10/25/2022 - NMUSD Board of Education Meeting

001all right we will call the meeting to order at 4 pm roll call justy Bartow yes trustee Montoya here justy crane here trustee Anderson here trustee or soyloo here trustee weigen here trustee yelsea here Dr Smith here move to adoption of the agenda may I have a motion so moved second okay um yeah I wanted to pull an item for discussion uh 17a2 and I would like to have an item of clarification it doesn't necessarily have to be pulled so 17a1 hey what one so may I have a motion to adopt the agenda with 17a2 pulled for discussion so moved I may have a second second it's been moved by trustee matoya and seconded by trustee crane oh and we also need to but I can do that at the time um roll call vote

002trustee Bartow yes yes do you say crane yes trustee Anderson yes trustee your soilu yes trustee weigen yes trustee yelsea yes all right Community input on closed session items seeing none we will now move to closed session the items are 5A conference with labor negotiator and 5e Public Employee discipline dismissal release employment we will return to open session at 6 pm moving to closed session at 401 pm we'll call to order at 6 PM that's pretty cool okay Michelle with Opening Ceremonies Pledge of Allegiance led by student board member Ethan cross United States [Music] for all please all right move to adoption of the minutes 10 3 22 and 10 18 22 may have a motion someone may have a second second been moved by trustee Anderson seconded by trustee Elsie roll call vote trustee

003Bartow yes Christy matoya yes trustee crane yes trustee Anderson yes trustee or soyluz yes trustee weigan yes trustee yelsea yes all right now we move to student board member reports trustee yes I know I wasn't on that page yet um welcome Ethan we're glad to see you up here and our two other board members Russell and Fernando thank you and TJ um let's take take it it's all yours just make sure the pointy end points to your mouth and it moves easily good evening good evening superintendent Smith and members of the board a question for this week was what was our campus doing in terms of the fentanyl crisis my name is Ethan Krauss and I represent Cloud campus in regards to the topic I contacted the principal of cloud campus Dr Stevens to find

004out what cloud campus was doing in regards to addressing the fentanyl crisis in clouds health and PE courses lessons will be taking place about this topic Elementary and secondary are both using virtual backgrounds to show Cloud's commitment to the theme of this year which is to celebrate life drug-free we're also doing a spirit week to promote veteran week following the question of ifathetic we will also ask the question of if we think it helps following this I think it does help through the lessons and promotion of provide living week I believe Cloud campus is making a difference with addressing the fentanyl crisis thank you thank you very much um our next person on the list is um Fernando paranon from Estancia High School good evening superintendent Smith president Bartow and fellow Board of Trustees this

005week I Estancia we are recognizing Red Ribbon Week along with Battle of the Bell on Friday on Monday ASB passed out Red Ribbon bracelets to the students so that we can promote drug and alcohol awareness Estancia has continued its quest to be inclusive by having school spirit days we believe that if students are excited about coming to school and if it is a positive place that they will want to keep their bodies and Minds healthy even though there isn't direct drug drug and alcohol awareness every day the goal of our school is to help everyone make healthy choices being a part of ASB at estanta we plan a lot of effort into promoting spirit wear and having our hallways and comments covered with posters ASB has made several ribbon Red Ribbon Week coasters made announcements

006on our daily announcements these past two days about drugs drug use prevention and have displayed information on Fentanyl and its negative impact on people through our flat screen TVs I also wanted to share that the non-profit organization called when on campus has been very helpful to our school as students gain support through the meetings held that steps aside the stresses stressors that students go through on the daily and allow for human connection Estancia has continued to promote student involvement through our five-star program where students receive points by attending sports games and school events they can redeem these points for cool prizes such as Estancia shirts stickers water bottles pins and many more cool prizes like donut day which has been rewarding to students during our scheduled break thank you thank you very much Dante has

007been busy um Marcelina Sanchez from Early College High School good evening superintendent Smith president Bartow and members of the board on October 10th through the 15th we had red rib Ribbon week on Monday we passed out Red Ribbon bracelets on Tuesday we committed to be drug free and dressed to impress Wednesday we had a poster at lunch where students signed their name and pledged To Be Drug Free Thursday was the start of our canned food drive and Friday we were read to school it is important for students to know the risks that come with drugs and how to avoid them for them to be healthy echs believes that students should know the resources that are available to them if they need it thank you thank you very much and let's give our board student board

