001All right, I want to call the meeting to order at 4 pm. Um, roll call, please. Trusty Wagan, here. Trusty Soilu. Trusty Murphy, here. Trusty Pearson, here. Trusty Anderson here. Trusty Crane. Dr. Smith here. All right. Adoption of of the agenda. Do I have a motion? So moved. Second. Moved by Trusty Pearson. Seconded by Trusty Anderson. Roll call vote. Trusty Wagan. Yes. Trusty. Trusty Murphy here. Or yes. Trusty Pearson. Yes. Trusty Anderson. Yes. Trusty Crane. Okay. Vote carries. 4. Um, and we have community input on uh closed uh session items only. We have one um comment and um would you like to read your um statement, Trusty Murphy? Uh this is an opportunity for the public to address the board regarding items on the close session agenda only. Comments on close session agenda items are
002limited to three minutes per comment up to 20 minutes per topic. A speaker may not relinquish his or her time to another person. All right. Our first uh comment is from uh David Martinez. Hello, Madame President, members of the board. My name is David Martinez. I'm a former 7-Eleven committee member and currently serve on the Costa Mesa Planning Commission, but I'm just here for myself. Uh, I just wanted to comment on the property that's on your close session agenda. Uh, and first want to recognize the need for more housing, more development. I was just at planning commission last night recommended the city council approve a 150 unit apartment development. And I know we need more housing, but this site presents a unique opportunity for a for open space, for recreation, for nature-based education, for things
003like that that I think it would be a really big shame to pass up. Um, I went to College Park and then I went to Mesa Middle in high school and we never got anything like out in nature. We never did a field trip out to to a park or something like that. Uh, I remember in seventh grade biology, we just had the outdoor patio for science class and that was like our experience with plants and that was it. Um, this uh could be open space by owned by you uh leased to someone else. Uh, let students know about nature, about the environment. It it could be a really great opportunity for you all to to do something with this. It makes me think about Mesa Waters Murf, the reliability facility that they just opened.
004Uh that's now a place where students and anyone else in the community can go and learn about water, the water table, water issues. Um and that's owned by, you know, Mesa Water Government Agency. be amazing if Newport Mesa also got an opportunity to own or lease out uh from or to uh a different agency, some kind of educational experience like what Mesa Water has. Um yeah, so at at 7-Eleven committee, I spoke up for this essentially. I wanted it to be uh open space to be prioritized among the board when you consider uh what to do with this property and I hope that you keep that in mind with this uh negotiation. Thank you. Thank you. So seeing that there are no more comments um we are going to move now into close session. The
005items are A conference with legal counsel existing litigation one case, B conference with a real property negotiator, C conference with labor negotiator, D public employee discipline, dismissal, release employment. Um, we will return from close session at 6 p.m. Thank you. All right, I'm going to call the meeting to order at 6:01 p.m. and opening ceremonies and moment of reflection uh led by Ashley Anderson. Ready to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. All right. Moving on to adoption of minutes from um 52025 and 52725. Do I have a motion? So move. Second. Okay. Moved by Trusty Crane, seconded by Trustee Pearson. Roll call vote. Trusty Wagan. Yes. Trusty Soilu. Trusty Murphy. Trusty Pearson. Yes. Trusty Anderson.
006Yes. Trusty Crane. Yes. Okay. Motion carries. Poro. Um, now moving on to in introduction of new staff. We've got, uh, Sarah, assistant soup, Sarah J. Great. Thank you, uh, President Wand, members of the board, Dr. Smith, colleagues, and, uh, community members. I'm very pleased to introduce and welcome two new people with key special education roles. And first, I'd like to call up to the podium Dr. Heather Cash. and Heather will start on July 1st, although she's kind of already started as our director of special education, early learning, and elementary. So, Dr. Cash has more than 20 years of experience in education, including roles as a site administrator and director. For the past two years, she's supported our elementary school sites as a coordinator of special education with a focus on early education. She's fostered partnerships
007between general education and special education to improve learning outcomes for students. Her advocacy for all students and commitment to improving the quality of education for all students will be important traits as she begins her new role. Her experience in both general education and special education provides her that valuable perspective to lead early childhood and elementary programs and support our goal of more inclusive programs and services. She has a very strong interpersonal skills, an abundance of energy, and a deep commitment to the success of all students. She earned her bachelor's degree from Pepperdine University, her master's in educational administration from Cal Lutheran, and her doctorate in education from the University of Southern California. Two out of three isn't bad. So, please join me in welcoming Dr. Heather Cash into her new position as the elementary director
008of special education. Thank you so much for having me here tonight. And I want to just tell you how how full of gratitude I am to be part of Newport Mesa Unified. I have enjoyed the last two years here and I have friends and colleagues and mentors in the room and in the district and I just can't wait to continue working with them in this new role and supporting what you value also which is all students every day giving every child exactly what they need. So thank you again for my time here. I thought for sure I'd hear a fight on from somewhere in the audience. No. Okay. One. Two fightons. Okay, I'll take And then would you like to introduce any family or friends you brought? Yes. I brought my husband, also a Trojan
009in the back, David Cash. So, thank you again for tonight. I appreciate it. Thank you, Heather. And then I'd like to call Oh, I'll let you. That's okay. And then I'd like to call Robert Nichols to the podium. So he joins Oh, we'll take that. And he joins NMUSD from the um warm Coachella Valley Unified School District where he served as the director of special education since 2022. And prior to his time in Coachella Valley, he was also the director in Palm Springs Unified. So um definitely likes that warm weather a little bit. Um so he began his career as an accountant which um thrilled Mr. Trader when he started talking about how to monitor the special education budget. Um so throughout his two decades though in education he has extensive knowledge of special education
010serving as a moderate severe teacher for 10 years a special education teacher on special assignment a special education program specialist and special education coordinator. His experience with student assessment, data analysis, differentiated instruction, and functional classroom design will support our work with co-eing the alternative diploma pathway and building inclusive programs at the secondary level. We're excited to welcome Robert to Newport Mesa. He is knowledgeable, experienced leader who is known for working closely with administrators, teachers, support staff, and families. So Rob obtained his bachelor's degree from Drexel University and and master's degree in educational administration and special ed from Cal State University San Bernardino. So please join me in welcoming Mr. Rob Nichols as the secondary director of special education. Hi. Thank you everyone. I'm very excited to be here. Uh, I'm very excited to be out
011of 116 degree weather, which it's already 116. Um, but very excited to be here. We're relocating from the desert um to Orange County. And I just have to say uh I've been able to spend some time here already. And just the warm welcome um that I've gotten really makes it um an exciting place for me to be. Um, my passion throughout uh my 22 years, which I just realized today has happened very fast, has really been inclusion and creating those inclusive environments to make sure that all really does mean all. And um I was happy to see when I got here that my vision really aligns with that of uh Newport Mesa and I'm very excited to be able to continue that work here. So, thank you very much. I appreciate the opportunity. And then
012Rob, did you have you want to introduce anyone? Uh, I brought my husband tonight, Joe Chung, in the back. It's It's his first ever board meeting, so he was a little nervous. So, she wants to take your picture. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Well, and on to number 11, which is recognition. Um, Dr. Torres. Yes. Good evening. And it's always a wonderful night when we have students uh in our audience. And so at this time, I'd like to welcome up uh Dr. Keith. I'm sorry, I called Dr. Keith Carmona. He's going to get one. And he tells me, well, you tell me you're going to be a Trojan. I'm not sure. Um Keith Carmona to come up and he is oversees our AVID program and he's going to introduce our students tonight. Good evening,
013uh President Wagan, trustees, Superintendent Smith, uh and executive cabinet. Tonight we are celebrating the accomplishments of some incredible students in our middle and high school AVID programs. Um, as you know, AVID is a college readiness program now at seven of our secondary campuses and six of our elementary schools. Um, so each year in a partnership with the Orange County Department of Education, um, Orange County Secondary AVID schools are providing opportunity to select their most outstanding eighth grade and senior students to be celebrated at a special ceremony that took place last month. um one at the Diamond Club for our eighth graders and then another one at the Barkley Theater at UCI for our seniors. Uh so tonight we're bringing them up and having them recognized by the board of education for their excellence in all
014that they've done. Um so we're going to start with our eighth graders, then we're going to introduce our high schoolers, and then I have one other short announcement for or uh presentation for you. Uh, so tonight our um avid standout eighth grade students are from Costa Mesa Middle School, Netsy Morales Bravo. From Enson Intermediate, Ethan Okmpo. And from T-winkle Middle School, Renata San Roman. Not all of them are able to make it because here we are already in summer. And our avid standout seniors are from Costa Mesa High School, Diego Reyes. From Early College High School, Victor Jimenez. From Estansia High School, Valerie Garcia Barahas. And from Newport Harbor High School, Jazelle Ales. [Applause] Please join me in congratulating these outstanding AVID students. [Applause] Finally, in a continued partnership with uh the AVID schools in
015Orange County, the Angels Baseball Foundation has a program that provides college scholarships for seniors based upon a rigorous application process. Uh these scholarships are unique in that Angels baseball evaluates the students hard work and accomplishments and then ensures that the selected students attend college at no cost. The Angels will provide scholarships that cover the balance of their tuition and other costs that aren't already covered by whatever grants or scholarships that students have received. So ostensibly the students uh receive full rides to their school of choice which is pretty incredible. Tonight we would like to recognize the students from Newport Mesa who applied and were selected for this very prestigious honor. Um they also were able to attend a fancy ceremony already this spring. Um, from Early College High School, Indigo Columb. And from Newport Harbor
016High School, Isabella Zubieta, Sophie Zubieta, May Gooto, and Jazelle Ales. [Applause] Congratulations. Thank you very much. Thank you. And back to you, Dr. Torres. Additionally, tonight we have another celebration um of our spring athletes. And so at this time, I would like to welcome up principal Mike Halt of Estansia High School, who can introduce uh his AD and coach. Thank Dr. Torres, President Ward, trustees, Dr. Smith. Uh it's my pleasure to be back here again. Uh second time in four years, and I'd like to introduce the uh man be responsible for that. Um you're right, our athletic director and uh head coach Nate Gri. Hopefully we don't screw this up this time. Sorry, President Wagan, members of the board, Dr. Smith, executive cabinet, and the guests. Uh, thank you also to Dr. uh, Mike Shock,
017who couldn't be here tonight, and Mr. Haltz for all their support for our baseball program, uh, and board member Anderson uh, being there Cal State Forton. I'd like to introduce to you the 2025 CIF champions, Asanti baseball. might [Music] get squish a little. I know the paparazzi's here, but it's all about me right now. Camera first. Okay. Smile. Okay. Now, I'm going to step out. Let the paparazzi go. [Applause] Thank you and congratulations uh gentlemen. Wonderful job. Congratulations. [Applause] All right, congratulations everyone. We'll let the room clear. We have an LCAP presentation, don't we? She's kind of in the middle. All right. Um, next on the agenda is a Harbor Council PTA report, but we don't have a report this uh this meeting. So, we have CSEA President Amy Ching. Good evening, President Wagan, trustees,
018Superintendent Smith, cabinet, and guests. I want to congratulate all the students and staff for a great year and welcome um ever all the new staff to the district. Uh, speaking of new staff to the district, um, as we know, Leona and Jeff um are retiring at the end of this month and, um, as part of that, we have new staff coming on and I found myself wandering through, uh, YouTube and watching, uh, other schoolboard district meetings through the evening and my husband would come home and say, "What are you doing?" I'm like, "Oh, I'm watching the schoolboard meetings." And he's like, "Are you crazy?" But anyways, um uh in watching the other school board meetings, I uh just found it very interesting and one of the observations that I made was just in comparison to
019our district, what a what great leadership we have and just the way we treat each other was really great. And so I just wanted to commend everybody uh cabinet and uh trustees for that. Um it's a great place to be and I appreciate all of you for that. Uh so on to the speech. Since the last board meeting, the district held ACE day appreciating classified employees where trustees, the superintendent, assistant soups, and other administrators spent time exploring the world of classified employees. It was a great day filled with community and laughter as we learned more about each other. I want to thank Kristen Clark, administrative director of classified personnel, for her dedication to this program and to supporting classified staff. A second think tank meeting was held last week. This is a place where those
020who participate are encouraged to voice their needs and develop pathways to improve their skills and performance for themselves and others in their classifications. Employees feel empowered and hopeful when they leave. This joy, the lighter spring in their step is the fire we hope to ignite among in within them. Neither of these events can take place without your support. Through your leadership, we hope that administrators and supervisors throughout the district will aspire to create a culture where classified employees are valued and respected. We look forward to continuing to do the good work for students, staff, and the community. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, NMFT President Ronda Reed. Good evening, President Wagan, trustees, Superintendent Dr. Smith, cabinet, and guests here tonight. Well, we made it through another year. Got a little chaotic at the end. The
021last week of school was the longest week in the entire school year. But in the end, all students received a world-class education delivered by the most amazing teachers in all of Orange County. Thank you trustees for showing them their worth, their value, and how much you truly appreciate them. So, as we look ahead um towards the next year, which really just feels like it's right around the corner, I hope we can continue the tenants of LMI, timely, and um clear communication, transparency, and trust. So, we have nearly 60 certificated educators retiring. I don't know if that's the correct number, but that's what we have. But I just want to talk about one retiree tonight and that's one of yours management Leona Olsen. So for three years I have been working with her as president of
022NMFT and one thing that stood out really early on is her graciousness. Um, so toward all of our members, not only is she extremely skilled in her job, her depth of knowledge and her profession is exceptional, but it is her heart for people that is truly extraordinary. Re recently, I have again been shown that and aruck about the generosity of her graciousness. Not only does she strive, you're going to make me cry. Not only does she strive to always do the right thing for all educators, but she shows them the same care whether they have been in the district their entire career or they're brand new. So, not only does um her leadership just astound anyone that works with her, it has touched her entire department as they have that same heart of care. So,
023thank you, Leona Olsen. All right. Now, on to community input on non-aggend agendaized items. Uh, Trusty Murphy. I'm a little tearyeyed, too. Um, yes. Uh, this is an opportunity for the public to address the board regarding items. Nope, that's not the right one. Thank you. This is an opportunity for the public to address the board regarding items on the regular meeting agenda. Comments are comments on agenda items are limited to three minutes per what? Why did you do that to me? God just looking at Leotaa and getting teeyed. Okay. Getting for a glimpse. This is an opportunity for the public to address the board regarding items not on the regular meeting agenda. Comments on non-aggenda topics are limited to three minutes per comment up to 20 minutes per topic. A speaker may not relinquish his
024or her time to another person. By order of the Brown Act section 54954.2, the board will take no action or have any discussion on non-aggendaized items. The superintendent may provide clarification during superintendent's comments. Okay, we have Eddie Garcia. Good evening everyone. Uh, superintendent, board members, thanks for having me again. I'm Eddie Garcia and it, you know, here we are in June. And I was feels like just yesterday I was here talking about what we're going to do for this school year and then also Shalomar and that experience and so um time flies when you're having a great time. So thank you all. I just wanted to share a few things that we've been doing um with think together. Um you know the the idea for think together is changing the odds for kids and that's
025really what we do and we have a whole team that really looks at uh beyond the program. what else are we providing for the programs that we can potentially uh bring in for the kids? And we have grant people that work on our grants team that apply for grants to bring in different experiences that could supplement the learning for our kids. And so there was two wonderful events. Well, there was many many things that we did this school year at. Um there was two a couple things that we brought in a a culinary arts program for two weeks that kids were able to experience actually with chefs that came in to work with our students to teach them some different um how to make healthy snacks for kids and um that was a really great
026experience and it was a two-eek experience um that the kids have with some of these chefs that are also on like Top Chef and things of those natures that came in. So that was a really great experience. We also had a steam week where we had um some uh fulcrum um team building organization. We also had mad science and it was a whole week of kids just learning um about science, building go-karts that they had to build. They also talked about sound. They had to do the egg drop and the just a variety activities that they all they did that week. And so I have a few flyers that I want to share and that has just their wonderful little faces doing their activities. So um I will leave this for you all. It's been
027a great experience working with our wonderful principal, Miss Schwarz over at Paulino, and also working with, you know, the team here with Christy Flores and her team. They're all wonderful people. And so, we look forward um to serving more kids next year. This year, we finished at a rate of 90 oh 95.5% was our average daily attendance that we had. So, it was really great. We were really short of 100, but that's okay. And we had 89.89 eight nine students was the average. I know you can't make a point eight student, but we were contracted for nine students and that was where we ended. So, we're very proud of the work we did in at Polarino and we look forward to working with everyone in the team in the following school year. Thank you all
028very much. Thank you. Next, we have a superintendent com superintendent comments. Certainly no corrections. I would just thank think think together again for being a great partner and for the services and for keeping the board updated. So let's uh let's keep it up. Okay. 16. Community input on agendaized items. Trusty Murphy. This is an opportunity for the public to address the board regarding items on the regular meeting agenda. Comments on agenda items are limited to three minutes per comment up to 20 minutes per topic. A speaker may not relinquish his or her time to another person. Speaker cards for items on the discussion action calendar may be held until that item is considered by the board if the speaker prefers. Okay. And I'm going to try this name because you have very lovely writing. So
