001foreign good afternoon I'd like to call to order the meeting of the Elk Grove School Board for May May 2nd 2023 at 4 pm and announced that the board will meet in closed session to address items one through five on the closed session portion of the agenda I'd like to call for public comment on closed session items at this time we do not have any blue slips and seeing that I'm going to close public comment and recess into closed session thank you good afternoon I'd like to call this meeting to order and announce uh excuse me call this meeting to order at 6 10 pm thank you for your patience folks as we're running a little bit behind schedule I'd like to announce that the board met in closed session and the following action was
002taken so pursuant to government code section 54957 this was an action relating to Public Employee appointment slash employment in closed session pending approval by the board on May 16 2023 the board supports the superintendent's appointment of Amari Watkins to the position of Chief Financial Officer this appointment requires board approval of an employment agreement during the Open Session portion of the board's May 16 2023 regular board meeting the vote was unanimous on the part of all those present with members Yang Jamerson Bettis absent for that portion of the meeting so good evening and welcome to the Elk Grove unified school district's board meeting the board of education has resumed full in-person board meetings unless remote attendance is permitted pursuant to the California Brown act live streaming a full in-person board meetings will be available to the
003public via the zoom platform today's meeting is being video recorded and will be available on the district's YouTube channel I'm going to share some information about public comment individual speakers will be allowed up to three minutes to address the board on each agenda item the total amount of time allocated to public comments by the board will be limited with a total of 30 minutes designated for public comment per item time limitations are at the discretion of the president of the board public comments may be made about items not on the agenda but within the school district's jurisdiction please note that if public comments are about items not appearing on the posted agenda the board cannot take action or discuss the public comment other than to briefly acknowledge it public comment may be made on on
004all items that are on the board agenda and will be heard when the selected item comes up please note that the board May comment and ask clarifying questions on board agenda items individuals may not defer their time to another speaker to increase their individual total time Beyond three minutes the guidelines for in-person public comments and participation can be found on the table outside of the boardroom and on the district's website please be mindful that students may be watching you are encouraged to address the board and the public in a respectful manner such that all those observing from children to adults are made to feel safe welcome and valued pursuant to government code section 549-57.9 the board shall not permit a disturbance or willful Interruption of board meetings persistent disruption by an individual or group Shelby
005grounds for the board president to provide a warning and then to terminate the individual's privilege of addressing the board the board president may call a recess at any time first item on our agenda today is the Pledge of Allegiance I'd like to call on Miss Desiree Fox Mr Paul Cordero principal of Union house Elementary to come up to the microphone as my calling Mr Yang share some comments first good evening I'm honored to share this flag salute recognition of Miss Desiree Fox Elementary School is honored to recognize Desiree Fox as House Education partner Miss Fox is the parents of three Union house pioneers third grader John and kindergartners Nicholas and evidence Miss Fox truly embodies the meaning of partner in education she is the president and enthusiastic heart of our PTO as a parent leader
006she recruits other parents and her own family members to lead school events such as Al Harvest Festival and pancakes with Santa Miss Fox leads fundraisers and supports our teachers and students with her time and PTO funds Miss FOX also serves on our School site Council and we can always depend upon her to participate ask questions and share her visions of what union house Elementary can be Miss Fox is a founding member of our black Excellence parents group our creativities and energy have contributed to enlightening our multi-purpose room with empowering symbolism her entire family contribute to putting on our first black Excellence community events in which we celebrate the richness and history of food across the African diaspora Miss Fox is a proud of egusd schools and the AVID program she is very excited that we
007are embracing Avid at Union house and is planning to speak to our students about its benefits missed Fox generosity and hard work is inspiring to all Union house staff parents and families it is an honor to partner with her and together we will surely make Union house the best school it can be thank you Desiree Fox news you would please just stay there for a second while Mr Yang comes down he's going to present you with a small token of our appreciation foreign thank you again miss Fox our next item will be our high school student representative reports today we'll be hearing from Franklin Valley and William daler High School first up let's start with uh Franklin High School just one second that sat on okay okay perfect um once again good evening board president
008miss Charles Espinoza members of the board superintendent Hoffman and Miss Avalos my name is Sophia way and my name is Damaris magana all day and we are seniors representing Franklin High School Franklin has been productive in fostering a welcoming environment for everyone on campus and we are very pleased to share some of our final successes of this school year on April 21st we hosted an academic Awards lunch to recognize our students achievements for quarters one and two and three combined over 1 200 students earned a 3.75 or higher through the first three quarters of the school year we are very proud of our Wildcats and their hard work in the classroom in addition we had our senior Awards night where we handed out more than a thousand Awards it was held on April 25th and
009we had about 30 percent of our graduating class earn the presidential award meaning that they maintained a grade point average of a 4.0 or higher for the entirety of their High School career way to go cats our amazing student leaders planned spear weeks throughout the second quarter in hopes of fostering a community of love and spirit during Franklin's winter homecoming week students were encouraged to dress up in accordance to the Daily themes some examples included Majesty Monday and ancient Greece versus Greece Tuesday we had an amazing attendance at a winter homecoming where more than 1 200 students attended our Disney themed homecoming dance moreover the student Equity Council partnered with GSA for their second Annual Pride week from April 10th through April 14th together they hosted lunchtime activities and created a week-long spirit week during
010their lunch informational tables students have the opportunity to learn more about the Day of Silence and pledge to be an ally also on April 24th our AVID program hosted a spring College and Career Fair where students created a unique bulletin boards featuring different colleges and careers presenting to our Wildcats box information wow great job of it moving on to Athletics our film console softball team is also having an amazing season our varsity team is currently in first place with a 17-3 record for the season in our most recent game on April 28th our Wildcats took on the work pack winning with a score of seven to three way to go cats our Franklin baseball team has been having a record-setting season our freshman baseball team has won the Delta League Championship meeting at 12-0 record
011in the league this is our third straight Delta league title at the Freshman level also our JV team won the Delta League Championship with the 15-3 record and finished with an 11 game win streak maintaining the third consecutive year that our JV team has won a league championship lastly our amazing varsity baseball team has won the Delta league title with a record of 17-1 in the league and 24-4 overall this marks back-to-back Delta League titles for our baseball teams and we wish our Wildcats the best of luck as we continue to the playoffs starting May 9th when constructing or dashing through this year with a breeze as the season approaches the near end we've had amazing track athletes broking and setting new records in Franklin history Ike OKO set a new record for the 100
012meter race with a time of 57.5 seconds we are so proud of our Wildcats and we also wish the best of luck to them as they head off to the Delta League trials our men's volleyball team hosted their senior night on April 20th congrats to our men's volleyball team for the amazing season and congratulations to the graduating players our men's tennis team has qualified for the playoffs at finishing fourth in the league and their swim team has had a lot of successes advancing 10 swimmers to the postseason on March 4th we had our junior prom at the State Credit Union Convention Center our amazing Wildcats had a night full of lots of fun enjoying their prom themed Festival of Lights also Marine crew has done an incredible job in welcoming freshmen and new students to
013our Wildcat family they hosted their last event freshman lockdown on March 10th where freshmen came to school from 5 to 11 and created lasting memories and new friendships they hosted team building activities and heard from a guest speaker and ending the night off with an amazing Italian dinner our school address to their annual poly and Hawk and I on March 24th where not only are amazing Franklin and Polly Pocket Club perform but also invited performers from other schools in the district including Cosumnes Oaks Pleasant Grove and Monterey Trail we had so much fun seeing our poly and pocket clubs perform where over 800 friends and families attended in March our school Wind Ensemble performed at the Sonoma State festival and on March 1st our Franklin High School Color Guard competed at the ncba winter championships
014and won the national AAA Champion our Drumline competed in this ncba and Tech home second place we are so proud of our Wildcats in late April Franklin's vocal company also hosted their annual vocal on the Green concert on our quad they were joined by friends and families and teachers to celebrate a term of harmonious collaboration and joining an evening of talented singers sharing their voices and Passions continuing on with our vapra our Franklin theater company had their spring production of Rogers and Hammerstein's Cinderella they've had their opening night on April 7th and we all enjoyed seeing our amazing Wildcats perform our Franklin theater company has had their ongoing production of the aristocrats kids performing for our local elementary school students almost every day recently our TDC Club on campus also known as the technique link
015dancing Club hosted and showcased their talents at make a change night with a mission to raise awareness and funds for the National Alliance for Filipinos concerns in the Philippines the group danced to spread the history of the Philippines and teach our peers about the wonders of the country hundreds of dollars were raised that night and our students had a wonderful time and finally on April 8th our senior class traveled down to Disneyland for a magical day it was full of lots of laughs pictures and smiles as our senior class enjoyed one of their last High School events on April 29th we had our senior ball at the Hyatt themed a tale old ass time seniors enjoyed a long night of dancing with friends and all looked fabulous for president Ms Titus Espinoza members of the
016board superintendent Hoffman and Miss Avalos we would like to show our greatest appreciation and gratitude for your time this evening we have enjoyed sharing all of Franklin's amazing progress for the past two years both of us are seniors this year and we look forward to the last few weeks of school before graduation in the fall I will be attending Columbia University and in the fall I will be attending UCLA we know that next year student board Representatives will be amazing and we cannot wait for you all to hear more of Franklin's future successes thank you thank you ladies next up let's have the representatives from Valley High School good evening boy president Nancy Shadows Espinoza members of the board superintendent Hoffman and Miss Avalos my name is Austin and my name is Sir Capri Joe
017Hall and we're about senior representatives from Valley High School our spring spreads have made Valley extremely proud recently our tennis team represented Valley at the GSL tennis tournament held at Natomas High School our men's baseball and volleyball team as well as our women's softball team have all had a gray season as they felt hard at each and every one of their games our student athletes are looking forward to next week as we'll be holding our senior Awards night in addition to celebrating academic achievements Valley will also be recognizing our athletes and awarding our female and male athletes of the year with the year coming coming round to the end Valley is flourishing with events last week we had our mini long night and our theater launched their spring Show clue going even further back to
018April 15th junior senior masquerade ball which is still the hype all around campus Valley's ball can be described as elegant delicious and picturesque a special highlight for our seniors will be the senior farewell dance host by the junior class it's rumored to be prom part two our end of the year rally senior fellow rally is fast approaching the overall rally theme is Disney Classics so our Cena will get to live their childhood one last time as we know this time of year is very stressful for students however our teachers and staff at Valley have been doing their best to support us students as AP exams and finals are quickly approaching students have been hard at work preparing for them our Lincoln recently held an event cookies and cream where students will were able to not
019only collaborate and study for the upcoming finals but were also able to relieve some stress Valley also held our annual top 10 dinner where we celebrated the top 10 students of our senior class next week Valley will be hosting our senior Awards night to celebrate the seniors academic achievements thank you seniors at Valley have caught the main flow of senioritis guilty myself these last few weeks are a struggle academically but there's a light at the end of the tunnel as seniors are being bombarded with events to end off the year of Viking strong two weeks ago we had to be on a viking week Beyond a viking is a weak set aside to celebrate seniors on all their achievements late start Wednesday of that week we had our Beyond a viking breakfast the delicious breakfast
020was made by senior Ortiz our retired Wellness counselor the whole counseling department and a few teachers during the week we also had a pin making workshop for students to create a pin with their picture paired with their plans for Beyond a viking now seniors are eagerly awaiting for the sooner trip to Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk senior picnic and finally senior Sunset which Falls a day before graduation now as exciting fun and memorable this year has been for us seniors our time has come class of 2023 signing out once the Viking always a viking thank you job ladies and we also have a video foreign anyone thank you um thank you foreign thank you Vikings next up let's hear from daler high school whenever you're ready good evening board president members of the board superintendent Hoffman
021and Miss Avalos my name is Liliana and I'm a junior at William daler high school and I would like to tell you about my school William daler is an alternative high school that serves students who prefer in smaller education environment that has a family feel and is more flexible than what is typically found at a comprehensive High School our day begins at dealer with a smile and a fistband from our admin and school counselor then we are off to class to receive a quote quality education students enrolling a dealer can expect to find a quality program of instructions leading to a high school diploma with an academic performance standards the class the class have instructions that addresses the Common Core academic standards and smaller class sizes for in individualized instructions there are alternatives options to
022earn elective credits and work study options we have a competent and caring staff who skillfully and patiently addresses issue confronting students mental health counseling and College and Career guidance students are excited about the two successful Career and Technical education CTE programs offer their daily the first is the careers with children CTE class that continues to expand each year this class prepares students for the field of early childhood development through curriculum based daily lessons site visits field trips and Hands-On care the goal of the class is to prepare students for entry-level positions in the field of early childhood education and other related fields this year the careers with children student visit Cosumnes River College and sex they upon completion of this course 20 students will receive three early childhood education college credits to continue to this
023field at CRC in addition 15 students from the pathway will begin a paid internship this summer through the scoe program career paths to success lastly we had 35 students to receive their certification in adult and pediatric first aid CPR and EAD indeed it was a great year for for our careers with children CTE class the second CTE class we offer at Baylor is Building Trades this course is designed to provide students with a basic understanding of carpentry and the many skilled trades utilized by residential and commercial construction tomorrow members of the CTE class will participate in NorCal design build competition at CRC the daily team designs plans and constructs a structure that meets a set of criteria established under the advisement of Industry Professionals in the past Baylor has won the first and second place
024awards at the competition besides CTE courses we also offer art and guitar classes article art students created a hammer copper philodendron water fountain that was featured at the egus the art show in addition daler daily teacher I'm sorry Taylor t-shirts were created using student or in guitar class students are now composing their own music students also did great experiments in physics and biology with this we dissected a pig and designed paper airplanes to study aerodynamics many of her experience can be seen on our William daler Facebook page though our focus is on academics we also know that the importance of building up on our community will have an active student government that is busy throughout the year planning activities and events for her campus student government has led Spirit Week award assemblies daily announcements our
025annual Halloween party and prom our Student Government also runs our Snack Shack The Snack Shack raises money for school-wide activities as well as give students Hands-On training and running a small business also found at Baylor High School is the daily Child Development Center if a fully licensed Child Care Center it is the one and only in the district it provides child care for infants and toddlers while their teen mothers and fathers attend school the child care center is open to any team parent in the Oak Grove unified school district this is no cost safe and nurturing environment that helps young children thrive while their parents get an education since we have the child care center and its resources we have been able to increase in the number of teen parents who graduate each year in
026addition Baylor offers a drug and alcohol program that project success the project is supported by a grant and helps students who are at risk of drug and alcohol abuse as well as helping all students understand how many choices in their lives can impact their future the staff at dealer work hard to keep us focused on the present goal of graduation they also help guide us towards exploring options post high school at dealer we have a strong belief that all College and Career paths After High School deserve equal respect therefore in our advocacy class we learn about vocational schools community colleges apparentinships and the military our school counselor meets with each graduation senior to help them complete colleges applications or enrollment forms vocational training programs moreover she assists us with completion the FAFSA financial aid one
027of the biggest events on our campus this year was College and Career Day students attended three presentations of the choice and then all students went to the career fair where they could learn more about local career and College Programs vendors include Sacramento City College consumers River College Saks day Charles age joins commit Career Education Center makes cosmetology Sacramento job courts Sheet Metal Workers Local Union number 104 to name just a few as you can see daler is a place where students receive a quality education while meeting their social and emotional needs thank you very much for your time and allowing us to tell you about our school we welcome the board members to visit our campus thank you for a great report students thank you all for great reports those of you graduating we wish
028you the best in whatever your post-graduation plans are let's recognize the principles of these high schools I believe we have Mr Adam wood from Franklin High School do we have Miss Bridget Kent Bell from Valley and Justine Fuller from William daler thank you students who may be excused next up we're moving on to our resolutions first up for classified School Employees week I'm going to call on Miss levasser to see if there are any public comments of the assume for this item Madam president there are no public comments via zoomed on this item thank you and Miss Jamerson was unable to be with us today playing the part of our vice president today is Miss albiani who's graciously agreed to step in so miss albiani do we have any blue cards for this resolution thank
029you no we do not thank you um go ahead Mr Singh good evening Madam president Nancy Chavez Espinoza members of the board Supreme Hoffman colleagues and staff it's my honor tonight to request the board to adopt resolution 78 2022-23 which will recognize May 21st till the 27th 2023 as classified School Employees week in the Elk Grove unified school district so the California state legislature passed a measure in 1986 which establishes classified School Employees week to recognize the contribution that classified school employees make to our schools classified School Employees provide valuable and meaningful services to the schools and students of the Elk Grove unified school district and contribute to the establishment and promotion of a positive instructional environment our classified employees Provo play a vital role in providing for the welfare and safety for all BL
030Groove Unified School District community all our Elk Grove unified school district classified School Employees strive for excellence in all areas relative to education to recognize this event and to honor the classified employees of our school district we are asking the board to approve the resolution 78 honoring May 21st to the 27th as the classified School Employees week in the Elk Grove unified school district thank you I'd like to call for a motion to approve resolution 78 recognizing May 21st through 27 2023 is classified School Employees week in the Elk Grove unified school district so moved second moved and seconded all in favor please signify by saying aye aye opposed none the resolution is approved unanimously thank you thank you Mr Sunny our next resolution is for national school nurse day Miss levasser do we have
031any public comments via Zoom for this item Madam President we have no public comments be assumed for this item thank you Miss albiani do we have any blue cards for this item no we do not thank you Mr Ross take it away uh good evening uh Madam uh president Cyrus Espinoza members of the board um superintendent Hoffman Miss Avalos uh I'm here tonight along with some of our fabulous School nurses to present resolution 76 recognizing May 10 2023 as school nurse day since 1972 national school nurse day has been set aside to recognize School nurses national school nurse day was established to foster a better understanding of the role of School nurses in the educational setting and recognize the role they play in a student's education a student's health is linked to their ability to
032learn and a school nurse the school nurses stand at the intersection of health and education weaving the support needed to reduce barriers to learning and promote healthy children families and communities School nurses support students with a wide range of medical needs for minor health issues to providing daily care for students who are medically fragile or who have chronic conditions during any given school day our nurses are providing first aid care and health assessments writing care plans coordinating the care of students with chronic or acute health conditions communicating with teachers and staff to ensure the safety and well-being of students administering medications and monitoring and delegated medication administration assisting in the evaluation of students for Special Education Coordinating and providing vision and hearing screenings educating and training staff and Asthma life-threatening allergies diabetes and bloodborne pathogens
033School nurses are the leaders in healthcare providing care coordination advocating for Quality student centered care and collaborating Design Systems that allow students to develop their full potential we asked the board to approve resolution 76 recognizing May 10 2023 as a national school nurse day thank you do our nurses have any statements prepared checking okay not putting you on the spot just want to make sure you know you're welcome Miss Gerald yes sir um I like to make up some friendly amendments to this resolution and whereas one two three four five paragraph um nurses make great Liaisons to the school community and in your and it's written here that promoting wellness and proving health educational outcomes I like to do forward slash education outcomes we don't have healthy students they you know they're not being concentrating
034on the on the curriculum or study or whatever so it affects healthy students are healthy outcomes educational outcomes equals so I want to include that in there include education for our districts children parents staff and Community again it all goes in one I'm a big believer you know like I said I was an educator and a public health consultant researcher and I know the outcomes of healthy children and and when you have healthy outcomes you have a lot of ADA money right it creates a you know they can come to school they don't stay home and and as a result of that they don't affect our staff if they're healthy things like that so anyway I want to add those two individual words into the our resolution because it's very important that you don't we
035don't have a healthy Community we don't have a healthy or healthy educational outcomes I think health and Education Health and education outcomes is a is a fair tweak to make with that yes sir I just want to make comment as a health care worker myself I know um sometimes could be very very challenging working as a registered nurse so I just want to give my deepest thank you to you all thank you very much for what you do thank you indeed with that I would like to call on uh call for a motion to approve resolution 76 recognizing May 10 2023 as national school nurse day so moved as amended by Mr Paris thank you second thank you all in favor please signify by saying aye aye opposed the resolution is approved unanimously thank you
036so much for all you do we're moving on to a different set of Heroes today the next resolution is for national uh school lunch hero day Miss lavas or do we have any public comments for this item Madam President we have no public comments for this item thank you miss albioni any blue cards none thank you come on up Miss Drake good evening president Charles Espinosa members of the board superintendent Hoffman establos I'm here this evening to ask that the board adopt resolution 75 designating May 5th 2023 as national school lunch hero Day School Lunch hero Day celebrated annually since 2013 is designated by the school nutrition Association and Jarrett krozaska author of the lunch lady graphic novel series between preparing healthy meals adhering to strict nutrition standards navigating specialized student needs and offering service
037with a smile the Elk Grove unified nutrition professionals have a lot on their plate the Elk Grove unified food and nutrition service professionals are on the front lines providing meal service to the children of our community our school Food Service professionals continue to work extremely hard operate with flexibility and demonstrate a willingness to gracefully adapt to change their dedication to the children of Elk Grove unified is amazing and worthy of sincere recognition the Elk Grove unified food and nutrition leadership will recognize our staff on May 5th but I ask that the board please approve resolution 75 designating May 5th is school lunch hero day thank you Miss Drake I'd like to call for a motion to approve resolution 75 designating May 5th 2023 a school lunch hero day yeah I move approval number 75 moved
