001good afternoon I'm going to call to order the regular meeting of the Elk Grove unified school district board of education for April 18 2023 and announced that the board will meet in closed session to address items one through six on the closed session portion of the agenda at this time I'd like to call for public comment on the closed session items Mr superintendent do we have any blue slips we do not thank you I'm going to close public comment and recess into closed session thank you good afternoon I'd like to call the meeting to order at 604 pm and announce that the board met in closed session pursuant to government code section 549-57.1 subsection a paragraph two the board provided legal counsel provide direct excuse me the board provided a legal counsel direction to initiate
002litigation the vote was unanimous 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 is available to the public via the zoom platform today's meeting is being video recorded and will be available on the district's YouTube channel going to read you some public comment information 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 of Trustees public comments may not
003uh excuse me 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 all 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 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 are watching and indeed participating you are
004encouraged 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 any disturbance or willful Interruption of board meetings persistent disruption by an individual or group shall be grounds 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 point during the meeting with that the first item on our agendas is always the Pledge of Allegiance and today I'm going to call on Jamie Pierce and Daniel Denton and my colleague Mr Vargas is going to share some information with us about them please come on up wonderful as usual we've got
005some comments for you guys ahead of the ahead of the Pledge Harriet Eddie Middle School is honored to recognize two important members of our school community and true Partners in service to our students Mr Jamie Pierce and Mr Daniel Denton Mr Pierce is a youth pastor at River City Church in Elk Grove and has been involved in every secondary campus during the past five years Mr Pierce and his wife estora have six children in total two that have attended Harriet Eddy Middle School Mr Daniel Denton is active in The Fellowship of Christian athletes and works with Mr Pierce to connect with our students each month through engaging lunchtime activities Sports and consistent presence on our campus Mr Pierce and Mr Denton love to engage with Elk Grove students and help students break down walls and
006encourage students to find a platform to launch to success Mr Pearson Mr Denton along with the FCA have supported our teachers by providing gift baskets and lunch on teacher in-service days both strive to bridge to bridge the gaps between elk Grove's faith-based communities the schools and this and our small businesses together to give our students the greatest chance of success in life our Harriet Eddie Community is grateful for the positive presence these two important people bring to our campus each month and love that they are always so willing to step in and help we thank you for your service and dedication to our students teachers and the greater Elk Grove Community so whenever you're ready pledge salute I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which
007stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all right if you can just wait for us down there one second well Mr Vargas makes his way down there and I neglected to welcome and thank Miss Norma Gillis principal of Harriet Eddie middle school thank you so next up we're going to begin our presentations and recognitions our student Regional report today is from the Pleasant Grove region and it includes students from Pleasant Grove High School Catherine albiani Middle School Arnold aldrie adriani Elementary Edna Beatty Elementary Cosumnes River Elementary C.W Dillard Elementary Robert J McGarvey Elementary Pleasant Grove Elementary Sierra Enterprise Elementary and Sunrise Elementary I'd like to call the student Representatives at this time you can begin whenever you're ready all right I'm ready good evening good evening president and it shares us
008Espinoza board members superintendent hospin and Miss Avalos my name is Colin boating woods and I am an 8th grader at Catherine l albiani Middle School and my name is Juliet Kroll and I'm in sixth grade at Edna baby Elementary School we are here tonight to tell you what it's like to be a student at the schools in Pleasant Grove region the last two the last two two years of middle school had been an adventure at first I struggled a bit at the beginning but then I started walking out of the dark and into the light making my best effort to make friends as Vivian Green said it best wife is about waiting for the storm to pass it's about learning how to dance in the rain the overall themes and expectations of our school be
009safe be respectful be responsible we'll help anyone get through the storms and know that we know and we know that these are our schools we all belong here we all finders people to dance with us in the rain we hope you enjoy our presentation than you too know that all are welcome in the Pleasant Grove region we would now like to introduce first grade students from Arnold out adriani Elementary School if you can go sit down until they'll really want us important foreign thank you great job wildhawks thank you foreign next up we have Sierra Enterprise Elementary School good evenings my name is Archie Garcia and it's is my friend Marciano Rosso we wanted to tell you about the fun times we had at five percent this Saturday five senses Saturday was last Saturday on
010April 15th it is a celebration of Autism Awareness Month and how different students learn five cents a Saturday show a lot of the tools we learn with and how we we have fun when we learn to some of the some of the things we played with were magnetized and made those it might look like we're just having fun but we're also thinking like engineers and learning how machines work we also played with modeling those and rice bins why it may look like we're looking for plain or Fun prices or really starting to think like artists and learning how to calm ourselves down when we need a break up hmm my favorite thing from five cents Australia was a Lego and water beads I was a I was able to make a machine with wheels like
011a car my favorite things from five cents to Saturday was playing with the Orbeez and kinetic sand it was nice and calm I also had fun with the two egg hunts we had we also had so many people that came to visit and helped she volunteers from Valley high school and community volunteers from the Chinese Emmanuel helped us with all the fun games Mr forsignia from the board game came to visit too also nobody had to pay things to things to help from River Valley kawanis and it was nice to see everyone come together we had so much fun we wanted to bring each board members our five cents a Saturday in a bag we put in connects and collect Magna tiles ain't what paint sticks play form Legos and even it's not we hope
012that you each find something that helps you with your learning and maybe you will find you want to be an artist or engineer too thank you so much for listening now we would like to introduce Luke Spencer and Riley cook from the Pleasant Grove High School students that black button will move that Podium up if you need to move that microphone closer thank you good evening everyone my name is Natalie Olson and I am here to talk about and represent the red carpet Dance Before introducing my two very lovely guests I wanted to discuss what red carpet is briefly red carpet is a dance for special needs students throughout the Elk Grove unified school district we have two of our students here first is Riley cook a student from Pleasant Grove High School and her
013date Luke Spencer and red carpet attendee and they're here to talk about and share their experiences from the night of the dance hello I'm Riley and as Natalie mentioned I also helped set up and plan the red carpet dance and I also had the privilege of having Luke as my date for the red carpet dance and so I met Luke through a program that I helped run at PG called the social group and it consists of a group of students from our Associated student body and we go into these special ed classrooms and we just socialize with them we play board games we do arts and crafts we've made bracelets and we really get to know them and the more we get to know them the better we can tailor the dance to help them
014feel more comfortable so the star of our red carpet dance was Luke to share about some of his experiences so Luke what was your favorite part of red carpet so one of my favorite red carbon dance was dancing with my very own Michael Jackson's glove and also I'm taking pictures with Riley yes so there was a photo booth and there was a lot of songs so you could dance to Michael Jackson what was your favorite song there so one of my favorite songs at the red carpent dance was anti-hero by Taylor Swift and was there anything to eat there yes I ate lettuce there there were what there were options there were hamburgers there were chips but what did you like to eat lettuce lettuce what did you wear to the dance I wear a
015tuxedo and purple tie in your glove right yeah for sure and did you meet anyone so yeah two when I first met Riley for the first time she was in the ASB and same thing to Natalie thank you guys for listening to two of our guests at the Red Carpet dance we've been planning since August of 2022 so it was amazing to see it come into fruition so thank you guys foreign good evening my name is Jamie Henson and I'm excited to be here with some of the cast from our musical at Sunrise Elementary School Willy Wonka Jr where we had 74 4th through sixth grade students performing in February tonight they're going to show you two songs we're gonna do um we're gonna do two songs for you tonight you know um thank you
016foreign folks we hope you've enjoyed our regional presentation and you understand and how amazing it is to be a student in the Pleasant Grove region thank you amazing performance students great job does that conclude our presentation or is there more I believe that concludes the presentation so congratulations and thank you to the students for their reports and performances I also want to introduce the following principles miss taking keplinger from Pleasant Grove High School not sure if they're still in the room Marie Bahar from Catherine albiani Middle School Julie Hughes from Arnold adriani Elementary William Jones from Edna Beatty Elementary Blomquist with Cosumnes River Elementary School Sandra Wiest with C.W Dillard Elementary School Robert Aikman with Robert J McGarvey Elementary School Deidre wood from Pleasant Grove Elementary Patricia heck with Sierra Enterprise Elementary and Martin Hawk
017with Sunrise Elementary School students are dismissed I also should congratulate the parents Educators and everybody else involved in supporting these fantastic students thank you gonna let traffic move out a little bit our next item is the athletic recognition of our winter CIF champions while folks are moving through Miss levasser do we have any public comments via Zoom Madam president there are no public comments via zoom on this item thank you Miss Jamerson do we have any blue cards for this item no Madam President we do not have any blue cards for this item okay I'm gonna call on Mr Chad Schweitzer who will be assisted by my colleague Miss Gina Jamerson for these recognitions still awfully busy out there uh good evening board president chyros Espinoza members of the board superintendent Hoffman and Miss Avalos
018we're here tonight to present our winter CIF Sac Joaquin section uh Champions and our Masters champions in wrestling over 200 schools competed this year in the sack Joaquin section and all of our wrestlers were crowned Masters champions like to begin tonight by introducing the Elk Grove High School wrestling Coach Pat coffing I thought I had the thumbs up we understand there's a little bit of traffic out there that are here all right here we go uh introduced once again Mr Pat coffing he's the coach of the Elk Grove High School wrestling program and coach hoffing has on his uh coaching staff Nick Jordan and Kyle Baird in this year coach coffing has three wrestlers who all won the sack Joaquin section Masters championship in their respective weight classes that was held down in Stockton Arena
019a few months ago first we have Nolan Frank Nolan won first place for the second consecutive year and the 220 pound class he defeated his opponent from Pitman one to nothing in the final match next up is octave Octavio Negrete Octavio won first place in the 113 pound class by defeating the Folsom opponent six to four in the final match and lastly from Elk Grove we have Bianca posole and Bianca won first place by pinning her opponent in just the first minute and 47 seconds to win her first national championship next from Monterey Trail I'd like to introduce head coach Evan Walker and Monterey Trail had one wrestler win the section Masters and that is Elizabeth raynaga Nunes and Elizabeth won her Masters by beating Bella Vista 3-0 in the final match parents supporters you're
020welcome to come up to the front of the room to take pictures gonna need our honorees to get a little closer congratulations to all of our Masters champions and next up we have the Franklin High School women's soccer team and represented tonight by head coach Aaron salamo all right and Aaron's assistant coaches are Phil welbrock a few aren't here so we'll start naming our athletes we have Malia Bona and Natalie Cervantes Lauren fresh hour Annelise George Nicole Morris Sydney pashan Jaden Paul LJ Rogers and Sanai Rogers Addison cease and Brooke wilbrock our Franklin soccer team this year went 19-4-3 on the way to winning the sack Joaquin division one section Championship this year in the playoffs they beat River City one to zero Pleasant Grove after a one-to-one tie in the shootout they beat Rocklin
0212-1 and finally McClatchy High School four to nothing in the championship game congratulations ladies back and again parent supporters you're welcome to come up to the front of the room to take a picture congratulations Wildcats next we're going to move on to our resolutions we have I believe five today yes we do first is the recognition of the day of the teacher I'm going to call on Miss Lisa levasser to see if there are any public comments via Zoom today Madam president there are no public comments via zoom on this thank you going to very slowly call on Miss Jamerson to ask if there are any blue cards for this item Madam president there are no blue cards put aside thank you Mr Singh whenever you're ready uh good evening Madam president uh members of
022the board superintendent Hoffman uh fellow colleagues and Community it's my pleasure to introduce and request the board to adopt resolution 66 2022 and 23 recognizing May 10 2023 that's the day of the teacher in the Elk Grove unified school district every year thousands of communities will take time out on Wednesday May 10 2023 to honor their local Educators and to acknowledge the contributions they make to our lives while it certainly takes many people to make a school succeed national teacher day focuses on the teachers who work to make public schools great places for students to succeed in life with that it is my pleasure to ask the Elk Grove unified school district Board of Education to approve the resolution thank you Mr Singh I'd like to call for a motion to approve resolution number 66
023recognizing May 10 2020 2023 as the day of the teacher in Elk Grove unified uh oh I'm gonna take a move from Miss Albion a second from Mr Bettis all in favor please signify by saying aye aye opposed measure passes unanimously thank you Mr Singh next resolution is Asian Pacific American heritage month Mr Ambassador do we have any public comments via Zoom Madam President we have no public comments via this item thank you Miss Jamerson do we have any blue cards for this item no Madam President we do not have any blue cards for this item Miss Donnell black we're ready for you good evening Madam president chairs Espinoza Mr track members of the board superintendent Hoffman and Miss Avalos I come before you to request the adoption of resolution 73 recognizing may as Asian
024Pacific American heritage month Asian Pacific American heritage week began in 1978 when President Jimmy Carter signed a joint resolution designating this as an annual celebration in May of 1990 the recognition was expanded further when George H.W bush designated may as Asian Pacific American heritage month May was chosen to commemorate the immigration of the first Japanese to the United States on May 7 1843 and to Mark the anniversary of the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad on May 10 1869. the majority of the workers who laid the tracks were Chinese immigrants throughout the year the contributions of Americans with Pacific Rim Heritage are presented in the regular curriculum however this special Focus for one month serves as a reminder of the combined contributions of this group the celebration of the Asian American Asian Pacific American Community is
025important as we continue to still see anti-asian sentiment Nationwide due to xenophobia and racism related to the global pandemic in support of this resolution this year curriculum professional learning will facilitate a district-wide virtual Workshop aapi cultural legacies through ART and music on May 4th at 4 pm and again due to popularity on June 28th at 6 PM which will support participants in recognizing valuing and promoting diversity currently there's over 125 egusd employees registered for each of those virtual trainings so I come to you to request the adoption of resolution 73. love to hear that there's support for a demand for additional trainings um thank you so at this time I'd like to call for a motion to approve resolution number 73 designating May 2023 as Asian Pacific American heritage month yeah I will be honored
026to move this motion uh Asian Pacific American heritage month thank you sir second moved and seconded all in favor please signify by saying aye aye opposed that resolution is approved unanimously thank you Miss Black and I can make a quick remark sure go ahead sir it is uh with honor to hear that our uh school district is adapting this uh resolution again uh for this coming in May to honor the Asian Pacific American uh heritage in this great nation and uh Asian Americans is no different from all Americans who are all immigrants from the start and with that said you know our contributions in mini Arenas such as farming I just railroads and so forth um has make American a more vibrant country and a better country for all of us and just a great
027honor to be a part of this Rich history this great nation and congratulations thank you thank you for those comments next resolution is physical fitness and sports month resolution Miss levasser do we have any public comments for this item Madam President we have no public comments to be assumed for this item thank you Miss Jamerson do we have any blue cars for this item we have no blue cards for this item whenever you're ready Miss Black in addition to Asian Pacific American heritage month I come before you to request the adoption of resolution 72 recognizing may as physical fitness and sports month this resolution recognizes the central role of physical education and Sports in creating a healthy lifestyle for all children in the Elk Grove unified school district the president's Council on Sports Fitness and
028Nutrition recognizes may as physical fitness and sports mug and its mission is to invoke a call to action to recognize the value and importance of having physical activity and physical education in the lives of kids and adults campaigns like this one help to reactivate our interests in physical activity in sports fitness and sports are not only good for our physical health they also improve the quality of Our Lives overall experts agree that even small amounts of physical activity can make a significant difference in a person's physical and mental health for example it can reduce the risk of chronic diseases blood pressure and anxiety while improving sleep among other health benefits additionally participation in sports teams and physical activity clubs can improve grade point averages School attachment educational aspirations and the likelihood of graduation higher physical
029fitness achievement is associated with better School attendance rates and fewer disciplinary incidents involving drugs alcohol violence and truancy parents and Guardians can help by modeling the very behaviors we want to see in young children if parents and Guardians exercise and set an example their kids will likely Embrace similar habits if families emphasize physical play time on the weekends kids will be more likely to get involved in sports activities without pushback in support of this resolution curriculum professional learning will partner with local city parks and rec programs along with physical education teachers to develop a list of recommendations for how families can be physically active in the summer months so I humbly request the adoption of resolution 72 recognizing may as physical fitness and sports month thank you Miss Black I'd like to call for a
030motion to approve resolution number 72 designating May 2023 as physical fitness and sports month I move approval resolution 72. okay moved and seconded all in favor please dignify by saying aye aye I approved unanimous thank you Miss Black thank you our next resolution is for National Foster Care month Miss levasser do we have any uh public comments via Zoom for this Madam President we have no public comments via zoom on this item thank you Miss Jamerson do we have any blue cards on this item we have no blue cards on this item thank you I'd like to welcome Mr Don Ross uh good evening uh Madam president Cyrus Espinoza members of the board superintendent Hoffman and Miss Avalos I'm here tonight uh to present resolution 70 recognizing National Foster Care month May is National Foster
031Care month and this year's theme is strengthening minds and uplifting families families public and private agencies Community organizations and individuals provide a valuable support and encouragement to Youth and Foster Care Across the Nation the state and our district during the month of May Elk Grove unified school district would like to honor the contributions of our kinship families Educators Community Partners and service providers who contribute to the stability educational achievement and emotional and physical well-being of Youth and Foster Care the district would also like to raise awareness of the challenges that many students in foster care face and how the collective efforts of caring adults can make an impact on their lives I asked the board to please adopt resolution 70 recognizing may as National Foster Care month thank you Mr Ross I'd like to call