029I hope I get it. Um and Angelie Andradea. Sorry. Hello President Wagan. uh superintendent and board. Uh my name is Angela Andra Verta. Um pardon it was a rushed writing. So um I am I'm a mom of a college park third grader in the Mandarin immersion program. Super proud and we're going to fourth grade. Um I appreciate shout out to the past speaker. She absolutely loves Think Together. We're so excited to participate also in the summer school um programming that is happening in just a couple of weeks. We cannot wait. Um but I wanted to just quickly come by. I missed an opportunity to speak in the close session item regarding the opportunity opportunity the unique opportunity that the district has in protecting Banning Ranch. I have had the fortune to serve our city as
030parks commissioner and through my time there I quickly learned on the inequitable p um representation of individuals that live on the west side of Kosamea and how much green space we have available to our community is very unbalanced. Um, and now working with the planning commission at the moment for district 4, I'm realizing that it's quite a challenge for the city to figure out where are their pocket opportunities to create parks and bringing accessibility to our community. Um, investment on the city level um to plan for, strategize, and actually carve out spaces to make into green space for our westside community are far far in 2025, 2028. Um so the reality is it's not happening. Um we have a couple of parks here. Um but it's not sufficient for the community, the local community. Um
031this so this is such a important opportunity to protect banning ranch is a issue truly of environmental justice I believe for our community. the fact that it has I we got to I got to hear some highlights of the open community session that happened at the community center and learning that this uh preserve will have access directly or provide closer access to the beaches for our westside residents is truly truly powerful. So um affordable housing I can share with you from the planning perspective is coming along slowly but surely. Um, we just approved affordable housing in the Costa Mesa Motel right on Harvard Boulevard. There's actually going to be 38 Liveorg units right in that area, 960 West 16th Street. So, there's already great congestion happening there. I highly highly encourage you to preserve this
032space as green space. Westside truly truly needs the green space. I'm sure you all heard um the feedback also from the broader community at the Norma Herdsog community uh feedback session. So really, it's just a a pitch. Please preserve green space for the Westside residents. Our children need it. They need that exposure. They need that connectivity with everything else that is happening in the world right now. We need that space to relieve to regain um mind jokes. Thank you. Okay. Number 17 is achievement report on early literacy and reading difficulty screener. Uh Dr. Sir. Yes. So, if I could please ask Dr. Lori Hernandez and her team to come up. Uh, we're excited tonight to present to you really two areas. The outstanding work that uh our team is doing in regards to early literacy
033and monitoring reading foundational skills along with a requirement that uh came to us uh from the state in regards to having a universal reading screener to help address reading difficulties. So, we have a great out an outstanding set of information based off of a lot of tremendous work that our team is doing in regards to supporting early literacy in our district. Dr. Hernandez, good evening, President Wan, members of the board, Superintendent Smith, staff, and guests. I'm excited to again stand before you to provide updates on early literacy as I've done in the past. Tonight, we have some new information about some legislation for uh screening students. And so we're going to be sharing that with you along with some data. Our efforts in literacy are rooted in board priority one and also in our beliefs
034that all of our students are our students. So this what you hear tonight applies to all of our students. Um students with IEPs u multilingual learners. Um every student in our system needs high quality reading instruction. Our early literacy efforts um extend beyond just the teaching and learning department. This has been a partnership between teaching and learning, the early literacy department who or early learning department, sorry, under Kathleen Liry who started this work several years ago, special education and multilingual programs. We've been partners in this work and our P3 literacy team has evolved and accomplished a lot in the last few years. We've strengthened systems for assessment, implemented new curriculum, and much more. Um the team includes teachers and administrators from preschool, TK and elementary in both general and special education. So uh as usual,
035I'm excited to share some of our continued successes. We now have 150 teachers who have participated in the letters training, which is language essentials for teachers of reading and spelling. And that includes uh classroom teachers, support teachers, and special education teachers. We've implemented Hegarity phenemic awareness and phonics curriculum districtwide. We're also proud of the expansion of our TK program. Even more than the expansion of the program is actually the high quality of the program that has led to some major gains. We've been measuring um students when they enter kindergarten. And we found that like this year 80% of our students who attended one of our TK programs entered with first sound fluency which is one of the building blocks for learning to read. That compared to 63% of students who did not attend our TK
036program. So what that tells us is that our early learning programs are working. And obviously we can't control, we know some of those kids had TK in different places or had different preschool programs, but we took our we're tracking our students that are attending our TK programs and we're finding that the outcomes are are really exciting for that. So as I've told you in past presentations, acadians is how we measure phmic awareness and phonics in our youngest learners. So phone segmentation fluency, the ability of students to actually hear the different sounds in a word has grown significantly and you can especially see that in title one schools. We attribute the growth to a strong cohesive curriculum, highly trained kindergarten teachers, support teachers, and also as I mentioned our strong early learning prek programs. Grade 1
037also grew this year. So 16% more students than last year are proficient in decoding nonsense words, which means they can read unfamiliar words using just their skills in phonics. And so we're really excited to see that growth again this year. We also assess passage reading in first grade. And this is where we put some attention this past year due to our data showing that some students progress slowed at this phase of reading development. we did see that students were stalling out at actually going from the the decoding of the nonsense words into being fluent, accurate readers. So, we've we put some emphasis on that, targeted some support, and we do see that with those targeted efforts, we've now, you know, you can see there was a 10% growth in Title One schools in that measure.
038Um, and I hope what that shows is that we're using data to inform our actions, to inform where we're putting our energy, where we're really thinking critically about what we're doing. And I think um you'll see that with the new legislation coming, it's going to shift some of our practices for assessment, but I think it's going to be um great improvement um in what we're doing, what we're already doing. So, Senate Bill 114 is what we're talking about, which requires the screening of all students in kinder, first, and second grade for reading difficulties, and it's based upon research that early identification and intervention is critical. The good news is that Newport M is already doing this. we started this work um I mean for many years even prior to my four years here the district
039had a strong history in this area so in the past four years we've really spent a lot of time and effort on training on looking at how we're screening students how we're benchmarking students how we're progress monitoring students so this is is not going to be such a drastic shift for our district as it might be for others we do have already have systems we just need to make some changes to our systems to align with the legis legislation. So, our team tonight is going to share with you a recommendation to consider as part of this legislation. And our team tonight is we have Christina Frink Manfrey. She's one of our ELD TOSAs. We have Jamie Nye from the special education department, also a TOSA. Uh Maggie Dodd, she's one of our full-time support teachers
040from Victoria Elementary. And Shannon Haney is one of our teaching and learning TOSSAs. Hi there. Okay. So, um, in December, the state department of education released the approved list of from the selection committee of the screeners that districts in California were allowed to choose from. And so, these were our four screeners that we had to choose from. And we eliminated um the bottom one there, ROAR, because it uh did not offer an option for us for kindergarten students. And the bill is for kindergarten, first and second grade students. So, that one got eliminated right away. And then the other one we eliminated was Multitudes. It is a one-time only screener. So we would still have to have a cadence to in order to know if our students were making progress. Um so we eliminated those
041two and we opted to pilot a mirror learning and amplify uh which is the MClass dibbles edition. So we had a brief abbreviated pilot. Um we had full-time support teachers from each of our four zones. So one school from each zone. Um and some of our uh classroom teachers from the P3 committee also participated and they were trained on each of the different measures like a 45 minute zoom after school and they each did about eight students per grade level um per school. Uh the teachers had about 8 to 10 days to complete the assessments and give them a try and then they completed an evaluation form at the end that was provided from the county. And Maggie's going to talk to you. She was one of our piloting teachers. Good evening. Um, I'm going
042to talk about the Mclass Dibbles assessment first. Uh, this was the first screener that we piloted. It is the most similar to our current Aadian benchmarking system. Um, it is a bit upgraded. Uh, many measures that are in the Acadians are repeated in MClass and the students are assessed one- on-one with a teacher. Um unlike Acadians, however, MClass does the scoring for us and makes recommendations for next steps in instruction. The Amira on the other hand uses AI to assess students. Um it's computer administered and we experienced a lot of glitches and extended lag time for the students because she Amira couldn't respond to the individual students in front of her. um because we didn't administer the assessments ourselves, we didn't understand exactly how she was um capturing the data, the reports were not very
043informative to us in terms of instructional steps and um the scoring often took 24 to 72 hours kind of defeating the purpose of using AI to save time. Thanks. So just to go into a little bit more about MClass which is our recommendation um the M and MClass stands for mobile classroom and MClass is like the digital platform that houses the actual assessment. The suite of assessments are called Dibbles which has been around for decades and people in the room probably have heard of it. Um Dibble stands for it's of course it's an acronym dynamic indicators of basic early literacy skills. Um some positives about MClass for us is that like we've mentioned it's very similar to Aadians. The same measures that Lori presented earlier will be represented in the new assessment. Um the benchmarks
044are slightly different but I mean it'll be a very similar transition, easy transition for our teachers. The measures are also K6. The data in MCAS is normed. It's updated. Uh the par the parent teacher reports are very visually appealing and they're really easy to read. Uh which is really helpful and we will have immediate access to the results. So, here is just an example of a parent report um for a fictional student named named Emma Ashley. Um we love this first question. Why is Emma being assessed? The teachers and administrators at our school want Emma to read successfully. Full stop. Like right there, that's the clarity of that statement kind of just shows our goal. Um it then goes on to which is really helpful explain some of the measures that the student took. So,
045letter names and phmic awareness and then defines for parents what phmic awareness actually is. And I love the statement, can your child identify the first, middle, and last sound in sun? Right? So, just the clarity of that is just really helpful. Um, MClass also gives parents reports on things they can do at home and on the go to help support their students. So, it's going to be very helpful. And now we'll hear from Christa. Good evening. I'm going to talk to you a little bit about the implications of this legislation on our multilingual learners. Um, so the legislation really looks at our multilingual learners through um through an equity lens, which is great. It's what we're already doing here in Newport Mesa. Um, but things that they particularly call out is that we ensure that
046our multilingual learners are neither overidentified for special education through this testing nor under academic supports. Um, that we use culturally and linguistically appropriate screening tools, which both school both tools we piloted are um, linguistically appropriate. um if the primary language actually do we need to screen our students in their primary language if they do not speak sufficient English to be screened and I'll talk to you about those details in the next couple slides. If a primary language screener is unavailable though an alternate process should be used which we already have here in Newport Mesa which is great. Um but I'm going to explain to you just about the four pathways on how we'll screen our multilingual students. So, one way that we would do this is just to assess students in English. And that would
047happen if a student can understand directions in English, if they've received some instruction and exposure to English, or if they've scored a level two or four on their summitive LPAC, which is the English language proficiency assessment for California. Um, or a two to three on the initial ELPAC because that tells us that they have sufficient English. we would assess the student in their primary language and that would be Spanish because our um MC class which we're proposing that we adopt comes in a Spanish assessment. So we would do that if a student is in Spanish dual immersion program. So our wittier students in K2 would be assessed in Spanish. Um if a student cannot understand directions in English, if they're newly arrived, a newcomer 12 months or less in the US or if they demonstrate
048some basic skills in Spanish. Of course, we don't want to put a Spanish language test in front of a student who doesn't demonstrate those basic skills and just frustrate them. Okay. Um, oh, and I want to take a look at that star. Um, we as a multilingual TOSSA team, um, we would recommend that students be assessed in Spanish after going through our own process which is called a a newcomer welcome kit where we come, we meet our newcomer students, we assess them for their proficiency in their primary language. We would assess students in English and their primary language, Spanish, if they are in again the Spanish dual immersion program, third through sixth grade, because those students have received instruction in both English and Spanish for 50% of their day at that point. Or if a
049student demonstrates reading risk in English, so we've assessed them in English, they show reading risk and they have some basic skills in Spanish, we would assess that student once again using the Spanish assessment. All right. And then the last process, sorry, got cut off a little bit. Um, our alternative process, again, that newcomer welcome kit for that welcome meeting. If a student cannot understand directions in English, again, if they're a newly arrived newcomer, um, and if they have primary language other than Spanish, so this would be maybe students who are Russian speaking, right? Um, we would do our alternative process, which would be to go out to screen the student to see if they have primary language. um we would use our specialized interpreters to help with that. We just want to see we want
050to look at those students not through a deficit model but through um an assetbased model to see what they what they know in their own language. Okay. So that is everything with multilingual supports. I'm going to turn it over to Jamie. She's going to talk about special education. Okay. Hello. Thank you. Um I'll be talking about students on IEPs and 504. the legislation um has allowed exceptions. So the exceptions that are allowed are the um diagnosed students with reading disabilities. Um an exception for IEP and 504 students and students that are currently assess in the assessment process. However, in Newport Mesa, we are using Dibbles to inform instruction. Therefore, all of our students will participate in district-wide MClass and Dibbles assessments unless their IEP team has recommended alternative assessments. And why? Because assessing all students
051aligns with our current IEP testing recommended recommendations for district testing. It continues current baseline and goal progress monitoring data points. It maintains the integrity of our district's longitudinal data. It supports collaboration between general education and special education teams. It enables teams to adjust instruction and group students efficiently or effectively. Um it streamlines our assessment tools and reduces duplications of of efforts. All right. So, um, if approved later during discussion action, our plan is to train, thoroughly train all of our full-time support teachers. Every one of our sites has a full-time support teacher. Um, Title One schools have two. So, those people would be extensively trained and they would be our first assessors because the validity of the data is really important to us and we've put a lot of work into making sure everyone administering
052Aadians has been highly trained. We don't want to sacrifice that with the adoption of a new tool. So, we're going to and we have access to the full-time support teachers where classroom teachers to get them for six hours for a training is a little more difficult at the start of the year. We don't want to pull kindergarten teachers out the first week of school for training. So, what we're going to do is we're going to start with our full-time support teachers being really our experts, our first assessors. They're going to do all the screening initially because we want them to work out the kinks, to learn the tool, to learn, you know, to be the experts. Um, we've piloted the the software with a couple different devices. So, we teachers have laptops. We also have
053student Chromebooks and then iPads. We found that iPads with the pencils is the best way because you can actually see the students face and engage with them better than having the screen in front of you. So, um, iPads are the the preferred tool. So, we're going to we're going to do that with our full-time support teachers. We have grade level kits. So, although the teacher is on the device, the student is actually looking at paper. So they'll have physical a paper that has the letters and they're reading from the paper. So it's it's comfortable for the student and then the teacher's the one scoring on the device with the with the iPad and that's how we get the instant results as opposed to our system now with a cadence is these little booklets and it's
054a lot of manual manual work. And so this is we feel like this is really going to enhance um and make more efficient our assessments. So we're going to start with that. Our benchmarking and screening windows are going to stay the same because it is basically the same assessment. So all of that will stay the same as last year. And then we're going to offer training for classroom teachers in year 1 who want it. So we do have some really skilled um primary grade teachers that would want to assess their own students. We're not going to restrict that. So we're going to offer some afterchool sessions for teachers that want to do that. And then at Whittier, the Whittier teachers will need to be trained in the Spanish assessment because it does need to be
055a bilingual assessor giving that assessment. And so the team at Whittier would be trained and they would be the ones assessing their own students supported centrally by the teaching and learning and multilingual departments. So tonight it is recommended um later tonight on discussion action that the board approve the MClass Dibbles 8th edition um as our screener for K2. We will also be implementing it for 36. So we won't be keeping a cadence. We would switch over our whole system. But the legislation is specific to K2. And at this time, if the board has any questions, we would be happy to answer them. Trusty Murphy, thank you. Sounds great. I do wonder about that fourth option that doesn't even offer kindergarten. What was that on that fourth option? Yeah, you know, it it's we were surprised.
