday in particular um mayor Adina isi will
015be joining that meeting with this particular encampment and the concerns um and the ideas of how to uh support both our unhoused but also to support and make sure that our students and staff are safe is the main topic so we invite you be BH BHS uh families and staff and students or just anyone in the B USD or Berkeley Community who's interested in that topic to please join I don't have the time but I will make sure to get that and get it out to you as well thank you very collaboration in action :15 um the BHS B PTSA meeting and again you do not have to be a BHS uh Community member or student or staff member to join and that would be with mayor Adina isi so please come out um do
016you have something that's broken listen y'all this is a whole interactive um so if you do you're in luck uh because the third B USD fixed Fest is this Saturday February 8th from 1 to 3:30 at Longfellow Middle School now it's a little bit you know misleading because I don't think they fix anything um but this free avenge Taps into the collective Genius of community members who offer their skills to help others learn how to repair their broken items everyone is welcome and there will even be special Hands-On repair activities for kids they fix anything they fix vacuum clean they fixed the vacuum cleaner okay um tonight's agenda want to direct your attention to tonight's agenda we have a couple presentations that we are excited about one is the long awaited facilities update um brought
017to you by our associate our assistant superintendent John khis and his amazing team and so if folks have questions about um some of the construction projects that are happening or that are on calendar to happen tonight is your night so please stay for that presentation we'll also have an update from our curriculum and instruction team um about our multilingual learner plan plan and the ways in which we're implementing that plan and progress monitoring and service of all of our um language Learners here in B USD I also want to call your attention to the various policies on our information items list including High School graduation requirements student use of technology and academic honesty some of those um policies are on for first read and that is the opportunity for the board to read and give
018feedback to staff before bringing it back for second read which is the time in which the board takes action on those policies so I wanted to call those to your attention and finally I want to do a couple welcomes before I wrap up my time I want to say welcome to Alicia Garcia who is our 11th grade student rep from BTA yay um she has attended uh BTA or Berkeley High for two years previous to coming to BTA and she's excited about joining the school board because she excited to advocate for others and I'm sure she'll sh more about herself and her interest U when it's her time to speak we also have an alternate for Lisa and that is Evelyn Velasquez is here this evening hi Evelyn Evelyn May big big so they can
019see so Evelyn Velasquez is also a senior at Berkeley technical um Technology Academy and before attending BTA she attended Oakland Military Institute and Evelyn says that she's really excited to be a part of the school board because she wants students to be more heard about their opinions and make systems in the district fair for all students a final welcome to the BD family not new to the BD family but definitely new in this capacity want to say hello and welcome and congratulations to Mrs Andrea Ambrose who has been a teacher at Berkeley Arts Magnet Elementary School for the past I know she's here for the past for the past nine years and Andrea will join Longfellow Middle School and the vice principal role so welcome to school ad I don't know you didn't get the
020memo huh welcome uh Andrea Miss Ambrose recently completed a graduate program to obtain her administrative credential and we are thrilled to place her in this administrative role at fellow but like I said she's been a longstanding educator and part of the B USD Community formerly a Bam um formerly working with the BAM students and now a Long Fellow so thank you for joining us in this new capacity we look forward to the amazing things you're going to do on behalf of students and families in B USD and with that President I'm done with my comments thank you thank you so much for your comments superintendent for Morel um we will now move on to um our Open session for uh for uh public comment public testimony um I since I am not there in person
021I've asked director Chang uh to please assist me uh with calling um all of the cards that are green so folks could um speak on various topics I will set tonight's speaking time at one minute per public speaker um however if there are groups and I believe director Chang we have a couple of groups who are going to speak tonight um their speaking time will be 5 minutes and I'm going to ask you all to please um prepare your comments accordingly so that you can get as many speakers um as you can within that 5 minute speaking period um it is always the intention of the board to prioritize our student speakers because we are all here in service of our students and so uh vice president Chang as you call up speakers tonight please
022ensure that you first prioritize our student speakers um and then uh move on to our groups and then find our individual speakers at this time I'll turn it over to you uh director Chang with a reminder that after we are done with all of the open comments in person you will then move on to um move on to the zoom comments uh beginning first with our student speakers who are uh interested in speaking on Zoom um those who are interested in speaking on Zoom who are students please identify yourself by putting student before or after your name so that director chain can ident ify you director Chang whenever you are ready to begin thank you so much president Brown um first up on students we have and please tell me if I've mispronounced your name
023and I'm having trouble with some of the handwriting M toy long fellow student hello my name is Marco soy I'm a sixth grader at long Feller Middle School I like my friends and teachers that are Longfellow Community I am here tonight to talk about the condition of our school and how disappointing I am that we cannot go to Old longf School in that our current school is going to be a smaller and noiser soon we have no play equipment the basketball hoops are broken the first two months of school so did the te ball the volleyball net broke soon after we are at 100 days at school and no improvement at lunch many of us just sit around for PE we walk to James Kenny but by the by the time we get there we
024have 10 minutes for PE and then we have to walk back now I'm told that the front of the parking lot is going to be a big construction project which I assume will be noisy and dirty you are also taking part of part of our play area away it is not looking good for me and no one has a plan for changing it in all three years in middle school thank you so much um next up with students we have Jade burough which who is apparently also Long Fellow thank you so much already on oh um hi my name is Jade and I'm a sixth grader at longf middle I'm really disappointed that we're going to have a constru project at our school I already moved school is in elementary school with Oxford and now
025I'm going to move again the old long fell was four blocks from my house and now it's a cold and tiring bike ride I really want to have a safe and quiet learning environment and space to play volleyball all the basketball hoops are broken and our volleyball net is destroyed all my king friends have a skate park two baseball fields a track and a huge grassy field but we have a concrete yard um I thought the schools are supposed to be fair thank you thank you so much next up we have former School Board president P levia Cutler thank you honorable superintendent board president School Board directors my name name is Beatrice Lea Cutler a former School Board member for 2000 from 2008 to 2020 and my daughter and sorry sorry I am um I'm
026the daughter of an undocumented parent and he was caught by ice one the same day my sister was born and my sister and I are considered what is now termed anchor babies because of undocumented status of my father though my mother was born in San Antonio Texas and as a US citizen still my father had to return to Mexico before becoming a California legal resident many years later both my parents are deceased but I know that they would be traumatized they would be traumatized um they would we'd be r- traumatized to know that our schools hospitals and childcare places where families participate and and visit are unsafe and unprotective please support 100% the resolution item 12.9 that is now going to con please support that in SBA 48 thank you thank you so much next
027up we have Matt lassner I'm pronouncing your name properly sure um I'm part of a group of parents Long Fellow and I don't know if you want to give us collectively five minutes also had a certain order in which we kind of wanted to Sure collectively five minutes and um uh if you want to come on up with the order with the folks okay that are speaking oh thank you all right so um we're here to speak on behalf of a growing number of current and incoming Longfellow students and their families Longfellow families are frustrated and angry by the lack of transparency and communication about the workforce housing project that is scheduled to begin in a month I'm here to voice our Collective frustration with BD's failure to acknowledge the gross inequities this project creates
028for those students at Longfellow compared to their peers at B USD we are here to ask BD to meet several conditions before breaking ground one search for a new site for Longfellow and move it there the ideal solution for many families if feasible would be to delay construction until Longfellows rebuild is done in 2027 short of that bosd should search for an alternative space or spaces King and Willard with their Library science classrooms athletic facilities Green Space adequate ventilation Gardens and other facilities have plenty of space for Portables moving Longfellow would not only ensure a standard learning environment it would alleviate principal Mitchell from having to keep an eye on Berkeley ad Adult School construction as well as Longfellows two so long as Longfellow remains at Berkeley adult school we want BD to address four
029areas of concern campus health and safety Traffic Safety equity and governance and communication regarding campus site health and safety first we want a site specific safety plan that accounts for the construction's proximity to students as well as sensitive populations in the neighborhood next we want to address noise we want BD to install and maintain a sound level recording device in every classroom along with other spaces indoors and out commit and writing to enforcing standards of acceptable classroom noise provides sound attenuation barriers barriers on all scaffolding on the East face of the new building it will be 60 to 70 feet tall and early in the project that height will exceed the 20 foot sound wall described in BD at the webinar in December create and and maintain a website with realtime noise readings and a
030log of average and exceeded noise levels for each recording device develop a series of actions to meet standards for noise should they be violated next regarding air quality in advance a construction BD needs to test indoor air quality and for mold through Berkeley Adult School when the windows are closed and the HVAC system is operating to sure they're acceptable to install and maintain an IND air quality recording device in every classroom install and maintain outdoor air quality recording devices in areas where students congregate commit in writing to enforce standards of acceptable indoor and outdoor air quality set by the US EPA for sensitive groups ensure that indoor and outdoor monitors record levels of carbon monoxide lead nitrogen and so on conu construction site safety we want to have you commit to ensuring safety precautions will
031be in place including locking away equipment when not in use storing hazardous material and waste properly commit and writing to ensuring that construction workers comport themselves properly while in proximity to middle school students regarding traffic and safety there have been three individuals hit already this school year so to ensure student pedestrian and bicyclist safety throughout the school day we want BD to provide traffic guards across San Pablo at Virginia across Curtis at San at Francisco across San Pablo at Virginia to ensure safe Crossings to James Kenny for PE move all pedestrian and bicycle traffic to uh Francisco street and we have a few others equity in Green Space is a major concern for Longfellow families we want BD to acknowledge and quantify disparities in access to Playing Fields gyms PE gardening and other green spaces
032between Longfellow and Willard Longfellow and King and Willard we want to ensure access to James Kenny PE uh Kenny park for PE recess and learns arrange for access to Cedar Rose Park and dedicate the entire back parking lot to Recreation and Sport for PE recess and after school by removing all storage containers in construction and uh regarding governance we want a dedicated staff member at B usd's expense not our principal to facilitate communication between BD and the construction team so there are many more additional things that we will forward to you documented and we're prepared to engage in continued actions in advocacy thank you so much please feel free to email with additional information thank you very much um vice president Chang a quick question uh do you currently have in your hand more than
033five um speakers cards regarding the Long Fellow um item um those appear to be the well there is at least one okay um I just want to make a note for the public um because I did there was someone who asked a question in regards to this earlier um so I want to make sure that we are um both transparent and Equitable to the community typically we allow five minutes if there are five or more speaker cards uh for a specific item if we do not have more than five speaker cards on that specific item it is really important that we are Equitable and provide only one minute um to each speaker um so director Chang as you continue with the public speaking period um this evening um let us please do so um and
034thank you all for the comments that you all made okay thank you so much you're welcome we're free to continue great just for the record we do have five but some were students um of the five thank and I believe three of their students were already given the opportunity to speak is that correct okay that's correct thank you um uh next up for public speaking we have Stacy Hara thank you thank you my name is Stacy Z Hara I have two kids at B USD uh an eighth grader at King and a senior at Berkeley High who you'll hear from later tonight I want to start by thanking all of you for taking so seriously the incident at Civic Park last week and the ongoing risk to the area I'm here to urge you to
035do more and do it fast I don't need to tell you that every single day BHS administrators manage a Litany of unknown unpredictable risks every day our students also manage the risk of just moving around in the world with a lot of unknown unpredictable risk this encampment is a known risk it is an actual live fire for which the city is holding the fire extinguisher and just doesn't want to squeeze the handle to put it out they have a lot of citizens with competing interest to balance kids should come first and I urge you to take on that voice as the school district and help them to prioritize our children thank you thank you so much also please feel free to email as all folks May um next on up is Daniel fredman oh okay
036I'm sorry so uh we will uh hear him in a bit we still have a number of cards here um in person isua buros oh you already went okay cool thank you and we have meline Roberts rich I believe is the last hi there howy everyone my name is mine Roberts rich I was in the class of 2012 at Berkeley High I'm here because I ran into a classmate of mine today actually excuse me last week I was behind um in line of some teenagers at CVS and I saw one of them pull out $3 worth of quarters to buy an Arizona Iced Tea and a large thing of Fritos and count out the quarters and it brought me right back to my high school days where I had the most inadequate nutritional education and
037I had very little money and um anyway I developed an eating disorder at age 11 and I finally saw solved it and I'm out of the woods now and I think that looking back Berkeley High despite it being one mile away from The Gourmet ghetto and Berkeley being the home of edible schoolyards at least when I was a student just had a very cursory nutritional education and I think Berkeley High students are particularly at risk because there is an open campus so if they aren't equipped with the tools to navigate nutritional choices then it's actually a very large risk for them so I will continue to come back and advocate for enhanced nutritional education for Berkeley High students thank you so much please feel free to email us um next sign up in person is
038Forest bori hi thank you uh everybody for listening to my comments so I'm a seventh grade world history teacher at longf middle school and as a teacher I pay into calers so does B USD so uh every paycheck that I get a little bit of that is going to go to Lockheed Martin the uh biggest weapons manufacturer in the world that's $176 that calers has invested in them caterpillar who we uh know demolishes homes makes military grade tractors and uh like those used in the death of Rachel Corey um we have $214 million invested in that Corporation Boeing makes guided bombs we have 200 million in that General Dynamics makes Munitions we have $85 million in that BTO destroys the environment we have $95 million in that volunteer makes surveillance for ice and other military
039operations we're giving them $45 million it would be phenomenal if B USD could align teacher values with I don't want to give them a scent ever it's completely against everything I believe in it's not cool thank you for your support and a resolution in the future feel free to follow up with an email thank you all right thank you inperson speakers now we're shifting to online and I'm I'm trying to see here if we have folks who have raised their hands four attendees and there is on I can see vice president Chang um there are two students who I was giving a heads up about um so first we'll have student um is that student Dior is the first one yes we'll have student followed by just student but I've been alerted that um okay
040here we go thank you Miss chares student Dior good evening we can hear you okay good evening my name is Dior and I'm Miss sophomore and Bridge in past meetings Bri Bridge seniors have shared about their college admissions and students have talked about the weight list but I'm here just to explain how important Bridge has been to me Bridge has supported me not only academically but mentally it has expanded my thinking and my desire to be a better student Mr picture my seventh period Bridge teacher is someone who I can talk to about anything can go to at any time because he is very understanding the people who work in Bridge all care about my education and will do anything to give us opportunities bridge is so important to me and so many others in
041this time of difficult budget cuts we ask you to prioritize our program students and families feel connected and supported and when we graduate we have every option open to us including for your colleges please prioritize Bridge thank you for your time and care thank you so much and miss Charles we have another student I believe the second student looks like um they might have left the meeting if they rejoin I will alert you but we can move on to the next five hands okay and the would that start with Laurel Livingston is is okay copy uh Laurel Livingston is going to be provided opportunity to speak no wait what so sorry one second okay what it's I can't see anything hello hello my name is Zaden I'm a sixth grader at Longfellow we want a
042real school campus like Willard and King Middle School I'm on the basketball team we don't have any um places to practice or play our games it's unfair to go to school at a construction site we should we shouldn't wait oh we students don't want to breathe just long fellow students are not getting the fair treatment we need thank you thank you so much is I believe next up we have Timothy Burrows Mr Burrows you have an opportunity to speak you appear to be um unmute Mr Bros okay there we go thank you uh to start I want to say that the the subsidized housing project uh for our teachers and staff set to be built at longf is definitely needed in our community what's also true is that this that is uh is that the
043school Community that's about to experience the construction project at the school site deserves a lot more proactive and transparent communication about the impacts and the implications of the project for our kids and for our our teachers to dat the communication has been sparse to say the least we found out from Berkeley side that the um that the construction at the original site will be delayed and extended and I think the Longfellow Community should be given the courtesy of some direct communication on that and I think that would go a long way uh my understanding is the superintendent plans to come to the Longfellow site uh and provide some more information soon but that's six months into the school year um and it would have been nice to have that conversation much earlier I think proactive
044um communication builds trust and understanding and makes things easier later and I think the opposite is also true the lack of communication really damages trust and and increases frustration and I think that's what you're hearing from several speakers tonight and followup with emails thank you thank you appreciate next on up we have and I apologize for any pronunciation uh mispronunciation smti Gupta waic hi good evening everyone I hope you can hear me all right can hear you okay so I A Long Fellow parent of one student soon to be a Long Fellow parent of two students So Long Fellow kids are already in an inequitable space for example my daughter she has leg spasticity due to cerebral paly um for PE she has to walk every single day outside of her school to a park
045and she comes home every evening complaining about leg pain and she refuses to wear her corrective boots because she does not feel safe wearing corrective boots in public streets because she has to leave her school every day for PE and she wants to participate in a PE we don't want to hold her back and she really wants to go with her classmates so that's just one example and so the parking lots or whatever other assets that Long Fellow current campus has needs to be turned into something for the children for PE for recess green spaces Etc not into construction sites so um you know the inequitable treatment the kids already face it it's going to amplify once the construction starts both for the kids and teachers they already get noise from the San Pablo Road