038and we have a second second and seconded all in favor please signify by saying aye aye opposed the resolution is approved unanimously thank you Miss Drake go ahead sir we do we serve breakfast lunch snacks supper so it's really for all meals that we provide to children they're just their support that our community knows that the fact that you know again to come to school with your stomach to 100 whatever we feed them in the morning afternoon and out yes we do thank you very much you're welcome thank you our next and last resolution for today is from Hmong American day I'd like to call on Miss levasser to see if there are any blue excuse me any Zoom comments for this item Madam president there are no public comments to be assumed for this
039item thank you Miss albioni do we have any blue cards for this we do not okay welcome Miss Danielle black good evening Madam president sharis Espinosa Mr track members of the board superintendent Hoffman and Miss Avalos I'm humbled to bring before you a recommendation to adopt resolution 77 designating May 14 2023 as Hmong American day as a time to remember and honor among people's history stories and contributions in the Vietnam War May 14 1975 was the day of the last airlift evacuation among soldiers and families from Laos to a refugee camp in Thailand and is recognized as Hmong American day as a time to remember and honor the contributions provided since then and today Hmong Americans are helping build a vibrant and diverse California contributing socially politically and economically to our state minimum have become
040American success stories from having nothing to becoming teachers Engineers nurses doctors lawyers business owners professional athletes firefighters soldiers elected officials and more in recognition and celebration of Hmong Americans I request that the board adopt resolution 77 designating May 14 2023 as Hmong American day thank you Miss Black before remove the motion can I make a comment go ahead sir good evening Miss Black for reading that resolution thank you Asian American and Pacific Islander heritage month is observed in the United States during the month of May and recognize the contribution and influence of Asian Americans and Pacific Islander Americans to the history cultural and achievements of the United States as part of the long list of aapi groups that had their shares of contribution to this great country Ontario and very honored as a Hmong descent
041and board member of Elk Grove unified school district to say we the egusc board has adapted the more American day resolution which May 14 of this year and going forward every May 14th will be designated as Mall American diet I want to command among people for their courage as a minority group in Laos who shared the same belief in ideology of the American people to have democracy freedom and the freedom to Chase their dreams today I'm asking each one of us to acknowledge and recognize the brave mom soldiers as young as 10 years old approximately thirty thousand to forty thousand were killed in fighting with the United States during the Vietnam war and their family on every May 14 going forward and now that the mom are here to stay in America and will be
042and will forever be a part of this great nation to make the United States of America a better America by being taxpayer and all contributor in any ways necessary my big heartfelt thank you to the Elk Grove unified school district Board of Education and the staff for making this resolution possible thank you whereas May 14th is a time to remember and honor the monk people's history stories and contributions to the Vietnam War and also to the United States and the world the Hmong people not only settled here in California they were all low they had resettlement camps all over the United States and and the world so I want to make sure that you know people realize that they're not only here in California throughout the whole United States and the world also uh we
043have been very fortunate with a lot since they've been here they have been very politically active in civil engagement in our communities before Mr bang has been here we have Mr Steve Lee who was a board member for a short time because and also he graduated to become our Elk Grove uh city mayor city mayor so uh uh somehow I like to put an education of political people here or mayors of cities they are participating in democracy and fought for democracy when they come came to California and to the United States wherever they go they get involved with Civic engagement so they know what democracy is about and so I like to uh acknowledge that and express to our community that this is I'm proud to support this resolution 100 thank you um Mr Perez
044thank you for um that suggestion um I think it's fair to say outside of California I think that's that's fair to say however if we start naming individual I think that may not be fair so that's that's my suggestion okay well mayor maybe uh uh mayors of cities or whatever for marriage you know because Mr Perez yes um just a reminder that those are the kinds of comments that we should get to staff before the actual meeting takes place so that we can inform the development of resolutions I really don't want to go into that level of detail right now and make that kind of amendments to this so we're going to vote on this as it stands staff has heard your comments and I'm sure we will take that into consideration for next year's
045resolution well I'm sorry but I just thought that I just remember that Steve Lee is in our community and he's a monk and that I'm sorry that I didn't bring that up but I just I just thought of that because you know and oh and city council people here in our County okay all right thank you very much okay Mr Bettis thank you for that I'd like to call for a motion are you ready sir for uh to approve resolution number 77 designated May 14 2023 as among American day as a time to remember and honor among people's history stories and contributions I will be honored to move resolution 77 among American day do we have a second second thank you all in favor please signify by saying aye aye opposed that resolution is approved
046unanimously thank you Miss Black thank you next we will move on to requests for student explosions if anyone wishes to address the board in closed session regarding a particular student expulsion uh please let us know we don't have any Communications to that effect with that I'm going to call for a motion to approve the recommendations for student expulsions so moved thank you do we have a second moved and seconded all in favor please signify by saying aye aye aye opposed that item is approved unanimously thank you next we will be moving on to public comment for items not on the agenda Miss levasser do we have public comments via Zoom for items not on the agenda yes Madam President we have two public comments via Zoom go ahead first public comment Elda Garcia good afternoon
047can you hear me yes ma'am go ahead whenever you're ready okay thank you hi I'm a concerned parent and I'm here to implore to Mr Hoffman and the board members to please remove the porn books at Elementary's and various School libraries such as the Sheldon High School Monterey Trail High School and Edward Harris Middle School the district is promoting to kiss as young as 12 that they should participate in sex party and promote child trafficking these books are unacceptable if an adult was to hand out these books out at a public setting they would be arrested wrong is wrong this is not about targeting any groups or anything it's what's wrong is wrong and I ask again please remove these books I will close off with Proverbs 22 6 train up a child in the
048way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it and I just ask you again ask yourself would you allow your children to read these pornographic books and would you allow miners to be reading these books I don't understand why Mr Hoffman or whoever has made these decisions have not removed these books we need answers as parents we have every right to ask please respond Mr Hoffman you are the one that's leading the school district and you're responsible for what's being put in these schools whether you're giving anybody The Authority I just asked please remove these books thank you thank you Miss Garcia next next public comment via Zoom Jess Carlson okay Madam president that's all the public comments we assume thank you Miss albioni do we have blue cards
049or items not on the agenda we do we have a number we'll start with Miss Suzanne Tovar will be followed by Dave Kurth and folks we give you the name of the next person so that if you're able if you could come up to the front of the room and be ready we would sure appreciate it hello my name is Suzanne Tovar I am a parent of seven children that are all grown and I'm a grandparent of nine grandchildren I live in the school district um I've been concerned lately about what's going on in the schools with the sex education and the books that are being available made available to the kids in the schools um I just want to read a little bit of an excerpt from a book called lucky and it is
050available to kids in middle school I feel like it's not age appropriate I actually feel like it's um porn um I looked up the definition of porn it says it is one the depiction of erotic Behavior intended to cause sexual excitement to the depiction of Acts in a sensational manner so as to arouse a quick intense emotional reaction and three the depiction of Sensational materials such as violence in order to elicit a reaction this book um is really hard for me to read right now in public I wouldn't even want to read this book by myself alone and I definitely wouldn't want my grandchildren to read this I don't think it's good for anybody this is a little excerpt and I'm not going to read a lot it says give me a he said he
051was standing out I was on the ground trying to search among the filth for my clothes he kicked me and I curled into a ball I want a he held his dick in his hand I don't know how I said what do you mean you don't know how I've never done it before I said I'm a virgin put it in your mouth he grabbed my head put it in your mouth and suck he said like a straw I said yeah like a straw I took it in my hand it was small hot clammy it throbbed him voluntarily at my touch he shoved my head forward and I put it in it touched my tongue not like that he said and brought my head away don't you know how to suck a dick no I told
052you I said I've never done this before but she said his penis still limped he held it with two fingers and peed on me just a little bit I find this material totally disgusting um by law in California um right now transitioning a child gender promoting gender affirming treatment sexually explicit curriculum to minors without parents knowledge or consent is illegal um I don't know why anyone would want to have these books in their libraries I think has there been any clinical or psychological studies done on children that are reading this kind of material I know we have a lot of depression in children and we don't I don't know if it's being addressed anyway um parents hand over their children to you every day and we expect you to treat them well teach them math
053reading science not this please thank you for your time thank you we have Mr curse followed by Caroline Martin sorry it's kind of hard to follow that I was going to second that too uh thanks for your time my name is Dave Kurth I live in the Anatolia Sunridge area and have since 2005. it's come to our attention recently that schools sites that were originally intended for building have gone by the wayside the Cypress Community was recently built it's the most recent Community built just after the cresley homes those sites have now supposedly disappeared we had a site at cobblebrook in the cressly ranch area where a site butting up to Sun Ridge that was also supposed to be a school we pay 200 a month or 200 per tax period for the school bonds
054that are supposed to be going to these schools I have a seven-year-old daughter first grade don't know where she's going to go to middle school but if she's going to come to albiani or a school out here it's 25 minutes 25 minutes away from getting up at six o'clock in the morning to following all the way out get through the school day back to back home at three o'clock or four o'clock to homework and where does that leave for mental health all of these students in all of these now new rooftops that are coming to this area all the way from sunrise and Grant Line to Douglas and all the way down are all coming to the egsu school district Rancho Cordova's fighting saying hey we'll we'll make a school district we'll bring you into
055our our your rooftops into our establishment but we want to be a part of the Oak Grove School District that's why we bought those houses specifically this school district has every single thing that it is needed to build these schools we're going to request information under the information act as to where are the allocation of funds are going where the the money from the Mello Roost I've been paying since 2005. if anybody else has lived out there in that area for even the last 10 years you have at least a thousand homes a thousand rooftops that have been doing the same thing and continuously building there is no infrastructure out there right now I mean we could you have schools like Sunrise where parents and students are having to get they're having to redirect the
056the lines of getting kids into these schools I know it seems very haphazard but at some point it needs to be addressed that the schools that are out there there are we there is no plan for more middle and high schools McGarvey is the is the the one that was most recently built and you're in a situation where Sunrise is about to go to 1400 students 1500 students it's already been at 1200 students so once that offloading happens where are these kids going to go where is my daughter going to go to school she should be able to go into her community where we pay the taxes we are going to request the information we would love to know where the funds are going and have been going and what's going to address in the
057future Mr Kurtz have you emailed us by any chance I want to make sure you get uh up-to-date accurate information I have not yet had a chance to email because I've been on the road but once I heard about the meeting tonight I want to make sure I keep okay so two options you can email any of us on the board Mr Hoffman or make sure Kristen coats behind you has your uh contact information got it thank you those particular schools that you mentioned would you also provide that in your letter absolutely okay thank you thank you guys thank you sir thank you we have Caroline Martin followed by Nicole strange good evening my name is Caroline Martin I'm a teacher here in Elk Grove unified I teach and support our English Learners at Las
058Flores High School on Elk Grove Virtual Academy which are our two independent study schools um I'm coming to you today um because well first of all I really really love teachers I know I am a teacher but teachers inspire me I've worked with them as as a coach um instructionally with them I obviously work with them day to day um and I have a huge place in my heart for teachers and what they do um and so I feel like it's part of my responsibility as um you know a partner in education to support them um the reason why I'm here today is I want to request that we adopt a practice that truly honors the established downsizing process the established downsizing process affords teachers agency and choice despite a very unfortunate situation of having
059to be moved from their site today um teachers at my site received an email from Human Resources saying that we needed to downsize five teachers this comes almost 10 weeks after the downsizing window closed we had been told so this was surprising but it was also surprising when the downsizing window closed on February 26th that we were not downsizing we expected we were going to be downsizing they told us we were not we said okay this is awesome we can continue with our plants um we were told by our Union no District says they if they're going to downsize they were going to downsize during the downsizing window which would give teachers that opportunity to choose a site that fits them best and where they can best serve students instead we have this downsizing notice
060today we've been through four transfer rounds we've missed the downsizing window for Staffing and the teachers are put in a very unfavorable position and feel unsupported um this comes on the heels of involuntary transfers that happened two weeks after the school year started at our school where they forced teachers to go they forced science teachers to go to a specific site away from after they had met their students started classes they forced them to move to um a specific site and then they also pulled our special education teachers out um to go to other sites so already this year we've been we have lost trust in the idea that people are going to have our back and follow the processes that have been followed for as well I've been downsized I was downsized in 2010
061this is not new to me I know nobody wants it to happen and I know it's inevitable but not following the protocols and the processes in place I feel harms teachers thank you thank you thank you Nicole strange followed by Jasmine Grady a good evening board members um really quickly I would love to put out there as a request if we could when we're talking about the sexual stuff in books if we could just like reference a page it's super uncomfortable I'm very aware of the message I don't agree or disagree but like some kids are watching this or in the room so if we could reference a page or a paragraph I would love that um that's one thing um secondly as a Pleasant Grove redirection School I would love to find out about
062um what the gentleman had talked about with potential building of schools in the Anatolia region because it's a daily conversation I have with parents and I empathize with them when you spend seven hundred eight hundred thousand dollars for your home and you can't go to the school that you wanted to go to and it's a 30 minute drive um but what I'm here to talk about is um staff morale I'm super duper duper passionate about wanting to just improve our work environment and our work spaces and I kind of love that I just went off the heels of of the last woman who spoke um and that is um if there's a committee that that you guys need somebody on to give some input on what it's like at the school sites for our morale
063um like I was going to come here and I was going to talk about certain things that people asked me to talk about tonight and I thought you know what I'd rather email you guys I'm going to pick you up on your offer and email you separately and have private conversations about it but I'm super passionate about wanting to make an effective change to where staff want to come to work here students want to be here and every everyone's mental health will rise together and make it just a warm and welcoming place to be for Elk Grove unified school district so hit me up in my email heck I'd put my personal phone number out here if I wasn't going to get harassed but um anyways so yeah in our future if I could be
064on any kind of committee and work together I would love that thank you guys for your time thank you Jasmine Grady followed by Kirk Thompson good evening everybody um so I've been I'm a parent at Elliott Ranch Elementary to two students I've kind of been at a loss of what direction to go my oldest is in sixth grade and she's been receiving some very inappropriate comments from a student in her class I've notified the teacher vice principal as well as the principal the teacher has yet to reach out to me the vice principal has been my main point of contact UM I guess after following that book I can say some of the comments my daughter has received has been cotton picker dupe Blackie um and they've been consistent it's not it hasn't just been
065a one-time uh ordeal um I've once again I haven't received not one um response from a teacher um when I've spoken with the vice principal he's told me on several different occasions that he's kind of had a loss of what to do he told me that he has spoke he has not spoken to parents and I feel like parents should be informed he told me that the the student in question has of course denied these statements um and that he told the vice he told the vice principal you know I don't want to get in trouble because I would not be able to attend any summer activities you know currently at the moment I don't really care if he attends any summer activities I feel like he shouldn't receive any type of summer fun because
066of the things that he's continuing to say to my child and to other students in the classroom so I um I'm kind of at a loss of what to do another incident is on the 17th my son's front tooth was knocked out and I was not informed I received no communication whatsoever and I informed them I called the school and said I asked what the protocol was when a student gets hurt they told me and I informed that my child's tooth was knocked out I got no letter from the nurse I got a no letter from the teacher anything and then that's when the vice principal called me again to one follow-up on my son's missing tooth who's in kindergarten and two to follow up on the student who has because multiple things had happened
067with the racism racist comments so he followed up on that and then I demanded that parent to be told and then finally after that I have dates of everything I got I received the email from the principal stating that they don't inform parents of any rep you know any consequences that are done but I know no consequences have taken place because he's in my daughter's class and he's been in every class I know besides of talking to that's all that's transpired and so I'm kind of at a loss so I figured I'd come here and speak publicly thank you Miss Grady I'm so sorry to hear that we're going to have the appropriate administrator reach out to you know um Kirk Thompson followed by Lorraine Pryor hi so uh starting in August I will have
068a five-year-old autistic autistic son attending one of the schools in the school district so attempting to be an active participant in my child's education on April 18th I attended my first school board meeting in Elk Grove uh and my first school board meeting since I was in high school uh 25 years and about 50 pounds ago so um I have to say I left the meeting a bit discovered a bit discouraged to say the least I watched how dismissive several of you were towards concerns of parents who at least have genuine fears their kids could be shown pornographic material and at most could be targeted for grooming and sexual assault by someone within the school apparatus for me this was extra troubling because Studies have shown that children with 13 disabilities especially autism are four
069times more likely to be the targets of predators considering the dismissiveness I witnessed on the 18th to the concerns of parents about sexual deviancy being promoted in a place of learning it makes me wonder if you take an actual allegation of sexual abuse against a kid seriously made someone I saw two weeks ago I doubt it as you dismiss the concerns of parents I witnessed a few of you lighting up with approval as several of the speakers displayed full-on religious bigotry towards Christians and Christianity now I'm a Christian I've spent my entire educational life in Public Schools kindergarten through bachelor's degree religious hatred isn't something I'm unfamiliar with I can only imagine I Can Only Imagine if those dismissive attitudes would have been so apparent if they were being expressed by parents who were Orthodox
070Jews or traditional Muslims who I imagine would also have concerns about corn being in their kids school libraries with those same looks of Prides on your faces no less than two speakers on the 18th made statements to the effect of if you don't like it send your kids to a private Christian School as if there were no low-income Christians in Elk Grove and that by the nature of practicing of Faith somehow that excludes anyone of that Faith from conversation about explicit materials being shown to minors in public schools to those speakers I would like to ask is your lack of faith what makes you open to the idea of showing porn to little kids under the guise of educational materials in conclusion I'm disappointed with my first experience here my wife graduated from Sheldon High
071School when we moved here she assured me that these topics would not be something I had to concern myself about it was frustrating to have to go home and tell her that the school district which she's a proud alum is not what she remembers and that we have to approach every school teacher and every administrator with the same mentality that Ronald Reagan had towards the Soviet Union trust but verify I can guarantee you there's going to be a lot of verifying thank you sir Pauline fire followed by Lisa Stanley good evening um you have to forgive me I am actually quite pissed right now I get these stories from parents throughout your District all the time I was coming to talk to you about something else um however this is that was the third or
072fourth parent I've talked to today that is dealing with racism in your schools you're in competent staff for an inadequate responses racism happening now I'm listening to a parent whose child had his tooth knocked out kind of reminiscent of the child who've had his kid bashed in by a fire extinguisher it's unacceptable to continue to have people come in here and tell you what is happening to their children and you don't respond or you are you ignore it not you appear as the board but your staff in this district is unacceptable I'm sick and tired of coming in here this is my fifth year I've watched you deal with parents who run it five days a week because they were mostly non-black parents you got on that really quickly I watched EG speaks coming here
073and tell you time after time of year you apologize to them which you should have last time then I come and hear it and I've been telling you about what's going on with black students I've sat in or many of your committees I've worked with your staff and what did I get as an alumni of Valley High School I got gasly I got told that I was a liar while I'm seeing the pain that is etched on my parents faces because of being adequate or no responses of your staff somebody needs to grow that together I don't know what all this performative stuff is I don't know about putting these African-Americans in different positions and like you don't have any power in your District I don't know what the heck is going on in this
074district there has been more directed resources to the problem of identifying black boys as significantly Disturbed or uh emotionally this thing I gotta sit on a call with somebody who said well yeah we're we're identifying them but we can't be specific in the plan to fix it because it would be discriminatory it's a shame and now I come in here and hear about these books I'm just I am just quaking what the hell is going on in Elk Grove unified school district I loved my school in my time at Valley High School if you replace our teachers and administrators with attitude reflects leadership so while I'm gonna have to do something about the way in which you're not responding because I'ma keep coming thank you Lisa Stanley followed by Heidi Moore I'm Lisa Stanley an
075advocate with black youth leadership project and like Lorraine I am upset my blood is boiling right now to hear what this family has been going through um and we will talk about it I brought my uh Black versus the Board of Education you guys should tune into this because we talked about these topics every single Monday at 4 30. um and of course egusd never ceases to amaze me I'm exhausted coming up here and I know I'm not on my year five and I I might have some time to go but I'm in for the Long Haul the plain disregard and negligence for our black students and staff make for immensely unsafe environment when this District refused to partner with organizations such as byrp who are actively doing Equity work and creating safe spaces for
076black students and allies I have some questions please tell me why many of your staff do not even know what Dei stands for how can you ensure that taking a daei training will change people's behavior towards black students especially because I've Been In This Very Room where your staff complained that their 14 hours were a burden to complete with everything they had going on in their lives because clearly the treating of black students fair with dignity and respect is not a priority to you all as you just heard with this family also I want to know what framework was used to develop the Dei training besides the equity goals on the equity blog from what I see the goals are not a framework your staff is frustrated and afraid to speak up out of retaliation
077so I will be their voice today it makes sense so that your staff would feel this way when the environment for our black students continuously are unhealthy unsafe and even hostile we have another perfect example with our ongoing struggle to get the triennial IAP for one of our babies at Pleasant Grove completed while the ball was dropped in the care for this child in multiple ways the worst by far is the protection and complete avoidance by your chemistry teacher Michael Cooper it was made very clear during the meeting that his uh class expectations were confusing and even vindictive our students self-advocacy was ignored and overlooked even those even those they were in her goals his behavior was disgraceful furthermore she was not receiving her accommodations which contributed to her grade and when confronted and I