032for a motion to approve resolution number 70 recognizing May 2023 of National Foster Care month and who was the second Mr Vargas or Mr Fortuna Mr 14. all in favor please signify by saying aye aye um uh yes sir one second let me finish the vote a post a resolution is approved unanimously go ahead Mr Fortuna thank you the last board meeting we had a wonderful presentation on our homeless program and that that meeting I had made comments that for foster program parallel those made for homeless we have many children and those who serve them that struggle to provide what is needed because both programs must do so within the dollars that they generate from various uh grants and I would ask my colleagues that when it comes time for Budget discussions that we won
033not forget about the needs of our homeless children and that secondly we do not forget the needs of our foster care kids thank you Mr fortino our next item is National Mental Health Awareness Month resolution Miss levasser do we have any public comments via Zoom for this Madam President we have no public comments via zoom on this item thank you Miss Jamerson do we have any blue cards on this item we have no blue cards on this item thank you go ahead Mr Ross um so I'm here uh to uh bring to the board resolution 71 recognizing may as National Mental Health Awareness Month um National mental health awareness month was established in 1949 to increase awareness of the importance of mental health and wellness and to celebrate recovery from mental illness this resolution raises
034awareness of the trauma and the impact it can have on the physical emotional and mental well-being of children families and communities mental health is essential for a person's overall health and well-being this year's Mental Health America mha theme is looking around looking within the goal is to address mental health in areas such as safe and stable housing Healthy Home environments neighborhoods and towns and Outdoors and nature these topics impact mental health by encouraging individuals to look around their environments mha is inviting health organizations and school districts to join in spreading the word that mental health is something everyone should care about to support their efforts to increase awareness of mental illness and emphasize the importance of mental health our school counselors have taken the lead in organizing various events and activities on campus creating posters
035sending out messages and providing available resources to our students and the school Community during the month of May I asked the board to please adopt resolution 71 recognizing may as National Mental Health Awareness Month thank you Mr Ross I'd like to call for a motion to approve resolution number 71 recognizing May 2023 as National mental health awareness month so I moved seconded moved and seconded all in favor please signify by saying aye aye opposed resolution is approved unanimously double checking that we have no comments thank you Mr Ross our next item is public comment for items not on the agenda Mr Vassar do we have any public comments via Zoom for items not on the agenda yes Madam President we have several comments via Zoom for items not on the edge the first um first
036person up is Jess Carlson speaker if you can unmute yourself we're ready for you so um we're just going to ask you to wait until the in-person section thank you next speaker please next public comment Gandhi reinsick hey can you hear me we can go ahead okay hi um I just wanted to speak again in support of our Librarians and Elementary School teachers who I feel have been under attack at the last two meetings um by various people and I just wanted to share that I've been doing research on moms for Liberty which I believe is the organization that's behind organizing book Banning across the United States and several of the people that have spoke have been Facebook affiliated with moms for Liberty they seem to be following the blueprint that's laid out by this
037organization this organization was founded in Florida in 2021 and their agendas to change school curriculums so it starts out with targeting a couple of books such as Toni Morrison and then it moves on to other agendas such as textbooks LGBT rights any issues with critical race Theory which has never been taught in elementary school so basically any um teaching about diversity or Race and History all under the caption of parental rights and then there's also an attack by this group on teachers and teachers unions um I do feel this is an extremist group they have a lot of information available online and everything that I'm saying can be easily looked up by anybody that wants to know more about this group one of the things that they've come out against is the teaching of Galileo
038and astronomer famous astronomer who um first determined that the Earth revolved around the Sun and not vice versa and they have said that it shows the church in a bad light and there should be a balance with counter Praise of the church in August of 2022 a moms for Liberty activist advocated for separating LGBT students into specialized classes and this is a direct quote like for example children with autism and down syndrome I mean this is extremism and I believe that you have parental rights and if you want to believe far right extremist ideas then you have the right to enroll your children in a conservative private Christian school but you do not have the right to take rights away from other students um this doesn't represent California values this doesn't represent any workplace that
039I've ever worked in every workplace is advocated for diversity and we've had training on that every year that I've been in the workforce um and I really appreciate the training and education that our Librarians have and our elementary school teachers in addition to that their own funding and their own money that they put into the displays and everything that they have in their classrooms um I would much trust someone with a library science degree to be able to determine the books in my child's School than someone from an extremist group thank you next uh public comment via Zoom Elda Garcia hi good afternoon can you hear me yes go right ahead okay hi Mr Hoffman and the board members I am here um to share that I would like to bring to your attention again
040regarding uh inappropriate books in the elementary schools and uh I want to make it clear I am not an extremist I'm a parent and I'm not involved in any of those groups at the prior person just spoke about I'm just a concerned parent having pornography Books available to elementary students or any children in school is unacceptable this has been brought to the board's attention various times there has been no responses or notices to parents on why this is being allowed in the school libraries and this is not an attack on school librarians or anybody else this is a concern we have every right as parents to bring it to the to the board's attention I ask that you please remove these inappropriate books that are very graphical in sexual nature that is unacceptable for any
041children in school I ask that you also make it safe for the kids in a clean environment where they don't have to be subjective to this kind of type of books thank you next public comment via Zoom we just have a first name Jane if next public comment via Zoom Brian rickel hi thank you you can all hear me correct yes sir go ahead great thank you uh first I just wanted to thank Andy Reich uh uh for for speaking tonight um that is not why I came here to speak it was originally but I've changed some things I want to talk about but uh I I am also an atheistic humanistic parent and I have rights in this District also and I would prefer that the public education stay public for all people not
042just Conservative Christian ideologies created out of Florida so thank you Gandhi for saying that now on to what I came here to talk about tonight and that is um first off I I am I am the dean of arts median entertainment at Cosumnes River College but more importantly tonight I am a parent of a five-year-old in TK at Florence markhoffer and I was thrilled on April 1st to be able to host the Elk Grove unified school district's Visual Arts showcase at kasuma server College you all had over almost 500 pieces of art brought to our campus and almost six or seven hundred parents show up with their families and their kids to uh basically take a Museum tour of of public art made by your students and it was one of the most thrilling things
043I've done since I've been a Dean so I'd like to first off congratulate your entire new vapa team led by Jen Wilbanks um and I'm looking forward to further partnership with them but I want to talk about tonight is the inequality disparity uh between your theater programs I'm a theater artist I've been a practicing theater artist my entire life I started in Sacramento and I moved to Southern California I'm back I've taken my son to a field trip at Franklin High School to see The Aristocats and I was wowed and Amazed by the facilities they have I was stunned by the facilities they have um there are a few college students who have the facilities that Franklin High School has I've seen a show also at Elk Grove High School nice facility fantastic she is
044Leilani is doing a lot with what she has which is not a ton but it's it's great stuff uh two weeks ago I had The Misfortune of visiting Valley High School's theater program and their music program and I'm speaking on behalf of them tonight um I left physically angry at what you will have left Valley high school with we talk about Equity a lot in this district and if you all think for one second that Equity exists between Franklin's Arts programming and Valley High School's Arts programming then I would invite you to come spend a few days in a space that has been waiting for old furniture to be picked up for months a space that OSHA would probably shut down were they to show up and I I want you all to help me
045make sense of the fact that anything that Franklin High School no longer wants or needs gets dumped into Valley High School we are supporting Valley High School by trying to create an mou with them so that their music students can come across the street and perform in our Recital Hall and we are trying to get any tool that I can to build scenery into the hands of the teacher teaching theater currently at Valley High School they are being left behind it is inequitable you cannot tell me that they have Equity because they each have a theater program I think you're all doing an amazing job I've got 11 seconds left but there is disparity between these programs that needs to be fixed stem success comes through Steam and I will leave it at that thank
046you for your time tonight thank you your next public comment via Zoom Lisa Stanley hi my name is Lisa Stanley I'm an advocate with bylp black youth leadership project and while we're doing so much good in other districts and collaborating with like-minded Administration we unfortunately have to continue to bring your shortcomings to light we spoke of another one of our babies last month being harmed due to the negligence at the hands of your staff specifically the VP when she did not take accountability for not creating a safe space on her campus the chemistry teacher who worked overtime to make class assignments and due dates confusing to our students was another issue we also learned recently that this student was not granted Services while her case manager was on maternity leave our team was made aware
047of this disservice when we asked for her service minutes to which absolutely none had been provided your continued gross negligence is noted and we want you to know our team is getting stronger to hold this District accountable how many other students are being mishandled and suffering at the hands of your staff this must stop I also want to highlight San Juan again we are not only on an elementary school campus currently but we are also bringing our 12-week mindfulness-based substance abuse program to a high school and several more at the beginning of the next school year it is so refreshing to speak with teachers VPS and staff who care and I find it funny how all the resolutions you all just adopted spoke of mental health Foster youth physical fitness literally everything byop stands for
048and is about and is about bringing intentionally to our babies yet we are refused by the very people who voted for the resolutions and who pretend to care about all these things even the other school board meetings we attended this last past month were less performative and more action-based they were less about patting themselves on the back but how can they intentionally show up for our students EG needs to step up I'd also like to remind everybody about our book club tomorrow night we're still reading suspended by Dr Charles Charles Bell you can register at bylp.org we read as a community so don't worry if you haven't read the book yet you are welcomed especially if your children are in this District you need all the tools you can get because it's not a matter
049of if but when will your child be on the receiving end of negligence thank you ma'am last uh public comment via Zoom Lorraine Pryor good evening go ahead Miss Pryor oh thank you you know it's normally my style to be with you um however I'm at home sick and I wanted to keep my germs to myself but I'm coming before you because I did hear that you had Pleasant Grove region um highlighted today in your board meeting and I want to talk about a student from Pleasant Grove region who was failed on multiple levels her self-advocacy despite her disabilities fell on deaf ears no pun intended as she tried to navigate her classes with the addition of social presence that she faced as a team she tried to make sense of what was going on
050in her chemistry class despite not hearing everything said as her teacher moved about the room even though she was supposed to get preferential treat seating during her her lectures because she couldn't hear out of one ear she powered through nonetheless a while ago I came before you and I told you of the rude and dismissive interactions we observed during her triennial IEP we had a follow-up meeting and during that meeting as Lisa stated we discovered she had or we were informed that she had not received her IEP mandated supports due to her case manager being on maternity leave and no one else being assigned to cover for her cover her during that time she did not have access to Fair inappropriate public education service minutes and now they want to talk about giving her those
051minutes as if they're doing her a favor no she is legally entitled to those minutes and you all dropped the ball so what we expect to see because she cannot go back to Pleasant Grove High School we expect that transfer that was requested by the parents to be honored immediately not only that we expect those minutes to be given to her she is entitled to those and I'm just so entirely frustrated with the fact that it seems like people people just don't care people don't care how they talk to parents people don't care how they are perceived by the greater public people don't care how they treat black children and it's unacceptable because I care I care enough to tell you that we've been going state to state we had a chance to go to
052Louisiana Lafayette Louisiana and tour a school I want to tell you how refreshing it is to see students who are excited about learning because they are exposed to adults who care another thing I would like to tell you is if you have not listened to the latest podcast episode of black versus the Board of Education you should we had a young lady who was a foster student on there and she was talking about the lack of care and concern adults continually put towards her and so I want to just reinforce we need adults in positions who are going to care if they're going to be exposed to our children thank you thank you and get well soon that was the last one correct okay thank you Miss Jamerson um let's begin with blue cards oh
053um the woman who was supposed to be on Zoom do you happen to have a do we have a blue card for you you did oh okay okay then you'll be in the pies wanted to make sure that you that you were in the pile I'll call you okay thank you okay uh first up we have Amanda Scott followed by emelina Mendoza hello my name is Amanda and I am a parent here in Elk Grove unified school district I have a son in the second grade at Helen car Costello and I just wanted to say that I support the board's um approval of the sex ed curriculum I think it's extremely important um I am very appreciative of the practices and policies that you're putting in place to protect families and students that identify as
054you know lgbtq plus students and families and our marginalized communities thank you thank you and Marina followed by Melissa Gentry there is a saying that goes you should never get between your mama bear and her Cubs this board have tried to do that and have awoken moms and dads on a mission a mission to protect our children I'm bringing awareness to other parents about the lack of transparency of this board about the sexualization of our children through the education the sexual education curriculum pornographic books in our school libraries and drag shows in our school assemblies I would like to know who were the members of the committee that put together this sexual education curriculum who selected them and what was the process of the selection who revised the curriculum why parents were not notified nor
055invited to be involved in the development of the the process of the curriculum the sexual education curriculum this board approved in addition to inappropriate content it teaches children to undermine their parents Authority telling kids that they they have rights telling kids that they can hide things from their parents and so on if kids are taught to be defiant and disrespectful to their parents do you think that they will respect teachers principals police or anybody else of course not by bringing this by giving this much power to Children you are contributing to creating this to contributing to creating disrespectful defiant and violent members of society if you think removing parents rights is good for families and Society you're becoming part of the chaos in the culture that we are experiencing a culture today this district is
056failing to give the education that our children deserve and need to succeed it is failing to work with parents to make our school a place to learn and thrive this board has shown indifference towards parents concerns regarding important issues such as this sexual education curriculum the action of this board has impaled us to build a fort between to protect our children's innocence and you're gonna have to go through us before you get to them and I will the action of this board has I'm sorry um so with that I want to say I would like to um invite parents maybe we need to get together and strategize about school choice the State of the State of Arizona has done it so can we school choice means that parents would receive their child's tax state tax
057dollars that would otherwise go to the public school for their child that way these funds can be used these ratification outside of the public school system yes I'm almost done I would like to invite more parents to join us to rebuilding the more Compass of this community because he has definitely been broken and Society no peace if there is no order thank you next speaker next up is Melissa followed by Emily onry good evening thank you for the opportunity to address you today I'm a mother of four children in the district across elementary junior high and High School um I've come to speak to you about the sexually explicit materials available to children in the school libraries in our district I'm not affiliated with any of the groups they were talking about there I'm just
058deeply concerned about my children and the influence that are on them and of course all the other children in the district in that vein I'd like to warn parents with children listening that I will quote from a book that is in my children's School library and that the material is not appropriate for children our middle and high school library has a book that describes how genital stimulation can come from any body part the book says and I quote you may stroke his penis insert fingers into his anus or insert fingers into her vagina it's all sex it feels really good and the best part is there is a decreased risk of spreading sexually transmitted infections when all you do is touch and rub this is not all the book encourages it details losing your virginity
059anal sex oral sex vaginal sex dildos sex toys pornography and hiding things from parents why would this District provide a book or multiple books describing how to engage in different forms of sex to children who can't legally consent to those Acts would you be okay with someone you don't know telling your 12 year old about their favorite sexual acts of course not so why are you providing that to children in writing at the elementary school level it's been determined that it is appropriate for sex ed to be taught beginning in fifth grade but books discussing many of the same topics are available to children as young as four years old a teacher can decide to read any of the library books to their class without parental notice or consent I was able to voice my
060concerns a couple months ago in a meeting with District officials but I have not seen any changes come from that meeting I still feel unheard it is the parents moral obligation to teach their own children what is appropriate sexually not a school district and to decide when that conversation occurs thank you Emily followed by Richard Atkinson I am so thankful for this school board I grew up in the kind of school that Melissa envisions where we taught abstinence only education queer people did not exist and queer people if they did were dangerous this did not erase who I am it did not change me but it hurt me and 20 years of work has only started to undo the depth of that harm queer people are not dangerous we are not deviant we are not
