Berkeley USD School Board Meeting - June 23, 2021

001i would 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 is a second and final opportunity for additional public comments so if you do not get to speak during the first call we encourage you to stay until the end to request to participate in public comment please raise your hand by by clicking on the participants button at the bottom of your screen and please raise your hand now to comment by phone you will be prompted to raise your hand by pressing star 9. if you wait to raise your hand until public comment begins you will not get to speak and you will have to wait until the end of the meeting when called upon

002you will be promoted to a panelist which means that you will appear on screen so if you do not wish to be on camera please be sure to disable the camera on your end the board president will usually call our students first so students who are here tonight for public comment please indicate that you are a student by writing students at the end of your name board president will also determine to set tonight's speaking time at one two or three minutes per speaker in on an individual basis has the discretion to allow for additional time for those who need translate translation or have other needs when your time has elapsed you will see vice president brown holds up a sign that you know you have 15 seconds left if you are still speaking please complete

003your sentence but try not to speak beyond your time thank you proportion thank you thank you uh miss jerez um i'm going to call the meeting to order at 704 for the record we started closed session at 5 30 tonight welcome everybody to the june 23rd meeting of the berkeley school board our last meeting of the school year um as ms chiara said if you'd like to give public comment now is the time to raise your hand once we start public comment if you raise your hand um you'll have to wait until the end of the meeting when we'll have another public comment period so if you'd like to make public comment again now is the time to raise your hand um mrs can you please call the role uh yes director i'm not boston

004director laura babbitt here director julie sinai here vice president khadijah brown president president president thank you um now we will approve the meeting agenda um kind of emotionally approve the meeting agenda i moved ocean by russia isn't brown is there a second a second second my director about that miss charles director of that yes yes director sinai yes vice president brown yes and president yes all right thank you you have our agenda um i will now turn it over to vice president brown to report out from closed session thank you president alfred um closed session began at 5 30 2 p.m for item 3.1.1 it was moved by director sinai seconded by vice president brown and the motion passed four to zero with director babbitt in abstention for item 3.2.1 the board heard an update

005and provided direction for item 3.3.1 it's moved by president albert seconded by director vasudev and the motion passed 5-0 at this time i'm going to turn it over to superintendent stevens who will give us an introduction and update vice president brown thank you very much i'm very happy to welcome to the berkeley family of the administrative team kathy fleming kathy is here in the audience this evening and just listening in kathy has just been appointed by the board of education to be the new director of local resources and partnerships this is a new position that takes the place of the former director of bsep and community relations this is the the job that many of us know has been held for a long time and done so effectively by miss natasha bieri who's also in

006our audience this evening kathy fleming is coming to us from san francisco unified where she has a long range of experience in activities exactly like the role of the new director of local resources in san francisco ms fleming was the director of the public education enrichment fund for many years where she supported the effective use of public parcel tax dollars for enrichment programs across the city for many years she's an east bay local very close by and we're very glad to be welcoming her to the busd team so kathy welcome to you we're really glad to have you on board and then it absolutely must be said that natasha we're going to miss you dearly and so while we welcome one person uh we do um have to sort of mark the departure of another

007so vice president brown i'm going to turn it back over to you and thank you to the to you and all of the board for your support thank you so much for that introduction um and welcome kathy for item 3.4 the broad heard an update and also provided direction and listens the reading of the notes from closed session thank you president alfred thank you vice president brown um next oh next is public comment okay um again this is your last chance to raise your hand for public comment um until the next public comment period at the end of the meeting all right um we've got four people um vice president brown they can have three minutes each um it's angela gallegos castillo mr latruga uh mark joseph ramia and then paz melendez canales so those

008those are our four public commenters um and we'll start with ms gallegos castillo good evening everyone can you hear me yep good evening hi uh good evening director superintendent in public my name is dr angela gallegos castillo and i will be reading a statement that i also endorse that has been written by beatrice leyva cutler a past board member honorable board members superintendent and the esteemed parents in public that are listening to tonight's board meeting i am sorry that i am unable to join you as i have a family matter that prevents me from speaking to you tonight in person my name is beatriz leyva cutler and i was formerly on the school board for 12 years i learned that when a newly elected board comes together it takes time as you only meet in

009public and or in closed session to understand question and solve issues and concerns together board members can only speak to one another to one to one another um about an item and if it is not on the agenda if it's not on the agenda they cannot bring up an issue either in public or in closed session i trust this board and that each person elected has an equity and social justice lens in public and in closed session i trust that they do approach the work um i'm sorry before them with this lens uh each and every time i think we can all agree that these past few months and years have been extremely difficult for all i feel that the board with the superintendent and district staff are building and sailing the ship at the

010same time and it makes it more difficult when some people use their platform and position to create divisiveness between board members and the public that does not exist i am confident that if you ask any board member they will say they respect each other and each other's work in our schooling community yes board members will have different opinions and approaches and i also believe that the board before you want the same thing for all students at equitable education i joined the community in endorsing each sitting board member in their election an appointment to serve the students of berkeley because they hold up all students and their families i have faith in the board and believe each of them will bring something to the discussion and to the work at hand throwing negativity at a board

011member superintendent and or staff is neither productive nor helpful to understanding and finding solutions to the issues and concerns that the public has it instead creates division on the diocese and in the public this negative action is unproductive poisonous and unhealthy for anyone i urge the public to bring your concerns and solutions to the board and not divisive language and actions that are not productive in any arena thank you do i still have more time i don't know where my time is um oh it's time i can't see the number sorry you have about 10 seconds oh no i just wanted to reiterate um how important it is with the bigger framework of dismantling white uh white supremacy and institutional oppression that we come together as allies to work together on all the issues that

012our children and youth are facing thank you very much thank you dr guys castillo and thank you um former director david cutler for those words appreciate it thank you for being here um mr lechuga what's up what's up hey what's up folks how are you you've got three minutes what'd you say 15 minutes all right cool what's up my name is le chuga i'm a restorative justice counselor at longfellow middle school um so i just want to say what's up and appreciations to y'all um i'm actually here to comment on an agenda item about the school architecture improvement plan for longfellow i just want to say that i had the the pleasure and the opportunity the privilege to be on the steering committee also to participate in the staff focus group as well as the

013clue departures focus group and so i just want to you know throw my appreciation behind that that process behind for the folks who participated you know the community members the students who really represented um and you know longfellow was a place i loved dearly both my kids uh went through longfellow um and you know it's a gym in the community and so i just want to just i think it's long overdue and anyways i'm just here to to share my appreciations apologize i'm not on camera i didn't get my hair done today so um y'all can just look at my picture oh come on let us see you well i'm telling you man you know i'm going there it is club but this picture is better i want the pictures better says much more than

014like my uh my grill but anyways um so much love and appreciation to everybody who participated in the process and for for the support and it's like i said it's well overdue and uh appreciate you all much love and respect and and peace well thank you thank you for for those comments and for giving us the opportunity to thank you for all the work that you do at longfellow um you're one of our rj heroes we really appreciate it yeah i love y'all and uh yeah that's what's up all right take care have a good night take care um all right um mark joseph ramia and then um paz melendez canales will be our last public speaker mark romney here classified berkeley high school instructional assistant paraprofessional i'd like to start off by saying that

015the busd school board member laura babbitt is encouraging forgiveness so i will go along with that topic if i were to forgive the school board view for lack of proper oversight matters in this district such as the 20-day rule still not having a process and the open lawsuit unresolved the classification study not done vacation and sick days not granted or paid as they should be the classified staff having to double down on duties some working out of class yet not being compensated and a few more things would that open the deaf and ears that may not care to know if i could forgive all those things would it make a difference and would you just start another list of things not to do the lessons you should have learned by now as the school board

016is that your lack of action impacts thousands of students and their families you are the gatekeepers of student success yet pride yourselves even pat yourselves on the back while the rate of failure is so high the classifieds are the lowest paid under-appreciated and most harmed class which cannot seem to get justice within the system the very system that was created for basic protection when you all took the position as school board members you made an oath stating that your performance was about doing what is correct i'm done thank you um and our last speaker is paz melinda canelos good evening sorry good evening board uh director superintendent steven staff from the uc community my name is pasmones canales and i have two kids attending longfellow middle school and berkeley high today i am here to

017ask that the board dedicate some specific funding for the latinx resolution for interventions for interventions for students next year and a possible presentation that includes maybe a latinx success framework um thank you also for the support throughout this year for latinx and all students and for being open to work with latinos unidos at berkeley and other groups looking to improve outcomes for prioritized students we really appreciate your partnership and collaboration with us i also know mr khalis will be bringing the long fellow modernization project for board approval today so please note it is not a remodel it's a whole modernization of the ontario campus so we aloneville are very excited about this long-awaited vision finally starting to materialize i would like to thank the board superintendent stevens john kalis the architectural firm gold evans the

018bs busy facilities team and especially the longfellow community the parents teachers and staff the long fellow advocacy group pta school site council include the paladis and everyone who advocated for the funds and attended meetings with gold evans and took the time to give your input and share your vision of what the campus you look like and what our students family staff and staff need and deserve we really appreciate all the work everyone put into this project to make it a reality so big thank you to everyone involved i would like i won't be there any longer but i can't wait to see what the campus will look like in a few years so si se pudo thank you thank you mrnas canelos i appreciate it okay um that concludes our public comment period and thank

019you for everybody who came to speak um now we will hear from our unions if we have any union representatives um if there's a union representative if you can raise your hand uh miss charles i'm assuming we don't have any pre-recorded that's right okay all right moving right along to committee comments i know we have a comment from the parent advisory committee that's sandra loving so why don't we go right to miss loving on behalf of the parent advisory committee and if there's any other committee comments if you could raise your hands too that would be great um hi miss loving um go ahead you've got five minutes okay how you guys doing good all right good evening what a year we have all had i'm here tonight to reflect what many pac members experienced

020this year on one hand we experienced a quality of collaboration that was fresh and energizing resulting in the most exciting year the pack has had we were on a quest to find out what works and what doesn't for our prioritized students and learn so much we built relationships with district staff educators and families we actively by actively listening to what they were saying we created our recommendations that have widespread support this year was also very challenging for pac and you can read it in a detail in the pack comments that will be emailed to you this evening i will share a glimpse of what we went through the district's top-down pac meetings took us nowhere as of our march meeting we had no information to work with so we mobilized pac representatives spoke with people

021in the district office of specialists our school principals teachers the high school intervention counselors the bridge teacher families and to prepare for our comments on emotional support needs i personally reached out to find counselors and other supports in the elementary middle and high school settings the pac didn't have any input into the district decision to reward the lcap goals relocate actions within them and change the funding source for 10 lcap originated programs there was no transparency in the decision-making process and sadly the new budget does not do enough for our prioritized students so in this mixing up of everything is there a positive for the pack surprisingly yes the positive is that the pac learned more about using the lcap to implement a strategic plan surprisingly we're now optimistic and hopeful we believe building strategy