046right so they talk about how they can't open their Windows during instruction time during class time and now addition there will be construction noise so time is run out if you want to follow up with an email please do okay thank you um and uh speakers please remember you have a minute and you know we apologize but of course we have to to allow everybody to be able to speak and you'll hear the beeping noise next we have Daniel Daniel can you hear us you're on mute yeah just unmuted can you hear me yep great um I'm Daniel I have a kid in uh 10th grade and another in eth grade and I'm a member of the Berkeley High Safety Committee and the districtwide Safety Committee and the Pano and I'm here tonight to talk
047to say that our district has no comprehensive policies on gun violence prevention aside from three paragraphs buried on page 25 of the 106 page Bud parent student handbook which I know everyone in this room reads cover to cover there's no mention of gun prevention in and of our safety policies for example BHS safety plans were developed in 21 by a consultant focused on Ed code 35 924 compliant safety plans but their relevance and applicability to our community is unclear meanwhile experts including Specialists right here in Berkeley currently leading gun violence prevention for sfusd could help us Implement evidence-based locally informed improvements to prioritize school safety the district must take real action uplevel the role from coordinator to a full-time director of safety including gun safety add an additional SRO as planned in the 2021 reimagining
048the SRO led by Dr Shelly increased security offic Out Mr Daniel please uh email us any additional information um next up would be Laurel Laurel you're up next uh you're on mute hi I'm Laurel nestal I am a neighbor lives right next door to Longfellow Middle School as of now and because of the construction I want to demand that we get school zone signs on Francisco street Curtis and I think I believe there's already signs on uh Virginia that's it great thank you next on up we have Chris Rowan apologize for any mispronunciations Chris Laurel yeah Chris Chris is not up oh I'm sorry Chris's hand do not up so we actually are done with the except for one card Daniel freedomin he was online he was online previously we did call him great okay
049thanks that means that we're done with the public comment period thank you so much vice president Chang I appreciate your help at this time we will move um excuse me we will move from our public comment period uh to our committee comments um and I believe we have committee comments tonight um from daac and I believe they're committee comments from gack and if I have missed any other committee comments uh you are more than welcome to make your comments uh following daac and gack hello my name ISO I am a delect chair and delect representative from the schools and also I'm professor of practice at UC Berkeley at school of education so today I'm speaking on behalf of the parents students and also as an educator myself and a parent I'm originally from Istanbul Turkey
050and I want to thank and I'm grateful for all the support I have received as a parent from the L program so far because we came here three years ago and my son who has been diagnosed with I with ADHD and who struggled a lot with ad PhD but at the same time came here with no English now is very fluent in English and I but at the same time while uh expressing my gratitude on behalf of myself and the families whom I have interacted so far in the last three years I think that Berkeley UniFi School District serves as a very good model for other districts in with regards to implementing a very successful ell program in addition to this uh of course there are some challenges we have experienced I was lucky that
051as a parents we have and my son received a lot of support in his diagnosis under the IEP program but from my observations I've seen that not all the families are aware of the challenges their kids are going through so in our interactions in our elect meetings and elect meetings with the support of our great uh administrators we try to create that awareness amongst the families but we'll appreciate to receive more support from the district uh to support families and to create some structures uh and trying to create that aw awareness amongst the families who are may not be aware of the challenges their kids are going through at the same time the other challenge can be seen from the lances of the teachers because our elll teachers we have great teachers who are dedicated
052to create that impact in the lives of their students but some sometimes times because of their field they may not be aware of the challenges created with regards to or based on special education so this can be one of the pathways that can be created and to support teachers El teachers in the district and based on our conversations in our meetings I have learned that our uh program El program and the MTI language master program also Incorporated a new model which will will be shared I guess soon by our administrators uh that is a very important program focusing on Dual identified students who struggle both in between learning a new language and espe being under the spectrum of special education so we are very happy to hear that those developments will create an impact in
053the lives of families thank you so much thank you so much thank you as well for your comments uh next we will rece receive our gack comments followed by our pack comments good evening board my name is Rebecca lenson and I'm the co-chair of the gack stands for gender Equity sexual harassment advisory or committee um but I'm going to actually save my time and hand it over to students who've been directly affected um by the homeless encampment across the street from their school um good evening members of the school board my name is Isabelle noyan and I sit as one of the student Representatives on the gender equity and sexual harassment advisory committee otherwise known as gack um I am here to talk about the incident of sexual assault across from Berkeley High School that
054happened last week my own experience with the homeless encampment and to ask the school board to take action by working with the city a couple of weeks ago while walking to Trader Joe's for lunch I passed the homeless encampment that for those of you who don't know is is located right across the street from Berkeley High as I walked by someone shouted two deeply offensive cat calls feeling uncomfortable I chose to ignore it as so many of us are conditioned to do in these moments and on my way back I chose to take a different route that following week an email circulated informing us that on January 29th a student had been groped inappropriately by someone at the encampment both because of the type of person I am and because of my role on G-Shock
055I I talked to my friends and uh people I knew who frequently went to Trader Joe's at lunch and realized that my incident was not isolated many of them shared similar experiences of being cat cat called and whistled at this is not just a pervasive matter that affects female students it affects everyone male students who skateboard at the park have also faced harassment especially from aggressive dogs and their owners specifically on the note of aggressive dogs within the encampment one of our security officers was attacked and injured by one of these dogs I understand that this is a controversial issue and in no way is my speaking tonight meant to contribute to a not in my backyard messenger mentality however I do believe it is critical that we prioritize the safety of students so I
056here not just as a member of gack but also as a child and a student asking that school board advocate for us we the students use our voices every day to bring attention to the issues that matter to us but quite frankly we also rely on you the leader of our community to protect us we look to you to create an environment where we can learn grow and Thrive without the fear of harassment or harm we are asking you to make a formal request that the city council make the removal of the encampment across the street from Berkeley High a first priority recently about two hours ago we spoke with council member tri's Chief of Staff about the homeless encampment and plans regarding of the future of it his chief of staff explained to us
057that there is no plans to shift the focus from addressing the homeless encampment that is on Harrison Street to the Berkeley High to the campus at Civic Center Park near Berkeley High and Washington Elementary School in order to keep students safe even more concerning they notified us of plans to open up the rest of the park later this month this is only going to exacerbate the problem and is actually going to be do the opposite of the goal which is keeping students safe thank you so much for your time and for your commitment to keeping our students safe I appreciate you guys thank you both for your comments this evening next we will move to our pack comments good evening my name is Jessica La Brandy I am the parent of two students at Berkley
058AR magnet and I am here as the chair of the parent advisory committee I'm here tonight to give an update on the Pack's work so far this year and our priorities for the remainder of the year the pack is a parent group that is tasked with reviewing and providing essential feedback on the district's local control and accountability plan ensuring that our spending and programs truly serve all students needs our committee members represent diverse parent perspectives with special attention to supporting our English Learners low-income students Foster Youth and students with disabilities we take seriously our role in helping the district create measurable goals and track progress toward meeting them the pack consists of members from each School in the district with multiple seats for the Middle School SK Middle School sites and Berkeley High and for
059the first time this year our committee also includes two seats for students we are excited to have their voices among us and so grateful for their perspectives we began the year with a nearly Full Slate of Representatives with only two seats unfilled and many sites with designated alternates unfortunately we've had several pack members step step back since the beginning of the year including my co-chair leading us leaving us with six unfilled seats we are currently seeking representatives from Cragmont Emerson Malcolm X Longfellow Willard and Berkeley High if you or someone you know may be interested please reach out to your school principal we have had three meetings already this school year our first meeting focused on orienting our many new members to the committee at our second meeting Lena Sweeney from Brea gives gave us
060a presentation on data from the 2324 school year and we began discussing our began discussion on establishing our priorities for the year at our third meeting we determined our three Focus areas for the year and received a training and preparation for the upcoming Federal Pro program monitoring officially the T Pack is tasked with reviewing and monitoring the whole of the lcap as a group parent of volunteers many of whom are encountering the elcap for the first time we recognize that we cannot adequately cover all of the LC Cap's many actions in our limited meeting time as in the past we have decided to prioritize those actions that use lcff supplemental dollars which are targeted to our District's unduplicated students those who qualify for free reduced lunch Foster Youth and English language Learners we also refer
061defer to deac for actions that specifically Target our multilingual language Learners after reviewing the pack goals and the perspective from each of our school sites the pack has decided to further narrow our attention for this year on lcap goals 2 3 and four and in particular we are planning to focus our conversations on academic intervention especially for our youngest students working to catch them before they fall farther behind making sure we are fully supporting historically disadvantaged students and addressing barriers in the school Home Connection our next meeting is tomorrow evening and we are excited to move into the the next phase of our work digging into the first of our priority areas we'll be disc discussing elcap goal 4 partnership and engagement with a presentation from the office of family equity and engagement and a
062discussion of what is going well and What needs Improvement I look forward to returning to update you on our progress throughout the remainder of the Year thank you thank you very much for your comments uh next we will hear from our African-American success advisory committee um and just to point out uh Miss chz there is um a word missing from their title in uh the agenda so if we can make sure that we correct that uh for the next meeting that would be great at this time we will receive your comments thank you good evening board director superintendent and members of the Berkeley Community my name is Nicole Harris and I a honor and I am honored to serve on the superintendent's African-American success advisory committee AAC I'm decided to provide a brief update centered
063around the guiding question Cera and JRA are the children well last Saturday I had the privilege alongside fellow AAC AAC member Lorraine gasin to attend the 16th annual African-American Regional Educational Alliance Arya professional development Summit at calate East Bay it was inspiring to see the superintendent and board president Brown as well as several bu USD teachers and administ rators and attendance the summit had a clear and focused Mission how can school systems create environments where African American students and families Thrive one session that resonated with me focused on how parents can support their children in special education as the board has discussed extensively through the cim for siig work we recognize the op representation of African-American students in B USC's special education population this this session offered valuable perspectives and practical strategies that I believe
064can inform our work moving forward I want to take the opportunity to thank the board and superintendent for their ongoing support of aac's capacity building efforts I encourage you to continue nurturing this partnership even as we navigate challenging budget times the facilitated support provided to AAC has been invaluable in helping us better understand how to collaborate effectively with buusd we are encouraged by our efforts across the district such as longfellow's PTA support in sending a group of teachers to the professional development Summit this is a powerful example of how School communities can contribute to districtwide goals thank you for your time and attention this evening AAC stands ready and committed to collaborating with you to develop the best academic social emotional and college career action plans for our African-American students thank you very much for
065your comments this evening uh at this time we will move on to Union comments Miss chus do we have any Union comments Brown there's one more committee the uh District Safety Committee is oh thank you very much District safety we will receive your committee comments at this time thank you um good evening Schoolboard superintendent Ford moral my name is Rebecca levenson I'm the mother of a junior and I'm also the chair of the district rde Safety Committee I also sit on the Berkeley High School Safety Committee and there's some lessons learned from the Berkeley High School Safety Committee that are essential to Center in the development of our new districtwide committee um so we can avoid repeats of what hasn't worked so well full transparency the BHS Safety Committee has been a difficult committee full
066of frustration there is a between the administrators and the parents and the teachers and the staff but as of our last meeting last night I am hopeful that we're about to turn a corner I've said this many times gack is an incredible example of what happens when committees trust each other respect each other and work together to make things best for students and staff I believe every committee can be equally productive supportive and wonderful and that's what I expect both for the Berkeley High Safety Committee and the districtwide Safety Committee I believe in us and we need each other more in this moment than we ever have because every time we fight and turn our back on one another they win so let me cut to the chase as it stands the purview of the
067Safety Committee for Berkeley High School is to review what is a very much a boilerplate document and includes things like how to evacuate in case of a fire earthquake what to do in the event of an active shooter that kind of thing but what's left out is prevention and a plan for the day-to-day risks and safety concerns that we can solve for and that's what so frustrating to the committee we don't need the nitty-gritty of the day-to-day to be put in the big boilerplate plan but we do want to have an active safety plan separate from our boiler plate such that we can make our community safer you heard just this evening about what's happening with the homeless encampment outside of Berkeley High and if you the news you'll know again this year um we
068had guns on campus and that piqued the attention of our committee but there's no real for to discuss these things that are of course first and foremost in our minds we have asked to do surveys of teachers staff and students to understand from their perspective where the rubber meets the road on the safety front so we can solve for some of these problems the response we get back from the district and the administration is that when we asked to do site specific surveys that b unified will be using the California kids survey the chicks survey um that looks at safety and there's nothing wrong with that survey it's great to have more issues and understand sort of General things more data better but the problem is it doesn't solve for the homeless encampment outside of
069BHS or the fact that on the g&h side of the buildings those are essentially open doors for people to get into our buildings at 3:40 in the afternoon because we put nearly all of our safety officers on the quad to clear students at the of the day why is this a problem it's because we've had kids jumped in the bathroom in the g&h building at 3:40 in the afternoon we've also brought up the fact according to our safety plan we're supposed to have an administrator on campus or an administrator's design on campus we have no administrative coverage for zero period or in the late afternoon and early evening why does this matter because on Monday afternoon at around 5:30 we had two folks who look to be from the homeless encampment wandering around our campus
070this is also so especially disturbing giving the sexual assault you heard about from the student g- Shack members I learned about this on my way to a Berkeley High Development Group meeting on Monday night and I ran into folks who were talking about it we've been told as a committee we are not allowed to write anything into the safety plan that's connected to Dollars currently we know we have carryover from our BP funds and we have some lwh hanging fruit that we could be using these dollars for for example um we have situations where we have dead spots in our buildings where radios don't work cell phones don't work these are places where sexual assaults have occurred in the past on campus we could solve for that I've got 49 seconds left there's a lot
071of stuff and I appreciate all of you for what you do but there's stuff that's right here that we could do tomorrow to make things better and as a district-wide Safety Committee I hope we take lessons learned from Berkeley High and think about creating little safety committees for each and every site so that we can solve for things like an unsafe drop off at BAM or an unsafe drop off of Craigmont safety is so much bigger than what our big boilerplate safety plan looks at so I appreciate your time and thank you so much good evening thank you for your comments uh I don't believe that there are any more committee comments and so we will move to Union comments I don't believe there are any Union comments this evening president Brown no Union comments
072this evening okay thank you um at this time we will move to board member comments um director kin if you're ready I'm going to ask that you go first um just to get give director Garcia a little bit of time to prepare if she needs it uh and then after you we'll go to director Garcia followed by uh director vasudev and then vice president Chang okay sure thanks president Brown um happy Black History Month everyone I am very excited about all of the black history events and learning opportunities in our schools this month focused on uplifting and celebrating the many accomplishments and contributions to our nation and our lives from the black community I hope to attend some events at our schools and I've ordered myself a Berkeley High black student union hoodie that I'm
073very excited for um and of course even as we honor and acknowledge the Brilliance of our black children families Educators and community members we also acknowledge that our Collective work for equity and social justice remains unfinished and indeed very clearly urgent on another note Jo another joyful positive happy note um our disability awareness month just concluded and I don't know if anyone else attended the Fantastic panel last week of students and educators who talked about the ways that their disabilities impact them and shared with us about how our schools can better support students and staff with a range of different disabilities the panel was inspiring and I hope that everyone will take time to watch the video and learn from our courageous students and staff alongside the joy I think we also have to acknowledge
074the harm and the fear that is being experienced by many members of our community um tonight I want to highlight our commitments to some members of our community who are particular particularly vulnerable tonight we will be passing our reaffirmed and strengthened resolution protecting our undocumented students and families I am proud to co-sponsor this resolution with dor vasudev and to stand in solidarity with our immigrant communities on that note I am also very much looking forward tonight to hearing an update on our multilingual master plan which is a key piece of our support for the academic growth and achievement of our immigrant and multilingual learner students another student group that is currently under Fierce attack from the federal government is our lgbtq plus Community particularly our transgender and our gender expansive students while the federal government
