December 13, 2022 - Board Meeting

001at 5 pm and announced okay they'll give you the high sign okay call the meeting to order at 5 pm and announce that the board will be in closed session to address items one through three call for public comment on closed session items there are no items for our public comment on items for closed session okay close the public comment Research into closed session thank you yeah that's good evening and welcome to Elk Grove unified school district board meeting unless otherwise ordered by the Sacramento County Public Health Department the state or by the legal mandate including AB 361 board resolution the board of education has resumed full in-person board meetings live streaming a full in-person board meetings will be available to the public via the zoom platform today's meeting is being video recorded and will

002be available on the district YouTube channel there will be one public comment period during each regular board meeting after board recognitions that will include public comments maybe make about items not on agenda but within the school district jurisdictions please note that if public comments are about items not appearing on the post agenda the board cannot take action or discuss the public comment other than the board president briefly acknowledging the comment public comments might be make about all items that are on the board meeting agenda please note that the board May comment and ask clarification the questions relating to public comments make about items that are on the agenda individuals may not defer their time to another individual speaker to increase their individual total time Beyond three minutes the guidelines for in-person public comments and participation

003can be found on the table outside of the boardroom and under the district website please be mindful that District students may be watching you are encouraged to address the board and the public in a respectful manner such that all those observing from children to adults are made to feel welcome safe and valued pursuance to government government code section 54957.9 the board shall not permit any disturbance of willful Interruption of board meetings persistence disruptions by individual or group shall be grounds for the board president to provide a warning and then to terminate the individual privilege of addressing the boy the board president may call a recess at any point during the meeting pledge allegiance call on material Andrade with principal Natisha Lewis Jones please come to the podium please and because the school is in my

004district I will call upon myself after I read this recognition and we'll ask you to do the pledge religion flat salute recognition December 13 2022. Samuel Jackson Middle School is honored to recognize Miss Victoria andrende as our education partner Victoria was born in Salinas California and then moved to San Jose right after high school she graduated from CSU Monterey Bay and moved to Sacramento in 2018. Victoria has three children of all which attend egusd schools Julian Sophia and Bella but Terry began working for egusd in and at Jackman in 2021 as a substitute teacher she is the kind of substitute teacher that every principal and teacher dream of having at their school and in the classroom Victoria is not only in the classroom she supports Jackman by building relationships with students helping in the front

005office recess room Student Activities and lunchtime supervision Victoria has coach both girls volleyball and basketball at Jackman she also taught math and a volleyball Clinic during summer learning she is passionate about coaching and helping students to see both on and off the court we have been honored to have Victoria as part of the Jackman family for the past two years I'm going to have you do the Flack right Chris okay everybody please rise relation to the flag of the United States of America and to your Republic which is stand one nation under God indivisible we will be Injustice fall foreign to present the certificate of election and Minister though of office to Bath albiani and Michael Burgers because Gina's not here we're going to skip her right Chris yeah we won't take care of that

006one on the 10th yeah so Michael and Beth please um okay all right to get the fancy uh you know right hand up I'm gonna do one line at a time so we can just kind of everybody can uh follow it and ride at the beginning part I'll say I and you add your name okay I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States and the constitution of the State of California in the constitution of the State of California against all enemies foreign and domestic that I will bear true faith and Allegiance to the Constitution of the United States and to the Constitution of the State of California that I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion and that I will well and

007Faithfully discharge the duties on which I'm about to enter congratulations come on up big deal foreign congratulations so election of officers is next foreign just want to make sure we're clear I'm just going to go ahead and read this and after that then you could uh dominate call for nominations then a motion to elect the president of the board of the education calling on Carmine thank you before I make my nomination I want to make a couple comments I think that this board uh needs to recommit itself to the issue of its right to make policy decisions I also believe that we through our actions must recommit to the principles of transparency accountability and most importantly inclusion I also believe that we need to focus on communication not only amongst ourselves but throughout the district

008and in all of our actions and that we need to work on boardsmanship for me personally it's important that I can trust the President to carry out these principles and based on discussion I nominate Nancy chyrus Espinoza for board president like a second okay we got first and second roll call Miss Trent uh aye Ms albiani aye Miss cheers Espinoza aye Mr fosina aye Miss Jefferson is absent Mr Perez Mr Vargas aye and myself is I congratulations thank you [Applause] next we will nominate the clerk of VP calling for nominations I'd like to nominate Miss Gina Jamerson um she's not here today but she has indicated that she would be willing to accept that position full second okay we got first and second roll call Mr Trent aye Miss albiani hi Miss chairs Espinoza aye

009Mr fasina now Ms Jamison's not here Mr Perez hi Mr Vargas hi and I for me so that concludes our Oak of office so we'll make a another motion and then we will proceed to uh recess to change the seating well one more second so we still need to do the um the Sac County rep person should be on the next did I skip a step just got one more flip the page over and should be one more oh okay collection of officers nomination board representative representative of Sacramento County Office of Education calling for nomination staff I'd like to nominate Mr yang calling for a second I seconded okay we got first and second Let's uh conduct the roll call Mr Trent hi it's albiani hi Miss cheers Espinoza aye Mr fasina aye Miss Jamison's

010not here Mr Perez hi Mr Vargas aye and I for myself so all right that concludes our collection of officers calling promotions for establishing the date time and place of meetings for the coming years first and third Tuesdays of each month at 6 pm and in between 5 p.m and 6 p.m for closed sessions when necessary with the place of the meetings being chairman determined by the secretary to the Board of Education Mr Carmine I move for maintenance of our regularly scheduled meetings as they currently are okay a second okay we got first and second roll call it's a trend hi Miss albiani hi Miss chairs Espinoza hi Mr fasina hi thanks Jameson Mr Perez hi Mr Vargas hi Mr Yang Mr I okay so presentation of the goggle to incoming presidents calling Chris Hartman

011to present the goal to the incoming president who will share the reminders of the meeting yes yeah so we we're going to go ahead and take a five minute recess please folks we're gonna get started thank you Tony thank you for bearing with us through the procedural stuff that we needed to do today and I'll ask for your continued Indulgence as I get myself used to this role again um let's uh call let's start up with our student Representatives first up today we have uh cosumnus Oaks foreign good evening board president Charis Espinoza members of the board superintendent Hoffman and Miss Avalos my name is Tim Sai rohanu and I am Arya shergill and we are representing the Mighty Wolf fact to kick off the school year we hosted a welcome back rally with performances

012from our very own Polynesian Haka and tanikling clubs as well as games for students to participate in such as mattress surfing and a fashion show for our homecoming dance with a theme of cities under lights each class represented a city freshmen were San Francisco sophomores were Rome Juniors were parents and seniors were in New York after hosting our school's annual Club rush in late October we had over 70 clubs on campus with lots of new additions from Auto Club to crochet Club students have many opportunities to get involved and express their passions further in regards to our PBIS initiatives consumers Oaks earn State gold recognition for the first time and we are working hard on reducing tardies with a reward of donuts for the classes with the fewest students food slave students our tier 2

013index status has also gone up significantly this year our student Equity Council theme is that we will we hope to break through gender and racial biases as well as facilitating mutual respect and accountability among staff admin and students many students participated in our spirit week on the week of Halloween on Monday students got to show off their Halloween costumes Tuesday was country versus Country Club Wednesday was soccer moms versus barbecue dads Thursday was White Lies and Friday was dressed as your type we also held our Fall Fest with our very own Pumpkin Palooza contest and a haunted house ran by a thespian society and ASB where actors worked hard to ensure the experience was a realistic depiction of a haunted Children's Hospital for visitors our student athletes had much to celebrate this season for players

014from our girls golf team went to the sectional golf tournament and our cross-country team had a good run with our boys placing fourth and girls placing sixth in the Delta League our annual College app info sessions provided an opportunity for our seniors to get a head start on their college apps and get support from our school counselors and our college career advisor to celebrate the festive season ASB put together a movie night for each of the classes where they provided an assortment of holiday treats and nostalgic films such as Coraline Nightmare Before Christmas and Home Alone our theater Department also put on the interactive play of family reunion to die for which was a suspenseful mirror mystery right now they're working on their spring musical ranked thank you for your continued support we look forward

015to highlighting our achievements in the coming new year and remember that the strength of the pack is the wool and the strength of the wolf is the pack have a wonderful evening thank you like thank you co can we have our representatives from Sheldon High School up next good evening board president chares Espinoza members of the board superintendent Hoffman and Miss Avalos my name is interpreet Singh and my name is Kiani Leon and we're representing the student body of Sheldon high school as the second year of in-class learning is halfway done Sheldon is getting closer and closer to the tight Community it once was before covet School academics Spirit Athletics and events are up and running and we're glad to share this successes today starting off with academics in September we recognize our students outstanding

016academic success from quarters three to four of the 2021-2022 school year 534 students earned a 3.75 GPA or higher and qualified for the awards in the following month after quarter one a thousand five hundred and sixty three students became qualified for the quarterly academic Renaissance program which gave benefits such as front of the line passes and academic waivers for having a GPA higher than a 3.0 such high numbers can only be explained by our teachers who do their job with passion and commitment in fact our computer science teacher Miss Linda Dewberry won UC Davis 2022 c-stem teacher of the year award Sheldon is so thankful for having such committed teachers on our campus oops continuing on to our student Unity efforts ASB has been focused on reversing the social barrier that was placed on by

017covet through trying to involve students in clubs and sporting events at the beginning of the year we organized clubbrush where students got the opportunities during their lunches to join the 50 clubs Sheldon has to offer a few weeks later with these new members clubs got the opportunity to fundraise by selling food to students in our food fair event now clubs are performing preparing performances for our Multicultural assembly that is going to happen in February another area that we're focusing on in order to increase school spirit is working on our student section last year coming back from distance learning students were intimidated and unenthusiastic about our sports teams which led to small attendance therefore starting small with our first football game on August 26th we created teal Army a group that coordinates cheers for students and

018encourages them to attend games with over 300 student followers strong on social media the group the group comes together during each of our themed football games and will continue during Battle season in hopes of bringing even more students together moving on to Athletics our fall season has just ended for several Sports and we're excited to share their successes our football team was one of the three teams to make it to playoffs and made it to the second round where they put up a tough fight against Folsom High Senior Scott Nixon was named Delta leak MVP several athletes also earned first team and second all Delta leave honors for a cross-country team the frosh soft girls team made it to the sac Joaquin sections and performed well our women's golf team also had an amazing season

019and were presented with awards for being the sports team with the highest GPA Although our women's volleyball team did not have the best season record this year we are happy to acknowledge them for continuing to represent Sheldon despite having several injuries on the team women's tennis also had a great season with several players winning singles every competition finally we would like to acknowledge our softball team as coach Truesdale was inducted into the nfca Hall of Fame as well as Jay lioho Sakura Harvel and J Lee Marshall who signed National letters of intent going on to activities the first event of the year was freshman orientation where incoming freshmen got the opportunity to explore Sheldon's campus and learn about some of its programs after the orientation we hosted Hot August days where students got took their

020yearbook photos picked up their schedules and bought class and spirit merchandise at discounted prices when school began ASB hosted senior Sunrise to start the senior year strong after a week we coordinated the first rally of the year to welcome our students by introducing fall teams and dance performances then September came and homecoming festivities started this is Sheldon's first Homecoming in three years so we made sure to bring back every event involved to begin staff revealed eight students to be on the royalty court at the homecoming rally then ASB partnered with our PE Department to host our annual Powder Puff event oh in which a women's flag football game happened between the classes and the halftime performance happened from male cheerleaders two days later on Friday morning we organized our homecoming parade featuring all clubs false

021words academics and class floats to our student body later that evening during our homecoming game the king and queen were announced and finally on Saturday to conclude homecoming Sheldon LED our first homecoming dance in three years and it had the most tickets ever sold in school history Slater ASB hosted senior scenes enjoyed picnically picnic games Inflatables and Kona Ice cups for all the Sheldon concert choir also had their fall performances which was heavily attended by our parents and students beginning in November Sheldon Theater Works put on an amazing show called Peter and the starcatcher and it was well liked by families as every year for Veterans Day our marching band performed in a Veterans Day Parade to show the appreciation for the ones that have served our country on December 3rd members of our FFA

022Academy participated in the Mariposa public speaking contest and several students placed top 10. on December 8th band held an orchestra concert finally our Universal Rhythm Dance Company represented Sheldon in the winter recital where several schools came together to dance as we are speaking right now choir is coordinating with Smedberg Middle School on a concert night starting the year off strong we're finally getting back to normalcy after the strange past two years as time goes on students will continue to succeed academically with the efforts of our outstanding teachers our community will continue to become stronger with more students getting involved in school and as we will continue to put out as many events needed to connect people together thank you so much for your time and remember every day is a great day to be a

023husky thank you Sheldon I'd like to recognize the principles of both of these schools I think I see Mr houdegi from cosumas Oaks and I'm not sure if we have Miss Duncan from Sheldon high school here I do not but we recognize her as well thank you so much students thank you for your updates and you may be dismissed next up I'm going to call on Dr Bindi greywall good evening board president members of the board superintendent Hoffman and Miss Avalos I asked the board to reaffirm the annual day of remembrance resolution joining me are Mariel sukumoto of the foreign Japanese American citizens league and Donna kimuri of the northern California time of remembrance committee this year marks the 81st anniversary of the executive order signed by President Roosevelt on February 19th in 1942 the

024order proclaimed California Oregon and Washington Military zones and led to the forest removal of a 120 000 Japanese Americans to incarceration camps for the duration of World War II After Japan surrendered in 1945 marking the end of World War II the United States began to close the internment camps restructuring their lives after World War II was difficult for many Japanese Americans most lost their homes Farms businesses and properties their education was disrupted and acts of discrimination and violence were commonplace in 1988 President Reagan recognizing that a great Injustice had occurred signed H.R 4 Fortune to law authorizing payment and an apology letter to each surviving internee annually Elk Grove fifth grade students visit the California Museum's longest running exhibit titled uprooted Japanese Americans during World War II with surveys A Century of Japanese history through

025the personal stories of formerly interned Californians this exhibit runs from the end of January through March 25th and students learn about their Japanese internment and about the rights denied to U.S citizens during World War II students will be able to view this important information virtually or in person before the board takes action Mr kimono thank you so much for allowing us to come in and speak before you I know that your meetings run long and I'll keep my comments short but I am so proud that I am from Elk Grove I graduated from Elk Grove High School in 1955. my parents graduated in the 1930s my whole cousins and everybody in the family went to Elk Grove High School so we have a long history here but during World War II we were not seen

026as Americans we were seen as immigrants even though we had been here my parents were born here and I think you're called American citizens right if you're born here but we weren't seen that way and we also did not understand that we had rights guaranteed as an American citizen or as an American resident you cannot be taken directly from your home to prison you have a right to be charged with wrongdoing and then if you are found guilty then and only then can you go into prison because we didn't understand our rights and we felt we had no voice we set a precedence that wasn't good it allowed the opportunity for some person that's in political power to decide that we don't like you we need to put you away and this is an easy

027way to get rid of you and this is why this board is the only board that I know of that since 1981 you have been authorizing and supporting a program which teaches our children and if you teach the children their children and their children will learn that so we're touching the future teaching them the Constitution protects every American and I'm so proud to be part of that process and congratulate the board because it started long before any of you served as board members but I want to especially thank Mr forsina because he has been very very supportive of this program and also I'm proud that so many of our young men served in a group called the 442 and the Mis even when their parents were in prison and they fought hard and become the

028most highly decorated unit in all of U.S military history and they did that because they wanted to prove that they were real Americans and they paid a high price as it was reported President Reagan did sign executive order ninos I did sign H.R 442 named for those soldiers and we did get an apology and for Mr Oliver track I think you'll find that we also got a check for twenty thousand dollars and you're thinking wow wow that's a lot of money which is for you but when you think about somebody losing their Farm like Patty masanaga's family her grandfather had 150 acres in what is now known as Silicon Valley only Patty her mother and her brother were left alive they got sixty thousand dollars for 150 acres of land in Silicon Valley but it

029was an apology and it was rep some kind of money and that set of Precedence too I'm going to invite the board to a special opening of a new exhibit we've up the museum was able to upgrade it so that it has um screens with pictures and it'll have videos where people actually answer questions and it modernized the exhibit so we're very excited about the changes but thank you very much for allowing me this time thank you very much [Applause] I'd like to call for a motion to adopt resolution number 40 reaffirming the day of remembrance resolution I want to get this out okay okay sure but yes I will take comments day of remembrance resolution originally introduced by the Elk Grove unified school district my notes say 1983 but miss tsukamoto says 1981 so

030I will obviously differ declaring annually a day of remembrance across the Elk Grove unified school district is there a motion hey I got a point of information yeah I'd like to make a motion okay I've got a motion pulling information one second so you're in the queue um and this needs a second I believe a second okay thank you and I'm gonna go first to Mr Yang sir hi for discussion of voting uh I thought you had the first comments or questions go ahead yeah I'm Sorry Miss what's your name Miss sukamoto Ariel tsukamoto bicycle I'm sorry say that again Muriel tsukumoto Moto Miss tsukumoto thank you so much for being here and thank you Miss uh Great Wall for reading that resolution um as a as a Asian band but um I'm an American

031but I'm a Hmong descent and hearing this resolution and hearing your story it's very emotional for me because when I think of myself I think I'm American first and foremost and then monkey said so what I do for the community for the country it's all for Americans and the Japanese Americans who live here I am sure that they live by that Principle as well during that World War II however they were mistreated and I am very happy to hear the apology and whatever that the United States of America was able to contribute and and pay whatever that kind of eased that pain um very very thrilled to to see you again here and presenting uh your story and hearing this resolution so thank you so much for being here be well thank you for real

032comments Mr Yang thank you Mr Bettis um in our board package we have the speaker and recommendation motion the rationale but you also included the financial impact would it be okay for us to amend the contract to include the the fiscal amount 1100 thousand dollars to support this issue at this time board members I believe this is uh money that has already been appropriated is that it's already in the budget yeah it's already so it's already approved for the budget yes sir and okay so I would assure that make sure that that that's part of budget I support 100 thank you sir any other questions or comments before we take a vote go ahead Mr Fortuna thank you um Muriel thank thank you for this words of recognition but it is I who wants to