022into the lcap and using it as a tool as it is intended to be is how finally busy can do better for our prioritized kids it requires a cleaned up and more inclusive lcap and the pax accountability oversight now extends to programs other than just those that are supplementally funded it will be fueled by more collaboration between the pac and those implementing actions and with other district committees as well and personally a fire has been lit under me because our children are worth it in our community there's so much care and knowledge amongst our families and educators that i know the most vulnerable students here can thrive let's focus on providing them without providing them what they need without compromise i know we all want that and i know we can do it so enjoy

023the summer take care and rest well because we have a lot of work ahead of us in the 2021-2022 school year thank you thanks so much miss loving thanks for all your work and for your leadership have a good night me too oops i don't know why i muted myself okay um [Music] thank you and i don't see any other um comments so it will go to union i mean um board member and superintendent comments who would dr babbitt uh good evening everyone i just wanted to say that i'm so pleased to be wrapping up this last board meeting of this school year and i'd like to thank the district for responding to the parent advisory comments this year this is the first time in at least two cycles of comments in which written response

024was provided as our parent volunteer leaders spent a lot of time thought and emotional energy into providing advisory comments i'm so grateful for the ways in which we as a district respond with action and implementation and so looking forward to doing more next year i want to thank all of our administrators who will continue to work diligently over the summer to prepare for the fall and the great challenges ahead with the full reopening of schools and all the related post-pandemic impacts i was asked by some why more hadn't been done already to prepare for falls needs and i immediately recalled how much work was put into meeting the monumental minimum needs this year presented week after week so thank you again to all the students families faculty contractors city personnel clergy community leaders oversight and

025advisory committees that help busd make it through this year i hope everyone will return this far refreshed and ready to commit again as the best even from this board is yet to come thank you thank you dr babbitt that was great um i appreciate it uh who's next i can go okay i can follow that the best is yet to come thank you director that's what she was talking about this board coming right now no hardly um you know as we wrap up the school year i hope that this will be the last time in board comments that i have to say the phrase has been an unprecedented year um i hate the comment and uh it can't be denied that it really has been something that none of us have ever experienced before and

026while the pandemic is not over we hopefully have turned the curve and through all of the vaccinations that we really are on a forward momentum i look forward to returning um to in-person board meetings um in august i hope um and and while we're moving into in-person school and that we'll continue to make the accommodations as needed for vulnerable families and teachers or staff that we need to i really want to express my sincere appreciation to all of the parents and families the guardians that went through this school year whether they showed up at a board meeting or not we know the struggle that people went through and the patience and the commitment and the support to the district and the teachers and the staff i also want to thank all the students who struggled

027through this year you know we heard voices from our high school students and for many of our students uh throughout the year and i thank folks and students for stepping up and staying focused and just persevering in a really challenging time i want to thank all the teachers and the staff for their tenacity and their persistence in making zoom school work and then transitioning to in person and i want to thank all the administrators at both the school sites and the central office for the diligent work the hours the hours that you guys all put in in order to make education for our students a success i'm hoping that we venture into the next school year that we're able to move into in-person meetings but keep zoom as an option because i think it has

028really opened the door for a level of engagement that has never happened before when we're totally dependent on people showing up to the school district boardroom to give public comment we are not getting the richness of the parent and guardian community or even the student community so i hope um superintendent stevens we can figure out ways to enter um spurs a hybrid model for community engagement um and you know lastly i think it's you know it's um our parent advisory councils tremendously contribute a tremendous amount of richness to our deliberations i want to thank all the parents of guardians of seniors who don't have kids in the district anymore who are moving on and thank you for helping make this district what it is and i want to thank all of you who are continuing

029to stay to continue to be engaged in our committees and to provide the leadership that you have been over the past years and uh it's it's just been an honor to serve and i look forward to the next school year thanks director sinai um um and the best is yet to come i think we should all just end with that that's your cue director russell the best is yet to come all right um well i also wanted to thank everyone for coming tonight and for your public comments i really appreciate all of you who are here joining us for our last school board meeting i also wanted to echo our superintendent's warm words of welcome towards miss kathy fleming our new director of local resources miss fleming i'm thrilled to hear about your experience especially

030with community engagement in sfusd i know that's a very tough job and i'm really excited to see what you will contribute to this position we're just really excited to welcome you i also want to take the time to thank miss natasha biry our current director of berkeley of the berkeley schools excellence program and community relations natasha i can't imagine busd without you i have enjoyed working with you on the piano and also on our multilingual community engagement during proven 19 response i'll never forget the hundreds of slides that you reviewed for those ucsf presentations to our community i think natasha really embodies the best of our district and it's been such a pleasure working with you this year and for many years in busd and you know what you'll be really missed natasha i also

031want to thank our students and families and staff for your patience this year i won't say it was an unprecedented year what a year and you know we're really looking forward just to you know coming to a more stable school year next year right into helping our families continue to thrive and to helping our students recover from this pandemic because we know it doesn't happen overnight we know it's a process right and i think it's really important that you know as we use the summer to really think about you know how we're going to come in strong next year and so i'm really looking forward to continuing to hear from our families i want to know what we can do better to help our students thrive you know from our educators and really just wish

032everyone a wonderful and restful summer and know that you know it's been a pleasure to serve it's definitely been one of the hardest years for any school board i've talked to many school board members who feel the same way it's been one of the most challenging years to serve but it's also been a pleasure to see how our community has stepped up this year right all the love that i feel in our community and really the collaborative spirit from our educators from our parents from just the richness of the community engagement that we do in busd which you know i don't see in many districts i think we're really fortunate to have the district that we do because we have a lot of passionate families and we have a lot of passionate educators and we

033don't always agree but it's been really beautiful and healing to see how we've come together to move our district forward and i'm looking forward to you know continuing to engage and continue to see us come together whether it's in committees to talk about the budget or you know whether it's a middle school assignment process you know whatever the issue is um you know whether it's virtual or in person right i like the hybrid approach that that my fellow colleague director sinai proposed you know however we're engaging next year i know that our communities will continue to step up and come out stronger and the best is yet to come did i end on the right one prison albert we're gonna figure out a way to um or we're gonna try to figure out a way

034and work with the city to have in-person board meetings with opportunity and i i would just urge us to please not call it hybrid if we can never call anything hybrid again um i think we all might be better off but in concept and concept i agree um all right vice president brown uh thanks president alper uh good evening everyone thank you to those of you who are still coming to our board meetings all the way into the last very last one um but thank you all so much for being there and for those who watch this later thank you for your continued commitment throughout the entire school year um i would also like to welcome kathy to our incredible and dynamic um team here in berkeley unified school district and i can't wait to

035to meet you in person um and while welcoming kathy i would i would just like to say to natasha um that you are a phenomenal incredible wonderful gym and you have been here um in busd for a while but on a personal note um you made yourself completely available to me um when i first joined the school board and let me know everything i needed to know about our parcel taxes and about the inner workings of the district anything i needed to know even outside of your expertise you made yourself available to me and so i will always remember that and appreciate that and for just the incredible way that you served our district our families our students and our staff is better because of you so thank you for your impact and you will

036truly truly truly be missed um i i i said it um during the board meeting before the last day of score after graduation but thank you once again to our stakeholders to our families and faculty and students staff and students alike thank you for sticking it out during this incredibly challenging year and to my board colleagues um oftentimes you all are not recognized for the behind the scenes work that you do um and so i would just like to take this point of privilege to say thank you to you all for making yourselves available for um sometimes putting school board work before your actual uh nine to five jobs your families and sometimes even your health so thank you thank you thank you for this incredible year and i um although we have more work

037to do i'm proud of where we've where we've come and how we've been able to maneuver through this incredibly difficult year um in partnership with the superintendent um and and staff so thank you all um so much it's a joy and a privilege and also a pleasure to work with each and every one of you um and then finally to um sorry i lost my last comment so i guess i'll end it here and just say thank you um again to everyone who is here and the best is yet to come this is gonna be the best board comment ever everybody um actually i i just want a second but all of you said all the thanks including to our superintendent for um for his leadership during this incredibly difficult year but also i'm glad

038um vice president brown mentioned you all our board colleagues it's um really been a pleasure to to work with you all to um to to sort of navigate some stormy waters together and it's a great team and i really am looking forward to next year when i think we'll be able to um do so many of the things that we've been wanting to do um and had to put on hold this year there's so much pent up desire there's so much men that need we have some available resources so it's an exciting fall to be entering into and we'll turn it over now to our superintendent who will be leading us through that fall process dr stevens thank you very much president elper um i think like everybody who spoke before i'm also sort of

039feeling caught up in this moment of reflection and gratitude um as this year comes to an end um i know that for a lot of us we've sort of had to continue to work at a very stiff pace over the last couple of months even as much of our community is beginning to return to normal we've been maintaining a hectic pace with weekly board meetings and still many administrative tasks to resolve over the last um several meetings i've sort of taken time to sort of um thank various segments of our community um and it really is quite remarkable the level of sacrifice um and sort of um uh sort of collective effort that we have made as a community um starting with our students who have i think engaged in this sort of really unrecognized

040act of heroism to protect members of our community that was really probably should not have been asked of them and yet they bore that weight for all of us collectively over the course of these long 15 months and who knows how many more people are safe because of that sacrifice our families i know that this has been a deeply painful time every paternal maternal instinct that we all possess to keep our children safe to see them with friends to see them in a in a situation of acceptance um was for many families just shattered this year my family included and that has been uh i think for every one of our parents just a very painful moment to go through we've i've had a chance as well to thank our teachers who have developed new

041skills trying to teach kids trying to love kids in every way they can from from their own houses while often caring for their own families and for principals who had to reconceive of their schools as this new remote environment what a remarkable act they've made i haven't really sort of focused yet on thanking the folks who appear in this little brady bunch grid staring in front of me right now and i'd like to do that as the closing comments of this year so first just to my cabinet colleagues i'm going to address you individually john thank you john over and over again sort of stepped into realms that just were not his um by any stretch of the imagination from student testing to facilities prep sunday calls with companies we'd never heard of trying to

042figure out how to get kids tested all of these things i saw over and over again you just stepped into with such an openness and please know that i saw it and really really appreciate it sam to you as well this has been the season of unending bargaining it seems like we get one mou signed and then there's another one to think about and all with issues we've never before contemplated in our professional lives so you pulled that off and did so with a lot of grace um a lot of patience and all while managing a department and a personal life as well so thank you very much and then pauline as well you've also been asked to take on all kinds of things that you've never contemplated as well i know you now know

043more about ppe than anybody else in the district and how much exactly we have of it and where it is and then of course you've managed a really complex budget process in the middle of this so i just want to call you out as well personally for all of that work three of our board members um didn't know what they were signing up for when they ran for office um and then two of you somehow did know that you were signing up to become a pandemic board member um whatever the case may be though i do want to acknowledge you on behalf of all of the staff um it is true that um this has been somewhat of a thankless endeavor for all of us um and that we have had to wrestle with um