078quote we recognize that a lack of special education services may have contributed to the chemistry grade however the grades are the sole discretion of the teacher well I just told you who handed out that grade you need to correct your teacher the rest of the staff allowing him to avoid the meeting and make this right today thank you many more followed by Greg Bert good evening I once again am here as a concerned mother for kids in the district and I would like to bring to your attention this pornographic book that was located in the Sheldon High School library I have photos of this graphic novel here so that you can see exactly what I'm concerned about the first photo shows a child giving a to another child as you can see the second photo
079talks about masturbation and hip thrusting while a kid thinks about a person they'd want to have sex with the photo shows two naked teens having sex and includes a naked buttocks the third photo depicts a teen having a fantasy and shows two naked individuals with erections one of the individuals is touching the other's penis I emailed uh District officials about this book and Miss avey's response was quote we are aware of this book and it is not in circulation Sheldon High School is the only site that ordered the book and after the book was physically reviewed it was not shell for student checkout the site librarian removed it from the destiny catalog or is removing it she said my initial reaction was oh the district is actually removing something from the library but then I
080realized her statement left many unanswered questions first her statement acknowledged that the book is highly inappropriate second her statement proves my point that there is no oversight or approval process in The Ordering of books it also leaves me questions like where is the book now why did no one have to approve it before the book was ordered why would our tax dollars wasted on this porn why did the book conveniently get removed from the online catalog after I told District officials I was aware of it how do I know the book isn't still in the library how do we know the book isn't sitting in classroom libraries since there's also no oversight in classroom libraries these are valid questions that the community deserves to have answers to we are here to stop the sexualization of
081children in schools and advocate for parental rights and transparency we deserve that and our kids certainly deserve better thank you Greg butt followed by Laurie Gardner chair members uh my name is Greg Bert I have been a resident here in Elk Grove for over a decade my two kids went to Consumer Associates High School um I think we all can agree that adults administrators and parents have a responsibility to keep sexually explicit material out of the hands of minors you know as a society we already rate movies right for Content you know the rating system G PG PG-13 R and X you know R doesn't let anybody under 17 attend the movie without a parent and ex-bands kids from seeing uh these type of movies at all right but these kind of regulations are not
082Banning movies right the same thing goes for video games they have a reading system to help parents you gotta uh things that are rated E for everyone teen and mature right and uh this regulates the type of uh video games that little kids can see so my question is what kind of rating system do we have for books used by Elk Grove School District my impression is that you don't really have a rating system you really leave it up to teachers individual teachers and Librarians to decide what is explicit sexually explicit and obviously uh from hearing the stuff tonight that isn't working um and I just wanted to just say that you know keeping obscenity and child pornography out of the hands of kids is not Banning books although that's it characterized our objections that
083way I I wanted just to prove that uh I found some information at the Department of Justice website that I wanted to read you about obscenity and so the Supreme Court this is from their their website the Supreme Court has ruled that transmitting obscenity and child pornography whether on the Internet or other means is illegal under federal law for both adults and juveniles obscenity is not protected under the First Amendment rights to free speech and violations of federal obscenity laws are a criminal offense the U.S courts use a three-prong test to determine what uh referred to as the Miller test to determine if a material is obscene obscenity is defined as anything that fits this Miller test which may include for example visual depiction spoken words or written texts and just to give you an
084example um the federal law also uh prohibits uh obscene matters being given to minors this includes visual representations such as drawing cartoons paintings that appear to depict minors engaging in sexual activity and are obscene and also illegal under federal law the penalties are five years 10 years 20 years in prison Please wrap up so your time's up and my my question to you how sure are you that your this your school is not violating those standards what we need in place is a way to objectively uh decide what materials are good and and not explicitly uh sexual and objective so you can apply those as you judge what books you bring thank you thank you so much thank you sir next speaker is Lloyd Gardner followed by Veronica Garcia February 24th I met with 16
085School District staff and a handful of parents some who are here tonight today we're still discussing the same thing the trespass and harm on our school children of the sexually graphic pornographic books on shelves at the school libraries books that describe in detail child rape incest child prostitution how to meet adults for sex via social media apps grooming detailed instruction on various types of sex acts directed at our children which are minors and abusing animals all of which are felonies by your own legal definitions Jennifer h a b acknowledged that some of the books were not appropriate for some ages nor would she read them to her own children Marx Rudy said they would not remove them James 4 17 says if anyone then knows the good they ought to do and doesn't do it
086it is sin for them for the wages of sin is death but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lords Romans 6 23 we decree and declare that this is a season of reaping and sowing Galatians 6 7-9 do not be deceived God cannot be mocked a man reaps what he sows whoever sows to please their flesh from the flesh they will reap destruction whoever sows to please the spirit from the spirit will reap eternal life with that law of reaping and sowing God also says you will know a tree by its fruit the fruit of this school board is destruction of children confusion in their minds and identities they were created by their creator man or woman that is what you should be teaching anything else is false it's lies
087the Bible tells us that God is not the author of Fusion so you have aligned yourself with that liar who from the beginning speaks his native tongue and you've shown Yourself by your actions to believe that lie and push your religion onto our children a religion of perversion death and destruction we don't know what your motivations are and why you have chosen to bring such confusion and lies to our children but we decree and declare we will not stand for it no longer will you confuse and lie to our children and we put you on notice that God is Not mocked and you will reap what you sow Jesus said in Luke 17 2 it would be better to be thrown into the sea with a millstone hung around your neck than to cause one
088of these little ones to fall into sin his words not ours we are not your judge the Creator is we don't know your motivation is it money is this your perversion maybe you practice these things it seems to be popular in our society and we are seeing more and more charges and convictions for these felony acts against children pedophilia and grooming are rampant and they are felonies consider yourself notified so being that you continue to mock God and snare at us who would say stop no this is wrong we decree and declare your trespass on our children which is against our constitution and our civil rights and we declare our civil rights you may not trespass as a woman I will not let you as man and woman sitting on a board trample on my
089civil rights as given in the Constitution of the United States in the Bill of Rights I have all my rights and you will not and you will stand individually to give account as a man or woman for your actions together Veronica Garcia followed by Mark Ellis someone wanted page numbers here you go these experts are for me Earl and the dying girl available in five middle schools in egust this book has 79 bucks 51 ships 11 dicks plus he's nine G dams page 59 are you gonna eat her age 60 yeah Earl I'm gonna eat her huh yeah do you even know how to eat uh not really proper games on the other side brownie we're going to have to eat no but he did teach me how to eat a butthole Julie Brown black
090man yep I will teach you some potato technique complicated fun I don't have time for that I've got like 20 pieces over here that I need to eat well I'm impressive battling not good for any vagina with all I end up in a row you know that don't make any damn sense at all you're telling me when we can look at some titties get a hard one with that from dude get another hard-on you kind of family rap for Rude the dog taking me down hard on the Wendy's double cheeseburger are done all your hard on oh [Laughter] um [Music] you are providing this to 12 years [Music] moving out of my old school district my kids would have a better education but when I moved here I joined my investigation and I saw this
091and I said no thank you my children are not going to be part of this because I think I have thousands to protruded and I've spent my whole life teaching them right from wrong and how to respect their bodies and not give birth to other people look at your records why because you guys are a lot of this nonsense let me see I still have something 30 seconds I have worked so hard to check their innocence and I will not allow you or others in the geusp to take that away from my precious strawberry because we're honorable out here thank you Mark Ellis followed by Amelia Mendoza good evening members of the board superintendent and District administration I'm not anti or phobic I'm an ordinary man with a lot of experience and Common Sense there
092are many wonderful books in the school libraries that help our children understand different races cultures sexual preference gender identity what makes a family and other social concerns of our current Society I'm not here to debate those items I believe that children need to be educated and allow nature and time to take its natural course as each child forms their own viewpoints however there is one hard line and that is pornography should not be in schools the phrase I know it when I see it was first used in 1964 by United States Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart to describe his threshold test for obscenity obscenity is defined as anything that fits the criteria of the Miller test is previously stated and I'll restate it which may include for example visual depictions spoken words or written text
093federal law makes it illegal to distribute distribute transport sell ship mail produce with intent to destroy distribute or sell or engage in a business of selling or transferring obscene matter furthermore federal law strictly prohibits the distribution of obscene matter to minors any transfer or attempt to transfer such material to a minor under the age of 16 including over the Internet is punishable under federal law in addition visual representations such as drawings cartoons or paintings that appear to depict miners engaged in sexual activity and are obscene are also illegal under federal law furthermore under California state law Penal Code chapter 7.5 that states obscene matter means matter taken as a whole that to the average person applying contemporary Statewide standards appeals to the prurient interests that taken as a whole the picture describes sexual conduct in
094a patently offensive way and that taken as a whole lacks serious literary artistic political or scientific value the Elk Grove School District has chosen to distribute obscene materials to school libraries this is a conscious Act without any moral or ethical consideration of children pornography offers nothing of value it debases and dehumanizes males and females in the most vulgar manner I am challenging this body to do the right thing on a case-by-case basis when a book which is obviously pornographic is identified and brought forward it should be immediately removed from the library Librarians should notify the district so that all libraries can remove their copies of the same book and lastly I would ask that this body take responsibility and be accountable to the constituents who elected them and report back to the public in this
095forum the actions the district has taken regarding removing pornography in the libraries thank you for the time Amelia Mendoza followed by Norman Alfred clone I believe is the correct way to say it I am a concerned mother and grandmother I am concerned about the sexualization happening within our schools our children are having free access to books in our school libraries that contain inappropriate sexual content I am concerned about the lack of transparency being provided to parents and keeping parents in a dark and violating parental rights let us think of the scenario for a moment when the child's 12th birthday party you give her a copy of the book sold and have her read it to her friends I asked the parents to please remove the children from the room because inappropriate content will be shared
096a man with lips like a fish comes into my room and says you're lucky to be with Habib he is squeezing my best with his hand like someone shopping for a melon I tried to push him away but my arms don't heavy from the Lassie doesn't move you're lucky he says the Habib is the first is your first one I close my eyes the room pitches this way in that you can tell the others that it was Habib he says I open my eyes watch him squeeze my other breast and remember who is this Habib he's he keeps talking about if this is your really first time he says is a tricky one he unbuckles his belt once before she sold me used Goods the Fisher lips man remove he remove my my dress I
097wait for myself to protest but nothing happens Habib says Habib is good with the ladies then he's on top of me and sometimes in something but an insistent is between my legs he grants and struggles trying to fit himself inside me will be sunbed for us I am torn into oh yes he says haunting Habib is getting bad I hear coming from a distance a study and register that this is the sound of a headboard hitting the wall after a while I don't know how long another sound interrupts the rhythm of the headboard I know this noise from somewhere I worked very hard to make it out finally I identify it it was the muffled sound of sobbing now you wouldn't handle this book to your 12 year old child and have it read it
098to their friends right well this book is available to 12 year olds at albiani Middle School I'm asking action from this board to remove books like this from our school libraries will have no academic value whatsoever what we do have are traumatic description of rape prostitution pornography and gender dysphoria is because followed by Jacqueline Ortiz well I was a young student many years ago in 1949 at Franklin Grammar School I love the Franklin I love the Elk Grove High School and you know it's interesting in 1949 Toby Johnson was the principal at uh Franklin grammar school and his wife Pauline taught us how to read and then the second grade um their daughter came out Susan I eventually married age 40. but anyway the reason I'm hearing to say this I heard something this morning
099I I was riding I'm just an old Wrangler riding through and I got thrown off my horse when I heard this somebody shared with me something that was um read in one of the books about two young boys or something like this learning how to have sex with one another with I don't even want to go in the details it was shocking when I heard that I said my golly you know whoever wrote this who does not realize what happens because there's a spirit that comes in and it changes that child and you want mental health you talk about mental health problems that are going to perplex these young kids when they get into this kind of off-colored behavior it's it's going to be crazy but you know there was a young man who was
100walking along uh in this Alleyway and he saw a pornographic magazine and he kind of looked at it and he got captivated by this and you know eventually he got deeper and deeper into it 40 young ladies were raped and killed because that was Ted Bundy you know so what has happened I I just can't believe when I heard some of the stuff that is happening but I want to tell you something amazing something amazing that's gonna happen God is going to come on the scene he is going to come and say God put on my heart he is going to invade Elk Grove High schools with his love his love is coming in there baby and I'll tell you stuff there's going to be a cleansing take place because people are going to want
101the goodness and mercy of God's love I'll taste them if it beats anything has to offer and anyway I really feel so sorry for these people because there is a agenda to write this kind of stuff because they want kids to get trapped they're going to get trapped in this kind of behavior so anyway um I I I know good things are going to happen yet y'all's gonna have the finals say so Wranglers keep writing tough on the trail thank you sir Jacqueline Ortiz followed by Heather delse um I Heard a teacher say that she would like us to avoid from reading the passages that are explicit because they're very difficult to hear but we're adults and you're offering them to children but I think that's precisely the point if it's difficult for us then
102why are we allowing children to be exposed to it I'm going to read some sections from a book and they're not going to be as graphic as other ones so you might you know think it's nothing but it's still pretty pretty strong what does it mean to lose it you might be wondering what it even means for you as a queer person to lose your virginity the way straight kids usually see it he sticks his penis in her vagina and voila they're both divirginated but for queers it can be a little more complicated sure you lose your virginity the first time you have sex with another person but how do queer people Define sex is it oral sex penetration any kind of genital contact does a tongue have to be involved or do fingers count
103the answer is that there is no answer or rather it's up to you to come up with the answer this is another great part of being queer you get to decide what sex is to you you also don't need to play into any pre-established gender roles regarding your sexuality you get to make up your own rules you like to do what exploration is a big part of sex and you might find that you're into some weird stuff although if you only knew how many people were into quote weird stuff you'd realize it's not so weird some people like to role play pretend to act like someone or something else during sex dress up like animals tie each other up or wear leather and high heels hey whatever makes your toes tingle there's no reason to
104be judgmental about the consensual sexual activity someone enjoys just make sure that you don't take things too far and end up hurting yourself or the person you're with playing with ropes knives or other potentially dangerous objects can cause serious injury and role-playing if it gets out of hand or becomes an end unto itself may cause psychological or emotional stress to the other person if he or she doesn't understand what's going on this is troublesome this is not good I I I I challenge you if any of you would choose to read this to your grandchildren to the Friends of your children to your children themselves and if you don't think it's appropriate for them then why would you expose other people's children to it and also not even tell them thank you other develops followed
105by Charlotte rhaeger Reiger Rieger apologize my name is Heather delves and my children have all attended egusd schools starting back in 2003. I also am alarmed about many of the books in our Middle School and High School libraries in Elk Grove please hear me we are not interested in books being banned Banning books results in reading material being completely unavailable to all people instead we are asking the books that are inappropriate for children be removed from Elk Grove School libraries surely we can all agree that not every book that has ever been published in the world is appropriate for schools otherwise our school libraries could have a whole spectrum of pornography in them and since I'm fairly certain we can agree on that we are only left with defining exactly which books are appropriate for
106students and which are not if you have young children here with you tonight or are watching via Zoom or they are watching via Zoom you may want to cover their ears for the remainder of my comment I am completely mortified to read the excerpt that I will be reading aloud tonight but it's the least I can do if our students can find these books on their Library shelves the passage I'm reading is from a book in Toby Johnson's middle school library entitled out of the darkness the book is about three young men who work with horses and have threesomes with each other in other words they all three have sex together at the same time and I quote directly from the book no sweetheart I don't want you to beg Dan takes his hand off
107Jeff's hip long enough to grab another condom and rip the wrapper open you hear that Jeff I'm ready for you I want to you so bad he Smooths the condom one-handed and grabs the lube using his teeth again so he doesn't have to take his fingers away from Jeff's ass he Smooths the lube over all over his and brings it forward to just touch Jeff just beneath where Dan's fingers disappear I just want to know that you want it too he leans forward a bit and nips at Jeff's shoulder blades We're Not Making Love here Jeff this isn't one of our artsy cuddle fests he bites again a little harder this time a little harder and Jeff arches is back again and swears if you want us man you need to take us Evan wants
108you man he wants you hard and fast wants you to slam him into him and make you feel it and Jeff I can barely stand it back here I keep thinking of you yourself on my the way it's going to feel to know that every time you pull off of me you're going to be driving into him Dan pulls his fingers in out in and lines himself up letting the tip of his just begin to push in just do it Jeff come on just and then Jeff does it The Sound he makes is more like a gasp than Aurora but Dan doesn't think to complain Jeff slams forward into Evan and Dan moves with him keeping himself lined up and then leaning forward so that when Jeff pulls out he's impaling himself on Dan again
109in a middle school Library I'm asking you to share leaders to show leadership and humility by being willing to change course and remove these harmful books our kids are counting on you thank you Charlotte Riga followed by Ronald Owens Jr so the first book that was described lucky is not in Middle Schools it's in elementary schools it's in five elementary schools let me read the Webster's definition of pornography materials such as books or photographs including cartoons that depicts erotic behavior and is intended to cause sexual excitement so one book that's found in our high schools um we all are discouraged to have to read this crap to you well this one describes sex apps the smartphone smartphone Revolution understood that like anything in the 21st century we'd eventually want to be downloading sex it wouldn't
110surprise me if in a couple of years we can download the idea of sex so convincingly that we won't have to bother with the messy bodily fluids and pesky emotional stuff at all it is fact that although grown-up adult types are sometimes looking for a serious relationship sometimes they're just looking for a spot for sexy fun time you may come to establish that men in Men in particular do seem to quite like sex so how sex acts work upload a tiny pic of yourself to the app the app works out your location the app tells you who's the near who the nearest people are any gender or sexuality are then you chat with them because you're near it is easy to meet up with them if you're looking for the ubiquitous fund word sex shag
111and the f word ironically are banned from most of these sex apps being be upfront about it and then no one's feelings can be hurt the benefit the great sex app debate the benefits are obvious quick easy and uncomplicated sex I've met a variety of interesting people through sex apps they're predominantly used for sex though they're sold to us as social networking apps but we all know what they really are for it's a bit like selling a dildo under a pretext that it's a sole use of a draft excluder I don't have a problem with that aspect of it people want casual sex than something like grinder is a must another major plus to sex apps in the and they allowed a degree of anonymity so guys and girls who aren't out can meet people
112this way without having to self-identify by entering a bar or any place if you're horny then that's what that you want to do sex meet meet the trick in the public place for a drink first that way you can assess if you fancy them in the flesh and they are not Twitchy eyed Freakazoid before letting them into your house we're not wanting the Books banned we're just wanting the inappropriate age content taken out of the school library the movies are rated the books are not they need to be rated thank you for this time thank you Ronald Owens Jr followed by Rhett good evening I am a concerned Citizen and taxpayer I have lived in this District since November 2003. I understand Sheldon High School Monterey Trail High School and Edward Harris Middle School students
113can check out the book titled the book is gay 20 171 displays an illustration of a boy with arrows pointing to his lips his nipples his testicles his neck his ears his skin and his penis page 171 instructs young readers how to sexually stimulate themselves through touching kissing playing massaging licking and stroking the Motion Picture Association rates movies are persons under a certain age not admitted by parent or adult Guardian the mpa rates movies X persons under a certain age not admitted yet children can check out this pornographic book at their school library as I stated when I first appeared before you two weeks ago school is a place for children this book is being presented to children it's obscene it's pornographic it should be removed from the library Juno Dawson the British author who
114wrote This Book is gay was born on June 10 1981 as James Dawson Dawson transitioned in 2015. Dawson began hormonal transition in early 2016. Dawson is 41 Dawson is an adult Dawson and adelt had the right to live whatever life Dawson wants to live Dawson nor anyone else does not have the right to usurp parental rights Dawson nor anyone else does not have the right to groom anyone else's children questions who found this book who approved purchasing it how much did it cost how many were ordered how many other similar books are shelved in the district school libraries for children to read please email me the response to my questions sex is a personal topic that should be discussed by parents with their children no one else nowhere else schools are supposed to educate children
115by teaching them how to think not indoctrinate children by imposing on them what to think thank you thank you my last speaker tonight my comments that I just read are here oh would you hand them to miss Avalos please she'll make sure the board gets a copy thank you and I saw Mr I saw Mr Hoffman take note that you wanted an email response thank you very much it's all right if that Podium yeah ma'am ma'am we want to make sure people can hear you can you pull that microphone down is that okay yes all right thank you um I agree with pretty much about these pornography books so I'm not gonna say because they have pretty much said everything I agree with but I need some questions first who exactly decides what books go
116into the library for the schools are there only maybe the librarian one or two people and that's not right to have just one person decide what goes into the school libraries do you have a group of parents or teachers to decide together I think it maybe you need to get a group of parents because parents have the right to know what the children are reading from the school library so parents and teachers Maybe um and what is the criteria that she that is decided how to get a book in the library I have no idea and I'm sure there's a lot of people have no clue how you get a book in the library I'm a grandma and I have um four grandchildren and they're very Innocents but right now they're going to lose that
117innocence because of books and things like this and other things that are happening in the school what's really saddens my heart um the other thing that I'm worried about is bullion two of my grandchildren have been really bullied one of them got beat the crap out of at school and did nothing to get deserve it and I don't really think there's a lot doing for against the bullies you know there's a bully that beats you up then they both get in trouble but that person didn't start it and I'm going to tell you right now somebody hits one of my grandkids I tell them hit them right back because I am not going to have them stand there and get beat to death that's unreasonable but maybe you guys liked it if somebody hit you