033recognize your efforts and your continued efforts in your relationship uh not only with Elk Grove unified but but with so many others the day of remembrance activities that you put on every year are so heartwarming it's great to see just the the thousands of people that show up uh and and and the storytelling and and the remembrance of what it was like and and I know that uh unfortunately as time passes there's fewer and fewer who can specifically address uh what it was like um but but keeping keeping that memory alive is so critical and I know that's the work you've been doing for so many years especially with the recordings so that we'll have that those voices heard in the future so thank you proud of you guys love you guys and I'll be

034seeing you in February take a moment myself I just want to thank you again to the the Japanese American citizens League at the time of remembrance project thank you for all of the work that you do not just educating our students on history but educating really the broader Community about how those lessons apply to challenges that other groups continue to face today so we very much appreciate your work with that I will take a roll call vote Mr track hi the salbiani hi Mr fortina aye Mr Bettis aye Mr Vargas aye Mr Yang aye measure passes thank you the next item is the observation of Dr Martin Luther King Jr's birthday which will be presented by Miss Danielle black good evening president chairs Espinoza Mr track members of the board and superintendent Hoffman I'm here

035to request the adoption of resolution number 42 designating January 16 2023 as a celebration of Dr Martin Luther King Jr's birthday Dr Martin Luther King Jr devoted his life to the struggle for justice and equality and is universally recognized as a proponent of non-violence in the pursuit of freedom Dr King firmly believed that the road which led to Justice equality and a new sense of dignity for millions of black people opened for all Americans a new era of Hope and progress Dr Martin Luther King Jr's birthday not only reminds all educators of our responsibility and privilege to assist our students in developing their skills to reach their dreams for achievement and to pursue a nation which practices equality for all but is also recognized as a National Day of Service which calls for Americans from

036all walks of life to work together to provide solutions to the most pressing national and local problems the instruction in the Elk Grove unified school district schools acknowledges the contributions of Dr Martin Luther King Jr in ways in various ways teachers may include a variety of activities from our adopted curriculum assemblies presentations featuring highlights of Dr King's life and speaking and writing activities based on his speeches in support of this resolution curriculum and professional learning will offer a virtual Workshop not just available to Educators but any Elk Grove unified school district employees who would like to attend I'm excited about the opening of these educator workshops to all employees in Elk Grove unified the first one will be on January 17th and to accommodate more people we will offer it again in June the title

037of this Workshop is art as tribute the life of Dr Martin Luther King Jr where we will explore various forms of art that have been tributes to Dr Martin Luther King Jr including monuments murals paintings sculptures and music the book Martin Luther King a Peaceful Warrior by E Clayton is one of the district's Elementary recommended reading list books for sixth grade and as part of ongoing curriculum that recognizes leaders and heroes from all cultures and ethnic backgrounds additionally all students parents teachers and staff are encouraged to observe this day of service by engaging in volunteer activities in service to our community I request that the Elk Grove unified school district Board of Education adopt resolution number 42 designating January 16 2023 as a celebration of Dr Martin Luther King Jr's birthday thank you Miss Black

038I'd like to call for a motion to adopt resolution number 42 designating January 16 2023 as a celebration of Dr Martin Luther King Jr's birthday um Mr Bettis was the first or did you go Mr gang I wasn't sure okay yeah I moved it okay Mr Yang moved it Mr Bettis has a second I'm gonna do a roll call vote Mr track hi Miss albiani aye Mr fortino hi Miss Jamerson oh sorry Miss jamerson's absent Mr Bettis aye Mr Vargas aye Mr yang hi I'm also an I measure passes thank you thank you foreign [Music] Dr King everybody can't be great because anybody can serve you don't have to have a college degree to serve you don't have to make your subject and verb agree to serve you only need a Heart full of grace

039a soul generated by love very nice thank you the next item is public comment for items not on the agenda Miss levassa are there any public comments via Zoom audio for items not on the agenda Madam president there are no comments via Zoom thank you um I we will next have the board clerk call the names of the folks on the blue cards who are ready to speak to items not on the agenda and just real quick I'm going to ask the speakers to please uh say their names into the microphone before you comment okay we have uh five blue car for not on the agenda and this um blue car has two names on it and I believe they want to come together so Lori Bach Lindsay Townsend come together please and just pointed

040clarification uh even though there's two of you we only allow three minutes per blue car you're part of clerical we just wanted to address some issues that have been going on and it's not just at our site it's all sites and all clear uh classification classified all classified workers workers and we're just we're honestly exhausted and the help just doesn't seem to come and I think it's for a bunch of different reasons um mostly pay are clerical substitutes are not getting paid the wages that is appropriate for what they're doing at school sites and I think we've had a vacancy at our site Sheldon High School since the beginning of this year we've tried to this will be our fourth posting of the job we've had a member of our SOA tubes go on medically

041because of the stress of our site and I know this is it it's across all sides and so we just really wanted to give a voice to everybody and that's custodians our site has had minimal custodians because of substitutes um our campus campus security we've had one or two and we just don't feel safe outside but it's really because of the substitutes not getting paid as much as they should too so it's affecting all of us and we just wanted to be kind of heard and just have you understand that it's not just at one site it's a lot of sites and the morale is at its lowest for all classified everyone you talk to they're all filling it our custodians are struggling so much where we only have one or two person at night

042or even during the day it's just it's awful I've been with school district over 20 years and this has been the lowest in the last year and it's not because of the covet we all worked hard during the covet but now just to get a sub and then they're complaining because the pay is 15 we had one of our retirees coming in and they paid her 15 even though she retired as a DP but your retirees don't even want to come and help stuff because the pay is so low minimum yeah and then when you the cost of um inflation inflation when they raise the minimum wage to Fifteen dollars are steps one two and three went from 13 to 15 but nobody else from steps three four five up to six none of our

043um hourly wage changed and that needs to be adjusted yes you got you know we got that four percent it did nothing for our paychecks as far as campus security is getting paid minimally it's it's really not helping them survive right now with inflation so we just wanted to address this and your time's up please wrap up okay thank you thank you thank you thank you next up co-string Nicole strength hi my name is Nicole strange this is my friend Akira she's just gonna hang out with me um um I'm actually here because of the two people you just heard from Lindsey Townsend and Lori Bocce um they are my fellow data processors and registers at Sheldon High School I work at Pleasant Grove um and we're just here to I'm piggybacking off of what

044they said we've been short staffed at Pleasant Grove for two years now we had to post our SOA position three times and every time we called the people and offered them the job they're like yes and then when HR finally got around to calling them um they declined yay so um as a data processor my daily like what my snapshot of my day looks like is I start well before my contract an hour my hours and and then throughout the day like um I'm usually in the front office like as the SOA attendance Tech and I'm also doing my data processing job as well so my day would be like I'm answering 100 phone calls Pleasant Grove High School is a high impact school we are checking kids in and out over 100 Kids a

045day and then over a hundred phone calls because we're also tracking all the attendance phone calls that we get throughout the day um but as well you know along with doing that I'm also doing a registration or um I sometimes when my register is out um for any reason I'm doing a dismissal or a disenrollment or when my secretary decides to take a vacation rightfully deserved and earned I am the secretary so I'm pulling the rosters and handing out the keys and using the radio to track any in any issues that are happening on campus and alert any of my admin that may not be aware so we are like heavily heavily heavily short staffed Akira at her site is in the same position actually every I think every data processor I've talked to in

046the district is filling in more than one two three hats every single day I agree with Lindsay I think a huge issue is the the cost um the the entry level position at Elk Grove unified and the cost of living it's killing us we have um students kids that are making you know rtas that are in the office is helping us answer phones that are currently good for them kudos for them they're getting their jobs and getting work permits filled out they're making more money than my current SOA to and they're answering the same phone calls and and my SOA 2 carries a bit more responsibility than a TA um but that is an issue and I hope in our future that we can address this because I think for every data I'm speaking for

047every data processor and register we're just filling the stretch my SOA she said her example is like we're like a rubber band and any little instance that is happening is just it hurts to take your time's up please wrap up well thank you guys so much for hearing us I hope you guys have a great night thank you next Melissa Bitcoin good evening my name is Marissa Bitcoin and first I want to say thank you Mr Yang Miss Jamerson Mr forcina and Mr Vargas thank you for engaging with our community and events and privately as well um thank you Miss albiani for meeting with me and your continued support and I think it's time I take you on your offer and thank you Mr Perez and Mr Yang Mr forcino for your enthusiastic support in

048school board meetings and I really enjoy watching you make so many valid points and asking hard questions Mr chairs Espinoza and Mr Vargas I hope to hear more from you in meetings or in person as well and Mr track thank you for being here to volunteer your time and be involved as a student representative and again shout out to Elk Grove Elementary because the staff there Rock and I hope to meet more with you in upcoming month I just wanted to share some personal news as a member in this community I'm a parent and I'm an unemployed teacher I'm a math teacher I had intended on applying to this district for work but after this year I've lost interest I plan on applying to nearby nearby districts I have friends who have quit teaching and

049are burnt out so I really want to squash the myth that there's a teacher shortage they are out there but people aren't falling for the martership gig anymore I recognize that issues in this District are a common problem this doesn't mean that there aren't Solutions so even though I won't have a pay job in this District I can promise that I will be working to advocate for my kids and more and that's all I have to say for now except I hope you have um a great couple weeks enjoy this season and I'll see you next year thank you to the podium lowering prior foreign we were talking earlier and well we weren't talking y'all were talking to somebody was up here talking and they were talking about updates the students were talking about updates

050so I have an update for you as well we have had six new complaints three of them belong to you we have more complaints coming out of your sped Department with how your staff is engaging with parents of sped students how they are being told we don't have the uh infrastructure you need to take your kids back to Sac City Unified that happened at one of your schools the parent called me and I'm like okay well I can look into it what school are we talking about and she told me it was Franklin so I'm going to need somebody to make a call over to Franklin and figure out why they are handling our parents so harshly why they are being dismissive of their concerns um I'm not sure what you expect frustrated parents to

051do at this point everybody is not as poised as I am everybody cannot take the constant rejection or the gaslighting or the descriptions that constantly attack your character instead of listening to your heart when you say you're done with the games we want our children to be respected in this District period if you don't have the right people in place you need to get them in place if there are people on these campuses that don't want to deal with all families they should not deal with any families we have to change the way we are allowing people to engage and dismiss concerns of parents who are coming to you who are sending their kids to your campuses for them to be treated with respect and for them to remain safe I cannot have my kids

052remain safe when you are not listening to me and what I am telling you if there is a problem with a sped student and you have put him in him or her in the wrong class or you have diverted them into something else because you don't have the right Personnel it's on you to get that that means if you have to trim from the top let's do that but to keep these kids on these campuses and not serve them appropriately or equitably is Criminal if a parent did what I see this District doing we would have CPS called on them who do we call on you I'm really really tired I'm exhausted I'm exhausted with carrying the burden of burnt out parents frustrated parents pissed off parents parents who have no other option because they've

053tried to work through your staff that they have to come through me and when I come to the schools now I'm the problem so please get your staff together I hope in the New Year we will see some movement on that because if not I'm gonna be back I'm gonna be back anyway but I'm gonna be back and I'm gonna be mad [Music] that's Lisa Stanley [Music] High School oh that was the high school thank you for somebody last name Dillingham or Dylan I'll figure it out the school's enough thank you thank you uh I'm Lisa Stanley an advocate with black youth leadership project I know she was going to cover the uh some of the complaints but um I want to read it out of an article that was um just posted today out

054of the Elk Grove Daily News as well it's called as well run and reform minded as claimed egusd received poor reform ratings from independent study the district Readiness index study conducted by pivot learning found that in three overall scores the Elk Grove District was middling in terms of Education reforms needed to improve student performance agusd scored poorly in community and family engagement finance and Leadership within community and family engagement which scored egusd as having partial foundations of significance the district was rated as having few foundations for family and Community involvement and decision making additionally within that category the district scored poorly in Readiness to develop relationships with families and opportunities for two-way communication with families and that's something we've been I I know Lauren has been in this a lot longer the last four years

055me the last two years saying the same thing all we want is some Community engagement with our families we want to be at the table we want everybody at the table we want their voices heard our family and our children's voices heard more damning was the district's overall leadership and governance score ranking it as having few foundations the three categories were an attempted or a successful recall of board members adoption of superintendent performance review process and Adoption of an equity policy the article goes on to say egusd has been regularly criticized for the unfair and disproportionate discipline for its black students I want to remind the board and everyone here that we cannot address any other issues until anti-blackness is acknowledged and addressed with policies this is a side note the people who quote Martin

056Luther King today would have hated him because he makes white people uncomfortable and all immigrants should pay homage to him and join the fight against anti-blackness thank you that's it for now on agenda blue car thank you Miss levasser are there any public comments via Zoom audio for items on the agenda there we go Madam president there are no public comments via Zoom okay thank you Mr Yang do we have blue cards for items on the agenda yeah Madam chair we have nine new car on the agenda go ahead and call them yeah sure uh Wesley partner and I'll just remind uh remind you again if you could please state your name before you speak thank you good evening board my name is Wesley Bremer uh teacher at Franklin High School I was downsized this

057year as a conclusion specialist um a week ago we met and we talked about the various things that we wanted to see coming from this report and the things that will be addressed one of the comments that was made was that we can't pull money out of a hat that there's a certain level of money that we have for a budget that was promised to us from uh the state or the federal government and as a government teacher with for my students sitting in the audience to participate in government tonight I'm curious if we have written any letters to Dianne Feinstein or Alex Padilla or Amy Bera or any of our state you know Gavin Newsom any of our state or federal representatives to see if we could get any of that money that if

058Staffing is an issue and that paying teachers who want to work but won't come to work because as we heard earlier it's a toxic environment or they don't want to be punished for their actions or having difficulty working what are we doing in order to get that money so that we could pay our teachers more or that we could staff our school sites with parents Educators or the certificate or the classified staff that was speaking earlier if that was the issue retention hiring new staff if getting them isn't a teacher shortage but rather a fair compensation have we asked for any of that money have we as Elk Grove unified as I am a teacher I'm not about to write about that but we as the governing board of the school or the district superintendent

059or anybody have we done anything to push that action forward have we asked for that money and I would I'm curious thank you thank you Max Marcus meaner Marcus I think he's not here Melissa Bitcoin hello Marissa Bitcoin again um I just have a couple issues to follow up on regarding inclusion I had sent an email into September with 11 questions regarding the changes to the inclusion program most of you had responded that you received my email and I appreciate that Dr Martinez a liar responded with I have received your email and questions as your feedback is important as a staff member we'll be following up with a response Miss chairs Espinoza you had said we are coordinating a response to your questions I have not heard from anyone to answer my questions and I

060was hoping you would comment on that tonight as a community we have provided many questions and they have not been answered I also want to express the the same concern we have been bringing up any new information from this from the district still doesn't add up we're told this wasn't a financial decision but the district said they were downsizing we still don't know where the money we still don't know the money saved from the teacher salaries how is it going to be used Mr Riley said that the future of inclusion is co-teaching and he focused a lot on secondary education he told us he told us he was looking for a school to Pilot co-teaching but this District already has co-teaching and I'm interested to know if he knew that and if there had been

061a comparison and priorities between primary and secondary teaching or interventions I'm sorry and resources have been taken from elementary students but we know early intervention is so important and if we invest in kids earlier then the return is so much greater so we know eliminating the inclusion is had directly affected special education students but this is an issue affecting the whole District because gen Ed teachers and admin are losing a resource and I believe that this change had been communicated to all the families in the district that many more families would be would have an opinion on the issue which would make conclusion more of a priority to all of us and teachers from the inclusion program were used primarily to fill level 4 self-contained special ed classrooms so I'd like to know how many

062of those teachers still have those how many of those classrooms still have those teachers and if they're if they are still there then will they be there next year and Mr Riley claims that some of these people are happy about the change and I'd like to hear from them and ask why I'd like to learn more and hear more from all perspectives and thank you for continuing to give attention to the inclusion topic we've been asked to give these changes a chance and I'd like to ask for how long can we set a date when these changes can be re-evaluated and action to be taken based on our voice in the community okay thank you thank you much Andrew Adrian yeah it's good I can't read donate uh let's get it so Andrew coming up

063and if you may please um say your name your full name thank you hey everyone um yeah my my full name matches chadrick Adrian ballisteros and I graduated from you get a little closer to the mic I want to make sure people can hear you thank you sorry it's actually my first time here but um I was I was a graduate of the inclusion activity from from Elk Grove Elementary I am now a Oak Grove high schooler I I'm just going to be honest like I'm just going to go like put out my thoughts here that like um in my experiences too that like um I really did benefit a lot from like prayer Educators from my experience like I mean if it wasn't for them like it would have been just me and the

064teacher and I've been with so many different teachers that like they have their own different like learnings right or like I mean teaching strategies I mean and so like you know sometimes they'll like if I ever wanted to ask a question they would they would either like like go up to me and like like let me know like or just like want to like answer my question or or just like um I would have to ask the question to the entire class and I remember just being extremely terrified of that and you know and that's why I that kind of just like discouraged me from from wanting to like ask questions because like like having to ask someone like in front of like whole class I mean yeah like like other other students would be

065like like you know just want to ask it like or something but with me like and probably like a lot of other people out there too I like I was just terrified like like oh what would the teacher think of me like like oh would they like think I'm like stupid for this or oh like the other like what were my friend's team or what would like other students would like me and that's why like I was like really like I really like benefited a lot from from having to per Educators because you know they were there for me and you know I if I had a question then I could just ask them and they would like come up to me and just like it's just like a safe and like comfortable like space

066of just um being able to let them know like what am I asking about or something then you know they would like let me know the the answer and most of the time these para Educators also like like talk to my parents too or like my family and and you know so there's like connections made that also made me feel really comfortable and really safe and you know even though like I am now like well like um like graduated from like Elk Grove Elementary and so I still like I still needed like my projectors like back in middle school like I was just completely terrified but like just like every single change just because you know age and everything but you know there is still para Educators out there that who helped me through it