008members a round of applause thank you and now we move to Harbor Council PTA Report with Lisa bowler okay good evening Dr Smith president Bartow trustees cabinet and guests um I'm filling in for Cynthia tonight and it's my pleasure to report that we have over 5 600 PTA members so far and the month's not over and it's never too late to join the PTA um our units are working on their Reflections which is a PTA National program our Harbor Council reception for the first place winners from all of our participating schools will be held here in the Sanborn room on November 17th from 5 to 7 pm and um on in February there will be a reception at the fourth district level which is all of Orange County so our first place winners here will

009go on to fourth district and they'll be a reception at the Board of Education up there on um Red Hill or off of Red Hill at calmas we're all so excited about our first Harbor Council coffee with the superintendent which is tomorrow morning at Newport Harbor High School it will be for all any PTA members we're doing them by zone so this first one is the Newport Harbor Zone but if you're a PTA member at one of our other schools you're welcome to attend and it will be at 9 00 a.m tomorrow morning in the reading room at Newport Harbor which is in their Library um also our ptas are in the midst of having their Boo Fest or if you're going on tonight and the rest of the weekend and they're doing boo fest

010and trunk or treat and then our units are all getting their um PTA business in order their audits for the year end in order and their taxes which are due November 15th so that's it thank you thank you Now we move to CSEA and nmft president's comments we'll start with CSEA president Stu Tedford evening board president uh Bartow sorry um I feel like you guys are my family I mean you know everybody knows me so I just want to say how much fun that was and how absolutely positively nervous I was to get up and speak in front of everybody but all the positive feedback I got from all the board members and from the uh just people who were there lady stopped me today and said that I did a really great job so

011I guess you know this is my thing but but on a serious note I'd like to thank you for your consideration of our mou um we appreciate the fact that the district thinks about us like that and that by squaring up the salary it'll make everything a little easier going forward we do have a couple of years to worry about those kinds of things but I just wanted to say thank you to everybody in Leona's hard work and and I know that Wes had mentioned it in a meeting we hadn't and I was kind of like oblivious to it but I'm really happy because it's a lot of money for my members and my members needed uh especially the part-timers so I want to say thank you for all of that and um last but

012personal absolutely not least as I wanted to congratulate Char on her potential um Personnel commission so we had talked about what a great addition she would be to the Personnel commission and I just wanted to say that I really hope that that happens because I know that we'll be able to work with you as a member of the commission as well as we have as a school board member and back in the day as a principal I don't know if I hope that it works out for you but I really appreciate all the support everybody gives and I wanted to uh uh say thank you again and have a great evening thank you and then we have nmft representative Tamara Fairbanks good evening Dr Smith president Bartow honored trustees and guests it is my honor

013and privilege to introduce our nmft president Rhonda Reed Runner brings a wealth Insight that is an asset to our organization Rhonda has served as a coordinator for our elementary counselors under the Project SAFE connections Grant she served as a crisis responder for both the district and the county and a mentor for each and every one of our school sites under crisis response cheese also has experiences in all in elementary as well as secondary at each and every one of our school sites she's the reason she was the recipient of the injury to Water Works through an mft and have also served on our negotiations team during this transition Rhonda has worked tirelessly between her current duties and leading us at nmft her work in attending human resource superintendent and Joint benefit team meetings demonstrates her

014servant leadership as an executive board member I am proud to say that we are stronger than ever because that excellent leaders and run as an example of that so I introduce you ratherine thank you Tamara this will be short I just want to say How Deeply honored and delighted I am to be president of Newport Mesa Federation of teachers I also want to thank superintendent Smith and assistant superintendent Olson for their assistant as I transition into this new role and making it as smooth as possible I also am looking forward to the continued collaboration working together on behalf of our certificated staff and our students so thank you thank you you're welcome [Applause] Now we move to community input on non-agendized items this is an opportunity for the public to address the board regarding items

015not on the regular meeting agenda comments on non-agenda topics are limited to three minutes per comment up to 20 minutes per topic a speaker may not a speaker may not relinquish his or her time to another person by order of the brown act section 549-54.2 the board will take no action nor have any discussion on non-agendized items the superintendent May provide clarification during superintendent's comments we're going to start with Cass Kong then mafik Airy and then Ruth Kobayashi I hope everyone's having a nice night my name is Cass and I'm a freshman at Newport Harbor High School now you're probably wondering what's the Freshman doing here what are you thinking what is the Freshman know about school he's only spent a few months at the four years you spend at high score some of the