075attempts to erase transgender and gender expansive people I want everyone to know in no uncertain terms that our policies and practices to affirm every student's gender expression protect all students from hate motivated behaviors and ensure that our schools are humanizing affirming responsive and safe are not changing I want to read a statement that was put out um I think just yesterday by our state attorney general he said California will continue to create a welcoming environment for all students including transgender and gender nonconforming students the federal government sets a floor not a ceiling when it comes to civil rights protections and California law has always provided additional protections Beyond those that exist at the federal level those protections remain firmly in place the right to equality and education and equal protection under the law is guaranteed
076by the US Constitution California's constitution sets its own separate and strong standards that clearly establish transgender and gender non-conforming individuals as a protected class the Attorney General continued I want to emphasize that California law remains unchanged we will not be frightened or cowed by the president's threat we will not abandon our values and we certainly will have no part in executing the president's agenda and on that note I would just like to end by thanking daac gack Pac the a Sac the Safety Committee Representatives who came out tonight to share with us what's what what you're working on in your committees I look forward to more discussion of the Longfellow facility concerns and Workforce housing construction plans during tonight's facilities presid presentation I appreciate the feedback about nutrition education calsters investment practices the bridge program
077and gun violence prevention and I look forward to all the work we're going to do tonight thank you director K student director Garcia unfortunately I don't have any outside information outside of myself very sorry but I'm Lisha Garcia I am one of the student representatives for Berkeley Technology Academy I'm an 11th grader and I joined because I felt that BTA didn't have a very big part in I don't know I felt as if bch didn't have a very big part in bosd and I never hear about btech in in really anything I thought that just because it's a smaller school it doesn't deserve any less attention than Berkeley High um a little nervous sorry um I'd like my interest to lie in your hands and as I get into the swing of things I'd like
078to keep an open mind and listen to anything that anyone would like to tell me I will always try to advocate for everyone else along with myself and others that attend my school thank you that was perfect student board director Garcia uh thank you for taking the time to introduce yourself and share your interest uh we're happy to have you and um happy to support you here okay uh director vasudev I believe you're next great thank you president Brown I just wanted to thank Alicia and Evelyn so much for being here tonight behalf of BC on behalf of our students um you know Schoolboard directors all of us here are elected to serve you guys and to make sure that you have access to an excellent public education and so the fact that you're here
079making sure that we're doing that holding us accountable and elevating the issues from your campus is incredibly important to us it helps us do our job better so I I know you're taking time away from your studies to be here and we're so grateful and so honored that you're here so thank you and with that um I want to thank everybody else who came out tonight to give public comment I especially want to thank our students and parents who express your concerns about safety at BHS and thank our superintendent for following up closely with our city leaders to ensure that that they're doing everything that they can to create safe conditions at the encampment there's a lot of things that I think um people think that we hold the key to making sure that we're
080like the only ones creating a culture of safety for our students but it's not always the case and this situation we do really need to work closely with our city Partners in situations where there's traffic safety issues you do have to work closely with your City to make sure that there are responsible land use decisions being made around schools and so those Partnerships are key we have a committee called the 2 by two Committee of the board and I don't know how many members of the public know that but that's where two School Board directors and two City Council Members come together to work on these these issues of mutual interest where our work kind of intersects so I definitely hope that some of these issues are being addressed there at a deeper level um
081I know that the superintendent is updates the community at these kind of broader meetings but that's really where we work on the nitty-gritty so from my colleagues that serve on the 2 by two I know that that some of you are going to be bringing these issues to that committee and the counterpart to the superintendent which is the city manager holds a lot of the keys into how to how to work collaboratively on the Tactical decisions that um that need to be made to make sure that we're all responsible um for creating a culture of safety around our schools and so I know that's work that our superintendent does whether she's at the 2 by two or not she has a collaborative relationship with our city manager um but I just want the public to
082kind of know how those decisions are made and um I also want to thank uh just the Long Fellow parents that came to talk about the construction issues I'll follow up with facilities to see how we can best address those also want to thank the deac committee members who came to give public comment we don't hear from deac very often so it was really nice for me and very informative to hear um some of the feedback about how to create more awareness of the special education resources for our English Learners I think this is something that also is important for black families too many times when it comes to special education and special education advocacy I don't see a lot of families of color in those spaces and I think there is a gap on
083and I would say that we do a great job as a district not always in special education I will say that but like that we do try to do a great job in making sure that the resources are available to our families but we can do a better job at making sure that they're culturally responsive and available to our most vulnerable families because they're very difficult to navigate in general I think special education can be a very complicated subject for any parent um but I think I'm making sure that we have you know information in multiple languages uh I know that on our website we have information about dreff and other community- based organizations that really work more closely with parents and have multilingual support um on special education issues making sure that that information
084is shared more broadly especially with our daac committee seem that seems to be a gap so thank you because I wasn't aware of that Gap so I really appreciate the comments tonight I also Echo um the superintendent's comments and my colleagues comments around the celebration for Black History Month we're excited uh to take this time to focus on the rich history and contributions of the black community in our lives and in all of our campuses so I'm very excited um to celebrate that in our schools this month and um I also want to Echo the gratitude for the BHS students who led the wonderful panel on disability awareness I learned a lot I was watching it with my son who's neurodiverse and I think it was really empowering for him just to hear other students
085share their stories I think the student part um was really important and also just how we can better support invisible disabilities in the classroom I think there was um a lot of uh really great practical advice and I know that it took a lot of Courage for the students to be there and to share something so very personal so I just want to applaud the BHS students that were there thank you so much um for being there and for opening your hearts really with our community and telling us um how we can do better I also want to remind the community about the Caminos aliv event on the 22nd of February it's an event for our middle schoolers and high schoolers who want to learn more about how to get ready to go to college
086there will be lots of resources there from BCC from the district um from UC Berkeley and uh although the conference will be held in Spanish there's also English interpretation so both languages will be there if um anyone is curious to check it out and I hope that uh the flyer has been also shared with our daac families who might be interested in this event uh I also share uh director kin's concerns for our lgbtq community right now in light of the hateful comments coming from the federal government but as our attorney general stated our protections at the state and local level for lgbtq students remain strong and unchanged in California and I know that I and many of my colleagues will do everything that we can um to make sure there their lgbtq students feel
087safe and protected and feel a strong sense of belonging in our campuses our commitment to equity and diversity and inclusion does not change in buusd I'm excited today that we'll vote on the resolution reaffirming the board's commitment to making B USD campuses a safe zone for students and families threatened by ice and that we're going to align better with the city of Berkeley and their resolution um on the sanctuary City I pulled this item today from the consent calendar I know some people are not going to stay till the end of the meeting so I just wanted to make sure that I cover this really quickly right now is that I know I pull the item because I want to make sure that b USD can can also support in the same way that the
088city of Berkeley has already stated their support for Senate Bill 48 which is called safe access to schools in one of the provisions of the resolution now Senate Bill 48 would prevent an Lea and its staff from Grant an in ice officer permission and access to school campuses without a a Judicial warrant at the state level so right now we're putting in our resolutions at the at a very hyper local level District by District but so it's not peac meal this is a Senate bill that will happen you know for the whole state that's why it's important that we send a letter of support also um in addition to that uh s sp48 Senate Bill 48 would establish a one mile radius around a School site where California law enforcement agencies will be prohibited from
089collaborating with or Prov providing in any information about a pupil a pupil's family and household School employee or teacher to any immigration authorities regarding any immigration enforcement action and that becomes really important because often times you know if you're undocumented and you're dropping off you a lot of times you could be an essential worker you could be walking your child to school or walking your child from the bus and if that's within a one mile radius of a school we want to make sure that that's also part of the protected Zone that it's not just when you reach the school campus but it's within that one mile radius and so those are the things um that I think it's important to also include as part of our resolution support for that state bill so that
090this happen Statewide and I'm thrilled that that um Senate bill is being sponsored by our superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurman and his staff has requested support from BD so I'm very excited that we're going to have that discussion and with that um I look forward to a conversation about facilities about the multilingual plan and thank you all for coming tonight vice president chain thank you so much president Brown um and also thank you uh directors K and vasad Dev and student director Alicia Garcia um good evening thank you for all of your voices again today and and uh Happy African-American Heritage Month um of course welcoming uh to our board student director Lisa Garcia as well and her alternate Evelyn bascos um I know these are challenging times um but I also know that
091we will stand up for brookley values um and that as a district we will continue to provide not only Equitable and accessible programs and services but also non-disrupted programs and services um on the board we of course will continue to effectuate these basic standards and principles to the many committees that we do our work through um at this moment in time in particular um you know we want to um uh let our lgbtq students and dreamer students know that they uh have our allyship and our support uh in our community um and uh please do continue to press on uh your officials both within and outside of Berkeley um thank you so much for all the um students who came out and spoke and the teachers and the parents on uh concerns across um safety
092uh with regard to um ongoing modernization efforts and um of course we are listening and taking these seriously um while also ensuring that you have worldclass facilities in this District um in addition um uh you know we we uh are hearing concerns around safety around the park and that's something that is of concern I think to all of us um and uh working with our city Partners is very very critical uh to ensure that the ongoing safety issue that has manifested in a recent incident um does not perpetuate um thanks so much for your advocacy on that and I'm sure I'm missing folks and I just want to be cognizant of the time and thanks again I know that we are going through challenging times but we are in this together thank you thank you
093vice president changen um again happy Black History Month everyone uh those who know me knows know that this is absolutely one of my favorite months um to celebrate it is so important that we pause um celebrate and remember the contributions of uh black and African-American people to this country um and Beyond and so again happy Black History Month um as always with my students I embark um on a really really important uh project where we focus on uh African-Americans who've made major contributions uh in the fields of innovation um and Science and Mathematics and so um I'm very very excited uh that we are finally here uh in this month this month for me this year uh feels a little bit different than it has um in years past uh for various reasons but one
094of the most obvious reasons um is because of the threat to um our country um and the consistent um threats of racism and um uh the the consistent threats of racism um towards black people um on every single level uh in the United States of America and so um this year I'm going to celebrate a little bit harder um as we continue to fight against the challenges uh that that continue to uh plague our community and that we have to face each and every single day um I'd like to pause and uh thank vice president Chang as well as our um District Title 9 coordinator yes me ofes who uh the three of us spent um a number of hours uh last week updating our Student Records policies which you all will see um listed
095on tonight's agenda for information um and it was really important to us that we do the work that we need to do to ensure our students remain safe in Berkeley Unified School District um and that can be done in a number of ways first through our resolution that you'll hear um tonight but also in our policy we know that our policy work um is the legal document that protects our school district and so um I want to thank vice president Chang for his partnership um on those documents and um encourage my board colleagues to please govern yourselves accordingly so that when it is brought back to uh the agenda as a consent item we can um happily move those items so thank you again for that additionally I'd like to thank associate superintendent um Hogan
096as well as principal um Tom for your work um on our policies uh supporting our adult school education and you will also see those uh listed for information this evening um again another warm welcome to student director Garcia um she did want us to let you all know that she had to step out um it is always our custom to let our uh student board directors leave uh at an appropriate hour because they are still students and their first responsibility um is to ensure that they are ready and prepared for um the great education that they get in BD the very next day and so we were able to dismiss her but we're so happy that she is joining um our Board of Education um superintendent for Morel addressed it in her uh public in
097her uh superintendent comments earlier but she along with myself um principal Rosa as well as um associate superintendent Kalise attended a very important meeting today with um council member council member igore mayor isi um uh city clerk Paul uh our wonderful uh police chief and other folks within the city um so that we can address the very concerns that were raised tonight um during public comment the concerns that were raised during last night Safety Committee um and the concerns that have been raised uh not just this week and last week but um in Prior weeks in Prior months and even in Prior years uh regarding the safety around Berkeley High School um and our Greater Community we know and understand that we are a part of our a part of a community um that sometimes
098happens to be uh shared spaces and um although that may be true our number one concern is that in every every single space that they occupy our students are safe um and feel safe and so um I really appreciated meeting with them today um where we didn't just discuss what couldn't happen or what would take a long time to happen but we really focused in on prioritizing the safety of our students um from this evening's uh meeting to me the greatest outcome is that we will have U more safety patrol around um Berkeley High and the Park area um and so I'm grateful for the partnership from our Police Department who will work to ensure that our students uh are safe in that way um there are there will be a town hall meeting that
099will be open to the public um so please stay um on the be please be on the lookout for that information that will be distributed um throughout the district we want to continue to hear from families and we want you all to continue to hold us accountable um and share with us and partner with us in reg uh in regards to best practices around safety and so uh there will be an opportunity to do that with not just your Berkeley um high school and Berkeley Unified School District leaders but with our city leaders as well and so uh we know that this is the first of many meetings that we will hold together uh to make sure that our students are safe um not just because of this incident but because we know that there
100are uh other safety concerns that happen throughout the year and other safety concerns that happen on other campuses and so our hope is that we will uh continue to address those in collaboration and in support of each other uh congratulations to um our uh newest uh hires for our schools the vice president of Longfellow Middle School as well as the vice principal excuse me of Longfellow Middle School as well as the principal of will Middle School we are the interim principal excuse me of Willert Middle School while our principal is on uh paternity leave and so we're so excited to have you all join um our community in this way um and rejoin our community in a different way we know that your um support to our schools um will really help support our students
101and our overall Berkeley community and so welcome we're very excited to have you and excited to work with you uh finally I'd like to thank um the all of the comment all of the committee commenters uh that commented tonight and um I'd like to just highlight the comments that were made by the African-American um success committee regarding the 16th annual uh area professional development Summit um I had a wonderful wonderful time um attending that Summit I always love to go because there I can um put on my board member hat and then take it off put on my educator hat and then take it off put on my advocacy hat and take it off and so it was nice to be able to be in a space where I could do all three um that
102doesn't always happen in all of our spaces but that definitely happens for me at the professional development Summit um I am really happy that uh many of our community members in Berkeley Unified School District were also able to attend that Summit to learn from um The Summit and to work work in collaboration with each other as we plan for the success of our African-American students family faculty and staff I'd like to give a major shout out to Mr kamaro Gwyn who facilitated that conversation uh with u representatives from BD um and thank you for your leadership um and your outstanding facilitation skills finally I am um excited about all of our um agenda items to tonight but again want to raise um item 14.2 our resolution up uh this evening we know that um there's
103been a lot of work that has been done by both director Korn and director vasu Dev um in partnership with Latinos unidos in partnership with our mayor in partnership with our city council um as well as various groups and other community leaders and so we are excited uh that this is coming to us tonight Berkeley is um a place of many first including being the first um identified City to be a sanctuary city um as well as continuing to be a leader and making sure that our schools are safe places for our students and so um thank you again for your work on this happy to um support this and can't wait for us to finally get to the action item to um affirm support and approve uh this evening's resolution solution this ends my
104public comments for tonight and so we will now move on to excuse me we will now move on to the approval of our consent calendar is there a motion to approve this evening's consent calendar I moveed to do so it has been moved by vice president changen is there a second all second second and by director vasu Dev Miss chz can you please call the role director hi director vasev yes vice president Chang yes president Brown yes thank you so much our consent calendar is approved for this evening we will excuse me we will now move on to our first um agenda item uh tonight which is um on our multilingual learner master plan back in uh 2022 the multilingual learner master plan was a byproduct of a collaboration between Berkeley unified school districts educational
105Partners um such as daac um our site our site leaders our teachers our ELD teachers students parents and community members and this plan was built um on Berkeley Unified School District's 2013 master plan for English Learners and has aligned with our school district um has aligned our school district with the California Department of Education guidelines and the California English learner roadmap so tonight we will receive a presentation from our uh buusd staff that will provide an update on our current multilingual learner master plan and staff will review each of the goals identified in our plan as well as share progress for the goals uh progress that BD has made towards uh reaching our goals uh so at this time I'm very happy to welcome uh our presentation for our multi lingual learner master plan you