067all and with that I managed to experience a lot of good things so yeah and that's all I wanted to say I mean most of it at least but yeah I hope everyone here has a good evening and yeah thank you Mitch Dustin no Noble all right good evening uh Dustin Noble the EG speaks on Facebook um so uh in a little bit you're going to get a presentation from Mr Riley uh regarding uh inclusion services and get that for pork uh there's just one thing I want to call out is the lack of actual numbers and data in that report something that this board has been requesting for months now so just wanted to throw that out there while I do appreciate the survey that was sent out last month that was the beginning

068part of acquiring the data that was requested I still asked why it took so long to get out there um and I appreciate that it's been extended because they definitely need a higher particip participation rate but again it took so long to get that survey out in the first place and uh we've been requesting data since uh the September 6 board meeting it's December 13th we were told the community involvement would help shape these surveys and key metrics that we the stakeholders would like to see only very recently is that happening as the report will show as most of this information is coming from the November 28th meeting of inclusion uh it really doesn't have anything to do that's survey based or metric based some of our group was invited recently last month to a

069zoom meeting with Mr Riley and Mr golly um it was kind of put forth that it was to discuss the survey and to provide input and help shape it in a way so certain data points were collected so for this report only when we came to that meeting we had come to understand that not only did the survey was it already completed it was in the translation phase without any input from us or the community um we also asked if additional surveys were going to be going out and as I understand they are one's uh specific to Educators staff members asking other well-rounded questions on inclusion like how we got here what we were told is that those surveys would be rolling out once every eight to ten weeks and I question that because we're

070almost halfway done with the school year and how are we going to get an actual data driven Report with surveys going out that infrequently make no mistake I want to assume good intent here and we want to work with the district to problem solve this issue this is why we show up here this is why we show up to the CAC meetings we show up to one-on-one meetings with District administration and board members and provide this feedback feedback is only valuable if it's actionable and I feel strongly that our feedback has been actionable we're still providing this feedback on inclusion where is the action I strongly encourage this board to keep the topic of inclusion alive going forward thank you thank you Brandon Morgan all right hello my name is Brandon Morgan good evening board

071members and thank you again for this opportunity to speak so recently here in this room we had a meeting about inclusive education there's quite a few parents teachers para Educators District administrators and concerned citizens as well as Mr Yang and Mr forcina thank you guys for coming to that and we're going to hear a presentation that kind of follows up on that so I just want to kind of go about one of the themes that we heard a lot in that meeting with that Mr Riley and putting out one fire of many other fires to pop up and that's something that stuck with me because I work alongside of Incident Management teams on forest fires and Wildland fires so putting out fires is something I've become very familiar with over the past couple years one

072of the big things that is understood with these Incident Management teams is that when you make a plan you don't just make a plan you make four plans a primary plan a alternative plan a contingency plan and an emergency plan you have to be ready for if and when your primary plan runs into a problem so you can fall back to the next step ultimately what we've seen here is a district having gone from a primary plan jumping straight to the emergency plan by initiating sweeping changes in special education after the school year already started that that is an emergency plan it's the most disruptive and dramatic option to take and you only take it because your other plans have already failed and this was the alternate or contingency plan you don't do it mid-year

073you don't do it such short notice and you don't do it behind parents backs based on the feedback we see in the presentation there's been a negative impact and I as a parent of a child inclusive Ed I see that impact firsthand so that kind of brings me to the next thing that caught my attention this week and Lisa Stanley kind of already brought it up I've had a few discussions with uh various program coordinators and Specialists the thing that I found that continually cause these problems to get worse is poor communication and according to the the studies that she mentioned that's a place where the district is severely lacking is is communication with families and the community for involvement in decision making and you know I kind of definitely see the irony in that

074as I was writing my notes tonight as we got a letter from uh Mr Hoffman in which he quotes Helen Keller alone we can do so little together we can do so much but that's not how we as parents have felt in this District this year and I think those that have actually reached out and started working with us after we've already caused this big commotion um but ultimately I think the things that we're seeing here might be related to one of the other findings about the district as of the 2021 school year had not adopted a superintendent performance review policy and maybe that's changed since then because this is data from the 2012 school year but if that's still the case there's no accountability for the leadership in this district and with that they

075can do whatever they want and parents just got to live with it My Hope Is that as always you as a board can take a look at these issues and determine what actions can be taken to fix them we can't afford to let poor planning impact our children Good Times up please wrap up thank you very much thank you [Applause] Courtney please say your name fully before you speak hi happy holidays congratulations Mr Vargas welcome tonight I am going to not be speaking for myself I'm reading a statement that was submitted to Elk Grove speaks by a parent named David P he was unable to attend Mr Riley will present tonight I want to remind everyone what is missing in his report as you listen to him tonight keep this in the back of your

076mind funding approximately 3.2 million dollars was removed from inclusive education by terminating 32 inclusion specialist positions more recently two hundred and sixty thousand dollars was reallocated from Genet teachers with inclusive inclusive students to site level sped thus far about 3.7 million has been gutted from inclusive education six inclusion Specialists have resigned they are moved to self-contained classrooms in September three months later 60 percent have left the district after three months Mr Riley is just now identifying metrics he is still trying to identify services to support students and staff he's still trying to fill voids and services and support created by elimination of inclusion Specialists of the inclusion specialist role you will see that Mr Riley has no definite timeline for training RSP teachers and again these are his parents words so basically in September he

077pushed people into the pool and walked away months later he returns to teach them to swim in a surprise that people are lying face down motionless if I were you I would not sign up for that swim class do not sign up for that class 102 para Educators resigned between 2021 and 2022 and Mr Riley is just now identifying the need for Recruitment and Retention 239 para educators positions are vacant 167 in 72 positions in 2021 2022 respectively just to give everyone a frame of reference earlier this year there were 150 vacancies in January amrik Singh said the district was hiring on an average of 28 new para Educators a month 11 months later we jumped from 150 to 239 vacancies Mr Riley will have you believe he can make inclusive education better so when

078he so you have to wonder how that is possible when he takes away funding from inclusive education for move staff and treats training as an afterthought we know a certainty that every program that does not have proper funding and Staffing well whether I die on the vine so here's what I predict I predict more students who qualify for inclusive education will remain in self-contained classes I predicted Roman inclusive education will Plateau and decrease I predict he will fundamentally include change inclusive education to just inclusion which is a different definition than inclusive education is captured on pages 78 of his presentation is in my opinion that Mr Riley lacks in-depth knowledge on understanding of inclusive education his mindset method methodology are fundamentally a flawed and because of that things will get worse not better thank you

079that's Candace meals foreign s and I'm reading a letter from a special education teacher good evening board members Mr Hoffman and Mr Riley I am a special education teacher and I've been with the district many years I have questions and possible solutions for you to discuss my question my first question is which our Binger arbinger I'm not sure tools were used in the decision to eliminate inclusion and who was involved during this process the following is a quote from page 37 of the leadership and self-deception book that every employee in this District read and was required to take multiple classes in which one are you the quote is either I'm seeing others straightforwardly as they are people like me who have needs and desires as legitimate as my own or I am not which is

080it are you in the boxer out my next question is how many former inclusion teachers are teaching in special day leveled classes a proposed solution the former inclusion teachers not in special day classes could go back to their schools as level one Specialists and coordinate all services as envisioned for level one you can actively look for teachers to fill the few special day classes and let the former inclusion inclusion teacher go back to their former sites or say if they would like their choice we teach our students that we all make mistakes which is a foundational skill in learning we teach them that we learn from our mistakes can you learn from your mistakes hopefully we can all learn from this and move on in the way that best serves our students respectfully from someone

081who cares deeply for all students and as for myself I would like to Echo her question how many former inclusion teachers are teaching in special day level classes I've heard six have resigned and it sounds like I was backed up by someone here I know of two others that are just staying to the end of the year that's a highly educated experience teachers that have resigned and in all likelihood will never be back how can you lose eight those that are in such short supply and it's all because of this change and part of the reasons they decide uh resigned was they knew going to those classes those classes have been neglected for years and years I've heard speakers in here months ago they don't have supplies they don't have curriculum they don't have trained

082Paras these inclusion Specialists have been were in their jobs for years one in particular 10 years and you were going to pick her up and put her into a day class that she knew she would not have the support when she got there so I'd like to know what fire your time's up please wrap up thank you since you've lost six of them already and you caused all these other fires elsewhere thank you thank you last blue car Peter Mendoza Peter Mendoza yeah he's coming okay copy can we get a wireless mic for Mr Mendoza please which one this one thank you whenever you're ready sir thank you Madam president ability to speak to you at first my name is Peter Mendoza and I work for the state councilman you know little disabilities Sacramento Regional

083Office this serves 10 counties continues from yellow all the way through the taco region I'm so Resident Evil went through impervation services [Music] ago now in the Bay Area I think that the towels was happening with this changes to the foreign future program is that there was no I could work oversight there was a lack of a plan you know we're allowed to the school year we're still the program parents and students but they were getting one program and they're being moved to programs with this panel and now they're having a struggle to have their rights of help to get a full education and the service of the supporters they need which are important for every child and every student remember that one of your fundamental rules is to be here for the best interest

084of the child if they don't have a good quality education they're not able to succeed one of the reasons why I have a full independent happy life you know broke is because it supports throughout my make no experience we have hurt for many parents students the difficulties they're facing accessing Services there required by a lot and for the district while they may be well intentioned really don't address any of the concerns the lack of strategic planning there's a lack of listening and a lack of room to see and a major misstep that this was allowed to occur without better planning and no input for the community are very little so at civil rights organization I also want to bring up because we've heard from students and Families and families and other communities are really visible

085here and there needs to be more done to address those concerns as well no one should ever go lack of services are discrimination in this District your time's up please wrap up thank you [Music] thank you madam chair that ends our blue card next item up is our consent agenda I'd like to call for a motion to approve items 1 through 29 on the consent agenda I move articles or agenda items one to 29. I'd like to pull some items what's that Mr that is go ahead which ones can you give us the numbers Mr Bettis number one number ten 24 and 25. okay do I have an amended motion yes I prove excuse me I make a motion to approve consent agendas items one through 29 minus item one item 10 24 and 25.

086second item has been moved and seconded I'm going to do a roll call vote Miss albiani hi this is Mr fortino aye Mr Bettis aye Mr Vargas aye Mr Yang hi I'm also and I those items have been approved Mr Bettis can you address item number one please foreign item which is approval or board policy I'll say five five zero three zero student wellness uh as you know I'm a big supporter of student wellness and this is the beginning of an error in which we are going to blend Health Services we're going to blend a variety of other services with the whole child we're going to deal with a child and that's the trend that the California is going to take those legislative body knows when students come to school they have health issues and

087they bring these issues from our community and as a result of these health issues they come with you know achievement Gap because of health issues and now as you all seen the pandemic about another excuse me Madam president what is the question we can go on with narrative all night long yes what is the question what is the specific objection there's no question to the policy that is what you should be addressing now so a question what is your objection to approving this question okay you want me to phrase it as a question the question is how much is this board going to put budget into this type of item in the near future we as a board you know we represent different communities throughout our thing and they're now very simple like I said

088I'm very supportive this type of program because not only academically support we need to give to our students but to make sure that they come to school 100 healthy and we're here to support the health and safety of these students and the question is how much are we going to dedicate funds for this particular policy you know I know I appreciate those comments um this is a board policy right we adopt the policy and then in a separate action the appropriate time we align resources so the reason the question is is not on the agenda I would like to know how much is this this we going to spend on this issue you know how much is they going to gauge and these are health education physical education I move approval of item number one

089nutritional Services thank you for your comments I would like to see an actual dollar amount on these eight items and get an analysis of what we spent presently and possibly what we're going to spend next fiscal year thank you thank you okay I heard it first that's number one hold on hold on we take this one at a time I heard a first and the second from Mr Fortuna and Mrs albiani I'm going to take a roll call vote on that Mr track hi Miss albiani hi Mr fortino hi Mr Perez hi Mr Vargas aye Mr yang hi I'm also an I vote so item one on consent passes Mr Perez can you address number 10 and what your objection is my question well no objection why why should we not vote for this I'm

090not voting I'm I'm I'm supporting a particular item on this and I want to make it a announcement that on this item but uh board I mean I mean ratification contract item number uh page two three zero three 27 which is a a contract with the regions of University of California you see Davis Mitch Mesa K-12 School Center this program is an excellent program that we are going to start at Monterey Trails High School if anybody knows anything about this program they are very successful within school districts throughout California uh through the UC systems and what I would like to see this board but other high schools such as Valley High School Florence High School doing the same project because the outcomes of students that participate go on through college junior college get vocational training

091etc etc so that's what I want to say thank you and four thousand dollars is not nothing to compare what we have in our total budget so we I feel that we can afford to fund other I move the approval of of uh board item number 10 230327 and the question is why aren't we funding other programs High seconds we've heard your comments that first and a second I'm going to do a roll call vote on item number 10 under the consent agenda Mr track hi Chris albiani hi for Fortuna Mr Perez hi Mr Vargas aye Mr Yang hi thank you I am also an i Mr Bettis your next item is item number 24 on consent can you speak to that please uh I'm gonna deal with 24 25. well we say Mr High

092the question is we have to vote on them individually though okay let's go with 24 then and that particular issue they are monies that left over that you want to use the administration wants to use it for another issue and these are monies that are like for full-time positions Etc et cetera and and we're losing out if you look at the Head Start numbers we don't max out on that program and now we're using this money for other uh things besides Direct Services to Head Start students in a variety of different schools so that's what I oppose we should be using those services and fundings for Direct Services that for those students who are Head Start qualified and so that's what fiscal year 20 21. okay so Mr Bettis I'm hearing you have the same

093objection then to 22 and 20 I mean excuse me 24 and 25. no this vote on that like you said okay number 24 then I move approval item number 24. second moved and seconded I'm gonna do a roll call vote on item 24 under consent Mr track hi Miss albiani hi Mr Fortuna aye Mr Bettis no I don't vote for change this I want Direct Services so the head start to let the record shows they're better says a no Mr Vargas aye Mr yang hi I'm also an i all right Mr Bettis number 25. this is another thing the program is requested to move 35 000 from Administration Personnel nine thousand dollars from administrations uh Fringe uh benefits 000 from program Personnel a total one hundred thousand dollars this is this is ridiculous and this

094is very similar to what happened the other fiscal year we need this money to go to Direct Services our Head Start students and we we need our and I'm I'm not sure this is the compliance so maybe that's the question is this doing this type of uh uh budget changes the compliance with a Head Start program that's the question okay I'm sure Mr superintendent can address that with you and another issue the committee that uh meets on this I didn't see them write off uh approved by the governing body is that the committee that monitors this you're the governing body okay that's what we're doing now it should be stated approved by the governing board policy not the committee for I moved approval of budget item number 25 on the consent agenda okay thank you

095for your comments thank you Mr Perez the item has been moved and seconded we're going to do a roll call vote on item 25 on the consent agenda Mr track aye Ms albiani aye Mr Fortuna aye Mr Perez no Mr Vargas aye Mr Yang aye I am also an I measure passes we have completed the consent agenda next item is the opportunity for bargaining units are there any bargaining units who wish to address the board thank you foreign update first but uh but here we are um good evening school board thank you for your time thank you for your time today um we know we have packed agendas and um the time is valuable but I think what we have to say is valuable today as well um first off I'd like to I know

096she's not here but I would like to thank Dr Crystal Martinez for her time serves and um her leadership on the school board um hopefully she hears it wherever she's at um we would also like to congratulate those who are elected Michael Vargas thank you we appreciate you being here so thank you for running and we're glad to have you be a part of the board and also for anybody who is running for re-election congratulations as well [Music] um so we had a few of our askme members speak a little bit earlier and I was joking with them because they stole a little bit of my thunder but that's okay because what they're saying is on point and that was Lindsey Townsend Lori Bocce Nicole strange and Akira Bailey um they touched on many topics

097that I'm going to touch on tonight I think I'm going to go a little bit more in depth in them and I do have some documents that I can give you um that show what I'm saying the first thing that I'd like to touch on is the lack of Staffing at least in the ask me bargaining unit I know it's happening with every bargain unit but I represent ask me and in the afternoon bargain unit as of 10 30 2022 the report that I got we have over 130 vacancies in food service which not coincidentally is the lowest paid of all of our positions um we have this seems like a low number to me but that's what's on the report over 35 vacancies in custodial while custodial is one of the primary positions of

098need because of the cleaning that we're doing on the end of covid and how important it has been this entire time during covid to be down that many staff is extremely impactful and I would venture to say that if you ask the department heads they would tell you the same they're consistently having to provide overtime on weekends for custodial staff to come in and work and volunteer for which they don't want to do they would you know the money's nice but they're burnt out you have one night custodian at an elementary school or a high school maybe two at a high school they're covering everything it's not sustainable it just truly is not and they're burnt out um we have over 20 vacancies in campus security campus supervisors being at elementary schools now with Esser

099funds is a great idea we're not able to fill them because again that is one of the lowest paid positions within our bargaining unit uh we have over 60 front office vacancies including data processors and registrars school office assistant twos office assistant ones twos threes all of those positions we have over 60 vacancies there and meanwhile the schools are running full bore and so someone is having to pick up the slack so I feel what they are saying because it's true um and asked me alone a bargaining unit of roughly 1200 when we're fully staffed depending on the time of year it is we have over 225 vacancies that's 20 of our entire bargaining unit and um that that is a lot a lot and there is very clear reasons some very clear reasons as

100to why um again the vast majority of those are in lower paid positions I think there's an easy uh connection that we can make there um specialty trades which makes more they also have huge vacancies while they might not be the big um you know surprising numbers because they don't have a total number of many of them maybe six or five depending on the team we are down three out of our six electricians and we've been recruiting that position since 2019. we are down two of our 12 HVAC positions I've sat on those interviews we continuously have problems getting them because of the requirements and the pay and we've been recruiting those positions since October of 2020. we're down two of our six painters and we've been recruiting since August of 2021 we're down two