056Normally when the state adopts something like that, they do have other ways of proving that like your system meets that or I don't know how four companies are going to sustain the whole state of California. That is a a question we definitely have especially when the techn is already glitchy on the other system that we piloted. So when the AI doesn't work. Exactly. So yeah, we have the same thoughts. Uh okay, so in case I might have just missed it. This is actually my real question. Is dyslexia on here? Is Yeah. So that when they say reading difficulty screener, that would include um that's including screening for dyslexia, right? Because if we have a student that is screening that they're having reading difficulties, the legislation is requiring that we do that screening and we dig
057deeper on those students earlier. Okay. So do you because I it's my understanding that it's harder to necessarily detect dyslexia essentially, right? And so yeah, so th this so the purpose of this so the purpose of a screener is to say, okay, these students are having reading difficulties. We're going to do some really targeted focused inter cycles of intervention and continue to assess and progress monitor. And if they don't respond, then we would suspect that maybe there's something else going on and that would then go to, you know, tiers two and three and assessment. We would not in the general education setting be diag, you know, diagnosing dyslexia. um the the special education testing process is what would you know maybe tease out a learning disability. This is like a risk screening. So So the
058point of this is to help us identify those students earlier and intervene earlier um and know and know that we're assessing the right kids. Okay. And so if you so if they weren't responding basically it's if they're not responding to the initial interventions then you're Exactly. It's it's putting in place. We already have so we have great systems. We've already been been screening students. We we have good systems for intervention. We're monitoring them. And at a certain point, if they don't respond, then it's time to look at what else might be going on with that kiddo. Sometimes they need glasses. Sometimes they're tested for special education and they qualify for an IEP. But if we don't screen them, we have no idea what's we just say, "Oh, they they're not learning to read. We don't
059know why." And and in our district, we have such a great kind of history of screening and benchmarking students that there are I understand why the legislation was put in place. It's put in place because there are districts that aren't screening students. So that that is the idea is to and we're going to use it as an opportunity to hopefully improve our systems and really make sure we're we're in a really good position now where you know 5 years ago we couldn't guarantee that everyone was screened. When we look back at data from five, six, seven years ago, we see that we missed some classes. Well, you'll run like longitudinal data and we see, you know what, we were not doing a great job of making sure 100% of kids are assessed. Part of this
060legislation is requiring that 100% of kids are assessed unless they meet one of those exemptions. And we feel like it's a really good checks and balances system. So, we're not upset about it. We're we feel like we're just going to use it to make our system stronger. There's there's some money coming from the state to help us implement this that will provide the training for teachers. And so we're seeing this as such an enhancement to our system. Oh, good. I'm so excited. Thank you, Trusty Anderson. Thank you. I'm also really excited about this. Um I think it the the numbers that we're seeing are just incredible. I think it it basically this the one page that shows the non-title one and the title one are like the definition of what happens when everyone is being
061asked to have higher expectations of students and doing the eval the evaluation and the work that needs to be done. Everyone is rising. Um and so I think this is a really powerful indicator of that. Um I am really excited just also overall I don't know that a majority of districts ha have seen the levels of increasing literacy after co I think it's just really incredible and speaks to the dedication of our staff and one of the reasons we hired Dr. Smith. So it's just really wonderful to see this the um the direct results of that. Um I also love something that is very um parentfriendly. So um I know that the Aadian data is was not very parentfriendly at all. Um it was difficult for I think some people who are not trained experts
062to know what it was referring to. My question is how and when will we be sharing that data with parents. Um I know one of the things that came up um actually with the DWAC presentation and then also Carmen has shared is just sending out a flyer about like ELPAC what levels people should be assessing at getting a flyer that's in parents hands rather than just the the official document that is mailed that people don't necessarily know what it means. Um, and so yeah, I just wanted to know if there's kind of subsequent trainings then, you know, if there's an entire group of second graders at one school and they all need to work on phmic awareness, are we also talking to the parents? What are kind of the next steps? How do we share
063this with them? And then what are the next steps? That's a very loaded question. Um, so the first thing is um the first step is us getting to know the parent report. So we we've already talked to the company about also providing a training for our principles and how to interpret and and communicate about the data. The the parent reports come in English and Spanish. We've also given feedback that we do have other languages other than Spanish. And while they don't currently exist, we're going to be working with them to ensure that all you know we can represent the other languages even if it's with like a paired document that has the translation of every section of it where they can see the number and and understand what that means. So that the first step
064is like the the papers itself. Um and then our team will be looking at way you know at what points do we communicate is it's part of now the parent teacher conference for K2. There is a requirement in the legislation that we communicate with parents. Obviously that doesn't mean to us just sending this letter home. So we're we're going to look at structures for do we share this in the fall parent teacher conference and the spring parent teacher conference. Do we hold some kind of you knowformational meeting? Do we create supplemental videos for parents? Um, all of those pieces are still kind of TBD as we are just branching into this whole world of these great parent reports and parent tools. And the company has said with the growth because they're one of four companies
065adopted statewide obviously they're going to grow their toolkit as well. And they've, you know, we'll see what happens, but they've promised some more parent supports and things like that that they can provide for us. And then as a kind of followup to that, for some of our like this kind of information is ideal for expanded learning opportunities, if we're doing tutoring after school, is there like a permission slip piece that like parents would need to sign off or what? To me, this is exactly the information that teachers that are wanting to stay after or tutors or other people would love to have access to. So, how will we balance that? What is the next step? Yeah, I think um you know Christy and I work closely together and and we've talked about this and we
066do have the ELOP admin interns which work during the day and after school and they know the kids really you know deeply. They know all about them and their needs and I think we're always looking for ways to enhance the academic supports and with Christy in that position I think you know we've added some things and we definitely would want to have some targeted supports in place. Okay. Are you gonna ask about the language I think you mentioned? I think it had to do with the um newcomer Russian and then you mentioned the fact that you're going to try your best to make it friendly to newcomers. Absolutely. Yeah. Well, I think my question connected to that is it I mean to use either like the English screener with like a teacher that's going one
067by one through it but then working with our translator like what is that? So it the parent is still getting the same information, the teacher is still getting that same information but in the correct language. Yeah, I think that's the part that is is more difficult when we get into all the different world languages in our schools. With Spanish, it's very easy. There's the report comes in Spanish. We have so much staff that can call parents and communicate that. So it's it's as with any data, we would make sure it's accessible. We have district interpreters that can do that. We have school community facilitators. We have all of these people that can help support that. So, I think we'll we'll need to look at how we set up meetings or you want to talk about
068that. Come on here. Did you feel Did you tell about it? I just wanted to let you know that um Christina alluded to our we we call it a welcome toolkit. It's a screener we've been doing for many years for all newcomer students in elementary. It's pretty comprehensive. Um we're going to make it better with this information because this is obviously um an added literacy piece. So, um it is more comprehensive already in other ways, but we'll we're going to always try to enhance it. So, we're already doing that with um our newcomers in elementary, so we'll just make it better with this. Great. Thank you so much. Any other questions? Um I have a quick question. So, we said 100% of our students will get this assessment. when and um I guess and and
069yeah, when during the school year will they have this and will they have multiple times a year to get assessed? Right now we we do three times a year. So we so the legislation requires screening at least one time a year and that would be the point where you assess you know 100% of your kids. We would probably as far as state reporting use the midyear as our like reported benchmark because at the beginning of the year because by mid year a lot of those newcomer students would be ready to be assessed right if they would have some basic conversational English they would have some skills under their belt. So we would probably use that because at the beginning of the year sometimes you know there's different circumstances but we could really we've been getting
070almost 100% of our students right now at the beginning mid and endear point. um we'll be assessing all three and we'll be looking at the data. We the requirement to the state is just that you say like this is our screening window and this is when we do it and they don't have any parameters around at what point in the year that's done. So we'll continue to do the three and then if they do not pass so to speak you know if there's if there's concerns then we use a progress monitoring plan and right now we're doing that with these booklets where we have to decide okay if they screen this way we put them in this progress monitoring and all of that. the system actually will do that automatically. So after we assess a
071child, it'll suggest, okay, in six weeks, assess them here. And so it actually helps us go on a plan with a student and gives instructional suggestions and all that kind of stuff. So we're we're we're hoping that it it actually gets used more than the progress monitoring booklets because it's so easy to use. And so when a kid doesn't uh get to that level and they suggest, hey, you guys need to this child needs intervention support. What do we put where that benchmark is or is it a state created benchmark of what we expect them or is it you know grade level? What is that benchmark? Yeah, it's kind of it's it's basically based on you know the the developmental progression of reading like a kindergartener should be to this point, a first grader should
072be to this point. It's closely aligned to, you know, the reading foundational standards in the common core, but those aren't as specific. We know that we want kids at the beginning of kinder to have this skill. We know by mid first year we want them to read this many correct words a minute. So um when it when they don't then it would say okay this child needs work on these skills and then that's when we deploy our support staff our small group instruction the teacher can do things. We have a bunch of different tools that we've developed over the last three years for teachers to pull a small group. Okay these kids need their long vows need to retach on their long vows. Let's pull them to the back table and let's work some more
073on that. The the basic premise is that we're not giving up on any child in our system. whether you have an IEP, you're a multilingual learner, you're an advanced learner, every child in our system needs to learn to read. That's their right. So that that's kind of the system we've employed. So we're still monitoring. We have kids that get into the upper grades and they we still have concerns. We don't give up at that point. So, so the good thing is with this system, we're going to be able to now capture digitally a child's entire history of their reading progression, which then hopefully um to uh Miss Murphy's point earlier will help us to identify when it's something more than just they need more retach when when have we tried everything and now we need
074to look and see what's going on with a student. That's awesome. Thank you. Yeah. Um any other questions? Well, if not, um, thank you and I I I this is great information on early literacy and I I hope we can do something similar to for our mathematics side of of the of the assessments and see how we can equally create our students to push to that next level of math as well. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Thank you everyone. Great presentation. Okay. Number 18 isformational items and we have a legislative and state budget update uh by Trustee Crane. Thank you. Um legislatively the California Schoolboard Association which is our professional organization um has been active with about 10 in supporting about 10 bills and tonight I will just highlight about four or five. Uh one
075of them is AB1381 which is education workforce housing predevelopment funding. This measure would establish and fund a revolving loan account in the office of the California state treasurer to provide no interest loans to school districts and COE's which is county of educa uh county of education boards to assist with preparing feasibility studies and conduct pre-development work for education workforce housing projects. It's AB1381. Those are all proposed bills. Um, second one is AB 1224. Um, expanding access to substitute teachers. This bill would expand the amount of time an authorized substitute teacher could serve in a single general special or career technical education classroom from 30 days to 60 days. Another one um is SP 374. This bill will um reduce school district and county of education boards administrative burdens. Uh this one is heavily popular and
076I believe it passed. Uh it basically stream streamlines the hundreds of reports that leas have to submit to the state. Um so the bill um I I actually I believe it passed. So um less paperwork, less bureaucracy, less time spent on reports um that are potentially redundant and unnecessary. [Laughter] Um AB 1390 uh is to modernize school and county board member stipens. This bill will modernize the 40-year-old compensation thresholds in law for district and county school board members. It would bring existing stipen rates into alignment with the impacts of inflation and provide that school district and county boards of education retain the authority to determine the amount of the stipen within the cap. Those are some of the highlights. Um, as far as the budget, I know we got the May revise which which made
077us a little bit nervous. Um, apparently there's now a projected 12 billion deficit. It may be growing in the future and the governor is looking at $1.8 8 billion deferrals uh for schools. So, and I'm sure we'll be hearing about that a little later tonight. So, I'm I'm sure the suspense is building. Thank you. All right. Thank you so much. Number 19 is our consent calendar. Um do I have a motion? So moved. Second. Moved by Trusty Pearson, seconded by Trusty Crane. Roll call vote. Trusty Wagan. Yes. Trusty Soiloop. Trusty Murphy. Yes. Trusty Pearson. Yes. Trusty Anderson. Yes. Trusty Crane. Yes. Motion carries 50. Okay. Now moving on to number 20, which is our public hearing and report section. Um 20A is report on SULPA local plan uh services plan and SULPA annual budget plan
078for the 202526 school year. Dr. Jaw. Okay, good evening again. U, so special education local plan area is what is the um SULPA is the acronym for that. So as we talk about what the local plan is, every SULPA within California, there's about 130 or so SULPASS are required to have a local plan. And the local plan really outlines the governance plan for the SULPA, how they're going to provide services to students with disabilities, and how funding is allocated to district programs and in and to SULPA programs. So, what's important to remember about this is that the vast majority of SULPAS in California are multid-distpas. So the local plan becomes very important to them um because each district wants to know which share of the pie they get and each district has to ensure that