106may proceed whenever you are ready thank you president Brown um and really appreciate that excellent orientation uh to the multilingual learner master plan uh my name is Jill hog andik I'm the associate superintendent and I'm joined here by director Chris albeck um and our ELD TSA Miss Kathleen Marte um we're excited to be here this evening and want to make sure that we anchor this presentation in our District's mission to enable and Inspire our diverse student body to achieve academic excellence and make positive contributions to the world our diverse student body includes almost 600 multilingual language Learners representing just over 40 different languages the predominant language at about 50% of those multilingual language Learners is Spanish um approximately 300 of our English Learners um speak Spanish is followed by our Arabic population at 9.5% BD
107did approve our multi our current multilingual learner master plan in December of 22 2022 through collaboration between our bosd educational Partners such as the daac who you heard from this evening our site leaders teachers ELD teachers and other Community Partners we are excited to share the work to support our multilingual Learners and tonight we will highlight some of the actions we have taken and the data we are seeing across the six goals in the multilingual learner master plan um so um we also want to make sure that as we engage in this conversation we recognize the intersections between the multilingual learner La master plan and our our lcap goals that you see there on the left and our strategic action pillars that you see there on the right many of our goals in the multilingual
108learner master plan are really aligned with academic excellence and uh Equitable outcomes for our students uh which is also embedded in our lcap goals number one and number two um and we have a a component of our multilingual learner master plan that includes parent engagement and partnership um it's also important to know that there are intersections with our Latin X resolution um and as we move through the highlights on the goals um in this presentation we'll you'll see um some call outs with that alignment um on some of the slides so with that I'm going to turn it over um to director robc all righty good evening everybody uh good evening BSD Board of Education and superintendent I share with you the structure of this evening's presentation is to review our multilingual learner Master plans
109agreed upon goals in order to evaluate in progress and performance of these goals as you will hear we will acknowledge progress share artifacts of accomplishment and also identify areas of future Improvement and development well we and BD do believe in continuous Improvement and know that our work to produce more Equitable outcomes for our multilingual Learners as director kin said tonight is unfinished so our first goal focuses on ensuring that our multilingual Learners develop full receptive and productive proficiencies in English Within 5 to seven years of receiving ELD Services as measured through our summi of elpac we've seen steady progress towards English language proficiency reflected in the increased percentage of students making gains on the lpac as seen on the slide before you farmer State's accountability dashboard we attribute this growth to strengthen designated ELD instruction
110and curriculum implementation across all Sites ensuring consistent language development opportunities are embedded in Daily instruction in addition to our lpac data a our key metric to use to track this progress is our English learner progress indicator elpi which measures how effectively students are advancing towards English proficiency the elpi data shows the percentage of multilingual Learners who are making at least one level of growth year over-year this year our elpi data reflects notable growth in several areas we've seen an increase in the percentage of students progressing at least one proficiency level indicat that our instructional strategies particularly the implementation of designated and integrated ELD in our classrooms are having a positive impact in addition to elpi we are closely monitoring reclassification data which reflects the number of students who have met the criteria to be reclassified
111as as fluent English proficient or arfp this data is critical because it demonstrates not just language growth but also academic Readiness for Success without designated ELD supports this year we've observed positive Trends in reclassification rates with an increase in the number of students meeting criteria for reclassification this growth suggests that our efforts to strengthen language instruction are translating into measurable out academic outcomes moving forward one area of our Focus to address is around the variability in both elpi growth and reclassification rates across School sites while some schools are making significant growth others require more targeted professional development to enhance designated integrated ELD practices particularly in our secondary classrooms where we know language development is embedded within a complex content areas so that was something that we'll continue to focus on moving forward into this next
112year goal number two of our multilingual learner master plan is academic success English Learners are taught highly rigorous academic content content that enables them to meet performance standards consistent with all those of all students one of the key ways we are addressing this goal is by continuing to expand our constructing meeting program which is instructional support for integrated ELD throughout the day this year we provided a 5-day constructing meeing Institute to our GE Elementary School teachers and a 4-day training to our GE secondary teachers as you can see on the slide there many teachers share that this is the most valuable PD they have ever participated in and appreciate the strategies benefit all of our students this was our first year implementing District level constructing meeting PD for our elementary teachers at the training I
113after sorry after the training I had the opportunity to observe various English language arts lessons incorporating constructing meaning in action the students consistently use the program resources and tools such as the academic discard discussion cards seen in the middle of the slide and they have sentence frames for presenting an idea supporting your thinking challenging an idea Etc as part of our work to expand the constructing meaning program we will be sending a small group of elementary school teachers to El Chief's Summer Leadership Institute this will be the first step in creating our team of Elementary trainer of trainers this um we can then develop our own constructing meaning institutes at the element level as we do already do with the high school this ensures that we have that is tailored to the needs of our
114teachers and students and is more coste effective next slide oh this year we continue our multidisciplinary approach to enable and Inspire the academic success of our multilingual Learners with learning differences some special ed case managers in District fed say have participated in constructing meaning Institute to be able to support general education teachers with inclusion during tier one instruction and to integrate the strategies with their own tier 2 and tier three instruction in addition all special ed case managers and TF tsas have participated in collaboration meetings on how to best serve our duy duly identified students which are our multilingual Learners with IEPs and also discuss students with 504 plans during the meetings we review all of the various accessibility resources that are provided when taking the Casp and the elpac providing students with the appropriate
115accessibility resources while taking their assessments is key to them being able to demonstrate their skills and knowledge to the best of their abilities um last but not least for goal number two academic success we'd like to highlight the achievement of our rfet students which our students who have met all the reclassification criteria and have exited the ELD program this graph shows how our ARP students performed last year on the ELA and math cast as you can see the blue bar indicates that our students um performed at 59% performed at meeting The Benchmark or above in English language arts and 52% are meeting The Benchmark or above in math notably these scores are above the percentages of all students at the county level in red and the state level in Orange of both subjects this data
116combined with our data on the English language proficiency indicator and reclassification rates demonstrate the BD is making much progress towards effective programs and services for multilingual Learners and RFB students goal three emphasizes creating safe welcoming and inclusive environments for our multilingual families recognizing that strong family engagement is critical to Student Success our work with the deac as you heard from oos tonight has been a key driver in strengthening family Partnerships and ensuring that our multilingual learner voices are Central to decisionmaking here in BD our daac played an important role in developing of last year's three-year lcap particularly in shaping items related to our multi-lingual Learners their collaboration helped to ensure that family perspectives were embedded in the goals actions and metrics designed to support multilingual Learners reflecting a shared vision for equity and academic Excellence
117through this process deac members provided feedback on strategies to improve language development support family engagement practices and academic outcomes for multilingual Learners they also helped identify gaps in services advocating for resources that address both the academic and social emotional needs this partnership with our deac not only not only strengthened elcap but it also empowered our daac members to see that their input reflected in District priorities deepen their connection to the educational purposes both when we were able to support and make things happen and also when that we were not of significant importance that occurred in our last lcap is our new focus on long-term English language Learners ltels a critical area identified through both data analysis and daac advocacy recognizing that the ltel requ requirement in the in the in our new elcap we are
118committed to implementing targeted supports that address the unique needs of students who have been classified as English language learners for six or more years in BD an area of growth and focus for BD moving forward in addition to our work with daac we've St we've streamlined family Communications through elevation which allows us to send clear multilingual learner family notification letters making important information more accessible to families and caregivers and also this year to deep family engage engagement we've developed family educational videos that are easily accessible via Flyers with QR codes providing parents and Guardians with support of their child's education at home in ways that are engaging and convenient for them with commun while communication tools have improved we recognize the need to create more interactive opportunities for families moving forward we continue to um
119focus on expanding in-person workshops and community events that Foster two-way communication these strategies ensure that families are not just informed but are actively engaged strengthening the partnership home between home and school for our multilingual learner success goal four focuses on preparing all of our multilingual Learners to be College and Career ready ensuring that they have the academic skills support and opportunities needed for postsecondary Success our data shows that 8.3 increase in graduation rates for multilingual Learners last year reflecting our district commitment to supporting students through the completion of high school however it is important to recognize that while graduation rates are high there is a critical distinction between graduations and meeting the a through G requirements necessary for admission to California's public universities this distinction highlights the need to not only support our students in
120earning a diploma but also to ensure they are academically prepared for college to address this BD provides programs such as Avid Excel pente bridge and rise with which provides targeted academic support and college readiness skills we've also strengthened Partnerships with Berkeley City College offering dual enrollment opportunities where students can earn college credits while also in high school and with youth works this year connecting students with real world career experiences in addition to our CTE Pathways at the high school additionally we've implemented a new process for evaluating high school transcripts from students country of origin allowing to them to receive appropriate course credit which supports both graduation and college readiness moving forward our Focus will be on closing the gap between graduation and a through G completion rates this includes increasing access to rigorous coursework providing
121targeted academic counseling and ensuring that our multilingual Learners receive the support needed to thrive not just in high school but in college and Beyond goal number five is implementation of instructional programs for multilingual Learners with Fidelity the primary goal of monitoring is to ensure that every school the district has effective and compliant programs for all multilingual Learners the six areas for for federal program monitoring review of EO programs are involvement governance and administration funding assessment and accountability Staffing and professional development and equal educational access I will highlight a work on a few of the E items Federal program monitoring e item 10 is reclassification there are four criteria for students to meet reclassification to uh to fluent English proficient for many years USD has us been using students grades and English language arts to meet
122Criterion two which is teacher evaluation to ensure that students are being considered for reclassification with quitable measures we have started piloting a new California department of educational tool called the optel observation protocol for teachers of the English Learners now teachers can observe students performance in the class and use the rubric to determine if a student's expressive and receptive language skills are fully de developed to engage in grade level content to meet the reclassification criterian to El item 4.4 is enhanced instructional opportunities for immigrant students last year after completing A needs assessment and piloting various curriculum designed to meet the specific needs of our newcomer students who purchased new supplementary programs which teachers have started implementing this year to the programs focus on listening speaking reading and writing and follow a scope and sequence of grammar
123and vocabulary for targeted language instruction for TK through 12th grades we also purchased leveled texts to replace the books that were designed for TK through second graders these libraries provide more dignity to our secondary newcomer students with their age appropriate themes and images we have identified an area of growth under El item 15 access to an standard instructional program we are currently looking at our newcomer programs to make sure that students are in the sheltered classes only shortterm all multi Learners at Alpac levels three and four should transition to the mainstream general education classes to receive a standard instructional program with our constructing meaning program multilingual learner students can receive the language support they need and have fluent English proficiency proficient peers serve as models in addition to their designated ELD classes director albu and
124I are supporting the Berkeley High School multi- lingal learner program leadership team to improve the structure and the entrance and exit criteria for the MLP next year we are excited about the work we are doing in continuous Improvement of our newcomer program our last goal focuses on ensuring that students in our Spanish Twi two-way immersion program develop full bilingualism and biliteracy in Spanish by the end of middle school with the opportunity to purs pursue the state seal of biliteracy in high school this year our data shows an encouraging number of students earning the Seal of biliteracy high highlighting the success of our Twi program in fostering high levels of English language proficiency and academic achievement in both Spanish and in English to support this growth we've also expanded family workshops that engage families of understanding
125by literacy Pathways offering resources to help families support language development at home and navigate the steps toward earning this seal in alignment with our commitment to strengthening by literacy we've implemented the Mendes Spanish language arts curriculum adoption process as a parallel proc process to our English language arts adoption process this ensures that our Twi students at our primary level will continue to receive rigorous standards aligned instruction grounded in the science of reading in Spanish that mirrors the quality and expect expectations of our piloting English curriculum the adoption of a new Spanish language arts curriculum at Mendes will Define a coherent instructional framework that fits the supports of our language acquisition model promoting literacy Development Across both languages and enhancing the academic rigor of our Twi program looking ahead we will continue to strengthen the articulation
126between elementary middle and high school Twi programs we started that work last year with four uh collaborations between Mendes and Longfellow but we recognize the need to continue especially into the high school our Focus remains on expanding access to biliteracy Opportunities supporting families and increasing the number of students who graduate with the state seal I by literacy as we conclude this presentation we would like to share several recommendations to modify the existing language the existing language in our multilingual learner master plan these recommendations are being ba made based on the new guidance from CDE and Regional county level networks of best practice first as a result of new CDE guidance TK students will now be exempt from taking the initial Alpac as it's been deemed developmentally inappropriate they'll be accessed in Kinder started an instead
127second designated ELD will continue to be required with flexibility schools will integrate it as part of a tier one instruction to better meet the students language proficiency levels for our newcomer program eligibility now aligns with CDE definition serving students enrolled in US schools for less than three years course offerings will focus on students with English proficiency levels one through two as these programs are meant to be short-term supports finally to support students with disabilities may receive now now may receive domain exemptions on the elpac if their disability prevents assessment in specific areas we're asking the board to review these updates and our recommendations will be placed on the consent calendar for our February 19th Board of Education meeting thank you and we now have time for questions and thank you all so much for uh
128that wonderful wonderful presentation um I know I have a number of questions as well as my board colleagues and so my board colleagues would allow I'm going to uh begin with my number of questions first uh and then whichever board colleague is uh available or ready to ask questions may follow first and foremost um I want to start with the exciting um presentation uh that was around goal number two for academic success um it is wonderful that um Berkeley Unified School District is outperforming um both the county um as well as the state of California and so I wanted to take a second to um to highlight that I thought that that was really really um exciting uh and I'm referencing our 2324 Ela and math um excuse me math scores on the Casp so
129that was was really really uh exciting and important information um I have a question in regards to um our College and Career Readiness slide that was presented tonight um uh first I'm really really grateful for um programs like Avid and Bridge and Rise um and pente for the support that they are providing our students um to get them a through G ready but I'd like to know um what is or what more is needed to be done um to address uh through curriculum and instruction um our a through G Readiness needs so that's my first question uh and then I have uh two more to follow up one component that stands out for me direct president Brown is that specifically around the guidance counseling and the support that our guidance counseling provides our multilingual Learners
130specifically our newcomers and I know that at our high school we already have additional resources specifically as it relates to family engagement and supporting our students and as recently as last month we were meeting with vice principal Coleman and the guidance counselor that is specifically responsible for the MLP and just the Insight that the guidance counselor has in ensuring that all of our multilingual Learners who are also but some of them are also newcomers who are in potentially sheltered classes are getting access access to all a through G I know is a significant um resp responsibility and it's a priority for our high school and I've seen it in action so I have uh a lot of faith in our high school both at BTA and at BHS that the focus really is on making
131sure that these students who um are enrolled in these classes are also getting access to a through G thank you um I'm really excited to hear about the guidance counselor support my question was around instruction as specific Al to your one instruction that is happening in the classroom the constructed meaning PD do you want to talk about to a through G well just related to instruction for English learner for English Learners I need clar I think if and if I can make it easier um I think that this question um you know although specific for English Learners I think that this may be a question that uh could really answer and address all of our Learners because we know that a through G require Ms um um meeting the a3g requirements is something that we
132continue uh to work towards and kind of struggle with a little bit but work towards for all of our students and so um as we specifically talk about our multilingual Learners tonight um I know that this answer will support all of our students and so I'll ask again um what additional needs are there um in regards to instruction and or curriculum but specifically instruction to help support um our a students meeting the a through G requirements um I'll I'll offer a beginning place um so the Berkeley High Community specifically has completed their self-study for their was review and I think one of the areas that uh has surfaced through that self-study was a need to strengthen um our assessment processes at the high school so that we are implementing um some more regular uh um