118maybe you'd just stand there and take the beating I don't know I'm just curious and the other thing is I have a grandson that goes to John Earhart we moved here from another state 11 years ago and it was a really good school the principals oh I was Mom and Dad and me were so happy to have these kids there now I'm sad that they're there because that school has gone down so bad I'm embarrassed and ashamed nothing is done about a lot of stuff bullying they don't they don't get in trouble so it's just really sad to see how a lot of the education and everything is going down it's sad because when I went to school I was happy and innocent but the children today do not get that thank you thank you
119Mr Hoffman if you could make sure someone responds to the last speaker's questions about uh book buying decisions thank you yes um also I would like to get a list of those elementary schools a list of the elementary schools when you write your name is also through the chair yes sir yeah so I like to make the motion to meet in closed session in the boardroom right here government code section 54957 Public Employee discipline dismissal release and more complaint regarding this issue right now I'm making that mugs to have a second I like to make it I need a second Mr Perez your motion Mr Pettis your motion is out of order and we we have an issue with you even attending closed session so that's ironic I'm going to call her recess until 8
12015. thank you so we can't vote on it I I can't get a second because out of order we can continue the meeting thank you okay folks we are going to reconvene our meeting and continue uh next item is a consent calendar I neglected to say at the end of public comment I know we have some new faces some of you may not have heard the the public comment instructions at the beginning of the meeting so I just want to make clear that you understand we are legally prohibited from responding to comments made during public comment on uh items that are not on the agenda so that's where you know when folks ask specific questions or if there's a specific issue we need to follow up on we make sure that that happens but beyond
121that if you're expecting a response we are not able to give it to you just want to be clear everyone understood that um with that we will move on to the consent agenda Miss levasser do we have any public comments via zoom on the consent agenda Madam President we have no public comments via Zoom for the consent agenda thank you Miss levas for Miss Albion do we have any blue cards on the consent agenda no we do not miss chairman I have a question sir we're in the middle of in our government you're going to hold your question you're gonna have to hold your questions we're dealing with the consent agenda right now okay yes this is okay issue all right go ahead sir in our consent um issue um section of our agenda where
122in in our governance booklet can I seek information on how to do a complaint under under one of these issues that was that was brought up tonight sounds like a very reasonable question sir unfortunately I can't cite a document and page number right now while I'm running this meeting so I'm also like a legal well I'm still talking legal I'm still trying to answer your question so Mr Hoffman and I will confer and make sure that you get the resource that you're asking for and I would like uh spots as soon as possible because you know I I mentioned government cold section and that's that's very important that we go by educational code California Education Code issues complaints and follow educational code that's correct sir that's why I've been trained on it multiple times and
123invited you to join me you know exactly I've mentioned government code section 54 957 I want to meet in closed session and request information and we have legal counsel here on this board also share your comments do not pertain to the item that we're on so I need to ask you to please stop we are on the consent agenda I'm going to call for a motion too items one through nine hold on I'm sorry we have multiple people talking at the same time of consent agenda items second I like to pull an idol for consent what is it sir um first of all I have two issues uh we we received the board policy updates I need numbers sir I need numbers first well this is not on here if the issue is if you're
124not speaking them on the consent agenda you may not make whatever comments you're talking about we can only talk to the item that we're on right now okay but sometimes we leave things agenda items talk about this at the end I want to pull out number two job description or updates okay do we have an amended motion I move approval of item one and three through nine second item has a first and a second all in favor please signify by saying aye aye I opposed those items we you didn't raise any objection to those sir okay um let the record show that on all items except number two they are approved on a one two three four five six two one vote no seven to one wait five to one point five to one one
125absence vote um Mr Bettis will you speak to number two on consent please well this the title of this new position we're going to have is coordinator curriculum and professional learning that position is actually not on the agenda well it will be it will be in a feature agenda but it's not on the city from the agenda you need to speak to that in Center number two it's right here number two something the report for an agenda he'd say it's there's two jobs and updates yes but those job descriptions aren't the one you're referring to that one's going to be on a future agenda item it didn't make it to this agenda we we had planned to but it's not on this agenda looks like you're looking at a draft version number two there's a
126whole series of uh job descriptions okay go down here put up with Mr Perez we are meant to read the agenda before the meeting takes place so it sounds like you don't have an objection to this item because you have not read it I did read okay all right I move approval item number two do we have a second second all in favor of approving item two on consent please signify by saying aye aye opposed measures approved unanimously thank you next item is our race and educational Equity update I'd like to call on Miss lavasser to see if there are any public comments via Zoom for this item Madam president there are no public comments via zoom on this item thank you Miss albiani do we have any blue cards for this item we do
127not have blue cards thank you I'd like to invite Miss levasser up to begin the presentation good evening Madam president board members Mr Trent superintendent Hoffman Miss Avalos I am thrilled tonight to present with my team here an update on our race and educational equity as you know many of you have seen our egusd learning vision and goals we did not point out one specific goal tonight because we believe Equity lies in all of these goals I do want to draw your attention to our educational Equity framework we believe this Roots all of our work that we do in our district and tonight's presentation is going to focus on two of these foundations the student or excuse me the school family and Community relationships foundation and our student centered support tonight's presentation format you are
128going to have the privilege of hearing about several of our programs uh under this educational Equity framework tonight you will hear from Mr Jones about the different ways that we are supporting our young men of color you're going to hear from Miss Tammy Silvera a little more in information about our safe student and family empowerment centers our safe centers you're going to hear from Miss Lemay about our newcomer welcome centers and how they support our students and families you'll get to hear about our Community Partners and how we are evaluating all this work and then we'll share a little bit about the future so I'm going to turn it over now to Mr Jones good evening Madam president Mr board members I'm sorry to interrupt you that black button if you push the top of
129it it'll push the podium up and it just looked like you were stooping a little bit is that the top oh that's okay good that's all right I know my uh colleagues a little shorter than I am never want to be comfortable so now they know how to fix it for themselves good evening Madam president board members superintendent Hoffman and Miss Avalos I'm honored to be here to talk to you a little bit about the work that's going on in the head Equity Department um first I'll talk about our young men Rising program which is uh chiefly coordinated by Mr Roberto Robles who's in attendance thank you Mr Robles for for being here and providing much of the information for this presentation um the young men Rising program began with a pilot at Jackman Middle
130School I'm a little over a calendar year ago it has since expanded to Valley high school and Pleasant Grove High School on this calendar year Valley High School was selected uh chiefly in part because it's a feeder jogging Middle School is a feature Valley so wanting to maximize a little bit on the theater pattern and the students that go there and Pleasant Grove High School was selected in collaboration with the staff member there who identified a need to support some of the young men of color that attend that school the ryt program will improve your tomorrow is a program that's been operating the district for over a decade the air and Equity department is has recently become the district liaison for the program there's many schools that are involved including calvine High School Florence High
131School Monterey Trail High School Rio cazadero High School Valley High School William Bayer High School Edward Harris Middle School James Rutter middle school and Samuel Jackson Middle School and these groups were created to focus support on our meals of color not to the exclusion of other groups of color but with the focus on males who identify as black or African-American and this program Focus areas were chosen to support the positive academic social emotional cultural and personal development of the participants these programs are we have charged to the student participants next I'd like to talk a little bit about uh the inaugural young men of color empowerment conference that took place at cosumas Oaks High School on March 4th 2023 once again chiefly coordinated by Mr Robles um the conference that began with one current and
132three former male students from Elk Grove unified school district the panelists got an opportunity to share a little bit about their Journeys while in Elk Grove unified and after some of the other presenters included Dr Joe from Sac State Roberto cuantes and Renee Grande from UC Davis Danza Azteca and I am impact which focused on some Community circles we had a keynote speaker and we're honored to have Mr Ardell lamond Harrison who is currently the vice president from the second World chapter of NAACP he was able to impart some words of wisdom for the participants student participants were present from Eddie Whittle in high school in the district they all grew the windy and rainy Saturday to be out there to grow Community during the presentations and the workshops as well as a provided lunch
133this event was also free of charge to all the student participants next I'd like to invite out Miss Silvera to talk a little bit about the district safe centers okay thank you thank you thank you CJ and thank you madam president the board superintendo Hoffman Miss Avalos for having me back um here to share a little bit more information about the student and family empowerment office and some of the work that we do to support all of our students across the Elk Grove unified school district um we are here to um share a little bit about um some of the services that we provide to other families uh Beyond those who are unhoused and and dealing with um housing and security um but we're dealing with other economic challenges and other hardships that they face
134um first I want to introduce you to uh our team who operate out of our two centers at both Valley high school and David Reese Elementary we currently have um two social workers that are part of the team and six Regional program excuse me Regional team program technicians they serve our district regionally by feeder pattern offering Case Management Services connecting families to resources who are referred to us by school teachers by counselors or who may seek their way to our centers through their own volition because they're they're needing support for themselves and their families we also have two program assistants who help with our referral process keep the ship afloat in our office um this year we have had an academic intervention teacher and we have two project implementers who are launching some new efforts
135at Valley high school and our other high schools to support students in our programs that need additional assistance with graduation with completing FAFSA and this year we'll be launching our first additional effort to support those students through summer school and their credit recovery program um we also have two family advocates who support some of the work that's more Global so we offer district-wide Dental screenings for our students at elementary schools in partnership with the early Smiles program we we host some of our larger scale events like the Kohl's child spree which helps provide students new clothes and shoes and other items that they need to start the school year and then they also help to support some of our large events like our holiday giving season events that the whole District participates in and supports
136and then we have a school counselor on staff who helps to analyze and assess students who are eligible for graduation exemption and communicates that information to the schools so this is just a little bit about our team and while we do provide a lot of support for our students and families experiencing homelessness we are here to support all of our families who are facing these challenges some of the resources that we provide specifically are backpacks and school supplies we get a lot of requests from our campuses we will deliver backpacks straight to the campus or we'll do home and porch visits if needed to bring supplies to families that can also include referrals to the closed closet the food banks in the area we have hygiene kits and other critical needs and basic needs items
137like sleeping bags and other things that we can provide to families we make referrals for medical dental and vision and help families navigate and Link through and to their insurance providers some of our families may have medical but it can be really difficult to navigate that system and we can help support them navigating those systems we help make referrals usually using our care Solace referral system for individual and family counseling referrals but we also have other Community Partners like La Familia that we will make referrals to and um and as described earlier we do support our District's homeless education program as I provided information on that in a prior meeting we also work with the Department of Human Assistance to help our families connect to resources available to them and a whole host of other
138Community Partners and agencies to support those families so just adding on to what was shared earlier in terms of the additional resources we provide to the district at large for all of our students and Families and I'm going to hand it over to Lizette Lemay our director for family and Community engagement good evening Madam board president board members superintendent Hoffman Miss Avalos I am excited to be before you this evening to share with you a little bit about our newcomer welcome centers these centers were created in response to a large influx of refugee and newcomer families most specifically from Afghanistan who were resettled and relocated in the in Elk Grove we were able to obtain two grants that provide both Federal and State dollars that help us provide these additional supports to sites to our
139families and our students the welcome centers also serve as information hubs for families who are new to our country and new to our U.S education system Additionally the centers provide wraparound services and help families and students get acclimated to their new environments the vision was always to have four welcome centers in the regions with the highest needs so we were able to start with by opening a center at Jackman middle school and one also at Florin High School these two centers are actually shared spaces on those campuses and provide the same Services as our Laguna Creek High School and Monterey Trail High School newcomer centers that are now finally opening after many delays related to manufacturing shipping Etc the Laguna Creek and Monterey Trail welcome centers are actually Standalone spaces that are located in Portables
140on those campuses and again provide the same all four centers provide the same services to families to students and to staff in those centers we have an amazing full-time staff of multilingual multi-talented amazing human beings who are right here and we lovingly refer to them as our welcome Dream Team thank you for staying um so our our staff have at to date have sorted over 500 families and students they speak Spanish Dari Farsi poshtu and Cantonese and some of our staff have also lived the refugee experience so they are able to relate to and connect with our families who are resettling and getting acclimated similar to what you heard Miss Silvera say about the safe centers the welcome centers also offer a variety of supports to families and students most of what we are helping
141our families and students with are enrollment and I want to preface all this by saying these humans back here these are the boots on the ground they will go and meet families where they are and connect them with whatever resources are needed so when I say help with enrollment they're there to help translate the forms help throw out the forms make sure our families understand what they need to bring when they are enrolling and if need be go to the schools with the families they're providing interpretation and translation supports they're connecting families to Community Resources for basic needs such as food clothing and housing assistance they're also supporting with immunizations making sure our families know where to go referring them to our District's Immunization Clinics and again if need be showing up to the clinics
142to support with interpretation translation and then we're providing mental health supports as well we have our family mental health therapists who are working closely with our program Educators to provide some support to our moms so they are running moms groups to help build some connection and Community oftentimes our moms are the most isolated due to language barrier and lack of Transportation in the moms groups they are doing things such as processing trauma through ART as well as other social and emotional Wellness activities again I just want to reiterate that our staff in the welcome centers are the boots on the ground they are meeting our families right where they are to provide the supports that are needed none of this work would be possible without the collaborations that we have with various departments across our
143district including our safe centers our English Learners English learner services department and HR just to name a few I'd like to highlight that our English learner services department has been collaborating with our welcome dream team and providing some family right nights at some of our sites where families are telling their stories and we know there's power in sharing our stories and then through some partnership or collaboration with human resources we were able to provide some targeted recruitment uh specifically at Kennedy Elementary School and from that effort we were able to actually hire two of our newcomer um family members one is now working in our food and nutrition services department and the other is working with Ms silvera's safe center team and just like our um across District collaborations are important so are the collaborations
144we have with the various Community organizations and so on the screen or on in front of you you'll see several logos that represent just some of the Community Partners that we work with throughout the community I'd like to highlight for example egase or our Elk Grove Adult Community Education Center we work closely with them in providing English as a second language classes for some of our families and students we work with moss Social Services Foundation this is an Islamic organization that provides Social Services type supports with a strong emphasis on the Muslim Community and one of our dream team members discovered a Hidden Gem right here in our own Community it's called almi spa and they are another Food Bank among other services that they provide but they're a local non-profit providing emergency food relief
145and the food that they provide is halal for our families who need that um and those are just some of the Community Partners that we have that make this work make us able to do the work that we do as with all egusd programs safe at equity and face are constantly evaluating everything we do this is to ensure that we continue to improve our programs and the services that we are offering families students and staff we work really closely with our research and evaluation department and use logic models identifying student outcomes that we expect to see we use quantitative and qualitative measures to monitor our programs to make sure that what we expect to be implemented is actually what's being implemented sometimes we formalize that in what's called a program implementation Continuum that's a mouthful
146we just call it pick and through these efforts we're able to see if there's a positive relationship between implementation and outcomes and if there's a positive pattern between inflammation implementation and outcomes then we know that we can deepen or expand the work that we are doing and likewise we're not seeing such a strong positive correlation we know that we can adjust so that we're able to gain more impact and adjust our full measures more fully to capture the program outputs that we would hope for so looking forward some things that we have on the horizon with the young men of rising young man rising program we are looking at a possible expansion into the elementary World specifically Hermann leinbach and when that happens I would actually complete the feeder pattern or those schools a summer
147student Summit peer-to-peer mentorships and then some continued collaboration between our departments to provide some Family Enrichment series we're hoping to combine the conference that Ed Equity put on along with the conference that face put on and have one big family conference to offer and with our newcomer welcome centers we are excited about doing a grand opening so yes they're open and they're operational but we would like to make sure our community is aware that the centers are there they know where they are how to access them and what services are provided so be on the lookout for an invitation to a grand opening and lastly we are looking forward to Future opportunities to continue our targeted recruitment collaborating with our human resources department thank you are there any questions thank you for an excellent presentation
148I expect we will have some questions and comments I'll go first to Mr track any questions or comments sir oh yeah it was a great presentation thank you I just want to make a quick comment on the uh young man uh color the first conference I went there it was a great conference um I really liked all the many workshops they had and I had a really good time being um being able to speak with everyone there and I look forward to what they have to do in the future thank you Mr track I'll go to Mr Fortuna and then I'll go down the line thank you um Tammy don't make her cry again Carmen oh yeah I don't want to put you on this spot okay and I don't expect you to respond right
149now okay but what I would like to have and I'm sure the other board members would also appreciate it is a listing of positions that would allow you to expand the services that you're providing um both Within um her homeless and for Foster well Foster youth is a different right so I don't want to speak for for my web and the program specialist who oversees Foster youth I think John might be able to speak to both our teams specifically yeah as was mentioned where that's a good question and we can get you that certainly the positions but it's right now we're evaluating right we've especially with the um the growth of the homeless education program uh through some additional funding and so right now we're taking a look at the services that we're providing what
150was working now and what we're going to uh project for the future yeah and as far as Sports and I know this is yeah and I know the assessment is ongoing that at a point in time uh do you propose to submit that to the board for review we would yes so after our evaluation like all the programs that would that would go to the board we would say this is this is what we are proposing we'll go through that process as we project growth if that's what's needed okay well I you know uh after Tammy's incredible presentation last board meeting uh certainly uh it appeared that my colleagues were sensitive to those children and families and their needs and the fact that more could be done and uh our new Deputy is already preparing
151for Budget actions coming up so as the board gets to take a look at budget it would be really helpful to know um what enhancements would provide what for the program but thank you guys Mr yang yeah um good evening and um thank you for the presentation as a refugee um coming to this country at age 12. um you know all the programs here and um and what we are providing to these kids you know in really hit homes for me and um you know I graduated from Valley High um 96. and that the one thing that I remember um just like yesterday was uh job center I've really believed that that would kind of shape me to uh who I am today um as far as um professional work and um but I don't
152quite remember um getting much more help than that and um you know I had um you know parents who couldn't speak English so you know they didn't involve in my school at all and um you know I felt very lonely um isolated you know um from the school but I had some friends who looked like me and other ethnic group like blacks White um so what I'm trying to tell you guys is that and ladies is that um you know these programs are great um just make sure that you know our Outreach our process of um being transparent uh being there for them it's it's you know um about par you know um because that's what we need to do we need to make sure that uh our service will reach them and they will
153be identified as needed as refugees um as kids who need development um that's to me is the most important and as we are in this infant stage I know that there's going to be Improvement through triners data and so forth and that would not be possible if we don't get as many um folks or students parents that we could help so that they could give us feedback so thank you for what you do um I really appreciate this these programs for students and parents and um one last thing that I would say is and has spoken with one of the co-founders for iyt he's he did mention that they also serve Asian students and I would love for you folks to reflect on that as well because it sounds very um exclusive and and you
154know so I think that because the program is provide for uh other ethnic groups as well so be more inclusive more transparent and that would be more um more effective as an overall for all of us so thank you for what you do thank you I made note of that so thank you thank you Mr Yang salbiani thank you very much for the presentation um it's always wonderful to hear what we're able to do for for our children and our families and the expansion and the um thoughtfulness included in it and thank you to the people who are there every day um we greatly appreciate you Mr Vargas ah yes thank you again for the presentation um okay it's program implementation Continuum do they get that okay pick okay um still still learning all of
155the acronyms um so you said you have uh picks already set up for the safe and the Welcome Center we have a pick for the Department of Family and Community engagement and the different programs that are taking place at the school sites okay um so I don't necessarily have a question related to that um my request is I would love to see those um and I just think it'd be useful as we get ready for um seeing the evaluations that come forward so I'm just being a nerd um but I appreciate the presentation Mr Bettis anything I support this program 100 percent and I know for a fact that we have more money more funds to expand this program so it's a matter of just proposing it and you need four votes on this board
156get approved and you mentioned that you had federal state monies because they know that you know the the educational flow of refugee programs was through Congress and all that but he didn't he didn't put the amount and also the criteria of how you chose those schools that most likely I know it's probably the number of students geographically in those areas but yet yeah I need you to put that on paper because you know people look at our reports and say how what was the criteria they might ask me you know why did you choose a floor in high school why did you choose Pleasant Grove why did you choose Jackson Middle School because the numbers are there you know so we need data again we need data information to drive our decisions and and make