061broken and I want to thank the school board for validating that through approving the sex ed curriculum and through refusing to ban books out of fear and bigotry the law says this school is a safe Zone it says be safe and respectful and the voices behind me are not safe they are harmful and those parents are harming their children with their words in ideology and when they try to push that on my children who are safer in this District than I ever was they are harming my children so thank you again I am so glad that we are moving farther and farther into being a city where there is no place for hate in part through this school district I have Richard Atkinson followed by Jess Carlson hi my name is Richard Atkinson and um
062I'm still not happy about the the way this has gone down um your own board members questioned if procedures were followed correctly and um I don't think they were and I think it was really sneaky and shady and and chicken the way you voted this in and a lot of parents are not happy about it and um let's think of it a different way right okay so like most people don't ever talk about their sexual preferences like a man and a wife that they you don't have to talk about it it's obvious right and and your sexual preference is private that's what causes intimacy that's what makes a loving relationship an amazing thing because it is private between you and your wife between me and my wife and neither one of us me as a
063husband or her as a wife would appreciate the other one talking about our sex life and you know it doesn't I why is it so important that I know what your sexual preference is because it's different than mine why is it so necessary for I for me to know like what what item of clothing do I have to wear like I'm not going to stick a bandana out of my back pocket like a you know like a gang member flashing my colors you know so that you know I'm heterosexual it's ridiculous and I I just can't take it anymore it's it's it should be a private thing that's why there's intimacy and that's what makes a loving relationship in a marriage a great thing because there is intimacy there is things that no one else
064knows except for that per that person that man and wife in the marriage and that's and it makes the love stronger and and it makes it amazing it's not anybody's else's business and so don't make it my business and I definitely don't involve my innocent children in it oh my God I just can't believe it like people you looking at me with a straight face like you think this is okay it is not it is not okay just say innocent children there you go that explains it nobody needs to talk about sex or sexual orientation or sexual preferences or how to engage in sex with children nobody needs to it it's it happens naturally all by itself when the time is appropriate and Elementary School is not appropriate totally inappropriate totally protest you want to
065let a stranger Teach an elementary school student about sex life I'll be praying for you guys Jess Carlson followed by Heidi Moore good evening board president chair cispinosa members of the board and superintendent Hoffman my name is Jess Carlson I'm a mom small business owner lgbtq Ally Community member and admin of the Elk Grove book club I am here tonight to remind us all that the act of banning books is the Nazi tradition it is done out of fear of knowledge and freedom the freedom to read which is protected by the first amendment is our essential right it is our responsibility to protect this right as educated citizens and thus protect the same right afforded to the children of our community against those that seek only to erase our lgbtq kids and families and our
066bipolar kids and their families by the Banning of books in our schools if you can recall in 1969 in Tinker versus Des Moines School District the court affirmed that neither teachers nor students shed their first amendment rights at the schoolhouse gate more recently in 82 the Board of Education versus Pico the Supreme Court rejected the effort by a town School Board in New York state to strip objectionable books from public school libraries it all began with a group of extremists like those that have frequented our school board meetings as of late Who convinced the school board to ban a total of nine books after brandishing a compilation of the most lurid Orient and profane passages taken out of context unfortunately for them this case made it to the Supreme Court the majority sided with students
067who declared that the removal of books from their school libraries was a form of political and ideological thought control contradictory to the First Amendment food for thought to those present and online tonight who are trying to ban books in our community that decision was dominated by Supreme Court Justices who had been nominated by the court through the court by GOP presidents among those justices was Justice Brennan who found that the constitution protects not only the right to speak and to write but also the right to receive information and ideas the First Amendment plays a pivotal role in affording the Public Public Access to discussion debate and the dissemination of information and ideas the Strategic removal of books on lgbtq issues and byproc issues from our school libraries because someone considers the content offensive directly affects
068and eliminates students free speech and thought therefore robbing them of empathy compassion and the sense of community other people's level of offense cannot be the metric for defining whether your rights my rights or the rights of students are infringed upon to answer or the answer to books whose content or views please wrap up your pose or even despise is simply to not read them any more followed by Sarah Wingard hello I am not here on behalf of moms of Liberty or the group that was mentioned I am not an extremist um I am a mom of four children in The District Two is deeply invested in my children's education and deeply care about all children and at the last board meeting I mentioned um that I was still waiting for a response from Mr ceretti
069regarding several sexually explicit books that I found in the Catherine albiani middle school and pghs shared Library he finally responded but gave no real resolutions to the concerns that were shared with District officials by several parents at the end of the email he indicated every single book of concern was approved given a list of criteria that he listed shockingly none of the criteria included a review for sexually explicit content which was the basis of our concern he completely ignored our concerns about the content and still refuses to make parents aware of the books that I've discovered and will continue to find at the meeting one of my friends jokingly said we should just let Heidi choose books for the kids Mr seretti seemed angry at this suggestion and said he would never let just one
070person choose books for the libraries yet later in the meeting he and Ms Avery Avi refused to give us specifics of who exactly is choosing the books they finally admitted sometimes it's just a librarian choosing books with no oversight in the email for Mr soredi on Friday he indicated that a book can be approved if if a teacher suggests it so it appears that indeed one individual can choose books for school libraries without oversight or question however if you are a parent concerned about sexually explicit content of books Mr ceretti will try to shut you up and ignore you on that note I will be exposing another sexually explicit book tonight this book is titled flamer and we have posters in the back for anyone who would like to see it is one of the
071books Mr ceretti approved for our libraries in Friday's email and available to 12 year olds the book flamer is written in a comic book style with illustrations throughout the book A group of boys masturbate together in a tent one voice says quote we're each busting a load into this bottle if you don't come you have to drink it hahaha give that I'll show you in another scene it shows a boy watching his dad's porn talking about a surprise sensation and jerking off he says quote I could see everything people were doing things that I didn't even know were possible or allowed why is there so much hair those dicks are so big the last thing I will share with you is two naked boys taking a shower one meals in front of the other and
072stares at the other boy's crotch his naked crotch and then and then says he's getting a boner I shared this material on social media and a former police chief commented who thinks to provide this to children please wrap up they should have to register as a sex offender others have said only groomers material to kids thank you Sarah Wingard followed by Jane hello good evening thank you for the opportunity to speak I am a parent I'm going to stop you I just want to make sure you get hurt if you push the top of that black button it's going to move the podium up and the microphone closer to you oh guess not you can just try the microphone yeah um thank you for the opportunity to speak um I am a parent of two
073children in the district and I wanted to talk about two things so I'll try and talk past um first I wanted to support um or speak in support of the board's decision to approve the sexual education curriculum the American Academy of Pediatrics states that comprehensive sex education is a critical component of sexual and reproductive Health Care the AAP supports broad access to comprehensive sex education wherein all children and adolescents have access to developmentally appropriate which I believe you guys have done evidence-based education that provides the knowledge that they need to one develop the safe and positive view of sexuality build healthy relationships and make informed safe Positive Choices about their sexuality and Sexual Health which I know as a parent I think everybody could agree that we want our children to grow up to be
074safe the second thing that I wanted to talk about is the dangerous discussions that have been had about banning books I agree with another speaker if you don't want your children to read a certain kind of book then have those conversations in the home where you express your beliefs and you make an understanding with your children of the things that they are allowed to read or what you would like them to read I have those conversations with my children regarding video games that I think are appropriate and TV shows that I think are appropriate I don't write Netflix and say I think you need to remove these shows I have a conversation with my children and mind you they're five and nine and they can understand what's appropriate for them and what's not and they
075are old enough to not pick something they know mom doesn't want them watching and the book that was mentioned flamer that's recommended for people between the age of 14 and 18. so if you have concerns about your you know what your 16 or 17 or 18 year old kid might be reading in that book I believe that what they're seeing on Tick Tock is probably way worse so um anyway um it is important that we have diverse books available to our students when Multicultural and inclusive books are available in the library children receive the message that all racists cultures genders sexual orientations and populations of people are embraced and appreciated we focus on educating the whole child and that includes providing books that reflects either their families the people in their Community or just helps
076them understand other people limiting access to these books denies students the opportunity to learn new points of view find the answers to pressing questions practical information that allows them to build personal opinions and identities thank you Jane okay doesn't have a last name or anything followed I'm sorry followed by Marissa bickman okay hi I'm a concerned parent here in the district and excuse me can you please State your first time first and last name Jane Garcia so I'm here because I wanted to go over um this book it's called fret get stressed seems pretty innocent right but if I'm pretty sure if they find um in one of your guys's laptops a picture of a naked kid we'll go to jail I hope you do um here seems innocent I teach my children's about pornography
077right whatever doesn't cover your bathing suit is pornography right turn off the light the iPad the whatever technology you have run and tell the parents right isn't that one of those Burns do we do that why because we want to protect our children but if they're reading this book at school my child will come home and be rude not to think doors this opens up doors I will tell you I will grant you to outgrow but now I kind of regret it um after school to pick up something I said okay I'm gonna leave my kids in the car really quick this was by I think it's like Franklin Middle School there's like a Boba Place something I left my kids in the car tinted windows with my dog I said I'm just gonna pick
078up something didn't even take a minute I kid you not instead of any money elsewhere or whatever you guys spent it on why not why are you most school police so I come out my daughter's crying and she was like no no next one in the car I saw the knife I'm like oh wait calm down what's going on and my boys were like I was going reverse I look over I saw the knife I thought I didn't have my cell phone okay I rested I'm like I'm gonna get home as fast as I can so I can call the police luckily I was able to fly down the police and I told him exactly what happened my kids like I said I just moved to Elk Grove I will not enroll my kids in
079this discussing School District I am here because I wish I could but I will not because of everything yet we talk about diversity but why are pushing these things on our children my son says why is that some rage right engaged we understand we respect everybody I have nothing against your sexual preference I really don't but everybody else talks about pushing their agenda uh I mean us being our agenda on them first why can't we meet in the middle yeah hi my name is Marissa betcon sorry sorry hold on one second was it followed by Ron Owens will be next my name is Marissa Bitcoin and as a parent in the school district I support the new sex at curriculum overall I believe in inclusive and safe places for all students of all backgrounds thank
080you for your continued support for this effort in our schools Ron Owens followed by Moises three minutes huh good evening my name is Ron Owens I'm a taxpayer I'm concerned about what I have seen what I've heard first of all for those of us who are parental rights we're not afraid of homosexuals we don't hate them we love them but there's a proper time and a proper place for sex to be taught to children children when you were children did you think about sexual orientation did you think about all of this lgbtq stuff drag queen it's not about the people who have testified saying well I experienced this and I experienced that it's not about you it's about kids I could come out and say hey I'm 65 years old I'm a virgin what business
081is it of anybody really I am concerned about what's being taught to kids I'm very concerned about the explicit material that is being taught to children there's a time and place to be exposed to those kind of books it's not about banning books or Banning free thoughts it's about what is proper what it's decent it's about decency the Martin Luther King Jr die for this decision shop is March for the United Farm Workers for this what happened to reading writing arithmetic science what happened to history the history of this great country there's this criticism about Christians Christians founded this country it wasn't for Christians you wouldn't be sitting there and I wouldn't be standing here thank you for your time my says followed by Mo Marshall or M Marshall yes it was all the way
082up good evening my name is Moses Garcia once again speaking against uh obviously literature that's being presented to kids it's being allowed for the exposure of kids the availability for kids um like the previous uh speaker said there's time for everything when I was growing up in school I was taught how to read how to write that was the focus of it for me to be better educated I don't think my mom brought me to this country to be a hooligan to be a menace to society they brought me here to be a contributor to society and that's what I've become respectful fearful I opened the doors for anybody that walks uh that I see trying to come in as I'm walking out to taught that to my children doesn't matter who it is but
083we need to understand that just because you have a preference of something doesn't mean you need to impose it on somebody else as a school district you're supposed to be focusing on what you're teaching the kids to to be successful in life being a sex worker is not something that you want your kids to be that's not what I'm raising my kids to be I'm not raising my kids to be exposed to pornography because I know the mental issues that come with that the depravity that comes with that because obviously they're perverting what is meant for the bedroom and intimacy whatever your preference is that is your preference do not impose it on the kids the kids should be concerned and and be focused on becoming better um um providers for their families once they
084grow up to be able to you know focus on what school they're going to go what career they're going to choose so that's what they need to be focusing on not and and sex not not in how do I perform sex on somebody else there's a time for everything I think there's even 18 year olds that don't know what to do with a woman a young girl does not know what to do with a man that has nothing to do with anybody else to be teaching that in school you were not put as a teacher or somebody in the district as a as a member to be uh telling the kids what they're gonna see or not see in regarding sexuality you're here to make sure that what's being taught is what's going to educate
085them to be better people better uh members of society productive members of society not to be you know messed up in the head because obviously you're you're teaching them to feel free to do whatever they want with their bodies and not respect them unfortunately because of this you have so much uh uh sicknesses that are occurring the sexual transmitted diseases has ramped up so high because of all of this because it's being allowed is being taught that it's okay please stop that feel how you want and do what you want but that's not how it goes thank you M Marshall or Mo Marshall I apologize followed by Ryan Belden thank you um so I'm here today I was just found out today that there is a code I guess the school goes by as far
086as what punishments kids do when they do something at school and my son was called a today earlier this week excuse me let me clear on Monday this past Monday not yesterday Monday the Monday before and my son told the teacher and the teacher only pulled the kid outside the class spoke to the student and the student was able to go back and sit down in class the school never called me until today so a whole week has gone by and only reason why the school called because I called the District so I sat and waited to see how long they would call me so the boy was recommended on Wednesday so two days after but he wasn't suspended I feel he should have been suspended the n-word shouldn't be taken lightly and I noticed
087the school district is taking the n-word lightly so I was told that there's a Code but the n-word Is Not underneath for suspension it's just a former name bombing like it's no big deal so how do we change that code who has the ability to change that is it you guys is it going on the news for the public that's a question ma'am we're not able to respond to public comment but we will ensure someone follows up with you okay um Elk Grove is a zero tolerance I've been over 24 years I've never seen an email from the school that says we have zero tolerance for calling the n-word ever and African-Americans get called this on a regular basis in Elk Grove School District and nothing's done about it when is there going to be
088a change if someone shout defendant themselves but I think calling us on the n-word is an act of violence it is the act of violence so if somebody felt they're defending themselves and punched that person for calling them in where they're suspended but the other person is not why would that be where's the difference what can we do to change that when can we send the message to students or kids this is not okay not suspending them is supporting the behavior it's wrong um I don't see where some of the the teachers are even helping even verbally talk to their kids and tell them it's not okay I mean all of you guys look like you have kids you know or grandkids how would you feel if your child went to school and got called
089a cracker every day spit chain right what is this like it's the big deal it's a big deal it is a big deal Please wrap up those are not the right words to use Sean we're not able to comment or respond to public comment well I want to comment it no no the law is very clear on this week we can't have interaction how you felt offended your time is up ma'am what do you think a child feels ma'am because your time is up Sean you cannot engage ma'am thank you ma'am nope Toby Johnson sir ma'am we have Ryan Belden followed by Laura Cortez good evening thank you for your time tonight um I hope it's okay that I brought up my bandana with me uh first I want to thank you guys for supporting
090the gsas and the rainbow clubs that goes a long way in their support for the students on their campuses as well um I'm here tonight to speak on the sex ed curriculum I'm usually long-winded so I'm gonna I'm aiming to get in under the time limit so we'll see if I can do it as a product of an English teacher I was taught the importance of our books and the stories we read in school as a parent of a kindergartner that starts in August I'm concerned about the attacks on the curriculum and the books found that some want banned the current Trend in parts of our country is to ban books close libraries and defund curriculum that makes parents feel uncomfortable context is important and context seems to be left out by many of the
091people here today the color purple for example is not pornography it's the reality of what many people went through in our history and I want my kids to know the reality of what happened I'm here to encourage you to support the sex ed curriculum and ignore any calls for the bands of books in our schools we need to put our trust in our teachers let them teach our kids and guide them I want my children to learn the reality of the world they live in not an agenda somewhat pushed many times the only education our students get are from the libraries and teachers at our schools the movement to change the curriculum that silences our teachers and hides the reality of our history will lead to nothing but ill-equipped young adults our teachers and schools
