Berkeley USD School Board Meeting - November 17, 2021

001i'd like to provide a brief overview of tonight's meeting after a few procedural items the board will hear 30 minutes of public comment at the end of the meeting there will be another and final opportunity for additional public comments so if you do not get to speak at the beginning of the meeting you can stay and speak at the end to participate in public comment please raise your hand now by click by clicking on the participate button at the bottom of your screen and selecting the raise your hand to comment by phone you'll be prompted to raise your hand by pressing star 9 if you wait to raise your hand until the comment period starts you will not get to speak and you'll have to wait until the next public comment period when called upon

002you'll be promoted to panelists this means that you will appear on screen and if you do not wish to appear on camera please be sure to disable your camera on your end the board president will usually call on our students first if you are a student who wishes to speak please write student at the end of your name the board president will determine whether to set tonight's speaking time at one two or three minutes per speaker on an individ individual basis he also has a discretion to allow for extra time for those who need translation or have other special needs when your time has elapsed you'll see vice president brown holding a sign letting letting you know you have 15 seconds left if you're still speaking you are allowed to finish your sentence but please

003try not to speak beyond your time thank you voya is thank you so much mrs barrios and welcome everyone to the um november 17th meeting of the berkeley school board um we're gonna further call the open session meeting order at 705 pm and for the record we open the meeting at 5 30 5 p.m and recess into closed session um miss barrios can you please call the roll here director julie sinai here vice president khadijah brown president and president president thank you if you'd like to get public comment um now would be the time to raise your hand um we have a small crowd tonight about 15 people 16 people in the audience um but if you'd like to public comment please do raise your hand now um so we can see how much time

004we have to give to everybody um okay now i will now we need to approve the meeting agenda so um is there a motion to approve the agenda is it is this where we need to pull that one item from the consent calendar um thank you director baba did um which uh israelia which one is this let me see actually dr stevens you have the item number that's on the consent this is the sixth item in uh item 11.5 so 11.7.5 right with contracts it's the six of those items uh related to the emergency program that we'd like okay so we're we're we're removing item it would be 11.5.6 correct okay it's actually just here um yeah thanks director although just i think there's a typo in the item on 11.5 it's listed as number

005eight i think it goes from five to eight but it's actually the sixth one so just to make it even more confusing we're pulling what actually is listed as the eighth item in item 11.5 but it's actually the sixth one but just to say what it is it's the contract with freedom soul freedom freedom soul media yeah media education that item well in that so is there a motion to approve the agenda with that one part removed uh some moved with the necessary corrections okay motion by vice president brown second by director signer um esparza can you call the roll please uh student director mascara swan yes director vasudev yes director babbitt yes director signing yes vice president brown yes is it an helper yes all right um thank you everybody um now um we

006will have a report from closed session um vice president brown uh thank you president albert for call session all board school board directors for present and for item 3.1 the board uh heard an update and gave your election and this is the report from concession short and sweet thank you vice president brown um all right now we will move to to public testimony so um i'll give people like 10 more seconds to raise their hand if they want to um one two three four six seven okay um there's seven people um with their hands raised so they you can each have three minutes um aaron rhodes is going to be the last speaker um and just i know you all in the audience can't see the participants but just for our marking aaron will be

007the last speaker wait what's happening here um oh okay um gladys stout um you'll be first and then um miss bryce if you could if you could put robert collier second after um missed out and then we'll and then we'll go back to miguel piedra i'm going in three years okay go ahead hello um good evening superintendent stevens and school board members i'm here representing latinos unidos at berkeley we are concerned because we have been hearing that in preparation for the budget cuts the district is proposing a hold on hiring positions that are of vital importance to our most vulnerable communities there has been major advocacy around the need for a spanish language specialist at the district level for the office of family engagement last year the school board approved a part-time position for this

008work although latinos unidos strongly believes that we need a full-time district-wide spanish language engagement specialist that can support the whole district and would carry the work to communicate and do outreach to the latin nets and spanish-speaking community we are concerned that the district-wide bilingual ofi position is being seen as a new position and will be placed on hold for hiring this position is long overdue and is urgently needed during last year's budget cycle the spanish-speaking split position was approved by the board for funding under the general fund and received support from from sbac dlac and the pac it is a shame to see that the board will now consider freezing a position that many district committees and latinx families feel is essential furthermore we continue to see a lack of engagement from the district to

009our spanish-speaking families for instance we have seen little outreach to our families regarding the ell master plan and other programs such as the spanish language district outreach for latino literacy csis and stemceps we know that the district is working on these programs and says latinx children are part of them but what good is it to make these investments if we do not have the staff at the district level actively reaching out to spanish-speaking families to let them know about these opportunities we hope that in the discussions of any budget cuts we keep the most vulnerable communities and outreach engagement to latinx families as a priority this was an issue before covid but the negative impact that covet has had on the latinx community is something that will be felt for years to come we hope

010that the district and school board fulfills the promise it made to the latinx community and does not free services that are much needed for spanish-speaking families please keep your promise to our community and do not freeze hiring for the district-wide spanish-speaking bilingual ophi position budgets tell stories and your current list of cuts is telling the story that our spanish-speaking families are not a priority thank you thank you very much next um rob robert collier followed by miguel piedra [Music] good evening superintendent stevens and board school board members i'm rob collier parent of a sixth grader at longtail middle school and i'm here to speak in support of the comments by latino sunilis de berkeley regarding the new spanish language of position at the district level i hope you will please find a way not to

011cut this position so as gladys doubt as mentioned this position is long overdue the spanish-speaking of liaison based in district offices is urgently needed to conduct outreach to spanish-speaking families both over as latino literacy puente stem steps and the comprehensive coordinated early intervening services or csis you have many claims on the district budget but this ov position is only a part-time slot it's a small investment that would have an oversized benefit it would be money very efficiently spent on a critical need the district has made a strong commitment to address educational gaps by engaging with latinx families but that doesn't align with a potential decision to freeze this position in ophi such a decision would be a step backward please protect this position in your ongoing budget decisions thank you thank you mr collier next

012we have miguel piedra followed by amanda to park hi good evening berkeley board of education my name is miguel i am a graduate from berkeley high school and from the bioscience career institute with biotech partners i wanted to share my story to discuss the importance of the development agreement for steam education biotech partners helped me secure an internship at bayer during the height of the code pandemic the internship was instrumental in teaching me by vital biotic skills while also supplementing my family's expenses and since i've joined the program i continue to grow in responsibility and effectiveness as both a student and a scientist thanks to their continued support even after program graduation i've been able to land a position as a lab technician at abalone bio a lab in emeryville i'm confident that with the

013continued support of the biotech partners program other students such as myself will be able to turn their passions into career i would appreciate the berkeley boards of education consideration into supporting the development agreement for stem education for high school and community college students thank you thank you so much thanks for being here um next we have amanda toprek followed by linda gayden and then aaron rhodes good evening i'm amanda taforek and i am a teacher at berkeley high school and i am here to talk to you unfortunately about nothing as wonderful as everyone else has talked about but an incessant buzzing in my classroom um we know that we have custodial staff tirelessly working on this and i am a team player if it had been a couple days or even a week i would

014not be here to talk to you about it i work in the m building at berkeley high school and it has been a buzzing in there since november 4th and we are now being told that it will take two to three more weeks for that buzzing to stop our administrators have told us that basically we're in a situation where either we hear buzzing constantly but in the case of an emergency we can hear our principle over the pa system or they can turn off the pa system in our building which would stop the buzzing but not allow us to hear announcements in emergencies at this point it is impeding student learning and my ability to serve students students constantly are trying to focus at this point in the semester on final projects and work and

015telling me that the buzzing is driving them mad i have plenty of students a high percentage actually on the autism spectrum and you can imagine constant relatively loud buzzing is more than just unpleasant for those students and not to mention i now run out of school at 3 30 p.m when usually i would be extremely lenient and patient with my time and offer students extra help it's also the season of writing letters of recommendation in which i usually love staying late at school and getting that work done but now i am sprinting home to find another quiet place to work so i ask you to please support our custodial staff and send them any resources possible to please please please stop the buzzing so we can all be back here to talk about more important