044really sort of trying terrible dilemmas for a very long time we all carried the stress of this sort of dilemma this awful choice we were forced to make about risks to safety and the need for education and i know that carried away for every one of you like it did for me so i want to thank you very sincerely every one of you for your leadership for your patients for hanging in there with us as we as a team have sort of struggled through all this new content and sometimes come apart a little bit over the course of this year we really do appreciate your support and your leadership and then finally um my last thank you as any good son should do you may notice that there's another stevens in this audience and i

045just want to give a quick little shout out to my mom she's been a consistent viewer of all of these board members meetings she knows every one of us by name trust me um so i want to thank you for for just hanging in there over the course of the year and many long phone calls as i come close to tears sort of talking about how complicated everything was so thanks mom so i'm back over to you president elper and thanks for for giving me that opportunity your mom is on here twice dr stevens she just can't get enough yes that that that is the privilege of having the superintendent as your son you get two passes to the show lucky her um all right well welcome miss stevens since we're shouting out parents i

046just want to recognize that my dad is here too so thank you daddy there he is mr brown maybe we should promote maybe we should promote rodney brown and nancy stephens to the panelists should we degrade our place miss cyrus can you can you just briefly promote rodney brown and enough i have to agree to get off cam camera though yeah well if if they if they really don't want to they don't have to turn turn on their cameras but it would be nice to do that i'm promoting rodney brown now you and i are we're going to endure this together yeah they said we should turn our cameras off julie is that what you said no no no i meant on get back on here now rodney um i think brought khadija's baby book

047with him tonight so yeah no we're going too far now all right miss stevens or mr brown if either one of you wants to turn on your cameras you're welcome to you don't have to but you're welcome too but we're waiting no you don't have to you can or you can say hi there you are rodney you want to say hello good evening board president ty alfred everybody good to see you all uh in in the circumstance concerning and considering but uh it's just great to listen in on what you all are doing i'm very proud of all of you and uh continue the great work that you all doing uh despite the circumstances that we're dealing with with the pandemic and all and i see you guys are diligently doing uh your due diligence

048of service and i'm definitely definitely proud of my baby miss khadijah brown thank you for the wonderful father's day uh meal that you serve for us beautiful thanks so again thank you all for inviting me thank you for being here mr brown miss stevens you have 15 minutes she was unmuted a minute ago mom dad are you there there they are i'm here but i don't know that you can't hear me there we can hear you well i just want to say that i i worked in education for 28 years so uh i can identify with all of you and the roles and the issues you've been dealing with this year it is unprecedented and i think all of you handled yourself so well but i'm so impressed with the board is the civility and

049the um reflection that you present um to the public about the big issues that come up uh i think you're all to be congratulated you're a wonderful board and um of course you know i'm very proud of brent and he always worked his head off but anyway um i think you're all doing a great job and congratulations to you thank you thank you so much oh i think we just ended there that was very sweet tai thank you for doing that that was really nice um all right thank you all numb now even more exciting is the consent calendar um someone like to make a motion to approve the consent counter some moved martial isn't brown is there a second second director for signing i think um ms jairus thank you for promoting our parents

050sure uh director vasilev yes uh director abbott yes director sinai yes president brown yes yes um all right thank you all um now we have um discussion item 12.1 um uh dr stevens i'll let you introduce introduce this oh yeah thanks very much president elper i'm just going to turn the presentation over to um stephen jimenez rob who's going to come back on camera mr jimenez rob is the coordinator of our newly renamed district office of civil rights and compliance what we all referred to previously is the title ix office mr jimenez rob is relatively new to berkeley unified where i think we welcomed you on board in january another sort of pandemic entry into the district but in that very short time he's been hard at work with a new title 9 investigator mary

051keating both to organize the office and begin a very proactive approach to training our administrators opportunities to students and to staff and then engage with me in conversations about how to lead the district to the next level of sort of proactive response on the topic of sexual harassment prevention so mr jimenez rob has prepared a presentation a relatively brief presentation and we'll walk you through on the activities that he and his office have been engaged in over the last academic year so over to you stephen and thank you again for being here thank you so much good evening board president alper board members dr stevens and other cabinet members my name is steven jimenez rob and i am the title ix coordinator for the district um someone was going to give me sharing rights i

052think it was lasagna uh yeah i believe i you you're able to share your screen yeah i see that okay even is it helpful if i share my screen and i'll just advance the slides yeah can you do that i'm happy to do it thank you so much i appreciate that okay let's just go to the next slide so tonight i'm going to be uh providing you a brief update on what the district office of civil rights and compliance office has been doing in terms of uh title ix and sexual harassment uh training and other things that we've been doing in the office dr stevens mentioned the members of my office i'd like to mention them again here mary keating is an attorney and she's my title 9 investigator and tanisha wilson is our administrative

053assistant okay next slide so listed here are the individuals the law firms the school districts and the parent and student organizations that we have worked with in this past year who have been providing us resources and training and guidance megan farrell lozana smith fagan freeman in full frost san francisco unified school district the los angeles university district the parent and student shack and we are members of the association of title ix administrators okay next slide so this is the training that we have been doing this past year uh myself and members of my team have had title ix training with two different law firms we provided uh title ix and sexual harassment training for k-12 administrators the berkeley high school faculty berkeley high school counselors and the berkeley um i forget what bta stands for

054berkeley tech academy faculty as well okay next slide um the student trainings that have taken place this past year have been with greendock this is upstander training miss justine molly who is a counselor and miss claudia gonzalez who is the school's dean um do all the student trainings with students they help facilitate this process and this is all peer-led another sexual harassment training that is peer-to-peer that has been peer-led and um and has been facilitated by the student check has been taking place this past year at the high school going to classroom to classroom to provide this training okay as well as my office has updated and sent out uh the sexual harassment prevention notifications the non-discrimination notices and the williams legislation to all the schools and all of our district offices so all that

055information is now has been distributed and it is updated next slide so the newly renamed office district civil rights and compliance office has a new website if you were to go to the website you would see all of these various tabs from title ix sexual harassment non-discrimination bullying lgbtq married expected and parent students title six and then our uh complaint procedure form starting with the uniform complaint procedures the district level complaints and our williams complaints all of this information is updated and there's all additional resources per tab okay so as we move forward to the new school year we will continue to provide sexual harassment training for certificated and classified employees students and parents and community stakeholders we are also providing training new training for on transgender and gender equity for certificated and classified we

056started doing that particular training this year with our k-8 administrators we have recently purchased curriculum called changing boys into men it's an anti-sexual violence curriculum specifically targeting male athletes and berkeley high school now has a new consent educator who will be providing expanded um training and resources for our high school students and that's it so if there's any questions that you guys have to open up any discussion here i'm more than happy to answer any and all your questions thank you so much um thanks for that presentation for for for all that work and i'll turn over to director babbitt in a second i just want to um even some of the things that seem straightforward like i'm posting the the discrimination information and sort of where to file complaint and updating the website things

057that um you know that seem relatively simple are things that we haven't always done well in the past and um have been criticized for it you know reasonably and appropriately for not doing and not updating and so um i was just looking through the the website over the last couple days and just even just now during your presentation and um it's really impressive the just the amount of well organized information that's that is now available to community members which is really important um in addition to the programmatic work that that you talked about so um so anyway i'm i'm impressed and thank you for your work um mr manning thank you so much um director babbitt and then director sinai yes thank you so much for for that update um and for your work i'm

058curious as to your goals for next year and how you plan to measure the success of the climate improvements around all of these issues at our various campuses i also want to know how we plan to expand our curriculum down to the middle school level or k through 12 level should we say and then um really want to target our measurements for success and what are your okay so so to answer your question um we would like to put out a survey at the very beginning of the school year to measure the school climate in our high schools and in our k-8 schools and then uh do provide the services and training that we want to do for for our students and the trainings for our faculty and staff members and for members of the

059community and then uh within a few more months provide another post survey to measure the the quality of the work that we've been doing and if we're if there's anything that we're missing in the in terms of our delivery and what we could do to improve in our systems i'm also working with gabe fredman who is a teacher on special assignment he's currently working in student services [Music] dr shelley and i will be sharing him to also do climate work in various spaces regarding aapi blm and we're also working with another individual to provide training and services regarding transgender training and resources and accommodations as well um so within the three of us working on this we will be able to provide services k through 12. um additionally we will be working with the high

060school the student shack green dot and um our our newly hired consent educator and also measuring the success of what they're currently doing pre and post through surveys great thank you so much and do you have a plan um for middle school and then also for um board reporting so that we can get some kind of average number of complaints the time it takes to resolve them measurements for success as to those numbers going down or up and then that's then i'll relinquish thank you okay so you so i'm i'm processing what you just said to me or asked of me um so currently in terms of any type of uh sexual harassment training that we're doing at the hot at the middle school we do have a curriculum in place that addresses it uh

061and it's through our [Music] it's through our teacher on special assignment gabe fredman who facilitates that at the elementary school there is some information that students receive in the curriculum around bullying my goal as a title ix is to provide greater training at the middle school sites for our faculty our staff our parents stakeholders within that group as well as at the elementary level as well we can provide information for students through assemblies at the middle schools and at the elementary level i think in the past year because of what's been happening at the high school and the number of sexual assaults that have been occurring off campus we've been really targeting our resources more towards the high school as a result of that and then you asked me one more question and i forgot

062what it was it's about i think it was about sort of the number of complaints and is that something that can be reported to the board as a way of sort of assessing your progress absolutely absolutely so we already have a lot of that information that we could provide for the board now you know if you wanted it by tomorrow i can provide it for you so that you could at least see for the last three years the trends in the type of complaints that the office has been receiving in terms of uniform complaints regarding any type of sexual harassment or any type of sexual assault or any other type of complaints that have occurred even outside of the ucp we already have all that information logged i'm just going to jump in real quick

063and ask that as we it doesn't have to be tomorrow but that that you know and i think we used to have quarterly reporting of of those numbers um if we could include the demographics of the um complainants and and the alleged victims in those cases too because um one measure of success i would imagine would be the reduction in those complaints but um there's also been a real concern in the past about racial disparities and who is who's accused particularly of sexual assault in this district and so it would be that would be another measure of success i think would be a reduction in the racial disproportionality um just like it's sort of the flip side to the discipline numbers that we that we want to reduce the disproportionality up so yeah and we

064can provide you with that information as well okay director babbitt is that does that satisfy your questions okay um director sinai hey thank you for the update um i really appreciate it and you're clearly doing again i think another example within our unique circumstance you've still been able to get a lot of work done around this issue so i really appreciate it i have two um three questions one is is there a district-wide sexual harassment advisory committee or is it strictly a berkeley high that's one question the second question is um when you look at metrics for success uh it would be i think extremely important to do turn around time of the investigation and resolution of a complaint so not just how many complaints we get but how are how quickly how effectively are