101of our three two out of three alarm technicians recruiting since uh November of 2021. we have one low voltage technician which has never been filled from my understanding and we've been recruiting that since December of 2019. plumbers were down one of six um we've been recruiting that position since 2020 Carpenters were down one of one we don't have a carpenter locksmiths were down one of three and we've been recruiting that one's more recent since April of 2022 but that's still quite a while for recruitment and uh one of the situations with this is we as a district are asking journey level Tradesmen and women to come into the district making approximately half of what they would make in the trades now I've been doing this work for a while now the only time that I've

102ever seen trade Journey five year which is the requirement five-year journey level the only time I've ever seen anything like that happen is in the 0809 recession when construction was at a complete halt where they would come and be willing to make approximately half of what they would make in the trades and remember the trades ibw Teamsters all those they're providing benefits as well so when we say the benefits are going to attract in some situations it's not and those are vital positions HVAC technicians have been vital during this time with all the filter changes I mean we have overtime Crews going non-stop trying to make sure the filters get changed in the HVAC units because we switched the medical grade filters which was right but they require more maintenance so we have all these

103positions down grounds the compaction there there is no career ladder in grounds whether you hold special driver's licenses special certificates as an H as an irrigation technician special licenses like a heavy equipment operator they all get paid the same there's no career ladder and then even when you jump to the the lead position in that department that's only I think 60 cents to like it's 40 cents more an hour to take on the responsibility of being a lead and leading a crew so we don't have a career ladder there and that is concerning to all of the grounds people our whole grounds division it's been a big topic since I've gotten here I've been here about five years now roughly um and in all of those situations all of those situations every single one of

104them what is happening is you're doing more with less and at some point in time that's breaks and I've seen it through the 0809 recession where I worked at city of South San Francisco doing Public Works we did not retain people we let people go through attrition because we had to but at some point in time the service level was not able to be provided it's not that people don't want to it's physically not possible anymore and we're seeing that I am seeing that a lot with our a lot of our people like you've heard but custodians who have not come up to speak all kinds of positions and we need to figure a way out to start recruiting them inflation has hovered around seven and a half to eight and a quarter depending on

105what where we're looking at uh food is up gas is up utilities are up I think I heard earlier today that pgs is looking at increasing 21 something like that we're the the people are struggling the people that are getting paid these wages are struggling um private sector starting salaries McDonald's right there around the corner from the district office has a posting or they did have a posting on their window in the drive-through starting at 17 an hour McDonald's we are paying our people less than McDonald's we are paying our people less than Walmart the gas station right around here on Elk Grove Florin is uh they I think they took it down but they were starting at 16.50 we are paying our people starting less than the Gap you know I mean this is

106a profession this we are I have heard this statement made to me that we here are all educators if we are all Educators then that is a vital position every single one of these positions is vital and there's there for a reason for support to make sure that kids can learn and are in an environment where they can learn dealing with not having to deal with no heat or no air conditioning those kind of things um recently there have been a couple school districts who have settled contract negotiations one being Twin Rivers and one being San Juan Twin Rivers uh their certificated staff got a three-year contract 10 in the first year five percent in the second year and three percent in the third year San Juan their classified staff not certificated was different but

107the classified staff got 10 in the first year and four and a half percent in the second year those are those make a difference those types of raises make a difference and could have possible impacts on these vacancies here in Elk Grove unified um the minimum wage problem that we deal with we've slapped a Band-Aid on and we agreed to that because it was a temporary situation the increases to minimum wage from the state were higher than what could be done through contract negotiations and the two percents three percents that we were getting however now we are so far down the road on that that several of our positions especially on the lower end of the salary schedule have do not have much movement maybe one or two maybe three steps that they can move

108and so what create the problem that creates is once they top out they're relying on negotiations which is appropriate but also you have people who are starting the position working right along next to someone who has been in that position for three years and they're making the same rate of pay and that uh creates a lot of heartburn for many people and I think minimum wage is a tough thing to fix but it is something that I think is imperative that we figure out uh we can be creative we can work together but it is imperative to figure out because not only that but also we are paying our student workers which just got approved um and I have this document for you uh we're paying our student workers as much or more as a

109first step that's above minimum wage that we legally have to pay of several of our positions our student workers and these are professionals that we are hiring on contracts for all of that it's an interesting concept it's really odd um but that's what's happening right now um let's see staff morale I think we all have an idea from what we've heard where staff morale is um to the to the tune that the district did a staff morale study which was good I think that was a great thing to do the results of that study were concerning but in my opinion not surprising only 40 percent of staff said that they are recognized for excellent work by District leaders District leaders there's a distinction in the questioning by District leaders only 40 percent of staff while

11064 which still isn't a great number but a better number feel that they're supported by their school leaders there's a disparity there that's really interesting to me only 41 percent of Staff felt like their opinions are heard and valued by District leaders again District leaders right and also 64 felt that they were heard by school leaders again a disparity that's interesting and only 59 percent of Staff felt like they have a manageable workload so 60 you know it's around at 60 percent of our staff feel like they have a manageable workload 40 percent which is a huge number feel like they do not have a manageable workload and I know that we haven't gotten up to full staff um since the recession and we're nowhere near what seabed says we should be in many situations

111and I want to thank Carmine Fortuna for the move a few years ago to bring in more custodians at the time that was a bold move um and leadership in my opinion requires bold moves especially when we're in situations like we are right now and so I uh one last thing is I found it we found a 2004 salary schedule from Elk Grove unified you know for us that's a while ago um and step one of the lowest paid position which was a food food and nutrition services assistant one different title at the time was two dollars above minimum wage fast forward to the current salary schedule that we have and that same step for the same position is now two dollars once 1550 comes into play is now two dollars and fifty cents below

112minimum wage that's quite a swing and I know that the district isn't responsible for what the state does but we also have to move in conjunction with the changes that are happening and we need to not have a Band-Aid on that anymore we need to come up with a fix and so um I just wanted to provide this information to you because we are going into negotiations and it's an important time and I think this is pivotal for where the future of this school district goes um especially when it comes to classified staff and support staff we're seeing it I know CSEA is feeling it with their para Educators their downs hundreds I'm sure um so just wanted to give you guys some numbers I do have documents that I'll share with you guys um

113with all of you and I shouldn't say guys with everybody and I appreciate your time tonight so thank you very much thank you for that update no we're good thank you next up Mr David Riley inclusive education services update foreign good evening Madam chairs Espinoza president madam Nancy chairs chairs Espinoza members of the board superintendent Hoffman and uh community members um thank you for this opportunity to give this update on inclusive Services um we will you'll see a number of guests uh this evening and as reflected on this uh this first slide here you'll see that this update is brought to you by a number of different uh departments as partnership is going to be a theme to this evening's presentation um you know if inclusive services and expanding inclusive Services expands Beyond special education

114it's it's a cultural mindset and so uh very pleased with the Partnerships that we are starting to Foster and deepen in many regards so you'll be hearing not only from special education staff but family and Community engagement curriculum and professional learning research search and evaluation student support and Health Services and human resources and once again I'm going to start with this learning Vision the Elk Grove unified school district strategic goals because in line with the various departments that you saw in the previous slide and the Partnerships that are being fostered and deepened as I said district-wide they are very much in line with our strategic goals realizing a a vision of foreign ER inclusion in this district is going to take the efforts and the concentration on all five of these areas in our strategic

115plan it's going to include high quality instruction and curriculum it's going to require assessment and program evaluation IT addresses student wellness and all the different factors that comprise that family and Community engagement is a key factor as you hear more about and also our targeted supports you'll see students with disabilities that are specifically and explicitly called out there so this this plan and this partnership really reflects our strategic goals and it's an effort to bring our strategic goals to action around this important topic the our overview of our update there'll be three major components here we do want to review the Outreach and feedback feedback and input efforts that we've had since September and what we have heard from the community uh specifically our parents and Guardians and staff and our response our action and

116our partnership that we're doing as a result so I'll start uh with our a couple of our first Outreach efforts here and then some colleagues will come up and speak in more in depth about others but the first one is a survey that you heard referenced in our public comment and that you're aware of the survey was sent on November 18th prior to the Thanksgiving break was sent to parents and guardians of students receiving inclusive services and the survey was developed and facilitated in partnership with the research and evaluation Department uh at the time that at the end of last week we were looking at about a 30 response rate uh to date I think we're closer to 35 or 36 percent response rate and uh since we saw with efforts reaching out to parents

117encouraging parents and Guardians to complete the survey we continue to see progress and increasing that response rate so we made the decision to extend that window uh through this Friday December 16th we also held a community Forum on November 28th and we had 60 participants in this room comprised of we had two board members we had four community members at large five pair Educators five staff largely from face and Pre-K we had six teachers 14 special education administrators and we had 24 parent Guardians representing 19 families The Forum provided opportunities to share experiences with the transition of services to ask questions and share ideas for metrics to be used to evaluate the program at this time I'm going to introduce and bring up director Ann regali director of special education and ourselpa director and also

118Janelle Jones a program specialist in special education and also I'll ask Erica Nguyen and Sandra Sandoval to come forward as well both program specials who have helped conduct some trainings and workshops good evening congratulations chairperson chatis Espinosa and welcome um to the board members of the board and congratulations and superintendent Hoffman um so uh continuing on excuse me with our Outreach efforts sorry about that just sack um we have had meetings and we have ongoing meetings with um parents site Administration District administration including our coordinators program Specialists and we are prioritizing challenging situations with different families so that we can address those on an ongoing basis we have been meeting thanks nope tis the season um thanks um we've been meeting with the the inclusion stays or um Elk Grove EG speaks EG speaks group

119um on Facebook and we've been meeting with members of the group to address their concerns as well um at this time I'm going to just turn it over to Sandra Sandoval and Erica Nguyen to talk about the training that was held earlier um last month good evening everyone I'm Sandra Sandoval I'm one of the program specialists in the Elk Grove region along with my partner Eric Goin and together we worked with one of before a former inclusion education specialist who is now an instructional coach and we developed the training for our RSP teachers we had approximately 75 Learning Center staff or sorry teachers with an ABS teacher that also came in administrators and we presented for two hours so the training actually encompassed many different aspects of what it takes to be an inclusive educator

120or provide inclusive Ed supports so some of those topics if you were interested in knowing include better understanding the para educator job duties because some people were new to having to work with inclusive Ed Perez running social skills groups collecting data different types of data collection how to do assessments on students scheduling their services and determining what types of services um we also were given the opportunity to hear their feedback many of the teachers we were grateful to hear what was on their mind and answer their questions they had Miss regali was in the room and answered their questions to the best of our ability with what we have available and we are ongoing in developing more trainings and more information we're also we took in the questions that were being asked of us and

121we're still working on creating a Google Document to answer those questions as a PS team and once we have that we will be sending that out to all the teachers we have um already sent a present our presentation from that day on to our teams and we are developing a Google folder with well actually we've already sent out the Google folder linked to The Learning Center teams to give them resources that were developed by the inclusive Educators for use with the students or any other students on things like executive functioning the social skills needs the communication needs on providing training to their own para Educators at the site level so there's ample resources available to them within that Google Drive we also had completed a survey which is open for teachers right now we've sent

122out through a Google form and asking what training they're Desiring so we get direct input from them on knowing exactly where they want us to focus on providing the information and resources to them um another Outreach effort is meeting with board members and receiving your input and feedback um and then in the community advisory committee meeting in October we were able to establish an ad hoc committee to support um inclusion and inclusion Services we had our first meeting last night actually yesterday and I would like to thank the program Specialists and administrators who are participating I'd also like to thank um a few parents Brandon Morgan has volunteered and stepped up and is serving on this ad hoc committee Dustin Noble is also offering to serve on the committee and has participated last evening and

123Rebecca Armstrong so all three parents of students with in the inclusive setting and they are working to support the the progress and next steps for our students in inclusion and I'd like to introduce a former inclusion teacher who is currently a program Specialists and can share a little bit about the outcome of our inclusion ad hoc committee meeting Chanel Jones hello I'm Janelle Jones and I'm program specialist for the Pleasant Grove region and I did want to also touch on the fact that through all of this information that's being shared and everything that our parents are talking about we do see that they by not having the inclusion Specialists anymore they feel a loss of a support person so we do know that and we do see that so that is why we continue to

124build those relationships back up with our families and continue to work to train staff so going to the highlights from that meeting we discussed caseload consideration we touched on it and then additional service providers and flexible service silvery model including co-teaching push-in model pull out for all students not just secondary um and then we are going to kick off inclusive schools week next December we're going to pair with a bunch of other departments as noted in this presentation to kind of work towards that um and excuse me can't even repeat you said you're going to kick it off next December that's a long term not our short term I I just wanted to make sure I heard that correctly it's paired way for all students so when we're talking about inclusion and we're talking about

125inclusion for students with disabilities it's really a community right so we need inclusive communities inclusive schools and it's a belief it's a culture that is a is a shift for us so it's students who receive El Services it's our students who have 504s it's our gen ed students who are maybe having a bad day or struggling yeah in lgbtq so it's a whole week of activities it's actually Statewide and so we're just gonna see what other places have done to make our own just so our kids are educated we're building that Community within the schools and our staff and everybody gets involved and it aligns with diversity equity and inclusion um and then one more thing training like Erica and Sandra said we see that there needs to be training we see there needs to

126be training for principals Vice principals District level employees Perez everybody so we are going to continue to work on that as well okay so as a result of all of these Outreach uh efforts to survey the community Forum our workshops and training with teachers that we've done thus far we wanted to delineate uh the feedback that we have heard uh from people and um you know recognize the fact that this change was disruptive to parent guardian and student experiences we we do acknowledge that we do recognize that we also recognize that relationships some relationships were severed and lost amongst staff and students and Families uh the levels of communication and updates have decreased we've heard the ability of staff to respond to immediate needs of students and staff have been just diminished the coordination of

127related services such as speech and language Physical Therapy occupational therapy has been reduced and training and support to pair Educators is needed we've heard that Learning Center and secondary resource teachers feel overwhelmed we've also heard that we're at risk of losing staff and not attracting new staff due to working conditions and expectations we've heard about a lack of trust in District leadership a fear of District leadership a feeling that District leadership is not listening that the district did not make a data-based decision to change the inclusion program in solving one problem the district has created another and that the district did not engage or communicate with parents guardians or staff prior to the decision so through a variety of different forms public comment all the things that we we reviewed these are our takeaways and

128what we have heard from our parents Guardians students and staff so what do we do in response to this um we have response action and partnership um So based on this input and feedback our Department's special education in collaboration with other departments uh we'll be developing specific action plans and one of the primary goals is to increase opportunities for parents and Guardians and staff to engage in programmatic and service considerations Ann is going to delineate the the four major aspects of this response so the four major aspects and I've heard this come up quite a bit um from some of our public comment and it's always something we can improve upon be beginning with communication um Recruitment and Retention and that's the primary focus for everybody in the district and specifically in special education um

129professional development and training and we've outlined a little bit of um what we've been doing and ongoing efforts and plans for the winter and spring and then program and service evaluation how can we do better we always want to continue improving so at this time I'm going to introduce a few other of our partners uh first I'm going to ask Lisa levasser who's our executive director of school support representing uh face and Communications she's got two two of her three responsibilities here um and uh we'll also ask Jen Avey our executive director of school support um to speak and represent curriculum professional learning and uh we also have our partners in elementary and secondary education Dr brindy Bindi Grewal and Chad Schweitzer uh over Elementary and secondary respectively research and evaluation we're teaming with that

130department uh both Christine hikito our director and Jeremy Hinshaw who is a research project manager we will also be speaking towards Partnerships with our student support and Health Services Department with and working directly with our director Don Ross and then of course with Recruitment and Retention Human Resources with amrik Singh our Chief Human Resources officer so in terms of communication um and partnering with Lisa we'll we'll be following up with parents and guardians from Community forum and survey responses so um we will at times request assistance from face in in reaching out to families and working with them largely our program Specialists have been reaching out to the 19 families who attended the Forum and then from our survey responses the final question on that survey was if you're having challenges and you would like

131to be contacted please leave your contact information so we have about 25 26 families of the close to 260 respondents that we have thus far who have requested communication so we have approximately you know 45 to 50 families who have requested direct contact and we're in process of making that individual contact to delineate their specific needs and challenges because again special education is based in individualized educational plants so we really want to have a wanna have contact with those families and understand what specifically where specifically are we falling short and what immediate assistance can we can we provide given our existing resources and so we're in progress with that we do have a Google doc that we're sharing in terms of tracking those contacts What specifically those families need and we're looking at the trends

132and that's going to inform our planning moving forward where are we falling short and what additional resources do we need long term to ensure that we we Shore this up we want to reevaluate our policy and practice related to parent Guardian communication with para Educators what we heard loud and clear at The Forum was a frustration about a policy of para Educators not talking directly to parents and Guardians um there's some nuances to that and we need to look at that but I think with training and providing some guidelines we do see the value in direct communication in terms of you know daily updates and and daily exchanges with the para Educators who in most cases are providing that direct service to the students so that kind of two-way communication we can see that essential

133so we're going to be reviewing that that policy and we also want to address breakdowns uh communication breakdowns with related service providers um I'll Lisa come up and speak a little bit more towards um how we're going to partner with faith to these next aims good evening Madam president board members superintendent Hoffman and especially I'm sorry to the families and community that my back is to you I am also speaking to you tonight as well so members of the face Department family and Community engagement face for short attended the November 28th community meeting and and our families um that were there we wanted you to know that we see you we hear you and we appreciate your input and feedback your voice matters so tonight we're honored to speak about some of the collaboration between

134the special ed Department Communications and family and Community engagement so the face department is going to directly support some of this Outreach we have some incredible human beings in our department that work directly in our schools and work with our families they're going to help with some of the community feedback and survey responses we have a multilingual Department who is willing to reach out to families in multiple languages to make sure that we hear from All Families we're currently um in collaboration and working on the idea of reevaluating the policy and practice around parent and guardian communication with para educators we're also very excited um by um and I guess we're looking forward too as well about the idea um with gaining more Community feedback we often ask parents to come to us and so