016things thank you thank you so much thanks for being here um and for letting us know um next we have linda gayden and then aaron rhodes good evening superintendent stevens and school board members my name is linda gayden i serve as the executive director of biotech partners biotech partners was established in 1993 as part of the original development agreement between bear and the city of berkeley our mission is to educate underserved youth from populations underrepresented in stem fields with personal academic and professional development experiences that increase participation in higher education and access to fulfilling science careers biotech partners would not exist today without the development agreement bears community benefit and our partnership with berkeley high school career technical education department since its exception we have had 3 900 participants in our program each summer our

017rising seniors intern in real world bioscience environments in which they communica community i'm sorry community earned 3.5 million bear has hosted 15 internship placements annually for our berkeley high totaling 450 young people who have gained meaningful work experience in various bear departments 85 of our participants fall in the income challenge bracket and 85 identify either as people of color or as female as a recipient of the community benefits and our value valuable partnership with berkeley high school we have offered berkeley heists students a supported pathway out of economic hardship and into the rapidly growing and much needed bioscience industry berkeley high school has been vital to bp's longevity and success the work internships bear has provided has been essential to our mission and to bettering the lives of berkeley residents students over the long term

018our graduates demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach our 54 alum have gone on to lucrative careers at bayer and other biotech companies or other scientific fields with bears generous support of the community benefit biotech partners has been able to introduce students to bioscience careers and provide them complete wrap around support to enable student success covet 19 has shown us both the intense and ongoing vulnerability of income challenge populations of color and the dire need for steam development during covet we place 42 berkeley high students into paid internships in which they collectively earn seventy two thousand seven hundred and thirteen dollars i wholeheartedly support the community benefits of the new development agreement without hesitation because it will give the community ongoing access to opportunities for economic development and growth and learn in the steam field supporting

019berkeley students to gain an equitable start and bright future in the biotech field thank you thank you so much ms gayden thanks for being here um and then our final commenter of the night is aaron rhodes hi good evening thank you board president alper i'm aaron rhodes the executive director of the berkeley public schools fund i would like to express my appreciation for the level of community partnership represented by the development agreement between the city of berkeley and bayer on your agenda for discussion this evening the development agreement funds a continuum of career connected stem learning for berkeley students expanding access to college and career opportunities for students who most need it i especially want to thank director sinai and vasudev for offering the proposed language in tonight's amendment that emphasizes the importance of using

020this funding to open doors for berkeley students who are furthest from opportunity the berkeley public schools fund has been a beneficiary of the existing 30-year bear development agreement and we have bear to thank for enriching science education in busd with programs like be a scientist which serves every 7th grader in our district the schools fund looks forward to aligning our programming with the goals of this development agreement through our strong partnership with the career technical education program in busd thanks to the city the cte program and the bear development agreement berkeley is positioning itself to significantly expand college and career stem opportunities for the members of our community who have been historically excluded from stem fields thank you to the board for prioritizing this item thanks so much mrs rhodes and it's always nice to

021take the opportunity to thank you and the schools fund for everything you do so thank you and and there she goes um all right um moving right along um i i don't see i don't think we have any do we have any union comment i'll just ask if there's any union representatives here please raise your hand um any committee representatives can also raise their hands now give people a minute i don't i don't think anybody let us know that they were giving comment for the unions or the committees so and i don't see any so we will move we will move right along to um board member and superintendent comments um if anybody has any doesn't does anyone have any comments they'd like to give i'm going to ask it that way since you're a

022small crowd here tonight um if anybody does raise your hand who's there um uh director rossidev i'll just be really brief i have just brief comments um i wanted to thank everyone for your public comments tonight especially grateful to the community advocates who came to give comments about the proposed budget cuts i appreciate your advocacy and support of the spanish-speaking of position and will save my more substantive comments for the budget discussion later tonight i also wanted to thank all the bhs families and educators who have written to us about safety concerns at the high school last friday i was really lucky to visit the high school and meet with our safety officers and sro to have some intimate discussion about safety issues i'm grateful to the staff of the high school and to our

023district staff our central office staff who have been working really hard to address these issues and it was nice to see our central office staff also there at the high school i also wanted just to appreciate the berkeley high ptsa for having me at your meeting last night and it was just such a wonderful discussion with the berkeley high community and with our educators about what culture change could look like at the high school and what what was happening on site post the pandemic and to hear from students too like what is their vision for for their high school experience moving forward and some of the you know emotional and mental health challenges that they're seeing right now so i appreciate you having me and just spending time listening to everybody and lastly i just

024want to quickly announce that i'm having office hours this sunday november 21st from 9 to 10 a.m and on sunday december 12th from 9 to 10 am at lavender bakery on solano avenue and so i hope to see many of you there and especially as we are making budget decisions i'm all ears i would love to hear from the community about what they're thinking of our proposed budget cuts thank you thanks director of director thank you um i i just want to start um by recognizing tonight um and respecting excuse me the alone territory where we currently reside it's with gratitude and the utmost respect of the ancestors and all of those living and working this land as we enter into this thing thanksgiving week and native american heritage months it's critical that we recognize

025the past and the present injustices facing our indigenous communities and that we honor and recognize the ongoing powerful presence of the elony people on this land so as we enter into thanksgiving i hope that we all reflect on what has gone on on the land that we are currently having our meeting on and continue to work in partnership with the indigenous communities here in the bay area and east bay thank you director simon um director babbitt yes thank you so much and uh thank you for that recognition director sinai um in keeping with that the milwaukee forest planting day is scheduled for friday um november 19th and this will be a ceremony from the elo ohlone tribal leaders to really bless the land before we plant the trees and that will happen at 9 00

026a.m from 10 to 4 p.m busd students will plant saplings and 5 pm mulching and first watering of the milwaukee forest will take place so you can rsvp to uh neelam patel who is a teacher in berkeley unified neil patel at berkeley.net if you would like to attend and we definitely want to at the most send them their our well wishes and thank them for this work that they are doing for the environment i also want to thank um berkeley side and ally and kelly for the nice article that they did around our climate literacy resolution really appreciate the ways in which they highlight the good the bad and even the ugly that happens in our school district so that we can continue to thrive and make difference and make a change in our community

027last but not least you will see many of the berkeley stands united against hate backgrounds grateful for this week and the league of women voters is showing a movie in honor of berkeley standing united against hate you can check out their website it is tomorrow at 6 30 p.m and the screening is called racially charged america's misdemeanor problem so i hope all of those who can will really um seek this out so we can really dive deeper into the criminal justice and diversity equity and inclusion initiatives that the league of league of women voters are taking part in in this week i also want to let my board colleagues know that young gifted in black which is something we've been talking about since february of last year is a part of our african-american success framework

028and our direct services initiatives has still not started in vosd it is november 17th we approved it several months ago i've been following up rapidly consistently not rapidly but consistently um and yet they still have not started so we are definitely in danger of losing that direct service program as they have other venues that they are really going to be moving to starting after thanksgiving break so thanks you director babbitt um i i don't see other hands up so i'm gonna go to dr stevens great thank you very much president elper i'm i'm going to um offer a little bit more information about the milwaukee forests that are being installed in three of our schools these are really interesting plantings taking place these are very unique plantings called milwaukee forests developed by an agriculturalist in

029japan we believe that we're the first school district in the country to be installing this particular type of forest the milwaukee method combines the layers of a naturally occurring forest shrubs trees and canopy into small plots of land turning them into dense urban forests these forests grow 10 times faster store 40 times more carbon than conventional forests and encourage 100 times more biodiversity and can fit into a small pocket of a school playground or a roadside they also serve as wildlife corridors for native fauna which are in danger of extinction our ultra dense biodiverse forests will include a total of 3 300 saplings on about 13 000 square feet between three school sites and come to busd through a partnership with the natural urban forests uh in an organization called sugi uh we're also providing