065they resolved and closed and then my my other question is there's looks like a lot of training how much of the training for faculty and staff is voluntary versus mandatory and how how is the approach to get as many adults um on campus trained as possible and knowing that it's not a one-shot deal you know kind of what's the ongoing development so those are those are my three questions and i'm done okay so i'm going to start with your last question because that's the one that i remember the most right now a lot of the training is voluntary so when i was newly hired here because training is voluntary i made it a point to have one-to-one discussions with all the administrators k-8 and high school a lot of my discussions was around the complaint

066process and training okay and the importance of training which is why it was important for me this year to train all the administrators because that's typically where it begins first administrators have administrators that are trained seeing the value of the training and then saying okay i want you to come out to my school to conduct training so again the training is voluntary um in previous school districts that i've worked for the board and the superintendent if if they felt made the training mandatory okay so that would be that would be something that would fall into your purview if if you wanted training to be mandatory for all faculty and staff the second question you asked again i forgot the metrics around turnaround time and resolution to the commercial okay so let me uh tell you

067in my uh training that i've done as title 9 for about 11 years those are statutory guidelines when you're talking about when you receive a complaint and then the entire process of acknowledging the complaint the investigation and then when that individual receives their decision letter i have always stayed within statutory guidelines so typically a complaint is about 60 days but we can do it within 45 to 50 days to stay well within a well within uh timeline um under my direction that's never gonna be a problem to to respond to complaints in a very uh uh immediate and reasonable manner and then your other first question was i really appreciate that um and what i would ask is and i trust that your professional commitment to that but when um when we have whether it's

068quarterly reports it would be good for us to know that you're that you're able to do that because that has been as i think director babbitt said or by or president albert i'm not sure that the issue of the timeliness of the complaints in the past has been a challenge for a whole variety of reasons so if we could just you know know that it's on track you know that's something that you could just it could be a very quick everything has met the guideline of 45 to 60 days that's all it would be and then sorry just one thing i'd like to add is when i do this work i'm always aware of we can easily be audited and when i worked for the los angeles unified school district during the time that i

069was the title ix coordinator we were audited three times within a five year period so i understand the importance of sitting with auditors and having to show them all of our spreadsheets indicating when we receive complaints and when the complaint was completed and all of our complaints were always within a timeline because you would have to explain to an auditor why you why you could not complete your complaints on time so and it's really important well it's really important not to have that extra level of oversight you really want to be able to take care of business so i'm sorry your next question was just i know we have a sexual harassment advisory council or committee at the at the high school level i think we used to have a district one i'm just wondering

070if we still do we do and and i i have to say that a lot of the concerns that come from that advisory committee a lot of their concerns are primarily at the high school not so much what's happening at the middle school or at the elementary schools so that has been our primary focus with that advisory committee so maybe as you guys are developing your plan for next year dr stevens i i think it's important for us to have some discussion about um if there's a work plan for training and we're not getting the uptick on a voluntary basis that we that we need or we go you know we have a goal for that would be another goal that we would want to set that again following director babbitt's idea of like what

071are the metrics for how much training is happening based on a voluntary and whether or not it needs to transition to a mandatory because we need to have people trained hopefully they do it voluntarily but if not then we need to have some broad discussion about whether or not we need to mandate it thank you thank you vice president brown and then director of osterdev thank you my question is pretty similar to uh the one that director sinai brought up um but not necessarily in terms of process um for those who alleged victims who um who write a formal complaint my question is more so about support and how that process um i know you know you mentioned the turnaround time and the importance of getting that done quickly but i also wanted to know

072just your thoughts um in terms of supporting along the way for those alleged victims i know that oftentimes these processes uh focus on the alleged harasser ra and and disciplining um the harasser and oftentimes misses the mark on providing um social emotional support for the alleged victim and so i just wanted to know if that was on your radar and how you plan to address and respond to that so absolutely that's on our radar in terms of students who come forward to report any type of sexual harassment assault or battery part of our effort is to coordinate directly with the schools their counselors i understand that also at berkeley high school they they have an outside service provider that provides counseling support for students and it's on campus so it would definitely be coordinating our

073efforts to ensure that our students who are targets of any type of sexual harassment or misconduct are supported fully through counseling support or any other types of supports that we can provide for them i can tell you that in my experience that even that exp that's type of support even extends to uh security and administrators to make sure that they are monitoring and supervising students on campus who have been targets of sexual harassment to make sure that they're able to navigate their way through the school safely so that they are not let's say retargeted or retaliated against for coming forward to file a complaint so all of those things are on our mind it's almost like having a checklist in your head of any possible negative impact that a student could have coming forward when

074they come and file a complaint but definitely the emotional support is is necessary for anyone who um who's been a target thank you thank you for that and for that for the information my next question um is something else that falls under sexual harassment um is sex-based discrimination which is oftentimes a conversation um something that is that is missed or not a part of the conversation and so i wanted to know what your thinking was around that your um how our faculty and staff will be prepared or trained to um to respond to that as well as how our students and the rest of our school communities will be prepared to prepare to prevent those types of occurrences and behaviors and attitudes from happening okay so when we talk about title ix that is really

075the cornerstone of title ix gender equity right and so that is a big piece of the training it's not just talking about students or individuals who are harassed but it's also the non-discrimination piece where you are so when we do this training we have conversations with teachers about um using gender-neutral language in the classroom and then even in the curriculum how you highlight the significance of women in history how you how you address gender in the classroom even the way students are seated in the classroom you even discuss gender equity and parity in let's say physical education and in sports you address it with counselors how counselors counsel students on higher education or um career paths so if you wherever you can see where there could be discrimination based on gender it's in every single

076facet of school from student discipline to counselors to what takes place in the classroom what takes place in a pe class and especially what takes place in sports as well and making sure that even coaches understand that all students are all students based on their gender and other protected classes are created equal all right thank you um and director ambassador you've got the last question unless director baba do you still have your hand up you do okay go ahead direct your boss today yeah i just wanted to to thank uh mr steven jimenez rob for your presentation and having worked with you um closely in our affinity group meetings with our aapi community i know that equity is very much at the center of your work sorry i just wanted to to thank you for

077your presentation tonight thank you i'm really i'm really excited to see the expansion in consent education as previously before i got on the board as a parent leader i know that that work was very near and dear to the heart of our former school board director judy appel so i'm really excited to see some of this work and some of these recommendations come to fruition that parents were discussing for the year the year before last and so that's really exciting to me one of the things that i wanted to ask you and i'm sure that you're already thinking about this but i think it's good for the public to know because we you know we've discussed these issues in our affinity group meetings but not not with the public um you know having drafted the

078resolution denouncing hate crimes against our aapi community i know we were really intentional in putting a reporting process a complaint process as part of that resolution just calling it out but the process by which we're explaining it to community and particularly in a multilingual way right like i would love to hear um just more about how you're thinking of explaining you know our complaint procedures and how we're reporting that out to our latinx community to our asian families to our arabic speaking families in a multilingual way because i think you know to the disparities raised earlier but i think was president alper like i want to make sure that you know all of our diverse families in the district know the great work that your office does particularly because of the politics of this year

079and we know that our aapi community in particular has been very much hurt by hate against our community and so i want to make sure that these complaint processes processes are rolled out in a very transparent way in the communities and particularly on the parent engagement side right that that's multilingual are there any resources dedicated to that kind of work and if not um can we prioritize that you know for the fall because i think it's so important we want to make sure that everybody can can access the resources of your office right to keep their children safe absolutely and so what you're dr you're what you're basically addressing is the fact that you know we live in a pluralistic society where we have parents and families who come to our schools who are multilingual

080i know that coming from los angeles we served a very broad spectrum of ethnicities and cultures where there was about 128 languages in our own school district so i know that there's a lot of language languages in in berkeley as well so part of that is for parents to to see themselves represented in the work that we do and part of that representation is having our complaint forms translated into spanish and other various languages having information on my website where there is information in in those various primary languages as well and then when we conduct student trainings i'm sorry parent trainings and and trainings for members of the community which i intend to do for this coming school year um that there is an individual who can also address uh or provide training and information

081to those parents also in their primary languages as well so we're that's something that we are thinking about and we know that i know that dr stevens has addressed it before with me that we're looking at other types of resources where we can uh utilize in this effort all right we have a great and then i just had a quick follow-up question in addition to your office though when those materials are developed will you also work with our office of family engagement to make sure that you know our of specialists have have those resources too because oftentimes they're the first line of communication with our multilingual families and so i want to make sure that they know their resources and when you do have those trainings i would love to just kind of be a

082part of it because i do want to celebrate your work and i know that you've been very intentional about meeting with our affinity group so thank you absolutely and just to let you know since the beginning when i when i first arrived i've already been uh having various meetings with um um and marie caligari about these very things about how we can support our families so that's good so very much our our work is in alignment with each other as well as student services all right director babbitt i'm giving you the last word we do have three more items to get to tonight we're trying to end not too late so okay great um so thank you so much um for all of your responses and uh for for this detailed update i have a

083um final comment that i am pressed to make which is a little uncomfortable for me um because i've had children from elementary middle through high school in bosd schools and i think one of the things that we don't really look at or name when it comes to sexual harassment is the impact of early exposure to pornography um and the access that's so available to our students even at third fourth fifth grade levels and how that all of those negative impacts kind of gets played out by the time late middle school and high school starts and so i really was just pressed to just name that that that really needs to be an intentional way that we are we include those impacts to parents uh to our technology departments to make sure that you know that

084access is really cut off and so that our students make the right choices early on and understand the long-term developmental impacts of of what they may think is funny or cute or you know however some people assess it early on which turns into more behaviors that we have to address later in life so that was my last comment and i just wanted to make it publicly and hopefully other parents out there will hear that and also do the research on that and really take it serious thank you so much thank you for that yeah thank you dr babbitt all right thank you mr jimenez rob that was a really rich discussion and presentation so thank you and thanks director babbitt for um requesting that we put this on the agenda um for tonight so um

085great um have a good night mr jimenez rob and thanks for being with us tonight um i mean you're welcome to stay i'm gonna go play with my dogs that sounds fun um all right next we have um a few action items so we're going to start with the approval of our local control and accountability plan i don't think for this or the budget there's the actual presentation but dr stevens has a few introductory comments and then we do need to take action on both of these items so we'll start with the lcap thank you very much president alper um you're correct we did not prepare a presentation this evening mainly because we've had a number of rich discussions in the meetings prior about both the lcap and the various budgets that we've been looking

086at this year including the general fund the supplemental budget and our covet resources what i thought i'd do prior to recommending for approval our current 21 through 24 lcap is just offer to the community a few of the highlights included in this help this local control accountability plan this is a three-year plan uh it's describing work that we hope to accomplish over the coming three-year period of time this plan is not written in stone uh we're both required in california to annually update this plan and we have the option to go back in and look at it at any point that we feel like it's appropriate um so do you want to call out for the community that this is a starting point for three years of work but doesn't represent the sum of our