092are the best equipped to teach our students and we need to support them the unfortunate part of this whole thing is if we really want to protect our kids let's figure out a way to end the rule threat to our children school shootings every time we talk about this non-issue there's another minute our kids are in danger of being killed in a place clearly every parent wants to be safe California is a leader in many things two power schools at the Forefront of the fight against Banning books our teachers and our students need you thank you I did it followed by Charlotte Ryder good evening board members thank you for hearing me out my name is Laura Cortez I'm a parent of four children here in the Elk Grove District one's already graduated um I
093have three others um just a few words on my why's are not answered yet uh why the disrespect in what we've uh what our children are taught if we teach our children at home to respect all why is the seventh grade curriculum not still accessible in the system as far as what the children are going to be taught book for book page by Page to be given starting April 28th so I still don't have access to that and neither is my sister-in-law um we're trying to help other parents be knowledgeable of this why is this massive incoming ocean wave of confusion to all the youth in their most vulnerable state of growth of their fifth grade year of their seventh grade year of their ninth grade year some of these questions are adult questions why
094is my seventh grader going to be taught that it is okay to abort a child why was I told at a district meeting by one employee that was holding the meeting not all parents can afford to support that team that becomes pregnant and so basically she was telling us that it is better to kill that instant child um that's one of the lessons that's going to be taught or was taught a few years ago to my other seventh grader why can't we just live in peace as families as a community as a nation thank you very much for all of you for hearing us I don't hate anyone I don't despise anyone I have family best lgtbq and I love them why because they're my blood they're my family and I'm sorry that whoever suffered
095growing up like that I'm sorry for that but we don't teach our children to hate anyone thank you for listening to me Charlotte followed by survey hi my name is Charlotte Rieger again it's okay it's German so it's backwards so um you know there are some quotes that were made on March 21st I'm talking about how the vocabulary is there to protect the kids and that we can protect each other in the sex head um and you also said we're begging you to have these conversations with your students with what you believe and how to prepare them and how to go out into the world and interact with people who have different beliefs many of us do that and it's sad that we are accused that we're not um oh again I'm not affiliated with
096moms of Liberty or any of those extremist groups I am a mother of six ones passed away two have graduated and I have three more in this District I have been here almost 17 years all we're asking is the books with pornography to be taken out and if you guys want to show your kids a pornography better to you but it is our right to not have the pornography what if I had those books and I approached your grandchildren and your kids I would be the groomer so again this district is grooming our children we are legally responsible for our children until they're 18 years old in one quote I just want to make sure everyone understands teach your children that safe adults don't ask children to keep secrets again teach your children that safe
097adults don't ask children to keep secrets and that is what this district is doing this district is keeping conversations away from parents I have witnessed it I have heard about it from many parents I have heard about many disgusting situations I have been in this district and I have had to protect my children and it's sad that I have had to fight for 17 years in this district and I am not giving up so you all are basically telling us that we have to take this curriculum and consent to it in our own homes I think that's horrible I really think that's horrible you all are supposed to be inclusive but again you're not inclusive to my children you are not inclusive to their children you're not inclusive to all children did you know that
098sex trafficking is becoming more normalized in Elk Grove that's disgusting but that is what leads to it you are promoting that to the cell to the sex trafficking so I pray every day for my children to be safe at school and I really think this District needs to focus more on mental and Wellness Health Wellness because your time is up the teachers the administrators the kids are all bullying their time steps and I support the woman that just said that but you all need to go to school site because everyone is being bullied your time is up survey probably I'm sorry followed by Jacqueline Ortiz it's a survey probateer I have two children in the Elk Grove School District and I'm here to express my support for comprehensive sex education I am grateful for the
099district teaching tolerance and acceptance of different gender identities and sexual orientation I know there are students who identify outside the norm and those children are at most risk for suicide and bullying the school should be a safe place for them as it should be for all students ideally students should be able to receive comprehensive sex ed at home but unfortunately not all homes provide that support and in fact some of those homes will kick a child out for expressing their gender identity or their sexual orientation or cause a student to want to commit suicide so schools have traditionally bridged the gap between essential education that should be taught at home but is not for instance when I was in middle school there were three girls who were pregnant due to lack of sex ed at
100home I do not wish that for any of our student population I am also in support of a separation of church and state I don't believe religious views of some should dictate the education my time my child receives in public schools those whose religion conflicts with Comprehensive sex ed can exercise the option to place their child in private school or home school rather than demand their religion control public school education I'm a bit tired of hearing from some that the district is imposing their views on our students simply by exposing our children to comprehensive sex ed when our kids watch a Disney movie where there's a straight couple that is not considered imposing a heterosexual point of view but if there is a gay couple in a movie God forbid that is suddenly considered gay
101indoctrination and grooming the double standard is outrageous now I don't agree with 100 of what is taught in schools but I don't force my beliefs on the whole school system if the school's overall teaching respect for their fellow children I do have conversations with my children on what our beliefs are and how they may differ from some of the messaging they receive and I encourage other parents to do so if they have some disagreements rather than impose their religion on a whole public school system before my time wraps up I want to note that I'm wearing red in support of the needs of our children in the special ed classrooms who are being failed and I'm also in support of pushing schools to do better for our African-American children they are not provided a safe
102space and that needs to change thank you Jacqueline Ortiz a mother with a fifth grade daughter told me she did not opt her child out of the new curriculum though she found the content violated her sincerely held beliefs the mother chose to teach her child each of the 11 lessons in advance of her child's elementary teacher doing so she acted Faithfully in accordance with the urging by this board begging parents to have these conversations with their parents even so when her daughter came home and told her mom that she was taught that day for either the third or the fourth lesson she was shocked she said her daughter told her mom that the teacher taught the fifth fifth grade class about wet dreams erection and ejaculation boys and girls were not separated during this instruction
103this may not come as a surprise to the board but this certainly surprised this Mom this parent surprise us not because she was unprepared and unintentional she taught her daughter all 11 lessons in advance but still even in her diligence she was blindsided if she was blindsided being as purposeful as she was why should other parents believe they should fare any better thank you Madam president that was the end of the blue cards for items not on the agenda thank you I am going to close public comment for items not on the agenda and take a 10 minute recess before we come back for consent thank you thanks folks let's continue with tonight's business next item on our agenda is the consent agenda Miss levasser do we have any public comments via Zoom for the
104consent agenda Madam President we have no public comments via Zoom regarding the consent agenda thank you can you please have a seat Mr Bettis thank you Miss Jamerson do we have any blue cards for the consent agenda yes we have one blue card for consent item number 22 Heidi Moore Miss Moore are you still with us thank you please coming up thank you um so this is kind of to the consent agenda in general but um last at the last meeting it was pointed out um that there is not Financial accountability and expenditures provided with the consent agenda and I would like to know why there is not Financial accountability provided and how we how we can make change how we can make that change so that Financial accountability and expenditures can be provided moving
105forward um my concern is financial accountability to the public in general but also regarding consent item 22 which appears to address a remodel for this District building and then at the last meeting there was also a consent item which funded new flooring for this building um if the district has enough money to remodel and update this building which is not used by students I question why my daughters have not readily had access to bathrooms at Pleasant Grove High School for this entire School Year Ms keplinger claims that it is an issue of vandalism and that she doesn't have the resources to keep the bathrooms open so I would like to know is this a lack of funds issue or just a lack of concern for students you see one of the student bathrooms has been
106converted to a snap bathroom and others are closed throughout the day sometimes only leaving one restroom per gender open sometimes this is only one of the smaller restrooms that has five toilets the lines are always long and if students do get to use the restroom they often find dirty conditions no toilet paper and no soap again is this a lack of personnel to maintain the bathroom or lack of funds to provide soap and toilet paper this really concerns me because my daughters have come home most days without using the restroom all day this means that they also neglect to drink water all day one of my daughters recently started track which has added even more concern as her mother she avoids drinking water all day because of the lack of access to bathrooms then she
107goes to track practice dehydrated she has reported feeling like she's going to pass out in track practice has it ever occurred to you that there could be lawsuits involved when you continue to permanently close these bathrooms Education Code section 35292.5 requires all restrooms to be clean operational and stocked with paper products and soap it also requires that restrooms remain available to students during the school day because Miss Caplinger was not in compliance with this code and refused to make the necessary changes to provide students with open Clean restrooms I filed an official Complaint that makes her accountable to this state it's sad that it takes this kind of action to advocate for kids to have access to a restroom at school you would hope that Administration would care about doing what is right for students
108but sadly this is not the case I hope the district will provide funding and oversight moving forward to make sure that all restrooms can be open clean and functional thank you thank you with that I would like to call for a motion to approve items one through Thirty on the consent agenda item sir so moved uh seconds number 23 and 28. 23 and 28. may we have an amended motion I move to approve all items on the consent agenda except for items number 23 and 28. second okay we moved and seconded all in favor uh please signify by saying aye aye opposed those are approved unanimously Mr Perez can you speak to item 23 please bear with me my uh computer went out when I took my break and I'm happy to log in again
109uh okay here we go okay it looks like to me title 23 standard learning opportunity program e-l-o-p lease lease back agreement no my question is is this funding source can we use this funding source or this project which it looks like to me you either buying or lease back right well yeah lease Bank and and I'm wondering why we're using this funding versus measure M or other other facility monies like 49 that Mr said of this particular funding source so Mr Perez lease leaseback isn't a funding source it's a funding method method yes so I talked about the funding source is elop and Esser dollars and there were specific dollars that were available through EOP to be able to provide additional classroom and facility space as we're expanding the opportunities for our kids and after
110school and before school programming so this is exactly what those funds are designed to be used for so we're actually going to build something with this money this money or what a classroom or or rent a modular or what missed uh Mr President we are going to relocate Portables to provide uh expanded space for the after-school program which is what those monies are designed to do is to extend the learning day uh and just as superintendent Hoffman has said that this is an appropriate source and a great way to um use different Monies to provide facilities to support kids before and after school okay that's well that's what confuses me when you look at uh item number 28 expanding learning opportunity program Roofing award and contract so we're it says I think you'll say we're
111gonna move these buildings out of some place and move them into these particular sites on uh on Florin Elementary summer Kennedy David Reese and union health uh item 23 is relocation item 28 is different so it's almost that's what's confusing if you look at 28 can you clear that for me please no it said Roofing on it so it's pretty clearly not relocation what the 28 is as we when we move some of those Portables it's one thing to move them from one side to the other but they still need work right so so we're going to refurbish them and one of the main things we do is make sure roofing systems are solid it's one of the things that we did with measure M very early in the process um you know heating air
112conditioning roofing systems because when those things are protected they they protect the building so we get longer life out of the building so we're moving we're relocating the buildings that costs something but then we're also upgrading um and doing some repairs to the buildings because uh they they need that as well and if I may uh was a better value to the district awarded to a different why it's two separate items on the agenda tonight why okay that makes sense but I was wondering why didn't you just include those as one she just said that it's a better value to the district to award them to two separate entities they're different agreements Mr Pettis does that conclude your questions no I have another question go ahead sir Okay so getting back over here so are
113we just gonna leave them I mean uh okay okay from my understanding we're gonna use them after school and summer program before school after school and I'm sure during the summer they'll be used as well but we need we need the additional space before school and after school at many of our school sites because they they their other classrooms are being used throughout the day so to be able to keep Kids on Campus for extended periods of time we need additional space to do that and good okay really good okay Mr Perez asked and answered I'm going to call for a motion on items 23 and 28 agenda I move approval of 23 and 28. thank you do we have a second second all in favor please signify by saying aye aye opposed that it's
114approved unanimously thank you should have roll call request a roll call the vote has been closer um and and you know that the our rules say the only reason you're able to abstain is if you have a conflict of interest well then you hold three intention I can't do that for you okay okay our next item anonymous our next item is bargaining units are there any bargaining units who wish to address the board thank you uh good evening School Board president Harris Espinosa superintendent Hoffman and miss Avila um in just a few minutes you will be voting to ratify the tentative agreement that asked me local 258's bargain unit um team and bargaining team and the district have been working on while negotiations may have only spanned several months this contract has been years in
115the making um and on behalf of ask me local 258 I would like to say that we truly appreciate the school board taking time to understand our members struggles and there are many of them um we are thankful to have a school board that is listening to and more importantly actually hearing their real life stories this contract will be a great step in the right direction when it comes to taking care of our struggling classified staff and we know that there's more work to be done and ask me looks forward to putting the work in and collaborating with the school board at Elk Grove unified on future items such as the comparability study and future contract negotiations in an effort to move egusd to be highly competitive in the market and to be able to
116hire and retain the best and brightest classified staff appreciates your dedication to our classified staff and we look forward to making even more progress with you in the near future thank you thank you our next item is our special education services report Miss lavasa are there any public comments via Zoom for this item Madam president there is one public comment via Zoom for this item thank you Brandon Morgan hi can you hear me yes sir go ahead all right thank you for president chairs Espinosa board members and superintendent Hoffman oh hold on okay I attended the special education parent workshop last week where the district presented next year's plan for inclusive education and much of that will be presented in the presentation tonight and I will say there are some positive things in this plan
117but while this plan makes three steps forward it comes after taking 10 steps back it hits on things that we as parents have asked but there's much more work to be done in our members of EG speaks are looking forward to continuing our partnership with the district to address those now 20 years ago there was transformational thinking in our district there are people who asked the questions of how this District could be more inclusive and how we can serve kids in a general education setting that normally would be relegated to a self-contained class this was what made Elk Grove such a beacon for parents who knew that their kids could achieve so much more when presented with the right opportunities and supports while some of my concerns for next year have been touched on I
118still see a huge gap in how we serve kids with moderate to severe needs in the genetic environment prior to this change we had teachers with moderate to severe credentials working as inclusion Specialists who worked to make sure that those kids were getting the proper supports and transforming the Jed edit environment into their least restrictive environment but now we are going to continue forward in a plan that only really offers those supports to kids who have been served by teachers in a mild to moderate credential after speaking last week with Melissa Stoneman about teachers who worked as inclusion Specialists last year with Mod severe credentials some of them who had been in that position for over a decade and I asked if Learning Center positions would be open for them since the district had stated
119inclusion Specialists would have their first pick this year for assignments the answer that question was no because they did not have the appropriate credential my problem with this is that it neglects those teachers who are put in the classrooms they never asked to be in with a plan that still leaves a lot of uncertainty to be uncertainty about if those level four classrooms will get appropriate level of support to function in a safe manager Manner and at least some students without teachers who have appropriate credentials and experience to work out their level of support needs if this District wanted to do right by these teachers and also expand the flexibility of the special education teachers in this District the selpa could offer at no cost to these teachers professional development Bridge authorization courses that expands
120their credential into the new extensive support needs credential this would allow teachers with Mod severe credentials to now support students with specific learning disabilities in the Learning Center and offer this opportunity to your mild mod credential teachers as well will allow them to much more flexibility in the future should critical situations like what we saw this year happen the district would no longer have to forcibly Target entire programs to pull specific credentialed teachers but can for incentives to teachers to take classrooms or other special education opportunities on a year-by-year basis this is something that other selfas both locally and across California are doing and I would hope that Elk Grove would also begin to offer this as well and I thank you very much for your time foreign yes we do I have Amanda Scott
121followed by Jency Faro hello my name is Amanda Scott I am the parent of a second grader and he is an uh level two special education at Helen Carr Costello um I am here to shed light on the inequities and injustices that are occurring in the special education system in this District through my son's story um we came into this District in December of 2019 from San Juan Unified from the assessment process to placement between the many schools we've been shuffled around to we have observed poor classroom conditions mistreatment ableist behavior management and classroom practices and a total lack of community and support my son is in a level two class I'm still unclear about how placements are determined I was pleased to hear the pals program was being replaced I was not in favor