157let the community know that drives our decisions and the criteria for funding that's where the problem is that's where okay a big thing I'm going to say again uh my history how I developed a newcomer Center for Sac City Unified School District Miss Fong and I where it was a pull-up program South paying classroom seventh and 8th grader uh we'll see wood yeah I don't know if it still exists but you know that's a that's a model which people went to throughout the state to look at is there a chance that we could have a pull-out program seventh grade South contained classroom do we have the numbers I can't speak to that I don't have that in front of me I do know that we provide our El students with uh lots of support so
158but I can take note and get back to you yes because that's uh you have two it's a team teaching approach yeah Saturday graders and and you're going to see through this student population you know they may be in seventh and 8th grade or sixth grade but some of these students are on the high school level of math and and I use some of those students as peer tutors and uh and the other thing for you people back there family visits are very important uh potlucks on Fridays for lunch and or dinner whatever in cultural events show them that the cultural linguistic uh is important and and take pride in it that we we had done in those things and you see these students that are you know kind of inverted come out of the
159shells Bloom and because they have these hidden talents that you know we don't you know you know seek or you know very uh you'd be surprised in the Arts and and painting and you know they're excellent um I would like to see more like evaluation outcomes and all these programs numbers I know you've mentioned numbers of the how many students participated in a conference you know 93 students registered but yet prophetam showed up and came to it that it needs to be in sentence give them incentives give them bus tokens give them 20 bucks or a card to the restaurant or something fast food or you know something like that they could say oh here a movie passed you know that that drives kids over there um also you know uh we need transportations of
160costs you're going to realize that a lot of these kids are babysitting their younger siblings and maybe that's an issue that why you didn't have so much of a you know Big Show in that situation there's all kinds of reasons why they didn't show um you mentioned uh all these schools regarding these the these programs in your list you need to list them improve your tomorrow you mentioned you mentioned Earl orally we served 695 students today school year we need those not those nine high schools listed your presentations and how many students uh participate in each high school and what type of support you give them because like when you work for the state level Federal level they want numbers and oh and also face-to-face contacts how many are you providing and they divide those
161numbers into the total funding and they see how much it costs per child just like the state of California does and prisoners you know they do all that stuff so uh you know when funding comes yeah it's the ones that do the best Outreach out there in the community in the communities you have excellent uh program Focus um networking oh parent again you know this District's week again I would say in front of this board and you know ask this board how much do we spend on parent training parent education empowerment you know how much money we do we don't compare to other school districts and that's a very important studies say you educate the woman in that family you educate the whole family so get those parents those mothers into Adult Educational courses not
162you know on campus not over there on Gerber Road you know that's too far out of place out of sight if you could provide a parent education adult education classes right on the educational site have those teachers go to those elementary schools junior high or high schools right there and because of the Fountain of what we call it a distance it's distance and you know the families within the community it could happen takes time and energy but it could happen provide lunch provide dinners like I said um I noticed that my naps Workshop legislators that probably pass the legislation it's going to be mandatory financial literacy in our high schools and and so that's coming I'm glad you started that get on board to have that curriculum develop because it's going to be a matter
163of time that's going to be in our classrooms and the other ones I've been home bring that up again um ethnic studies have ethnic studies be culturally pride of your culture your language you know get cultural things in there hot luck earlier okay Elementary that's two grants how much well how much would those grants those Federal grant States total can you or a newcomer yes programs I don't again have the exact number there's one from the state and there's one from the feds yeah but we can provide you that as well okay last page 12 you have the evaluation of programs attendance is the number one uh indicator once you have those kids in schools are they coming every day at the Ada and that's showing that they they enjoy it they feel comfortable and
164they're learning so you know and English language Learners you know you have to provide that type of services I did you I didn't see that in there are you providing that and the centers can you say that again Mr President in English language uh horses English Second Language we don't provide that for students we we connect them with tutoring and we make sure that we have you know we have El coaches and uh you know across all the entire District K-12 and we also um connect families to yeah English learner classes as well through the Adult Ed and then through um some other avenues okay well that's why our program newcomer saying was so uh proactive and got a lot of support we actually had those you know 20 to 25 students in the classroom
165English language Learners they they weren't you know they went to the regular gym they went to the regular lunch they uh but they had English language classes within that Center so it's very important they actually have their and and tutors to help them on those subject now that they've attended regular math uh English we provide that our only English learner curriculum of study but like I said you're doing a good job you're getting you know eventually a matter of time that you're gonna load our community and be prepared for another Invasion oh I shouldn't say Invasion but there's going to be another uh well people throughout the world you know sedan and we might have some people from Africa come in there's things parts of the world a lot of conflict so be prepared for
166that population and and some other ones because of uh world world problems thank you one of the many things that I love about this school district is the diversity so we will always welcome everyone foreign about 10 minutes I need you to wrap up thank you very much for extending my time much appreciated I always appreciate it when you speak to the actual agenda item that we're on um I will keep my comments brief because we have a lot of work ahead um I'm so appreciative well first I want to give another shout out to Mr Robles we got some information about this work ahead of time um in there it said that um with the young men Rising program that he's getting an average of 25 middle schoolers showing up for weekly meetings for
167personal development I think that is outstanding so congratulations to you um um you know this this work is is deep and it is slow when you're doing it right so you know that's why I think that's a really impressive number and I know that there are plans to to expand that work so I'm really excited to see what comes um I won't speak to the safe centers really because we we heard so much about that and we had a recent presentation about them I want to speak to the newcomer welcome centers a little bit um well actually this applies to both of those I'm just I'm really encouraged by the responsiveness to the actual barriers right and serving this population that is the one that we are most likely to miss to not even pull
168into our system to be able to serve in any way and that we are most likely to lose so I'm just I'm so grateful for the granularity um of of the services and and of the support um and uh thank you so much I I echo my my colleagues interest and evaluation to see where we can refine um in resource questions to see where we can better support so thank you all so much for the work that you do thank you next item is bargaining units do we have any bargaining units wishing to address the board I'm not seeing any so I'm going to move on next item is one of our two reports for tonight measure M General obligation bond series Bond sale and issuance at least purchase financing plan Miss Ambassador do we
169have any public comments via Zoom Madam President we have no public comments again soon Miss Albion any blue cards we have no blue cards thank you Miss Coates whenever you're ready all right well good evening Madam president trustee superintendent Hoffman Miss Avalos staff in public we were last here in March giving an overall facility update really a Showcase of what's been done over the last several years with our long-range facility master plan modernization and measure M and tonight we're here to provide an update on the financing plan um how we're going to finance the facility master plan with measure m and our community facility District the cfd I have um uh Lori Ranieri who is a familiar face in Elk Grove uh she is our chief executive officer for government financial services jpa which is
170uh a joint Power Authority with multiple districts really um looking to use best practice and I wanted to share that because it's it's recent and uh with the intentionality of uh Lori and her team in the jpa I think what you're going to see tonight is really resulting in a in a cost Savings of taxpayer dollars of over 220 million dollars very exciting um so the government financial service I gotta change my slides here jpa was founded on July 1st with Elk Grove being one of the founding members um you can see there on the screen the Sacramento County Office of Education schools Insurance Authority Capistrano Unified School District Davis Joint Unified School District Kern County Superintendent of Schools in Santa Clara Unified School District we're all founding members um and part of that gives
171Elk Grove just a lifetime membership on the executive board as part of that uh and so um Lori is going to be up here in just a minute but um before I bring her up just want to note that she has worked extensively in altgrove dating back to 1987 but really continuously for the last 13 years and addition to Lori being in the audience we also have Dan ruchia from Lozano Smith our bond counsel to assist in any presentation any questions that might come up so I'm going to bring Lori up to discuss measure M and our cfd and propose Bond sale process and our next steps welcome Miss rainery it's always good to see you and your assistants um well thank you glad to be here again and we're going to be brief tonight
172given the hour so I'll go kind of fast and if you want me to stop and go over anything you'll let me know I do want to say that you've not met this dog before this is Millie 11 months old in service dog school um and of course you are always very welcoming of my other dog Daisy who who passed away so glad to be here and I also want to thank my assistant who stepped out but my assistant Celestial Thomas who drove me tonight so I think we all know about measure M and what a tremendously positive response it received from the community over 70 percent yes vote and as a reminder the way that um our tax rates for measure M are established is that it is the rate is a ratio of
173Debt Service divide by assessed value there's some specifics to that um and I can answer questions as you know for any taxpayer who has a question and we do have that occasionally just be confident that if somebody stops in the grocery store and they have a question about their property tax bill we'll be glad to go over that with them and help them understand it um the next thing to show you is that we have always aligned our projections of the tax base with the district's development projections that lead to enrollment projections but one thing that has happened since measurement was passed is that we've seen really high tax-based growth and that has actually allowed us to have an even more efficient Bond plan because as the base grows for the tax rate um commitment
174that we had to the public we can actually pay the bonds off faster and pay less and as Ms Coates shared that is leading to tremendous taxpayer savings as with any debt the sooner we pay it off the less interest that we pay so then the next thing I want to cover is interest rates you've probably heard oh interest rates are up but a lot of people that's what they hear about like maybe one interest rate like mortgage interest rates are up one of the things you can see by this chart if you look on the far left and the far right you can see that our Benchmark interest rate is not that far from where it was when we were planning measure M but what you can see is what happened in the middle
175it went up it went down and what people react to I think a lot is rapid movement interest rates are moving all the time but one of the things that we did in our plan as a measure of conservatism is we took the historical volatility we assumed that we would experience volatility but we assumed it would all be on the high side and you might say well that's pretty conservative why do you assume that interest rates will go up and the reason is I don't need to assume if they go down if they go down my job's really easy if they go up it's when we have to make modifications to our plan and that leads us to a really good modification which is that we're actually issuing our bonds in one less series than
176we expected four series instead of five and so we're completing the bond issuance two years early with one less issuance which means we don't have the last cost of issuance for that last series so that's just pure savings Savings in The Upfront cost but then also on the on the back end because they'll be outstanding for Less years we have a lot less interest that we pay and we're amortizing faster um and we expect from our series 2023 bonds to net just over 130 million and we have just about that in projects plan of course we have some fund balance and some other sources so 130 million coming in from measure M from this sale that combined with funds on hand um we'll be able to cover this 132 million that you see here in
177print that is so small you cannot read it on the slide but this is our list you know when we look at it on screen we make it as big as we need to depending on your age so um uh and then of course as a reminder the bonds are repaid over time and one of the things that now that we're getting to our last measure M Bond sale two years early you can see we're making them shorter so usually what people do is they they go too short in the beginning they get longer and then everything gets more expensive and we saw other District it's making that error I think they didn't even realize it was there and we said hey wait let's squish it down so what we do is we do the
178longer bonds first because that's when we know what interest rates are the risk is uncertainty so we sold those first bonds we went with the longer term and we've been shortening ever since and aligning our call dates so that we'll have refi opportunities in the future and you can see here that our tax rates have been under our 38 dollar maximum projection so far um this is showing you through fiscal 2223 and we're projecting to be under that all the way through and then you can see that we have a reduction in three years on the total repayment term and then as you see the tax rates drop that's because we just have those last few years from our first series which we hope to be able to refi and you might say why do
179you hope we'll be able to refi what if interest rates go up and and we will have an opportunity to refi even if interest rates go up if they don't go up too much because when you refi you're not refine for the same term just like a mortgage if you do a 30-year mortgage and you refi to a 15-year it's a lower term so even if interest rates in general have gone up a 15-year rate may still be lower than the 30-year rate if that all made sense um so we do one of the things that we manage this measure M as I like to say a debt portfolio and we want it to operate just like an Investment Portfolio but everything is backwards instead of lasting a long time we want it to last
180a short time instead of earning a lot of interest we want to pay a little bit of interest but one thing is true is that we don't want to have transaction costs any more than we have to that's true and both portfolios and that's why it's so bad valuable to not have to do that fifth issuance and then the next thing to show you is that as we're wrapping up selling all the measure M bonds we still have a lot of available bonding capacity because the way the statute works that is a percentage of our assessed value our assessed value has been growing and we have well over 700 million of available bonding capacity um and that's right now and you can see that as that widens right as the assessed value of the tax
181base continues to grow we pay down our bonds we have more and more bonding capacities so what's the meaning of that if the district were to consider a future Bond measure there's plenty of room so wrapping up measure M we have 13 million dollars more from facilities than we originally budgeted our funds have been received faster and that's really important in this High inflationary environment because every dollar that comes in earlier can buy more and you can see some of our dollars came in as much as eight years earlier that's eight years of inflation that didn't operate on those expenses so this has been a really valuable element of our program and then again because we've been shortening our term and therefore reducing The Debt Service on our bonds we have that really big number
182of 222 million for taxpayer savings and I like it because it's easy for everyone to remember 222 million dollars of estimated taxpayer savings so far when we sell the measure the final series of measurement bonds I come back I'll give you the final results but that's our estimate right now so I'm going to quickly go over cfd number one and this goes back a long time 1987. it had an amendment um and we've used the money from um cfd number one and variety of ways and it's a little bit different with our Geo bonds we sell the bonds the taxpayers pay them back it's a lot more simple with the cfd we get the tax revenue and we can spend that in cash or we can borrow against it and by bar and against it
183that means we get the money from the borrowing and we use the revenue to pay off that debt and we've done that borrowing through both bonds and using another form of financing which is a lease purchase and as a reminder we've done certificates of participation we call them cops or cops those are all abbreviations and certificates of participation is simply the first three words of a sentence certificates of participation evidencing a proportionate interest in a lease so it's all lease financing it's just a way of borrowing money and capitalizing those bonds now why have we used all these I'm sorry those tax revenues why have we used these different methods it has to do with credit when we borrow money we want to borrow at the cheapest rate possible and one of the the elements
184of borrowing is what credit rating we have and you can see in this graph our our cfd number one bonds had an a rating and then they were downgraded to Triple B plus which is actually it sounds like a big drop it's just one level down but when that dropped and we were able to instead issue certificates of participation in 2016 at a higher credit rating we chose to do that because it allowed us to borrow at a better interest rate a lower interest rate because it was higher credit now you might say why why would it be better why would the the cops be able to go out better than at least a revenue Bond a lease Revenue bond is restricted to only being paid from the revenue that you've assigned to it a
185cop has to be paid from any source of funds and we went over this back in 2016 but and I probably had a Snoopy cartoon or something in that presentation to make it memorable but at that time this this is just the vagaries of the rating agencies and what their their information sellers they sell their opinion for mill millions of dollars so they they like the cops better so we like them better because that meant the market like them better which means we borrowed cheaper and so that's why we did it but now we have the opposite um our bonds have been upgraded and so now they've been upgraded to double a so if we borrow we'd rather do at least revenue bonds now why would it matter to us we plan to pay this
186off from the cfd under any circumstances we don't we're not planning that it's going to get tight and we're going to say oh we don't have enough tax revenue right but we do look at it you can see this on the next page 17 where you can see that our debt service coverage is um our revenue is 110 percent of our debt service coverage I'm sorry our debt service coverage is 110 percent of the revenue to The Debt Service that means we have 10 cushion in there so we don't have any concerns that our tax revenue will not be sufficient to pay the debt so if we sell these 2023 bonds we would sell them and they would be paid from the cfd revenue along with all of our existing debt does that make sense
187now our cops that are outstanding and our lease purchase still get the credit rating from the rating agencies meaning that the district is backing it up our other lease revenue bonds are just at that double A rating level so again taking that portfolio view just like you have an Investment Portfolio it might have different credit quality in it and you're trying to maximize your credit quality because that increases your value we're trying to maximize our credit quality because that reduces our cost of borrowing so we're estimating that based on the the market today and the amount of Revenue we have that we could generate um just under 22.4 million for facilities barring against our cfd revenues and we're planning to use the the money from cfd1 to supplement our projects our measurement projects are district-wide
188our cfd is district-wide so it's another source of funds to help with those projects and very important to us now at the same time we looked at can we refinance any of our bonds or measure M bonds they're too new they're not at the call dates they're not ready for refi but are at least revenue bonds have been outstanding for a long time they're starting to get to where the call dates are coming up and we could potentially refi our 22 12 font and you can see that the Benchmark interest rates wearing this when the 2012 refinancing Bonds were sold are not that much lower it was 3.67 and it was 3.32 none of our other bonds are what we would say in the money meaning that they could be refined for savings so we
189don't want to do that now this is but this one it's not quite in the money the threshold that we use is the government Finance Officers Association recommended best practice um Ms Coates earlier talked about government financial services John Powers Authority and its members really following best practices to get better results and you can see that the savings meets uh is under the threshold of three percent of refinanced bonds in terms of the savings it's 2.25 so what does that mean it's close so if the bond sale went really well we could toss them in and get if we got that three percent we'd proceed if we didn't get there we wouldn't does that make sense we're issuing bonds anyway we can include include them and kind of include them in the sidecar and they'll
190they'll go if they meet the threshold and if not we'll pull it back and that and we'll have another opportunity hopefully in the future to refinance so thank you when interest was going really low less than one percent and why didn't we or why didn't your company request a refinance at that time because like when I refinance my house you know I started at eight went down all the way to three and so uh you know what's the rule is it less than two percent or after below the current percentage so what what's the rule so we've done several refinancing all right and we follow as the standard when the savings from the refinancing is three percent of the bonds we're refinancing original yes okay well not the original whatever Bonds were refinancing which could
191be a rep for instance and just saying okay if we okay it was five percent so we if it went down to two percent that's when you start no it's not the the percentage that we're using is not what the interest rates are because we we have the bonds and they're outstanding at a certain interest rate and when you refinance you're replacing those at a lower interest rate and we're we're using a mathematical formula to determine if the savings is sufficient and the mathematical formula that we use is the recommended best practice from the government Finance Officers Association that they say it should be at least three to five percent so oh we weren't throwing it in with something else we might say we should be looking at four or five percent but because we're
192doing this other Bond we have the opportunity to kind of do it at very low cost because we're already in the market so if we hit that three percent threshold we would so the so we go over with the district at least once a year and sometimes more frequently the what the refinancing opportunities are now you might ask hey interest rates change every day why don't you do it every day because when we do it we actually also look at what we call the sensitivity to the interest rate so when we sit down with in in this case it's been Kristin coats and before that it was with Rob Pierce right we would sit down and we would say okay here's where interest rates are to get the three percent interest rates would have to
193drop this much over this period of time and so what that allows us to do I like to say it allows me to set my alarm clock I know if they don't move this much they might move they might go it might get better but it's not going to hit the three percent threshold that I'm looking for until I get to this point so our team and internally we run these numbers minimally once a month and when there's a lot of volatility in the market they do it more often but I tell them you don't you know you Ring My Alarm Clock when we're getting close to that three percent because that's the minimum and I'm not going to bother Kristen coats for something that is a nothing conversation so I'm going to wait until
194it's good enough then I'm going to get her attention and the other thing I look at is not just the Sensitivity I look at where we are right now to when I can get in front of the board and get the whole thing approved because you wouldn't want me coming forward proposing a refi and then coming back here in a month and saying up interest rates moved against us so I'm not just looking at interest rates today I'm looking at the sensitivity and the time we need to go through our process of taking um of taking the benefit of that for the taxpayers right right okay I understand that that's good okay so now I'm um I'm on the proposed sale process which I actually think I'm just gonna wrap up here because we've done
195it this way many times um I'll just show you we've had we've had tremendous response in our previous sales with competitive sale we have a investment grade credit rating we have a great name in the market there are there are many many investors out there and I'll maybe I'll put it another way bidders who have already been on your bonds know your name and when they see Elk Grove unified coming with something else they'll take a look at it and we'll work with them on the bids and interestingly enough you can see that one of your um uh happiest bidders is Bank of America because they want our last three bonds and fortunately they they haven't been mentioned in any of this Bank scandal going on so you'll have these legal documents um presented for
196approval and so the next time this is going to come up is May 16th now typically um we don't have anything to present then if you want us to be available for questions and and Mr maricia has said he will also be available for questions we can but if you feel confident and comfortable with this then it can just be an action item on your agenda you'll let us know if you need anybody's anybody from our team to be present um and in the meantime if you have any questions about what's going on in the market what drives things um uh please let Ms Coates know and um and and uh we'll answer that question and I have to say she came up with a brilliant idea for our joint Powers Authority that all of
197our members are going to be benefiting we're going to be doing like a little 15-minute equivalent of a radio show with economic updates and we're going to make that available to all members so look for an email on that hopefully you'll you'll enjoy that because we'll be able to talk about economic factors that you hear in the general news but we'll be able to specialize in talking about what it means for school districts so we're kind of excited about doing that and I've never produced anything like that but I'm going to learn how so um May 16th is the action item May 31st is when we're planning to sell the measure M bonds and the and safety number one Bonds on June 6. now as you might recall those dates might move because for example