087aspirations necessarily and then it's also important to keep in mind that in the lcap not all of our action items are represented although there's dozens of action items here uh the district has many other lines of work for example our sustainability plan which is not represented in the el capita that is the nevertheless important so among the highlights that i'd love to call out prior to making this recommendation is that this lcap continues to sustain a number of our very important programs those include programs like avid bridge our cta cte pathways leap classes those are intervention classes at our high school restorative justice counselors we heard from one of them earlier today our eld and our ti supported schools as well as wilson and slingerland training for reading intervention teachers it's also important to note

088about this particular season that we have had to cut about a million dollars from our supplemental grant program also known as our lcap budget that million dollars is due to generally a reduction in the number of unduplicated students here in the district and this particular lcap along with our budget actually includes no cuts to supplemental grant programming through a variety of conversations we've been able to move to different revenue sources the full set of supplemental grant programming and that is itself an accomplishment in these times this particular lcap separates out core instruction from intervention i think will allow us over time to get more clear about the programs that are designed to improve core classroom instruction for all of our students at this point this lcap includes action items like the early literacy assessment plan

089the literacy action plan the adoption of dibbles as a new early literacy screener in grades k through 2 a review of our math programming to take place in the 21 22 school year training for teachers on a practice called integrated eld as well as additional resources for cultural competence training this lcap also calls out and the budget includes resources to support a thoughtful and inclusive revision of the el master plan long an inspiration of this community to go back into that 2014 plan and update it in keeping both with new guidelines and standards from the state but also to reflect best practices we are as adding significantly to a number of intervention and support programs the lcap also calls out a rich array of new identity-based programs to begin taking place in this coming school

090year uh includes the june 2021 latinx resolution passed by the board as well as a year ago the june 2020 black lives matter resolution included in the lcap as well as resources related to the draft african american success framework and also called out is the board's allocation of six hundred thousand dollars in the coming school year towards the implementation of that draft framework the lcap also includes the coordination of early intervention plan or csace which was actually the result of a rich set of community engagement efforts that took place during the pandemic and that included dozens of community members commenting on the ways in which we can prevent a disproportionate referral to special education services for african-american students specifically included in the cell cam elcap plan is a commitment to begin the development of a

091puente program expand our emojia offerings as well as begin for the first time k-12 approach to ethnic studies this lcap maintains and increases resources related to the recruitment and retention of teachers staff and leaders of color including a new bara funded staff position specifically for the purpose of recruitment and retention of staff of color as well as ongoing partnership with the principal's leadership institute to partner with the teachers of color network financial support for the existing certificated leaders of color network and plans next year to build a brand new classified leaders of color network again in collaboration with pli this lcap calls out the board's commitment to our office of family engagement and equity which this year will include an additional 5.5 ftes and that is added to the 1.5 ftes that was increased for

092ofi in the 2021 school year as well this lcap points the way to increase data collection and reporting well it's not fully specified exactly what that will look like in the lcap it does make a firm commitment to begin to introduce to the district the principles of improvement science as well as program evaluation both in a formal sense and then support from our expanded brea office to our program managers to understand the principles of program evaluation and then finally i would call out that many of the dozens of action items inside of the lcap are themselves plans i've mentioned several of them but they include a full seas plan that coordination of early intervention services the black lives matter resolution the african-american success framework and the literacy action plan while each of those is only

093an individual item in the lcap they are themselves plans that have multiple action steps associated with them this was not by any means a perfect planning process we were all under a great deal of strain as we had tried to open our schools continue to deal with covet health crises along the way contending with ongoing quarantines and i know from pac comments that certainly our parent advisory committee members felt the strain that we were as well nevertheless we were able to come together i think call out a number of important expansions of our equity work and that's both reflected in our lcap and in the next presentation reflected in our budget so with that president alper having sort of called out many of the highlights i'm going to turn it back over to the board

094and recommend the approval of the 21 through 24 local control accountability plan thank you very much thank you dr steven thanks for that um summary of of um of the plan and um i'll open it up for board and for all the work that went into it um and i'll open up for comments and questions director babbitt yes thank you dr stevens for all of that hard work thank you even in your absence michelle sinclair and to our consultant who did so much it really is amazing to have even what we have considering all of the the priorities that we had to balance this year so it is appreciated my question is around the updates what is the plan so that we can um not just measure success but really put in the implementation and

095the accountability piece that we've talked about um and how do you how do you see that work rolling out so that as we make improvements that's the area we can focus on or one of the major areas yeah i really appreciate this question it's something that i've been giving some thought to the the first part of it i imagine with respect to the board is sitting down in the very early part of the coming school year to work with board leadership to develop essentially a syllabus of board presentations over the course of the year so that staff sort of have a predictable way that they know they'll be presenting updates to the board and that way the board also understands the cadence of our work before you um to present our progress um so that

096i think will sort of lend a predictable nature it also lets us collaborate together on that sort of sequence of board presentations that's not the only thing i imagine happening though i'd also like to see that early in the year program managers through support with dom with the bray office are articulating a refined set of program measurements so that include could include there were great examples that came up in the earlier discussion about sexual harassment prevention number of teachers participating in training surveys student surveys focus groups and then ultimately what we want to work towards as a district is being able to connect student outcomes with our actions uh and and i think we're going to get there i don't think it'll be right out of the gate but that's exactly where we're going so

097it's some form of predictable reports to the board plus a regular set of reports that i'd like to see made public coming from a variety of our program managers that i think represents a good solid first step towards this vision of improvement science in the district thanks um director vasudev um yes uh thanks dr stevens for for this summary and i also want to echo the appreciation shared by my colleague director babbitt for you and the staff pulling this off in this unprecedented year so i'm going to say that um really quickly you know you mentioned that this is a three year roadmap right and it's a roadmap and it's a framework and as we think of you know looking at the lcap and i know we just passed the latinx resolution but i also

098know that latino advocates have been coming to many board meetings to say we'd like something like a framework we'd like something like target and you know we want to see more targeted interventions and i think the resolution spells out the growth areas for our a lot of next learners right both on for english language learners and non-english language learners but particularly you know in in math intervention the need for math intervention the need for college and career readiness i mean it's spelled out pretty detailed in the resolution and so i feel like that you know now it's the proof is in the pudding how do we fund targeted interventions to really help our more our most vulnerable students and so i would love to see an update of you know of the lcap you know

099after the staff has a has a chance to to think about some of the things that you mentioned more thoughtfully in the fall but particularly what are the targeted interventions that we're going to implement as part of this roadmap for our latinx learners and how we will fund them think you know a framework and a resolution is great as a black and white document that lives on paper but if we don't bring it to life then we're not succeeding as a district and so i really want us to be thoughtful and you know to come back with some ideas for targeted programming for a lot of next learners thank you yeah i really i really do hear um in board comments both this week and in previous weeks the desire to sort of see regular

100updates from us um and to know that the sort of words we've committed to paper are coming true uh and so just last week we were proposing for example that we would come back to the board after this brief six-week hiatus once we're back on august 11th and report on staff's work towards identifying the partners not only in terms of the african-american success framework but also in terms of the latinx resolution as well and we staff see that these efforts are complementary and parallel to one another and so what we learn in one area we apply to the next um and and so on and so forth it really needs to be um sort of a hand-in-glove approach so and we work together right like we work smarter so we have programming that serves both

101our you know our vulnerable student populations and so i think that that's the beauty of it right and i'm so it was great to work with vice president brown on that resolution it's the the beauty of coalition building and the beauty of addressing our needs together thank you thank you director senate thank you dr stevens for all the work and i echo the appreciation and absence of michelle sinclair and all the work that she did um and particularly want to also applaud the dlac and the pack for their persistence their hours their time um that's they're supposed to be with their families you know writing their documents and getting information to us so that we can make really informed decisions um i want to echo a little bit about what paz melendez canales said and

102what director vasudev was saying is around the idea of a latinx framework um similar to the work that we did on the african-american success framework and you know if there are ways that we can um you know i i still um i think the fact that we got the lcap done and we were responsive to a number of the issues that came out from the the committees and the uh input in public comment and the like is it it still has um kind of a laundry list approach to it where there's a lot of different things that we don't know exactly what's going to attribute to what outcomes um and that our most prioritized students we need to see movement and we know the movement doesn't happen tomorrow but we you know we can't we

103can't wait we keep we can't keep waiting and when um i listen to presentations that feel like they were the same presentations we made 12 years ago um with the 2020 vision we have to see that we're doing something different and the current lcap does a little bit of stuff different but we really and i really want to applaud the staff for trying to align and doing the work to align the metrics with outcomes and strategies i don't really want just a lot more interventions i want a comprehensive approach that's going to directly impact the outcomes and so um i'm hoping that with the mentality that this is a three-year roadmap that starting next year in preparation in the fall so that it's not just the l the pac and the dlac addressing budgetary proposals

104for supplemental dollars that are reducing but it's really informing the roadmap informing the interventions and not just intervention the acceleration the cohesion of a curriculum and an instructional practice that is going to have the impact on the prioritized students that we need to have our white students are doing well we want them to continue to do well but we have to tailor our programs to make sure that our prioritized students are elevated um more than 50 of you know meeting the guidelines so i really do appreciate all the work that's been done um i feel like there's a lot more work we need to do and we can't be complacent we kind of have to hit the ground running when the school year starts about what we need to continue to do and i really

105appreciate the um the approach that um that dr reinhardt has around the metrics and looking at measurements um and having data that will help inform the decisions that we need to make and i hope that we build the capacity at the school sites to use that data and to inform their practice and that we you know in our new um miguel no sorry ruben ruben i forget his last name aurelio aurelio you know can hold our educators you know kind of collectively accountable to having the data-driven approach to inform our practice so i think we have a lot of work to do and i look forward to it thank you director senate um would anybody like to make a motion to approve the local control accountability plan thank you direct i mean uh vice president

106brown um second second by director sinai miss chairs yes vice president brown yes and president yes all right thank you um and congratulations on passing that dr stevens next we have the adoption of the 2021-2022 budget um thank you very much i i may do something very similar um and i will try really hard not to sort of repeat myself the the budget and the lcap of course are are nearly one in the same um the budget that we're passing tonight is the the larger general fund budget it's approximately 100 million dollars and from this budget comes our core staffing all of our operational costs and there are elements of this budget being passed tonight that directly contribute to the goals and action items that are listed in the lcap so in addition to passing