122of segregation of autistic people unfortunately I have a growing concern that this new system is creating further inequities for students we discovered halfway through the school year that my son wasn't receiving any of the supports or accommodations we determined he required the year prior even minor things like sitting close to the board because he is visually impaired or reading support because he's dyslexic students are all given the same curriculum even if it isn't accessible for them there is a resistance to modifications and implementing practices that are proven to be more effective for children with learning disabilities I have her comments from special education teachers and pairs of the changes from last year have impacted them and limited their ability to support I have witnessed staff grab my son aggressively yell in his face and use
123physical restraint I complained to the teacher and the principal with no resolution last year we have continued to struggle with poor interactions and support from staff this is not something that we should still see happening in schools in 2023 my son has been to school for only six or seven hours over the course of the past three months I don't believe this is the fault of individual staff or teachers it is apparent to me that there are massive inconsistencies and behavior management practices and expectations of Staff across the district I am calling on the special education department and the school board to invest in adequate resources and mandatory training for paraprofessionals I ask that you affirmed your commitment to diversity equity and inclusion and have policies and practices that are inclusive and Equitable to students
124with disabilities I do want to give recognition and thanks to Ann regali for listening and collaborating I want to thank EG speaks for the support and resources they are providing parents and students we need more engagement with families in special education and I feel that EG speaks is helping to fill this Gap I am hopeful that the district has been working with eg speaks and is working to bridge this Gap thank you jensy followed by Melissa VidCon hi good evening wow we have been looking very forward to this evening and um uh first I'd like to say happy birthday to Andrew Galley thanks happy birthday and um it's uh amazing evening though we've got David Riley and Anne both wearing EG speaks shirts and I am so grateful that we have had an opportunity to
125build a relationship and try to make they're seeing that we are trying here trying to make it better for everybody it's not just our kids um tonight I'm going to talk about the culture of special education and disability awareness in our schools and how going forward after tonight how we would like to help bring about change in that sense we've learned with the uncovering of all of this uh change that was so disruptive and Swift that there's a lot of things that need to be fixed and culture around this is one of them um I've mentioned in the past multiple training opportunities that are already in place that all we have to do is find the funding and do them and one of my favorite ones I wanted to talk about again is the Nora
126project and it's based out of Chicago and it's literally four children you see all these kids up here today um and and I was like man that would be amazing if that was showing an empathetic Bridge of children with different disabilities with these kids at the same time um the Nora project has so many different levels all the way up to high school one of my favorites for older grades is called stempathy and it is using stem to create empathy amongst the children with disabilities and there's so many other programs all the way down to the little bitty kids that they can have an actual curriculum that's already written and lesson plans and books and read-alouds that are phenomenal for creating understanding disability awareness and an empathetic environment thank you Amanda for acknowledging the community
127building that EG speaks has created this has been the hardest year of my parenting probably from this I have created a community of an interaction with families that are in special ed that I never would have had we would love to continue growing that I hope that you will lean on us and allow us to create that bridge and to build the community because the support is so necessary from people who actually get it and have that lens and the last thing I could not be here today if it weren't for the parents and that my youngest son has they have worked tirelessly they trained program Specialists once the inclusion specialist was removed they trained everyone all the way up about how did you work with my son they are superheroes I know they're not
128alone and I would like to propose for a resolution for paraprofessional Appreciation Week to be recognized by the school district I don't know what other steps I need to take to request that but that's it please thank you okay we have Marissa followed by Dustin Noble oh okay Dustin followed by Courtney all right good evening board members and uh superintendent Hoffman uh tonight we'll be getting an update on special education including an update to the inclusion program and how services will look going into the next school year tonight you will see several slides that talk about the impact to in students in the inclusion program based on a survey that was conducted while I'm confident that this does not depict the full impact with regards to the changes that took place last September I wanted
129to provide this board with a direct example when speaking about impact as you will see on slide 34 of the presentation the survey was developed back in 2016-2017 and is conducted annually serving kids in grades 3 through 12 utilizing four key metrics my son is in first grade has are some of his peers and his very best friends some of these kids also have IEPs and are receiving inclusive services in Elk Grove unified this survey does not include them it does not include grades K through 12 or K through two where most kids are either identified or placed in the inclusion program for early intervention they are not included this means the struggle that my own family and many others like me went through with these changes to inclusion they were not included when gauging
130impact I know that data collection is never perfect it's it's just not um all I'm asking from this board is to just look through um with that lens and be mindful when reviewing the results of the survey for that one part of this presentation that there definitely was an impact it's just not uh defined in that particular part of the presentation having said that I'm very optimistic and even hopeful as we move forward based on the presentation as a whole and the structure and supports coming to the Learning Center that are so desperately needed for our inclusion kits and the people that work with them directly like I said at the last board meeting when I was phoning it in while being sick David Ann and the rest of the sped presenters knock it out
131of the park I look forward to the continued work and the collaboration thank you forward by Emily good evening um I wanted to start by apologizing for helps that I got at the previous or two meetings ago when I spoke I did not expect my profession my Integrity My Religion to be under attack so I was a little unprepared for that um like Trinity and Dustin said we've had some really amazing talks with David and Anne specifically yesterday we're really excited to partner with them in the future to help um bridge the gap that is still there and we're pretty optimistic based off the presentation that you'll be seeing tonight other than the silly data points that Dustin pointed out um there was one thing that was still kind of missing and that was the
132voice of our Paris so I have had um 25 different parents I think maybe 20 um give me some comments or little sound bites to give you that I will be reading I'm going to number each one to identify that it's a new person they're from various primary and secondary schools around the district one when the inclusion Specialists were removed no directives were given to us we had to march on without support or leadership from the person who held it all together now it's seemingly a war on the Paras we are blamed for the mistakes made by case managers two the district broke the system now they expect us to fix it or take blame for it but they don't give us any supports to do so three nobody from the district has addressed the
133inclusion specialist leaving or changes with us at all all year they didn't tell us what to do or we report to they haven't asked us how it's going or if we need anything they turned our lives upside down they really don't care at all or I've worked at three schools I still haven't met a principal or vice principal that treats pair as well five I had to teach the case managers what to do when an autistic child has a meltdown six it's not just about the money I just want the support seven I'm so tired of being treated like I don't exist eight there are no subs I'm tired of being sent to help another student because the administrator thinks their needs are greater than my students needs or because a teacher is throwing a
134tantrum over not having hope in their class nine why are these agency kids straight out of high school with no experience being paid 15 more an hour than me I've worked here for over a decade it's humiliating they aren't trained they're always on their phones our kids are suffering 10 our students minutes are not being met and we have no one we can report to 11. can the district be clear on who's in charge of what who do I report to 12. it's disrespectful to not value the support student needs when you don't value the supports you don't value the students here I'll make this the last one I would like to bring attention to the changes this year and servicing our students has become challenging without lack of Direction has fallen on the pair
135to communicate reach out for help many of us are now having to manage multiple students as well as guide the agency perils on how to do their job and cover students because they are nowhere to be found I'll make this last one I'm sorry peer educators are the backbone of personal education can I can I ask you if you if you don't mind can you email that complete list to us so we can see the whole thing yeah appreciate it thank you thank you Emily followed by Marcus Meyer hello again Emily attenery thank you for taking the time to listen to all of these thoughts and concerns I'm here briefly to stand in support with eg speaks I'm not going to say too much about my kids case because he's in seventh grade now and
136values his privacy but I would ask that with the culture of special education we work in schools on teaching kids not to use sped as a slur against each other because we see that a lot with the middle school I would also just like to emphasize the importance of trust in this process what the district did at the beginning of the year it just sent shock waves through every family in the district that is touched by special education and I have found that some of our IEP meetings we can have three people in a collaborative conversation and be all set and in other meetings it's a large team of people following every rule to the letter and all of that depends on whether they have earned our trust or broken our trust and how much
137we can rely on them to know what is best for our child so this this breach of trust has long-term implications that I hope the district will factor in thank you Marcus Meyer oh okay that is all of the blue comments for this item with that I'm going to close public comment and call on Mr David Riley for the presentation we needed drum roll or drum roll I actually was wondering are we going to need chairs up here if you if you need them get them oh that's true well you have the option okay we'll get started uh good evening president Charis Espinosa members of the board superintendent Hoffman and Miss Avalos before the special education leadership team begins their update on special education I wanted to take a moment to recognize the challenges that
138the 22 or 2022 2023 school year has brought and some of the people who have assisted Us in addressing them first and foremost I wish to apologize to the parents Guardians students staff and board members who experienced a sudden and abrupt change in the inclusive service models model earlier this year regardless of the reasons for the change the change cause great consternation amongst the community some of our most fragile and challenged students and their families had to adapt on a dime for this I am sincerely sorry I wish to recognize and express my appreciation for some of the new Partnerships and dare I say friendships that have emerged from the work that followed these changes I want to recognize and Express gratitude to the members of EG speaks whose advocacy has served as the Catalyst
139for us to do better to evaluate to reflect and to engage with our community on a consistent basis I also want to thank all the parents Guardians who took the time to respond to our surveys to attend our workshops and to attend and speak at our board meetings all of your passion and energy have contributed to the work we have done since that change thank you and to EG speaks I want to thank them for the newest addition to my to my wardrobe and to ants and happy birthday Anne uh this evening is part of the special education update you will be presented with the findings of a data study conducted by our department of research and evaluation I want to emphasize that even though the findings were summarized as favorable this by no means
140suggests that many of our students and families did not experience stress and additional challenges as a result of the change in the inclusive service model any large-scale data study or evaluation will not be able to capture the magnitude of any singular experience we have heard the singular voices and we will continue to listen to the singular voices as each story and experience and the actions that each generate makes us better and improves the realities of students and Families I also want to thank you each of the board members for your questions your your insights and guidance throughout this year and this process in addition I want to thank the team of program specialists in special education Who provided direct service to school sites and program teams on a daily basis these program Specialists are often
141called upon when there are challenges and then they have to assess situations and offer insights and solutions that are oftentimes Elusive and complex we have a great deal more work to do but together we can continue to improve that educational experience for all students thank you at this time I'd like to introduce Anne regali director of special education and the team of special education coordinators Kelly Park Melissa Stoneman and Alicia Wilson thank you I got it um good evening chairperson chatis Espinosa members of the board superintendent Hoffman and Miss Avalos still there um thank you very much this evening we are going to be sharing um a number of items programmatic updates and all we do aligns with the Strategic goals in particular targeted supports addressing um the needs and services for students with disabilities
142as you know special education is not a place it's not a building it's it's everywhere our mission is to provide high quality special education services in the least restrictive environment in each student's home community we will be again reviewing programmatic updates Recruitment and Retention efforts parents and community and Regional highlights and at the end we'll have an opportunity for questions the scope of the program of 14 of our students receive services from as a student with a disability that is roughly 9 278 students I think this morning we looked and it was 9292 so we had 14 more since uh this went to print 70 of our students fall within the mild mod range that would be our students receiving speech or possibly Resource Services Learning Center services and 29.5 percent of our students fall
143within the moderate to severe range this chart provides a graphic representation a Continuum a potential service environments ensuring all students have access to a free and appropriate public education in the least restrictive environment and with the bottom blue available to all students and then the top representing our most intensive supports I'll turn it over to Alicia Wilson to um address our Learning Center and RSP update good evening thank you for your attention this evening board member superintendent and Miss Avalos so as you can see as our Learning Center and RSP update we took a lot of feedback from our teachers our parents and our staff to figure out what we're going to focus on for the 22-23 school year our first Focus was to develop a support model for students requiring Level One support and
144an exploration of co-teaching models last year we talked about figuring out how we can expand the Learning Center and really attempt to address all needs of students so that was our number one focus our second Focus was to develop a flexible Service delivery model based on individualized student needs not just a model for everyone and making a manageable workload for teachers we really heard a lot of feedback about teachers were being overwhelmed teachers needed more support we wanted to figure out a way to make it more manageable during this year the progress you've made we've made some really good progress toward our programmatic design of RSP services and we did this through sort of things we had elementary teacher workshops we had secondary teacher workshops we also had lots of feedback from our parents and
145Guardians which we were very thankful for it helped us really design a next level for going into 2324 the biggest one was our caseload reduction and increasing the number of teachers both in the Learning Center and in the secondary rrsp programs just a note the state Ed code mandates a caseload cap of 28. Elk Grove made a concerted effort to keep cases under 24 for elementary Learning Center students monitoring every month and for 26 for our secondary rrsp that was this year so every single month we monitor our monthly Ellis our Learning Center and our rrsp to make sure they're under those case guidelines if they're above we look at how we can support whether it's assessment assistance caseload management Assistance or sending another teacher there to support their case loads going into 2324 we
146really want to see how we can move forward what do we need to work on thinking about the feedback we got from our parents our teachers and our staff we've had ongoing Community forums we're going to continue with our CAC meetings to make sure we hear the parents that we've heard tonight and calling forward we also hear that para Educators need support we want to have para educator trainings we are committed to casold reduction for teachers we are averaging for next year 18 to 20 students on our Learning Center caseload and 23 to 25 average for our secondary this will enable teachers to address the needs of students do their case management collaborate with teachers collaborate with parents and still get the job done to support students we want to evaluate our site para educator
147needs we know that right now we might not have enough for each of our sites so we're going to see what's the need and provide that support we heard a lot of support needs for Behavior so we want to increase Behavior Support to students whose promate placements in general education finally we heard that sometimes the teachers need more support with school psychologists with behavior with mental health with helping writing Behavior Support plans so we want to have increased School psychology support to The Learning Center as well this is our first part of our next steps we still take ongoing feedback from our parents from our teachers and our staff to make ongoing progress for next year so we had a couple of areas of focus for our self-contained classrooms uh the first one was we
148made a transition this year to what is called the level system so that represented a restructuring for us of what was formerly known as our Pals or our program for the acquisition of language and social skills and our living skills programs to what is now known as our level system and that represented a shift for us as a district to programming that was formerly kind of based on a disability that a student had to really looking at the needs of that student and offering them a level of support that really aligned with their needs um in terms of our progress for 2223 we are in year three of that transition to the level system in our secondary programs and this has been our first year with our Elementary programs um we held a teacher Forum
149in March of 2023 to get feedback from the teachers hear how it's been going get a better understanding of what some of their challenges and feedback and how we continue to support them moving forward heading into this school year 2223 we added five additional Behavior Support Specialists specifically to support implementation of the level system we understood that teachers may have some students in their classroom that may have different needs than what they were used to and we wanted to make sure that they had supports in place to help them through that transition and the Behavior Support Specialists have been a great resource to them we also had an EGA agreement with EGA in November of 2022 where we will have class size limits or recommendations for our self-contained teachers um and so that that has
150represented a great collaboration with EGA and special education as well uh in terms of our next steps for 23 24 looking ahead to the future we want to continue to gather and Implement um information from parents and Guardians um about the change how they feel what some of the benefits have been um and some of the challenges that they've seen as well to continue to drive our programming uh we want to explore additional curricular resources to help our students be life ready so one of our goals college career and life ready and we feel like we're doing a great job really hitting those academic areas but we want to make sure that we're hitting that that life ready and teaching those adaptive skills as well so that'll be a focus of our work uh we'll