030funding for this uh project i wanna call out our grounds department and then in particular call out the leadership of steve collins one of our district employees as well as sophia peltz our sustainability coordinator for their leadership and coordination on this project i also have good news to report to the city of berkeley we recently recite received information from the city of berkeley that we now can report that 45 percent of berkeley residents aged 5 to 11 have already received their first dose of the covid19 vaccine so that's just berkeley residents and that's the data reported by the city of berkeley to us just today more than 500 busd students ages 5 to 11 have already been vaccinated at school site clinics of malcolm x across from dhs and at rosa parks our office of

031family engagement and equity work to do one-to-one outreach to families facing access challenges to registration before opening up clinic registration to the larger community and then we refined this outreach process as we learned more about how this could work to serve our most under-resourced families the elementary school clinics have included music entertainment balloons stickers and snacks making for a relaxed and enjoyable experience for most students there were a few tiers we did see that we want to call out the city of berkeley for their partnership carbon health who is working with the city of berkeley and then as well to the berkeley public schools fund and all of their volunteers for making this as an enjoyable experience as possible we are hosting another vaccine clinic this saturday at sylvia mendez elementary school that's from nine

032o'clock to 3 30 in the afternoon we've been doing targeted outreach over the course the early part of this week and at this point by today on wednesday all families of students aged 5 to 11 should have received an email from the district with opportunities to register for the silvia mendes clinic i also want to call out another member of our staff for her very tireless work to pull all of these vaccine clinics together that is our public information officer trish mcdermott she already has a very busy schedule maintaining all of our media relations and coordinating a number of important communications campaigns and she's really taken on the lion's share of coordinating these vaccine clinics i know just last week she worked a total of 75 hours across both of these jobs and so i

033want to call out that extraordinary work and really thank her for the effort to help bring together city of berkeley vaccination opportunities and our families and then finally i want to call out a couple more of our busd folks who are doing quiet but important sort of data infrastructure work this is not the kind of work that's going to make the newspaper and nonetheless makes for a big difference in our school district and these are the folks who are leading the conversion from one data management system to another we are currently in the process of switching from a system called qss to another called escape this is a large sort of architectural project that involves all of our various district office departments is going to span the scope of a full year and involves a

034high degree of problem solving coordination and communication so i want to call out the leadership of samantha tobias espinosa for her work on this uh her colleague pauline fallinsby uh and as well our director of finance liz karam there are a number of other managers and department folks who are involved to totals a team of more than two dozen who at this point are putting in more than a day's work per week on this project alone so this is adding a great deal to their plates and please know we see it we want to recognize that effort and then as a last note i also want to acknowledge united against hate week this week you know here in berkeley we prided ourselves for a very long time in standing against hate and serving our communities

035effectively and yet we know we have many steps that we must take in order to be a more effective organization both in combating hate as it appears in our school campuses in our community and in serving all of our families so my specific call to all of our employees this week is that as we stand together against hate we also have to stand with a humble stance recognizing that we ourselves must improve that's each of us as individuals as employees uh and as an organization uh the more we listen the more we enter into conversations with our community with an open heart the more effective allies we can be uh so with that um uh uh i'm going to turn it back over to you president albert i appreciate the opportunity to share this information

036thank you so much i just i you don't have to turn on your camera miss mcdermott um but i just wanted to um promote you to the panels here so that we could echo dr stevens thanks to you for um the work that you did um with the work you've been doing ever since covet started but particularly with these vaccine clinics to have the clinics up and running you know two or three days after um you know the the vaccines were authorized for kids that age um it was just an incredible accomplishment something i think we're all super proud of and just really grateful to you for it so thank you for taking on this this completely separate extra um work that um that has just been so critical to our ability to keep kids

037in school um all right and with that i will um um move us along to um the consent calendar is there a motion to approve the consent calendar vice president brown um who is that director russell yep um and um can you please call the role of asparagus student director um yes director vasudev yes director of abbott yes director sinai yes vice president brown yes is it an helper yes all right thanks ms marios um now we have our first discussion item which is item 12.1 um dr stevens and assistant superintendent fonsby yes thank you very much um so in just one minute i'm going to turn the microphone over to assistant superintendent pauline fallinsby she runs our business services uh here in the district i thought what i would do is offer though just

038a quick bit of context we are in yet another really remarkable budget year in fact it's been each of the last three years where public schools school boards superintendents and staff have had to overcome a variety of challenges just as we were sort of finishing up the year when the pandemic started we were facing what we thought was going to be a catastrophic 7 8 10 budget reduction that turned around very quickly despite all of the work we did on those reductions and we were in a period where we were spending a lot of one-time money but all of us worried about potential structural challenges as they were coming these structural challenges are now well documented in the media they have to do with the decline in student enrollment in public schools across districts in

039california and really across the country and we have not been immune from these enrollment declines over the course of the last two years about 600 students fewer are now attending berkeley schools compared to the pre-pandemic period these 600 students represents a potential loss in revenue of about 6.6 million dollars and as a result of the sort of potential cliff what's being called in school districts around the country the alameda county office of education is asking berkeley unified and many other districts to engage in a preliminary plan to reduce our budget if that proves to be necessary usually when we're talking about the budget season we talk about the january to june time period it's very rare for us to be thinking about budget reductions in the fall and yet here we are so in response

040to a requirement by the alameda county office of education we have been starting to re-energize all of our budget committees we're asking them to weigh in on a preliminary list of reductions and we will be bringing this preliminary redux list of productions to the board for approval on december 15th so we're about a month away from having a finalized list and the purpose of tonight's public discussion is both to share with the community some of our very early ideas for this preliminary list to solicit feedback from board members and to continue the process of refining this list i want to emphasize that this december 15th list is non-binding it's preliminary it will be submitted to the county but then we will be watching with a lot of eagerness to see what the governor says about

041revenue for the school districts in january and then we're all watching to see what impact vaccinations have on elementary school enrollment so i ask members of the community members of the board to sort of keep in mind that everything we're talking about is very provisional none of it needs to be enacted but all of it is sort of a step in the made in the name of cautiousness so with that i'm going to turn it over to assistant superintendent following she'll walk us through some more information and share with you the preliminary list as it exists in this draft state right now thank you superintendent stevens um good evening everyone i'm going to need the ability to be able to share my screen so if i could get that i'll walk you through our slider

042so um thank you dr stevens for the in for the introduction and as dr stevens mentions this is a very unusual time for us to be bringing budget reductions um to the board for discussion and um as he mentioned this this is being given primarily by a request from um our alameda county office of ed and as he also mentions these are not binding but this is just to give the board an idea of where we are in the process and we will be bringing a final list back um on the 8th and the 15th so um i think i will take the board through looking at our budget development principles we've finalized principles in terms of how we're actually um approaching our budget reductions and also we'll take you through a workbook that we're

043currently working on with sbac the superintendent's budget advisory committee um there's a a slide with a link to data and resources we're trying to have data-driven um decisions as much as possible so this um i'll also i'll share with you some of the data that we're looking at in sbac and remind you what the target is and also share with you alameda county office of ed's format that they shared with us for the budget reductions um so this is um hopefully the format that we'll be bringing to the board when we bring the final budget to productions we also have a format from the prior year and then um the last few slides will be on our future meeting dates so this budget development principles was developed um in our budget leadership team and i'll

044take you through this pretty um take you through this pretty quickly um and the the beginning here is a preamble in terms of what's driving or the need for these budget principle budget reduction principles but um the guiding principles are for our budget development period in and you can see um the first principle we're working with is protecting services to students cuts should take place away from programs that directly serve students um the second principle um or bearing in minor lcap goals and programs or budget priorities will be derived from lcap goals and actions which center on improved services to all duplicated students and other prioritized groups like african americans latin latin x and students with disabilities and as i mentioned earlier we are having a data-driven um approach and so as much as possible

045cuts the programs will be data-driven guided by outcomes um qualitative data about students families perceptions of success or measures of implementation so we're also having a focus um where we will be looking at budget reductions across the board so some portion of cuts will be equal and will come from all departments um we also are looking at opportunities for service restructuring and over the course of the year um in building the 22-23 budget we'll be looking at possible errors for larger restructuring and efficiencies and our sixth principle we're gonna we're um we want to be transparent about interconnected budgets and the district will make interrelated budgets like the general fund bsep and the state supplemental grants available to committees even if each committee has a particular um per view so um so you may remember