133uh screening Assessments in order to make good instructional decisions so new this year all 9th and 10th graders are taking the star assessment so as you all know star assessment has been administered to students in grades 3 through 8 um and so that is new to the Berkeley High Community this year as it's implementing some structured processes to review those assessments um at regular intervals so that we can make good decisions about what instructional supports our students need um in their tier one classrooms as well as in their support classroom so I think um as we help and work alongside of the Berkeley High team to build and Implement those stronger assessment routines that's going to have an impact on on the instruction that's happening in the classroom thanks for that response I know that
134often times assessments are first indicators um so it it is really good to hear um that that assessment schedule um is being and will be implemented uh for our students so thank you for that um speaking of Assessments that brings me to my second question um first of all I'm always so proud of our reclassification rates um in Berkeley Unified School District and continue to remain proud of them um after tonight's presentation I did want to ask um I know that we spent some time talking about criteria too um uh and criteria one uh as it relates to reclassification uh but I know that criteria 4 um is also incredibly important as well as criteria 3 um criteria 3 being um being um parent consultation um and taking parent consultation in uh as a way
135to uh support um students who have uh scored an overall four on PC um as well as uh criteria 4 which identifies uh student scores on the esack uh as a way esack and other assessments as a way to um measure their English language learner progress um how are we uh using our um State assessments to um as evidence to uh support reclassification [Music] um we've made a lot of progress in this area there was a few years ago so for um Criterion forwards the basic skills tests where our multilingual Learners have to uh perform on an assessment that all other students also take and a few years ago our students had to um beat Benchmark on both espac and the star but now it's either ESC are or Star but in addition to that
136we we review all the data we look at our students and we look at the list of our students who have already got met the first criteria which is a four on the summi of elpac and if they've gotten that then we look at the other data and if we have a student for example who has a two on the star but needs a three to get reclassified we sit with down with the student say look this is what you need to do um this is what you need to accomplish to get reclassified that provides them with the extra motivation because sometimes they can do better they're just like H another assessment if they understand the importance of the assessment then they put in their extra effort and we have found that this isues their
137score from a two to three for instance I think I would also add and you can correct me if I'm wrong but this is an area that did come up with deac and their recommendations and I know that there has been intentionality in spending some of that deac time to really review with families what students need to do in order to reclassify there were a lot of questions that had come up from our families about what can we do and how can we support and we've been sharing um some of those uh as part of our deac regular deac media thank you both for that um response and then finally I just want to um give um a shout out for the last H slide that was shown um as it relates to our seal
138of biliteracy um historically we have really uh been super proud of our of our a number of students who have received um the seal the state seale of B literacy and that's been something that was celebrated since I've been on the board and of course predates me um but to see the amazing number uh of uh an increase of our students who are receiving the S of bi literacy specifically in the 2023 2024 year is just absolutely phenomenal and so I just want to um pause and uh highlight and also shout out our students um and our Educators for the phenomenal work that they um have done there it is one thing um to be able to speak one language but to be able to speak multiple language languages and to be literate in both
139of those languages is something to be um celebrated and so uh shout out to our our students and to our families and to our Educators for making that happen for so many of our students um thank you I'll pass it over to whoever is ready I'm ready president Brown director B okay go right ahead great um like she's here I can hear her um I just want to thank you so much for your presentation and for highlighting a lot of the professional development that's been taking place since the implementation of um the latest um master plan I know it's been a lot and so I just want to really appreciate that and also I really appreciate um director albeck's kind of like scrutiny on the data a little bit like yes the graduation rates are
140high and yes we score better on math and on Ela than you know then the county and then the state on our on our standardized testing but when we dig when we dig in those numbers are still overall not great and and focus on like those a tog requirements that we're setting up our English Learners to be able to get into uc's and state schools um I had a couple of questions just about uh constructing meaning and how that's been explained to our El families and also what does the professional development around that look like for administrators um for you know District leaders so that we're all kind of on the same page of what integrated ELD looks like what are the benefits of it you know like for your average family how do they
141understand like you know that and then the second thing that I wanted to bring up I love that there's information about the professional development on how to support duly identified students but as we heard from our DC committee tonight I think there's a lot of family members who might still not know what you know what special education resources are available to them so maybe their students aren't yet duy identified have not yet entered the special education system but want to understand more like what that means because they might their children might it's not just a language issue but they might have a learning difference that needs a little bit more support and so how do we talk to our daac um um members about that like how to or and at the site level how
142do we educate our English language Learners uh just about special education in general um to make sure that we're properly supporting their students so those are two constructing meaning for families and administrators and staff and then um the sped issues thanks thank you direct badev um as it relates to constructing man constructing meaning and communication with the families I think here in B BD we're very fortunate to have site based ELD coordinators um in our s based ELD coordinators not only work with our site elac but also and often times run our site elac with their principles so I know that these conversations come up so similar to what associate superintendent Hogan dij said as it relates to our work with the daac and their reclassification process these are also conversations that we're having with
143our daac and then we're um with the support of our superintendent who you know sends our our Representatives back to their school site with homework to do uh we do ask that our our Delux bring uh information back so in in our daac we talk about constructing meaning we talk about the importance of constructing meaning and how it actually plays out um and then that information goes back to site site Ela which then gets distributed to families but I also know that our ELD coordinators work closely with the families and um share a little bit about Beyond just our time in our group with designated dld what does this look like when they're back in the class with with Miss X or with with Mr V kind of thing and can share those insights um
144so that stands out for me if any be if there's like an easy one pager I would love to I don't know if my board members want to see it but I would love to see it just kind of how that's communicated to families um in language that they can understand and that you know board members who are not Educators can understand yeah we can get that to you and yeah I just want I just want to say I really appreciate your question because I remember when we were um working on rewriting our multilingual learner master plan that's one of the things that kept coming up was you know communication communication we want to understand those parents and families and so yeah we're really working on uh providing information in a variety of ways you
145know through our elac and delac videos um I remember last year during daac we provided videos of um students in in classrooms using the designated ELD curriculum for example so they could see it in action so it's really an area that we're working on we still have a lot more to do but um it's a great question question and then in terms of um the duly identified uh the question was about Ed letting parents know yeah that there are these resources for duly identified students and also just for parents who maybe their child has not yet entered special education but they noticed that hey it's not just like a language issue maybe they do have some kind of learning difference um I think just kind of based on the comments from the D committee tonight
146it seems to be a gap that they might not even be aware that there are special education resource so that overlap between English Learners and special education like before the students are identified right and before the educators are working with them how do we inform parents of Education resources well that's why I think it's important that um we continue to discuss this this uh population no matter if we have a parent of a student with a disability in in in our elac for example and we um we have sort of like templates of slide presentations for elac and that all so there's information that we're ensuring that all elac families are getting and so we can make sure that they get information on um how to if they have a concern that they think their
147student might have a learning difference what do you do and so we could include that we haven't yet but it's a great suggestion thank you yeah that'd be great and I mean I'll just say for myself I speaking to English Learners there's a lot of stigma in different cultures around special education right and their children are entering a new system where maybe the stigma is not there the parents aren't used to the resources there's a just like a lot of handholding that goes into like helping a family understand that this is this isn't a terrible thing that there's different ways to learn right so there's this also like soft pitch that goes along with it like understanding um the cultural nuances of different backgrounds and how special education is treated within different cultural contexts it's
148it's a hard thing so I don't think it's like something very easy to do in a one pater but I think at least starting the with deac would be really powerful thank you okay I'll go next um I first I just I'm really grateful for this presentation and for all of the amazing work that you all are doing I'm very excited to hear about constructing meaning in elementary schools I think Kathleen and I were talking about that many years ago the need for it um I agree with uh president Brown about the the Seal of biliteracy numbers being very exciting to see um really happy to hear about the work to support dual identified students the focus on long-term English Learners um I really appreciated the um thinking about increasing two-way communication with families being
149an important goal um and I was happy to hear about the adoption process really focusing on the needs of Menda specifically um I have two questions one of them is about reclassification rates I'm wondering if you can contextualize for us um those rates what what's our goal reclassification rate and how are we doing you know how do we know whe how will we know when we're doing a really great job with reclassification and my second question is related to your very last slide where you were talking about changes to the eel master plan I'm curious the about the ramifications of not giving the lpac in t and does that mean anything for identifying ters for ELD services like what are what are the implications of that change thank you so as it relates to the
150change in in initial lpac for TK I want to make a point of clarification that we still are it doesn't mean that we're not supporting TK students so our TK students are still receiving designated ELD uh with our Eld coordinators um and that was a decision that we made because we believe that's the right thing to be doing we don't we shouldn't be waiting for you know uh a student to take an assessment to be termed you know something for them to get services that they need um so in regards to in regards to Services no services will change um it does have an implication on you know how many um students are identified as multilingual Learners within a School site which then sometimes translates into uh funding sources or Staffing decisions and I think
151that is something that we are working internally to make sure that we're both cognizant of and accounting for when we're making those um Staffing decisions um ensuring that we're making sure that those those TK students are are are kept in mind and when you're identifying those kids to provide services is it just based on their home language survey is it based on teachers observation both yeah okay and just in regard to reclassification so um as you know we launched a three-year l cap so our Baseline data for reclassification is 17% so we're looking for a 3% increase um we at the mid year right now we have about 16.7% of our students have reclassified so we're haven't quite hit um last year's measure but there's a lot of reclassification work that happens in the spring
152yeah thank you so much um firstly I want to uh really congratulate your hard work and the um obvious improvements and clear improvements and really thank you for all that work that's been put in and your engagement with the community um I just have a a quick comment and question um that I think has been covered here with other board members as well um just to emphasize the importance again of duly identified students and I really appreciate um the go two uh analyses here and the do domains with the performance areas and the and the uh listening speaking Reading Writing Etc with the performance areas that are covered here in the graphic um but also just the awareness and the um knowledge that there are intersections here particularly with duly identified students which has been
153raised by daac as well and the type of Outreach that's necessary to um ensure those students have um programs and services that are in the appropriate both for their parents for LEP parents who have access um to the appropriate interpretation and translations for documents Etc but also the students themselves who have that type of need um and uh in addition um I also want to flag and congratulate you on the 82.5% graduated rate um that sounds quite quite high and quite good to me uh with an increase of 88.3% with 63 students so um uh there's lots of good work going on of course we always ask uh helpful pointed questions uh towards constructive ends and again thank you for your hard work thanks um president Brown I think we're all done with our comments
154and questions yes yes we are um thank you all so much for your presentation this evening uh and for taking the time to address the questions that came from the board uh we will now move on to item 14.1 which will excuse me be our facilities update um as many of you all know in the community we uh receive a facilities update periodically um and uh the purpose of the facilities update is to really highlight changes and also review and approve changes uh to the measure gbond program uh tonight's update uh and presentation is to discuss uh with the of Education the necessary changes uh to the program to ensure that quality facilities are still constructed and maintained while the program remains fiscally sovent and bond funds continue uh to be drawn down in a
155way that protects the community's tax rate so I'd like to invite um director Kalise as well um as uh some new faces um and some familiar faces uh to the board this evening uh for our um much awaited facilities update and take some time to say direct to director kise um excuse me to associate superintendent Kalise uh welcome back we have definitely uh missed you and are so excited for this evening's presentation great thank you good evening everybody so I'm joined here tonight with the team um who pretty much manages the majority of our bond program uh many of you have met some but not all and I think there's a few who don't know them so I am going to introduce them real quick so um to my left we have Maurice bordon morice
156is our new director of facilities maintenance and operations he's been with the district for a little bit over three months now uh definitely getting into it and really doing a great job uh directly to my right is Asia Evans the district safety and risk coordinator that is part of facilities um and Asia has actually been integral and helping us look at our projects and really understand how we can Implement things that are for our safety projects but also monitoring and watching any new OSHA regulations or things like that that come out um so I have her here tonight to talk about one of the projects uh sitting next to Asia is Kevin Wagner Kevin is a program manager with Van Pelt Construction Services who is our cm and PM firm Kevin has over 41 years
157experience in the construction industry he joined our team about six or S months ago um as the program manager as one of the two program managers for our overall project and directly next to Kevin is Ashley Del Rio many of you might remember Ashley as really the savior of the summer right as I told you guys in August had it not been for Ashley there is absolutely no way we would have pulled off moving seven different facilities in two months time including multiple schools uh Ashley is also a program manager with years in construction management uh as well as school Finance so she really she will cover the portion tonight that talks specifically about the bond funds and how we really run out our cash flow and things like that so with that I am
158gonna pass it over to Maurice and he's gonna open up the presentation uh associate superintendent before you begin um thank you for taking the time to introduce um all the staff who will present tonight uh I failed to give the board a much needed break um so I'm going to ask since you are ready of begun would you like to continue uh and find somewhere to pause in between your presentation or would you like to pause here so that the board uh can take a very quick break I think it's a perfect opportunity to pause the evil inside me wanted to make him wait and sit through 30 you and me too you and me both honestly a good opportunity so go ahead okay we'll take we'll take a little break thank you all please
159forgive me for forgetting to do that so let's go ahead and take a quick break uh folks and then we'll come back and pick up where we left off thank you than e e e spe to for e e e no I didn't prob time problem for e president Brown has notified us that we're ready to go all right hopefully you all enjoyed your much needed break uh we are ready to pick up where we left off all right thank you folks thank you for for having us tonight um as John mentioned uh I am morce Sport and I've been here three months so I've uh figured out where the coffee machine is and I I have had a chance to uh review the uh measure g g program and it was uh extremely exciting
160uh for me to review and I'm excited to uh participate in this uh tonight's agenda will cover the initial measure Bond planning which basically explains how the plan was created uh the project review summary of recommendations uh project budget allocation highlights including the workforce housing information update uh the initial Bond was created by the superintendent's Bond work group uh this group um I know next slide please see it's not me not just me okay so this group uh included uh internal and external stakeholders um uh project up for consideration uh uh were as followed uh facilities needs assessments um which basically uh directs the needs and explains the improvements through facilities uh Bond promises and uh commitments once the project list was created the group was able to develop an equitable scoring and ranking system
161uh scoring was developed in accordance uh with the bond approved design standards criteria uh must be achievable with reasonable anticipated funds promote uh Equity across the district incorporate the needs of a diverse student body uh the priority rankings uh to improve um teaching and learning opportunities uh correct infrastructure deficiencies improve campus safety uh including uh student services correct operational deficiencies expand options for Project based learning Andor Career Development and also to advance District sustainability goals hold that hold that for one second please I'm sorry I think it's important to point this out and I've talked about this with our facility subcommittee I've mentioned this to the board but this board is different from when the board was here when the superintendent Bond working group was created what Maurice just went over and this is important
162to note because often times your constituents the public the parents they want to know well how come this school gets a project and this school doesn't get a project right so there's a couple of factors there one it's a revolving basis right it's based upon need but it's also based upon when was the last time the school was modernized right the state of California says a school should be modernized every 30 years but with that the scoring that was initially done it was based on these bullets but then the the point to highlight here is the priority ranking so all of these bull that you see here were really the important pieces as developed by the superintendence bond working group and then supported by the board and it wasn't that a project would check one
163box or two boxes but what it was that what it was was that those projects even previous board Promises of projects they had to fall into one if not more of these buckets and then based on the number of bullets that they actually checked based on that number of boxes that they were checking was how we were able to actually prioritize that and that can be seen on the next Slide the next slide shows it it's not intended for you to be able to read it's just really a screenshot to show you what we're working with on the right side is just a very small snippet of What's called the unified implementation plan that sheet is actually about two pages long but that was all of the projects as they came out of that Bond