151actually move to implementation of our class size agreement with EGA and that would represent a class size reduction in many of our self-contained classes which we feel will both benefit our staff and our students and we will also be um implementing a tkk program we're excited about this because historically we have served our kindergarten students in a K2 model so kindergarten first and second grade together and that has presented some challenges in terms of Developmental expectations for students so um we're really excited that the tkk we think will be a better developmental fit for students um we've also done a lot of work around our facilities looking at the location district-wide of our self-contained programs we really want to make sure that classrooms are equitably distributed across the district but we also want to make
152sure that students have the opportunity to have some programmatic consistency at a school site so if you start somewhere in kindergarten we really want for you to be able to continue at that school site through six sixth grade and we really feel like that provides continuity for students but also families to be able to feel a part of a school community and not feel like they're constantly being moved around so the work that we've done over the course of this year is we've done some strategic planning related to the opening of new classrooms so over the past several years really being intentional about where we opened new facilities and trying to keep our strategic goals in mind uh we we had a series of facilities moves in our high school programs that took place in
153the summer of 2022 to really again get the right programs at the school sites where we needed them uh we worked with Elementary Ed and transportation to create a development of a master facilities plan that will really guide our district in the Years moving forward about where we want programs to go and where new programs will go as we open them so we can really be strategic about getting things in the right place um in terms of next year we have some additional facilities moves planned for 22-23 or 23 the summer of 2023 sorry um you know we have facilities that have just grown up over time and are a little haphazard and so we want to correct that and get things in the right School sites where they need to be our long-term goal
154is to have every program in every region as dictated by programmatic need some programs just serve a smaller number of students than others but where it's possible we'd like to have every program in every feeder high school region we also want to do some parent and guardian surveys as well as a transport survey to get feedback on how we're doing and how parents are experiencing the change this slide represents some data about the number of students that we're able to serve in their home High School feeder region school so um as you can see you'll see some data up there from 2223 and then where we're projected to be for 23.24 we've made some significant growth in terms of being able to serve kids in their home region and we're really proud of that work
155so hi I'm going to discuss the academic behavior and social supports program we also refer to it as our ABS program the areas of focus that were identified for this school year were to look at enhancing mental health and behavioral supports in that program and also looking at the design to ensure that we had flexibility and consistency for our students as they progress and move towards hopefully exiting those programs and going further out into our gen Ed in terms of progress for this school year we did add four mental health therapists mhts um to support our elementary and tier one ABS programs um that was an added support this year and then we've also had a teacher feedback Workshop where we brought ABS teachers to collectively be in groups and discuss how supports are going
156and what the needs of the program were we held that in March in terms of next steps for the 23 24 school year it's continuing to evaluate our program and seek input especially looking at our tier one tier two model our students sometimes need to move to a higher level of support so looking if that is the correct model and how we're serving our students and the best Ed benefit that we can provide we're also doing in some class location changes so that we can have a Continuum on one site this is really primarily in Elementary this year so that students as they change grade bands they don't have to move to a different School site they can stay on one campus through the duration of their Elementary program uh this side represents an overview
157of our preschool program so we had a 678 students who came through our preschool Assessment Center the majority of those students about 90 to 95 percent will qualify for special education and you'll see an overview of the number of students we serve and the number of uh programs we offer one thing I want to highlight here that's been new for us this year is our level one or Head Start inclusion programs um we that represents a collaboration with Elementary Ed and Tabitha Thompson The Early Childhood director where we do an Inclusive Preschool classroom we have a general ed teacher and a special education teacher there two days a week a general education para and a special education para and we're serving those students in an entirely inclusive environment which has been a really nice model
158to be able to kind of round out our Continuum of services um some of our preschool outcomes uh 47 of our preschool students and 29 of our TK students who are currently in our special education programs will be going into general education kindergarten classes next year so so really speaks to the efficacy of our preschool programming and the um value of Early Education uh we have 10 of our students uh returning that are currently in a preschool special education class who will be transitioning to that inclusive Head Start classroom next year so we're we're proud of that as well hey I wanted to share a little bit about our transition Services um headed Head Up by Linda Vargas who is our lead transition specialist transition services are provided for students from grades eight through adult
159the adult transition program and we are currently working on a Pilot Elementary project that allows for a career exploration um and it provides there we have guest speakers and connections with different Community agencies the goals that students work on in transition our ability to make informed choices about career Pathways ability uh to advocate for themselves an introduction to the work world and then of course ultimately to successfully transition from school to post-secondary education employment Independent Living we have a had since 1991 a partnership with the Department of Rehabilitation we have two important employment placement specialists um who work with students on student services to explore um different jobs again provide instruction and self-advocacy and workplace Readiness training 20 of our transition Specialists spend is spent on this transition to um on this transition partnership program
160with the Department of Rehabilitation so in terms of Recruitment and Retention um we like many districts across the country have faced some challenges as we were aware um with recruitment of special education teachers uh it's really required close collaboration and close work with our human resources department to really set ourselves up for the 23-24 school year in making sure that we're prepared to meet our staffing needs for special education so we've identified the need to hire 70 special education teachers for the 23-24 school year part of the reason why this number is a little higher than what we typically see is the our new tkk classrooms where we'll have two teachers both an AM and a PM teacher so that has sort of bumped up the number of teachers that we need a little bit
161however we have been successful again in working with our partners in Human Resources we've offered 40 contingent offers to special education teachers to date we're doing daily screening of applicants and weekly interviews with every teacher that applies um and so we've been successful in bringing a lot of new teachers on board so far for next year we have continued work with our related service providers to continue to recruit highly qualified speech and language Pathologists occupational therapists and physical therapists as well um some of the additional efforts that are that have happened so far this year we have a differentiated salary schedule for our special education teachers so as you know they received a 15 increase this year which has helped us to attract quality candidates we've been working to get folks who have student taught
162in our district contingent offers so um getting them early and getting them to commit to Elk Grove so even looking ahead to December 2023 those folks who will be graduating in their credential program and are currently working we're reaching out to them and doing interviews and and exploring contingent offers we've been giving contingent offers to some of our related service providers like occupational therapists and some school psychologists and we continue to partner with our EG and EGA speech and language leads on recruitment for speech and language pathologists uh this slide represents some of the recruitment fairs and hiring efforts that uh special ed and Human Resources have participated in um and will continue to do so throughout the course of this hiring season another effort to recruit and maintain special education teachers come from with
163own within elgrove called our reach which is retaining Educators through assistance collaboration and hiring it's effectually known as the reach program this was a brainchild of our daily departed Shelly Clark from Human Resources who partnered with special education we worked with University Pacific on this program it's been very successful we've been able to recruit and maintain teachers through this program the basis of the program is to have District serving teacher education program that prayers a rigorous full year classroom experience with Master's level education content at University of Pacific so the students get both their in-class support with University Pacific and then they're in student teaching with Elk Grove unified so they're in a year-long residency where they practice their skills their knowledge alongside an Effective Teacher mentor and our high need classrooms so our special
164ed Learning Centers our resource program our level programs we have student teachers residents and all those programs the residents earned two credentials they're mild moderate and their extensive support credential which you should be called the mod severe credential and they earn a master's in special education in 13 months so within 13 months we'll have teachers ready to go and ready to be hired and within that they make a four-year post-graduation commitment to work in Elk Grove in our special ed classrooms this is a huge success for Elk Grove we've had this program since 2021 and our first cohort we've hired 13 teachers 13 out of 13 13 residents 13 hired 21-22 we had cohorts too we had 19 residents 19 were hired we're at 100 percent and our third cohort which is currently going on
165right now we have 15 residents we are anticipating 95 of them will be hired for the 20-24 school year we have one that still needs to finish one residency requirement we're told we got approved very excited for the 22-24 continuation Grant which means 10 more residents for next year we already finished their interviews we're working on their placements for mentors so it's 10 more residents and then we got approved for the 24-25 school year a new three-year Grant so that's another three years and each year our goal is to hire and recruit 20 more special teachers so a total of 60 more in our next three-year Grant we're very excited about our homegrown efforts to recruit and retain highly qualified special education teachers so in terms of retention we recognize the importance of professional development
166to really give meaningful training to our teachers and help them be effective Educators um so this school year we've been focusing on different trainings to offer so curriculum in English language arts and math or intervention programs offering teachers time to come in and learn the program with publishers we've also worked on IEP compliance and case management support for teachers uh another one that we focus on for all staff is our Crisis Prevention intervention training um that focuses on de-escalation training behavior in the classroom and out and that is offered to both certificated and classified staff we have worked on picture communication trainings that is focused on our self-contained classrooms and how we work with students in language development and then also partnering with other departments so CPL and English language are English language Services English
167in English and math so both curriculum for next school year we're going to continue our efforts to meet with our teachers monthly in the Learning Center and rrsp we also want to bring together our self-contained jobalite groups at least quarterly we're really hearing the feedback for para educator trainings so that we can support all students both in the Learning Center in general education as well as self-contained environment also the importance of that new teacher onboarding so making sure that teachers feel prepared when they enter the classroom on day one um and continuing those curriculum trainings uh we also are bringing back our quarterly steering meetings which is a collective of teachers to look at our curriculum our adopted programs and to review those and monitor their effectiveness um and also again partnering with CPL trainings
168for first instruction um where we are really focusing on decoding comprehension and writing so that our students are equipped as they move through the different grades hey um areas of focus for parents and Community engaging in ongoing programmatic evaluation with input and feedback from all stakeholders something we've been working on um having holding parent workshops holding staff workshops um Community workshops we've had members of um uh the state Council on development developmental disabilities meet with us we have developed an ad hoc inclusion committee through our community advisory committee um we are collaborating with the families and Community engagement folks and collaborating with our research and evaluation team next steps continued input receiving continued input from parents and Guardians and staff through teacher forums and again collaboration with our communities and Community advisory committee meetings and
169we are developing an additional parent survey we've received feedback and we're going to be sending out another parent survey soon on May 3rd I'm excited to share that um three program Specialists uh are joining me and our EG speaks parent group to participate in this selpa legislative sharing day at the Capitol um changes to the inclusive Services model in September the district made a change to the inclusive Services model that's probably not new um we since then we have had a number of stakeholder meetings workshops Community forums small group and individual meetings throughout the year to address the challenges associated with the change and to our friends and EG speaks uh both David and I are wearing these shirts and I do believe that we've made a lot of progress in terms of addressing the
170primary concerns we have a lot of work to do and we're aware the following data study was conducted by egusd's research and evaluation department and it is one byproduct of this work staff will continue to work collaboratively with and monitor the progress of students and families impacted by this change special ed and our red collaborated as means to gauge the impact of the changes in this service by looking at the changes in mid-year outcomes for our inclusion students and a number of folks have alluded to this study and it was compared to students who had not previously had inclusion specialist support um Jeremy Henshaw is here and Christine hey keto they helped develop this survey the metrics selected for the analytics include daily attendance grade point average student discipline data and social emotional learning the
171district's annual student survey of social emotional learning skills is used to assess the student's capacity to integrate the skills attitudes and behaviors to deal effectively and ethically with daily tasks and challenges the survey was originally conducted by the core districts and has been annually administered each winter to students in grades 3 through 12. rad Jeremy and Christine identified a group of similar students through a technique called propensity score matching and at the risk of sounding like a statistician or a researcher I'm going to just um plug away here the technique utilizes a statistical model to match students with similar demographics and you can see the listed demographics to relative relative to inclusion students each student match had to be an exact match on the following variables of interest for special education students primary disability alternate
172assessment participation instructional setting and grade level the hypothesis is if inclusion students were negatively impacted by the loss of the service then their outcome should either decrease more than the comparison group or increase less the conclusion in in terms of the major outcomes of students in the inclusive setting were favorable for inclusion students relative to the comparison group the differences between the two groups were not found to be significant if you look here the dots represent the average change in outcome for each group and the bars extending the dot of the confidence intervals if the bars overlap at all in the same vertical space as they do in these charts then the differences were not found to be significant so you look at this first chart social emotional learning the differences were not significant again
173attendance the differences were not statistically significantly different nor were they with GPA or suspension and I would just like to um reiterate what I think both David and a number of our parents um we mentioned that um this in no way addresses the concerns that many families felt and we continue to work to address their concerns ah now we have some Regional highlights and again David mentioned our program Specialists worked very hard and they've um to put these together and we're very proud and appreciative foreign thank you this concludes our presentation and if you have no questions we'd like to thank you for your time I appreciate that your sense of humor is still intact at this late hour man um I'm sure we will have lots of questions and comments Mr track uh had
174to leave early to to study for a test we wish him well tomorrow I will start comments and questions with Mr Fortuna and go down the line thank you um I'm just gonna make some statements uh I don't have any questions because I've had the opportunity to go over the report and also attend uh the community meeting last Tuesday uh I I want to share that after the first community meeting um I had stated that at best it was contentious the meeting we had last week was completely different um the information provided was comprehensive it was uh such that questions and concerns that had been raised by community members were addressed and leaving that meeting I I felt that special education was in a better place than where it had been the day before and
175I strongly felt it will be better going forward um not that I need to do in education uh but I do need to state that when it comes to special education there's two terms that do disservice to everyone who tries to serve them one is special education and the other's inclusion uh and least restrictive environment and inclusion are not synonymous when we when we look at at children um to compartmentalize them oftentimes does the disservice uh unfortunately um it's the funding that that dictates where we plug kids in um and it's always important to remember that the least restrictive environment is determined by the IEP committee the parents and the people working with the children determine what least restrictive environment is for that individual children child excuse me um and it and it certainly meets
176the test of equity we had some people talk about equity and special education tonight simply as Equity just means providing what a particular student needs in order to benefit from the education provided it's not particularly difficult to understand that uh my my hats off to to our staff my hats off to the community because the collaborative nature of of where we are today uh is evident individual issues are still being addressed as they should appropriately um we have work to do staff has identified that work but I believe firmly that that we really have moved um I was gonna an and struggling for a word I I was gonna say rapidly but I guess eight months you know you can't you can't say rapidly when it's been eight months um but we we are moving
177in a positive direction and uh uh I really believe that uh the community and the district are both receptive uh to working with one another and as long as that door stays open everyone wins thank you thank you Mr Fortuna Mr yang good evening thank you for uh the presentation um it's it's been a long road uh for Mr Raleigh and the team that been working uh entirely to get to this point uh I think that's fair to say and um I I want to take off my hat to uh your team I want to uh do a special shout out to um you know all the parents that continue to come in wearing the red shirts and uh the ones that are not wearing red shirts but still coming continue to come in to
178support um and and push this District to do better for our uh special education students in particularly the um inclusion specialist students and I also want to thank you the the board members and uh everyone that is involved in this uh process I along with uh with other boards who's been personally uh involved with this process from the beginning um talking to different parties talking to parents talking to staff board members and uh you know I I believe I work really hard uh you know in in the behind the doors to to make a change along with everyone else that's been working hard and I don't have any particular questions at this point because I have done uh my share of asking questions and constructively uh taking um this and that and David and I
179have many extensive conversation and uh I think that David um has you know has come a long way in terms of understanding how um in particular they're in Specialists Inc uh the inclusion Specialists group of parents and students how um vulnerable they are um and how much of a need of attention they need um just to make sure you show that you care and sometimes it's not just what you show but it's also what you say and the way you say it uh to really touch their hearts that they truly believe that you care and not just you know try to show them the data and and statistically say hey we're doing the right thing but you know coming off you know the wrong way you know that's still not good enough right and I