046the last time we did budget reductions it wasn't just the unrestricted general fund we looked at all our funding sources and in some cases where there were reductions in other programs were able to do swaps to um to alleviate the unrestricted general fund dr stevens did you want to add anything at this point no you've done a great job thank you okay so um the next slide um this is a workbook without we're um working with our sbac our superintendent's budget advisory committee um so um so this is a these are the adjustments and we've grouped them by educational programs operations human resources and staffing bsap and also looking at new grants um that have been uh made available to the district so um in sback we had um superintendent assistant superintendent um aurelium went

047through all of these areas and i'm just sharing these with you um in terms of um our approach and if there are questions in this area um either dr stevens or um ruben will actually uh i don't um assistant superintendent follows me why don't we sort of pass it over to associate superintendent irelia he can walk us through very quickly sort of the key elements of this list just so that they get a brief description okay good evening all right yeah good evening everyone i'll gladly take us through the educational program items uh the rows that you see if you can make it just slightly larger it might be maybe 125 percent a little bit easier to see um the first rows you see there rows three four five and six the first four items

048there those are all related to our special education services um we have seen the cost rise in special education over the last three to four years and so what we are looking at is as a way to reduce the overall cost of special education not by reducing services in any way we have to provide the same services to students those are mandated by ieps but we are looking at building our own services and reducing how many of these services we contract out so row three which is adult transition program we currently outsource our adult transition program that's your 18 to 22 year old continues services so we would be looking at a way to build our own in-house program partnering potentially with the adult school and they could conceivably continue services beyond 23 for adults

049at that point as well so there's a real an opportunity to partner and build our own in-house services spg is a contract that we have where we contract out for our instructional assistants we've had a really challenging time hiring our ias that are assigned to either 101 to students or in groups and that we are looking at a contract that is now over 5 million dollars that has really grown significantly over the last four years um just in relative nature it was under a million dollars four years ago so this is definitely a challenge it is made significantly more challenging just in our current hiring environment you know that these are entry-level positions typically and so we really need to boost that ability to hire our own ias had a great conversation with tom reed

050of adult school potentially building now our own training program so we could train people to be ias in the adult school and then hire them which would be great for berkeley so really trying to connect those dots we're going to be examining our different programs especially our students that we are currently sending to non-public school placements and looking how we can start to build some of those programs in-house as well to limit how many services we're sending out we have started this year with the addition of additional psychologists to do our own educational related mental health services assessments we typically had contracted that out with alameda county and we're starting to bring some of that back so we will continue on that pathway of doing our own services those are those big four special education

051based items um the interesting piece here is it wouldn't be a reduction in staff in fact we would be adding staff and services um but the assumed savings come in the fact that we wouldn't be contracting those out item seven is teachers on special assignment so berkeley as a school district as a job classification has over 84 teachers on special assignment for a total of about 9.4 million dollars so we're just putting in a sort of a blanket statement right here that this was a lot of more information needs to be determined before we ever get down to a specific position tsas have come in a variety of categories there are centralized or district office tsas they're also site-based tsas including literacy coaches math coaches english language development tsas that provide direct services to students

052using the principles the budget principles that uh assistant fallsb superintendent follows me presented we would be really looking closely at not trying to cut positions that are directly serving students and of course 10 percent of that would be roughly around 850 000. i do want to name too that we knew have a number of vacancies in these in this category as well that could assume some of those cuts the last category here is the u9 the universal ninth grade program at berkeley high we have what is called the leap class a leaked section is additional support for students it is an elective course we do not mandate it for our students we offer it to our students as part of the hive structure there are currently seven hives at berkeley high under u9 those are

053cohorts of 120 students and so what we'd be looking at is reducing the number of leap sections per hive we currently have very few students that are electing to be in the leap sections and so we would be examining that closely to see if we can find some reductions in fte or full-time equivalent teachers so we're accounting for potentially two fte in reduction and we know that that causes some domino effects and we'll be working through that with the high scored around scheduling and other factors lastly we have gardening and cooking program there and that would be a reduction of fifty thousand dollars in the general fund um as part of not the three hundred thousand but really the total budget which is close to a million dollars majority of the funding that comes is

054through the soda tax um that we get from berkeley those are the ed services programs i know i went quickly and if you have questions i'll be here thank you assistant superintendent um so i'll take us through the um remaining categories in our operations um we typically contribute the meals for the needy to that program and because of um increased participation in the nutrition services program partly because meals are actually free this year and next year all meals lunch and breakfast um but also the method of us we're doing um the the grab-and-go method for meals so combined with the speed of delivery and the fact that uh meals are free where um we will not be be contributing about 700 000 per year so that's the savings over two years in operations and the

055district spends about 20 million dollars central office and maintenance and custodial services we've gone through each program and have identified about 627 thousand dollars in savings um which are partly um being um as a result of positions that are not being filled the vacant positions that are not being filled or they're frozen for um for those operations um there's also in there um a proposal for our transportation program where we will not be replacing three positions and instead we'll be using their other budgets for overtime to increase the hours for our bus drivers human resources and staffing um the ofi positions um we the supervisor position is vacant and we're proposing freezing that position um since we have now hired a director we have the um the split between king and willard um for the

056liaison position as well as the another position which is between the district and spanish bilingual these are both on the on field and they're both on the list and of course this is a preliminary um suggestion that um may or may not be fulfilled there are also two offi positions and these were approved by the board when we adopted the 21 22 budget um so with this um funding it's on kovitz so we're not scoring the reduction again as a budget as a unrestricted budget unrestricted general fund savings but there will be we're proposing freezing those positions as well and then in terms of looking at our enrollment-based staffing we project that we will be able to save about 149 in staffing based on the reduced um enrollment um so that's that's an area that

057um we think we'll be able to accomplish that and then um we have actually looked at um projections for the teacher template for 22.23 and we've built our assumptions on um using that assumption in terms of um enrollment but we're also projecting possibly an additional 50 students for the lower grades um with the availability of vaccines for the five to 11 year olds so this is very preliminary very early in the budget process and we're we're we'll be on fine-tuning this as we get more information but with 50 students we be we're believing um that will generate about five hundred thousand dollars in revenue and less staffing to accommodate that increase we're projecting a three hundred and fifty thousand dollar savings with bsep um we've actually done the teacher template we got um revised um

058enrollment projections from francisco um recently so in looking at the savings in terms of the the reduction in the number of teachers will we will actually be paying for offset by the reduction in the contribution that the general fund receives from bsep we're projecting a savings of about 657 000 and we've also looked at our grants um the district has been fortunate enough to um get uh um an educator effectiveness grant is restricted but it's it's 2.7 million dollars over five years so it's not ongoing indefinitely but we're looking at saving 50 um of each year for each program um and that's going we're projecting a 250 000 savings there and we also benefited from the expanded learning opportunity grant that's ongoing a million dollars restricted and we're taking a look at that to see

059if there are any um expenses that we can um shift to this program that would have been cut otherwise so it's not technically supplanting and with that we can see that we are up to 6.3 million dollars in budget reductions a little short of the 6.6 million dollars will be con convening the budget leadership team tomorrow to try and find additional um savings but as dr stevens mentioned this is a preliminary list that will be that need to be board approved that will be sharing with um acl when we submit the first interim but it's not binding this is not something that we will have to do because there are so many unknowns at this at this point including um the governor's workshop um the governor's budget so we have no idea what the budget

060the governor is proposing for the 2223 project so and um superintendent follows me maybe i could jump in here before we move from this list i just wanted to offer a little bit of information about the ofi liaison positions here so these are all openings they have been posted we have solicited candidates and we continue to go through that recruitment and hiring process so the presence of these ideas on this list has not actually stopped the district's work to try and fill these positions and it would actually only be with the approval of the board in in a month or so that we would cease that work so i just wanted to make that that sort of apparent to everybody that there's been no change in our approach to filling these positions but we bring