107tonight's budget i'd like just to sort of provide a recap for all of us but for members of the community particularly not only for the decision to be made this evening but for decisions made by the board of education over the last two months we knew when we began this budget building process that we would be making a series of decisions across multiple board meetings and that set that sort of accumulated set of decisions has resulted in some very positive things coming to berkeley for the 21-22 school year so i won't repeat what i listed for the elk cap but would like to call out a couple of these sort of unique budget decisions that have been made for this year and that i think will contribute to positive growth in the coming year so

108it does this year's budget season includes among its most dramatic staff expansions the addition of nine new special education positions for 2122. we haven't spent a lot of time talking about this particular addition to the special education department and we've been going about our hirings during the season with the support of the department and human resources but having these additional case manager positions speech and language pathologist positions occupational therapists will provide a higher level of service and in many cases a lower case load for special education students in berkeley i mentioned before the dramatic increase in funding for the office of family engagement and equity but we'll call out that this particular budget creates a new director level position for the ofi office which is intended to respond to the community's desire for greater reporting

109for district-based family empowerment work including multilingual work in support of spanish-speaking families specifically increased metrics and increased capacity to sustain partnerships in support of our families the total contribution to ofi over the course of the last two years is over six hundred thousand dollars of new resources infused into this program over the course of a several bud board meetings we've also um excuse me reinforced and expanded the bridge program at berkeley high school a program with a very strong track record of college matriculation uh in this coming year the 21 22 school year funding for that program will go grow by two hundred and twenty thousand dollars this budget also restores funding for the berkeley research evaluation and assessment or brea department uh including reestablishing a director level position as its leader uh and returning

110brea staffing to pre-2018 levels this particular budget also provides or rather these series of budget decisions has provided for a two-year pilot seven period day at longfellow middle school which we're all very excited about and in the coming presentation we'll hear developing plans for 30 million dollars in modernization and improvement at longfellow as well i'd also like to call out that among our budget decisions uh was moving two million dollars towards our schools in the form of restorative restart funding uh which is given anywhere between eighty thousand and six hundred and fifty thousand dollars to our schools uh and this was an equity-based allocation where we allocated 150 dollars per student and an additional 150 dollars per unduplicated student we are expanding support to our black studies department and for the first time in that

111department will have department co-chairs who have release time just like their colleagues that we hope is among many actions that will lead to increased leadership of the black studies department and increase cohorting opportunities as well through our expanded learning opportunities grant we've set aside a large amount of money for expanded enrichment with organizations like young gifted and black and others and we'll add to our current set of partnerships with groups like camp edmo and stem steps i'd like to call out as well that this budget increases consent education at berkeley high school something we just discussed and that will include beginning work with a consent education specialist next year we're also adding to the high school a 504 coordinator which we're excited will support students with disabilities who are covered through section 504 of the

112ada the ethnic studies teacher on special assignment uh as well as uh bera contributions to the recruitment and retention of staff of color so all of this represents very exciting and equity oriented work again it's not perfect it's not complete we have work to do but as a set of budget decisions i think they really represent the sort of core values of this board and the staff team uh driving towards equity and putting our dollars where our values most lie so i'll turn it back over to the board for and recommend that the board approve the 2122 budget thank you dr stevens and again thank you for all that work and assistant superintendent follensbee for putting the budget together and um and guiding us through this process um we should i should i was remiss

113i should actually call out not only assistant superintendent pauline fallinsby but her whole team um it's a little known fact that they're often having lunch together on saturdays just to be able to close books and write the budget for the next year so please know that we see that there's just been a lot of extra effort going on in the in the business services office to prepare all of this work and it was a monumental amount of work to this year with not only the pandemic but just all of the complicated budget changes and allocations and threatened reductions um that we dealt with over the course of the year so um assistant superintendent phones may help you thank your team on behalf of all of us um director babbitt and then director sinai yes i

114definitely wanted to echo my appreciation to assistant superintendent pauline follinsby and her team and i really enjoy my time with the audit committee learning so much and the thoughtful questions and discussions that we get to have in that meeting and so again thank you for all that work and then you know how you continue to remind us that we have to control our spending right um and so to that end i just wanted to really say to my board colleagues as well as to the superintendent how we can begin thinking about our guiding questions and guiding principles and some cost-benefit analysis and really making sure that as we build up the data department that we do it with the lens of evaluating the effectiveness of our programs and program supports so that when we have

115to make tough decisions we can do that based on data and when we know that there are tough decisions that have to be made which may have a political political value to people but may not have very much um actual impact for students right now in 2021 2022 right how are we going to start um preparing for those conversations and really getting up-to-date information from the community as to is this still an important value that we need to invest in so that's kind of my my thinking around um really preparing for the cliff that um hate that word cliff but preparing for that uh end of the road in some of our funding that we really need to start addressing now so that it's not a dramatic uh impact like where can we start with

116our organizational planning now to to fill some of these needs that we're currently spending so much money to fill if that makes sense to anyone so that's just my comment and um what i've been really enjoying the discussions with our audit committee so thanks again yeah i really appreciate those comments dr babbitt um and think it's important that we we all keep them in mind um director um vasudev's internet um wait she's not here is she i think her internet went out so i'm sure she'll be trying to get back in in the meantime um director sena right i don't know if she can listen but maybe if her internet's out she could call in yeah i'll try to get in touch with her okay go ahead i have a a couple of quick questions

117um and i probably should ask this a few weeks ago but um the plans that the schools are submitting for the recover recovery dollars i can't remember what they're called the restorative restart good name um will we get a copy or a summary of the plans i'd like to know what the schools are doing with the funds i'd be happy to share them we have them all and i can include them that'd be great maybe in friday notes we could get that so we could see what people are doing with them um and then um the i also just want to confirm and maybe for the the growing public that are watching our board meetings over the course of these weeks i appreciate that you just gave us a summary and just to remind the

118folks who are listening in um we have been seeing the budget week after week for like the last i don't know how many weeks and now we're just kind of doing and last week was the first reading where we got a lot of input and final recommendations to go into the budget which you reported went in so if people are wondering why there's not a full-blown presentation i think it's because there's been a lot of them and i believe that the documents are all also on the website um so thank you for doing a summary um i guess i want to confirm because i don't think i heard you say but there is still approximately 1.1 million dollars in covid ester dollars that are unallocated um that are to be used between now and 2023

119for issues related to like learning loss or family student strife you know challenges that we are facing not solely due to covet but have been exacerbated potentially by covid um that that's accurate right yes that's accurate okay um so i just as we again kind of going back to the lcap conversation that we were just having we've got some time you know heading into the fall to continue to look at how we might want to use those dollars either in uh developing a framework for the latinx resolution or developing more comprehensive programming that we didn't get to yet or that we need to have some of that money go into 22-23 so i just want to remind folks that we we still have that to plan out um and it's in the budget it's just

120not in the budget on any particular program area right now yeah all of all of that is correct yeah and i and i um in in addition to those elements that you just described um it's still the case that we're expecting revised guidance from the cdc and cdph about the conditions for reopening schools it may be the case though we don't know that there could be additional funding items associated with that revised guidance so we're wise i think just to sort of keep an eye open over the course of the summer understanding that we have this critical reserve available to us in case we need it right and we also don't know what the state budget is going to land on so there's a number of unknowns within that that we won't know until probably

121the end of august that's also true um i also just want to echo my appreciation and thanks to assistant superintendent flonsby and her team um you guys rock thank you for all the work that you do we really appreciate you thank you um all right um we still have one more reasonably big presentation to go um so director vasudev thank you and uh thank you everyone for who saw me leave for a second my internet went out but i'm back um yeah i just wanted to echo some of the comments that uh i just cut the tail end of director sinai's comments but to think about you know additional target interventions for our vulnerable student populations again um you know budgets tell stories right and so we want to make sure that if when when

122we come back we have this unallocated million dollars right in covid reserve that we think about how we are going to have targeted interventions for our latinx students as part of the resolution but also more importantly because we know that the latinx community has been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic and also for our students with disabilities i'm very excited by the additional staffing that we have in for special education and it's so important and it's so critical and they're providing direct services to our students but i think you know our students with disabilities have also been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic right like they had to learn in a whole new way that's not the way that it's very hard for many reasons right and so i think taking the summer to be thoughtful and

123i'm not proposing any numbers dr stevens i i hear you loud and clear um but i think you know taking the summer to think about our most vulnerable students and how we're helping them recover and i think um you know that that's really important and in the fall i would love to see an update on the latinx resolution and also targeted interventions for for our children um with special education needs thank you um all right um do i have a motion improve the budget i'll motion to approve okay director if i said moves to approve i thank you second by director babbitt thank you both um ms chaires director message yes director babbitt yes director cyanide yes vice president brown yes president yes all right that was easy dr stevens um i never doubted yeah

124um all right congratulations to us all for adopting the budget for next year um and now um we have a presentation that i'm very excited about director sinai and i as members of the facilities subcommittee have have seen a preview of this and and and voted to send it on to the to the full board for consideration and we're excited to have executive director of facilities john kalise with us um dr stevens i don't know if you have anything to say or should we just turn it over to mr khalis director khalees that's actually executive director of facilities and student testing i just want to you know make that clear yes i'm happy to turn it over to john cleese and welcome and thanks for all the work that you're about to present great thank

125you um thanks everyone so i'm going to go ahead and share my screen uh actually liz if i could ask for permission there to share my screen not yet um dr stevens are you able to you sorry about that oh no problem all right thank you so yeah we're here tonight to talk about longfellow um so longfellow was uh excuse me one second let me advance the slides here i lost my slide control there it is so longfellow middle school sits on roughly about 1.6 acres it's a really small campus but it does serve a large number of students the need for a upgrade of long fellow and a modernization has been known and a parent group advocated to the board in july of last year for some additional funding and that was discussed and

126we looked at some projects and we brought some short-term projects to the board and what was really identified uh within those short-term projects but then also with the school's new leadership with principal furlon was that those projects didn't necessarily represent what was best for the school they were the short term they were the quick thinking um so we what we had done we worked with the board and the subcommittee a while back and we brought on gould evans uh our our design partner for this particular project to really engage in a very rich and meaningful uh engagement process with all of the long fellow communities from the students to the parents the staff former families future families and the outlying or the surrounding community as well so there were several budgets that were considered when

127measure g was put together for up for all of our projects but at longfellow in particular there was an infrastructure budget which dealt with all of our systems as well as the building envelope there was a cte budget which really would allow us to expand career technical education at the middle school and then additionally there was a solar and infrastructure excuse me solar and sustainability budget that was allotted for each of our campus those budgets combined with uh the ad project the modernization that the board had considered in july of last year came out to a total of 22.6 million dollars when we costed it out and this was really the infrastructure is what we absolutely have to do and when we costed that out with what the cte the solar and then the board

128approved project would be we came in just underneath or just slightly below that budget what we had heard though through the engagement process and this here is gives you a sample of what the engagement schedule looked like over several months was that there was a lot more work to do beyond doing what we just had to do mr lachuga mentioned you know that was a really rich engagement process where the community was heard um and he also talked about the fact that and i'll quote him as longfellow as a gem he's absolutely accurate i'll uh i'll paraphrase paz where what she what she what i had heard her talk about was really that the design team the facilities team everyone who participated really made sure to listen and fully understand what the communities were asking