164working group and with the initial estimates from there then what we look at is we say okay these are the projects but as the board knows and we've talked about because we had a $380 million Bond we don't issue $380 million and have that money sitting in the bank we're very strategic about how and when we issue that money sell the bonds in order to keep the taxpayers rates low so just because one score might have Pro scored one project may have scored slightly higher than the next that doesn't guarantee its placement in line because that one project that scored higher could be 50 million the next project might be 20 and we might have been able to fit the 20 million in the smaller issuance right or that first issuance excuse me so from
165there what we did was we created this implementation plan and then off the bottom we started to remove projects as it did not fit into the funding on the left what you see there is the funding sources and we were concerned conservative with our numbers but what that was was measure G gave the bond gave the district $380 million for facilities improvements and then we have we calculate in there the interest State funding State funding for Little Theater is specific to seismic work that has to happen I'll get into that a little bit more and then developer fees and then the obf line we can actually we zeroed that out that was originally a 0% interest loan that we were going to do that was going to be paid back in lie of a U
166ility bill and we were able to pick that up to relieve the general fund sum as it fit into a project scope next slide so tonight we and I I want to point out we do have a Workforce housing update towards the end so it's not here but the on this list but what the project discussions are that we're going to have we're going to talk about Longfellow Middle School Sylvia Mendes the BHS Little Theater the BHS CN project which is capacity and expansion uh District wide heat mitigation uh Asia will talk a little bit about that modernization at Washington uh modernizations at Berkeley art magnets Berkeley Adult School Emerson and then also a districtwide solar project next slide so Longfellow project I've I've included some visuals here because it is important to point out
167what you see here is severe dry rot on the three-story building the curriculum building but what looks even worse are the two photos on the bottom and what we've seen there is actually that's on the admin building and the gym and once we began to actually strip the skin pull the stucco off that building what we C quickly Learned was that the singl story gymnasium and admin building the condition of that structurally was exponentially worse than the three-story building so because of the size and magnitude of these repairs that have to happen the State architect said now these are actually two separate projects that you have to submit so we have to go through a whole new engineering investigation process engineer drawings and submit right now the anticipated approval from the state architect is spring
168of 25 for the three-story building and summer of 25 for the uh gy while this is a delay this actually works out well just with the weather conditions when we consider the fact that the structural work has to happen and it can happen in the rain next slide there's some other factors that I did bring up to the facility subcommittee uh when we met uh on a Sunday back in December we had a long workshop and we continue to uncover new things at Longfellow that we shouldn't find yet we do the very top blueprint that you see on that image there is from 1935 as I recall and it shows a very small straight footing going into the ground on the right of that you see a blueprint from 97 I think it was or
1691996 which shows that there was actually an improved Foundation at some point it went deeper it had a step footing the fo the photo that you see is actually what we discovered out there we dug it up and we have a straight piece of concrete with no step footing sitting in the dirt so this is another thing that we are dealing with and overall what that means to the project besides for the the time delay is a huge cost Longfellow the initial budget that the board approved for this project was 36.5 the new ROM uh which is the rough order of magnitude we have it listed here at 68 million but even based on everything that we continue to learn what I'm going to prepare the board for is this project will like likely reach
170$75 million when it's all set and done next slide so over at Long Fellow We are continuing to do a lot of value engineering uh as we do on all our projects which is just looking for missed opportunities in the in the initial budget planning of where we can save money this seems like a really small item to talk about the rain gutters but it's actually a tremendous item and it comes at a huge cost what we learned on the curriculum building was that all the water damage that we found was because of the initial design of the rain gutters however those rain gutters are considered to be a historic feature on the building so we're working with the Berkeley Historic Society for them to understand that while we want to protect that as much
171as we can we we're going to have to deviate from that um we came up with a plan and that's what you see on the right originally about how would we deal with that um and we can extend some what's called TPO some Roofing and roll it through the gutter but the problem is is the minute that somebody's cleaning those gutters and they accidentally Pierce that membrane we're right back where we were so we're constantly looking for ways to save money and again seems like a really small thing but reinstalling those copper gutters with the intricate framing system that they had for it we're talking about a lot of money that we can save on this project next slide so this is the schedule for forast and it's done by by color coding just to
172sort of show you where they're working at what point in time there is overlap but they are working on everything they can and a lot of it depends on when we come back out of the state with our approvals for example the three-story building or the gymnasium building there's very limited work that we can do on either of those right now because those are back sitting with the state architect so we're doing the work in the Annex Building they're doing some site work they're doing the work work on the field but now due to the season that's actually paused so there's not a lot happening out there what we anticipate right now unless we see major changes to the plans in what we call the back checks from the state Arch architect is that this
173project will be completed in August of 2027 next slide so Sylvia Mendes um this project is almost back on schedule we did shut down for about two weeks uh due to some overwhelming concerns that we were hearing about the district put some extraordinary safety measures and mitigation plans in place um we added a 16t sound wall there uh we added additional scaffolding additional netting additional air monitoring Etc um and what we've done is we've actually because the schedule is so tight on this we've agreed to pay overtime rates to actually put the contractor back on schedule cuz we did the project down for about 2 weeks when we received all the complaints just so that not only we could conduct an investigation but we had OSHA come in and actually do site assessments we had
174the contractor's insurance carrier come in and do safety inspections and then we brought in a third-party consultant to do an independent inspection that third-party consultant continues to go out to that site every few weeks to do random inspections um and everything the reports that are coming coming back are all overwhelmingly good um but all of this it came in an about a million dollar price tag to to shut this project down and put these other mitigations in place next slide Berkeley High Little Theater um this is a project that you'll see later I'm recommending because part of this presentation is that we are recommending moving some projects around and even deferring a project this project I'm not recommending moving at all and the reason for that is is there's several first of which this is
175about a $90 million project so when we consider the impact of escalation to any project budget this one's going to hurt the worst the second is is from a seismic standpoint excluding what we found with the two buildings at Longfellow from a seismic standpoint we know that this building absolutely has to be done um it's bad enough and it's large enough in scope that it's still titled the Little Theater because that's what the project has always been but the state architect was very clear they said if you touch the little theater you are doing a mandatory seismic upgrade on the house as well the 3500 seat main Auditorium so this project does a lot of things it modernizes and seismically retrofits the entire theater building both the little theater and the house it modernizes and
176refreshes that most of it hasn't been touched since the 40s since its original construction and we're also capturing on an opportunity here here that it added a very small amount in the grand scheme of this budget but one of the biggest problems that we continue to have at Berkeley High is really not enough restrooms and the restrooms that we're talking about are for teachers and students and they're all gender neutral so because of the elevation changes there we're adding another building which will basically sit underneath the lobby essentially which will offer seven more restrooms seven more stalls for students as well as seven individual stalls for staff all of which will be gender neutral next slide so Berkeley High School capacity and expansion factors um current classroom needs at Berkeley High uh in speaking with
177principal de goza and looking at their master schedule they roughly need about 30 more classrooms at that site there's no way to give them that but one of the things that we noticed when we were planning the original buildout of g107 109 was to build that out truly as CTE space as the board had initially approved was going to cost about a million5 more than what it should have just because of where it was in the G building and it's a historic building and all that did was solve for the need for CTE but it didn't solve for these other needs so we came up with this plan which gave the CTE program a dedicated shop and and lab of about five ,000 Square ft for robotics Advanced Machining um it also adds nine additional
178General Ed classrooms between the five and that building and then converting g107 109 back to four classrooms it adds additional office space what's needed at the at the campus and allows us to house an administrator on that end of the campus as well currently they're all housed in one corner of the campus um it adds restrooms and conference areas it also creates the opportunity to bring the tennis courts back which has been definitely a huge source of contention and discussion for over a decade now um and this project does create a challenge though right Berkeley High is built out and where this is going to go is the softball field so this plan resolves a lot of issues and the way that we really fully envelope that fully resolve everything is to embark on some
179work at Muller field as well that's in the next slide here oh sorry two more slides ahead so the original schedule for the CN Pro uh the CN project capacity and Expansion Project was to begin in June of 26 we've actually moved that back one year to start in June of 27 and we've done that for a few reasons one of which is we still have a lot of planning and Community engagement work to do do around uh mulling field as you'll see in the next slide but also once we started putting it together and we came to understand the full breath of what we have to do at Ming field to really honor some of the the wants if you will of the community it is costing a lot more so the original budget
180for this and we're this is part of what we're asking you to vote on is budget changes and timeline changes the original budget for this project was 24.8 Million we're estimating this project to have a budget of $ 44.7 million keeping in mind this does cover a lot of things from classroom space to fields to tennis courts Etc so if we jump to the next slide what we'll see is the newest design and I I can't take credit for this uh there's a lot of community members who have been involved as well as our Union partners and past Union Partners who have actually retired but they came up with the idea of the one of the sources of contention around this is right now a large space of Tim Ming field is used as open
181green space for the community in order to put the softball field there originally with the size the footprint of that field space we would have to completely take away that that open Green Space and while you can absolutely make the argument well it's District property it's there for district use the community has become accustomed to it and they want to keep some green space which we understand we also know that there's a need for restrooms at this site it was there were never any put in when the original site was built as well as some changing rooms batting cages things like that what this design does is this actually allows for the baseball field as well as a softball field and what you see on the top screen is maintaining some open Green Space so
182what's the big difference the big difference is if you look on the bottom Derby Street is smaller and it's a one-way Street this is going to involve a lot of partnership with you the board working with our partners on city council um we've already had a conversation with fire because fire really this is a major artery for the fire department um so we viewed it as fire could potentially be one of the biggest challenges uh I I met with uh several of the fire chiefs about two months ago and they actually signed off on this and bless this as long as we can continue to maintain 20 foot clearance they're absolutely in support of this project as it benefits the community as a whole next slide this is Asia you're good you're thank you John
183good evening my name is Asia Evans and I am the district safety risk safety and risk coordinator and I was also involved in the heat mitigation project this project was constructed for safety purposes not only for comfort but also in alignment with Cal oia regulations regarding heat mitigation our maintenance department has piloted the efficiency of bath High Velocity fans in various classrooms throughout the district with excellent results so the design is currently in progress to add additional bath to all classroom and ancill spaces to in the district now due to the increase of cost projects in progress there are going to be two phases of heat mitigation the first phase days will be the installation of the fans beginning summer 2025 to Spring 2026 then following in summer 2026 to Spring 2027 in which we'll
184install the mecco shades the same Shades that are you see here in this room next SL um yes I'm going to speak briefly about a couple more projects so Washington modernization project um was identified by the the bond working group as a priority primarily due to the safety issues with the uh school office being inside of the uh basically in the middle of the main building so this design will actually bring that uh uh office space to a primary entry point for the campus and will also help control the uh flow of traffic through the school uh we're also going to be addressing some of the water infiltration issues we have there as we've witnessed at Longfellow the last thing we want is more water infiltration issues in our school so it's one of our
185biggest priorities to get that taken care of here at Washington as well we've also got some infrastructure that's going to be addressed as long and as well as the uh nutrition services uh this school has a very uh inadequate uh nutrition services for the students so we're going to be addressing that as well uh our initial plan was to start work on that this summer uh summer of 25 uh but with the initial feedback that we've gotten from DSA the division State architect uh we anticipate not getting that approval in time for us to proceed starting in June of 25 so we are anticipating pushing that until start of June of 26 and that will continue through 28 um the next project is the uh Berkeley Arts Magnet uh again uh identified as a priority
186from the working group uh primarily due to filling infrastructure uh mechanical systems electrical systems are all in major need of updating um we originally anticipated starting construction for that in 25 as summer 25 as well um we are uh just about through DSA so we do anticipate having DSA approval shortly but because of the um uh timing of funding um we anticipate uh we're actually recommending that we defer this particular project till 2029 if I may I just want to interject because I see the way that I wrote it on the slide it's a little bit disingenuous not with intention but we talk about we recommend put pushing this project back to 2029 because of timing of funding but that's only half of it the other is really like we're seeing potentially a 40 to
18745 million cost increase at Longfellow and that's a project that's already underway so we have to continue with that project and what what I mean by I say about how the funding comes in is we don't want to just start selling too much in bonds because then what we're going to have is we're going to push the tax rate up through the roof so go ahead uh next SL please uh the next project I would like to speak about is the Berkeley Adult School um as we know Longfellow is now uh um using this campus for their their facilities um this is a priority for for us though um we really can't start that until longell has moved back to their original campus um the original plan was start in the summer of 25 we
188are in DSA now we anticipate uh approval for that shortly um but we are recommending that we push that out until Longfellow is back with the potential of even uh deferring that one until 2029 as well also because of some of the funding issues or not the funding issues but the the cash that we're spending on on longf campus Emerson modernization uh this one was identified primarily for capacity uh needs for that particular campus uh we are in design uh we don't anticipate having designs done early enough to start uh which was we're originally anticipating 2025 construction uh right now we're not anticipating designs being complete and ready until uh 2026 um and we are considering and uh recommending that we uh defer this to potentially a later Bond program if necessary all depends on
189how much we have coming back from the state for the other projects that'll free up funding for this one if if uh if that's possible yeah and I got to have some conversations with principal Holmes just recently uh when I got back in town about this and we did talk about this and I explained to her why with Emerson my recommendation would actually be to move it to a later Bond measure because while we can absolutely change how we issue money and defer projects how we issue money we can't add to what that total is so you know we're spending a lot more money on Long Fellow we're spending more money on Mendes and we're spending more money on the theater because the state said no you got to do the whole project right you
190got to do the the main theater as well so when we look at that and we compare that against for example bam or um excuse me the adult school the needs at both bam and the adult school are exponentially worse than Emerson it's not Den it's not to say that Emerson doesn't need a modernization it absolutely does need to be modernized but at BAM and Berkeley adult school for example almost every single window leaks we have major building uh envelope issues along with infrastructure issues and Ada and path of travel Etc so for that reason we make the recommendation that this one gets pushed next slide please so districtwide solar this is it's a little dis it's a little confusing the way that it's worded but what this was was really to finish off the
191district solar plan and so Longfellow Sylvia Mendes Berkeley Arts Magnet and the BHS Natatorium all have a major amount of solar incorporated into that project the natatorium project it was prior to you joining director K but the natatorium is the indoor pool at the high school but that building alone was actually the largest consumer of electricity in the entire District so what we did was that entire side of the campus all along milia Street every rooftop is called covered in solar we added 376 kilowatt of solar just to offset the energy from that one building there are major projects for solar at these other ones and Bam what we saw in design was we have the room on the campus and we also have the infrastructure the way it's being laid out on the campus
192that we can add enough solar there to actually make bam the first Net Zero campus we will will be 100% off grid over there um but what does that leave for districtwide that left the district office parking lot this great big parking lot out here that we say wow how much solar could we put up and the transportation parking lot and what we quickly saw in a study was because of the change to the pg& rules under the Public Utilities Commission they switched us from what they called net nem which is net energy metering nem2 to net n30 we got our applications in on time to actually be grandfathered in on them 20 but there was no way that we could possibly get through design approval and Construction in time to capture that so what
193that means is instead of seeing a $1.4 million savings we would have seen about a $220,000 savings quite frankly there are much better ways and much more costeffective ways for the district to reach its sustainability goals that project just from a financial perspective it it's a Los proposition next slide so summary of recommendations before I hand it over to Ashley longf it's an ongoing project we're going to continue we recommend that the board support that right Sylvia Mendes ongoing project she shorted me 15 minutes just for the record uh Sylvia Mendes is ongoing BHS Little Theater for the reasons that I discussed we recommend keeping that on schedule and not doing anything with that the T project uh out at the high school we recommend that we start construction in 27 the heat mitigation we