061these ideas nonetheless for feedback tonight thank you okay so i'll take us back to the rest of our presentation um so this has some information in terms of our ada and our enrollment projections i'll be bringing this back at first interim um excuse me i'm sorry to interject can can we do questions more in sections i don't sure how much time we've allotted for this but i can imagine if we try to go through the whole thing that we may get lost oh director babbitt i um misunderstood what you meant by sections earlier um i thought you meant sections on the on the budget worksheet can you um what what else how much left is there in this presentation this isn't too bad um not not a lot um not not a significant amount we're

062just going to look at some dates and um not a lot i can just finish the presentation and then we could come back if we just let's just do the dates the next steps and then come back to this because again as dr stevens has said this is this is it's it's almost an exercise that we have to go through for the county office um and we don't have any idea what the actual budget is going to be so um so we want to give our thoughts on on the cuts that have been identified knowing that there's committees um community committees that are going to be looking at this but um but yeah but why don't we see what the next steps are and then and then we can get people's thoughts okay so then

063sorry is there a place where i can view the but the budget reduction workbook i don't see a link for it like there is for the other um sheets there is a there is a link right there it's in the it's in is it on agenda online yes uh um it's not any gender online it was sent to board members i think but it's in this presentation okay can we just make sure that director of australian swan gets that yes we'll absolutely follow up okay all right so if you could just yeah um okay so let's take us quickly through the other slides um so this is the data that we're working on providing to um sbac that they've requested and we're working on getting some information to them this is a reminder of our

064budget cut target um the ones that are highlighted are actually driven by the reduction in ada and that's what we're approaching at this um at this point um the rest of it we'll be looking at when we actually um in january to june which is our traditional time um this is a quick look at the format that you can open yeah i don't think we need to see the format and then these are the future meeting dates so you can see um um in terms of the principles meeting november 17th s and our other partners these are the dates for their meeting um svax meeting on the seventh we're hoping to have final recommendations and then we're also um going to be meeting with s back and piano on the 14th and we'll be bringing

065this to the board on the 15th okay thank you so much um if you could go back to the slide you keep going yeah maybe is that it yeah yeah that's right um and um dr stevens maybe you could just preface the the comment period that we're now going to have from from the board members with what you mean when you say um feedback on these you know given given what the purpose of this um you know list is and what what kind of feedback would be helpful for you knowing that we're going to engage in um the actual budgeting process in the spring yeah i'm happy to do that um so we are in this sort of very quick two-month-long period trying to prepare this what what president alper is referred to sort of

066going through an exercise to prepare a list for acoe we're doing that really without any sense of our revenue without any sense of our actual enrollment but nonetheless acoe wants us to prepare this list in light of the current drop in student enrollment as essentially a backup plan they want to know that we have that on file and that we've begun some some level of consideration about reductions so nothing in this list is binding nothing about a board approved list on december 15th requires then that the district enact anything on the list everybody understands we'll continue to wait to get more information because this was really the sort of exercise a compliance exercise we have been limiting feedback to only our sort of community composed committees that's the superintendent's budget advisory committee dlac which is

067our english language advisory committee pac our parent advisory committee as well as our principals and the board of education so tonight's feedback will be is very important we do want to sort of get a sense what both of the overall direction that we're taking on the categories that we're taking and generally where you see we're on the right track or where you think even in this sort of exercise format it would be better to leave a particular cut off this list so that i think i hope i'm sort of hedging appropriately to say that nothing here is binding and that we're sort of involved in this quick eight week long process to comply with this um with this um requirement yeah thank you dr stevens and this item is even tonight is just on for

068discussion so there might be you know thoughts that board members have that you'll take back as part of the feedback that you're getting from everybody that's correct um and i'll um so if you have thoughts you know now is the time to raise your hand up i did want to thank you assistant superintendent and following for your leadership on this and for the um for the the presentation of the principles that that you identified which i think is really helpful and i think will will guide us when we get to the real budgeting process that we're going to have to engage in in the spring it's it's a way of thinking about this you know this critical work of budgeting um that that i haven't really seen us do in that way before and um

069and and was really helpful so i want to thank you for that um so with that i'll um open it up to um comments and questions from my colleagues did director babbitt did you i know you wanted did you want to comment i mean to put you on the spot but i know you're asking no i do want to comment but i'm happy to okay and if others want to go directly rabbit just so you know i thought when you said sections i say you meant like educational programs operations you know hr um but i don't actually think we need to limit it to that i think if anybody has comments on any of these um anything you can raise them now director sinai so um i also appreciate uh assistant director pollensby this is

070a lot of work that we don't normally do at this time frame um and so i really appreciate all the energy that's put in my questions are particularly um around the educational programs um associate superintendent of aurelio and um while i understand this is an exercise and a compliance issue it puts people on edge because now things are on and you know and that's not our fault but it's a reality so when we potentially look at a um a cost of 435 000 to a contracted out agency that we are going to reduce by 300 000 that could potentially get a non-profit organization that's serving our families so i'm a little um curious on who that organization is and that we um or if it's multiple organizations um so that that that's kind of one

071question let me i'll just throw out a couple of questions that's one question because i um how we message this is super important um because of the destabilizing factor it could have on people either in their future organizations or their future their their sense of future stability and their employment and we have enough problems right now with retention that this makes it i think it's really unfortunate that we're being pushed to do this before the governor even has like put out his first budget but i guess the savings around the special ed particularly the spg and the special day class those are things that have been on the line item for reform and change for the get-go so i'm just kind of curious on and these are big cuts well more so the the ias

072and uh less so the the nps placement but i'm just curious like we can put it on a line but it has a huge impact in how we actually think it's going to roll out in a semester you know that we have like a semester to plan it so i just i want to be careful about putting things in i mean unless we're really just doing it for show um it's like it's a big lift so those were my questions um particularly around the ed programs so let me answer on on the adult transition that is our adult transition program um so it would be building out our own version of that program now of course we have to put things on paper and you you know farewell you know we're doing this for the

073county and making sure we meet those requirements and we know that any of these special education programs they don't just start up automatically we grow them and so it would be a process in growing them i do believe that we can work towards reducing the svg contract in it we would attack it in multiple avenues one is of course we're looking at our own hiring and bringing hiring our own ias but also we've we have an iep coach that is on our team and really working with our case managers and really looking at how we provide services and how we offer services and making sure that we're doing what is right and what's best for students and and not just automatically assigning an ia for example making sure we're really being critical um in the

074services we provide we're also looking at ways working with human resources in in our unions on how we distribute the allocation of fte for ias because right now we typically assign them to sites versus say pulling them at the central office and having some flexibility in how we assign our ias specifically to students and not having them directly tied to a school site so there's some a number of layers that play into that but i believe that this has worked and i've been working with our executive director sean mansinger on on these items and something we definitely want to tackle um regardless of the budget cuts or not i think these are important items to tackle so i'll just flag a concern around alacasta long-term well-respected organization where families feel very connected to the organization

075so and to build a new program versus the ability to work with an existing one i think we need to seriously evaluate again knowing that we're not necessarily doing it but you know i'm sure that they'll be on edge seeing it on the list got it thank you thanks um director babbitt i think you and i yes uh thank you so much um i actually wanted to start with the um the budget development principles um again thank you for this work and thank you for um really taking um the suggestions from the board to make sure that we start with a thoughtful way of guiding principles i noticed in number six we talk about the district will make interrelated budgets like the general fund bsep and the state supplemental grant available to committees even if

076each committee has a particular purview and i just want to highlight that our supplemental grant funds and i just want to ask the question has it changed in which we can now supplant those supplemental funds to to take care of general funds needs um i can i can respond to that um director babbitt we're facing a lot of budget reductions so what was thought of as um supplanting um previously um some of these programs are actually gonna be they would have been cut or eliminated if the alternative funding was not provided so we're not saying we're going to supplant programs um in for instance in lcap or any other funding source we're just saying in those particular funding sources these programs would have gone away unless we found alternative funding so the supplanting the planting

077um assumes both programs are operating side by side but because we're facing such um significant budget cuts some of these programs are going to have to go away and the only way that we can either maintain them or fund them is if we find um alternative funding sources i don't know if that answers your question so you're saying that we're going to have a reduction in our number of unduplicated students which would lower our lcap supplemental funds anyway actually actually that's not the case so uh when we haven't started looking at the interplay between departments we think we may have a little bit more in terms of our unduplicated pupil count but i don't think the thought is to supplant anything in el lcap i think we're looking more at other programs um looking at