079all of the services are provided to all students within the SULPA. So, in a previous position when I was a SULPA director for um East San Gabriel Valley Sulpa, 13 school districts, one school district provided the orthopedically impaired program, one school district bid the visually impaired program. They got different amounts of money off the top of that SULPA budget to provide that program. And they also had to assure to the rest of the districts that they were providing those services. So, as a single district, we're just assuring that our district is doing all of those same things just within the confines of our district's programs. So, this year and every year, different pieces of the local plan are asked to be looked at. Now, the annual service and the annual budget plan are looked at
080every year. So, that's what we did um for this year. And how we did that when we took the information, we were able to meet with some representatives from our community advisory committee. So, parents of students with special needs, uh, Trusty Pearson was there. We had an elementary principal rep, a special education teacher rep, and we had u members of our district business department to really walk us through the annual budget plan. So the annual service plan, the requirements in ED code are that the plan itself identifies the IEP services that a district intends to provide at all the schools in the district and the schools that we have students in either non-public schools or residential treatment centers. And the annual service plan also has a casemiss requirement so that we as um districts and
081selpas throughout California they can compare some of our data. So everyone calls specialized academic instruction a a code 330 and speech and language is 415. So, if someone's trying to gather statewide data, they will see they'll be able to say, you know, let's look at code 415 for all of that information. And what it does is it looks like this, which is a very hard um uh graphic to read. So, you should have it in a a a different format in front of you to be able to read better. But what it does across the top is it lists all of the numbers. So 330 specialized academic instruction, 415 speech and language, and then down your left hand column is all the schools in the district. And it's really the projection of what IEP services
082we provide at those sites. So for every school within our district, we provide speech and language. Every school in our district, we provide specialized academic instruction. Not every school in the district do we provide aiology services. So the when we know we have students who have those needs that's definitely clicked and it also though doesn't preclude us from a student who moves into Adams and who has a need for an aiologist we add that service it will show up on next year's report. So that's the annual service plan. The annual budget plan um it lists our our projected revenue. So what is our funding that we're going to expect to see for next year? And then how are we going to spend that money? So again, this is really important for multi-distas to understand because
083they're all looking for a piece of that pie. For us as a single district SULPA, that budget is adopted along with and is part of Jeff's all fund budget that you're going to um see coming up. So what's important I think to um look at when we look at our revenue and our expenditures is that when we look at our revenue, the state and the federal government do not provide the enough support for our students with IEPs to provide those services. In fact, the federal government is a little over 5% of our funding. The state pays for some and the district's general fund, local property tax, pays for 74% of that. So, it's just really helpful to kind of keep that in mind when um you know, we talk about federal special education, state special
084education, the amount of money they put towards our programs and services is really um not very much. And then our projected budget expenditures, and we went over those um with the committee, excuse me. So again, this might be a little small to see. This just really talks about the um the revenue. And you can see there when you look at AB U 602 AB property tax, the percentage of funding for our special education budget is about 74%. So that's just important to remember. And then um table two is is what we project for expenditures. So, as typical in a school district, the majority of our costs are staff related, paying for teachers, paying for aids, paying for services for students. Um, so it it pretty much mirrors what we have on the general ed side
085of the budget in terms of how much of our budget goes for staffing and services. So, kind of the next steps in the adoption of the annual service and budget plan. Right after this, we're going to have a public hearing as required. And then on the at the next board meeting on June 24th, the board will hopefully adopt the annual service and budget plan. Um, we're required to have Orange County Department of Education superintendent review those plans and sign off on them and then we submit those plans to the California Department of Education by the end of the month. So that's kind of that in a nutshell. If you have any questions, please let me know. Trusty Crane. Yes. So thank you for that. I So special ed funding comes from federal federally speaking from
086IDEA, right? Yes. IDEA. Yes. IDEA we call it. Okay. So, and I had heard that initially when it was created, the federal government was going to give us 40% of what we need, but we never have gotten more than 14%. And at the height in, you know, maybe during ESRE, we think we were maybe up to 17 or 18%. But, and now we're down to 5%. Yes. Under six. So, it's a little over five. That is that is that typical of all the districts in California? So, no wonder some of them are worried. I mean, I know that um superintendents have mentioned how um sped is is costing a lot at the expense of the this school district. Yes. Because they're not getting the federal money that was promised. Yes. And we have seen also
087a significant reduction in our state money over the past as we projected this budget. I believe Mr. Trader, right? We've seen a significant reduction in that in the state uh money as well. Wow. Thank you. Any other Oh, Trustee Anderson. Uh, thank you. I There's some piece to this that I clicked on that I hadn't seen before, so I was like delving deep into it. It was It um surprise surprise. Well, yeah. The thing that was interesting was a lot of them don't refer to any specific numbers, but this specifically said there must be like the case load for 55 and under for SLPs, which I thought was interesting because there's not numbers for a variety almost all the other roles. Um, and it looks like we currently have 54 was in the note. So,
088if we're supposed to be under 55, do we if we if we get 56 next year, do we do a consultant or do we does that trigger then we hire someone else or so? We So, the the state education code says that every SLP or within a SULPA has to have an average of 55. So there may be somebody who has 70 and somebody who has 30 depending on how their case load works, but your average overall divided by all of your SLPs should be um not exceed 55. And so what we do is if we monitor that um a few times a year to make sure we're still within that because we know kids come in and out of special ed. And if that were to be the case, we would need to um
089hire staff to make sure we're meeting that education code requirement. Oh, f. Okay. And then I also was looking at this lovely section five 545 residential treatment. You know, one that I have questions about all the time. And I noticed that there is an option next to it as there are for all of them that we can check the box that we offer it or as all of these you can we can check service is not currently provided and there's certain things that you know we are not providing currently because others are providing it like specialized orthopedic services or there's a reading thing or um a kind of recreational piece. So what is the dividing line? How what is how's the decision made from check yes we're offering it to services not currently provided. So
090with some of them like our birth to two or birth to three services where we say we haven't adopted that code because we don't provide that service. It's because our contract um with the state is not for students birth to two with a different disabilities. We only serve children birth to three who are deaf and heart of hearing. So another agency provides that service. So that's why we don't adopt that. Our students in Newport Mesa before they turn three, if they have visual impairments or they have orthopedic impairments, they're served through a contract a vendor through regional center. So that's how that is done. So for some other ones like recreation therapy and that was one we actually talked about um when we met with the group for quite a while was is um that's
091also a very challenging u I don't even know if there's any um colleges right now who offer that credential for wreck therapy. So we look at what services what goals are we working on and we say who else could provide that. So for us, it might be our adapted physical education teachers that are doing some type of wreck therapy. It might be our occupational therapist. It might be a physical therapist. So depending on what the student needs, they still get what they need, but it might be in a from a different provider. Oh well. So what would allow us to then say we're not going to be the ones providing residential treatment? I don't know that there is that option. Expensive for us. I don't know that there is that option, but I will be
092glad to look into that further. Um, because it is part of the continuum of services that you're required to offer within a SULPA. Yeah. So, I I would love to follow because we're not offering mentoring currently, but so like So, it's we have students who have mentoring and they receive mentoring through our other programs within the district. It's just not what we write in as a service in the IEP that meets that definition. So, we do have several students in their individual transition plan, their ITP, that talk about how they're going to get some mentoring to learn a trade, to learn different things. It's just for us, we haven't adopted that code because it's served in a different manner. But I will um I will take that and look into it and see if there's
093if there's anyone across the state who has said well if we check no does that mean we don't have to provide services to residential residentially placed students or we just provide like here's a list of references here are some spots you know thank you that's helpful yes trusty Murphy well think hundreds of thousands of dollars but I think the problem is is if it If if the family sues to get the residential treatment, then we have to provide it. [Applause] If others are providing it like an outside entity, but we couldn't provide our own residential. We're not equipped, but we're not providing our own. We're not providing our own of some of the others either. I just think it's so a district or a SULPA is required to provide the full continuum of services. I
094think what I hear is trusty Anderson saying if you have the option to say oh we don't do this another agency is providing it can you do that I don't know under ed code if you can do that it is something that is a required component for us but and then I guess so my question is so if we say no we're not providing it then then what happens well if we said we're not providing residential treatment services and we're not and and it's part of a student's IEP, we would be liable for those services and they would ask us for that. So, I I get her question. I think it's a little bit different if it's optional. Yeah, I I don't believe it's optional. I I appreciate the the reading of it that way
095and I will I will double check. Determined to get us out of this no matter what, it's so expensive and we don't have oversight and so it's a tricky one for me. So if others were taking if other entities were doing it as they are with other things that I would think we are also required to do. I will explore and get back to you on that but I would not um my understanding is we definitely have that obligation within the district. I have sorry that wasn't technically my question but um but it's interesting to think about um so in looking at the um budget plan and I don't think this is I don't want to bug Jeff with this so much so I think it's more appropriate to ask you Sarah but um so
09610 pages other proposed revenue it looks like what is it 2.4 four. Sorry, it's really hard to read these numbers. Um, what is the other proposed revenue? It's on here. Um, it's an attachment. The other projected revenue. Yes, thank you. It's It's about 2.5, but um I was just wondering what that was. Yeah, actually that might be in Jeff. Oh, so special receives um grants in addition to just the AB 602 kind of thing. And then um I believe um correct me if I'm wrong, but but there are some uh inter agency uh revenues that get that get shared um that that show up on this report. Yes. So we have a alternative dispute resolution grant we get every year. We have our workability is a grant. So it's not considered part of that state
097funding or federal funding. It's considered an augmented um piece of that. So there are some smaller grants that we're given that that's what that is. And who's the who's funding the grants then? It's usually it's their state grants. Okay. The majority of them are it's sometimes they don't want to put money. It used to be all categorical in special ed. had all these different categories of funding and then they said we don't want to do that. We're going to fund you now based on your ADA and yet they still said but we know there's still some other kind of special things out there that we still want to fund you for but they don't want to have to be committed to it long term. So at some point they could say we don't have the
098money to fund um an ADR grant. We don't have the money to fund workability. Which brings me to my next question is if you see the state looking to cut some of this funding where any idea where they would go? Well, they've already reduced our basic what's called our AB602 just our flat funding. Um they also can look at um there used to be an out of home care. So for students in group homes they don't give us that anymore. um and or it's much much less. They've really put the criteria and we do have a lot of students in group homes in in um Newport Mesa that we serve. There's How are we paying for that then? Currently, sorry to interrupt, but keep going, but how are we paying for the group home then?
099Right now, general fund. General fund. Yes, it's part of that 74% of general fund. um because unfortunately several students who move into group homes have pretty significant um mental health challenges or behavioral challenges and that require either some inhome support or support at school or a non-public school support. So you could see cuts coming in and where else potentially just overall I think they will just I think they'll just continue to cut our overall grants and then as a district they would say you choose then how you're going to um where you're going to make your cuts across the board in special ed. So that's you know they we used to get separate money for low incidents. So for students who were deaf, blind, or orthopedically impaired, they've rolled that into our base funding, but
100then they reduced our base funding. So um that's really what they would do. They wouldn't say, "I'm going to take it away from this part or this part. It's just the overall grant." They would say, "Everyone, instead of getting $1,000 per student, we're going to give you $990 per student." something like that is how they would do it. Um, okay, that sounds fun. Uh, on So, my other question, I guess, because I I never seen this and I wasn't exactly sure, um, but we have a great autism preschool program, and I realized I haven't brought this up before, but how where is the funding coming from for that? And um well, pretty much for every program we have in the district in special education, it's the general fund. So there's no there's no special funding
101for autism pre preschool program. There's no there's a very small preschool grant that we get, but it's mostly like a few thousand dollars. So we wouldn't even consider that kind of we we offset that. We spend that first if we need materials for them or supplies. But every every program, every service is essentially funded by our general fund except for 5%. Except for Well, it's about 216%. So if you figure this, the feds do under six, then the state does what? 21% of that and the rest of it. So 74% is district. Any other questions? Happy news. All right, with that I'm going to um open up the public hearing. Um 20B is public hearing for SULPA local plan services plan um and SULPA annual budget plan for the 2025 2026 school year. Um, the
102hearing is now open at 7:27. Are there any comments? Seeing none, I will close the public hearing at 7:27. Okay, next up, 20C, report on local control and accountability plan and the 2025 budget. We're just going to keep going with all the exciting stuff. And while we make fun of this long document, I do think we can all recognize that Vanessa takes making the most out of this compliance issue something that drives our district, keeps us focused, holds us accountable and support students in their learning. So it is at its base a long long compliance item. It is though it holds within it focus, accountability, and collaboration in a way that Vanessa is always bringing in year after year to make it as fruitful as possible u knowing we have to do it. Thank you.