180I see that progression of you know of everything coming together uh making that uh push going forward making that Improvement and then you know the whole nine yard I know there's a lot of work left to be done but I I'm happy to see what I see what I heard and I think that you know the parents um are you know in a better place as well as far as having um some sort of believe that we are doing the right thing uh meaning all of us and and that I'm very very happy and uh with that said you know I think that this school district is is a really big school district and um we cannot neglect any um group of people especially the most vulnerable and sensitive group of kids and uh you
181know I'm glad that you guys are doing you know what you guys have done and continue to do what you do I just really really happy as a parent of uh a couple autistic kids you know I say this on a reflect of the the all the parents that have us hits in this nature uh it it you know it's it's it's a emotional roller coaster daily and um you know it's it's tougher than some people think you know and um for for David as a the head of the snake you know uh for you to to come this far I I take my hat off to him and all of you ladies and the people that work in this group and I will continue to uh support whatever I can uh to continue to
182give constructive criticism like I have I had and gonna continue to do the same but um I just want to say good job and uh we'll continue to be here to support you all so thank you appreciate it thank you Mr Yang Miss albiani um I'll be very short I have one comment on Slide Five I believe what's available on the Internet is reversed so um yeah um was it the 29 versus the 70 yes you caught it so yeah so it's just kind of shocking yeah when you hear it right I I was concerned so I don't know no big deal I just think we need to fix it for the record no people thank you for the one that was uploaded because the one we used today we had fixed but yeah today's
183was correct yeah so I just wanted to make sure we do that um I'm excited about the regional model I I really think that's that's so special that you don't take your one child another place I like we there's so many levels when you've got a child that needs extra needs and to be able to bring them and keep them and you're all rooting at the same high school football games and you might see your teachers and there's just a social aspect to that that can't be undervalued and and we cannot do it all the time but the fact that we're making a genuine effort to that to create family and community means a ton to me so thank you very much for that um I want to recognize Mr Fortuna's expertise and I appreciate
184his work in this he he has a history of this and he has so much knowledge that he brings for us and um many of us with this experience in our own lives as well so um I wanted to say that the staff it was a very challenging year um we appreciate your work it's obvious you you've been listening you've been um you're I don't think you'd be in this job if you didn't care about kids so um we appreciate what you do for our children very much so and how you handled this professionally and kept kept kept trying to show that you do care until it finally got hurt and and I did heal Emily today that there's some trust issues and and that happens in relationships but um the fact that you're fully
185engaged to recreate those relationships and I think um the people that have come and EG speaks for all the things you've done you already have a lot on your plate I know with your children and you've stepped up Beyond and and really um and come to a point of that we can meet and I appreciate you and those efforts and I know um you're doing what you know is best for your children and and really I think at least four times in this presentation they said for the child and they aren't trying to generalize and we're trying to find ways to be more in tune to each child but there is no better teacher than their own parents there's no one who knows best what their parents are for and from somebody who sat in
186some meetings those are hard meetings to go to and um and for our staff to be open to hearing what your child needs and for you to be able to hold it together to tell them what your child needs I I have great respect so um thank you for all the help thank you for the great report thank you Miss albiani Miss Jamerson good evening um first I just want to thank David for that opening letter uh that you shared and just sharing your vulnerability um taking accountability and I think as a leader um we all um second guess decisions that we make and sometimes we don't always make the decisions that even though they're with the best intent so I just I really wanted to say thank you uh for that opening letter um
187one thing I do want to call out um that we don't talk about or that we haven't um really talked about is the intersectionality between our um special ed students and our students of color and so we have a group of students that are marginalized in two ways and so I just want to make sure that we kind of bring that to the attention of the community I know that you are aware I know that our parents are here trying to make you aware of that and I just want to make sure the community is aware that we can't forget that um I think that um again sometimes we make decisions that we think are in the best interest for communities and instead um when we think about inclusivity inclusivity means not making decisions for
188people but with people and student marginalized groups have a history of trauma of people making decisions for them without having any agency and I think that part of what we saw when some of these changes were made was a reaction to once again having no agency in the decision making for marginalized groups and so again I I want to thank the parents for keeping us and check with that I just I really want to call attention to that um and I appreciate that this group um had the hard work of trying to um move forward in that space and I really hope that the rest of our district is able when decisions are made that they now follow the model that you have followed in trying to build relationships and trying to be inclusive in
189making decisions with folks so I commend you on kind of sticking it through and coming out on the other end it is you know there's still work to do but I appreciate that you're still here and you're still working towards that rebuilding of trust um a couple of questions besides my solilo equator um we talked a little bit um or maybe I just I'd like to hear a little bit more about the culture we've heard from some parents we've heard from some staff about educating um more of our general Ed teachers bringing some awareness to our students I attended the silent disco that was over at uh Donna I would love to see more events and things to bring the entire School site um into this into to change that culture do we have plans
190and do we have funding to go with those plans to do things to change the culture sure um something that and correct me if I don't have the dates or times we are in addition to the silent disco um we are having the Multicultural Affairs at the sites are now having a neurodiversity table to I um to support students with special with disabilities and we have one Thursday in the Franklin region at Costello from five to seven you're invited um and a number of our schools and if our program Specialists are watching and I didn't identify those I apologize but we will extend an invitation um but that's one way so that my dresses um we again your your question um about the the importance of the cross the intersectionality um that's an opportunity to
191um address both of those um something else we're doing is in the community advisory committee we are working on a inclusion Awareness Week in December modeled after the um a nationwide inclusion um Awareness Week um what are there additional efforts in my you may of course but um you know on a nuts and bolts level um you know one of the things that we're adding is additional behavior supports um and behavior specialists in our Learning Centers focusing on the elementary centers but not only with the focus of training our Learning Centers on how to Foster inclusivity but what's most important is training our general education teachers that's what we need to do and you know just to be honest and it's it's daunting the size of this district and for that to be on you
192know our you know special education and I'm gonna share something I had a meeting with a school psychologist this morning and we were talking about the recruitment of special education teachers and she said something that kind of was a catalyst for a bit of epiphany for me she said all general education teachers are special education teachers and it goes to Mr fortina's point the worst thing that happened to special education is that it was labeled special it was it's it's something other and it's not so we really need to Stitch the seams and we need to become more seamless with general education our efforts to Pilot co-teaching opportunities so that we have special education teachers not living in Learning Centers all day but spending up to two-thirds of their day in classrooms Consulting with teachers
193taking care of their IEPs and giving those students their specialized academic instruction in real time in their general education classes with the general education teacher learning from the special education teacher that's where we need to get so you know whereas these events and changing culture are very important but it's really the nuts and bolts and the training that needs to happen and that's why we're adding additional School psychologists that's why we're adding Behavior Support Specialists and we're not just focused on training the teachers our future workshops next year I want to see more of an integration of our general education teachers coming into those trainings and learning side by side with our special to blur that boundary and that's going to take years because cultural change takes years um but I I go back to
194my our my colleagues in EG speaks they're the Catalyst to kind of make that work as rapid as possible we're not going to get complacent without with that and what's we're fortunate is that we get resources to add additional every year to special education and so we have targeted those resources towards that very effort so like you said a lot of work to do it's going to take time but we're going to do it so um like to just a shout out to um Marx Rudy and gen Avey and Don Ross this is the first time that we have ever had our cygdus so we are found significantly disproportionate with over identification of African student black students as having emotional disturbance and discipline they wrote they drafted and worked with me and worked with our
195team to draft our action items on our um coordinator our cygdus plan and that um that work is imperative because we are not looking at how these students what you know once they're identified we're our work is to um is an intervention and pre-referral to keep them from being identified and that work um happens with our all of our counterparts and Ed services our secondary directors our elementary directors and they invite us as a team and we are working on presenting to the principal meetings and I think through that work we're going to make some cultural changes so super proud of that um and thank you very much that was a really big deal for us that's so great I love hearing about how we can desilo and again you guys are are modeling that
196um so that we can really share those best practices and work together um two more questions sorry um one is uh talking about the professional development we've heard in multiple meetings um about contracted paraprofessionals and is there a way to include those contracted paraprofessionals in this professional development Kelly Park yes so we have definitely heard the need for a para educator um trainings um we have two groups of para Educators we have our EGA right um classified staff but we also have our non-public agencies so really trying to partner with CSEA and um how we are educating our para Educators and growth opportunities and trainings so that um it's it's an attractive position that they want to stay in um because they do right they pick those jobs because they care about our students and
197love our kids um so next year definite proposals for para educator trainings more CPI opportunities um again that's the verbal de-escalation but also trainings our parents deliver a lot of instruction in our self-contained classes so really bringing them into curriculum trainings and making sure that there able to help in small group instruction in the self-contained setting and then on the Learning Center and RSP side really partnering coming in with those teachers right and having trainings alongside each other of how we're going to push into the Gen Ed environment and support our students in those classrooms it's a long-term plan right but working with Gen AV and CPL in terms of how we're allocating funds for training um and Jennifer woolbanks is going to be a partner in that as well on the classified side so
198it's a definite priority and really building up our EGA para hires so that we can offer all those trainings to our people perfect thank you and again just thank you I oh I'm sorry oh okay I thought you were going to come to answer training the next question okay um again uh you know I think that you've also this it's nothing's going to change tomorrow we have great ideas about how to make things better and I just appreciate you um putting in the work despite it being daunting so thank you very much for the presentation thank you Miss Jamerson Mr Vargas uh I joined my colleagues in thanking you profusely for the what I know was an enormous amount of work um over the course of this year uh and um also I you know
199thank you for clearly listening to not just the community but also you know what we are asking for um you know one of the things was numbers right asking for assessment asking for research and you guys clearly gave us that um and I appreciate that immensely uh because I think it helps to you know not just make the case but also you know provide evidence that you know the the district is doing what it says it's going to do and you know is trying to achieve the goals that we've set out um you know I do have uh not to in any way shape or form limit that appreciation um I want to grasp on two sort of um you know Loose Ends uh you know the first one being it seem like the I
200love that there's a plan it seems like the plan hinges a lot on hiring um which we've struggled with we and everybody else um and so I I appreciate all of the different ways um the hiring that that you've addressed that concern around hiring all the different programs are absolutely incredible um and so my question is sort of at a higher level like are you confident that we're going to reach the numbers that we need to reach in order to achieve these goal goals and you know in addition to that does that account for anticipated attrition are we just talking about our current need or are we also taking into account that people will retire people will choose to leave people will move um and then lastly is if I'm not giving you enough um
201what is the contingency if we get to day one of the next year um and we're just not there what do we do um so I I think we've taken a lot of efforts so far and we shared with those in the board presentation to help get us into a really good place um heading into next school year in terms of teachers um one area of struggle has still been finding those teachers with the mod severe credentials and we've been working closely we have weekly meetings with our human resources department to really get a think tank of people working on those Solutions um so that if we start to get to that point where um we're looking like we're going to have some vacancies we have a lot of great minds leaning into that work
202um you know we're we're looking at our tkk programs and where we have them staffed with two teachers um we're taking a look at numbers are there programs that we could consolidate might we explore a teacher um with one of our reach candidates right so having that be the second person so we're really looking at those programs as as possible places where we may be able to recapture some of our teacher staff and reallocate them um but we're hoping that our efforts are successful and it's it's still early for us to kind of make pull the trigger on any of those kinds of things but we are talking about it and leaning into that work so that um we don't end up at the point you know where the school year has started and we're
203struggling to find staff a little bit more detail on that um so in terms of the TK that's that's one of our challenges 13 new tkk classes 13 means 26 teachers so one thing that we're looking at doing for uh moving forward is before we stack an AM PM session with two credential teachers we're ensuring that we have as a base a credential teacher that way we can put an intern in the PM or you know vice versa uh we might even look we have some very experienced long-term substitutes who work exclusively in our special ed we could pair that because one of the jobs of the tkk you might be the Lead Teacher in the am but the your responsibility in the afternoon is to be on hand and to be that support almost
204like a co-teaching model but with two special education teachers we feel like with one credential teacher in the room we can still offer a quality program so that's a contingency that's not the ideal and it's not what we're but that's one we can then we could take other teachers and move them elsewhere in mod severe context um the other thing that we really appreciated the efforts um due to Emrick Singh's leadership and Human Resources is really I identifying as substitutes come in who have special education credentials they send out emails when we onboard a new substitute with a credential and as evidenced today when I see that I forward it to the team said let's call this person let's get let's see what their needs are can they work part-time do they need a certain
205authorization so we've actually been able to hire and retain you know internally through that process so we have and we meet weekly as as Melissa said or not we every two weeks with human resources and we're brainstorming all these so we have five or six different contingency possibilities in our back pocket but again it's still we're in the prime of the hiring season 40 contingent authors with our goal of 70. it is difficult to anticipate attrition because some people do wait to announce their retirement but most teachers do put in their retirement shortly after spring break so we feel like we have the majority of the picture in terms of resignations and retirements but we're like Melissa said we're on it every day good I appreciate knowing that I think that's incredibly important and it's
206something to just keep in mind as as things go um the other the other question that I have uh actually uh got raised a little bit um already in your answer um which is how are we because you mentioned right one of the biggest challenges we have is finding that you know mod severe credential right um and so how are we ensuring that we have the credentials we need in order to ensure that students are matched up with uh someone who has the credential that's appropriate for their needs thank you yeah I so we have constructs in this District about you know what credential uh aligns with what type of classrooms so you know it's really those level four classrooms where we need a mod severe teacher the other classrooms we have a little bit
207more flexibility in terms of mild mod severe and that's something that's disability driven through the California Department of Ed um so you know I I think for us you know a portion of the work is really looking at our level four classes right how do we make those attractive to teachers what are some of the challenges right in those classrooms how do we address them how do we make them um places where teachers want to work um and then also our Partnerships with local universities in attracting teachers to our district to our um seeking a mod severe credential and enrolled in those programs they're noticing the lack of Interest as well so it's not simply an Elk Grove problem but having those Partnerships is really beneficial because it's a pipeline to get teachers into the
208district who do have those types of credentials right and that's everything I have thank you again for all of your hard work really really appreciate it thank you thank you Mr Vargas Mr Bettis um is your mic on sir it takes a man to do that but yeah I don't I think you're you just um you just had marching orders it didn't come I don't think it came from you directly I came from the superintendent and and the other administrative staff I don't know uh because nobody has said that so you know like but yet you came forward and because you're in personnel and I mean uh in your program answer so let me just clarify I was not directed to do that um and I think there's some people in the back and who
209can attest that that did come from my heart and that came from a um months of meeting with the people in the back and specifically you know a conversation that I had with them yesterday so um I apologize if that didn't come as it was heartfelt um good God bless yourself I was not directed to do that okay well but yet I don't think you should well it seemed like you were taking the full blame well you know and there's more history to this decision to what we did eight months ago and it created a lot of anxiety you know for this whole board because we weren't aware of that what was going on and the plans of you know this whole process we're talking about today and how the changes that we're going to
210get you know was it because the fiscals issues you know we didn't know was it because of a lack of a special education teachers we didn't know but we were getting a lot of information more so for my community uh parents and staff what was going on initially in this process or in this uh section or this program within our Elk Grove unified school district and it caused a lot of pain throughout our district you know and so you know we we hanged in there as a board but yet you know it should never been it should never have happened number one that what going that process I imagine other school districts have gone you know did a complete change or a model per se now what is the model what's the name of the