078restricted or new funding sources to see if there's anything in that program that we will be cutting from our program and then possibly the other grants can pick those up okay so this supplemental grant excludes lcap plan supplemental funds okay yeah thank you for that clarification and then when it comes to uh budget priority five around opportunities for service restructuring um i think this is um an excellent goal and i think i agree with um assistant so this is sorry associate superintendent reven aurelio that no matter what we do we need to really look into this restructuring process within our district so that we can create efficiencies this is one of the reasons why i really wanted to run for the school board so that we could have workshops and really talk about our infrastructure

079and how we not only how we use our public funds wiser and more efficiently i want to appreciate that the s back committee yesterday talked about um bringing these things in-house was one of the things that they appreciated uh matt meyer noted that this was the first time he saw this kind of innovative thinking around special ed and bringing it in-house but i also want to highlight that another person did bring up that if we don't fix our back office hiring processes then we can say we'll do this in-house but if we don't have staff in time this could actually end up costing us more money because these are legal mandates and then we'll be faced with more lawsuits and legal fees so if we're going to restructure we really need to put in the

080time as a board and a leadership team group to really talk this thing through in my opinion and then um with regards to um the ofi staffing i just want to highlight that um that supervisor position is in lcap supplemental funds um and we we had over 250 people who wrote to us last year um specifically saying we can't have one person managing the people and being a director right so if we had a director that we now fill this role with and don't have a supervisor we're basically back in the same position we were in last year that so many people highlighted was not efficient in providing services to our prioritized families for family engagement and equity and i do understand that this is just for the record but again this would be an

081area where if we're going to be doing restructuring we need to be thoughtful about how we restructure in a way in which we can give people manageable jobs and expectations and outcomes that truly serve our families so i'll come back after other people speak if i need to thank you thanks director um vice president brown that's a perfect segue because i was just about to um bring up all of the recommendations that first of all let me start by saying thank you to um associates to brenton mcfarland b for um all of your hard work on this um but i was that's i thought that was a good segue a director by the part of the positions and i know that we are doing our best to provide this information um based off of the

082guidance that we've been given um but it makes me a little nervous to um cut positions that people that our community spent such um a long time advocating for um last year and to cut them so soon after um the advocacy without seeing um the full work being done or the fruits of the labor from that work is a bit concerning and then i also wanted to offer my feedback under the education programs that are that's at the top specifically around um the special spg and ia reductions so um superintendent uh i really i while i appreciate what you shared um around the collaboration with tom and the adult school and how exciting um that sounds i think i'm a little and i love the idea of homegrown ias i think i'm a little bit

083nervous and i understand this is you know for process but i'm a little bit nervous about the idea of cutting that especially in the season where it's so difficult to find um ias and it's so difficult to feel that position which is the original reason why we you know we're working with um this company and so i'm nervous about that but incredibly nervous about it without um a true plan of action associated with it um one that's definitely data-driven um when we think about our um increase of students who may require nia um i know you mentioned you know decreasing that number but when we continue to think about how those that population uh begins to increase i think we have to have a better plan of action before we decide to reduce our outside

084services i don't know if you want me to respond or yes please no and i agree that this it would be a process similar to what we're doing with the erm's assessments where as we hire we start to sort of shift or decrease it wouldn't be like an immediate cut to the contract it's as as you get more and more of your eyes put in place you then reduce the contract that you have at the svg with the ultimate goal to have it be reduced by 10 to 20 percent over time we it wouldn't be like a hard cut like tomorrow or you know in a month from now we know it's going to take time to build those services and to ensure that we hire our own ias and make sure they're trained in

085the way we need them to be trained to work with our student population so we know it's a process it will it's not going to happen overnight okay um thanks director rasadev i um thanks i feel like a lot of my peers already raised over the concerns that i had so hard to follow uh vice president brown but uh just wanted to say again thank you my sincere appreciation to the staff for putting together this presentation i know these are hard conversations these are not easy conversations definitely not my favorite board conversations to have and so i appreciate you being really thoughtful about how you're engaging the public with the limited time that we have so i wanted to acknowledge and appreciate your work and i also agree with director sinai that even though this

086is just an exercise obviously it's going to raise a lot of community concerns and it's going to hit community hard especially when they've just advocated for these things we've just approved them and now it feels like we're taking them away it feels you know a bit like whiplash for the community and also it can be demoralizing so i just want to acknowledge that um in terms of the special education cuts i think you know agree with what director brown what director babbitt said that we need to fix our back hiring processes to make these reductions really come to fruition and so i just want to echo that comment on the transportation side for those cuts i did want to ask associate superintendent um aurelia and um and associate superintendent fallensville if do will those cuts

087lead to any reduction in service and so you can answer that if you want to answer that now i have more comments but maybe just just answer that um i can answer that now there will be no um there'll be no reduction in services uh the positions that were um were proposing to freeze have not been filled for several years and will actually be increasing hours for our bus drivers they'll all be a 7.5 um they'll be full-time basically um so that will actually attract more bus drivers because the salary will be a little bit more attractive and they know they'll be having work for seven and a half hours pretty as opposed to the split shift that they know how oh that's great all right so that that alleviates that concern and then regarding

088ophie i'm very concerned about the proposed cuts and as our advocates mentioned tonight you know even if it's just an exercise budgets tell stories and they tell stories about our values and so i would like and before the final list comes to the board in december i would like to see some contingency plans in place specifically for the spanish-language bilingual ofi position that serves monolingual spanish-speaking families district-wide i'd like to see an update to the board about the spanish-speaking seminars hosted by pikit i'd like to see when those windows are happening what they look like you know they're only for a limited time i want to learn more about the pika seminars and that's obviously not going to be as substantive as having someone in house to do this work right we shouldn't be consulting

089contracting out to pica every year it would be great if we had that in-house knowledge and so in addition to pike i'd like to also see and it's my understanding that we have not hired the offi position for sylvia mendes yet which is another request from a lot of next families in our district from the families in the 2w in the twi program if that position could be a split position between the silvia mendez community and the central office i would like to see if that could be considered as a part of a contingency plan in case we do have to make these budget cuts but that we preserve that work so that we're not contracting out to pica every year because we keep not meeting the needs of our families and lastly i'd like

090to remind both the district staff and my colleagues that cutting the split position out even if it's just as part of an exercise is in direct contradiction to the work outlined for our district as part of the latinx resolution the resolution calls for our district to improve latinx parent engagement in spanish through culturally responsive latinx parent engagement seminars that are open to all the sites and so as we heard from the advocates there's still a lack of outreach being felt by the spanish-speaking community with regards to the master plan with you know regards to pika with regards to stem steps and all these different interventions that we tell the community that they're for them but they have never heard of them they are not engaged they don't know when they're happening right so obviously we're

091still struggling to move forward and i just don't want us to take a step back with these proposals when we're really struggling just to move forward a little bit inch by inch with our community so thank you so much for your work but i you know i want some contingency plans presented if we have to make these cuts okay thank you director director sinai did you have any questions president helper i didn't want to join you no go ahead go ahead okay thanks um just a couple of quick questions um i really i support director vasudeva and looking for creative solutions i think none of these not there's not one thing on this list that any of us feel good about but if there's ways to be creative and collaborative to come up with some

092ways that we can you know kind of put things together in a way we hadn't thought of before it would be really good and i think the ofi positions are important um i have a question um dr stevens around um when you talked about the hiring process for the ofi positions that we have not frozen that hiring process um if these are on the cut list in december are are you is it so let me know if i heard this right we might be hiring people in the next month or two that will then be laying off could you help me understand the time frame on that because i want to be careful about um hiring people into positions that we know we're going to eliminate and now with the new state law of having