103Well, thank you. That's a lovely introduction to u the local control and accountability plan. So, uh uh President Wan, Superintendent Smith, members of the board, um executive cabinet and guests. Tonight before you, we have our local control and accountability plan. And um it really is a a partnership that brings us together. Um and it's it's a twofold aspect. The plan is both looking forward projecting into 2526 and then a reflection of the 24-25 school year coming in at a lean 155 pages minus the 35 pages of instruction. It's only 120 pages of reading. Um and it does have um the required aspects that you see on the lefth hand side. Starting with the budget overview as required by the state. Every LCAP you look at will have the same three pages. Um we have a
104plan summary. We really reflect on the many successes we've had over the course of the year. Um we look at our technical assistance, the multitude of educational partners that we engage. Um and then we round out the experience not only with the goals and actions and results, but the increased or improved services we're providing um with the local control funding formula supplemental funds. And then of course the action tables that account for some of the dollars the district receives. Um the big thing to write home about is um the adjustment that we have made in our LCAP this year to really align the LCAP goals with the board priorities. So previously our LCAP goal two is now our LCAP goal one putting student academic success at the forefront um while also making sure that we're
105providing the whole child support. Um previous goal four family and community engagement is now goal three in alignment with the um board priorities. Um, so we really want to highlight that as one of the the biggest changes that we've made um to our LCAP. In terms of the budget overview for parents, the first two pages reflect on the 2526 school year and it's meant to make the funding comprehensible, questionable perhaps, but when you look at this pie on the left, all the different components, the colored components are federal funding and supplemental funding, local funding. Um, and then the blue is really it says total LCFF funds, but that's general fund. And then if you break down the big pie on the left to the right, the blue portion, the dark blue portion is considered the
106LCFF or general fund that would be um available in the LCAP. And then the small little slice is the supplemental dollar. And that's really supposed to provide increased and improved services for high needs students. The uh second page of the budget overview is really to to say that this is not a dollar for-dollar accounting of the budget. We have a beautiful comprehensive budget book that um does a lot of that work. So the the column on the left shows all of the the funds um all of the revenue streams and then the the blue on the right shows what we talk about in our LCAP. Um so there's things that are not in there like debt service um some non-instructional staffing etc. And we're just required to um show you that not every dollar uh
107is included in the LCAP and thinking about 2526. And of course, the third page is about reflecting on the LCFF supplemental or um the uh for the increase in improved services in 2425. We budgeted uh 23,575 and we came in just under that with our estimated actuals. Uh all children were served, positions were staffed. Um we did almost everything we said we were going to do. And the discrepancy really comes down to a slight hiccup in some of the elementary AVID funding. We gave them too much on the budget books and they had enough. They did everything they needed. And then also we had some high budget estimates on what the staffing would cost in some positions, but all the positions were filled and we're really proud of that. But this budget overview um makes
108those explanations. We engage many educational partners starting from the LCAP survey when anyone could participate all the way through um the valued input that we get from our bargaining units. We work with all all of our advisories, our schools, our 31 school site councils and our 22 elacs, provide site level input so we can de develop both the school plan and the LCAP. Um, and we do student focus groups. We choose eight elementaryaries each year. We work with all of our middle and high schools to get the student voice represented. So we look at many, many voices as we develop our LCAP. In terms of measurement and results, there are some required metrics from the state, things like graduation rate, um chronic absenteeism, and then there's additional things we add like acadians as you heard
109earlier or star rating or star math, not required by the state, but things that we add to try and round out our picture of success. The contributing metrics are designed to, and you'll see them at the very end of the LCAP. When we say we're putting um increased and improved services with dollars, what are the metrics that we're using to say, is this working? And then finally, student groups. we need to address all students as well as other student populations. So typically our lowincome and our English learner students. Um but a new feature as of last year was any students with dashboard red needed to also be identified so we can be saying how are we making progress um for those particular students. Want to point out with um the metrics as well. One change
110that we adjusted this year is looking at some of the metrics we had for our low-income students in particular or socioeconomically disadvantaged and we had some of them that weren't at the same level of the all student target. So for instance um in smarter balanced results maybe we were aiming for 85% meets or exceeds for all and our low income was u not ga benchmarked there. We had done it according to historical performance. Um, but we have made the adjustment so that any of our metrics where we're aiming a target for our low-income, socioeconomically disadvantaged students now meet the all target. So, that was one of the adjustments we wanted to make sure that you all knew about. That's great. In terms of our actions and services, we created our LCAP with the same philosophy
111of multi-tered systems of support. So, each of our goals has actions for all students, has actions for some students, and has actions for a few students. And the key thing to look at all of these um actions is that there's an action number, a title, and then a description which maps to the um tables at the very end for our dollars. And then you'll also see whether things contribute or don't contribute, yes or no. Any of the yeses is LCFF supplemental. So some key investment strategies we want to point out. Of course, we've done the reorganization of the LCAP. So anyone reading through the LCAP will see the explanation in each of the areas. previously this goal. These metrics were previously that number so that it's hopefully easy to crosswalk. The early literacy, as you've
112heard, is something that we're extremely proud of and is a significant investment. And so we want to um highlight the people, the programs, the efforts, and the outcomes. Um in terms of academic innovation, um we have recently been given direction to um expand the support at the elementary level with our accelerated and advanced learning. So we want to highlight that as well as um our robust CTE pathways that continue to grow and to pro produce results. Our critical thinking strategies TK12 like thinking maps um are are some of the highlights in terms of our um creating coherence for our students. Our summer programs and our investment in elementary and secondary. Uh the dual immersion program growth now that we're rolling up to uh the high school level. Um our unified parent communication, we've heard for
113years about really supporting that effort and so we're pleased with that progress. And of course, drive around starting yesterday and you will see the many facilities improvements that this district has invested in. And finally, the increased or improved services um that is at the very end and it goes through each of the different areas that we invest um for uh the local control funding formula supplemental funding. Just a reminder, Newport Mesa doesn't get additional funds, but we meet requirements by sequestering some of our general fund um to support um these efforts. At the very end of our LCAP, you have our planned expenditures for the the future. And it is both the kind of the all that we're including in the LCAP and then the contributing actions tables where those are the things that we're
114using our LCFF supplemental dollars on. Um some English learner staffing, some classified staffing to support targeted students, um early college, high school, AVID, etc. And then of course we reflect on the prior year on the annual update. So, we had budgeted a dollar amount and then we say what the estimated actual is and um same thing for the contributing actions. So, we look at both of those and then in throughout the LCAP we identify every material difference and the Orange County Department of Ed double checks on that for us. So, we list everything that is a material difference and we explain so what happened. And then finally, there's a carryover table. News flash, we didn't carry over any money. Finally, you can find our LCAP on the district website. It is given top billing. Um,
115we have a short version, we have a long version, and anyone interested in any prior LCAP can find it under the second to last option, district plans. Enjoy the reading. Any questions before we move on? No, we love her. We love Anderson. They're amazing. We love you so much. Oh, thank you. Thank you. No, I I have to have at least one question. I did feel like this one was easier to read. Well, thank you. Um, and it just it's so much more narrative at the beginning talking so I just I think particularly we highlighted it a little bit in the early literacy portion, but the first portion where it talks about the elementary early learning, early literacy and writing. It's just incredible to read about the investment and all of the professional development and
116the results that have unsurprisingly for some of us happened quickly. And it's so exciting to see just that like in the data is reflecting all of the time and energy and focus that we're putting into that which really you know funnels into the next decade and life of a student. So that was really exciting to see it led with that and all of the things that we've been investing in. One of the things um that I was really interest and also thank you yes for the alignment. Um I was going to bring up goal four and now it's goal three. So, um I just wanted to say thank you for making it so clear um in adding just really clear descriptions about particularly for the family and community engagement what we're doing for each for
117all for some and for few. I think it was just really helpful. So, thank you overall. Just wanted to say thank you, Trusty Crane. Uh, I'm excited to hear that, uh, there's a new element that, um, applies to our advanced and accelerated accelerated learners and that it's going to make the LCAP and I can't wait to see that grow. So, thank you. Thank you, Trusty Murphy. Okay, I think this is somewhere. Did we talk about how many parents responded to the survey? We didn't talk about it here, but we talk about it in the next time I come for for you in June where we do the local indicators and we talk about our parent and family engagement, but it was somewhere in the neighborhood of 3,22. [Laughter] Just saying. That sounds like a great
118number. Was it higher or lower than last year? It is higher than last year. Slightly. We're we're going to do better next year. I'm going to shorten that thing and we're going to get people to respond. I forgot to do it this year, so you were down. I think I think our unified parents square system is will help us with reminders. Oh, yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Absolutely. That would be great. Yep. Yeah. Thank you, Vanessa. Okay. Any other questions, comments? All right. Well, thank you so much. We look forward to next or two weeks edition. It'll be great. Thank you. Yes. Thank you. Okay. I am going to open the public hearing for the local control and accountability plan at 7:40. Do I have any questions or comments? Seeing none, I'm going to close
119it at 7:40. All right. Moving on to 20E report on recommended 2025 26 all funds June budget. Mr. Trader, thank you. It's good to be here with you tonight. Uh we uh want to uh thank uh Vanessa, working with Vanessa and special projects. We really have to be like that to make it all coordinate and get it all together and make it all s make sense. So greatly appreciate everything she does and uh partnering with her in that. So let's get started here. Um, I want to uh recommend to you over 500 pages of pleasure reading material here for your u pleasure reading enjoyment and um it has a lot of the detail and is the basis for the presentation tonight. Uh you know we um we have a budget mandate and we have to
120adopt a budget by June 30th. We will come back to you uh in October with the first interim and January in with a second interim. And uh the way the process works, the governor's released his May revision by uh June 15th. They'll hopefully come together and then uh act on a budget by June 30th. And so uh with that, let's uh talk about the state budget. uh state budget was interesting in that uh the governor um really protected us uh or Proposition 98 really protected us in that regard. And so um we uh there's a lot of favorable things in that. There's uh some uh onetime grant student support and professional development for discretionary block grant. Universal meals is important to us. Expanding learning opportunities is important and the learning recovery emergency block grant. There's
121some unfavorable things though in the budget and um this is a result you know the the the state has a12 billion deficit and it's going to snowball not not in a good way it's going to snowball to $42 billion in 2829 if there's no correction. So there's a structural problem and the state's going to have to figure that out. But as a result, the governor's put in a cash deferral. And because of that snowballing, there's no money to take that cash deferral away. It's going to get bigger. And that's an issue for us because we have a cash drive peri per period between July and December. And so that hits us particularly hard. So we watch that very carefully. That's a a particular concern to us. And then there's a lack of transitional kindergarten funding,
122which um simply by virtue of our students living in our district, they do not get funded for. However, the the board has uh made that u a offering uh to the students who live within our district. And so, let's uh search for the long pole in the tent here as we u go through uh things. So, so you recall we have a budget study session every year and that's very very helpful for staff to help us understand uh where to go with things and so uh we heard in the budget priorities for uh this next year the facility maintenance and master plan um to continue with that and then um we're continuing with our safety uh endeavor. So, you know, we're we're looking at all the OKAK recommendations, implementing them, which include cameras and door
123hardware, ballards, window treatments, uh alerting systems, and and fence screening. And then, um then we're also looking at universal transitional kindergarten, which we're uh bringing in the next uh u uh age level of students. And then uh we're looking at uh the motivating, encouraging, and engaging academic after activities after school program. So that was another important thing the board wanted us to take a look at and move forward on. And then uh and then of course we try to do that with this mindset of hey look, let's try to do things. Dr. Dr. Smith is really encouraging about this about finding ways different different delivery service models to get things done um in in a most econ economical way that we can do things. So, um that's kind of where we're at with that. So,
124what let's look at enrollment. Enrollment stable. We got Look at that. We're we've we've hit a trough and now we're going to have just a slight little bump next year, which is is good news. Um, and then though here's the problem. So if you look here, revenue actually declined in 2425 and that's something that has not happened in a very very long time and that's going to that's going to have an impact on us. Um in the future though we see that revenue again uh start to um move up but that's going to have a big impact on us that revenue decline between 23 24 and 2425 and so um part of uh what uh we're and this is one thing that I hope you leave with tonight if if you leave with anything this
125is a concern that we have most of our revenue comes from property taxes is we take what the auditor controller uh uh predicts for for property tax revenues. And so at period uh they make a a estimate at period 1 and period 2. And so when you look here uh period 1 we were just under 382 million and then period 2 came in and we're at 380. And we kind of expect that, right? um we kind expect maybe a little bit of a dip, kind of a minor change, but then coming here at estimated actual um we're looking at a significant drop. This was surprising uh to us of about over an $8 million drop. That's an issue that's telling us that something is going on in in our property values in our market here.