211model to this day and I heard somebody say it's a regional model is it an original model in our overall structure is based on the regional model but how we're serving and delivering inclusive Services is part of this our resource Specialists services and secondary and our Learning Centers and I you know I would be more than happy to sit down with you Mr Perez and and kind of take you through the the details of the plan and the work that we're doing yes uh you know I get back to the cipa selpa you know of our district and that's I think is the the guideline the plan you know both at the state level and the local level and and parent involvement staff involvement you know for make to bring about change within for the
212best of the student so that's you know that's that's what you know really hurts me and angered me I had a lot of different types of feelings you know until even today because you know like Mr Yang said if we have children who are going through this this this process or who have gone through the process and it's a lot of uh you know a lot of you know feelings you know you've been sleepless nights just like Mr Hoffman he has a lot of sleepless nights because of our students and what he's thinking you know you know and so that's you know that's I want to express that right now because you know I have to let it out because if I don't let it out I won't sleep tonight myself and uh let's go
213so we are gonna evolve into a regional approach South uh two variety of models self-contained classrooms and and pull out in classroom we're evolving right and and are we using any other again I'm gonna bring out the Golden Bell Awards I went back home and study all these Golden Bell Awards programs throughout the state of California back 20 years and uh we um you know there is models out there so is there any other model we're following I that's the question is their model something you identified and I appreciate your work on that the local plan um um there's a um uh uh requirement that we have that uh reviewed by our community advisory committee right and thank you for bringing that up I think that Community advisory committee of which a number of our
214EG speaks are now participating in has a whole new opportunity it was almost perfunctory in the last 10 years right we those meetings we held them we had parent trainings but now they've come to life right and I appreciate that that is where that parent feedback is going to happen it's provided for an ed code and so we are going to be um I think developing a more robust Community advisory committee um to be able to get stakeholder feedback and um how we choose to move forward as a district so thank you for bringing up the local plan yeah so you know and there's a state plan and there's Association of us administrators and I came across the two-page resolution how they're going to use you know the whole plan remarkable every time you have
215a subject matter I'm learning all the time it's it's from the alpha administrators of California Special Education local plan area area yeah yeah beautiful document and I'm going to give it to you and to the staff and because the fact that there's a lot of good information that I learned just reading this as administrators and what you're going through right right now and I'm like I'm a lifetime learner and never I never say that I haven't you know stopped learning so I imagine and changes happen because of budgets because of the world but so anyway that's I want to make it bring that to your attention please do thank you and so uh um I was wondering where when we made these changes you know it worried me a lot and I'm going to say
216what you know I you know that it was coming back my head I'm afraid of a blossom I said I don't want a lawsuit and you need to speak to those parents and those staff to get this thing going ASAP you know that was my attitude because you know I think we compliance issues we had and what the parents were saying they they were in the right and now okay and IEPs uh you know you didn't have um very much information on that issue humming we have of uh you know there's a lot of changes right because of Staffing so how many of those all those students IEPs do we still have to sit down with those parents are those all completed those are things I wonder about too and and in the report I
217was wondering about that issue and and so you know and that's the most important thing that dictates Services correct correct right and how much service for each individual student um let me go back and say what happened is I'm not sure how it happened again again the the numbering system of your presentation did it change yeah well my numbers off by a couple of pages yeah the pictures were the two of the um Community pictures from Transitional services were placed okay and they we put them into um so it wasn't me I'd like to go you know my apologies bear with it that's three mistakes now we're getting uh you know you didn't use full inclusion and I mentioned uh you know my child was it was the first child that went to full inclusion
218and a Kirk theater at five he was the first child in the daycare center at uh downtown um and so you know I all that experience with special ed I have and and and I like what the the comment you said about the psychologists you mentioned every student uh especially that student is a general ed student it's true and I you know at the English Learners we have handicaps you know learning English you know we and and a short time of being handicapped English learner we get out of that particular educational issue yeah so uh so yes um I like that what he said um so and then you didn't have Partners you know I dealt with Alta Regional centers and advisor and all that you know that and I got to learn a lot
219about them so I didn't you had Community people in there I didn't see out out to Regional or how they could provide services or resources sure we we did meet with they presented to our um our program Specialist Team on Thursday all through Regional they've developed a new education manager for that very reason just in the last year they um all Alta Regional now has someone designated to support students with special needs so I learned a long time ago least restricted strict environment and and Anna Kirk's Peters they're supposed to provide that for him and they're they're wonderful teachers and staff there and and you know some people are still there or you know it's gone a long ways education you know before they never had students like my childhood in school Downstream the boy
220um well so we're developing a support model for students requiring level one level one support excellent at all schools looks like yes it's going to take time but I'll be patient Mr Perez what um you are at 11 minutes already I just wanted oh no no no no no I'm speaking sir oh no I just I just so I put the timer on good for you I'm still I'm not done speaking so um I want to remind you that's okay I'm still trying to finish though so if you can listen to me please yes okay I just want to remind you that this is our time to make substantive comments not to go through Page by Page and comment on every page of the slide presentation especially one with 77 pages I want to give
221some uh Kudos congratulations um that you have you know there's a lot of pages again we've run out of time for this important issue um you know I like those since I have seen data but now we call it regions not by trustee areas uh feeder schools I learned um now I don't what's the you we do assessments I look at our web page we have an assessment but I've seen other school districts they have assessment research and evaluation how does that work within special ed um well we partnered um on this particular project to receive information or feedback on how inclusion students prepared with the comparative group so we worked with um Christine hikito and Jeremy Hinshaw and we'll continue to partner with them and as I mentioned our work with ed services with
222Mark suredy and gen Avey um to make sure we're looking at data to make informed decisions exactly uh that's why I said there's not you know what I said especially I had programs in other districts they have that combined because first of all you got to have the base you have to do assessment and then the outcomes you measure out what you've done and learn to still learn so that that's common sense and you you actually are doing it on preschool program overview you say that preschool Assessment Center that's what you're talking about and and I'm a good I'm a supporter of early childhood development and get the kids in the education Arena as soon as possible English language Learners let's go back I'm going to concentrate on our Personnel recruitment retention I'm very concerned
223you know I know who where I had good friends that went to University Pacific uh but I'm concerned are we what type of student are we getting uh or a teacher as a result of this outcome uh are we getting I'm concerned that we don't have coultry linguistically competent special ed teachers in in our schools and and uh there was no ethnic makeup of these particular trainees so I was wondering uh what type of candidates or teachers are we getting on this program because to me it's very again that's another area that you know students need to see a person of color as soon as that's a teacher that linguistically capable to speak to them in their in their their native language and it's a transition so you know that those are things that I'm
224concerned about regarding uh the program I'm glad um you have and each year was they're also like I was wondering on your on your page 28 your reach cohort every year when you started were they 20 students and then and and seven dropped out and you got 13. no the first cohort only had 13. okay that second cohort only had 19. oh okay very good heart only had 15. our goal was 20 but we did not get that goal okay which is why we got the continuation Grant and so I dressed our question about the Multicultural and linguistic diversity all of our candidates we do interviews with them and we have a very diverse group our current cohort has people of color we have people of different disabilities we have some alternative lifestyle and sexual
225orientation preference which they've listed out to us so we are very clear on making sure that our reflective copulation of our teachers addresses the students in our school so we're very aware that we have not been as culturally diverse as we could have been in this District but we made a commitment with our reach program to bring in diverse for people of color SCS status sexual purpose orientation transgender we have all of that in our program so that's not something that we have taken lightly so please report those that was mentioned getting a three-year Grant excellent now what now did you or could you have added more students into that program 20th a really good number to work with we have to have mentors we have to have student teachers we have to have classes
226to put them in and we're already having struggles finding placement so 20 is a nice wrong number and it's even to get mentors and mentees very good very Mr Bettis you're at 16 minutes could we get your final one or two questions hey hey well you know what like I said oh there and also there wasn't a but a budget in there in your report and May and also maybe uh uh any fiscal projections of maybe how much we're growing per year and how much we might need next you know 10-year uh cycle down the road you know as we grow in this District have you thought of doing that also yeah we could get that to you and that is in our local plan okay yeah the allocations for every um level of service
227oh okay and I'd be happy to look at that with you anytime or um David would too um and there was an issue regarding research evaluation study have a lot of issues within that um section but I don't have time I'll research that provides you some information again thank you very much for doing excellent job under the circumstances but thank you be prepared that we're going to get more monies from the legislative body and the government okay thank you Mr Perez um I get to be brief because my colleagues have already made such great comments and questions no really really um so um I will just zoom through I really appreciate the focus on improved continuity within a site and within a region for all the reasons that have been stated when we talk about
228changing the culture across the board for inclusivity and and just real um integration of of all of our students I think it begins with that issue so so thank you so much for your focus on that um let's see you know I couldn't help but notice um the to-do list is very long um it needs to be right it's it's ambitious it's daunting we have a lot to do every time you know I recognize progress from up here I am accused of taking a Victory lap prematurely so I just want to add my usual disclaimer that I don't think anyone up here is under the uh the the impression that we are done that we have solved anything um but I I do really appreciate um the the thoughtfulness of you know with which you
229have um developed the the work plan and identified the targets uh to come um I I really appreciate the comments about intersexuality intersectionality and and cultural and linguistic competence I want to associate myself with that um and I I will just end talking about um trust right uh thank you Mr Riley for your comments at the top of the presentation my perspective has always been the responsibility flows upward so we are an organization of human beings that are imperfect and we mess up sometimes probably not the last time that it's happened um and uh each and every time that we as an organization mess up that we make a mistake that we fall short of meeting the needs of our kids I feel it very personally I think that is my individual responsibility as a
230board member and a collective responsibility of this board and I know how hard it is to to you know how hard it feels to fall short when we care so much about meeting the needs of our kids so I really appreciate your comments because I think they are they go a long way in starting to rebuild that trust that that we have lost um and with that you know I want to thank all of the staff everybody who's involved but I also want to thank the parents um we put you in a really rough spot and we followed It Up by making a really big ask of you which was um I know we've we've uh lost your trust but please engage with us on the subject that you're most vulnerable about um and you
231did it you Rose to the challenge and we are not nearly as good at solving problems without your input and your insights so thank you so much for doing such a hard thing and helping us to to do better by not just your kids all of our kids it um it is not gone unnoticed it is not uh you know unappreciated it means a lot to all of us and with that um just thank you for the presentation I know we are all interested and really look forward to Future updates on this topic thank you for your work our next item Mr Riley had you closed did I I if you're not done feel free okay okay he's ready our next item is a public hearing action items tentative agreement between egusd and ask me
232for 2022 23 and 23 24. take it away Mr Riley all right hello again wearing a different hat um the tentative agreement between Elk Grove unified school district and the American Federation of state county and Municipal Employees afscme local 258 for the 2022-2023 and 23 20. for school years I'm sorry 2023 and 2024 school years has been ratified by a vote of the askme members Education Code section 3540.2 stipulates a fiscal review by the Sacramento County Office of Education of negotiated agreements to determine the financial impact of the agreement on the District budget the ab1200 report which provides the financial analysis of the tentative agreement is attached and was submitted to scoey for their review and has been approved as such the egusd board is asked to approve or ratify the attached 20 to 23
233and 2324 tentative agreements thank you Mr Riley Miss levasser do we have any Zoom comments on this item Madam President we have no Zoom comments thank you Miss Jamerson do we have any blue cards on this item no we do not have any blue cards on this item thank you I'm going to close the public hearing that I didn't announce that I opened but I'm going to close it now and call for a motion to approve the attentive agreement between Elk Grove unified school district and the American Federation of state county and Municipal Employees after me local 258 for the 2022-23 and 23 24 school years so moved second moved and seconded all in favor please signify by saying aye aye opposed but is approved unanimously the next item is another tentative agreement between egusd
234and our California School Employees Association for 2020-23 and 2324 go ahead Mr Riley thank you the tentative agreement between the Elk Grove unified school district and the California School Employees Association CSEA Elk Grove chapter 831 for the 2022 and 2023 and 2023-2024 school years has been ratified by a vote of the CSEA members Education Code section 3540.2 stipulates a fiscal review by the Sacramento County Office of Education of negotiated agreements to determine the financial impact of the agreement on the District budget the ab1200 report which provides the financial analysis of the tentative agreement is attached and was submitted to scoey for their review and has been approved as such the egusd board is asked to approve or ratify the attached 2022 through 2023 and 2023 2024 tentative agreement thank you Mr Riley I'm going to
235open the public hearing and ask Miss levasser if there are any public comments via Zoom related to this item Madam President we have no public comments via zoom on this island thank you Miss Jamerson do we have any blue cards on this item we have no blue cards on this item thank you I'm going to close the public hearing and call for a motion to approve the tentative agreement between Elk Grove unified school district and the California School Employees Association Elk Grove chapter number 831 for the 2022-23 and 23-24 school years all in favor please signify by saying aye aye opposed that is approved unanimously we will move on to board member and superintendent reports I will look to my left any reports on official board business committees that I've met Mr Perez Mr Vargas
236um Miss Jamerson we had a meeting with the pi group as they are going through the comparability study and um I think that we're all on the same page it was mainly a meeting for clarifying questions as we continue on this process Miss albioni okay Mr yang Mr Fortuna go ahead yes um both you and I had a wonderful uh architect subcommittee being in which we uh discussed changes uh to our current boardroom and we we're going to bring it uh you know out of the Dark Ages and have it more relevant and more useful more functional and they'll be a down the road uh architect will continue to to work on the plans and we'll we'll have continued meetings but um the layout that has been proposed by the architect is functional and um
237the the Telecommunications is is going to be what we have been in dire need of so uh looking forward to the additional changes that'll come for a review yep oh is that is that you're you're done okay I think we've been doing so much work in in board subcommittees that you all are forgetting so I'm going to remind you um the finance subcommittee also met on April 11th um so that's exactly what I'm saying we've been busy so um Miss albiani and Mr Fortuna and I um met and we developed some pretty substantive recommendations that the board will be seeing in an upcoming board communication um I we also I guess I deputized them as a ledge committee we took a position um as we were asked to on a piece of legislation that is
238hopefully going to provide a state facility for school resource officers to be trained to deal with the types of security issues that unfortunately schools have to face these days um and Mr fortina talked about the board architect subcommittee um the plans are phenomenal and they're they're still being refined we are very excited to share that with the rest of you um Miss Jamerson talked about pie thank you and lastly I will just mention the California school boards Association legislative committee also met this past Friday and took positions on various pieces of legislation we also discussed the implementation of the late start mandate how that's going challenges maybe some adjustments that need to be made so go ahead Mr superintendent so there's a one real quick one um so uh Miss Hayes over there um wanted
239to uh uh recognize um that this will be Shannon's last regular meeting uh with us um 34 years um with the district and the word trust came up um today a couple of times and um the trust that the the board has had in Shannon over the years um can't put a price on that and the trust within the uh the bargaining units um as well so I just say uh thank you um thank you very very much and uh I'm excited for whatever this new thing is more details on it but I'm excited for you so thank you very much I have to piggyback on that Miss Hayes uh I couldn't have done it without you honestly I think you know the the budget and fiscal component was one of the most intimidating aspects
240of this job coming on board and um you made it you made it possible so thank you so much for all your support to me to us to everyone in this District you will be sorely missed and we wish you nothing but the best trying to say something to you hey when I started in 2012 you were assistant and I seen the growth of your your career and it was amazing that you just stepped into that position and boom and your natural feature or professor of budget yeah and you have that Knack and and that Charisma and it was I enjoyed working with you or listening to you and giving my input or whatever sorry to go with that I will adjourn this meeting at oh I'm sorry that was an accident yeah one more
241time jumping ahead uh consideration of future agenda items so okay sir um I guess you when's your last day I I I was looking forward to the new superintendent Tony Thurman this this person's second payment of nearly four million billion for learning recovery that was announced April 6 2023 and looks like we're gonna get some you know 4 million all the way to 2027-28 and because of the fact that the Federal Emergency Department is going to Mr Bettis as a reminder this item is for proposed future potential agenda items yeah that will be covered okay yep okay okay thank you with that I'm going to adjourn this meeting at 10 24 PM everybody drive safely thank you have a good night