135we are looking at going out into the community where our families are and meeting in schools meeting in community centers meeting in apartment complexes and making sure that we seek two-way communication and feedback and that we provide translation at all meetings we also are excited by um the idea of exploring different technology platforms we know families get information in various ways and so our department is going to collaborate with the special ed Department to make sure that our families are receiving information in the on the various Platforms in the various ways and then finally I'm really excited by this this last bullet um we're going to look at we currently have a position we have nine of them actually in our district but our family school Community Liaisons and we're going to re-examine that position

136and make sure that that role has the um a special ed liaison um component to it if not an actual position and that role could be an empathetic ear for our families that have children with special needs support our families with IEP and 504 the 504 process help connect families to the various resources in our community and help families better understand just the education and the language that are in our IEPs and 504s thank you Thank you Lisa uh in terms of uh Recruitment and Retention I'll ask my colleague Emery Singh to come up but we are going to continue to work with HR to continue addressing the working conditions of the Learning Center and secondary resource teachers in terms of caseload numbers additional supports to Learning Centers and resource programs so the latter there

137you heard our program special speak to that in that when we are going to bring the teachers in in January and February will be focused on and ask for their input on the additional supports that they need and again that will inform next year's planning and Staffing um also we've done uh to the caseload numbers and then the second bullet there addressing the compensation of certificated special education staff um as you are aware we have reached a tentative agreement with EGA that addresses many of the working conditions compensation aspects of these AIMS in that tentative agreement which we're excited about and we're also at the negotiation table with our para educator with csca who represents our pair Educators and we're also looking at our other classified support staff that help with special education and addressing

138those rates as well I'll let Mr Singh speak he's uh works on a daily basis with our Partnerships with universities and uh our recruitment events and advertising thank you Mr Riley good evening Madam president uh welcome Mr Vargas and members of the board and superintendent Hoffman so uh we are continuing from the HR side to continue to build relationships with our University Partners across our state so uh just as of I I had looked into our current Memories We have 77 universities that we have current Partnerships with uh to Place student teachers internships into our district and we have continued over the years to strengthen our relationships with them uh and also renew some of the ongoing mous and continue to look for more opportunities to continue to place especially teachers of uh in hard

139to fill positions like special ed in our district so that we can train them recruit them and then keep them one of the other things that we just and I'm very thankful to my colleagues in special ed and all my program Specialists who were very excited about this we are actually going to start giving conditional offers to our student teachers especially in special ed starting this before before the school year even before December 31st if we can so special ed has done an amazing job to collaborate with us to go out and see our student teaches or in the process of seeing them teach we actually have some interviews scheduled tomorrow and we are hoping that before we even go to winter break is we will have special teachers who are already in our district

140as student teachers have conditional offers to work for us for the next school year so we're trying some unique things we are trying some things that we haven't tried before to continue to recruit and to retain and then the last piece is we actually have about six or seven grants very exciting we just got a new one which is a Consortium of about seven school districts in Sac State to actually start a special ed Residency program and so we are Partners in that and those six or seven grants we have are opportunities for classified staff who want to be teachers to get into uh programs that Elk Grove unified school district is a partner with so that they can become residents and future teachers and that's mainly for uh classified stuff and we've uh got

141some upcoming I think there's one tomorrow night we have some informational sessions already set up and our classified bargaining units have been very helpful in getting that word out to continue to I mean recruit our classified folks for future teaching uh positions especially in a hard to feel special ed areas thank you Mr Singh so in terms of professional development and training um I'll ask Jennifer Amy to come up and speak elaborate on these but we want to develop professional development plan we have one that has begun as you know from our training and workshops that are targeted to our special education teachers but you can see how we want to broaden this to not only special ed but general education our site administrators our para Educators and also explicitly seek opportunities to train our

142para Educators alongside with our teachers we've heard that loud and clear from our para Educators from our conferences with csca and such so there have been some opportunities but we want to expand them because they're a team and we think there's value in them being trained together we want to develop a training for All District staff on inclusive practices and that goes to the cultural mindset and it's very much in line with our Dei our diversity equity and inclusion efforts so we want to expand that and we want to continue our enhancement of our mult multi-tiered system of support and not only partner with CPL but also student support and Elementary and secondary Ed so I'll let Jennifer expand a little bit more on those Concepts good evening so what we're focused on right now

143is the role when we look at a multi-tiered system of support we're looking at the instructional side of the house that SEL side of the house and the behavioral side we're honing in on instruction and what high quality instruction looks like for all students so regardless of a general education class or a special education class we have those trainings that we've been designing during our covet time and are actually rolling out to all teachers as part of the required trainings that is focused on four principles of high quality instruction so it's not to say we don't have high quality instruction going on it's providing a Common Language and a common expectation it's focused around active participation of students how teachers plan for that specifically how they are looking at student talk establishing that what are

144the protocols and procedures that are needed that training is being required for all EGA members so all certificated teachers but it's also required for all para Educators who Provide support in classrooms so when teachers are receiving that the para educator is going to receive the exact same training with the teachers that they support at the school sites that they work it's going further than just explaining what the terms are we're really looking at what teacher practice and asking teachers to do some self-evaluation of where they see themselves what are their strengths and those principles and what are areas that they can grow on and the focus is really about inclusivity so inclusivity is also having a classroom environment that's warm that's safe that's welcoming where all students feel they're a part of it they see

145their own agency and the role that they play in the classroom and so that's one area that we already have planned and that will be supporting the other area we're looking at specific to classified employees in our para educators is the support that they need as not certificated teachers but they play an important role interacting and teaching our students we'll look at the ways that we can kind of re re-change the programs that we bring our para Educators on and then the follow-up support that we can provide them throughout the school year and the other piece that I want to talk a little bit about is we're looking at when we walk into classrooms we're currently working with all of our principals on a tool that's called the font it's framework observation note-taking and that

146tool is based on those principles of high quality instruction and what we want to make sure that we're doing is not just using that tool for our general Ed classes that that is also a tool that's being used when we're walking our special ed classes so that we're looking at what all students are receiving regardless of their placement and what teacher they have so that we can provide and collect that data to be able to enhance the work that we'll continue to do so that begins in January we will have all schools and all members of our staff trained be in the 2023 calendar year so we'll roll into spring of next year and then into the 23-24 school year we're really looking forward to that thank you Jen so in terms of program and

147service evaluation as I said we're partnering with our research and evaluation Department as I mentioned earlier we did extend the window of the survey through the end of this week December 16th when we return after the holidays we will be analyzing that survey feedback and identifying additional areas of follow-up and intervention and we're also looking at administering a follow-up survey for parents and Guardians in February or March of 2023. uh where you saw you heard reference to surveying staff at uh at the conclusion of our workshop and additional supports that teachers need we want to continue those efforts and also looking at serving not only special education teachers but general education teachers because the inclusive services are about students accessing the general education classroom so we want to be surveying our general education teachers as

148well and the supports that they need and also uh this came out of the Forum um from one of the ideas generated uh from a parent which was developing and facilitating student surveys so that will take some partnership as we'll have to differentiate those questions and such given the age of the child and such but we are interested in that student feedback and we do administer student wellness surveys already so we might be able to link efforts with that uh with that initiative as well and then we want to continue to gather data on identified metrics and have continued parent guardian and staff input with those metrics that we want to uh collect and and review and analyze so that'll be a partnership with not only research and evaluation but also face more on the

149consideration of the metrics we continue to seek input as to the desired metrics used for evaluation of service at The Forum on the 20 on November 28th we did put a list of metrics that you'll see again um just for your review of some suggested metrics and got additional welcomed additional feedback and got additional feedback from The Forum participants and we've added some of those suggestions to that list and we're going to be seeking more input and solicit more input in future events but the potential metrics that we're we've identified that we want to see the changes before and after but also moving forward and it's in line of expanding our inclusivity in this District but just a few of them are you know the service minute Trends the amount of time that students spend

150outside of the general education class the changes in placement attendance rates progress reports staff and attrition and staff attrition and retention rates that came out of a suggestion from a parent meeting that I had Friday evening and I added that just yesterday parent Guardian surveys self-contained class enrollments and so I won't read through all of them but Jen Avey had referred to our multi-tiered system of supports our mtss implementation we already have a means of assessing the level of implementation at our schools so that's data that we can readily that's readily available and we want to look at a through G completion rate and instructional walkthroughs and Jen mentioned that instrument font the font and really make sure that our font instrument is are there opportunities to be explicit about the inclusivity and the inclusive

151instructional practices of our students with disabilities I know in the the classes that I have visited um to to with parents I've met a few parents at their school sites and have gone into classes and observed and you see different levels of inclusivity full you know inclusion is more than just placing a student in a general education classroom it's are they engaged are they at in are they at the center of the the circle time are they uh being asked to um you know participate with their with their uh peers and such um at a given point in time that may be the extent to which a child can participate but how is that child progressing towards their goals of participation and true engagement in the classroom similar to how we'll use the font instrument

152to maybe gauge the engage or to measure the engagement of English Learners we want to do that with students with disabilities and track that progress as they develop through our system so that's some exciting work that that we're looking forward to some upcoming opportunities as we referenced we're going to continue with the workshops for our teachers in January through February we already have dates identified with January 26th as one date where we're going to bring back the Learning Center teachers those are our elementary resource teachers and then on February 6th we're going to host an event for our secondary resource teachers again in this room and we're going to be conducting training but also soliciting more input as I said earlier about what additional supports we need for next year and currently uh what what

153resources can we do this second semester to help the families who are having challenges uh through the spring and and ongoing we're going to continue to work with with face we're looking at hosting events for parents and Guardians that will include updates we want to be up front with some of the the changes or uh some of the considerations for our various programs whether it's our level programs our ABS programs our Tac our Pathways programs we want to be upfront and update our our community with those considerations we want to provide more opportunities for feedback and input we want to provide trainings uh parents have asked for trainings on IEPs and such we can provide that training and we have and parents have found it valuable so we want to we want to duplicate that

154and replicate that we want to continue our targeted support for families requesting assistance so I said as I said earlier we have families who have reached out and said they need help we need contact so we're working on a daily basis with those families in some instances we're having meetings with them we're making phone contacts our program Specialists coordinators and even sometimes our directors attending IEPs to help with specific situations and to see what resources we can we can get and rally around the student more immediately uh Ann and the team and Janelle had had referenced the community advisory committee and the ad hoc for inclusive Services I want to continue with that work and we want to continue with staff trainings on inclusive practices and strategies meaning all staff district-wide so that concludes our

155presentation and we are available for for questions and some team members might help with some of the responses but thank you for this opportunity to give us this give you this update thank you Mr Riley appreciate the update I imagine we're going to have multiple questions or comments from the board so I'm just gonna go down the line I'll start with Mr fortino would you like to go first thank you well thanks for the report David uh as we discussed um I think the the format was specific with respect to to addressing issues that have been brought up in the different environments um I have just a couple of questions number one uh the survey is is the parents are going to have until the 16th of December for the survey when will the survey

156results be available to everyone yeah I spoke with um research and evaluation um you know with the closing on the 16th I think by the time we get back in January that first week in January we'll have a draft findings we'll probably have a meeting to ask clarifying questions on the report that research and evaluation puts together so I would say safely by mid-January we will have the results that in in a format that research and evaluation has put together graphs and easily readable um uh results and what about distribution uh we can I think at that time we'll want to make it available and distribute it um you know we can talk about uh mediums whether it's presented in a subsequent you know board update uh we could do a board communication but also

157a way to communicate with the parent groups um we'll have these meetings set up so we could we could do various presentations we could make the report the analysis available perhaps online Lisa do you have thoughts on um the provision of of that very important document to parents in terms of ensuring that all parents get it and understand it so in regards to the survey that's closing on December 16th I know that the face department is more than willing to make some phone calls to see if parents have filled it out or look at the ones that haven't and and create some direct Outreach around that we're more than willing to do that I know I have several people on the team um that would like to do that I also know that the face

158Department plans to help with the one in is it March February March the next survey um we've heard from parents in terms of of their concerns with respect to um their assessment of what their children have lost since the elimination of the program and we have heard from many about the importance of the survey um hopefully that's the survey results will give us information certainly the parents of the inclusion group have been waiting to have some hard data what is going to be the from your perspective the best way to ensure all special ed parents receive and understand the survey results and I suppose in particular uh the parents of the uh inclusion committee there's a couple of [Music] one when uh teachers who have relationships with families reach out and encourage um the families

159to fill out the survey direct phone calls uh actual human being calling building a relationship and asking we know that this works because back when we were in distance learning and we made lots of phone calls that just checked in with families and how they were doing and if the setup was you know everything they needed for distance learning so we know this works um continuing pushing it out in various platforms also helps okay and we will encourage that and support of course to do that so I think Mr Forte you're asking about once the survey is completed how do we distribute it so everyone has access to it let me just uh because there are some concerns in that you know we we understand face had had offered assistance in getting people to respond

160to the surveys we're having our program Specialists make those phone calls to people who haven't responded because of some you know idea and confidentiality you get a call because your student receives a certain service from someone who is not their service provider not they're not their teacher of record um there there's some concerns there from there could be some concerns from parents like why do you know what my child receives and such so we're doing the individual Outreach from our program special since it's been successful because in many times they have that that personal uh relationship and we've seen through the pushing we went from for the first week of the survey we went from just over 100 respondents and now we're getting close to 300 so we're seeing success with that I think once

161the survey is completed and red puts together the report then I think we can work with face about pushing out emails with a link to the survey results I think that will probably be the most effective way and then perhaps having community events or meetings or parent meetings to discuss and and and have conversations about the results yeah and and specific to the comments you just made are are we have communication uh process is in place for all parents female blast so on uh is there consideration for setting up a system specific for parents of special education students yeah right now that's how we have pushed out the survey we have the 500 550 590 families that received the survey and we have through their student ID numbers we're pushing it out to those families

162we can also identify any group of of parents and send out a targeted communication as well okay um but I I I I I wanted to put this question in and and and positive tones but I'm just going to put not just ask the question um why did we wait until November 16th to hold a training and workshop when we we knew they were I have to believe that we the district knew that not all teachers would have the preparation they needed for the changes that came about as a result of the elimination of the inclusion specialist position so why did we wait until November 16th so November 16th was our first formal training Workshop where we had everything together I mean from the moment that that we made the decision and the first line

163of order in the beginning of September was you know reassigning the caseloads understanding the students needs and having the Learning Center teams the secondary secondary uh teams were already case managers so really the emphasis was on Elementary so that was the first line of order was to assign the caseloads and stuff our program specialist went out immediately beginning in September and worked with uh individual teams of Learning Center teachers who were asking for assistance and help so it's not that the workshop was has been the only training um you know Janelle when we were planning just you know last week and such and today um shared that there's been other Zoom trainings and such there's been more on an informal basis for various regions of teachers who needed assistance but I would say November 16th

164was probably our first formal uh you know in Mass training where we were soliciting feedback and providing uh some tools and services um but before that it was it was happening it was just happening on a smaller scale and more organically when we met with the parents um hearing that para Educators were not allowed to speak with parents and that that was a policy that that was kind of eye-opening to me because it was in Conflict certainly with um the way in which I've experienced um para Educators ability to to work with parents since they are the primary person working with the child and have the most information um what what does a timeline look like for making whatever changes we needed to need to make to the policy and is that policy just an

165operational policy within the special education department yeah it's not it is an operational my understanding is that that policy her guideline was practical practice was put in years ago um I I think it was as a result of a of a legal uh situation where sure um but it is it is I think with training with our para Educators and providing guidelines on types of communication that is helpful and useful and then you know we have to be careful not to have IEP meetings outside of the IEP meeting and not to say that you know we think this service is is in order or such all staff need that kind of training and guideline because it should be those should be team decisions so I think if we provide guidance to our para Educators about

166you know of course what kind of day a student had is is appropriate is appropriate feedback and we want parents to have that feedback um and that's the other reason why we want to explore you saw one of the the bullets up there was about developing you know working with tech tech services to maybe develop a median that the district can host where parents can get feedback on a child's progress you know maybe it's a kind of app or maybe it's you know where parent educator a general education teacher and the case manager can communicate more readily uh with with a parent and everyone can see that communication so everybody's in the now we want to explore that as well without and I appreciate that response and without holding your feet to the fire and

167saying you know I'm gonna hold you to the date when might we look at that January February March next January September I think as soon as January we can look at that I mean we've already had conversations with our with our legal team about you know can can we work together to address some guidelines so that we can get the communication going as soon as possible um and then it'll just be about you know having the training and and talking to our para Educators and offering that guidance but it is something that needs to be Revisited that I just wanted to read a reiterate I remember you mentioned that the issue with the pairs and the policy was was concerning there is no policy the concern is they don't have the proper training and it's

168there's a confidentiality with that IEP we really value our parents um and you had said that too as a teacher and as a parent I've served as a teacher and a parent that that relationship is critical and I think as um Mr Riley said with the proper training we can really um do some really positive um things for kids in terms of the communication yeah I agree with that I guess what is really troubling um with the whole situation and it's like water under the bridge because I guess we've been doing that but if we're talking about the need for training and the need to provide uh an understanding on the part of the para that's our responsibility and so you know what I heard that night and what I've heard since is that the

169way in which we resolve the problem is just tell the parish you can't talk to parents rather than assuming our rightful responsibility to provide the training which we are now going to provide correct yeah okay correct that's always thank you Mr Fortuna salvioni thank you Mr Martina um I think some difficult decisions have been made um I appreciate staff's acceptance to um the ownership of our and the seriousness of our of our parents concerns they're very grounded and real concerns and I appreciate the way you've taken that and I don't feel like you tried to sugarcoat that in this presentation I feel like you shared what was shared at the meeting so I appreciate that I'm happy to see the plans the addition of departments I think the idea of a fully more inclusive school

170system is very positive um and I and I just want to recognize for parents um you know it's their child going to school every day and and so it's hard and and there's no and I think everyone that works here and both of you both have children and so as much as we can do immediately and and I really appreciate that the response and and leaving that on a survey I believe is a testimony that we do care and we want to make sure your child's okay and I and I hope they feel that and and we recognize the urgency of the situation thank you Mr yang hey David can you uh put that slide with the attendance of that town hall meeting yeah thank you for uh the presentation um I I think uh