129for and with that um there were other projects that that really are other pieces to the project that really came up and sort of floated to the top so to give you an idea of the engagement process it was done virtually but it was community meetings there were a lot of different surveys that went out and they were very well participated on by both families staff as well as students we talked about student visions we use digital whiteboards to really capture what folks were looking for and then bring it back and integrate it to what was reasonable and what we could actually do at that campus i'm not going to take you through each one of the photos you guys have had the opportunity to look at this but it was really creating a heart

130for a long fellow it was creating a school with clear programming goals and then the facilities to support them it was about a welcoming and aesthetically pleasing campus right now that the aesthetically pleasing unfortunately is lacking at that campus due to the age of it and then really just trying to capture and represent the community that that campus serves um different responses also included healthy and sustainable living uh outdoor athletic and physical education spaces multi-use athletic fields as well as modernization of existing buildings and really touching all the classrooms that are within those buildings so what the design team had come up with was really just and we would refer to this as a bubble diagram was really a representation of what this campus could look like and how we can set it aside where

131we how we can set aside different areas of the campus rather excuse me to represent the sixth grade the twi program the garden which that school absolutely loves a new play yard stem and student hubs as well as areas for students to come together and collaborate and work as well as staff what we also captured was the need to to create an area as like a family resource center something that we've been able to do over at rosa parks and what we want to do over at longfellow as well so with that one of the one of the items that was identified was just the entry to the campus it's very small it's very much a bottleneck it's not necessarily aesthetically pleasing but it's also a little bit of a safety a safety problem in

132the sense of that the the main office is really set aside from it and access to that campus is quite open without any type of access control a breezeway was identified as a desire once you enter the campus so you're not directly exposed to the elements refreshing the administration spaces to go along with that bike parking was a big thing um number four was really just about an area for students staff and families to congregate outside of the school and then number five was just about the sustainability and the healthy living um family resource center was a large piece that was talked about as a way to not only serve our students but also to serve the community and the families and we were able to identify some space that could be turned into that

133student hub and common areas longfellow does not have lockers they don't necessarily have common areas for students to come together or even small group instruction to happen so we were able to identify space for that and then the site improvements we've all seen the site currently the students uh run around the block during pe there is a need for a new field we have a lot of drainage problems with the existing field that's there athletic courts and there was also a real desire to see a climbing wall out there for students so when we looked at these additional asks and these are the the projects that really turn this modernization into what we absolutely have to do to pushing it to what we should do as well um the delta came out to be about

134seven and a half to seven point eight million dollars so we went back and we looked at the measure g budget sheet that we have and the projects that we have and the plan for funding and and we did identify that we can actually fully fund this project with the approval of the board and what that would do is that would transform this from a 22 million dollar project over four separate budgets uh to actually adding that additional 7.5 million which would turn it into a 30.2 million dollar project that's total project cost which doesn't cost it does include all of our construction hard costs as we refer to them as well as the soft costs that go along with that there was also a lot of discussion during the engagement process but also with

135the board about short-term projects and what we could do there were two that were identified the first of which was exterior painting of the campus and the second project was really dealing with landscaping drought-tolerant plants and irrigation and just beautifying the campus while these are short-term projects that we can do as the facilities director i would actually advise against doing these at this time the reality is is that the the buildings have been painted recently some of them in the last several years and part of the modernization project on the infrastructure side would include building envelope as new as new windows and what that means is that the paint that we would be putting on we would then be disturbing and trying to color match later similarly with the planting and the irrigation and the

136landscaping that would take place while the architect has been able to identify certain areas that won't necessarily be interfered during construction the reality is is during construction more often than not things do have to get excavated that aren't necessarily in the original plans i include this as part of the presentation so the community understands that we did hear them and we really understand the desire to do these short-term projects but i would be remiss if i honestly said that i i think we should i think we should do it as a complete modernization but we should be smart about how we spend the money and i don't want to see us spend the money twice the last slide here just takes us through a potential schedule for that so this would be a long-term project

137meaning from the time of board approval which will hopefully be tonight to the closeout would be approximately 45 months the construction would take place from the summer of 2023 to the beginning of 2025. we've spoken with principal furlong about this and principal furlon is very confident that he can work through the construction with the existing space that he has at the campus and that it would be worth it uh to do that so with that i will stop sharing um i will open it up for any questions and what i'd also like to say is that uh the principal from gould evans the architect who drove this is in the audience if you have any questions for her she we can definitely promote her to panelist and i know paz was very very much involved

138during all of the community engagement so if there's questions direct directly about the community engagement that i can't answer we can uh bring her up as well thank you um director kalisa really appreciate it and i just want to frame this the conversation or our uh and then i guess the this is an action item actually um um briefly um and i guess so i just want to well one i want to appreciate this work and and and express my support for it um as um to me this is this is a an example of sort of equity in practice we have a school that has the disproportionate number of our prioritized students and it had it has for years and were were being asked to approve an increased allocation to ensure that the school

139grounds are safe modern attractive um facilitative of the educational program that we want at that school and to me it seems like a perfect and appropriate use of the additional funds that were that you were able to find in the in the measure g budget and so um i really appreciate the the um the um the work that it took to figure out a way to make what really needs to happen you said what what should happen you know really what should and needs to happen at longfelt to make that school facility what we want it to be um what and so just to be clear that what you're asking us for is the approval of the of the additional funds um that will then give you the the sort of um overall budget that

140you've reflected in the presentation but we're still at the and even though there's a lot of community work that's gone into it um we're not approving the specific things that you outlined in the presentation we're not approving lockers necessarily we're not approving you know where the garden is going to be or any of that um i mean are those two things right that what you're asking for is to prove the budget and that um and that the design process will go through continued community process over the course of the next months that is correct yeah with the approval of the budget we will actually go to contract to begin design and a good piece of that design work includes more community engagement and listening and it's also answering questions that we discussed at the facilities

141subcommittee for example the lockers which we've already looked into um so yeah with the approval of the budget we would move to a contract with gould evans to design this school that would include further community engagement we would have discussions with subcommittee throughout the design process the schematic design process which is really the first step and then with all of our projects we bring the schematic design to board for approval with an updated budget at that time which typically does reflect the early budget which we're showing to you now um and then we would move further through our design development and our construction documents okay thanks so as i turn it to my colleagues for comments and questions like i'm going to encourage you all to resist the urge to get into the weeds of

142of proposals for specific things on the site because that will and and i think should come through the community process that director khalis just mentioned it doesn't mean you can't mention a thought or question that you have but um if we i i would encourage us to avoid avoid that and let it let that go through the process um part of the interest of time tonight and partly to respect that community process um okay uh director babbitt sinai thank you so much and thank you for um for this work i think one of the first meetings i ever sat in with you john kalis was during a long fellow community engagement process many years ago so it's very nice to see this come before the board in such a dynamic way my question is around

143if the timeline so if you're in sixth grade now what can you expect by the time you're in eighth grade to to be able to enjoy at longfellow and i think this is also important to our middle school assignment process because we know that some people don't choose to go to longfellow middle school because they choose the facilities at other middle schools and so i really just couldn't tell from the presentation like what benchmarks are can can we expect to be hit in the next even over this summer to the next year and the next year no it's a great question it's a thoughtful one and i appreciate it um if you're in the sixth grade you will be involved with the the engagement process that will happen which will include students i've spoken with

144our design team as well as with principal furlon about throughout different iterations of design about doing some renderings you know having things like that up in the school unfortunately you will not see the construction uh if you're in the sixth grade you won't see the construction prior to your completion there um i'll go back to put that schedule up for one moment but the the design process as it is with the division of state architect so the design criteria that we're held to is much more stringent and there is a process for that and then there's also a fairly long approval time um so what that means is by approving now essentially july of 2021 with schematic design which includes all of the community engagement as well as design development we're looking at really probably

145february of 2022 prior to that being completed construction documents which is then taking all of those early thoughts all those early pieces of design and refining them into a perfect set of documents to go to the state architect for approval we anticipate submitting to dsa in approximately one year from now which would be july of 2022. dsa on a project this size we can anticipate six to seven months of a turnaround process for approval and then from there it's typically about a three to four month process for the entire bid to go through from putting together all the specifications packaging it as a big document advertising the bid as we're required to do through law soliciting bids and then choosing them so what that means is unfortunately if you're in the sixth grade now construction

146isn't going to begin until july of 2023 tentatively so you'll be able to sort of see the coming soon but you won't see the the the fruit of that work really until its completion or throughout the work and the completion would be scheduled for early 2025. so my concern is the low-hanging fruit right like the playground right like we've had kids running around the block for years are you telling me that's a 2023-2024 gold like that can't be done over the summer sooner so when it so it can't be done over the summer just because it would doing that work requires approval from the state architect as well they have to look at it from an accessibility standpoint and that's the first thing that they're going to look at it so it does require architectural

147drawings to be go through the three iterations of design to go to the state for approval and then to be bid and to be done the earliest that could be dumber could be done would actually be next summer that being said when you consider the other work that has to be done on campus and the interruption to the campus physically right to the the interruption to the physical property of the campus to do that work to do that ahead in advance of the other construction wouldn't be fiscally responsible in the sense of that much of the work that we would be doing we may be damaging during other parts of the construction [Music] okay thank you very much um and my last comment is i wouldn't want extensive community engagement only because i've been a

148part of extensive communication community engagement around long fellow facilities for at least five years to continue to delay this project so i don't know at the risk of hearing more people ask for the same things no i i understand we're not meeting kids needs sooner yeah and when we talked about that to principal furlon you know his feeling was even that the community had been engaged and they felt that they had been heard and it was it was time to move this on and we all agreed on that the community engagement that's set to come is really just to share with the community what we're what we've captured through their asks right and to make sure that we've captured that in design in the beginning set of schematic design to make sure that it is

149captured to make sure we didn't miss anything and it's really to make sure that they understand where we are also facilities work takes a long time in planning and from from you know the community standpoint without that engagement that can be frustrating and we recognize that so part of the community engagement yes it's to make sure to listen and really make sure that we've captured everything but it's also to update them so we want them to know where we are with the work and what the projects are that are forthcoming i mean what i hear director rabbit also saying sort of if there's anywhere in that timeline that can be shaved down yeah the community would probably appreciate faster timeline and less presentations as long as as long as i kept in the loop um

150because we did i mean i think we should we should own the fact that we did um uh i don't know if promise is the word but we did we did um convey to the community that that there would be lower hanging fruit faster short-term projects that would be done this is a much more sooner than now or by now this is a much more exciting comprehensive vision for the school but um the current sixth graders i mean i guess if they like watching construction they'll get to see that but they're not going to get to the benefit of um the seeing is completed for a couple while they're in the school and um that's something that we should just be transparent with the community about completely understandable and yeah we did talk about that