194look to break up into two separate phases as Asia explained and that's primarily just because of cash flow Washington modernization uh we recommend we're moving that to Summer of 2026 and that's not anything other than it's just taking longer to get the state approvals than originally anticipated Berkeley Arts Magnet and Berkeley Adult School we Rec commend that the board says yes move them out to 2029 depending upon sabb funds and what that is a state allocation board if we see money come in from the state sooner on the facilities plan where we qualify for it then we can absolutely push those projects up because we will have fully designed and approved plans at that point in time Emerson we recommend moving to potentially a next Bond measure and cancelling the districtwide solar project with that
195I'm going to pass it over to Ashley go next slide please so as uh assistant superintendent kiss has reiterated this slide kind of shows where we're increasing and decreasing projects um throughout the bond program uh there's a few projects that we didn't touch too much detail on but these are all projects that are either in progress have been completed or we're proposing for cancelling um the increases our biggest numbers right here um for CN as we reviewed we're needing an increase of about 20 $25 million at this time um to note on that we are still in the concept phase for mhing field so these again are are rough projected numbers for that um the king CDC project was initially a project that was to modernize that entire School site which was mostly accomplished over
196this summer um with the Sprint of Shifting and re um adjusting where students were being housed for this incoming school year um due to having to accommodate the adult school being at this campus um we've had some additional cost increases for um temporary restrooms um and a lot of the Cil work that came with that so in order to accommodate where our costs are at now we're looking at a $1.5 million increase to that budget um Long Fellow as we've reviewed many times we're looking potentially right now at a $3 31.4 million budget increase um and Washington Washington modernization as we've been doing um engineer estimates with our team uh we're looking at a $4 million increase for that project as well to accommodate all its needs uh the decreases and close outs that you're
197seeing we are constantly in efforts to um reduce budgets where necessary by doing value engineering um and a lot of this on the list is also project closeout um projects that have been completed so we're doing that um checks and balances to see tying up every dollar every cent that we can um the biggest goal is to maximize every dollar uh that we can for the for this Bond and a big piece of where a lot of these uh numbers will fluctuate is obviously as we're hitting construction as things are occurring but the also as assistant superintendent K uh talked on is the state allocated bonds um a lot of that will will play into effect of how much money we're needing out of the bond specifically and what could be covered out of state
198Bond uh State the actual State Bond sorry uh next slide hold one second I just I I look up I see a couple of Wheels spinning right wondering wow we're talking about a lot of money and increases right and I definitely see that at least it seems like you guys are thinking about that so I do want to point this out when when when we created the bond list what we did on that unified implementation plan was for all of the out years and you'll see that on the slide Ash he's going to show about cash flow and things like that the normal escalator for for increase in costs that's run at that time was about 3% per year I had the architect run all of those numbers at 6% increases every year and the
199architect told me John you're crazy it's never going to go up that much well we ran it at 6% per year and what we've seen is overall it didn't make a dent in it so we've known this is coming for some time but to try to put a raw a new ROM to original budgets we would have had to have completely redone that implementation plan which is why we handle it in this manner where we first talk with it with our subcommittee and then bring it to the board as just a major shift so just so you understand our estimates aren't that far off it's just the net estimates that were done in 2019 even with that high escalator it didn't make a dent in it with what we've seen with inflation costs with issues
200with just getting me uh labor on the jobs and things like that so Ashley good next slide thank you ladies so we're in constant effort um we are consistently daily weekly reviewing our cash flow anticipating how we expect to spend our dollars over the next we're looking all the way to 2030 at this point so um these numbers are constantly reviewed as a team again we're doing a lot of value engineering to see where we can cut back and save on money um the biggest thing is just ensuring that we're responsible for our financial management and so our our cash flow um again it's small here because it's a very long it's a large lengthy document um but it's in constant update of what we spent to date what we anticipate spending as we're um
201getting DSA approved drawings we're taking in those engineering estimates and re-evaluating our budgets and and again tying every dollar back as well that we can as we're completing projects as we're tying them up as we're able to find where we can make some cost savings those are also reflected in these increases and decreases so one of the items that we've given you guys for board approval is that updated what you guys see as the green and yellow sheet which is our budget allocation for projects um there's a lot on this one as again we just did our um checks and balances to close out and complete a lot of old projects and grab every single diamond penny that we can to reallocate to all the current projects and upcoming projects and the cash flow here
202is not really intended to be read right uh I'll happily share it with you Mike I might quiz you later director Chang on it but really what it's to show is so we color code different iterations of a project whether it be in there's three different iterations of design then there's bidding then there's construction Etc that's the different colors that you see but what happens is is at the bottom of the sheet so when we're taking it through construction what we have to do is we have to estimate roughly per interim how much money do we believe that contractor is actually going to bill for and then from that we're totaling it out at the bottom based on what's in the bank so to speak so that we know how to work with Pauline and
203her team to work with our financial advisers as to when we do the next Bond issuance this allows us to project those Bond issuances but it also allows us to constantly work with like our our our financial advisor K&N to be watching the market watching Market rates things like that to know like hey do we need to speed up an issuance do we need to slow down a project what do we need to do because at the end of it all in 208 18 209 when the board said yes go back out for another Bond what the board had reaffirmed there was it its commitment to the community which was that all go bonds combined would never exceed a tax rate of $1 17160 per $100,000 of assessed value we're nowhere near that we never
204want to max out that credit card but we want to honor that promise and that commitment and keep it low so that's why it's sort of a this it's a long and or a long explanation but it's important to understand Ashley um I would say just to touch on that more is that you know we look ahead to to ensure that our projects are planned around that cash flow deposit and that's what's so big about the timing adjustments that we're needing um that we're proposing to the board is a lot of that is due to reviewing what the tax rates are going to be at and when we can expect cash flow to come in um and that's a big key factor for it okay so three slides left and there's going to be a
205quiz uh so this is what's that okay this is an informational update so this is about Workforce housing and it's about Longfellow so Workforce housing there's a couple of strikethroughs there and I heard mention of it and public comment earlier about well the date changed and we're not being told I found out two hours before walking into a staff meeting today at Longfellow with superintendent right that the date got pushed the gate the the groundbreaking got pushed by a full month now we've been asking can we delay the project can we delay the project and we keep hearing the same thing no you cannot delay the project if you delay it you will lose $4 49.4 million in funding for an 88 million build the reason that it's delayed is there is two California state
206agencies that are paying significant monies into that one of them is running severely behind so I actually spoke with them and I said well look can you just run a little bit further behind right let us start in June nope they're not willing to do that they're going to process it as quickly as they can but the other agency it's Cal HFA which is the behind they said the other agency it does not impact our funding because it's one state agency to another so what you see here is sort of an anticipated activities schedule uh right now a groundbreaking being on April 12th and really that works starting in April but we'll see when that approval comes in and the funding comes in from Cal HFA on the right hand side there's a note because
207this is important to mention there's actually a dedicated construction page of the Project's website so this project has always had its own website and the city actually requires us to put certain things on that and that includes just as a small sampling conditions of approval Transportation construction plan construction noise reduction program Etc all of that is under the city and it's required to be posted there they even have to post post their super or their their construction form and phone number on there right so you can call them if you're unhappy I'm pointing this out because it's it's significantly different even than a b USD construction project and a lot of a lot of what my hope is here tonight is to make everybody understand this is not a b USD project this is a
208project that BD myself my team the governing board has been working on for over six years to that there was a huge Community contingent that was working on this this was something that was really viewed as important to not only the B USD Community but to the community at whole and evidence of that shows and what the turnout and support was for measure o the city's measure o low income or excuse me uh low-income housing Bond right that's actually a large contributor of about $24 million to this project so but understanding that all all the district has done is entered into a land lease and figured out a way to structure this where we can do this without costing our taxpayers money as a school bond so by doing that we're we're separating the land
209and we really we can jump to the next slide please we want people to understand it's no longer one site what you see there that red line that delineating line and the parking lot that's actually a new property line and it would be very easy to say oh well you're saying it's not the same site but it's still in the parking lot yeah it is but it's really a neighbor to our school at this point in time what that red line shows is actually a 20 foot sound wall that's being put up um there's some concerns around how do you keep the kids safe and off of the construction site well it's fenced on three sides with 16t fences currently and they'll be a 20ft sound wall in between so the construction activities will not
210actually bleed over physic into the site nor will the site be able to come over into the construction site we're coordinating deliveries already talking with the contractor with the developer on what their what their construction deliveries look like because we can't impede upon drop off and pickup for that school one of the thing that's shown here is you'll actually see on that picture there's a crane and there's a radius Circle that runs around that um that shows What's called a pick plan and we're showing that just so that people understand that we are thinking about safety we had the the developer already work with calr to pull the necessary permits to actually load and unload this site with that crane from San Pablo Avenue as opposed to Virginia Street had to be calr because it's
211a state road why are we going to mess up San Pablo because I'm not willing to have that crane pick all those materials over the school and if we load off Virginia we have to go over the school now it's it's important to note that when the crane is not in use the crane is not locked the crane moves with the wind right it's designed to do that as a sky crane so it won't topple so the crane will turn over the building which is absolutely acceptable by osia standards by California standards and by school construction standards because it's often we have cranes on school sites when doing modernizations or new builds next slide this part of the information update pertains to Longfellow operating at that site uh in October we started talking with the
212city of Berkeley about needing a new drop off Zone and a new bus Zone uh met several representatives from the city out there they looked at it what they've offered uh but we're still waiting final approval from the city is a 200 foot passenger loading zone for Rolling drop off and pickup that'll be on Virginia Street with right around the corner will be 100 ft which is according to our transportation department what she needs for two buses for the school buses we're putting the school buses up on the Curtis Street side just because that's flat it doesn't have the the grade changes that we see on Virginia so it's easier to meet Ada around both sides of that Garden there is an entrance to the back door of the school what we're doing over the
213summer along with uh some other work there is we're actually installing some new f fening around the garden just on the school side with some new gates and by doing that that allows us to create a secure entry and keep it as a closed campus we already have card readers we're adding an intercom at the back door and card readers on the gates so that allows it to be a locked campus but for staff to still come in at this point I do want to take a couple opportunities to talk about because I tried to limit the size of this in to some degree but there's been questions from the board that you guys have asked me individually and I've tried to answer I've also heard some tonight so I do want to talk about
214a few things with that um one of which is is that sorry I lost my train of thought there for a minute one of the things is that the workforce housing project has been a little bit less than transparent I want to point out we've been working on this at the board level right here in this boardroom and in literally dozens of meetings with the community for over six years now we've talked about it at City Council meetings we've held neighborhood meetings we've had it on the website everywhere else so it's definitely been out there there's concerns about Longfellow being at the site while it is under construction I understand that school construction is common it's how we do it it's not as simple as moving them to another site there was a request to
215do that with Sylvia Mendes if you may recall it delayed that project by a year we searched high and low and then we went back and we did it two and three more times we looked at every option that we could including talking to all of our neighboring districts saying do you have an empty school we'll rent it we'll pay for transportation we'll move the kids nobody had it we fielded ideas we listened to what everybody said right and we looked at them but I can't use sites that are not approved by the division of State architect to house our students it's it's against the law we cannot do it so we have looked at all of those things understanding that this afternoon myself and superintendent we had an opportunity to actually attend the staff
216meeting over at Longfellow it was really to listen and understand what the concerns of the teachers are but also for them to have an option or a a a a moment to talk to us directly about the concerns of the students the majority of these concerns we're trying to meet the best way that we can there was I heard a comment tonight I think about the basketball hoops the basketball hoops are all broken but what I'll say is that we moved facilities in two months that's not a small thing so with that did we think about they need basketball and somewhere to play we absolutely did but the only thing that we can do in that time was give them some temporary measures right we gave them basketball Hoots Unfortunately they were all broken in
217the first seven weeks I've been working with director bordon as well as Steve Collins our maintenance manager they have every intention of actually putting in the permanent systems over the summer and they're working to see if there's a way that they can do that over break so these are things that we are doing unfortunately people just don't see it yet but we are communicating that constantly with the school site um and beyond that what I'll say is we're continuing to lean on the state agencies to try to push the groundbreaking but we have very limited options to what we can do I've heard recommendations and suggestions from the public of just push it or just cancel it or think like that even if the board were to make the decision today to say Workforce housing
218is no longer important and I'm not saying that's what you would say but if you made that decision and you pulled us from the project okay that will save the parking lot at San Pablo but understand it will also open up the board to millions of dollars of litigation because the developer has spent millions of dollars on this project so far moving it through design and development so it's something to consider next slide with that we will open for questions I do have one comment that you guys will see for the February 19th meeting that we caught today that was missed on the updated green and yellow sheet that you guys have for approval um there is one item missing from that so we will we will be presenting a correction notice to that on
219the February 19th and that is the mitigation meth uh methods for the San Pablo campus modifications um that are going to be required in order to accommodate the workforce housing going in um and as everything that uh assistant superintendent kiss mentioned with the fencing with the sound wall so um that is allocated and um accounted for in our cash flow we just missed it on the green and yellow update for you guys for your review so you will see that correction notice for the next meeting that's all I have all right so director Chang slide four third bullet that no it's 2.3 um do folks president Brown do you have uh questions that you want to start off with okay thank you I just want to check um are uh do board members have questions
220um I have a couple questions I don't do you want to start DR um thank you for that presentation it was very thorough um and it's nice to see the full team we usually just John so thank you all for coming and for staying so like we really appreciate it and welcome to the district um I just have a couple of questions about well won the tennis courts I know the tennis team was here at the last board meeting that they came out had lots of students lots of parents and have been advocating I think they gave me like 24 years or something crazy amount of time definitely predates me in Berkeley and in the district like for for the courts um but one of the things they mentioned is that with the current site
221where they have the courts that there's going to be a change next year I believe that that site will not be accessible to the team and so I think pushing that project to 2027 I just have concerns like have we come up with an interim solution for for the BHS uh tennis team in particular because I think they when they came to the board and correct me superintendent if I'm wrong but I think they said that it was next year that they were they would lose access to the the current um place where the the current courts where they're practicing so that's one question and then um I appreciate George assistant superintendent khis when you started with the um criteria of like how these projects are chosen and prioritized and understand that always a demand
222is more than what we have money for right um but the my concern is you know we're approving a lot of big capital projects and there are some sites that haven't received I know that there's a lot of Long Fellow parents that are expressing concerns about the construction and I don't minimize those at all but we have king that's a a very you know from a facilities perspective um a a very nice site we have long follow that will be right a a new site in a couple years and then there's schools like Willer that haven't had a large scale facilities upgrade in a long time and so just wanted to know like how do we make sure that when we're doing these projects right that we're also if we as we have our assignment
223system right and we promise parents kind of the same menu at every school or very similar menus um through through the way that we assign our students um it doesn't feel right that they there's like a one of the middle schools it's it's not receiving as much attention as the other two and so that's a a big concern for me and I and I'm sure that's also if we dig into the elementary schools we could look at John M and other schools where perhaps that that might feel the same for some parents and so how do you address that when there's some schools that are missing from this list and also the issue with the tennis courts so let me start at Willard I'm going to work it backwards so um to that point so
224one when the superintendent Bond working group created the project list and it was prior to any of you being on the board and we talked about this a little bit today in the staff meeting at Longfellow Longfellow was not identified for a modernization while it was absolutely needed and thank goodness we're doing it with what we're finding right it did not score high enough on the criteria ranking based upon the overall facilities needs assessment that was done by Architects and engineers at the time in 2018 our overall needs assessment was one .3 billion in the district okay so Longfellow actually wasn't on the list there was some parent Advocates who really did a great job of speaking to the board and coming out and talking about the need and from that point the board authorized
225a project and that project grew in scope exponentially right because once the board said please start digging into this looking at it that's where it jumped up to a $30 million mod so you're right that right now we've done work at King recently right we're doing all this work at Longfellow what about Willard so I did pull the records I did look at it Willard did receive a modernization in 2016 but it was on the smaller side um it was uh I I don't recall the dollars but it did include a lot of work for Ada path of travel which that is so you understand when we go to the state architect they look at three things they look at the entire plans but they're concerned with the three things they're concerned with Ada they're