093to notify people in march um i know we've always had to do that with our certificated folks but now apparently we have to do that with our classified folks that um that's going to be a very tenuous position so let me did i misunderstand that no um i'll i'll try to clarify and i'll lean on samantha just for some some extra clarification if i sort of go astray in any of my response um so why don't we sort of t separate out the two of e fund uh toe offi positions that were proposed to be on long-term funding and the two of positions that we know right now are on one-time funding so just to take those um the two positions on one-time funding um we have been putting together an eligibility list that eligibility

094list is almost prepared um and samantha please do correct me if at any point i sort of sort of go astray with this that actually that list does already exist it's the bilingual one that they're still working on thank you so the the the ophelia is on non-bilingual position um that list already does exist and it's the bilingual one that's closing very quickly um they're doing the assessment and all of that yeah we actually we're actually interviewing for the bilingual one uh upon return from break and and so now to go to director sinai's question um so we do face this dilemma in that we haven't yet hired for these positions on one-time funding and that dilemma is that if we don't identify an ongoing revenue source we would just as you're kind of describing

095be bringing them into the district and potentially laying them off for that march 15th deadline only a few months later and so we thought that it was reasonable to propose that these positions be frozen given the very short time period that these people might actually be in the district so that's one thing um to take a look then at the two positions that are approved by the board and are on ongoing funding um uh associate superintendent uh ruben irelio just described you know we are right now looking to fill one bilingual position that's the empty silvia mendez position we actually hire sorry interviewed some candidates maybe six weeks ago none was selected and so went out to create a new eligibility list for that particular position so what we're proposing is that we would continue

096through that particular process um to the point that we would you know be ready to interview and we're imagining that roughly the time is going to sync up so that a board decision to freeze or continue forward would roughly correspond with the approximate timing of a higher ring decision so i hope i'm describing that the right way but right now i'm going to continue that process until these two particular positions are resolved so just to clarify that that's line 23 that you're talking about that you're you're just in the process of interviewing or finishing a list or something is that is that line 23 uh that would be for the empty sp sylvia mendez position which is not listed here we're not proposing to cut sylvia mendez's offi liaison um and then it would be

097from that very same eligibility list that we could hire into line 23. okay so our line sorry president alfred just trying to get clear is line 22 and 23 are those positions open with eligibility lists now that have not been frozen yet so let me clarify so um thanks so for number 22 line 22 yes we have a list um we have not hired anybody yet from that list into that position um that is one of the new positions that was created last spring um 23 is the new position that was created last spring and we're getting a new list that would allow us to be able to hire into that position if we do make that decision to continue moving forward in that direction um and that again is the position that was created

098in the spring in the interim since the spring we've had somebody resign from the district who was in a bilingual position already at sylvia mendez um and so that's the position that superintendent stevens was talking about that we are working to fill right this moment and do not have on this list because we do intend to fill that position um so um that's sort of the three positions that we were talking about okay um all right we've got a few more minutes left for this item um director muscarini swan i just really quickly on the note of just like projected values going forward with this budget cuts i just like to caution against looking at um things approved for coded one-time funding is like disposable because i think the idea that a lot of us

099were hoping is that they would be approved as line items moving forward um i understand some of them were just actual covered one-time um budget items that were needed but a lot of the things were things that we were just needing to approve and didn't have the budget for um and i understand that this might be disposable but i just like to i guess caution against the idea moving forward that things that we granted covered one time funding for this year are things that we won't have to continue funding in the future but i don't have a question no thank you for that comment um all right last word director of austin to assistant uh superintendent tobias espinosa can we combine the sylvia mendes position that we're actively hiring for right now with line 23

100with that split position is that a possibility as a possible creative solution it is a possible solution and i um we can discuss it more dr stevens and i can discuss and see if that would work to help resolve some of the issues um i believe it's shared between sylvia mendez and another one of our elementary schools so i have to look into that piece as well it's a thousand oaks thousand oaks yeah um so yeah i'd love that it could be that that that one becomes a full-time bilingual position that does sylvia mendez and yes we could be creative i think is the answer all right um all right oh director babbitt did you did you just have your hand up i i did i was just hoping we could do a um i

101don't know how possible this is but um a projection of our students to actual grades so that we're not um overstaffed and we're really thinking about how we consolidate classes and how we actually enroll students differently so that we can have more of a direct classroom level of student to teacher ratio in our funding allocations hopefully that makes sense i think that's invested in item 30 the realign staffing for class sizes and that's what we we would be doing as part of the teacher template and making sure that we're closer to the original goal of visa in our classroom right and i guess i'm also saying add to that making sure that we assign kids at schools so that that realization is possible because part of why you know we don't have just a straight

102we lost 400 kids then how can we just don't lose the teachers to correlate to that classroom is because there's not necessarily a whole classroom that's what that's it but thank you yeah thanks church um all right um thanks very much everybody and um i'm gonna move dr stevens is it okay if we do the public hearing yes okay um we're gonna do the public hearing real quick and then we'll go to the bear item um just because the agenda was a little bit unclear on when the public hearing was starting so i'm going to open the public hearing on the um educator effectiveness grant application and see if there's anybody here for public comment on that item which is item 13.1 i'm not seeing anybody i'm going to close the public hearing and dr

103stevens do we have to take do we we just had to hold the public hearing we're not taking action on this that's correct okay so we'll be bringing this item back for action to the board on december 8th right okay all right thank you so that was the public hearing now we'll go um to the discussion item which is discussion 12.2 um and is who's doing this is this dr stephens are you starting i forget or did i always mr skeel i think it's going to be mr skills i think he's hiding hiding behind that screen somewhere exactly and in fact he's still hiding look at him sorry the lights were too dark hello everyone that's one way to enjoy a board meeting well i've been enjoying this one actually thank you for having me

104and i'm very happy to um to be able to be here to talk about a historic um 30-year extension of the bay city of berkeley bayer development agreement so um in my role in case you're watching from the outside i'm the busd cte program supervisor all of our career technical education programs which include many stem pathways at the high school level and connections to the community college stem programs tonight we're discussing again the 30-year extension of the development agreement between the city of berkeley and bayer pharmaceuticals and the specific portion we're going to discuss is the community benefits for science technology engineering arts and math or steam education so the community benefits section of the 30-year agreement the city of berkeley and bayer have tentatively agreed to a 30-year extension of the 1992 bayer development

105agreement or d.a from now on like the 1992 d.a the 2022 agreement includes various community benefits including but not limited to steam education the 2022 proposed ea dedicates nearly 50 of the overall community benefits allocation towards steam education through february 2052 so you can see why this is important for for all of us here in the community 30 years um and again it's between the city of berkeley and bayer but all of our students berkeley students will be beneficiaries the da is expected to go before the city berkeley city council for a first reading on november 30th and final approval december 14th and let me give you a little background on the current agreement which expires this year into this year the current development agreement initiated in 1992 launched the biotech academy at berkeley high

106school established the biotech partners program you heard a little bit about that public comment and provided funding for the district's k-8 stem programming explicitly prioritizing berkeley students from south and west berkeley the two-year biotech academy at bhs serves 11th and 12th grade students from backgrounds historically underrepresented in stem majors and careers approximately 50 biotech academy students participate in high value paid summer internships between their junior and senior years these internships are largely supported by bayer the funding the stipends for the students and other supports around the internships through our collaboration with the biotech partners program in addition to bayer other industry partners and internship providers or our students our place include biomarine genentech berkeley labs liberty laboratories children's hospital oakland research institute and east bay municipal utility district and by no means have i listed

107an exhaustive list here funds from the existing development agreement have also supported internships for students enrolled in the bio manufacturing institute at the community college level including many of our biotech academy graduates students from berkeley high who progressed to bio manufacturing institute the total community benefits package element of the proposed 2022 extension is 33 million 100 000 over a 30-year period i'm sorry of that 48 and a half percent is directed towards science technology engineering arts and math education and career technical education partners you can see why i'm here um over the several months uh mayor araguin and councilmember taplin from district 2 convened an ad hoc advisory group to explore the community benefits portion of the d.a directors vessel and sinai and myself um served on this ad-hoc committee we represented the usd um