151lower that lower hanging fruit and trying to tackle that but what was clear through the assessment that was done and through engaging the community was that a lot more was needed and that's where this project grew as we discussed in the subcommittee yeah yeah no i i appreciate that um director sinai then director vasudev and then we'll give vice president brown who graduated from longfellow right the last word go ahead represent um thank you executive director police for all the work and the work that the consultants have done on this um i think you've uh you've really listened to what the community has been asking for i think one of the challenges with middle school is a three-year time frame students are in and out um so when you go and look at a construction

152project there's almost no way you can start a construction i mean just think about when we did the cafeteria in the kitchen you know it's like students who started there didn't necessarily get to see the fruition of it um construction especially in schools just takes so darn long what i really like about this approach is that um it completely fits with our long-term vision of equity among our middle schools and patchwork as much as it helps in the short term we know it doesn't it doesn't help in the long term so i really support the extra allocation of dollars to do this right and to do this with a long-term vision um i would love i'm i'm not interested i mean i'm not not interested i'm i'm hesitant i hear your concern about doing some

153beautification now i'm i'm not ready to completely give that up um especially if there are ways that we can make it more inviting that isn't super expensive and if it gets trashed due to staging you know in three years it's three years where the students who are there get to feel a little bit more respected because we know facilities has a dramatic impact on how people feel respected within the school system so but i'm very supportive of the the additional dollars and i think the design is developing into a really exciting middle school and is a very small footprint and so there's not a whole i mean there's no way we can compare it to king or willard it just doesn't have the footprint but what the what the consultants did with the footprint that

154it does have is pretty exciting so um anything we can do in between i agree with director babbitt would be great as long as it's not you know breaking the bank but i think having the long the long the long-haul picture is what we really need to do to make it right for our kids in the district over you know over over the long term and i think one of the things we really need to do is shop the the schematics to our third graders to our fourth graders and the ones who are going to be coming in you know in the assign in the in the revised whatever student assignment in the coming time in the coming time so thank you for all your work on that thank you and i'd be happy to

155move it when we get there okay well i'm hoping that we'll get there pretty soon um director vasadev and then uh i'll speak really fast president alfred together you know thank you take your time um director kalis thank you so much for your great work and i also just want to echo like i i was impressed with the community engagement that took place right now to the existing community right like i got to see some of it unfold at the club de padres meeting it was really exciting um obviously hearing ms millen this canal is his comments i can tell you that it was it was um diverse that it was multilingual and i think there was a lot of great things that happened with the community engagement my concern though i also want to

156echo it's really hard to follow director sinai because i feel like she says a lot of the things that i want to say but i really want to echo the importance of reaching out to the kids that will be there when the project is complete right the third the fourth the fifth graders um it seems like we didn't reach out to those student populations correct no it was primarily to the longfellow community and it was open to the community at large and i know we did see some smaller children there but it it's actually it's a it's a good point that both you and director sinai are making and it's definitely being heard so i appreciate it yeah because as part of our you know there's two things happening at the same time we're we're

157upgrading this amazing school community but we're also trying to engage the community around the middle school assignment system so i feel like it's kind of a lost opportunity that we didn't engage those younger grades and i am in favor of always whenever we can as fast as possible trading blacktop for green top and so i'm also concerned about you know i understand your concerns about you know front loading some of those um you know greening con expenses right now in in the construction project i get what you're saying and i hear what you're saying um that the order of operation is really important but i do want the students that are there to feel pride and right now politically we're in a place where students and communities are asking for more outdoor learning spaces right

158and so anything that we can do um i just want us to be creative and to really try to you know try to try to be flexible on this point anything that we can do to create an inviting you know green outdoor space for our students right now for the ones that are there so they can see some of that benefit i think will be great that that gives you a sense of pride i can go to king and see how proud they are of their green space and and i want the same for our long fellow students and so you know wherever there's flexibility in the project i would like to just push us to really um you know front load some of those expenses i know they're cosmetic for some people right and

159like that things might change during the construction process but i really want our kids to get the benefit as soon as possible but i i also want more comprehensive community engagement for the ones that are there i think there's a way that we can do both director khalifa yeah and real quickly we did talk with the des with the design team about possibly rolling this project out in increments so what that means is that working with them once we begin schematic design if we really feel that we can take care of the green space or the field for example and do that without having a detrimental effect on it or a high cost effect on it later then we can roll that as out as an increment to do it earlier i'm hesitant to commit

160to that now just because we haven't even begun to begin to work on the plans but it is conversations that we have already begun to have great thank you thank you vice president brown with our last question thank you i apologize because we are literally going to sound like broken records saying the same things or similar things but um thank you director khalis for your presentation and also for your your hard work on this um and for for making uh the priority we all know that um school facility conditions really impact um impact education equity um and so in showing that this is a priority um for our incoming students it will be incoming uh to to longfellow is great but also um i just want to echo my work colleagues that we are we're

161similarly concerned about our students now um and their experience um especially coming out of a global pandemic and so my question um was just in in response to our students returning of what more can be done currently um and also uh in this present two more things in this presentation which was really great um one thing that i didn't hear was about additional safety measures that will be taken or things that will be a part of the plan that will ensure that the school is a safer place and around the community and in addition to the modern modernization that's happening in the school um how will the modernization reflect the students who are there is it through murals is it through um additional posters um that provide you know culturally responsive um artwork what's what's

162the plan and on top of that um another question which we could address later if you if you like um is around the longevity of the new um furniture for the facilities and that's a a concern because we're spending a lot of them and i just want to make sure they will last for years and years and years to come i'm going to try to capture all those questions but if i miss any please let me know so on the safety and security one of the primary issues that has been identified there right now is the main entrance to the school how when you come in there it really doesn't take you through that the administrative office there's actually in the bubble diagrams what's indicated and what's shown there is actually a build out of

163the front space that would create an open breezeway it would actually it would actually sort of divert visitors to the campus to bring them through the main offices which would deal with safety and security additionally there's a secondary uh student at annex that's being cut through through the sixth grade annex that would create a safer pathway to the new street crossing that we've installed to bring them over to the dining commons across the street but it would also create a clear line of sight so what it does is once that street is closed and those gates are up it now brings the dining commons that cafeteria to be a part of that campus so it really all ties it all together and now you have truly controlled access so it's addressing safety from the to

164to to really represent the diversity that goes through that school that was one of the things that was shown and right now in the early stages of planning you know we recognize the importance of recognizing the cultural diversity and celebrating what we have here in berkeley so with that there is murals there's different gathering areas it's really just about the use of paint the use of murals and just engaging with our community which the design team has done to understand what it is that that everyone is looking for and what's important to them both the students the staff and the community it's creating that family resource center to have an opportunity to bring the families into the school so we're trying to do that on the longevity of the furniture all the furniture that we

165have been purchasing we have several different manufacturers that we work with but it's all specifically designed for k-12 it's unfortunately very expensive but the longevity of it is actually really good it lasts and we've had furniture in place in some places for well over 15 years that's still in relatively good shape other than perhaps cosmetic things that have been caused by students and staff and just excessive use overall it works it's it's the right products that we use did i capture all of your questions you did and the first question was more so just um in addition to what my board colleagues were saying about what can be done now so there's no need to readdress that again i just wanted to highlight it understood thank you thank you thank you so much um so

166director sana you wanted to make the motion on behalf of the facilities committee would love to make the motion to approve the um the budget for the long fellow is that the right is that what i'm saying it's the budget the budget and the overall project yes so i just did the overall project for the long fellow modernization can i second yes and not on behalf of the facilities committee but this is another board member we have the non-facilities subcommittee members at the board um second by director vasudev um ms chaires director there yes director babbitt yes director simon yes vice president brown yes president yes all right thank you thank you thank you and i would be remiss to not thank my team uh shanita stevenson our consultants ellen clements from van pelt they've

167all put a ton of work into this and i just wanted to take one more moment to thank all of them for everything that they've done yeah thank you very much thank them on behalf of us as well too please i'm director khalis um all right y'all are about to witness some very good time management here um our first public hearing i'm going to open um this is item 13.4 um public hearing for the approval of the and entering into an energy services contract with schneider electric for the berkeley high natatorium project um if anybody is here to speak on that particular issue now is the time to raise your hand i'm not surprised that nobody's raising their hand so i'm going to close the public hearing is there a motion i need to stall

168for three minutes is there a motion um to approve this um this resolution sure i'll move it okay question directory seconded it yet we can you can wait a couple minutes everyone why don't we take a minute to stretch in the audience you two can stretch all right i think i'm i think i'm ready for for a second a second okay um life isn't brown miss cherries you can slowly call the roll yes director uh bobby yes uh director sinai me think about this for a minute yes oh okay uh vice president brown yes president albert do you think about this and take your time i'm gonna see what time what is what's the official time right now 9 30. now 9 27 don't get ahead of yourself mrs you're the one who set this

169public hearing the next one at 9 30. okay i will vote yes on item 13.4 as well congratulations director kalis you've gotten your approval for the energy services contract once again it's the energy services contract with schneider electric for the berkeley high what is it again it's just for the the natatorium i'm sorry sorry president alfred it's for the natatorium the yes but to enter into enter just to make sure and i know berkeley side is here to get this down right the energy services country with schneider electric all right that brings us to 9 plus 9 30 9 28 i think i think by i have a watch that says 9 30. so i'm going to open the next public hearing item 14.1 this is a public hearing for the disclosure on bosd's reserve

170this one is not an action item right assistant superintendent following okay so we are all we're doing is opening the public opening it up for public hearing is there a public comment on the disclosure of our reserve thank you for putting this together assistant superintendent follows me um i don't see anybody here for public comments i'm going to close the public hearing all right we did that now is the um thank you good timing miss cyrus and now is the opportunity to give extended public comment if you'd like to make a public comment now's your chance because we're about to adjourn all right oh dr gallegas castilla got her hand in just under the wire um all right dr guy goes castillo you have um three minutes and you will be our only public speaker

171oh no oh no oh yes there she is okay oh i just couldn't pass up this opportunity to say thank you to all of you i know how much time dedication emotional effort sometimes it takes to really be on the dice be in service to community and so i just wanted to extend my utmost gratitude to you all and that i am looking forward to a renewed regenerate reject regenerated and i hope you all get rest in the next month so that we can start all over again and um enjoy your vacations thank you so much that was very nice of you to say um we appreciate it thank you everybody um congratulations on passing the budget and the lcap dr stevens and all of us um director kalis thank you for your presentations and

172susan superintendent collinsby assistant superintendent to is espinosa um ms chaires thank you for all your work facilitating these meetings you don't show your face um but we know you're there and these meetings could not happen without you so we're very grateful to you um have a good night everybody good night good night everybody all right thank you nice thank you