226concerned with fire safety and structural in that order now Ada typically upgrades every single year it changes the slope of the concrete that you can have the turnaround radiuses Etc if I can't prove an ADA path of travel for everywhere the rest of it doesn't matter so that's why I tell people when we talk at these even in conception meetings about projects I explain to the public first we're going to do the things we have to do then we can determine how much money left to do the things we want to do so Willard actually a lot of those dollars were chewed up by ada8 doll following that there was several roofs that were replaced at Willard and at the same time they had to do a lot of water infiltration issues down below getting
227in underg grade but then there was a lot of mold and and uh excuse me there was a lot of mold abatement that had to happen at Willard at the same time now they also did some upgrades to the electrical and the ventilation they did a PA system they did a couple of restroom upgrades but you're right it hasn't received a major modernization and that's where it's so important to understand that this is why in order to have quality facilities when we think about we went out for a $380 million bond in 2020 and the voters of Berkeley really generously supported that Bond and it's so much money but in 2018 our needs were 1.3 billion historically every 10 years or so we've been going out for new bonds and what we have to continue
228to do is do that if we're going to continue to modernize and maintain all of our schools Willard great example is Willard has a really small metal shop theater right that as I understand it because it predates me was mostly put together by parents and DSA don't know and I don't want to know right but like there is a need for performing arts space on that campus there's a need for a lot of different things on that campus but right now truthfully where do we take that from right so we can't take it out of Longfellow or Sylvia Mendes those projects are ongoing when we consider the seismic risk of every building in this District that theater is by far the greatest risk that we have if you read the seismic report you'd get goosebumps
229up because I do right it's it's it's in bad shape the build the building they started Construction in the 40s it was known in the as the bird cage for a long time because it was just a steel frame because construction stopped for the war or I think it started in 39 then they resumed construction after the war so but the building hasn't been touched ever since right with the exception of being that we just did the classroom Wing so you need to do that so it's sort of like what other projects do you pick apart then there's projects that do come up that the board says hey this is really important we need to do this and a perfect example of this is when I came in the district over six years ago I
230really wanted to see us have closed campuses when we did Oxford here at West Campus I pushed that design as a closed campus and I'll admit it to you all now I didn't ask the board I just sort of pushed it through and I said I'm sorry later right but at the time there was this this belief in Berkeley that our campuses should be open I went to one school my first week here and I I won't talk about what school it was but the doors that go out to the street from the classrooms were wide open and I asked the principal at the time I said why are these open and they say oh this is Berkeley we like for the community to stop in and say hi and see what we're teaching I
231couldn't believe it on after the unfortunate events in naldi the community responded the board responded said John you need to do this you need to do access control everywhere upgrade all the cameras upgrade all the servers Etc was a $13 million project so understanding that there's other projects like that that might become a priority to the board right there's already not room to add new modernization projects like Willard in the current Bond but that's part of why we're even talking about like bam and uh the adult school saying at least right now and if you looked on the slide it said yeah we're talking about moving them to 2029 because of State allocation board money because of when we issue money because of cash flow Etc but also it said on there possibly deferring and
232it said possibly deferring because if the board comes and says hey we want you to do this too great but my question question back to the board first with the subcommittee and then the board is going to be where would you like me to take the money from so one of those projects absolutely has to suffer I've heard Ania say this many times she says she coined the term I heard assistant superintendent fall andby say it many more times but the board can do anything it wants but you can't do everything you want right I I'm G to pay for this one I could tell from the superintendent but it's it's the reality so understanding that when you when when we want to do Willard and we absolutely do and we want to work at
233other elementary schools or we want to do we want to do things more things at btec right um the other thing to remember is we've done some small projects at Willard uh absolutely thank you so much and we I have to uh interrupt for one second for a very important priority we need to have a motion to extend the meeting Beyond 11 just so we have that on record and also on record um the president uh president Brown is not president she is not feeling great so she's taking that uh she I think she might have logged off about she excused herself okay I don't know if we need have a time great so I'll motion to extend to 11:20 with the hope that we're gonna end a lot earlier I'll second uh do we
234need to take a a roll call director Bev yes director K yes vice president Cheng yes motion carries three to zero great so um as lastly on Willard we are responding though where we can on small projects to really help in improve the overall School climate and things like that the growing leaders program at Willard is an amazing program right and the conditions in which they were working several years ago it was a home economics classroom that had in the 70s should have been demolished if you dropped something as heavy as the phone on the counter it would actually fall through the counter it's this beautiful space now the building say I need them to vote I need them to vote yeah the facility said actually that's technology thing yeah the building said we're done
235automated through technology of yeah comments are not record might want me to answer that question before they go back on though here we go screen's back this has happened before we should get the programming changed we change it to midnight yeah these ones up here are see the flashing they're still coming online you're back we oh mine went on I think it just went on can I can I build on director V's question to just say I know many districts have a facil master plan to help make these long-term decisions is that in the works we have and we're actually getting ready to do a new one because with the new state bond that passed um and they still the state has already said like hey if you want to continue to qualify for State
236monies which we obviously do uh you need to do a new master plan and you need to make a commitment to update that master plan at least once every five years and we actually met with a demographer about it today because there's a demographics component to it but they also said we know that we want you to do this but we don't know the rules yet so we're sort of we're putting everything in place to bring on the architect and a demographer and things like that to put together the new master plan but we're not ready to pull the trigger on that yet because we don't quite know what the rules are just piggy back on Dr K's question what's the like General like broad stroke's timeline like is this something that could come to
237the board before the end of this year would it be next year just like if we had to put together a master plan to answer some of these broader questions right and have a like a timeline for potential Bond renewal sure so I think uh what are we in February it will be this calendar year that we will be bringing contract to the board to redo our master plan um I don't know when yet right and a lot of that is going to depend upon how suit how soon the state uh issues the new rules around it and then as far as a bond renewal historically Berkeley has done General obligation bonds every 10 years right now based on everything that we've seen for cost overruns due to unforeseen like Longfellow as well as increasing
238costs and inflation and everything else my recommendation if you have to ask me today what I would say I would say we should really start thinking about a bond measure in 2028 because by that point we will be at least fully issued and spending down um we did an issuance in June of 2024 we're doing another issuance in May of 2025 that's coming to the board here shortly and likely another issuance in May of 2026 and one of the things that I have the financial adviser working on right now is to say okay we we're very careful at how we issue money one for the tax rate but also there's what's called Arbitrage rules so we have to expense down 85% in 36 months or there's tax implications but knowing how fast we're going to
239spend it down what I've asked them to do is actually run the numbers to say instead of doing a 25 issuance and a 26 inssurance what would it look right like for the tax rate to do one issuance in 25 of all of that money because each time we issue money there's cost of issuance as well and that that's a burden to the taxpayer so wherever we can actually lower that burden and lower their debt that's our goal But to answer your question probably 2028 and the the tennis court question did you answer that oh no I didn't I'm sorry so no I don't have an answer for you yet I really don't uh we've lost uh you know I believe I I believe they were partnering with Cal for tennis courts if I'm not
240mistaken um but we try to work with the city we absolutely try to work with our partners at Cal uh the high school tries to work with King on their tennis courts but it's King's tennis courts so they have the priority Etc the one year that we're recommending on the push on that it's it's it's an impact to the tennis team and I totally understand that and I'll do whatever I can to support that but I can't give them a facility I don't have nor can I build a new facility without having money in the bank to pay for it I totally understand I I guess my direction would be that be um we're taking action today to accept your recommendations yes it's hard for me to take that action without knowing what's the plan
241the contingency plan for that team because they've been coming year after year to this board and I feel like owe it to them to give them like a a picture of where they're going to be next year I mean so yeah my job is never to give you work but what I would urge and really ask of the board is this is where we need board partnership back and I'm sorry to do this right but even to work with our partners at the city right we have tennis courts at Grove Park we have tennis courts at San Pablo we have tennis courts in the city that it is hard for bu us to use so this is where we absolutely need full partnership and trying to get our partners back to the table to actually
242give us a priority for these and I I'm sorry to do that but I'm I'm just being very honest there's only so much pressure that I can apply to those City partners then superintendent can this please be agendized for the 2 by two as well like with urgency the tennis cins this going to be a long 2 by two meeting we get a lot I have so many questions but I won't ask them all now um I do want to ask one question now which is um I heard you talk about at Sylvia Mendes um OSHA inspections Insurance inspections third-party inspections to help um reassure the community about the safety of the construction project there can those same measures be taken at long at Longfellow at the Berkeley adults School of surrounding the workforce housing
243to address people's safety concerns they can be but we can't require it and what I mean by that is I've talked about this is a totally different type of project all that we have is land lease how the developer builds it they have to operate within the confines and the code and the best practices of osia and they have to operate within the city ordinance of Berkeley and all the the the local state and federal laws around construction but what we can't do is tell them you need to bring your insurance company out once a month you need to do this now one of the things that we are doing to at least at the very least ensure that they're staying within the four corners of where they're supposed to be is our cm and
244PM firm Van Pelt we do have a project manager assigned to that project to really work with their safety people to work with their project managers they're not there constantly looking at everything but they are overseeing that project to make sure that we're doing it and then as the owner right as the the land owner we have a right to look at that as well but we can't require them to sign up for voluntary oia inspections or to bring their insurance company out can we require them or encourage them or facilitate them doing community engagement with the neighbors and the school Community around the construction project and they have I mean and that's what I spoke earlier about you know over two dozen meetings that was all led by our developing team and we were
245part of that but we met with the school community and and this goes back a long time so a lot of the folks who you hear come and talk to the meetings they're like well we didn't know well they didn't because they weren't there right and I understand that but this is six years in the making just at the district level and many years prior to that in the community so um but that development team also LED neighbors or excuse me LED meetings with all of the surrounding neighbors um we had two subcommittees off of the development team and it included neighborhood right and one of those actually excuse me one of them included neighborhood participants which was the design subcommittee right the neighbors actually had a say in what that design was going to
246look like in the end oh that's great to hear and and I think it's a point well taken that there's a whole school Community there now suddenly that wasn't there before and didn't get to benefit from that engagement and so it's worth kind of thinking about how to communicate again more frequently with them information yeah there's the website that we presented earlier in the slides too that families and community members are more than welcome to visit and get more information thank you so much I want to make a couple of quick questions and remarks um uh thanks for the very detailed and comprehensive overview of uh very broad scope and uh involved U modernization across the district um I think that the Berkeley High Capacity and expansion is a very exciting um uh program and
247something emerged uh due to some flexibility uh through board members and um as kiss and his uh team and I really uh very much looking forward to that space getting off the ground and it um it envisions um the type of flexibility that I think our district needs um given the short amount of little uh amount of space that we do have um one fast question here um with regard to the CN space that you're referencing um you you did refer to restrooms and I I know that in facilities meetings and in cboc committee conversations there's been more specificity there is there a plan for how many restrooms uh there is but I think I forgot at 10 o'clock okay uh there is but I off the top of my head I don't recall I
248know it's seven and seven seven students seven staff in the new restroom building that's going on the Little Theater yeah but I don't remember what the counts are out at the CN building on the other end of the campus and I'm trying to recollect would they um be a mix between uh those for students as well as for staff yes and then you have also have offices for staff and in terms of I think you undersold it a little bit uh the CTE program you're actually going to be uh building out a space where they can have um competitions outside of the building but undercover would actually be robotics Arena just because we have the space and it's something they need they have an amazing program okay excellent and uh one fast question as we're
249uh checking our time here um of course you're working with a Ming field folks and ensuring that um uh that the community is engaged upon in that and what type of um Community engagement have we planned for the future we've done some we haven't done a lot we've done several meetings or I think two meetings now but we have more engagement plan we're working with our partners at Contigo which is a community outreach partner that we brought to the board before we work with uh we have a survey that's ready to actually go out to it's within a one M radius around Ming field to understand uh just how people feel about changes to Ming field and what they want versus what they don't want Etc and then it'll just be uh with approval of
250this plan tonight it will be actually working with the community to see how they respond to that and then actually going to city council to see if we can work with City to do some type of a whether it be an imminent domain or a land swap or whatever to actually take over some of that property on Derby Street okay great that's a really important component of getting that CNA program off the ground with a softball and baseball being shifted down there um and finally one quick question on the brookly Arts Magnet modernization um uh bam has uh which I my kids went through and I was on the board there the PTA has had um temporary um classrooms for many many years in this drawing here I think literally since 2011 and they're still
251there um up on the uh the right hand corner of this drawing here are those the ec1 ec2 EC3 um what do those refer to because that I believe that's where the units are currently yeah so they what's what's there now those Portables actually do remain as part of that plan goes above that and they they are part of the modernization but then what what you're seeing there um I believe that's the solar canopies actually extending over the top of those Portables as just a way to capture additional and make that a a z& project zero net energy project so of course I think that um this is not a finalized plan but um there should be some review of the Portables and whether or not there can be some other capacity provided um uh
252instead of the Portables which have been there for quite some time well and that's part of the beauty of this right I mean the reality is is that now with knowing that we do need to move this out to 2029 having the co potentially to 2029 having the conversations even around what does maybe another Bond measure look like but also what does State funding look like we still don't know that we we don't even know how they're going to allocate that out and if there's funding for if they depending on what they put the rates at for new versus replacement or modernization and actually might make sense to increase this project and put a new building right onto not on the existing because it's a historic building but out in that corner for additional classroom
253space this gives us the time we need to study it further once all those rules are released thank you so I think we need some more time uh we have additional items they also want to do the the um consider the consider the recommendations I think board members um we had extended to what 11:20 which is like 4 minutes um is there I know it's a long night we've had a lot of presentations Etc uh is there a motion to extend beyond 1120 can we extend so we have to wrap it up so what I will say is this is we we're we're seeking action on the overall plan right because we need to do our budget adjustments but what we can take to is action on the overall plan with a recommendation that any
254projects that you might have concerns about such such as bam goes back to facility subcommittee and then comes back to board okay makes sense so if you want to give it a broad approval and then tell us but go back and talk about bam a little more right we can absolutely do that and director Brown and no it's actually me and director Koski yes that's right I would I would move in the interest of times when we get to last I would move um to approve it but uh with uh some information coming about like what should go in the future Bond like other project other big projects that we should get to at other sites particularly Willard and other sites that haven't had large capital projects to bring that back to facility sub but
255overall approve it and also address director Chang's concerns about B excellent I second that motion director K yes director vev yes vice president Chen yes moving on to thank you so much we have hustle we don't mean to push um we've got 14.2 uh which was shiting from consent to action yes um directors I just wanted to call out a small change in the resolution that's there to protect our undocumented students wanted to change the provision that mentions sb48 to be it further resolved that the Berkeley Unified School District along with the city of Berkeley calls on the California legislature to pass sb48 to keep Immigration and Customs Enforcement off school campuses protecting School attendance and funding amid deportation threats this change will allow us to send a letter of support to the senate for
256sb48 other districts are doing it other counties are doing it and um CDE asked us uh for support and so I would ask my board colleagues to approve this uh reaffirmation I would like to make a motion to approve the reaffirmation and also um to allow me and director kin to work on a letter of support that we will send to the Senate on behalf of the Board of Education um second second by director kin director VV yes director Korn yes and vice president Chen yes um moving on so we have informational items we're moving on to item 16 there doesn't appear to be anyone with their hand rais for extended public comment uh either any extended board member comments no oh I'm sorry we have some one person one person Lally yeah we one
257minute until botam thank you um last year when our students were at Longfellow and the construction noise was so loud that they couldn't hear and think we were told hey that's part of construction um then we got moved to this new facility which we understand um the old one got you know and with it we're having um safety issues because we're moving a drop off Zone to a bike a bike zone um the building has water now that it's raining there's water on the floors the um playground is a parking lot and the one question I would just ask all of you guys I think parents are being very understanding but would you put your children in that situation thank you thank you so much