108on this add-on committee as did aaron rose from berkeley public schools fund um who you also heard from earlier today and are very pleased to report that there was overwhelming support for steam education among the diverse representatives in the group the resulting agreement between the city and bayer in one year sorry in year one or next year 2022 for steam education would be 388 000 and escalate at roughly 2 per year over the duration of the agreement um as stated this would be divided as follows 10 of the of the 388 let's call that our baseline year um next year for transitional kindergarten through 8th grade programs 50 for high school career technical education and paid internships so steam internships and 40 for community college team career pathways and paid internships again the the large

109portion of both high school and community college going towards supporting the internships we are very very pleased to see the city of berkeley and bayer are continuing a 30-year commitment to steam education in keeping with the spirit of the 1992 d.a and to 2020 vision for berkeley's children and youth we busd are recommending some friendly amendments to the proposed d.a that will retain a focus on students who are underrepresented in steam education and career pathways basically we wanted to to make sure the language is very clear it's a 30-year agreement um and we know that communities change over time so specifically we request that city council amend section 4 and you can look in in the documents for this evening you can look in the appendix and you can see the section i'm referring to

110section four parameters governing community benefits program and city development fees to include these include these four points one ensure that educational experts seated on the grant committee have steam experience serving populations historically underrepresented in steam majors and careers two be clear and intentional about directing grants to berkeley's public school students with emphasis on serving students from populations historically underrepresented in steam majors and careers and contribute to diversifying this the steam career pipeline lending our students from from our schools in high wage high growth steam careers in the bay area three adjust the timeline to align with with planning for the academic year the the current language um has a march first award sorry has a august 30th award for funds we would like to see that march first um to better align with our planning

111our long-term planning understanding in year one meaning next year that wouldn't be possible um uh for for lots of reasons that are between bayer and the city of berkeley and four have a minimum time frame of five years for grant period grant award periods with the understanding that for ramping up and sustainability of esteemed education program more than five years may be needed and again any details of where these amendments are are in the appendix you can find in your board documents and after that i'd like to just um send this up to discussion thank you so much mr skills um i appreciate that background that's that's um that's new to many of us even though you and director bossa dev and director sinai and miss rhodes have been working on this um so hard

112over the last few months which we're so grateful to all of you for it um let me turn it over to director sinai i think next okay great thank you president elper and uh thank you mr skills for all of your work um not just on this agreement but for all of your work in building the career uh technical education program um in our district and for fostering such a strong and collaborative relationship with our community colleges our non-profit partners and our local employers you you've really represented and developed a stellar estellar program so thank you for all your work um and and also your your car your partner in crime stephanie allen uh who really helped make this this all happen um i want to express my sincere appreciation to bayer and the city

113of berkeley for extending the 30-year development agreement with a robust community benefit contribution to steam education this has been a work in progress for i think more than a year but with great intensity for the last few months all under the constraints of a pandemic it was no easy task to get community engagement around the development agreement and i think people worked really hard i appreciate the persistence and tenacity of the city team led by mayor adeguine and city council member taplin who represents district 2 where bayer sits along with the bayer team and getting the da where it is today and as mr skills said the time sensitivity of this is that it goes to council on november 30th and we don't have another meeting before then so we thought it was really important

114to just educate us all on what was what was going on with the agreement the uh community benefit element is just one piece of an overall planning document that projects the overall growth of the bayer site for three decades you heard from the student miguel and ms gayden from biotech partners how valuable the first 30-year commitment was and what it set in motion for our underrepresented students in getting into the steam career pathways so the next 30 years is as critically important to really institutionalize the equity and access that we want for the students of berkeley to be able to have a pathway into um good pain often union uh jobs right here at bayer in berkeley um so as again it's in the spirit of our college and career readiness elements of the 2020

115vision of the 1992 d.a as as mr steele said that focuses on south and west berkeley that we offer these amendments um mayor eddie gaines sent word today via email that he supports our recommendations and he sees the proposed language as furthering the goals of the development agreement he's now going to work with the city attorney and bayer to work to submit the proposed language in time for the november 30th deliberations of the city council so again we thank the mayor council member taplin and our city partners and we look forward to our ongoing collaboration with the city and bayer as well as all of the employers in our cte advisory committee who are really making sure we have robust pathways for the berkeley community now i'm going to pass it to director vasudev who's

116also been actively engaged in this to talk about the process she's been through yeah thank you director sinai and also mr scales and also aaron rhodes for your great work um just you know submitting and representing the district's interests but also just continuing to find ways to partner with our you know community colleges and with biotech partners to support underrepresented students in steam education so just really quickly from my peers uh you know i was invited by council member chaplin very appreciative of his leadership in march to start participating in these ad hoc committee meetings was pleased just to see the overwhelming support for steam education that was really clear and also very appreciative of bayer's support in our community for steam education as everybody knows black and latinx students are often underrepresented or in

117ins in steam classes and in advance science and math classes and for me this is something that's really personal and i don't know how many of my peers know this but i went to a technical education high school and the only reason i went to architecture school was because i had access to steam education i had never had access to stem education before and so that was really transformative for me at the high school level to be able to go study architecture and then you know get my masters in city planning but it was really that experience that helped me get into my career and many times i was often the only female or only latina in my class and so we i know that mr skills works really hard to make sure that our

118underrepresented students have access to quality steam education at our high schools and i know that he and ms rose are pushing really hard to make sure that they have access to steam education at the k-8 level and so i'm really appreciate appreciative of bayer council member taplin and our mayor for working hard to make sure that all of the the community's diverse needs are met and that education is a key component of the diverse needs that are being met with this historic development agreement it's a 30-year agreement which you know what a great legacy project for them to work on and just just to be a part of it it's a very hard work there's lots of competing interests in a city like berkeley um so i'm really appreciative of their support for the district

119as well and was very excited as my colleague director final mentioned to have received a word from the mayor that he supports our proposed changes to this so thank you everyone and i hope that everyone is can reach out to them and just just appreciate their hard work and leadership at the city level on this um great thank you all so much um i uh i also want to um i think i already did this but thank you all again mr skills director vasidev director simon miss rhodes um it really is um i know i know because i've been sort of on the sidelines but watching it just how much work has gone into this and um and and then our city partners embarra themselves um and i also i too want to thank the

120mayor um for his support for the amendments that we that we're requesting and um and i guess i'll ask um um my my i guess my request if my colleagues agree with it is to ask dr stevenson director basically devon director cyanide to continue working with with mr skills and ms rhodes and city partners to um to do whatever we can do to make sure that these amendments that we want to see in the final agreement actually end up there um i assume that everybody is on board with that but but let me let me pause there and see um director babbitt you your hand up well i don't understand why we would want that definitely on board and um just wanted to ask a quick question as i also share in appreciation what is

121our data collection and reporting like around these around this work i'm probably the best person to take that on so um actually we do uh we this year um in sixth grade we launched the universal sixth grade stem maker program so we're collecting data this very we have one semester of of data students um at all three middle schools who've been participating both school day and after school and i'll be really happy to do a full board presentation on that in the spring because that's a big new cte um uh initiative um other than that i have all of our enrollment data maybe i did not share that with you yet this year but i do have it from this from this year our um 1700 individual enrollments at berkeley high school in cte i

122haven't broken that down but i can by stem pathway um and i can very very proudly share that our pathways are very representative of the overall student population now biotech academy is actually very specifically and directly stem pathway to serve students from populations underrepresented in stem so actually the biotech academy specifically is not representative of all berkeley high it's representative of students who who have historically been shut out of stem careers and stem majors um but i'm happy to share all of our enrollment data matter of fact i can send that to you tomorrow i have a report and i can come to the board at any time and share um enrollment data student progress data and and also very proudly our dual enrollment data and then student transition to um our community colleges that

123would be great thank you so much um all right any other other comments um we'll look forward to seeing these amendments in the final agreement and um and then and then doing the actual work um great great thank you all so much mr skills thanks thanks for being here um now now let me just make sure i'm not forgetting anything we did the public hearing okay now is the time for um the second public comment period so if there's anybody here who wants to get a public comment now is the time um vice president brown is packing her bags i'm getting my uh time your time already together okay well it's it's all for naught because nobody's raised their hand so um so i think that means um i think that means we're done so

124we will adjourn the meeting thank you everybody have a good night night thank you everybody thank you