126And so we're very very concerned about that because that we that gets built into the base we mark to the auditor controller in terms of our estimates and our budget. And so we're we're a little concerned about that and we need to um we need to look at and evaluate that. And so uh let's look at revenue expense alignment. And so there here's the revenue line. You can see there um it's a great up and to the right line except for we get into the the 23 24 25 and we we we we uh have a slight decline and then and then we're we we move up again which is fine but the pro that's not the problem. The problem is our expenditure line. So you can see expenditure line red line should always be
127below the green line and uh for the next uh year or two we're above that green line and we we have projected that we have known that uh uh because of we're doing a lot of one-time things in terms of safety. We're putting in fence screening and and alerting systems and camera systems and those things. Those things are very expensive. They're onetime expenditures for the most part and we have COVID funding that's rolling off. So, we plan for that. Um, however, the the property tax issue is is causing if you look at that red line, we really have to bend that red line here in uh at 2526 and beginning in 2627. So that's going to take some effort and we're going to work on that as uh we go throughout the year and hope
128to have some uh solution uh guidance uh soon. So with that then um we want to talk a little bit about uh budget compliance ending fund balance compliance. So um this is something you have not seen before. Uh, in our budget book, we we describe reserves every which way to Sunday and and yet there's a format that our friends at the Department of Education would like us to use. And so, we're going to introduce this format to you. And you'll see this in the budget book later on, but I want you to to be able to understand uh what's happening here. And so, what what we have to do is we have to to describe how far above the state minimum reserve of 3%. in terms of dollars. We have to describe that. And I
129can only surmise that the state recognizes that 3% is uh wholly inadequate. And so they want to see like, hey, where are you at in terms of being at an adequate reserve level? And so um we describe that. So if you take all of our um assigned balances, un assigned and unassigned uh uh fund balances, that comes to $82.8 8 million, right? So 3% of that is about 16 million, which leaves a fund balance that requires reasons, right? We want to say, hey, why are we why do we have these reserves above the 3% minimum? That amount is $66.9 million. And those reasons um uh we are are um for there's sorry there's a number of reasons for that. So number one we have to manage our cash flow right because we again we have
130this cash drive period and if we have to borrow money that's like going to the corner check cashing cashing place and cashing a check it's really super expensive. I it's the most expensive credit card you can get. You have to pay the money changers and the attorneys and oh my goodness, it's it's very expensive to do that. And so we save a lot of money that way. It's to mitigate some fluctuation in funding. Um it's to address unexpected costs and then also to maintain our credit uh our credit rating. Our credit rating is really really important. and you have saved the taxpayers in this community millions of dollars by having the credit rating that you do. Our bonds have a AAA credit rating. And so, um, it's really important that we maintain reserves so we
131can maintain that credit rating that we have. And so, uh, as a result, those are the reasons and you'll see this in the budget book going forward. Um, let's talk about, uh, reserve level history and projection. Um, so you can see here, here's our reserves from 2010 to 2026 in terms of both dollars on the left hand side. And then if we look at percent, here's the percent of budget. And so we begin in 2010 with 7.1% reserve level and we're we're projected to be at 15.7%. Now that is lower than the 17% that you have given us guidance on, given staff on. Um 17% is the recommended level by the govern uh by the uh uh government finan uh sorry governmental financial officers association and then of course the uh LAO legislative analyst office
132has recommended a higher reserve. Um so, uh we're at recommended, you can see there we we peak at 26.6 going down to 15.7. And so with that, um you see there the 17% line uh that green line. And as we get to um some financial activators, Dr. Smith has encouraged us to develop financial activators. These are these are act these are metrics that um when we cross certain thresholds will cause us to evaluate our budget. And so you can see um on the left hand side are the thresholds and the metrics themselves. On the right hand side are the results. And so the the um pink the kind of pink reddish slide uh boxes are the ones that are in the evaluate column. They're they're saying, "Hey, it's kind of like the light on your
133car, right? You don't want to drive it very long when that light's flashing in your car." And so, um, we're looking at unrestricted general fund change. Um, we decrecting we'll decrease that unrestricted general fund by 3.1 million in 2425 and then decrease it by 22 million in 2526. So those are concerns we need to evaluate but we need to step back and evaluate that and we are doing that and then the other areas general fund cash flow in terms of a percent of budget um we see there in 2526 we're at 6.9% where that's in the evaluate column because it's below 7% and then total reserves um again we're below the 17% in 2526 and 2627 and we look forward to bringing you some solution guidance at first interim. Um that will provide you some
134time to kind of think about where uh guidance that you can provide staff um in helping us to get back to a 17% reserve level. And so with that then uh I just uh want to uh so my uh uh thank uh the whole business services team for uh putting the budget book together and thank you um you know your your um expectations are astonishingly high. this has not been the pleasure cruise I signed up for and and and yet at the same time I have always felt that you have u expressed that we're in this together and so I really do appreciate that. I appreciate you and I uh we u recommend a positive certification. Thank you. Thank you Jeff. questions or should we just let's actually go around to open the um public
135hearing. Okay. Um because you'll be back to talk to us next next meeting. Thank you. Um and more more to come, but we appreciate all your help, Jeff. Okay, I'm going to open the public hearing for the 2025 2026 all funds June budget at 7:55 comments public comments seeing none I'm going to close at 7:55 okay now moving on to discussion action calendar uh 21A approve the selection of M-Class with dibbles edition 8 and MClass lecturer at Newport Mesa Unified School District's reading difficulty screening instrument. Dr. Sir. Yes. So we had our report earlier and you could see the work that we did in regards to piloting the different options that we have as a public school district and from that uh a very strong recommendation came out of that for us to uh make
136a recommendation to the board to approve McLass dibbles 8 and also McLass elector. So, we're hoping that that will happen and we believe that that is the right tool for us to be able to do the work that we know is critical in regards to supporting early literacy and early reading abilities of our students. So, moved. Second. Or who has a second? Second. Okay. Moved by Trustee Anderson, seconded by Trustee Pearson. Questions or comments? Thank you very much. It seems excellent. Roll call vote. Trusty Wagan, yes. Trusty Soilu. Trusty Murphy, yes. Trusty Pearson, yes. Trusty Anderson, yes. Trusty Crane, yes. Motion carries 50. 21B, approve secondary textbooks for public display. Dr. Torres. Um, yes. you have in front of you um a series of test textbooks for approval tonight that have been on public display.
137Um no one has come to view those textbooks and they're in front of you tonight for new additions. Okay. Um do I have a motion? Oh uh moved by Trusty Murphy, seconded by uh Trusty Crane. Trusty Crane. Questions, comments? Okay. A roll call vote. Trusty Wagan, yes. Trusty Soilu. Trusty Murphy, yes. Trusty Pearson, yes. Trusty Anderson, yes. Trusty Crane, yes. All right. Motion carries 50. Uh 21C, approve addition to high school course of study. Dr. Torres. Yes. Tonight you have in front of you um a new course. Um, you may remember we've discussed that the state of California now has the alternative diploma pathway for our students who are in very specialized programs in special education. Uh, and with that um, our students have an opportunity to take an algebra course uh, in this pathway.
138And so in front of you tonight, you have that course of study um, that has been co-created um, with special education and our gened folks in secondary education. Do I have a motion? So moved. Second. Uh moved by Trusty Crane, seconded by Trusty Pearson. Questions, comments? Seeing none, roll call vote. Trusty Wagan, yes. Trusty Soilu. Trusty Murphy, yes. Trusty Pearson, yes. Trusty Anderson, yes. Trusty Crate, yes. Motion carries 50. 21D approved the renewal agreement between Orange County District Attorney's Office and Newport Mesa Unified School District to facilitate OC Grip Waymakers case manager component for the 2025 2026 school year. Dr. Torres. Yes, you have in front of you tonight uh the renewal agreement uh for the GRIP program which is the gang reduction intervention partnership program. Um it has been currently at uh Pomona Elementary
139and Whittier and tonight you have in front of you um the opportunity to potentially expand that program to a third elementary site. Do I have a motion? So moved. Moved by Trusty Pier uh Pearson, seconded by Trusty Crane. Oh, would you want a second? Yeah. Okay. Thought I moved it. Um questions, comments? Uh Trusty Anderson. Hi. Um yes, I have a lot of questions um about this item. Um when we initially approved it, I believe to when it came back to us after we had removed it, I think it was in 2021. Um, it came back because one specific principal really wanted this program. Um, and then it came back for a second school. Um, one of my concerns with this, sorry, we have lots of paperwork from the LCAP of the budget. It's a
140little I need like three desks. Um, but one of my concerns overall has been the lack of uh communication and accountability related to program evaluation. What is actually happening within um this program? And so I think one of my concerns again I was reminded when I saw the extremely simplistic onepage contract um and it's very vague is what is currently being offered um and what that truly entails and is it really a benefit. So, one of my concerns, particularly given our current um environment in the community, is um we're currently seeing a lot of um immigration action happening in our region. And one of the the first sentences on here says um intend to work together towards the mutual goal of providing maximum available assistance for students. It's very vague to me what maximum available
141assistance means. It's not really detailed um in any way. And one of the concerns that I have overall with this is um the lack of transparency in what this program has provided. So if you go on the website um it has this great video of someone who is a sheriff mentoring a student, but that's not what is currently being provided on our campuses. And so there's just um a lack of clarity. the um the contract says it's a partnership with way makers to offer case management. We already have our own partnership with way makers. Um and so there's a couple of pieces even just within this about um one of the deliverables is collect data and monitor outcome measures. Um we did not receive a lot of data at all. It says um collaborate with
142partners. It's it's hard to know who are who is being collaborated with. There was one thing that happened that was requested from the community. Um and we've been working on it for a couple of years to offer a soccer camp. Um and there was a a two-day thing that didn't con it didn't work in collaboration with our city partners. It didn't work in collaboration with our neighborhood partners or nonprofits. Um there's just a lot of questions for who is actually interacting with our students. Um one of the deliverables is attending parent intervention meetings. Um when I finally was able to get information on how many students this was serving, which again was no fault to our staff, but like pulling teeth. So, there were only 10 students at one school and there are eight at
143another school, but one moved to the other school. Um, it's unclear to me how how how we're training our own staff. So, this is a teacher referred program. How are our te how are our teachers being trained and are they supposed to be trained to identify a third grade student who at some point in his life might be in a gang? I don't really look at a third grade student that I'm interacting with and think, oh well factor, this factor came into my mind. I think the student might be in a gang. um particularly with some of the historic um situations that have happened unfortunately in Costa Mesa um with Costa Mesa literally being the first in the country in 2012 to have ICE in our jails which has changed now and obviously that was
144short-lived but there's a lot of historic trauma around that and while this program I think has good goals goals of bringing police officers and different people in to the lives of our students. That's not what's practically that's not what's happening on campus. So, there's one person from what I've seen. Again, it's difficult to get information. One woman who's been trained comes to both of these school sites. The students are taken out of class, this the small amount of students during key instructional time in the morning. So, at one school is at 8:30 in the morning, the other school is at 10:30 in the morning during key instructional minutes. We don't know what the outcomes are. There's nothing I don't know what they're talking about. And when this initial program came into place in the '9s,
145which some parents still talk about it, it would they loved it because of the greeter program. We don't need the DA's office to be involved in setting up a parent greeter program. So Whittier, for instance, had a greeter program before we started grip again. So while it has expanded, we didn't need it to start the program. We don't really need it to continue. Um, in fact, we have high school students who come back and actually help with greeting in the morning. It's like something that we also have moms that come and do noonday supervisors. It's a totally different climate than it was in the 90s. And some of that is the role of the principal. we don't need the DA to try and coordinate that. Um, one of the other pieces to me that's quite
146concerning is as we we've updated and really invested and focused before we didn't have our LCAP goal now three of community and family engagement. We added an LCAP item. We have um thousands and thousands of dollars that we're investing in community and family engagement that we didn't have in the 90s that we may not have even had fully when we started this back up at Pomona. Um and so we now have a school facilitator on site full-time at all of our Title One schools. We have an elementary counselor. One of my the other pieces is um teachers at Whittier did not know the access that they had to a social worker. The social worker from our district, our district staff, to my understanding, should be the person who's the front line of defense if there's
147a concern with a teacher and a child. So rather than having that a a teacher refer out to an outside entity with no accountability, I don't they have not been sharing data. Well, I don't know where that data is going. I don't know if that data is protected. I don't know if those addresses are being protected. I don't know if immigration statuses are being shared. I don't know a lot of information. So, um, we have a ve we've worked so hard to create campuses that are safe. We now have community schools that are working to provide resources to families. We we don't need a program that's like this that I think it has a great vision. The implementation I think the time has passed. We are already doing a variety of other things. We again
148are one of the only districts in our area who are basic aid. We have the money for the resources. Um this program is actually not happening in a lot of other districts for some of the reasons that I have mentioned. Um one of the other pieces too is just the data that we have received is a is a a little lacking to me. So um at Whittier there were 10 students that were participating. Um there was one parent education meeting there. The staff education included an introduction to this program. That's it. The student incentive literally these are things that community partners and others can and should do provide. So, personally at Whittier, um, since I think it was 2012 now, St. Andrews has been their partner. St. Andrews helps with a variety of these things.
149Um, if there's $50 gift cards that are needed for some families, particularly only 10, we have local community partners that want to help with those needs. So, um, those are a couple of the reasons. Um, I also have some concerns with the actual data that we did get that um, while a very simplistic pie chart is better than nothing, the the things that are being provided are things that um, our district is already providing and working towards. Again, when we started this even two years ago, um, we did not have the extensive resources that we currently have. So some of the the item that is biggest on this chart is for basic needs food and clothing. We have we have resources for that. We're now doing um second harvest is coming. We have a lot
150of resources for that. Um community events having an event to celebrate um the greeters is not something that we need the DA's office to be a part of. um the family support are the things that we as a district can and should be providing. So then the largest item on here being resource referrals. We h we that's what our school community facilitators have been hired to do. I from my understanding the school facilitators have not been invited into this. They're not participating with it. They're they're not involved. So we that again then creates all new different silos. Um we have particularly because we need all of those entities to be working together. We need our social workers to be working with our community partners that need to be working with our community school facilitators. When
151we have an outside program serving only 10 students that are not integrated into a system. I I don't think that's a best practice. Um, it looks like there's some things that Waymakers was providing which I don't know if they do this with our other other students who are not part of grip. Um, but I think that they're great ideas. There's a youth resiliency survey survey. I don't know where the students started at the beginning of this. There's a protective um fact factor survey. These would be great for us to be offering overall for our social workers to be doing. These are things that we should be doing. I don't know if we are and I don't really think that we need grip to be doing it. There's no process or understanding to me again about
152the referrals, but apparently they were due March 7th for the next year. Um, one of the things that I also find a little interesting is at least one, um, but more like three of our current city council people have asked questions specifically about what how Costa Mesa Police Department is involved and connected. Are we doing community outreach? We've had really strong partnerships at different times. um they have not gotten answers as related to this with our students. Uh to me it makes much more sense particularly as a program that was set up to be a mentoring program to work with so many of our students become police explorers in the city. I don't know if there's a program that's like that in Newport. Yeah, there is. But so then we have two cities that have
153young students. It would be it would make so much more sense for us to work with our SRO's which again in the 90s there were not SRO's. We have our own SRO that it would be great to have them the police explorers from both cities the social workers the school site facil the the um school community um facilitators all work together with the principal and with Dr. Flores to put together plans around community schools if we're going to be doing those for schools. But again, Westside Costa Mesa is not the only place where we're having some things pop up. Um it part of the problem where this isn't based on data. So the reason that Wilson was added, I don't know why, but Wilson doesn't have this need and coming to bring a turkey like
154they did a few years ago. It's not what the community needs. there are community partners that are already meeting those needs. Um I have a few more things. I really have a lot of concerns about this. Um I would love to know from staff because this is something that I think other programs need to other other principles and um our program staff need to know is what is the process for a teacher to refer a student to this? Have they had training in that? Um, one of my other concerns is we have been focusing this entire year with banners and a variety of things around attendance. One of the other parts of this program was supposed to increase attendance. Again, it's redundant. We are already working on that. We don't need the DA's office to
155help us increase attendance. Um, and so I the last piece to it before because I I just I really feel strongly um that it should be based on data and there should be actual requested need for it is we're changing the for the you know the format the format at from Pomona to Ray because Ry is now getting the older elementary and one of the questions that I asked the principal was are you having more behavioral issues are you having things happen on campus is where students are wearing things or expressing things or you things, you know, the something is getting tagged. No, that's not happening. They've actually had less behavioral issues this year. And again, if it's a behavioral issue, we have staff to help with that. That doesn't mean that a student might
156potentially join a gang. When our Costa Mesa PD literally there's a guy who works on their team who knows the few families in our community that are actually struggling with this problem. He knows everything about their families. He goes to their house. He knows them. To me, it makes more sense for us to be partnering and having more communication with him and that team than a program that sounds like it's making an impact, but there's really not a lot of data. And in fact, it creates stigma. It actually breaks um one of our board policies that specifically talks about creating programs that um can create bias. And where did it go? We had a lot of I have a lot of notes from all of our things that we've been talking about the past day.