171the intention to detail of demonstrating that the staff actually paying attention to the to the parents um I think that that's important um so so you know Kudo to to you guys on that part um I was one of the two boards that attended that meeting and um you know every time when I speak I like to say that you know I'm a parent of uh um a couple of needs or a special education uh parents because I just want the folks in the red red shirt to to know that I go through that with with my wife and the the family and it is not easy and with that said um you know there's a lot of things that you touch on this and it is a lot of work love to be done

172that's for sure and um a lot of parents um they are hurt and they they are struggling uh because of this change and you know this kind of reminds me of how we went through uh covet in a sense of some kids need more help than others and I think that in this case there's some truth in that as well um you know we know that there's what 500 plus students but obviously we don't see um the number of parents showing up to to reflect on that number of students however that doesn't mean others student or parents is not hurting or is not going through tough time but for me you know the ones that we are hearing from it um I really want to see if you could create a special uh Team to

173really help them out right away um like there's a couple testimony that was provided during that meeting that um our staff wasn't living up to their promises and to me that's uh that's a No-No that's unacceptable and you know with the hardship and difficulty that they are facing we have to deliver what we said we're going to do and then you know rather it works or not um you know that's something that we're going to have to hear from the parents and the students perhaps but we cannot just build out and not deliver our promises and those are the things that I heard some of the things that I heard during that board meeting and again there's a lot of things that we could continue to do and improve but but I would like to

174see that that you know the quick response and and who the parents that already cry out loud to us you know help them out you know see see what they need help with most um there's so many uh cry out loud students here parents um the last couple months and I just would like to see some sort of uh action right away instead of waiting for the data to come out because to me we already failing as far as we're not delivering what we already promised as far as the number so we already delaying that right so every week we delay kids are struggling parents are struggling you know me and my wife are struggling and then you know that's the truth that's the reality so I would like to have you guys to really

175consider a building a team to respond if you guys already did that's great okay I just want to be clear all the parents who came to the Forum and who requested a contact from the form from the survey they're being contacted right now by their program specialist teams their Regional teams so I just want to be clear we're not waiting okay for anything to close we're making calls I think some of the families that you know the voicemails are full or they haven't responded or not responding to the phone calls or the the emails we're going to continue to push but like I said we're tracking all of the contact and we're going to ensure that all of those families are getting direct support we're not we're not waiting for that okay I would also

176like to thank you Mr Yang and Mr Fortuna for participating in that Community forum and also you personally for allowing us to partner in your children's education because you have advocated um over many times and I appreciate that thank you yeah so so when you said uh you guys have already respond to those folks that cry out loud you respond to the fact that you find out exactly what they need and then you help them out the program Specialists teams are having conversations with those families What specifically where are we falling short do we need to host an IEP meeting do you want to come in and meet should we go out and observe a host of because everyone's challenges are unique so there's a number of different things that that are happening calling the

177site admin to follow up to make sure supports are in place does the Learning Center need support do the teachers need additional training do we need to communicate with a speech and language pathologist who you know maybe the communication broke down is the occupational therapist showing you know it could be whatever that family needs that program specialist team is charged with following through in concert with the site admin so teams of people are working together to address those needs yeah and it's good to hear that and you know I I hate to say this but you know I'm not going to take your word for it because I'm hearing like the parents are crying out loud so so we need to hear from them to see if we actually doing that right and we talked

178about it you know I you know I love the plan that we are doing things that you know I heard but I'm still hearing parents crying out loud that you know we are not meeting their needs you know taking care of their concerns so I hear what you're saying um but I'm gonna you know continue to communicate with the parents directly and to see if there's um changes as far as you know our delivering promises and with that said another question is that um the the hour change from three hours to four to five hours I should say for five hours to three hours um I I heard that there's a there's a flexibility reader that we could comp them to have the kids you know taking care of five hours still uh can you

179elaborate that a little bit yeah so that's that's in a little bit of a different context that's our pre-k program yeah um so we uh maybe the wireless you could use that oh my bad okay um so that's that's in regard to our pre-k program so we are moving from a five hour to a three hour uh gradual transition uh but just know that if a parent wants to maintain a five-hour program they may um so it's all voluntary I mean some of this change was to in an effort to serve more students but also feedback from parents and staff that a five hour day for our our little ones is long and they were falling asleep or they were kind of breaking down midday so three hour program is congruent with our general education

180program so our kids with special needs are getting the same offering as our general Ed and it's more manageable for some and if some families prefer the five hour we can still accommodate that okay thank you for that one more question um so if this survey comes back in January and it is um let's just say hypothetically uh if it's a terrible um response as far as the change is not helping at all what is the happy medium that we could provide to these uh parents or and the the family that are suffering [Music] well I mean we'll have to analyze it we'll have to see you know if the percentage of number of people who are having challenges uh will want to dig deeper on those challenges and then that's going to inform our

181planning for next year where are we falling short um you know so far we have about 570-ish you know students in this in this receiving inclusive Services right as as we term it now inclusive Services we've heard from uh directly to approximately 50 of the families who are really having significant challenges that's about 10 um it could be maybe the survey results say that you know 50 of our parents are receiving the same level support or better so that means that what additional resources can we put to those 50 or 30 percent of our students that are that are challenged and to the 10 that are really experiencing significant challenges what other supports can we put in place what more targeted support and that's why we're getting our teachers involved in these workshops to say

182it might be behavioral support there are a number of different positions that can provide social pragmatic lessons and programs School psychologists can do that so we might expand the number of positions that are working it doesn't always have to be a teacher we want to examine and get that input from staff what would help I just know from many of the meetings that we've had with parents if a student is having an off day the school psychologist has been extremely helpful that day well you know might we have additional psychologist support at a particular site that has a high concentration of students with receiving these Services those are the conversations we want to have we want to identify what resources will help so I think the survey will be helpful in helping us identify the

183numbers that we're dealing with and where the challenges are and specifically which families are having these challenges because it's a spectrum right the the inclusive Services served students with moderate to severe disabilities so those students who were more are more closer to the severe side of the spectrum probably need more support and we need to find ways to support them so those are those are some of the questions I think the greatest value of the survey is that it's going to be a catalyst for conversations and and a catalyst for A needs assessment in terms of where are we falling short and how can we meet those those needs yeah thank you for answering those questions uh I just want to end by saying yeah I really uh wish that the survey will will really

184build up the the lack of participation so far we have that conversation um so I really hope that more parents will uh participate in that survey and and in addition to that I just want to thank you to you and your whole team for uh continue to grind it out to help out the parents and the students on this very difficult uh situation with this new change I know it's it's a it's a school district decision um and and and some of the folks like yourself and um a few of you taking the load more than others so so I want to say thank you and um um yeah thank you thank you and I just also want to take the opportunity you know parents you know if you are feeling feel free to reach

185out you know to your program specialist to Ann to me and we will rally that support David can I share one other thing um interestingly today I had two very different meetings one of them was a family who was being offered inclusive service inclusive education and the family was insisting on Jesse Baker and here I am philosophically thinking wait a second they were their student would be served there but there are no typically developing peers and on the flip side of the coin we have these students and families who were supporting to create that lre so I'm I'm very we're very fortunate that we have those offerings and we're able to um serve students in different settings but um there there are a lot of different parents so I'm very excited as well to see

186the results of this survey for these parents um but I think we have a lot of other parents um you know out there as well and and one family who has been involved and has a student inclusion is moving to another site because they felt that site could not accommodate a student in inclusive ad they felt it was a culture at that site which shall remain nameless and was asking just to get out of there even though they were in inclusion inclusion but it wasn't necessarily the supports it was the culture so that's something that our work needs to address is and I think with our Dei that we're doing and with um really this push and the support of our friends on EG speaks I think we're we're going to make some great progress

187thank you Mr Yang Mr truck uh first off I just want to say I'm glad to see the efforts uh made to address the issues and the acknowledgment of the issues as well and moving forward I hope we can like continue that kind of communication with that being said I do have one question so for slide 17 uh when it says develop training for All District staff on inclusive practices I was just wondering how that was being done and when it would be applied foreign you're talking about all District staff on inclusive practices yes yes um we're going to be having conversations you know starting in January February our collaboration with CPL uh there there are trainings that we can offer staff on a volunteer basis that we can Infuse in our CPL our curriculum

188professional learning offerings but we eventually want to mobilize where we have all staff that are going through a module or were able to visit School sites and give all staff training on inclusive practices so we don't have a precise timeline for that effort that will take some time to develop and we need to give sites a little bit of a heads up in terms of planning for that but it would be great if by next fall we all of our staff receive some inclusive Services uh trainings um you know part of our Dei our diversity equity and inclusion training there might be opportunities to add some trainings into that effort which is going to be taking place for all staff over the next two years so those are some of the things we're thinking about

189but the sooner the better thank you Mr Vargas any questions or comments yeah so that was actually a great segue into um I want to drill down a little bit on the training um I think you so I think you know inclusion practices and is a great starting point is a great goal um you know but I think with special education right students in special education students have very specific needs there's very specific laws that apply there are very specific School District policies that need to be observed and so I'm curious how are how is that going to be incorporated is that going to be incorporated um you know and how we're going to make sure that that is all part of this training foreign yeah that's a great question um so I think when

190we're considering all staff I think we'll have to get together with our team and say what what is most important in a first training of all staff what is most important for our all staff to know the person our soas at the front desk at the schools uh the person who's Distributing lunch are bus drivers you know we we have some trainings that are already in place our bus drivers go through training on how to best serve students with with needs with special needs we can use that training and and Foster what are the types of disabilities you know what what what is autism you know to really educate you know people to make them aware what are the best strategies in working uh with students with disabilities what are some strategies in involving them

191and getting them engaged where they tend to you know stand aside so I think we need to kind of break that down but I don't think we're starting from scratch because we have some positions in this District where we have provided that training pair Educators bus drivers and there's a great deal of elements of that training that already exists that would be great for all staff to know so and in terms of the the legal aspects we can incorporate that you know um down to an IEP and you know how to how to read an IEP how to have a conversation with a case man what are the most important things about an IEP that you need when you have a student in your in your general how do you what is modification how do

192you modify assignments and assessments all that is good uh discourse and that is also um you know I know people have referenced like co-teaching and such that's not the only answer to to inclusion but it is it is a very valuable tool and that's the whole concept you have a classroom a general education classroom and you have a teacher who is a special education teacher with a with a a Content teacher or a multiple subject teacher and they're learning from each other the the general education teacher is learning how to modify students and how to understand a certain students disabilities and how best to adapt their instructional strategies but also their curriculum and the way they deliver it so all of that is good good conversation will be taken into account when we when we

193train staff so I just want to make sure that I'm hearing you right is that it sounds like this is going to be an ongoing thing there's going to be training sort of initially um you know you're going to be building it into next year's training it sounds like you want to have everybody go through it at least once next year um and you envision this as an ongoing thing where this will be incorporated into regular trainings as well it's a school district this large uh you know most training needs to be ongoing because you look up and there's new folks and new players we hire you know 350 teachers a year um we have you know new staff coming in new new secretaries of the so it's a constant you know we're having conversations

194and and what's included in onboarding when you join Elk Grove unified what kind of training do you get you know we have things like arbinger we have cultural responsiveness training that's part of Dai we contend in special education that the inclusive training should be part of that mandatory training because that's part of the cultural mindset and and inclusion not just limited to students with disability but as was referenced earlier you know LBGTQ issues English learner issues ethnicity rate all those things that's all part of inclusion that's why I fits so nicely in our Dei initiative CTC um one other I think I've mentioned this at the preschool well prior to your arrival but um the CTC is now requiring as of July 1 that a gen Ed credential so multiple subject credential includes an additional

195Universal Design for Learning course so that's very um much in our favor that our newer teachers will be receiving that training when they come on board and my last question on training is so my understanding is that um you know the persons with disability Community has a really interesting phrase that I really like and it is nothing about us without us and I so I'm curious how are you going to be selecting who's going to be uh you know administering or facilitating these trainings uh and how are you going to incorporate persons with disabilities into the trainings um that's a great question uh we will um best practices so we're looking into um the student participation checklist um the author of which is um author whom is a teacher in our district um we're looking

196at some other inclusive practices that La unified has incorporated into their training and um if we can get those trainers maybe we'd include them or we'd train some of our our trainers or administrators and then have them provide the training we'll work with our Equity department and face again um and CPL we we also have a great deal of expertise on our on our staff our program Specialists have been giving trainings uh for years on various topics and we have quite a wealth of of knowledge and expertise in this area so I I think we found that our trainings have been very very successful when and it's been a challenge you know taking teachers out of the classroom during times when you know absences were high because of illness Etc but we're getting back on

197track with that and so I mean you met a few uh you know the Sandra's presentation and training era that that she did with Eric I was was well received and and so we want to continue with that so we'll continue to tap that in-house expertise as well right um I have one last Carmen did you want to jump in real cool I was just gonna yeah I wanted to ask attention I have a follow-up question on what you were asking me uh because of its importance and I'm planning I'm planning to Pivot to a different issue so if you want to follow up go yeah okay um early this evening uh talked about the importance of transparency and accountability um the training program is is a key component of what will occur will the

198board receive a copy of that training uh program for inclusion services and the reason why I ask is that it's important for the board to understand the follow-through process on that training it's not just here about hear about it tonight and and then we move on to something else this is this issue is important and it's going to be with us and we need to know or and have a sense of where that training's going and when it's happening yeah we can certainly Supply the training materials um we're talking now about how to make our training and resources for special education our program descriptions all centrally located um you know on our website and want to devise a new website so it'll all be out there and you know we can talk about this more

199but I I would welcome if any board member wanted to sit in on a training and experience it for themselves I don't I don't see why that would be an issue so we'll keep you apprised on those dates and offerings and make sure that you have access to materials uh because I think that's great yeah and if I could make one more point on uh in terms of what was said um for us to responsibly address the training issues one thing that was said which is diametrically opposed to where I believe we need to be and I've said it before and and and the quote was that trading on a volunteer basis what we need is training right and we need to provide that training anyway we we have to do it that means we

200got to pay more money we pay we pay people but to say we have a deficit and the only way we're going to resolve the deficit is through training and then say Oh that's on a volunteer basis then you're talking out of both sides of your mouth and we need to resolve that kind of a problem yeah the the reference to the voluntary was the the immediate short term because we have the push out of the Dei where um there are some required trainings but then there's a menu of options I think what I want to explore is can we Infuse some of the in the immediate future where it is an option understanding that we do want it eventually to be required and that's why I mentioned hey when you become an employee of

201Oak Grove unified during that induction process you know we we highlight arbinger we highlight uh cultural responsiveness we think inclusion should be part of that as well so don't misunderstand well I agree with you we gotta if it's gonna stick and we're gonna change the culture it's got to be required for everything we do thank you Mr Vargas your next question yes um so I want to Pivot a little bit to the um getting closer to the end of the presentation right consideration of metrics um because you know standing on my soapbox a little bit here um you know I think assessment is key and is going to be critical in this process because right now and over the past I've been paying quite a bit of attention over the past three months for obvious

202reasons um and what I see is a lot of talk that's in theory right in theory we think this is going to happen in theory like we anticipate that you know these changes are going to occur this we think this is going to be better for students um but at the end of the day right what we need are numbers what we need is assessment um and it's a critical part of uh you know the the goal and vision of the district itself um and so I guess what I'm what I'm curious about here on these metrics is you've got a bunch of them um and I think all of them are good what are the key metrics here that are like the start of the dominoes because some of these metrics are going to

203be effects right something's going to happen and then a lot we're going to see it in a lot of these metrics but there's a couple of metrics I think that are um that are that first Domino and when you see something in this metric that is a huge red flag that we need to pay attention to and so in your mind what are those key metrics that we need to pay a lot of attention to and that's why you know you mentioned you see in the previous slide that we want to continue our dialogue with staff parents because we want to identify with the key we don't want to dictate that and you know these metrics are good for students receiving inclusive services these metrics are good for all students so what we should be

204doing is measuring these for all students and then disaggregating this group of six you know so it's not again it's not just special education right it's all of us and it's our entire assessment system with these students who are accessing the general education program these metrics exist so it's just a matter of disaggregating we're not inventing the wheel here but I think and I say that because when we identify key metrics I think we should be looking at it through the lens of what metrics should we have for all students that we don't need to reinvent the wheel for but which metrics are very relevant to these this group of students that's where I'd like to get but Ann and I and the program specialist coordinators don't be the ones to dictate that we want

205to have more conversation and come to that consensus and then the just the last question just kind of a follow-up is um so for us obviously these this assessment evaluation is is critical to our participation in this process um and so when generally do you think we're going to start to see some of the information on these metrics I mean our number one priority we have prioritized the feedback from the parents as you can see that's what this update is focused on and in reaching out to families that's what we're focused on surveys we're going to disseminate them in January right and then I think simultaneously once research and evaluation then we're going to continue our talks with that and it's a matter of working with them and when we can gather this information some

206of this you know there are some challenges because there were some gaps right students distance learning you know what what does attendance mean in that contest where now so there are some challenges but we've started those conversations and yeah we should have metrics by by you know spring that we're that we're looking at minarily but we want to have more of these meetings to determine what are the key metrics and then team up more with all the partners you know CPL our research and evaluation secondary and Elementary because they're they're looking at metrics too so we need to have those meetings but I would say um you know once we identify key metrics we should be able to to harvest this information pretty readily great thank you very much that's all my questions thank you

207Mr Vargas Mr Perez bring it home yeah we think alike those those those questions the ones I was going to ask but let's you let's talk let's start with parent training you didn't mention any parent training we're going to have anything like that and how much time we're going to put in that Arena um we did we did mention it um but there was a lot of information this evening um that's in part partnering with with face with with Lisa's uh one of her divisions is to work with face to identify what is the best means to provide that training to parents is it virtual is it by region is it by School site so we did make reference to example you know what is an IEP you know training for parents um how to