198if the state of California said it was going to sell bonds the day before we were we might move two days to get ahead of them but we also have a rule in our firm we never sell Bonds on Mondays or Fridays because we want the attention of the bidders we want to take a risk that they're still thinking about the weekend or planning for the weekend so we always do it on a Tuesday Wednesday or Thursday it also gives us a day before the sale to get them ready and and literally some of these bidders will make a decision to bid one minute before their bid is due because it's all electronic and they can do that if they want to so the other thing to remind you of it's totally transparent if somebody
199a member of the public or staff or any of you want to participate in the sale now with the power of Zoom we can we used to do it in person it was a harder thing to do but now we can bring you into kind of what we're doing and some people say it's like watching grass grow but it's basically watching our staff do what we do and and I will be the narrator of what everybody is doing so you can see what happens when you sell millions of dollars of bonds in the municipal bond market um funds will be available in June for both measures and on June 27th um if you'll have me if that's a good meeting for this purpose we would come back and give you the results of the presentation
200so I'm I I probably violated what I told Ms coats which was 10 minutes and I apologize for that I was talking as fast as I can so I'll be glad to answer any of the questions and thank you for your attention I really appreciate it thank you Miss renery I'll start with Mr Bettis if you have any questions okay David here from since 2012. those lessons I've been studying UC Davis or you um excuse me Davis joined Unified School District since 2012 because I saw some place that they're studying that they tax their their citizens as a result of that you know people believe that their school district's a lot better than ours but but I also found out that their houses their houses were are worth a hundred thousand dollars more than thousands
201here in in Elk Grove School District so I said I said to myself man shoot we need more money before Mr Hoffman was here are we going to do a bond are we you know that was the discussion well I didn't get no four votes to get a tax you know put a uh a ballot measure to tax our you know for the school district but point of information but when the board members who is now the mayor did the same thing for for the city and Texas citizens for the police department which kind of upsets me because it didn't go to education so you know but the bottom line hmm or did you consult with UC Davis did you did you consult with them too hey uh this referendum or this tax thing on
202the ballot measure is a good thing to do versus the bond or Mr Perez can you is that is that party of services Mr Perez what UC Davis is is joined Unified School District excuse me yeah so did I mean um do you and within your services can you provide that services to us as in Your Capacity oh advise us on that so we've we've been working with Davis Towing Unified School District also for uh since the 80s and I think what you're referring to is that they have had several parcel taxes which are special taxes as provided in the government code and yes our firm helps any of our clients understand their tax bases and considers and consider the types of Revenue that can be generated from the tax base Mr Bettis parcel taxes
203were not noticed as part of this agenda item so we really can't get into discussing them I'm asking what you know she's just talking about Bond issues yes but as a contractor we we contractor when other services the city she providers can't talk about those other services tonight we can agendize that for another conversation we just can't handle that conversation tonight why is that the brown actor it's not the brown hat it is do you have any other questions on this presentation well we got to focus on measuring bonds right now and the cfd that's that's what we have maybe I I'll ask Lozano Smith what's your opinion the chair makes the ruling on the interpretation of the applicable law sir if it's illegally opportunity which I probably shouldn't even do do you have any
204questions or comments okay I'll tell you someplace I read uh your for your services is about three million dollars for this particular Foundation or this uh The Joint Power Authority no oh well someplace I thought I read something I think what you're referring to is that how much does it cost yeah so I think what you're referring to is page eight in which you can see that the cost of issuance are um showing as an estimated 300 000 for this issuance so that there's a detailed list and let me oh you know what I don't think it's attached to what I have in my hand but that 300 000 is the total of all the upfront costs that we're budgeting that the district would pay when it issues these bonds so that includes um the
205the fees that are paid to the government financial services joint Powers Authority it's the fees that are paid to the bond Council it's the fees that are paid to the rating agency and there's a whole list which I just don't have in my hand right now but it's certainly available okay yeah so that's what I'm trying to understand or I'm not clear or trying to learn this process is that once we have this joint Authority here I mean it spreads out the cost of your services to all these these particular individual districts does that is that two or one I'm gonna I'm gonna pause you there the jpa itself is also not part of this item but we can resend you the board communication about all the information we did share that we have this
206information for information for you Mr President we can come up we can provide it about the reasons for being part of the board took action uh for uh for the district to be part of the jpa um oh a year and a half ago or so the reason why I'm asked or trying to get this clear because you know we have three new board members and they need this information or inquiring about it these individuals like they're not going to be aware of that these type of services that they provide for us or this or that so okay um I think you should speak on your business your behalf so ugly another question I have here hmm Mr Bettis it sounds like you're prepared um this is the regarding our community our Elder needs they
207don't they don't they could qualify for tax relief correct I mean oh is it our responsibilities or the do you tell us to do that for that part of your job I'm gonna interject again um that is that is related to bonds but it is not related to this items I think with Miss Raymond you could be Mr Bettis okay the topic is Bond sales everywhere no no Mr Perez I need you to listen that's three times I've tried to ask you to focus on this topic so we're going to move on no yeah I got other questions apparently none of them are actually on this topic so any other questions Mr Hoffman and I are more than happy to get you the right information please send please send us your questions would you write
208that down and answer that question later sure you will get it all if it's not yours maybe I have to mention happened to answer that question okay you send me the question Mr fetus you're done we're moving on okay I want you you didn't mentioned you know thank you Mr Vargas any questions or comments cutting me off man attract me up chilling um you don't want me to participate I need you to stop interrupting with proceeding sir I don't think I like can you shut off your microphone please be awful I'm leaving I apologize I apologize for the uh Interruption folks especially to our friend up here um go ahead Mr Vargas sounds good um so I would love to see the board communication because I am new and I would love to see that
209um and so I want to dig down really quickly on this um on page 13 the 222 million in taxpayer savings um so I know you explained this in a broad sense but like help me understand where this is coming from so a good way to see that is actually on page 11. so on page 11 you can see how much shorter the payments are or in this case it's actually showing the expected tax levies but it just gives you that picture that dotted line is what we expected when we put the measure forward and because the tax base has grown at a faster rate than we expected for that same tax rate we can actually pay the debt faster so we're not only are we paying it off three years early but the three
210years before that you can see the amount that we have to cover is significantly less and so we that's just gone right and then in all the other years we're actually paying principal faster we're amortizing faster so an equivalency a way to think about it would be if you're planning on a 30-year mortgage and the first thing you started to do was um set aside money and so that you could pay it down faster right and then you refinanced it for a shorter term and then you refinanced it again for a shorter term so that your what we would say is the average life of the debt is shortening and you're paying principal faster so every dollar is outstanding for a shorter amount of time and there for every dollar borrowed carries less interest so
211why is it so phenomenal and this is what I love Finance is calculus it's exponential so it a little bit goes a long way and so you wouldn't think hey you're just cutting off that little bit of end but the end is the most expensive right does that make sense yeah and so um do we with with I guess the growth that we're seeing in all that are we assuming that this is going to continue to be a trend where you know we're going to continue to see savings here or um is is this more of like the projection for what it's going to be so this is our projection of what the tax rates will be based on the bonds that we're issuing in the bond structure and what we've assumed is we've used
212this the development the same development that the district uses to project enrollment and we've we've assumed very conservatively that the existing tax base grows at two percent per year which is a low number especially because I think I showed the historical yeah you can see the historical assessed value here and you can even see that one year it was negative during the um Great Recession but you can see that based on historical two percent is very conservative on the existing that means nobody improves nobody sells a year passes and everybody gets that two percent then we're taking the new development and we actually have a pretty conservative number on the assessed value that we expect to be coming from each property that gets developed into a home and then we increase that at a I
213think it's really small here I don't know if I can read it four percent something um let's see if I can read my own notes here um yeah so we um I think I have it on the other page um thank you you guys have your reading glasses you can see it okay so yes yeah there it is 4.25 actually you know what now that I remember when I saw this chart the first time I said you need to make that table bigger so um yeah so we're just increasing that because that that's the newer homes that tend to grow faster but overall we have a rate of growth projected that is well under historical also the risk we faced on making this projection was much more after we sold the first series of bonds
214with each series of bonds there's less risk because we're already set with what we have does that make sense yeah so once we borrow at a fixed rate that set so things can only get better for us in terms of being able to refinance at a lower interest rate we're already set with the interest rates we have but there is risk if for example that the tax base dropped like you can see what's in the Great Recession we're not assuming that the tax base is going to drop right so if it did drop then the tax rates would go up right but we already have room for that thank you so much you can see we have a little bit of room for them to go up the just that difference between the dotted line
215so I don't know if you're looking at what I'm looking at but I'm pointing it up there and I feel like I'm pointing in the air um yeah okay did that make sense yes no that was incredibly helpful um and I honestly like thank you for this presentation it's been incredibly informative and being a new person like a lot of this when I first saw this um you know the slides was like gibberish um so this was incredibly helpful thank you that's all the questions I have thank you Mr Vargas Mr track anything okay Miss albiani you're really good at this thank you very much you make it very understandable I appreciate it Mr yang thank you for a presentation just um question on the refinance part you mentioned three to five percent and that's
216the Saving right the savings as a percentage of the bonds were refinancing yeah so uh what about the the payoff period would that be stretched the same okay so at the end of it um are we still saving three to five percent well the the way that the authorization requested from the board would work is we would ask you to authorize that we could proceed with the refi as long as we can save at least the three percent right and if we can't then we just pull that off we don't we don't do it does that make sense and Dan did you want to say anything about that about the authorization limiting when we would do the refund sure Mr Lucci I have to ask you to come up to a microphone good evening everyone
217Dan maruccia partner with Lazar Smith I'm sorry excuse me for calling you Lucia Mr marucha oh no it's okay it's so close uh but the what I think what we're talking about are two different things but best practices on the one hand finding a savings threshold that makes sense um you are being supported by you know a highly regarded uh Financial Consultant that has worked for the district for a long time and and had the district navigate um Financial issues in series and I've worked with um and for the the district on 11 of the the districts uh debt issuances since I think uh 20 2010 um the the savings threshold is not the law however um the savings threshold that we're talking about is is best practices the law however requires a very very
218low savings test to be reached which is um the principal plus interest of the refunded bonds um uh must or the principal plus interest of the refunding bonds must be lower than the principal plus interest of the refunding bonds the bonds that we're using to take out the bonds that are outstanding now um is that does that answer does that answer the question have to be a savings there must be some savings the board the board can decide at what level the savings should be what threshold we should reach before authorizing the issuance of the refunding bonds and then that's that's the topic of conversation now well like what I'm understanding is that the recommendation is three percent no I get that board I'm just curious you know at the payoff period who's still saving
219that much or it's going to be more I hope it'll be much more that's what we're hoping for well I mean I'm talking about the math right yeah we're that's what sounds like the best practice three to five percent I'm wondering you know is that a like a so we're less than accumulation of the whole period of paying off or or are you asking are we going to know what the savings is going to be or is it right right okay yes we will we will know that on closing because we know what the interest rates were on the bonds that we're looking to refund and upon closing or upon sale um we're going to find out what Underwriters are going to to to offer the district and what rates at at what rates they're
220going to offer so there we will know what the savings is going to be um and there won't be any mystery to that upon upon sale or really upon closing right I have to say this is the net savings and what we calculated is is refinancing all of the callable bonds it would be at 2.25 okay so let's say that there's no change in interest rates everything comes out just like this okay I'm going to tell you what we're going to say to Ms Coates on that day we're going to say we can pick off the most expensive Bonds in this 2012 issue and get three percent by just refining them right now and we'll leave the rest hopefully we'll get that later so that that's how we would handle that and that's what that
221little text at the top that's too small to read says so the the best practices recommendation is you hit at least three percent now what I see happening in the market is people will do a refi just because they started it and they say well you got to pay all these cost of issuance so you better finish it so you can pay it and they don't get enough savings but once you've done the transaction you can't redo it so we only want to do it that's why we have these standards we in and um the this kind of discipline in financial transactions is what the best practices say gives you the overall best result so this is a very very small part of this transaction right our recommendation is we're going to sell the measure
222on bonds this program has been from a financial perspective tremendously successful and better than budget in by every measurement for the cfd1 because we're already engaged in this process there's it there are two different kind of bonds there's not economy of scale for our firm or for um the bond Council but there is economy scale for you although I'm rapidly eroding that and for the District staff because you only do one financing right you're not dealing with this every month for two years and so we that's why we're doing it now you know there's nothing about now that calls for the refinancing set that we're doing facilities financing we're doing the new money sort of tossing the refi in so I think the key thought from a policy perspective is do we have discipline coming
223from the board so that the staff acts within the best practices right and the and the thing that I know if many of You Know Rich Malone our chief operating officer if he were here he would say but I don't want the resolution to say three percent because what if it's 2.99 right so what's going to happen is you're going to see and that's what what Dan was talking about there's going to be a um so you made me sorry in to say your last name and butcher it again um because then I cause other people to do that yeah anyway um so we so there'll be a very low number in your authorization but you know we're shooting for that and we have some strategies to get it and we will be making a
224recommendation on sale Day based on the pricing that is available on the bids that we get does this refi stay in the sidecar or do we say um this is your stop get out and no matter whether we refine all some whatever then there's still more because there's other lease revenue bonds that are being supported by safety number one and there's the cfd I'm sorry the cop and um the least revenue bonds the cop and what am I missing um the lease purchase thank you um so we're monitoring all of that to take these opportunities for refi this is just something that's an unusual item you don't want to be dealing with it every day because it takes your time and and staff time thank you Mr Fortuna any questions or comments my only comment
225is Lori I gotta listen to you all day every day it's a pleasure easy the information is easy to understand but it's it's the graphs are always such that they're they're easy to to read and and and make sense of so thank you you good partner with us I'll be very brief thank you both for a great presentation I know you have to way simplify this for us but somehow you leave us feeling smarter it's it's a magic trick we really appreciate you preparing us for these big decisions and um you know the prospect of saving 220 million 22 million dollars is far more exciting than you know watching paint dry or whatever you said that's very exciting um I'll add real quick so uh refinance although that's not part of the recommendation right now
226um is is something that we've been able to take advantage of it's um last time we did it we used a lot of that savings and put it into the new Franklin Elementary for example I think that's one of the ways that we funded that and to my newer colleagues great questions we really appreciate the engagement those of us who have been around longer have had the opportunity to prepare a misery with a lot of questions and just so grateful for you uh preparing us for these decisions ahead thank you so much okay next item is language Essentials for teachers of reading and spelling and this is the Vassar do we have any public comments via Zoom for this okay I'm not in President we have no public comments via Zoom for this item thank
227you Miss albioni do we have any blue cards we have no blue cards thank you Miss Avey whenever you're ready all right good evening Madam president members of the board superintendent Hoffman and Miss Avalos we are thrilled to be with you tonight and to have this opportunity to give you an update on a program that is uh leading to great success with student outcomes and improving the abilities of our classroom teachers I have with me tonight two of my colleagues Lorraine Blomquist who's the director of instructional support and CPL and Patty Tong program specialist for ELA for k-6 they both have dedicated their careers not only to Elk Grove but to the pursuit of literacy and Elk Grove and so they'll help share some of the information tonight so we always like to start off
228with our learning Vision but just to pull attention to this we are really focused on the every student learning in every classroom every subject and every day but really what this is letters is contributing to students being able to lead our district as readers and so that's something we want to celebrate because that's the truth behind having College and Career and life ready students they need to be able to have that literacy component and we're focused on three of our goals specifically letters is a program that focuses on teachers and their ability to teach the fundamentals of reading and so it focuses on the high quality instruction it involves not only student assessment because it's looking at student data very carefully but there's also a an evaluation for program evaluation because we also are evaluating
229the knowledge of teachers in order to be able to progress in the program which will be shared with you later teachers have to demonstrate their knowledge and this has allowed us to really provide those targeted supports with our aits and just regular classroom instruction what we're going to provide for you tonight is a background and kind of a timeline of our journey in Elk Grove will provide a program overview of letters I will talk about the benefits you'll actually hear from some teachers that we've recorded in our district and we'll share next steps with you so if you just take a moment to focus on the timeline up there we've always focused on literacy and Elk Grove this is my 30th year that I'm finishing with the district I taught here for 16 years but
230in 2015 we made a commitment the board made a commitment to provide literacy funds and it was a journey from 2015 to 2019 we'll really explored what research was saying different methods were out there different training possibilities and then in 2019 we are asked to do a review right before covid hit and to really look at the progress we had made as a district and really do like a gap analysis and find out what were our strengths and what are areas that we needed to grow on and when we did that we did a deeper dive into the research and it just coincided at the same time with our partners at scoey Sacramento County Office of Education that we were able to participate in this letters pilot which is the science of reading which Ms
231Tong will explain to you in just a moment so we had gone through this program review it was showing us that we needed to go beyond strategies and methods with teachers that we really needed to get into the fundamentals of teaching the foundational skills related to reading and at that same time when we started the pilot we had 30 coaches and program specialists in CPL and Els who started in 2019 uh they continued through covid at that same time we sent four of our employees two of them are standing right here to become facilitators so that they're able to provide the two-year training it's quite rigorous and as we move through covid we had to adjust because we started something we were really excited about and we had to adjust how we were going to
232provide that training and how we're going to provide support to teachers we were successful with that we had a an official laborious cohort that started with Elk Grove that was made up of employees from CPL and Els which was our coaches they can our first group that completed the two-year program that you'll hear about graduated in 2022 and we have continued to expand and refine that work so what we're going to move into next is kind of the background and timeline and the overview of the entire program so miss tall thank you so you've had a little bit of an overview of the timeline of where we've come I'm going to give you just a little bit of background on how we got where we are so how many of you've ever heard someone say
233this student cannot read um and then you think well what does that statement actually mean the student cannot read it's a little bit more complicated than one might think and on the slide you can see a framework that we learn in letters as um to all of the things that go into learning how to read um holla Scarborough created this model it's a metaphor for reading as being a skilled reader and what you see at the bottom there you see word recognition those are things like phonemic awareness being able to hear the sounds in words it's about phonics being able to decode words and then able to recognize words automatically and effortlessly so that's part of the reading process that some might be familiar with but there's so much more to becoming a skill reader
234and that's the the other part the language comprehension part of the rope and in that part you're you're looking at background information do what background information do student does the reader come with what vocabulary does this the reader come with and uh what kind of verbal reasoning or critical thinking does the reader come with those are other skills and so all of those skills are intertwined and you can see how the Rope becomes more tight as someone becomes a more skilled reader it's not like a race that you get these skills and then you get to the end you can see that a skilled reader will move back and forth in that that last part of that rope if someone gave me a journal a reading Journal I could read it pretty quickly and understand
235the vocabulary but if someone handed me an organic chemistry textbook for instance I would unravel pretty quickly I might be able to sound out those words but I would need to get background information vocabulary that's kind of how it works and we need to make sure that students are being taught with both parts of that particular rope we also learned about the brain and how the brain works when we learn to read I'm not going to go into too much detail here but know that there are four distinct parts of the brain that work together for a skilled reader to make sense of what they're reading and so teachers learn about this so you can see already that it's not that our teachers don't know how to teach reading it's that we are teaching them
236at such a deep level this is information that was in the journals of psychologists for a long time and it wasn't made really known to Educators until more recently and made available in a way that we could understand it and apply it to our classrooms so this is part of what letters does we also look to research when um Ms Xavier was talking about how we had to think about what we were doing and and make some decisions we really looked to the research and we we really took to heart uh the EAB it was they provided a research report for us about narrowing the achievement Gap um for third graders and this is one of the pieces of research that they showed us and it tells us that 95 of students can learn to
237read if we teach them in an appropriate way giving them um strong first tier one instruction and really targeting exactly what they need if they're not getting it the first time giving them the amount of practice that they need so 95 percent is a really high percentage if we use the methods and principles that we learn from research so those are just a few of the things that we as teachers and Educators have learned as we go through the letters program I want to also give you a little bit of a flavor of the program overview just to be clear this is not a curriculum but this is really deepening the knowledge of teachers so it's a two-year program and in year one um volume one we learn about the word recognition part of the
238rope and teachers spend a lot of time studying phonics phonemic awareness and how to get students to be able to read words effortlessly and automatically and then in volume 2 we focus on the other part of the Rope where we're really focusing on that language comprehension the vocabulary the background knowledge and all of those pieces now these are the total hours that a teacher would spend in the two years every participant takes a pre-test and and a post-test at the end of each volume they spend in volume 1 64 hours learning independently what does that entail it involves some professional reading it involves interacting with videos where they hear a host share in more detail about what they read or they view a teacher in a classroom demonstrating a strategy or a method that can