157Um just where did it go? Um so I there's some some pieces of our own on own our own board policy that when we reintroduced and updated things that talk about how how we we need to be cautious about how we identify students. The overall my issue with a program that is potentially identifying a child who doesn't know what a gang is, who doesn't have anyone that they know that's in a gang, but is in a program to defer them from being a potential gang member to me is unacceptable. and to have so little accountability in a one-page contract that basically is cart blanch for maximum available assistance. I I just think it's categorically wrong. And I believe that we have the opportunity and the resources to create our own program that would actually be
158a benefit and a resource for our students and our families because the students who need it the most may not have a parent that agrees to be part of this program, but our social worker would be able to help them. Thank you, Trusty Murphy. Um, well, I pretty much agree with everything Ashley has said. I think she's laid out um the argument for not uh continuing with this program quite well. I realize that gang prevention is something that um we need to work on in in Costa Mesa given a couple of incidents that have happened recently. So, I'm not denying the need for a program like um like what group is intended to to to accomplish, but to a to all of Ashley's points, it doesn't seem like it is. Um I feel like it
159would be much better, again, agree with Ashley completely, that if we combined our resources, our current resources that we already have, we could figure out a much better program to address these issues. And um and I want that. I I want that given what has happened to a couple of my elementary schools and I know that they need it and I think we need to figure out a better way to address some of these issues with our students and our families. And some of it is not just um not solely around intervention, but also around trauma and and some of the you know some of the real issues that these families are dealing with that can push them sometimes into you know into situations where they could be involved in gangs. And I think we
160are at the point where we have all the resources we need almost all of them uh to really identify and work with these families in a much more productive way and much more effective way. So I would agree with Ashley on on really all points. So my vote is a no. Trusty Pearson. Um, I guess I'm just curious, what are the principles um and families? Are we getting complaints from the principles and families and teachers that are involved? I know the principles that are currently involved in the program and the parents that are involved in the program have I'm I'm sorry. Sorry. Trying to focus on you. Oh, I'm sorry. Um, have given us positive feedback and that has come directly from principles to our staff. Um, it's not coming uh that feedback is not
161coming through the grip program. That's feedback that we've requested directly from our principles and our families that are participating. Do you feel like this is saving lives? I mean, well, we hope every investment we make to support students and families has an impact, you know, and I have taken feedback and have heard and, you know, and listened this evening about the lack of data and, you know, information coming from grip. Um but it is an investment we've made and we have seen and when I say we have seen when we've spoken to parents we've interviewed them we've spoken with them they're telling us it had been a positive experience. So you know you can weigh that against metrics and data and you know impact. Um so it's not as clean you know clean data in
162a metric set but it's just qualitative. It's people telling us that they've felt good about the program. Um, and that has been communication directly from families to staff and no complaint. We haven't had any complaints. I have not had any complaints. Trusty Crane. Yeah. Um, so I I hear I hear my colleagues um and it's just it's the first time that I hear about this being an issue. And if for trustes question trustee Pearson's question, have you heard from the site if there were any issues? Because at this point where we sit, we need to be able to trust our staff, especially those who are on the ground, who are our s site leaders about the efficacy of the program. And since I haven't really heard anything, this is a first. So, what I would
163suggest that we do is that yes, let's look into the future and try to carve out our own the Newport Mesa way, as we always say. Um, at this point, what I don't want is for us to to shut this down and then not have anything for the fall because we wouldn't have a fall back because I don't think we can create a program that would be ready to roll by fall. So, that's kind of that's my conc that's where I'm come coming from. I do hear the concerns and yes, I can see how in the future we can build our own program where our kids and our community is comfortable. It's just the it's the first time that I hear that there may be some hesitation towards this program. Trusty Anderson, thank you. So
164the it was a good question, Trusty Pearson, but the the response that was positive that parents were talking about is not what is part of this contract. The things that the parents emphatically shared was they love the greeter program. They feel like the greeters are really valuable. To a fault, I did not see a single one of them that said, "I feel like my child is safer on campus. I feel like they have access to um a a trusted police officer who's connected to the city of Costa Mesa." They weren't respond. They responded, "This is a good program, but they literally were only, if you look, they only talk about the greeter program." The greeter program is not the int I mean a greeter program is not gang intervention. So to me it's a big
165difference between what is being provided and what parents are offering feedback about. So um one of the concerns too that trustee Crane brought up is do we have a program to replace this? Again, this is offering what our staff already is capable, trained, credentialed in. We don't need someone to come and do case management when we have staff to work with eight students at one school and 10 students at another school. That's what our staff is hired to do. So, I actually am concerned because it is the role of our staff to do some of these and because there is not a connection to our current police officers and building a mentorship program and the things that this program claims to do on its own website and literally is not giving data to our staff
166when they ask for it. There's a lot there's a lot more to it again than the do the parents like it. The parents think it's just to set up greeters basically and they get to know this one police officer from the county. That's not that's the experience has been positive but it's not really the whole intent of what will actually benefit students long term. I I have a couple questions. Um, so what are we doing right now? Well, okay. So, with Whittier and and Pomona, there was obviously a need for us to bring back um the OCgrip contract. And why why did we bring that back and what was that need? Yeah, if you go back just a couple years, um we had some very unfortunate incidents that occurred in the community um that were
167shared with us as being gang related. um not necessarily with our youngest youth, right, the smallest kids in the district, but there were some community issues uh that involved some of our students that were older um that had been involved in some gang activity. Um and so, you know, principles are always looking for tools and resources to support their schools. And the philosophy behind trying to do gang prevention is to try to get students when they're young, right? You want to convince them to be more engaged, to be part of the community, to have those solid relationships when they're little so that they're not making those poor decisions and choices as they emerge into upper elementary, sixth grade, particularly and above, right? So, that's really the intention of that. So, that's why we brought it
168back. We had some pretty serious issues uh that came up. Mhm. Um, and I say in the community because, you know, it, you know, kind of just lived in the ether out there, um, in that particular portion of town. So, those are schools that we identified at that time. Okay. And then, um, Trusty Anderson talked about way makers that we we have way makers today. What what do we do with way makers if you can explain that? Yeah. So, we have a a partnership with way makers and they provide um, resources to families and particularly like through our SAR process. So they also only work really with a specialized group of families that need to receive targeted services. Uh but we do have a partnership with them. That is correct. What are some of those
169services that they provide? Uh they are connector of resources again uh you know trying to find f when they meet families like through SARB and the family comes to this event and says I need help in medical, I need help in this that they are a connector of that they help them. So do they provide any gang related support gang prevention? No, not through um not in the not in the way. No, not in the same way it's intended for the grip program. And the grip program for way makers is supposed to be specifically identified for that purpose. Okay. Um and then what is uh custom PD doing um doing for gang related prevention today with us? For our district with us or as as a department themselves? Oh, w with us. With us. Um
170they're not when I say they're not they don't have a formal partnership for gang prevention with us. We do have our strong SRO program. We have tremendous officers who work with us. Um they participate um at the campus when we have issues. Um but they're not leading any professional development or anything around gangs. Uh one of our officers has done some of the part partnership presentations with grip. Um, and so he has gone in and done the the training parent portion of it. Okay. And and I I don't know, does Costa PD still have their gang unit? They do. They do. Okay. They do. How well staffed is that? To me, I'm I'm unaware of their actual staffing ratio of officers to the gang unit. Um, but they don't interact directly with us, you know,
171in terms of our sites. Everything comes through our SRO's. Okay. Um, and then you were talking about because what I heard about this program mostly what I hear is that the principles want it, the teachers want it, and the parents want it as well. Um, and I'm not on the campus 100% of the time. So, you know, if they're finding value to it, um, it seems like something that that they want and then they that they want to continue with. And one thing that I hear in the community as kids metriculate to different schools um you know there is a concern from the community about gangs at those schools as kids go to junior high, high school, whatever. Um, and I do know that there is a um I I do think we need some
172kind of gang prevention education um targeting um education because you know from the the teachers at Whittier that I've heard from, they really like the GRIP program because they see their kids from fifth or sixth grade all of a sudden change and they close off and they're not there anymore. Um and they they don't you you can't really get them at that point. So getting these borderline kids as they as they say that you know could go either way based on friend groups I they say is really important and they really like when these grip um you interventionists come in and talk to them about you know good choices or hey my you know this older brother's in a gang but I don't want to join a gang how can I get through that? So
173they're actually providing that kind of service. Um, and I really would love to still have that kind of gang related service or gang prevention service to um, not only just, you know, help that community, but help all communities as our kids metriculate to all of our, all of our campuses. Um, so, so that's why I value the program. I understand your concerns, um, Trusty Anderson, about um, you know, immigration and that kind of stuff, but you know, I'm here to prevent, um, awful things happening towards children and other children in our district. And so that's why I find it very valuable. And um just to kind of um answer your question um you know principles are always looking for resources to best support their campus and um they're experts in a lot of things. Yeah.
174Um sometimes gangs is not one of them, right? So they're looking for resources. So when we talk about principles wanting resources and wanting a program like this, they're looking for a solution for an issue they have. Sometimes that issue changes year to year. Sometimes it moves around town. But those are the issues and conversations that our principal groups have. Um, if this isn't something that the board supports this evening, we of course with staff will go back to the table and work with our principles and take the feedback we've heard tonight and look at what we can do to create something that would best support principles because the goal of tonight and and any item that we bring forward, particularly with student services, is to create more safe environments for our students and families. The
175tools that we choose, you know, we look at options, we bring forward what we think could work. Um, but if it doesn't and it's not something that has support, then we will go back to the table and we will look at ways to be able to support our principles who are facing some of these challenges. Okay. Thank you. Uh, Trustee Anderson. Thank you. Um, I just wanted to clarify again. I think the vision is good. I I agree with you. We've had certain situations pop up. They're not just though in the west side. We've actually had a lot more recently that is in north coast of Mesa. So, one of my concerns with this going forward is it's not actually helping helping one of our high school communities. One of our entire zones is not
176being served. And I don't know that this is the program to do it because it's not based on data. It's not We had three incidences and we're working with CMPD and the the um the gang unit and so this is the school that we're going to work with. It's not it's just these schools were arbitrarily picked or a principal thought, oh, I want this and so or thought that they were getting a different program they were getting. If it was doing actual intervention work and it was working with our SRO, it's a different story to me. But when every parent responds, I love the greeter program and I think that's so valuable. That's not gang intervention. It's it's good to have positive parent interactions. Um, and I think that's I don't know if that got
177lost in what I shared, maybe I shared too much, but the piece to me that I'm concerned with is when one of the students who needs the most intervention currently at Whittier specifically, the parent wouldn't sign off on it is not a part of it and hadn't been served in the teacher didn't know that there was a social worker available for them. Like that's a real time in this month situation. So for me to have a program that it went it just keeps expanding and it's not based on data. It's not based on a targeted need. It to me is a concern. It continues to be a concern though. Also if if other trustees are not even hearing about it and don't know that there's a problem or don't know it's an issue. Um that
178again doesn't speak to a program that's communicating with us well is sharing here our concerns. um in your community, you need to be aware of, you know, you're on the board of a nonprofit that serves Westside schools. You didn't know about this. Like there's I didn't know it was an issue. I knew about the program. Okay. Well, again, there's not that much need if she doesn't know that there's an issue. So, um again, I think our staff can meet these needs. I really would like to see our SRO's working together with the if there the local gang people. My my my concern is not that this is not a need overall. I have a problem with this contract tonight for the three schools that are on here. So, I just wanted to make that clear.