208how to be a meaningful participant in an IEP meeting we've we've have we have those meetings already in existence but how do we duplicate and replicate to hit a larger audience um collaborate with Alta Regional to do that we do we do we and we to continue our collaboration I was one of the meetings I was attending today that that an Alta Regional Advocate or representative was there attending and um they have my number they call they let me know when they think I need to reach out or one of our team needs to reach out so um I would say we have a pretty good rapport with alter Regional okay that okay um we just came back from California School Board Association again I want to tell you that it's very important we maybe

209need to send you this administrative staff over here that runs different programs but there was a workshop and awards for special ed were you aware of that yeah Amy um I I know I did anybody last week the person who presented I helped her with her we as a matter of fact I provided some of the content for her presentation at csb it was two weeks ago okay yeah and uh we didn't receive did we submit a model program for this award or we weren't awarded did you talk to any of the the awardees that we've been a little busy lately but no I would that's something I think we'd be interested in doing exactly and I'm willing to go with you I'm not talking I'm too busy helping my mother um I would like

210to yes but yet they were excellent programs great presentations a lot of people came out of those workshops and you know listening to that and I'm going to read you something that one one of the made the papers what set our efforts apart from other school districts simply closing special day classes is the way we approach our work okay data frame the moral imperative and need for system Improvement data validated the results achieved at each of the model School sites and data has allowed us to credibly advance the work and that's what you were seeing Mr Vargas we need that Matrix to evaluate you know our programs and prove them you know and try be Innovative again we need to be innovative share ownership of the problem with our stakeholders we're doing that was also

211a key rather than issuing a top-down directive we engage our school administration and Slot to identify strategic Partners which I just asked you out to Regional genuine genuinely interested in leading the efforts so again that's what's happening in a lot of our programs we want Community engagement parent engagement all the stakeholders that are that are in the community and give us Direction support and input those experts that are out there that and and everybody knows that we are committed to system capacity support the necessary instructions and training required for inclusion so that's the message right that's a bottom line okay and it says and more than 100 professional development workshops dedicate to this effort over the next three years and you said that we're going that route but yet we need to done last year

212the year before and like you said continuously have a training model in place to support all this year round because like like you said the turnover uh one thing I was wondering how many vacancies do we have in in special ed right now in terms of teacher vacancies yeah at every level for this program that we're doing right now and how and and yeah let me tell you I think we have a whole bunch you didn't even have to answer that but what I think today on Channel 31 we did a recruitment drive but they did say recruitment for special ed Personnel maybe we need to do that and then say we pay well oh we're going to pay well yeah we have a pretty robust advertised marketing campaign events and um we've even hosted

213special education events you know in particular and and even events just for para Educators and and teachers so um you know you'll be considering the tentative agreement with the teachers in January once that is hopefully ratified approved by the board that will give us some really powerful marketing to get out there and attract people to events you know as Mr Singh mentioned we're talking to our current student teachers we're observing them pretty carefully and we're going to be offering contracts very early to those uh student teachers who we think are going to make an excellent addition to uh to Elk Grove so and and as you know and the community knows that in the state of California Northern California people come here for special ed we need to either put more dollars in it this

214program or Lobby for more dollars and what that what's and what's the latest on that issue yeah I mean lobbying for more dollars for special Educators is I think is always going to be a battle um but you know the good news is you know you know for inclusion is now a major focus and and you know although definitely regret the disrupt and the challenges that this has caused for our for some of our families um the fact that inclusion is at the Forefront right now we can turn this into a positive I mean it's very positive and our need for special education is out in the Forefront that can be very positive for us so you know through this collaboration partnering with parents staff and such we can get stronger through this I truly

215believe that we are committed to the data and the metrics but we started this evening with the most important data point which was the feedback from the parents right and I think just to you know I got an input from a parent that I met with last Friday who suggested that you know we reprise these slides at the end of the evening of what we heard and I hope as people read through them after tonight and after the presentation they can see how we are addressing each of these bullets through this collaboration of six departments uh reaching out to a whole community of parents agencies to the outside I mean we can really make a significant change on the culture of inclusion in this District if we continue with these efforts right um the only

216issue I have the Partnerships internally is that how much time there were birthday like what percentage of their or their job Duty would it be ten percent twenty percent thirty percent like uh you know like research and valuation students supporting Health Services uh do you is that the model way to go or do we need to develop a an actual special ad component of those type of people you know honestly I prefer not to take that approach I think special education should be part of the DNA right every Department here so I don't want a separate communication department for specialty we should be part of communication we should be an integral part of CPL planning and professional development and training uh we need to train general education teachers on special education so I've said this

217before you know the special in special education is sometimes a hurdle to overcome because we're education and this is inclusion and we should be included uh in in all train trainings and in the central network not something separate so um you know face CPL all these streams have to come together you know we we need eventually special education teachers and general education teachers being trained together on inclusive practices your metrics uh evaluate that well part of the mattress could be the number of trainings we did the participants the number of trainings where we have Blended trainings with classifieds so I mean the actual people working in that and you said that all these six Partners internally within uh our district how would you uh evaluate they're doing a good job towards special ed if they're

218only doing the 10 versus if you had a person doing a 100 percent well I think we we established the metrics we we assess all students in the district I'm talking about our staff no I know but then you know based on where we're falling short then we do A needs assessment you know what are the root causes as to why we're doing now that may lead us to insufficient Staffing it may lead us to additional resources in the classroom it may lead us to uh you know you know new types of services we don't know but we have to kind of establish the metrics and then kind of go backwards do A needs assessment see where we're falling short and then that'll tell us if we're if it's a staff issue Staffing issue or

219a training issue okay and so the last question has the state of California come here do an on-site District evaluation especially when was the last time they came here see um and we we uh we're currently um under significant disproportionality review so we're responding to the state for disproportionality with students who are black who are identified as emotional having emotional disturbance but um we have a plan we're working with 15 of our Ida funds to address that issue as far as on-site audits was before my time we had the same cygdus review in 2012 and then every year since we've had a targeted review but they just they request files they have not come in actually and opened up our files so we want to avoid that um but I also want to remember remind

220you you know or just reiterate that um that one family who is helping us and serving on this um this ad hoc committee that they've noticed as a family they literally went to a school site and felt like they were being recruited from everyone from the custodial staff to the cafeteria staff the um computer teacher and at another site they said that was not the case so we have a lot of work to do as a district and and as a department and as a team to really work on the culture and I think if the the presentation that you saw at csba I think they identified that and the West Ed study that Los Angeles Unified did that was that's a big part of it um but we're here we're ready to go and

221we're we're going to no I believe you like I said I want you to do it ASAP okay thank you thank you Mr Perez and to all of my colleagues for excellent questions thank you for a great presentation um I am reminded of a quote that I read recently that I'm sure I'm going to butcher but it was something like if you define the problem well you've almost got the answer right so when I see these slides um where we're acknowledging what we've heard from parents and from employees um it's actually very heartening to me because that's the road map right so I just I want to underscore for the parents who are here for everyone who's been participating in this broader process that your input is very valuable it is quite literally the road

222map um so I just I want to encourage you to stick with us and and continue to provide that detailed feedback about where we need to plug in the gaps and improve Services um I was hoping you could address one thing I hear a different conception from some folks um about what the work is that we're undertaking right now broadly speaking some people talk about it as um as if it's kind of a trial period and there will be a set date after which all of the changes that have been made will be reevaluated but I also hear you in your presentation more of an idea of um kind of constant a constant continuous feedback loop and constant change so can you address that for folks just so that we can make sure we're all

223on the same page in terms of what is this process that we're undergoing yeah it's more of a continuous Improvement cycle um there's no set date where we're gonna stop about we're going to be constantly evaluating we're going to be constantly training we're going to be constantly bolstering and learning from these experiences where are we falling short um you know we're going to get together and divide you know Learning Center re resource in secondary what's the future what does it look like what additional positions and services do we need at the sites to meet these needs so it's it's a constant evaluation towards continuous Improvement just another critical piece of that you know speaking to is we all we learn from where we fall short but we also need to build upon where our strengths

224are you know Mr Perez spoke to I mean people come from all over California they come from other states to come to Elk Grove unified for some of our special ed programs that's that's that's that's the truth and so there's a lot of things that are working really really well and how do we build upon and expand those um and then also identify where we're coming up short and how to how do we address that but there's there's there's so many phenomenal people doing phenomenal work across this District on a daily basis I just want to make sure that we're in our continuous Improvement model it's building upon the strengths as well this isn't a deficit model thank you um a quick comment on data definitely lots of my colleagues spoke to the importance of

225that members of the public have spoken to it I I want to take us in a slightly different direction um I I want to underscore the importance of qualitative data because so much of what I've heard from the parents and families is about their and their experience their feelings um you know all of which you know is very important um so I just I want to make sure that qualitative data are not lost in this process as important as numbers and metrics are um that's that's just as important it's the experience of our students and families and employees um the last point I want to make is is I I appreciate the questions on the training um hearing I think Miss Jones talked about our inclusivity weeks um it's it's very encouraging to hear that

226we are being intentional about creating a more inclusive culture right and changing our Collective mindsets about that I do share the concerns though about the specific needs of special education students getting lost in the middle of all that right because when we do for example the trainings that we contract with the Sacramento LGBT Center for right those are effective because they are very targeted um and I just I want to make sure that we don't lose that for this population as well because because frankly we need it just as much yeah so that is the end of my comments um and public comment for this item took place at the top of the meeting correct just wanted to double check because that was not on my script so that thank you for your presentation colleagues

227we have two action items the first is the appointment of a representative from the Elk Grove unified school district to the California school boards Association delegate assembly this is the position that has been occupied by miss albiani and miss albiani would you like to speak to that I would like to nominate um Miss Gina Jamerson for the position to the California school boards Association delegate assembly we had put out a call for anybody to call me and contact me about what that entailed we had a lengthy discussion and she's willing to serve in that position thank you do we have a second for Miss Jamerson in that position I'll say good then thank you Mr Perez I'm going to do a roll call vote Mr track aye Ms albiani aye Mr Fortuna aye Mr Perez

228aye Mr Vargas aye Mr Yang hi and I'm also and I congratulations Miss Jamerson the next item I will call up Miss Shannon Hayes to present the approval of the 2022-23 first interim financial report foreign good evening members of the board president Charis Espinoza welcome Mr Vargas superintendent Hoffman my colleagues I'm presenting tonight the qmb 223 first interim report as soon as I find it quicker and tonight we're gonna go and review the annual budget development cycle um our 2223 I don't think we have student enrollment in here this time I'm going to skip that bullet because that is not included in this presentation and then our first interim unrestricted general fund changes are components of our multi-year projections the actual multi-year projections themselves and then what our next steps are going forward so looking

229at the annual budget development cycle um we don't align necessarily with all of the actions that need to happen for the district but we adopt our budget usually before the state adopts their budget which we did that in June the state adopted their budget shortly thereafter and then August 15th um we actually did do a 45-day revise which is simply to budget any changes from the state's adopted budget into our own then September 15th the district and we prepare the prior year and audited actuals and that is a report that is done and then provided to our Auditors to be audited and it actually goes to our County Office of Education and then December 15th um we are to submit our 22-23 first interim budget which are expenditures and information known as of October 31st

230and then in January we get to hear the governor's proposal for the 23-24 school year then March 15th we have our second interim report which is information that is known as of January 31st and then there's the May revision that happens and then we start all over again and I joke with my staff all the time because we're never in one fiscal year at any point in time we're always in three we're always a year behind a year in the middle and a year in the future so looking at Ada when we adopted our budget we did not have we did not know that the state was going to actually adopt with this provision to hold districts harmless for the Ada Cliff as they refer to it so when we were in the covid two

231years there was a drop in enrollment there was also a drop in Ada so two different calculations for Elk Grove enrollment generates supplemental concentration funding and Ada generates total District funding so there's two components are very important to us in looking at our actual Ada in the First Column you can see for 1920 and for 2021 they are identical and that is because schools closed in school year 2021 and so the state funded all districts across the state at their 1920 Ada levels in 2122 our actual Ada dropped to 56 000 students that is attendance meaning how many times a child attends class so it does not reflect what our actual enrollment is so for a 56 000 students attending school that wasn't a hundred percent of the time so we roughly have anywhere in

232our district from 60 000 to 61 000 students enrolled so in 2122 they only attended and we were paid for Ada in the amount of fifty six thousand that I think is roughly around 90 percent of attendance whereas we're normally as a district at 95 96 percent so then looking at 2223 in our projection for um our funded Ada for 22.23 you can see it's relatively flat it's at 59. that 59 that 59 000 amount of ADA is a three-year average that we used when we adopted the budget and that was because at that time in the May revise we knew that we were going to be allowed to do an either or original Ed code said you had to use the current or prior year Ada value whichever was greater or you could use

233a three year Rolling average so when we adopted our budget we did the three year Rolling average and the state adopted with this consideration of what they're referring to as Ada mitigation so they allowed the districts across the state to use their Ada percentage from 1920 which for our district was 96 percent we were able to apply that to our 21-22 enrollment levels to generate our funded Ada for Elk Grove it's that funded Ada amount for this reporting period of first interim we're using sixty thousand one forty six as our Ada Target instead of what we would normally have had to claim and what we were being paid on which is 59 000 291. so that's important to note right now the way we the way I interpreted Ed code and I hope I wasn't

234incorrect was that we get to use this mitigation formula through 2425. so again that three-year rolling average as we go forward so changes that we've made to our budget again this is for the unrestricted general fund is we have budgeted the changes in lcfs funding based on the state's adopted budget we did add expenditure budgets for carryover that was presented to the board through unaudited actuals we have adjustments to site-based Staffing we have budgeted for the ongoing employee compensation proposal and we have additional indirect credits and other adjustments so what those look like these are the values that are attached to it was on the previous slide so when we adopted our budget in June we were deficit spending 10.8 million dollars and that's the number you see at the very top the revenue changes

235using the Ada mitigation formula generated 16.8 million dollars in new ongoing Revenue to Elk Grove the expenditures that we have budgeted as a first interim we have the ongoing employee compensation package so the board thank you very much has provided Direction on parameters for us to um take to the marketing table that value is 71.7 million looking at certificated substitutes we did bolster our rate in order to fill vacant classrooms with substitute teachers when needed that value is an estimate at this point in time and will be adjusted accordingly when we know when we have better Trend data right now we're budgeting an additional 2.7 million dollars for those efforts transitional kindergarten brand new for our school district in the form of a lower class size ratio so operating at 12 to 1 so 12

236students for every one adult we have hired additional parent educator support to be in the classroom with our certificated teachers the value of that transaction for this period is nine hundred thousand dollars technology utility through the unaudited actuals we did um want to carry over and the board approved carryover of 7.2 million directly for refreshing technology for both um in the classroom with teachers and with students this is in addition to the efforts that are funded through the Esser funds right now then looking at purchase order expenditures so what those are is when schools put through purchase orders and we've actually fill we've actually placed an order with a vendor and if we don't receive those goods and services by June 30th those purchase orders then roll over into the new fiscal year what we

237don't want to do is start departments and school sites off in a deficit so what we've done here is if they had balances left from where those POs came from then we have carried over the funds to go with them this is a very very large number for US traditionally we see about two to three hundred thousand dollars in purchase order carryover and this is a direct result of all of the people trying to get all of the same stuff in the state of California when Esser happened or when the covet happened and we just are still seeing that backlog in trying to um get our merchandise so 1.8 million dollars one time we have the 2122 balances of our supplemental um lcap actions and services so our district has um in the past maintained

238the Integrity of those programs that started in the prior year that may or may not have finished so that balance of seven million dollars um has been evaluated by Administration and there will be an adjustment to the budget to not fully use that seven million dollars but a portion of it to continue to fund the activities that are necessary the balance will go back into the reserve what we currently have right now that we're calling the mitigation of our unduplicated pupil percentage counts so as our percentage continues to be under the 55 percent we are still wanting to um hold those funds aside for those populations that are the most high needs and then we have an adjustment for Site Staffing we actually um have a saving so the negative means we spent more and

239the positive number means we had savings so we were actually able to reduce the budget um to reflect actual Site Staffing and then indirect and other adjustments so that's an action those are actually additional dollars for the district so as we have categorical programs there's an indirect cost in which it the administration incurs more costs to run categorical programs and with that that is an additional source of Revenue of 1.5 million so in total we increased our expenditures 84.8 million and that's leaving us with a deficit in 2223 of 34.8 million then looking at our multi-year projections and for the lcff we are still looking at a cost of living adjustment for the 23-24 school year and 24 25 school years of 5.38 and 4.02 percent respectively our student enrollment is based on a three-year

240rolling average and that is different for us as far as budgeting for that our expenditures include continuing the 22-23 stopping levels it includes an additional 4 million dollars for special education growth we have also adjusted in our multi-year projection the health care recommendations by the jhcc and how the district funds the district's portion of the healthcare Premium versus the 20 that the employees pay for and then changes in both calstrs and Calpers employer contributions so looking at our multi-year projection this is how we adopted our budget so in the first year deficit spending 10.8 million surplus in 2223 and a surplus of 24.25. for this particular um when we adopted there was two components that were missing from the state adopted budget so we did not have the Ada mitigation but we did have the

241three-year Ada averaging um and we were able to um budget the the um base Cola so what we saw in the state's adopted budget was an additional amount of cost of living adjustment and we saw the Ada mitigation so looking out first interim you can see our Revenue jumps to 711 million dollars we do have the 34 million dollar deficit spending in the first year and that's due to the items on the previous slide we then have a serp or a deficit in 2324 of 1.7 million and then we have our Surplus the 7 million in year in the third year so it's important to note when we look at the estimated 22 23 23 24 excuse me 23 24 and 24 25 those numbers and parentheses up there those are the department of finances

242um cost of living adjustment prior to the latest evaluation of Statewide revenues um for those of you that follow School business those are very very high and we're normally used to seeing colas that are two percent or less um we do believe that there we're probably going to see higher colas the question will be whether or not the state um funds prop 98 in total or not so we're not changing the estimates that we currently have in Revenue they will be re-evaluated once the governor's proposal comes out in January and we see if um there's any kind of direction or thinking on the state's part as far as funding and keeping prop 98 whole so our next steps um I will be back in January to give the board an update on the governor's proposal