239be used to implement what they're learning theoretically and how it can play out in the classroom they also take quizzes with each session and they need to score 80 or better on these quizzes they get two tries on the quizzes and then at the end of each unit they take a unit test again two tries eighty percent so they're assessed throughout and then they apply it to their classroom they choose three students to uh do what we call bridge to practice and so they apply what they're learned to those students it might be to interview students to find out the the the um how much oral vocabulary they have it might be to analyze an assessment or a piece of writing it might be a journal response to a method that they tried in the
240classroom and how it went uh so this is the work that they would do in those two years independently but then there's also live instruction we have 48 hours of live instruction between the two years 24 each year how does that work well some of them choose to come on Saturdays for three hours they we do all of this on zoom and so for three hours eight Saturdays during the year they'll meet together and we will provide live training for them we also have an option for others that don't want to come on Saturdays they can come after school and it's two hours for um weeknights um during the year and they received their 24 hours of training that way we also have required um jobs that require letters training for our aits we require
241it um for our coaches we require it so we do provide the same training during the work day so that they can complete that training during their work day so these are the options for that live instruction letters participation I know you heard a little bit about how we started with that small group in that pilot and that's that started in the 2019 school year and you know what happened in 2020 we quickly moved our training to zoom and uh we appreciate the coaches uh hanging in there with us um through that first two years of training we did it all on Zoom but in the 2020 as Ms Avi shared with you four of us Els department and CPL we went and became certified to teach volume one and we started with just one
242small group each a small group of secondary teachers and a small group of elementary teachers in secondary we focused on the teachers that were teaching intensive reading intervention and in elementary we focused on Title One Schools teachers from Title One schools and we knew that it was during covid but we just kind of put it out there to see if anybody would be interested and we did have enough for a small cohort that were interested in participating we had a few more than finished some of them had to pause because of the circumstances and they later went on to other cohorts or some of them are still on pause so but we did have a small group uh complete in 2022 and in 2022 what we also did is we expanded and formed another cohort
243in secondary and three more cohorts at elementary we also became trained and certified to teach Volume 2 at that time and then um in this past school year we we grew again so you can see that by the end of 23 24 we plan to have over 300 um staff members trained and uh in letters and so we'll we'll share a little bit about what comes next after that but I wanted to share just some of a few of the benefits that we've seen already from this work um again I want to remind you that the everyone takes a pre-test and our average in our district for the pre-test was 65 and I want to let you know that this assessment is very technical there are very technical questions there um and some of the
244vocabulary may not have been taught to teachers in their pre-service education so 65 is not a bad number in fact it was higher than the EAB schools that we saw in the report but what is fantastic is the host test at 90 percent so there was a strong gain in knowledge as evidenced by this assessment what we do know is that when we increase teacher knowledge um students also um we can also see students success so I want to introduce you to two two different staff members that wanted to share their experiences with letters hi my name is Erica Alvarez I'm a teacher at zinder Ranch Elementary School I teach first grade and I was a participant in the two-year letter program and I cannot tell you how impactful it has been for my teaching
245my students have progressed with their reading their dictation and their writing so much because of this program it has opened my eyes as a teacher to see the methodology behind what we teach and English and just the background behind our language this is such a program this is a program that I would highly encourage thank you so we also have a Laura stock who is an academic intervention teacher and also a Learning Center teacher hi my name is Laura stock and I am an AIT teacher at James McKee I'm also one of the RSP teachers at James McKee and I've been involved in the volume one of the letters training this year and it has really um helped me focus more on targeted phonics skills looking and and also through it um the assessment process
246being able to identify kids and need of academic intervention supports and I actually had a one of my students grandparents um come up to me and let me know that there's they were really happy with the progress that Ransom has made and that he learned to read because of that small group intervention so you can see that um and this is just a few of the examples there are other teachers that had volunteered to share as well um these are the two that we selected to bring before you tonight but teachers will say that it's hard work but that it's worth it and it's one of the best professional learnings that they've ever had we also wanted to show you that um this our work with letters has informed what we do as a district
247we realize the importance of phonemic awareness in students becoming skilled readers we found that um we didn't have a strong enough instructional piece there so what we did in 2120 in the 21 2020 school years we offered training to teachers to provide additional resources for phonemic awareness and that was with the hegarty program and it was or very organic we have a numeracy and literacy connection Series where we highlight some key pieces for teachers we do this training on zoom and we train train teachers to use this program and any teacher that came got the print materials as well as digital access and you can see here this is our scores for last year in the 2120 um two school year at the beginning of the year and you can see the increase to the
248end of the year and that was just last year where it was optional to use the curriculum we then made that curriculum part of our Core Curriculum and so this year you can see our um our results right now we have beginning of your data and interim 2. this is not end of year data yet they still have one trimester to complete and so we have um you can see that there has been an increase just by the use of this curriculum and strong first instruction so when the teachers know more they're able to um that is there's a strong correlation to the student's success and so we're going to continue now and show that connection to our instructional framework so we want to talk about the connections with what we're already doing um content
249knowledge is one thing but then putting the everything into place with pedagogy and and instructional moves um this this does this so we have the um very clear phonics lesson plan that is shared with the teachers their clear learning targets their success criteria we have active participation we have student talk we have formative assessment where we have opportunities for to provide um very proactive and responsive feedback it's also created this amazing collaboration with other departments so we have a curriculum professional learning and and we're we were the champions of this I guess you'd say and with our with our partners specifically in English learner services but it's also caused Partnerships in early childhood special education and Elementary Ed and on the on the screen there's a list of some of the things that that have
250come out about this so we have as as Miss Tong said letters facilitators from both CPL and English learner Services we have all aits that are required to be trained and that makes sense because they're working in small targeted groups with our students Early Childhood there's another version of letters that is specific to Early Childhood so they're working with a small group of teachers um so that's what the pilot part means and looking to see how can we scale because right now we're starting small and how do we scale at secondary I taught in classroom for 20 years it for English we weren't shown how to teach reading kids are expected to come to us knowing how to read so it's been instrumental like a summer teacher planning and my secondary teachers getting together to
251figure out how do we how do we roll out early intervention early literacy kinds of things when there isn't the curriculum for that so our teachers have been planning that especially with newcomer teachers we've got our instructional coaches are working in small group instruction um the they're also doing assessments so that's the other thing when we know what assessments to use to figure out what kids need that's really powerful so we have more teachers understanding the power of specific assessments to figure out what's the next car what's the next step for a student we have data analysis by student for student placement so with special ed we're partnering with them to figure out where do kids belong is it and is it an absence in that word recognition area volume one or is it an
252absence in the language comprehension volume two um and then our special education coaches too at the secondary level I'd say about 60 of the students are special ed who are in early intensive intervention but 40 are not and so having that kind of collaboration is really really important so for our next steps Miss Amy's going to bring us home all right and one of the things that great news right this is great news one of the things we really want to emphasize too is the dedication of our instructional coaches in curriculum professional learning and English learner services this has been a huge lift for them to do the job that's expected of them but also to learn the knowledge so that they can be supporters to all of the teachers out at our school sites
253so as we continue to focus on this work we're continuing the cohort work right now it is all on an organic basis the only groups that are required training as was mentioned were aits and coaches the rest of our participants are teachers who this has been advertised to they see the value in it and they're choosing to take this training we're going to continue to focus in that manner right now we are looking at what type of collaboration meetings we're going to provide for the participants when their host program completion so that we can keep the learning and the understanding of the best methods and strategies that we want to emphasize We are continuing different levels of the professional learning on Scarborough's Reading Road because you don't have to have the training to understand it
254for some people so we want to broaden that and we are potentially looking at some connections with family and Community engagement as well we have this series that we've done with early numeracy and literacy so instead of keeping them as separate subjects we want to understand the benefits with students that you could be really strong in math and you could have some challenge areas in literacy and we're trying to use those skills your math skills to help you move along also in literacy so that it's not one or the other that they are things that are seen together we're continuing that we're looking at the assessment so we've done a beautiful job in Elk Grove with our interim assessments we're continuing to refine them and we are using those with our fit groups helping our
255teachers understand how to continue to use that data so they can refine the targeted instruction to meet all students needs we want to get to that 95 for all students and we're looking for the letters light opportunities which is that piece that we want to be able to give an overview to principles we want to give an overview to staff that needs to support the work but they aren't going to participate in the two-year training and so with that I think we'll end and we'll just stand up here and wait for any great comments or questions thank you Mr truck do you have any questions or comments uh yeah I was a very good presentation so thank you for that um I have a one question I think it was on slide 10 so when
256it talks about the struggle with severe cognitive impairments I was just wondering I'm not sure if you said this already but I was wondering if there were like any extra support for those with the extra cognitive struggles those would be typically students that are on an IEP and have a specialized program and they might need to be learning to read in a different way perhaps they are um deaf and they they're not going to hear through they're not going to read through um phonological awareness because they can't hear the sound so we'll need to teach them in a different way so that's what it's referring to any students that might might need to learn differently and not in the way that we're talking about and then other students um may not learn to read they
257they may learn to do other things and other means of communication thank you I honestly can't remember where I started last time so Mr 14 I'm going to start with you thank you but one second uh go ahead I'd like to make a motion to extend the meeting to um 10 45. second two you're optimistic we'll go with that well I'll say till 11. okay okay second moved and seconded all in favor please signify by saying aye aye any needs okay approved unanimously uh go ahead Mr Fortuna okay okay it appears that that the early results are promising and if if you continue with that level of success at what point and what factors do you look at in saying you know it's time to move this from voluntary I think that's a fair question
258so one of the things we would always do is we have strong Partnerships because we're talking about our teachers and we have fabulous teachers so we would work collaboratively with that as we do with most of our things we'd also look at ways to honor teachers and we moved away from providing release time for teachers because of covid-19 and and just looking at the shortage we've had for substitute so that's something we're looking at this organic approach about honoring the time where they can choose when they receive the professional development everybody likes choice but we also want to recognize that there are some people who do want to participate but they're family commitments that they have outside of the school day May truly keep them from participating but being able to go back to an
259opportunity where we provide release time and that opportunity to do that we have interest in looking at how we onboard our new teachers K12 um that you know that's a potential discussion that we would have but again that would be done you know collaboratively with our partners in ETA okay and have you had discussions again this is looking looking forward have you had discussions uh about uh comparing student assessment or student progress with the state assessments on on standards because the last assessments that we had weren't anything to write home about so uh if you begin to show it will you then link it to performance down the road so um we have as we all know we have an amazing research and evaluation Department that's really looking at way to make connections between the
260work we do and down the road outcomes so those are things that we've been talking about um I would say right now with the K12 focus is that that's a component that we don't do cast testing right so if we're doing things right for kids when we're preparing kids right meaning we've prepared teachers the best we can and they're doing it we would naturally see Improvement but we also know that the State Testing is it has a lot of indicators that can be out of control how a student's feeling that they the environment of testing it goes back to the scope and sequence of what standards teachers are teaching so it's a con I think it's a more complicated question um because I think in the best case scenario that we can provide the training
261we can provide the best guidance for teachers we'll we'll be able to make stronger projections on that so hopefully I kind of answered your question on it but it's something I would also say we'd tread lightly on because we want we really want teachers to see the value in this when people see the value they want to do it versus being told they have to or mandated to do something right so I think as we look at you know those outcomes for students we are keeping all of that in mind but don't have a set plan for it all right and the best sales people will be your completers absolutely and you feel great when students are doing better as a teacher I taught for 16 years when you get good student outcomes you feel
262great as an educator and that's part of not selling but sharing some of the success stories that we're we're having with staff and that has a correlation with morale morale has a correlation of everything that happens with the child and with the teacher yeah and if students are happy and teachers are happy parents are usually happy if parents are happy teachers are happy and students are happy it's very simple it's going around yeah thank you Mr Fortuna Mr yang yeah thank you um great presentation so I really like this uh egusd learning vision every student learning in every classroom in every subject every day to prepare college career and life ready graduates I mean that's a great line so thank you now do we currently have like a remote sessions to help students do it
263remotely like reading or tutoring so that uh well because what I'm thinking out loud is I think maybe some student might need help and um not just he or her getting help by themselves but also the parents are right next to it just to learn how their kids are learning and then their I guess the type of learning they are is that available now or is that something that could be available in the near future so that isn't something that we have organized just required there could be opportunities for that that individual schools are doing for tutoring after hours most of the tutoring we provide is in our after school programs and it's on campus um and then the intervention side of what we do provide is the academic intervention teachers during the school day
264who are providing that support to students but that's in person so what we have is there any possibility that we could provide that remotely in the future um I think that's something that we could bring back to the team and probably Elementary education and have a discussion to see what capacity there is for them okay thank you thank you Mr Yang MS albioni I love this stuff thank you um I was able to have a long discussion about this when we put this in our superintendent's goals last year I think um scale is always a challenge with our district and so we are focusing on K12 which makes 100 sense to me um I'm not aware and I don't know if you know off the top of your head approximately how many teachers that means
265you have a guess in the hundreds here so what's interesting about that is we actually had that discussion to give exact numbers but because there's movement with t-shirts yes year to year it's hard to track that that's something we are actually going back to look at so potentially around 600 yeah um was that 600 K1 or K2 K12 okay thank you but also keep in mind we've trained some secondary teachers as well so the focus is K12 but we do have secondary teachers who are doing the work in our middle schools Okay so it sounds like we're you know maybe 150 into that and are you able to scale it as more interest comes it what is the limiting factor right now is the limiting factor you guys or the people signing up how's that
266balance working out for you so there's really not limiting because we are when we're looking at scale we're developing more facilitators okay so it started with the four facilitators two for secondary two for elementary and so we're moving ahead with having people trained to be able to be the facilitators when you work with scoey and scoey's the institution that provides it through an organization is it like three thousand dollars a person twenty five hundred dollars we can we can scale it down by just paying for the materials and then our staff that's paid through the district is providing it so honestly uh it's just a matter of time it's a matter of having those trainers get to all of the staff be able to provide in a time span that they can actually receive the
267training that works for them this is so amazing to me I was teaching second grade reading out of my open court book and and hoping you know they they had it all right and so um I still haven't felt like we keep trying things and the the the results and the change in this is just so impressive um I'm very excited that we require the aits to know it because they're working then you're working parallel in the same way and we still allow them the freedom to use other options right we're not constricting them to using letters because there are other best practices I just wanted to remind you that letters is is a program that teaches teachers it's not a curriculum okay so what we're encouraging teachers to do is to say follow the
268phonics lesson plan because it's um accessing the parts of the brain in the order that will allow it to stick in their brain and and keep it there so that they can automatically read those words but they can they use the Wonders curriculum to teach but following they're they're just more knowledgeable about what to pick and choose think of a buffet there's a there's a whole Buffet before you right what should you eat so what should you do for this student it gives the teacher that knowledge to make those decisions so that they can Target that instruction that that particular student needs and pull out that particular method of doing it okay it's not it's not telling them what program or curriculum they have to use but it's guiding them to use whatever they have
269the resources they have available and providing more resources for them to consider and helping them look at each student and figure out what's best for that individual child exactly okay my last comment is our Assessment program I can't think of the name of it for the life of me what is it so the tool that we're using is illuminate yes yeah so we're putting these assessments on illuminate so the student assessments are all in illuminate okay great another way to keep it across the whole district with the same expectations thank you very much this is wonderful stuff thank you Miss albiani Mr Vargas any questions or comments this sounds like a really great uh program so I'm looking forward to hearing more about it um no further questions thank you Mr Vargas Mr Bettis any
270questions or comments looks very good but has it been proven that any other school districts um actually yes Patty do you want to address that through EA it has it been awarded a golden Bell award from the California School Board Association reading programs if we ask questions we're going to promote people to answer them okay you've asked some questions let's let them answer them okay we can provide the EAB report I'm narrowing the achievement Gap at third grade and they show three different school districts and the games that they made when teachers participated in letters and they also showed um the correlation between When teacher knowledge increases Student Success increases as well so we can provide that report for you to review thank you what what school districts the studies often don't identify the school
271districts correct we'll see we'll see what we get okay cost what's projected cost and this district-wide and fiscal impact of our prep okay and uh does this uh piggyback on our Common Core curriculum yes this is aligned with the Common Core Curriculum and it's aligned with the research as well uh the cost is covered by the budget that's given for early literacy and so we've been able to and as Miss Avey said we've been able to keep the costs down because we have 11 trained facilitators now um the cost if we were to send people outside um we paid um let's see it would be for each individual it would be about five was it 500 per unit um so it would it would be really expensive to train people in a national setting but
272because we have 11 facilitators um trained in our district we don't pay them um in addition to we don't pay them at the rates that they would be getting if they were from the publisher so many of our coaches do um donate or they give time and we we compensate them to teach after their contractual hours and prepare after their contractual hours so that they can be ready for the 24 hours of training costs the cost is about eight hundred dollars for the two years subscription to the digital platform for each participant and then the additional costs for training are covered by the salary that's already given for the coaches but also they may receive for the 24 hours of training each coach is paid um at their Purdue rate uh and it's within our
273budget like I said I like the program it makes but I know reading it looks really good but yet I want to know that this has been proven out there and within you know those school districts I think I like to see those reports and who endorses this the other issue I have is what about the Department of Education any recommendations from the Department of Education could you be a little more saving program Consultants could you formulate a complete question sir sure if you understand the question has there been endorsements for this program by the Department of Education so I don't know if we can say specifically the Department of Education but the if we think back on what we've heard over time and probably from the 60s and 70s on I know my whole
274time in education is you've heard of like the reading Wars and that what we really have data on that's what the EAB report did that for us that's a organization we contract with as a district so we can ask for National research on topics that we're seeking out and what it is showing us is that nationally actually probably beyond the nation of it is the science of reading is what we were missing so it's the technical part that Miss Tong was speaking to that the teachers are learning so it's not the curriculum again that's being purchased it's teaching teachers to have the skills that they need to be able to not just teach students but to be able to examine data that's what I was wondering it was kind of gray in that area because
275um you mentioned it was a curriculum or booklets for the students okay the mythology and the theory and all that reading perfect but under the Fanatics phonics festivals I didn't see consonant Blends or diphthongs and uh is that covered under that it is uh and what do you call it a syllabication and all that kids uh the word you know okay that's very important uh and that has been proven uh what was the ethnic makeup and the second Mr Perez you need to move on we're going to get the study yeah you're cutting me off because the third time you're going back and they've already asked answer the question so you need to move on well I want to know if it's proven with that population you're going to get to see the studies you're
276gonna get to see the study so next question please next question you don't have to ask one I'm just taking my time I think that's pretty inconsiderate of the folks who I've been with us for so many hours it's very important that we ask very important questions because we're making very important uh financial decisions this is not a financial budgetary item sir affect our students but yet you know people go to prison because they do not know how to read at the third grade level and you talk about you want to stop the prison pipeline but you don't want to spend no time on this issue you know that's what it aggravates me Mr Perez um what do you think about third grade reading letter Yang is not running this meeting Mr Bettis last opportunity
277to ask questions on this item was I have an opportunity no no I need to ask you I need to ask you to hang off thank you I appreciate it you said you're using that on pretty outcomes we started with Title One skills and we've expanded to anyone in the district that wants to participate we held informational meetings where they come we've also invited intermediate teachers at Title One schools to join because we know that in their populations they could use this expertise so we've expanded to inviting um interested intermediate teachers as well has there been like a crash course summer course six to eight weeks for this type of program there isn't so it's a two-year program and it's a two-year program it's a two-year program because you have to learn information and then
278you actually have to practice it and then you have to come back and work with your colleagues your trainers and then you have to test out on it so it's not the type of program that you can just sit in a classroom or sit in a session and learn it all in six weeks and then go out and flourish it really takes that practice the lab work because that's where the real learning takes place and and then I'd also because I appreciate your question I have that passion for uh or as we all do I think everybody in this room does for readers the science of reading it's a science there's research behind it and to address your question the research shows all kids regardless of background regardless of their ethnicity that 95 percent of