179Trusty Murphy. Um, it's the same for me in terms of I haven't heard from one of my principles that they want this program. Um, so I do have a concern there because I would I would think I would want to hear from one of them that that's what they want. Um, even though I absolutely understand there is an issue, but no one has asked me for this program. So, and no one has no principal has talked to me about this program. I've there's been nothing on my side even though there is clearly a need. And so my concern is I want a program that actually addresses this need like in an integrated fashion with all of the supports that we're already funding and that we're already working with. It doesn't actually make sense to me
180from a programmatic perspective that we're going to have a one-off over here when we have all these other services over here. Like that it that actually doesn't make much sense. Um, regardless of what we want the program to do, which I think we all agree, we want gang intervention and we want gang prevention and we all understand that coming after COVID, Costa Mesa has told us there was a rise in and in and gang activity in in the city and I want to do everything we possibly can to um to quell that to bring those numbers down to bring you know the availability of you know accessing gang activity in our community down. So there is there is nothing that I want more than that, but I want a program that actually does that, that
181really does that. And um and again to Ashley's point, there doesn't seem to be a lot of data or information that really backs up that besides principles who said that they like the program. But I'm again I'm a little like it's 10 kids. Like how can you really love something that is serving like 10 kids? Um, and how many parents are really saying that they really love it? It's 10 maybe sets of parents and we're talking about hundreds of kids. And I think the the opportunity to address hundreds of kids needs is better than this. Um, I also am really concerned about the lack of spec specity about the data. um where what kind of data they're they're accessing, what they're doing with that data, where is it going, what kind of data. I have
182strong strong concerns with anything that mentions data that we don't have absolute complete control over. I'd like to call for the vote. I I I would like to actually just read our board policy because that's the big piece also for me if I may. And um if the but anyone can call for a vote. I'll second it because we already have a motion on the floor and so we can just do a roll call vote now. Okay. But it's our board policy. So well anyone on their own can read our policy. 0415. Trusty Wagan. Yes. Trusty. Please let the motion. Trusty Murphy. No. Trusty Pearson. Yes. Trusty Anderson. No. Trusty Craig. Yes. Okay. The motion fails because we don't have uh four four person. All right. 21E. Thank you very much. Well, good evening. Um
183coming to the board tonight to request um approval for us to move forward to the state for a credential waiver for one of our employees. Uh this employee is going to be teaching driver's education. And as you may recall, there isn't currently a program for teachers to take to teach driver's ed. So, we apply for the waiver. The teacher has agreed that if a program becomes available that they would enter into that program, but at this time there is not. So, we request your support so we can request the waiver. Do I have a motion? So moved. Second. Moved by Trusty Crane, seconded by Trusty Pearson. Roll call vote. Trusty Wagan. Yes. Trusty. Trusty Murphy. Yes. Trusty Pearson. Yes. Trusty Anderson. Yes. Trusty Crane. Yes. All right. Motion carries 50. Uh 21F approve 2025 2026
184declaration of need for fully qualified educators. Miss. Thank you. This is our annual request uh for approval for our declaration for fully qualified educators. This document is what we need to submit to the state in order to be able to approve teachers on emergency permits which would be your clad or your B-clad. So this usually happens with people coming to us from out of state and then they have a time certain to in order to get that certification. It also provides us to apply for limited assignment permits. So these are permits for our teachers who are already credentialed but they will be teaching outside of their credential and again there's a time frame for that for them to enter into a program and then it also includes internships. So, we submit this to the state
185which allows us to continue to employ and um our teachers apply for these permits until they have the actual authorization. We have to ensure that there's enough numbers on here because if we run out of numbers the spaces then we have to reapply which will delay hiring. So, we ask that the board approve the declaration of need for fully qualified educators. Do I have a motion? So moved. Second. Moved by Trusty Pearson, seconded by Trusty Murphy. Roll call vote. Trusty Wagon. Yes. Trusty Soilu. Trusty Murphy. Yes. Trusty Pearson. Yes. Trusty Anderson. Yes. Trusty Crane. Yes. Okay. Motion carries. 50. Uh 21G. approve the amendment for employment of assistant superintendent chief human res resources officer uh between the board of education of the Newport Mesa Unified School District and Tracy Nib dated June 10th 2025. Dr.
186Smith. Yeah. The next two are good news bad news stories. The bad news is that two of our beloved people are bailing on us. Um and it brings us to this item tonight. The good news is um you know we have a reputation in the area for valuing our employees. Um I think Amy mentioned earlier watching board meetings and seeing um how effectively our district is governed. And so we have a lot of folks interested in working here. These two searches were no exception. In fact the search firm that we hired to do this work said they had never seen um this level of interest and the quality of candidates. Um they've been doing this a long time. And so Tracy, our first one before you for consideration tonight um is exactly that. She currently
187serves as the assistant superintendent of human resources for the Orange Unified School District. Before that, she was the executive director of human resources, uh middle school principal. She was a middle school assistant principal, program coordinator, classroom teacher. She has been serving as the chief negotiator in all labor relations for multiple years. When asked about her, they said that one of her focuses is aligning HR practices with student success outcomes. That's exactly what we're working towards here in this district. And so I bring before you tonight the contract for Tracy Nib for assistant superintendent chief human resources. Okay. Regrettably, do we have a motion? I'm not I'm not doing I'm not doing it. Someone has to. I think Lyanna wants to hang up her hat. Okay. Um I will so moved. I mean seconded. Second. Okay.
188Sorry regretfully, but you know we got to No offense. No offense. All right. Roll call vote. Trusty Wagan. Yes. Trusty Soil. Trusty Murphy. Yes. Trusty Pearson, yes. Trusty Anderson, yes. Trusty Crane, yes. All right. Motion carries 50. Um, and 21H, another downer, but but happy, um, approved the agreement for employment of assistant superintendent, chief business um, official between the board of education of Newport Mesa Unified School District and Jeffrey Dixon dated June 10th, 2025. Dr. Smith. Yeah. Most recently, um Jeff has been the acting superintendent of Lagouna Beach Unified School District and by all accounts has done a very nice job of leading the entire district during their transition. Before that, he served as the assistant superintendent of business services. Um for those folks that don't know, Lagouna Unified is a communityf funed district like
189ours. So it it demonstrates that he has um a deep knowledge of those things like cash flow that Jeff mentioned and other the importance of property value. Um so we really appreciate that as well. But before that he had a lot of experience that will help with um what has been Jeff's portfolio. Um a lot of experience in facilities. In fact he led facilities work in a district larger than ours maintenance risk management food services. um again all the things that we'll be looking for leadership in our district moving forward. Um and so it's great pleasure that we bring to you tonight for your consideration someone not only with business but facilities, food service, risk management, and even superintendent experience. All right, we do we have a regretfully emotion for this one as well. We
190would love to have you all here forever, but you you have spent your time wisely here and we appreciate it. More to come with our admiration for you guys, but so moved. Moved by Trustee Anderson, seconded by Move. Second by Trustee Murphy. Roll call vote. Trusty Wagan. Yes. Trust. Trusty Murphy. Yes. Trusty Pearson. Yes. Trusty Anderson. Yes. Trusty Crane. Yes. All right. Motion carries 50 21, first reading and adoption of modifications to board policy. Dr. Torres. Yeah. The uh policy committee met uh recently and you have in front of you tonight policy 3210, which is the Irvine Company endowment or affectionately known as the tick fund. Um and we just made some clarifying language changes. Okay. Do I have a motion? So moved. Is that Trusty Anderson moved? Uh Trusty Crane seconded second. All right.
191Roll call vote. Trusty Wagan. Yes. Trusty Soil. Trusty Murphy. Yes. Trusty Pearson. Yes. Trusty Anderson. Yes. Trusty Craig. Yes. Motion carries 50. All right. Now moving down to 20. We don't have any res. Okay. Number 23 are informal reports. I have a comment. Yes. Oh, sorry. I didn't see that. Go ahead. I just wanted to say um in your final month, Mr. Trader, thank you for bringing forward this policy for us that we can memorialize it and get it rolling and using this m this money for educational enhancements and the benefit of our community. Um and so I just again thank you for the ease of working with you and that um you continue to bring ideas forward to us and um maximize them. So thank you. All right. Um informal reports. Dr. Smith briefs
192and I want to talk about the grid determination and the strength of human spirit that we've seen in the last month here in the district. had a chance to go to the Estansia baseball section finals, CF finals. They're down 3-1 the entire game. Bottom of the seventh, the uh ace closer for the other team came out on the mound absolutely throwing heat. Um our boys got up there on base two, bloop single, load the bases, young man hits the ball off the fence, clears the bases, we win a section championship. as everyone said, that was probably the most excitement we'd had the whole game. They they never gave up. They could have easily given up, especially with this kid coming out of the mound that again was just one of the hardest throwers that we've
193faced. Uh and then I think about all of our our graduations uh throughout the district and the stories that we hear. Certainly we hear some really emotional stories at STEP and and at Backbay, but uh in all of our graduations, there are young people who struggled over the last 13 years to answer the bell, so to speak, to to have the courage to do the work, to complete the work, to walk those fields, those stages, to move those tassels, and they don't do it without the support of families and friends and caregivers. Um and so to the students, thank you for your courage, grit, and dedication. to the families that support them. Thank you for trusting us and for supporting them. And for our our employee groups and and folks out there, our classified certificated
194management, that they get up every day committed to making sure that those kids do in fact, each and every one of them walk across that stage and across that field. It works and it was beautiful to see it. Thank you. Um Trusty Murphy, you want to start and go down the way? Um, well, I'm like already all tearary from Jeff and Leona. So, um, uh, and then our our emotional conversation about how to, you know, how to prevent gang, uh, violence and and interactions, um, which I know we all want, but, um, I I agree with you, uh, uh, Dr. Smith. So, um, all of the graduations were amazing and wonderful. Um, Costa Mesa does it fabulously. It was it was fantastic. Congrats again to all those um seniors moving on in their lives. But
195the which I will probably start crying about because it's been that kind of night. So, Monav Vista Mustangs, their um Oh my god. So, their um promotion and graduate in graduation ceremonies were amazing. Um, so thank you to all the staff at Monav Vista who make that school so special. Um, so welcoming, so warm, such a amazing place for a student to find a place to belong and to feel accepted and to move forward with their lives and make um the best that they can out of whatever situation that they're dealing with. And so, um, so what comes across in that in those promotion and graduation ceremonies is certainly again grit and strength of these kids to get through what they've been able to get through to get to that day. Um, and obviously the,
196you know, the parents and families that are around them and love them, but I'm always blown away with the high caliber of our teachers and our counselors and our staff that pour so much of their hearts and time and energy into um, helping these kids. So, thank you. And their stories were so their stories were amazing. And that's also what I'm thinking about and why I'm crying. And also Lyanna and Jeff and like that was just too much. Well, then I'll keep this very short also. Um, so many wonderful end of the year activities. Um, congratulations um to the class of 2025, your parents. I mean, thank you to the staff um and Newport Mesa for doing such an amazing amazing job. Um, every I mean I must have been at seven or eight graduations
197and each one of them was just as lovely as the others. So, what a great job. What a It was so It's an honor to be part of all of them. Um, the other thing that I just absolutely love going to are the walkthroughs. Um, and those are when our high school students come back and walk through their elementary school. Um, our their elementary schools and it's it is probably one of my favorite things to be at. Just it just shows the community. I Everybody's in tears there. I'm I'm still crying over it. It shows how great um Newport Mesa is as a community. It also shows I the other thing that I just secretly love is they all come in their caps and gowns and probably there's probably 40 kids that come to each
198one of the elementary schools that come back and I would say 30 out eight out of the 40 are in their blue um CDM gowns which means they're all staying in our public school system. Um they're they're they're choosing to stay in our public school system instead of going private. And I think that's just a testament to all of you guys and how well you guys do. Um, and the other thing the the other event that I loved was the unified. I didn't get to be at all of it. I wish I could. We were at another meeting beforehand. Um, I think that this is a great start to inclusion in our schools. Um, I I can't wait to see that grow um and continue. I'm very excited about that. So, thank you. Um I
199um just wanted to congratulate the AVID scholars um that were here earlier. Um I had a couple of parents um reach out in a variety of other capacities in the past month just to explain the process and the sequencing more as we're expanding it. Um, one parent was a parent that their child was in in it at Enen and then at Newport Harbor and didn't realize that they would have six years. Um, they thought they were doing a year or two at Enen and then a year or two rather than four at Newport Harbor and so they weren't able to do other electives. So, I think just explaining the process for parents is really key into what they're signing up for um, and what that can look like I think is really needed before we
200fully expand things. Um, I wanted to thank Mr. Trader for um, taking a look at our current bus application um, and reviewing some of that. Um, I think it's always important to look at things. It's been a decade since we've looked at some of those pieces. So, thank you um, for doing that, particularly as it relates um, to our students going to Team Winkle. We want as many local families that want to go to be able to have access to that. Um, I also just wanted to um ask if we can add to our um next budget perhaps to um to discuss approving a scope and a budget for the Estansia football team room. So the day that we're done with the theater, we can start with some of those plans. um they have been
201waiting for a really long time in a space that is not up to standard for the rest of the district. Um and so it would just be great if we could we could do that as quickly as we can. Um I was able to attend the T-winkle awards night which was amazing to see. I think there was over 75 students that got on a roll for seventh and eighth grade. And as many people discover when they attend Team Winkle in Estonia, it's a bit of a hidden gem of an area, which is again why messaging I think is important. Um and that we follow the policies that we currently have that include things like um we need to make sure that the board shall make decisions with deliberate awareness of impediments to learning faced by
202students of color and or diverse cultural, linguistic or socioeconomic backgrounds. The board decisions shall not rely on biased or stereotypical assumptions about any particular group of students. So I think it's really important that we follow our own policies when we're thinking about programs. Um I also was able to attend the promotions for Victoria Rey and Whittier due to some very careful parking lot maneuvers. So thank you to those principles. um and the Asansia and T-winkle promotion and graduation and graduation at Mesa and Newport Harbor and it's just great to go as far across our district as possible. Thank you. Well, June, as we know, is our mission accomplished. Um having visited many promotions uh from elementary, middle school to high school, um it's absolutely amazing to um hear, feel, and see the love that has
203been dished out by the staff, the teachers from custodian to principal and everyone in between and then also the families supporting all these students. So, um, it's it's, uh, pretty amazing. And the coolest thing, too, is that every site has its own personality and its own culture. However, the common denominator is love of kids, and that is Newport Mesa. Diverse yet dishing out a lot of love and care. So, um, June is is a good month. Uh, and as we head into summer, our job is not done. You know, we get comments like, "Oh, you're going to have summer off." No, we do a lot of work in summer a lot in including our summer school, of course, launching and just being there for all these thousands of families and kids and making sure that
204they're somewhere safe and getting their needs met and having fun while at it. And of course, we have a very ambitious facilities plan and I'm very excited to already see all the I mean, those bins are out there. they're they're out the crews out there are all trying, you know, trying to get the job done. So, um on that note, everyone have a wonderful um well, I guess we we keep going, but uh school's over for our grads. Congrats uh class of 2025. Yeah, it was a great end of the year. So, thank you everyone that participated in all the graduations. They were so wonderful, so heartwarming. and to our our trust our trustees feel like you you know could be a trustee one day maybe in your retirement Jeff and Leona if you want
205to run there always spaces available on your local school board um but yes thank you for attending some of your last um school board uh school board uh graduations it was great to be there with you guys um but thank you everyone for doing um all that you do for our students to get us to the finish line and so I'm going to close this at 857 thank Thank you. All right.