243for school year then we'll be back in March to do our second interim um report and then we will report back on the May revision and then we will be adopting our budget in June and with that I will take questions and ask the board to take action to approve our State financial reports thank you Miss Hayes so those of us returning members have had a lot of time thanks to you with the multi-year projections and we discussed it in closed session but I know Mr Vargas this is probably our first exposure in this level of detail um but I will take questions and comments let's see which I think I started there last time I'm going to start over here Mr Bettis do you have any questions or comments yes foreign page 1 20

24420 22 23 student enrollment then you don't have anything underneath that you go so we have to go to page three and that's where you show the enrollment correct so this is an enrollment information this is Ada if you explain to that how we got to the numbers very excellent thank you and then the most important thing to me because we're negotiating the ongoing employee compensation the as we discussed or what you showed us because Ada drives the budget that's correct right that bottom line the more Ada the more we could pay and compensate our employees so that reflects the 71.7 that we have to deal with right plus all the other certificates rates substitutes kindergarten blah blah blah right but but but that is the most important thing in order to keep everybody happy

245I would say it a little bit differently I would say that the state has granted us an opportunity to take care of our employees we haven't been able to in the past well that's part of retention right and good healthy staff and training so anyway so that's what that's about that's what I liked about your report it's very uh simple straightforward and and this one has been an issue with me since lcff was initiated um is that the students that generate that money that I always said that that should go back 100 back to the schools that they are attending now uh prior to today I was told that it goes District White is that the same thing that's going on there are portions in our lcat actions and services that go directly to the

246students based on the school sites that have the general need students right what percent though I was wondering Mr Perez the the thing we we talk about it is the funds are generated by district-wide averages not by numbers of kids and percentages of kids at individual schools so that there we talked about the the original idea was the weighted student formula and that one was based on individual school and their breakdown of kids and then we then the funds were going to be generated by individual school when they came up with lcff they went a different direction and they they're using District averages of the of the student groups of the unduplicated kids to generate an income so so the the individual kids at the individual schools they don't directly generate the funding because it's

247built on averages because we have schools that are 100 percent pre-reduced but those those schools don't uh they don't get no schools in our district get concentration dollars anymore because we're below the 55 threshold as an average even though we have schools in the district well above 55 so we've got to make sure we're clear about that in how the dollars are generated they're they're generated district-wide they paid five um so 21 22 June 22 right that's the fifth that's the academic year or the fiscal year we are yes bound supplement now that's seven million dollars that could have went to those targeted students correct so so we did and it goes and you've mentioned that goes to reserves that's another issue that I have yeah but hang on okay answer for you I know

248okay so in our lcat right we have identified 70 plus million dollars of actions and services that go to our high needs students right okay so of all of those actions and services so 70 million dollars we have 7 million left right two million of it is our old summer school program right that we are not spending because it we have elop right okay so we really have a balance of five million dollars of that five million dollars I think 1.7 of it is going to go right back to those programs to serve our high needs students when what year right now 22 23 23 okay how much 1.7 okay and so that balance that's left is going okay the balance that's left I'm going to point you to page number seven right there it

249says anticipated loss of Upp in the reserve categories the 7.9 million no not words in it on the call of the 22-23 correct yes so that's 7.9 million is specific to right actions and services of high needs students that right there high needs students yes okay that difference that we're going to add is going to go against that 7.9 it's going to increase a little bit more and it takes board action to use those monies and actually move them up above the Surplus deficit line to go back to serving High needs students the reason we're not doing that right now is because school sites are 100 funded for their actions and services for their High needs students and have been since July 1. that's right that's because uh title one we and we right is

250that because that's the lcat El Cap oh just Al cap you're not talking about the time you're not talking about title one yet so we're keeping the Integrity Mr Perez which I think is what you were asking is we want to make sure that those dollars go back to serve those students so we've reserved them for that very specific purpose so in the event that we are not able to have enough lcff funds to continue that 70 million plus dollars it's in the lcat we have another place to go to to keep everybody at 100 percent oh okay now I feel better good I'm glad you feel better okay that's very clear again perfect I like the way you you understand that very important because you have a lot of students to Monterey like this

251uh okay uh the last question uh I think that was it because you're super good I love to hear it Mr Perez Mr Vargas oh okay hold on here last question special ed all right is that the most we could provide in our budget to the 4 million no that four million just is a is a number to help capture the growth so we grow at a faster rate in special education than we do with Ada right so in order to keep up with the population growth we have inserted four million dollars which for the most part has funded the additional staff and whatever those special needs students need and so right now in the preschool area for autism is where we're seeing that increase but we don't get Ada for preschool students the reason

252why I'm wondering because you know we have that seven million dollars and a lot of our students are low income and people of color and Foster use and runaways homeless and all that can we match that or Elevate that regarding using that seven seven over here we could there's currently not a need to do so so right now for fiscal year 2223 based on the needs of our special education population right now they have the equivalent of what they need in the event something was to change that just just say we got an influx of kids we didn't know we were coming there's a process by which we would bring it back to the board and say we need to utilize this source for I heard I heard the news up the hill that it's

253closing a charter school they might come down the hill okay well if that's the case then our friends is a special ed will let us know I think okay thank you thank you Mr Perez Mr Vargas any questions comments uh one quick question um so thank you this was incredibly helpful I am still getting a crash course in all of this stuff um but just uh jumping to page eight um I wanted to uh just observe that in the 2023-24 um based on this new the first interim we are looking at uh the deficit in that one um and obvious obviously things change it sounds like we have a lot of control after the lcff um you know adjustment as to you know changing that um but my question is just simply is is there

254any assumption baked into this um this projection that we need to be concerned about and there are several actually um the one area that we've been talking about for quite a while is the enrollment so we want to make sure our enrollment comes back up um our district always has hovered around about 55 with free and reduced lunch count um students um we're now in the high 40s like 49 48 so that's problematic and there's things that have happened at the state level that contribute to that so now we have Universal meals and so every student is entitled to two free meals and so that's changed demographics for us um we have tried different Avenues and I'm going to forget the the title of it but there's a new lcff survey form where parents can

255provide financial information to us and then that will help bolster um funding for the high needs students that we have in our district um the kova didn't help obviously um we have an attendance campaign to ensure that kids attend school more often um that was kind of put on hold because as we were coming out of covid parents were encouraged to keep their students home so we didn't keep spreading the virus so there's a number of different things that for the 22-23 school year that we continue to look at and we will continue to refine um the fact that we do have now in Ed code the ability to do a three-year average of ADA is huge so even after the um Ada mitigation goes away that's going to be helpful um I know there's

256been talk about funding schools and school districts on enrollment versus Ada don't know where that's going to land yet but for us as a district that's how we get most of our money right so we continue to watch our Ada and enrollment numbers and then we have um the attendance information office I always forget the acronym for that um they are really good about engaging parents so like if kids aren't coming to school you know why aren't they coming to school so we have different um Outreach if you will in order to help with that effort I think until probably next school year I would think it's going to feel even more normal than it feels this year and then hopefully we'll see a change in our um and our enrollment information I will share

257um even though we're still going back through and we're looking at our seabeds enrollment which is a measurement on the first Wednesday in October we have seen the um a greater I know how to say this there's more activity happening in the primary grades than we've seen in Prior years and so that's exciting because as our primary grades grow obviously that's going to carry our attendance through all the way 12th grade so there's some good stuff happening I just think we're still feeling the effects of coming out of covid great thank you very much and I look forward to chatting more with you to learn more thank you Mr Vargas Mr Yang questions or comments yeah um thank you Shen for uh the presentation um I think um we have discussed uh very extensively in

258closed session as well um and multiple closed sessions and so I thank you for that um I just wanted to um touch on um three points I think it's not just important for us to discuss about but for the public to to uh to hear too so uh the Surplus [Music] um I'm just curious where we at on that I know that there's uh different opinions on that some wanted to see Zero someone wanted to see as high as possible for security purposes where we at right now today what do you what do you think we we are at you're referring to reserve levels yeah so the reserve levels for 2223 the district is obligated to not have more than 10 percent in the reserve so the reason for that is the state has a

259rainy day fund by which um districts are not supposed to hoard money you're supposed to spend it um when you have it and that if there was a downturn or another recession that the state would have the rainy day fund to backfill for that um our district right now um that opinion about how much reserves does vary greatly the average across the state for a unified district is about 16 percent and you can see here for our 2223 budget that 76 million dollar ending balance is 7.4 percent so below the 10 percent um I would tell you that that's too low the reason for that is the two percent mandated reserve of the 22 million that you see there doesn't even make one payroll so if something catastrophic were to happen and we didn't have

260enough cash um that would be a huge problem um I don't think that I mean it's been pretty low before but it's been because we've been in either a recession or or something of that nature it wasn't something that was self-imposed um but this District I think does a pretty good job of um keeping a balanced budget um especially with with Chris because I've been I've had the pleasure of working with a number of different superintendents um you know and Chris's Vision with making sure that we have a surplus in that third year that's huge um you know making sure that you know just because the state puts out Cola amounts that weren't us not out spending money before we get it and there's been very good practices here in our district about how we

261do our finances um I I will say that 7.4 percent makes me a little Twitchy but understand it and I'm learning a little that it's okay and that hopefully stay if you have to use the rainy day fund they come through for us yeah thank you um all right my second point will be um we are facing inflation and um on the contrary we we are I guess we are technically speaking in recession and possibly going to do a Great Recession so what is your uh is there any forecasts as far as projections of not funding yeah not currently um we do have built in our multi-year projection factors um I wouldn't say to offset inflation because it doesn't do that truly but there's different components so like we have a factor I think it's

262five percent that's in there to help capture increased costs like utilities as an example um we don't have factors in for purchasing power so for supplies there's nothing in our budget that has a factor for that um we could probably look at doing that right now I wouldn't necessarily recommend it um I would tell you that this particular budget for first interim um is very healthy it's still very fragile um we don't have any low-hanging fruit and the last recession that we went through all of that was gutted and it did not come back so what you see in the budget has a very specific purpose and intent there's no like sacred cows or any of those things that are in there so um if inflation continues it's probably something we would have to take

263a look at okay so my third Point um know that Surplus we're we're pretty low we were facing inflation recession um I'm just curious if we have special needs in terms of certain programs that really need funding is there a reserve fund that we could pull it off to to keep that program going sure so the district has a number of opportunities that are coming and so at the on the next special board Workshop we're going to reevaluate our Esser funds so there's capacity there that goes out through June of 24 we have two new block grants that came to the district that have a longer life span a lot of them goes all the way out to June of 28 and then we have another one that's going to go out through I think

264it's June of 26th and then um we also have proposition 28 which was approved by voters in November and that will afford different opportunities for different types of things and so as the board has developed priorities in the past I would assume that we would go back through that same process and so as programs need to be funded or expanded upon then that would be at that point in time that's all I have thank you for your answers thank you Mr Yang Ms albiani thank you for the report Mr pushina thank you my colleague Mr Yang chose to spend significant amount of time in my opinion on the issue of reserves I'm pleased that you are doing as well as you're doing and getting it close to five percent which is a reasonable amount of

265money in my opinion and that of a whole lot of people um Shannon I I have two questions one is more of a program question than a budget question but I ask it because of a comment you made and and it has to do with our TK and and you said that because of the 12-1 requirement that we placed more money in the budget and conceivably I meant to pay for that to buy pair Educators to keep the ratio down that's correct the question is have we hired those para Educators in the TK program yes we have okay did we give did we give priority to the TK program because of the 12-1 requirement since we have uh 200 plus vacancies in Para we actually did a special um posting this for uh preschool uh

266para Educators and so we ran a pool just like we do for every other pool and then people applied to that pool so it wasn't like we prioritized one over the other uh I I wanted they they were called General Paris and I could be wrong but uh we posted that poll and we recruited just for that particular program just like we do for special ed Malmo then what was the reason for a special posting uh the requirements are a little different because some of them have ECE requirements that are different than uh special ed requirements yeah they're called a book called pairs but they're but they're different um in the requirements of what the what the um what the folks are doing in the CK classes is just a different different requirements the requirements

267are very different than regular and more than much sphere Paris okay thank you and then my second question uh Shannon deals with with special ed and and I'm not going to get in to anything that deals with reason or value or need but but hopefully your answer will help people have an understanding of funding explain what special ed growth means so everybody has an understanding and how that affects the general fund the content the contributions piece would be another piece so that's that's what I want pardon me so special education has um three funding streams if you will there's a state component a federal component and then there's a contribution from the unrestricted general fund special education legally has to provide services to Children starting at the age of three through age 22. District can

268only count Ada starting at age five through age 19 and so we have a population of students that don't generate revenue for the district and because of that we have a contribution so looking at um slide number eight up here that line that says contributions and transfers of 115 million what that means is between the federal and state funding for special education students it is not fully funded therefore we send 115 million dollars ish that's two different line items that are in there I think it's more around 110. 110 million dollars from the unrestricted lcff funds that we receive over to support children's with special needs what's important to note is the way the state funds special education is based on District Ada and not special education only Ada so as a District's population of

269students with special needs increases it's not a one-to-one and so what we've seen over time is our um it's called ab602 that's the funding model up until two years ago it was relatively flat the district received 33 million dollars for that activity um the state has been changing what they call the Statewide Target amount to increase it to better represent the funds that should come to a school district and so school districts across the state struggle with two things population and age in order to claim Ada and then depending on the students needs you could have a high need Student just because of whatever is written into their IEP and the cost of that so when we say growth for special education that four million dollars that is in our multi-year projection is to help

270offset the costs that come from um what we call dis Services which are services that are on top of a normal daily instruction so if a student needed physical therapy or a student needed speech therapy on top of their normal instruction that's written in their IEP there's those and serving our preschool students so as we have three and four-year-olds five-year-olds come into our system we still have to account for those costs as well and that's the only mechanism to do that is to increase the contribution and in this case we set aside four million dollars in addition to the normal factor of growth that we but put in our budget which right now I think is 2.8 million so on a normal school year whatever that is um we can see costs increase in special

271education year over year so you figure the entire delivery system so all your teachers salaries and benefits as they move across the salary schedule all your support services your vendor services as that grows over time we have another four million dollars on top of that to help fund those increases as they come in and for the most part we haven't been outside of that um for several years um I want to say six seven years ago we had a mid-year increase and it was a lot of money at that point and it was because all of a sudden we had all of these little ones coming out of our regional center and as different members have mentioned we have a very good special education program and so it's a magnet program is what it's been

272referred to in the past we did hear a comment you know about what are we doing with regards to advocacy for increasing sped and Mr foresee and it will say that you know that will never happen but but and he's actually it's actually has happened it's happened from the federal level because of work that we've done and it's happened directly at the state level um I always say I I literally carried the message that we were not getting paid for our kids under five that we were serving and we we have received funding related to that and the ab602 funding that we've had increases on that has been a direct message that we've been working on Non-Stop and so when we're not done with it so there has been advocacy on that and we've had

273results as you know um because of that work no doubt thank you superintendent Hoffman I do want to be Crystal Clear we have had significant increases in ab602 so where we hovered around 33 million or more now in the neighborhood of 50. so huge increases in that area as well as our idea funding so that used to be flat as well it used to have around 10 million dollars and it's up as well so a lot of positive things are happening we also received um federal funds related to preschool special education students that was separate and so they have been pushing more dollars into special education it would be nice to see those dollars turn into ongoing and that may be their plan going forward but right now we are seeing a lot more money

274um than we have ever seen for special education yes it is it's under the idea oh yeah but it's specific to preschool is what the new dollars that we've seen come in Shanna that was probably the best explanation I've ever heard in any Arena thank you thank you um I I just want to reiterate one point and and again not not get into discussions on value at this point in time every additional dollar we get is just lessening the burden on the general fund that's correct yeah thank you got it Mr fertina wonderful thank you thank you um Miss Hayes it's like you're teaching a class every time you present this and it's very much needed and appreciated thank you so much thank you I would like to call for a motion to approve the

2752022-23 first interim financial report so moved second moved and seconded I'm going to conduct a roll call vote and right before I do that I want to just announce for folks at Mr track uh has finals tomorrow and he had to go home and study so he makes his apologies for having to leave around 10 pm um roll call vote uh Miss albiani aye Mr Fortuna aye Mr Bettis aye Mr Vargas aye Mr Yang aye and I am also an I measure passes next item is board member and superintendent reports this is our opportunity to submit reports on organizational and committee meetings relative to the district and its operation I'm not sure that we've had any of those this late in the year so very quick this Mr superintendent okay very quickly so uh first

276I want to say Mr Vargas welcome um I appreciate you coming in with your eyes wide open and uh open uh to questions that open to the concept of this thing's really big and really complicated and we will help you along the way so really glad that you're here and part of the team uh Mrs Espinoza over the screen looking forward to working with you and I'm again in the uh the role as president and I'm here to uh to help and I look forward to your leadership and as we move forward into Ms Jamerson hope you feel better and look forward to you in the uh in the vice president role thank you to the entire staff this this team here is as good as there is and I'm proud of them and I

277appreciate them very much and the labor Partners you make a huge difference too and our parents even when we don't agree I promise you we will we will get this uh we'll get this whole thing done and we appreciate the partnership um as well so hope everybody gets a little bit of downtime yes no I can do it so we do it we do have a a new member on cabinet so uh Kristen coats is here and she's new the deputy on the business side of the house and we are super happy to have her and I have to say again I'm the least popular superintendent in the county because we keep taking the best people from other places so uh but welcome really glad to have you and we're not sorry um next item

278is consideration of future agenda items this is our opportunity to briefly ask for consideration for a matter to be placed on a future agenda do we have any of those well I'm not generally regarding uh I guess we have because we have new um board member here we need to go back to that committee assignment agenda item or what how are we going to do that it's not on today's agenda but we'll bring it back yeah and seeing no other hands I'm going to adjourn the meeting at 10 30 p.m wishing you all a happy holidays and a well-deserved break