279kids can learn to read that is what we're striving for that's why we did the Deep dive into the research and that's why we've actually chosen the program that we're using the training that we're using and why we're so committed to bringing it to scale and helping teachers see the value for students you mentioned in 60 in the 70s there were using this too I wasn't sure I was mentioning the fact that the reading Wars about the best route to to teach children how to read has been all over the place for years right and the research has been directing us towards the science of reading but it was shared more on the psychology side of the house it wasn't shared with Educators now that we know better we're doing better so one last question
280Department of Education or any teacher preparation program uh reading course or for training the teachers do they use this process or curriculum so the ELA framework it aligns perfectly with that as far as higher ed those programs are are determined by individual universities there are some states that have mandated this in every single University in their state that Kentucky or Mississippi based on tremendous increase in all of their students and it had to do with with standardizing the teacher program but California has not done that yet okay well the new reports once like for instance one school year does okay if the students reading at the second grade level and they're in that class and that teacher has that particular curriculum study or that mythology or process have there been like an increase of grade
281reading level after that student's been with that teacher so at second year let me give you an example of secondary um it's really interesting and secondary because when kids come to school primary I'm talking like Primary Elementary okay it's hard to increase a grade level when your grade level is wonders how long ago a lot of our students especially uh Elementary level so and even middle school they're they're behind two to three great read limbs right okay yeah we don't do standardized tests until third grade and this program he does and it depends sir at the primary level right this is a K12 program so there really wouldn't be data for that well it's that it can be applied yes the knowledge can be applied all the way up right but it isn't like um
282a snap and it happens um it takes time for we for us to um learn and to Target and to train so there have been improvements in students you heard um Mrs stock talk about um her student who she was able to Target instruction and even the grandparent noticed how the student had progressed so it's happening in places like that where um an AIT said oh this really works all my students are testing out they're I'm moving them on is this really the way it's supposed to be so we are seeing results um it's just going to take time right exactly and uh you know this is that that at this grade level you know what I like to see where you know what's the future or how we could Elevate that to higher grades
283all the way because you know a lot of students uh are push-outs they're not dropouts you know what that that means you know they're they're behind their grade level when they graduate you know so Mr Price if we do our job right which is what we're focused on we're focused on the prevention of it so we're putting a lot of our energy right now into K12 to prevent our students leaving second grade not having the skills that they need when they go into third grade but we also have emphasized some of the students where we have gaps in middle school and high school but our goal is our plan is our dream is that we won't need those in later years and if you do it will be a small group of students that maybe
284didn't have their whole educational experience in Elk Grove but we want to really focus on the prevention which is why our work has really been focused around K12 teachers and our aits well it's a good foundation that's what I like about it you know once you get it but I you know I like to see it all the way to K to six and you know continue with I'm going to take that as your closing Mr Bettis there are a couple questions past your last one so thank you sir um and yes sir go ahead it's brief as a uh two and a half year school board on the school district uh I have learned a lot and try to um pay my dues and trends of contributing to Bringing solutions to make things better
285as far as what I see and as far as having conversation in meetings with staff and parents I think that you know there there is a extended questions and um back and forth um conversation is important but I think the real work is not in the boardroom is off the boardroom so it doesn't matter how many years you're on the board it's important that you build that relationship and spend those time away from the war room to get the real solution and get things done so that's my comment and thank you for the presentation I look forward to working with you ladies and other committees in our school district that work so hard relentlessly try to improve our programs for our students so thank you thank you Mr Yang I will be very brief because
286my colleagues have already made such great points um you know this work is so Central to our mission um I'm not telling you anything you don't know obviously but you know reading is one of those gatekeeper skills um it's it's very near and dear to my heart only a year ago I was having a lot of anxiety about where my son was with respect to reading and uh we focused on phonemic awareness and he made a tremendous leap but um you know one of you mentioned organic chemistry I have to tell you as a parent and as a non-educator learning all of the pre-reading skills and and trying to figure out how to teach that was no less daunting than organic chemistry to me so I have great respect for everything that this program is
287trying to achieve and also for the teachers so far who have made this tremendous commitment to our students I I very much appreciate it I also really appreciate your collaboration with other departments just um nothing but great things can come of that I do have two quick questions um is there anything in in the research that you've seen that indicates we might have to make any tweaks to support children who either already know another language or are learning more than one language at a time so one of the things in the ELD standards there's a part three that talks about early literacy and the part three of ELD standards lines up exactly with what we're teaching right now so it's really a lovely um confirmation that we're doing the right thing um it depends also
288it depends on how their literacy is on their primary language when they come in as to what kinds of needs our El students have that makes sense yeah much appreciated I just realized I didn't finish my story so we focused with my son on phonemic awareness um for it was it was tight for a few months there this year he's a confident reader in two languages and he does a happy dance whenever I tell him we're going to the library so just you know keep hope alive my last question um actually piggybacking off of something Mr Bettis said or you you mentioned about colleges teaching this it's kind of a bone of contention with me a lot of things that we wish our teachers would already know when they came to us and sometimes it's
289surprising that either they're they're undergrad or their Master's programs don't already cover um are you aware of any conversation in the state of California to to prepare teachers with this kind of training so Patty can add to this we actually started a conversation with our local University with Sac State so Pia Wong is the kind of the Outreach coordinator uh we started that kind of in the middle of covid and it's still on our piece to come back to because uh that's something we would like to be able to support because we do get so many of our teachers in Elk Grove that do go through the Sac State teacher prudentialing program Patty are you aware of anything at the state level beyond that much appreciated let us know if there's anything we can do
290to support um with that thank you all for this very important presentation godspeed let us know how we can support I want that I will move on to our public hearing and action items first of these is the 2022-23 and 2324 school years meet and confer summary regarding EG teams EG teams includes site and District administration classified managers classified administrative support staff and supervisory employees um Mr David Riley is going to present this and we don't do public comment until after your presentation apparently that's right so good evening president Charles Espinosa members of the board superintendent Hoffman Miss Avalos the Elk Grove unified school district and the site and District administration classified managers and classified administrative support staff and supervisory employees also known as EG teams have signed a meet and confer summary for the
2912022 and 2023 and 2023 and 2024 school years the egusd board is asked to approve or ratify the attached beaten confer summary in addition Education Code section 3540.2 stipulates a fiscal review by the Sacramento County Office of Education of agreements to determine the fiscal or financial impact of the agreement on the District budget therefore the ab1200 report which provides the financial analysis of the meet and confer summary is attached and was submitted to scoey for their review and approval the ab1200 review has been approved by scowing and so the board president you're asked to announce and open the public hearing with a request for anyone who wishes to speak to the EG teams meet and confer summary and ask them to come forward and after listening to any speakers to um to then close the
292public hearing and after closing the public hearing the board is asked to take action to approve or ratify the meet and confer summary with eg teams thank you Mr Riley I'm going to open the public hearing and ask Miss levasser if there are any public comments via Zoom related to this item Madam president there are no public comments via Zoom advantage of this item thank you Miss Albion do we have any blue cards we do not thank you I'm going to close the public hearing and call for a motion to approve the 2022-23 and 2324 meet and confer summary regarding EG teams uh I'll repeat includes site and District administration classified managers classified administrative administrative support staff and supervisory employees do we have a motion so I moved second moved and seconded all in favor
293please signify by saying aye aye opposed it is approved unanimously thank you thank you next we move on to our one action item of the night school board you wanna okay Mr track asked to leave because we don't want to be accused of child abuse here so thank you Mr track makes his apologies um next item uh is School Board uh finance committee Miss levasser do we have um any public comments be assumed for this Madam President we have no public comments via zoom on this item thank you Miss albiani do I have any blue cards we do not thank you Mr Hoffman thank you very much so I'm here to share the recommendation from the finance subcommittee that met with regards to ongoing recommendations with regards to the finance committee um I do want
294to thank Ms Chavez Espinoza Miss albiani and Mr porcina we're sitting on the uh on the subcommittee and engaging in this work so the charge of the subcommittee was to uh really take a look at the existing um committee and see how it was working that included reviewing the bylaws so current practices and board members interactions with the committee and to consider ideas on how to best utilize both the use of the Community Resources and staff resources but also making sure that the board was getting feedback that was useful making decisions related to budget there were two basic um recommendations and I'll go into a little bit of detail about each of them but the the basic recommendation is uh the sun setting of the current finance committee structure and the development of a budget
295advisory committee uh moving forward and I'll go into some details about about both of those with regards to the current finance committee and the sunset the um the idea would be for that group to meet and summarize the information from the past few meetings they've they've had with a real focus on the meeting that they just had with the students we wanted to make sure the subcommittee wanted to make sure that that information made it made its way back to the board they like to be able to do a final presentation to the board in June I mean the board would also like the full committee to be recognized at that meeting in June as well boarding the subcommittee they can speak for themselves but I'm very appreciative of the commitment of the folks that
296have been on been on this committee many have been on it for many years and that has served us well over time so we want to make sure we recognize those that have committed themselves to the district hey do you run the new budget advisory committee um was that it would be a little more focused with the idea that it would be called together um on an as needed basis the construction very similar what we currently have and was important to the subcommittee that each of the board members had the opportunity to appoint a member along with the superintendent having the opportunity to appoint a member so it was a representation across the entire District they also want to leave the option open that in some cases depending on the topic there might be a
297need to identify additional members they might make might make a decision that each member of the board would identify two or three members just depending on the complexity of the topic and the committee would be assembled for a specified time frame with a specified focus on topic and or topics I'm identified by the board and part of the concept of this would be that it would allow the community members to focus their time you know in a in a finite amount of time and really commit over maybe a two three four six month time frame that they were they were really committed to they would probably be more often than the traditional finance committee but it would be you know there would be kind of light at the end of the tunnel we're really digging
298in deep and connected with the realization that it wasn't a commitment for multiple years or things along those lines and with that idea of also getting a specific a specific topic that the board had identified and really needed feedback um from the from the committee so the other subcommittee recommendation that came out of this and uh Oliver just left so it's always the you know as somebody leaves the room that's when you give them an assignment right so this is kind of how this is one of the examples of examples of that uh so the board committee is okay really did speak to one of the things that was of most value um from the finance committee was there um twice yearly um interactions with students and the feedback that came from uh from those
299meetings and the subcommittee is very interested in developing a mechanism uh to collect such information moving forward and a discussed possibility again without assigning the duty to somebody since they're they're out of the room would be that we might build that responsibility within the student board member position since it really is a reach out to students to be able to get information so just an idea not a um this one isn't written in stone but that was part of the conversation that came about and the the actual action that the uh the subcommittee's recommendation uh recommending is the uh approve the sun setting of the current board finance committee and the development of a new board budget advisory committee with that and obviously if any of the subcommittee members wanted to fill in any of
300the gaps that I may have left uh certainly open to that with albiani anything to add um I just think development of a new board budget advisory committee as needed um to me it reads like we want to make one tonight and we don't want to make one tonight we want to find if we we have a reason we need to have one we will put it together at that point so I just wanted to clarify that yeah I think that reflects the intention yeah Mr Fortuna anything to add okay um questions come the rest of the board go ahead so um I just one of the concerns that I think I've raised a little bit um earlier was um we are essentially eliminating the one board appointed committee that we have um and so
301that has implications for Community engagement which is something that I think is important to us um it has implications for leadership development which I think is important to us and you know I to some degree you know I have uh intimate experience with that being that um you know the area two uh did not really have a pipeline um you know there was nobody who was you know ready to run in area two who'd been involved for a long time and you know that created an opportunity for me but it does raise the issue of you know it would be nice to have a pipeline it would be nice to have opportunities for Future Leaders to get involved um you know and there are uh certainly areas where um I think some more involvement um
302you know would be beneficial right one of those areas um just off the top my head is equity right we have an equity office that's still young still you know could use some uh support uh and advice from the community uh and and some Community engagement um and that could be something that we could do but um I appreciate you know the the report and I think and I I I'm happy to support it um you know as we move forward but I do just want to uh you know sort of raise some of those concerns around Community engagement and around um building a leadership pipeline uh in the district because I think those are very important uh priorities thank you Mr Vargas go ahead Miss albioni um I understand where you're coming from I
303also want to say that um the pipeline that brought me here included um the PTA the site Council the superintendent's parents so they're well we were very aware of not letting go of our one committee we had that's why we reserved this it was Mr Fortuna's point to to to reserve the right to make our own committee and um and I think as someone who is not with a child in the district right now that has a different value and I can see how there's a harder on-ramp for that that makes a lot of sense to me um if you do have children in the district there there is kind of a pipeline in that way so that's a different thing to consider yeah go ahead Mr Perez uh Mr Vargas here trustee Vargas that
304the words right out of my mouth and I agree with them 100 it's a train opportunity uh orientation opportunity for future uh board members to uh upper mobility and and participate not on that also at the school site see the interaction of different um committees at the school site District site and that's it thank you Mr Pettis uh Mr Fortuna yeah no I had two cents um the point on development was is an important point because uh in disbanding this committee you knowingly eliminate that as an opportunity so that that's a given um I fought very hard for the establishment or let me let me back up I fought very hard uh uh for changes to what had been an existing uh subcommittee but the subcommittee has never functioned as it had been envisioned would
305the proposal for me is a is a compromise in that we don't give up the ability to have a an outside look at a specific issue um and that's a positive we will still have engagement and that we will be able to determine uh who it is that would represent our particular trustee area and about I suppose the big thing given given the way in which it was functioning um it's a it's a big decrease of Staff time so it's it's uh it's like everything else lies the compromise but but it it should serve us well in that if we have uh difficult issues we could we could throw it their way thank you all the way in as the third member of this uh committee um the problem that we are trying to solve
306is that um what we are what we have been asking of the finance committee was really not a feasible task right for them to advise us on the entirety of the budget um there's just not enough time for them to come up to speed to where they are more knowledgeable than the board on those things so the proposal is really to move to something that creates better value for the board and better use of the time of the people who volunteer um you know we we pick the sharpest most engaged folks in the community to do this that's why we take really seriously the potential of that group as a pipeline but the current model doesn't really respect their time or talents so that's really what this proposal is about um you know we wouldn't
307be really eliminating a board-appointed committee we'd be reconfiguring it we can bring it back whenever we want we still have our ability to make a majority of appointments there um it would just be really a concentration of the strengths of the current model right um we could task them with gosh I don't even want to get into specifics now but we're going to have to make some pretty hard choices with respect to Esser and which programs to keep which programs To Cut That Could for example be an area where we say you know please look at this handful of programs help us prioritize things of that nature so so there are some very valuable things that they could do um in a shorter period of time that would really just be a a better use
308of the time of these folks and than what we're doing now um and you know yeah I'll stop there so go ahead um I wasn't aware of any sort of training with his uh uh finance committee that the board appoint um am I correct no they don't receive training per se but the presentations that they receive from staff in the course of their service are meant to provide that education so they receive a series of presentations on various areas of the District budget and the District programs so so right so I'm just thinking if that's not effective is it because of lack of training because I mean we put someone right in there um probably lack of I would say numbers of meetings I mean can we Implement something that will train them better more
309prepare I think the issue really is we're setting them up for an impossible task that's what I'm saying so can we Implement something that will help develop them be more prepared to do their job to do their tasks because it sounds to me like we put them in there and it just no no it it it's no Sean um again when when the changes were made we envisioned that the subcommittee would get uh would would see very specific uh tasks and that they then would address those and come back with recommendation what happened instead was that it basically became a standing committee and given they met on a regular basis they kind of put together what that looked like which became getting reports from each of the the various areas within in the school district
310as opposed to having an arm of the board that would take a look at specific budgets or total budget and come back to the board with recommendations with respect to how money should be spent or or take a look at specific functions for the purpose of making recommendation with respect to enhancement or dissolution it because because you even even though the people who participated on a regular basis became knowledgeable about the district because they were getting repetitive information over the years and and even though that was occurring uh because they didn't have specific tasks the interest was waning and such that there are a lot of vacancies and a lot of absenteeism and and I would surmise that's probably because some folks said you know it's really not worth my time what we're saying is
311we don't want to give up a board subcommittee but in recognition of Staff resources and in recognition of the time of the people who would serve let's replace what we have with an as need committee that would address a specific function and Nancy shared one of them as we as we come in to having to deal with how we maintain positions that have been funded by Esser um people are going to put their own two cents in on on a whole variety of things but but we can throw specific questions to them to go dig into and come back with recommendation from their perspective um so so it it it it'll have tenets of the original thought um but instead of ongoing it'll be specific and and shorter lived and make a better use of
312everybody's time thank you Carmen for highlighting the other problem that we're trying to solve which is that there are multiple vacancies and there have been for years on this committee um you know we we look for the best and brightest people who are willing to spend you know less time with their family and volunteer with the district um but what we find is that attendance becomes a problem and we think one of the reasons is because they're not really seeing value they're not feeling like they're making a valuable contribution so that's one of the problems we're trying to solve here heavy built like a list of questions to identify why we have high Eternal orders with this particular committee because I mean we don't ask we wouldn't know right I mean my guy has been
313okay but I see I see and understand you know the the lack of Interest going forward yeah because uh the lack of impact that they're making perhaps could be one of the main reasons why they don't want to be involved going forward because they seeing as they're not adding value to their role um so maybe we could uh amended you know some of the duties that they can make an impact on and what that is we could discuss furthermore okay we've had a robust discussion we've had some different ideas here I'm going to ask if there is a motion to approve the recommendation to Sunset the current finance committee and um to to create the opportunity for the development of an ad hoc budget advisory committee I assume second moved and seconded all um okay
314what does that budget look like what is what budget from my understanding we have to pay someone to do right no no no no no no what it means is that we would Sunset the existing committee and if and when we feel the need to recreate a group that's going to do a deep dive as opposed to a broad one we established reconstitute them yeah and that point them again we would appoint a new committee right okay yeah okay so we had a first and a second all in favor please signify by saying I I opposed no no okay measure passes thank you roll call I think we can count four to two even me even after a meeting I don't know who so so when is that going to go in effect um Mr
315superintendent that is a good question because we did talk about that you want to talk about next steps yeah so that was that was part of that it was let's do a quick recap there we go so uh the idea would be let's see so yeah we would we would actually I'll talk with the uh the committee chair um this week um and um share the information that the board did tonight um ask them to call um one more meeting to be able to summarize the information from the past few meetings that they've been put together uh with an emphasis on the information they received from the students at their last meeting and then ask them to present a final report at one of the June meetings kind of look at their timetable as far
316as being able to get together and we'd like to recognize them ideally at the June board meeting um and recognize the group for their contributions to the district with that I'm going to move on to board member and superintendent reports calling on those who wish to submit official committee reports look for hands yes Mr superintendent the only the only comment I have is uh I'm uh I'm sorry for all the kings fans out there but I'm happy to announce that we will have graduations at the uh the golden one Center and that takes one thing off of our plate that makes life a little bit easier so yeah sorry not sorry um last item on our agenda is consideration of future agenda items I'm going to look for him go ahead Mr Perez well this
317should be um Beyond consideration for future agenda items issues that board members should want to talk about or have concerns about for instance right now I have a concern that I'm going to be requesting to you Mrs Titus that I am requesting Family Medical sickly formed and information how to go about to write requests for Family Medical sick leave and also um accommodations this item one make this public okay because it's affecting my health and sitting on this board okay so Mr President this is not an appropriate time please put that in the agenda I mean the minutes of the meeting that I'm requesting those two items Mr Perez please talk to Mr Hoffman I'm sure we will start everything we're able to do but consideration of future agenda items is not the time yes
318I'm making it time still mentioned that I'm a requested to attend a a training conference to tackle the the potential issues facing Educators students and families and the policy solutions to address these issues educational issues have been asked education governance that's the title of the conference or the workshop of attending the policy Institute of education governance Empowering Families and evaluating student outcomes uh this month taking place May 16th and the 17th 2023 in Phoenix Arizona it's a training conference that uh will Empower me on on these issues Mr Perez is your request that the district pay for this travel no okay so what is your request you don't need our problem okay or uh travel and uh and uh what do you call the room room and board or whatever and also Mr Perez this
319is not a future agenda item so again please talk to Mr Hoffman and me about whatever the issue is but it does not sound like a future agenda item with that I'm adjourning this meeting at 11 14 p.m safely