016most significant and the environment there is a major factor in your future tonight I'm here to highlight the inclusive welcoming equal Community Harper has established stepping onto a new campus is always a little terrifying and the feeling is Amplified when you're entering High School it's like exploring an unknown ocean filled with hundreds of familiar yet unfamiliar sites but outside traversed my classes became increasingly obvious that I belonged at Harbor all to teachers and staff members I've met are committed to their work and willing to give support to anyone who needs it not only that these people afford so much effort into creating safe and inclusive environment one student is never favored over another and if you need help you can get it without fear of being mocked or discriminated against High School is an important

017place for building connections and Harper offers dozens of opportunities for students to get involved and meet people with common interests there's a variety of clubs and organizations like ASB drama club Bridges and prism I believe prism especially is a great Club as IT addresses equality and inclusion at Harper for lgbtq plus students when you're part of a community that has historically been abused belittled and erased it can be difficult to feel comfortable and wanted especially in high school the value of having a place to gather and connect with some more people is immeasurable those are only two small factors contributing to Harper's diverse and wonderful community every time I step onto campus I know I'm safe in a place that will let me Thrive no matter who you are as a person or what your

018identity is there is always room at Harbor for you I want to thank the school board for this opportunity and for allowing students to share their voices and be heard as principal Bolton says diversity is our strength thank you thank you next we have mafik Ari let's say good evening Newport Mesa School Board I hope you all are well and if you don't know me already my name is mafik area and I'm a proud senior at Newport Harbor High School and the founder of the club prism today I would like to cover a few issues that have been popular growth among the school board meetings and on the well-known Instagram account Newport Mesa uncensored the first issue I would like to address being the gender neutralization of our schools clearly there has been some worry

019among some parents as binary terms begin to shift to neutral Alternatives one key example being mentioned last meeting a father was scared for his daughter's High School future over the terms prom King and prom queen being changed to Royals in no way do I wish to admit dismiss his feelings or any others feelings but instead I would like to help the beautiful thing about this gender neutralization is that it will not take away from your daughter's or son's opportunities to become prom king or queen once they have obtained their position of prime Royal they can select whether they could be called prom queen prom queen or prime Royal think of it like a survey where you get the freedom to choose the title that fits you best all that gender neutralization does is make campuses

020places of opportunity for all girls boys and others secondly I would like to discuss uh the group that forms Newport Mesa incest uncensored it is strange to me as a student that adults without kids currently in their systems are telling us that our district is suffering and out of the school that I love so much is horrible because of its inclusivity and open-mindedness I have one thing to say to this group as Martin Gore wrote and Dave Gohan powerfully saying before you come to any conclusions try walking in my shoes thank you so much for your time and effort I'm glad I was given this opportunity to talk tonight thank you next we have Ruth Kobayashi good evening my name is Ruth Sanchez Kobayashi and I am a conservative Christ follower I want to tell

021you there are so many great things happening in this District I've been blown away by all the school spirit around town between the sailors the sea Kings all the other schools those are the ones that I know the best um there's just so much happiness and I keep hearing so many reports of kids that are so glad to be together we're seeing learning losses from the pandemic Nationwide and locally and it's going to take strong leadership to take this challenge head on and to make up for lost time for these kids I thank you for that leadership to all of us including my community yes it's fair to press our leaders to do more absolutely but do not fall prey to the destructive messaging from a small group of folks who hate our schools because

022that's what they do some of the ways that those that hatred has been expressed include we will tear it down I have a match and we write it Dawn or what is a human that last one in particular condemned organizations who support gay students specifically what really upset me was included in that was the organization blaze it forward for those of us from Newport Beach that live not too far from the port streets where the alleged murderer of Blaze lives to disrespect the memory of a gay Jewish boy young man is Unforgivable these people do not represent my community we can all do better all of us we can come together as parents grandparents and school leaders to help these kids get back to where they need to be we can't burn it down write

023it Dawn or insinuate that those who are different from us are not humans but we can make sure that our kids get the very best education and feel cared for in their schools thank you thank you next we have Olga Para laughs good evening thank you so much for listening to me again I was here at the first meeting uh from the school year and I have the same topic bullying right now it's happening to two of my students One race school which I get to pick her up every single day and she's crying she has scratches on her face a big Bruce on her on her arm because she was punched uh it's happening to a t Winkle student right now where um in the beginning of the year she was really excited about

024the school year Middle School right so she had good grades and then right now she went to 1.7 because she's been moved so I was here the first meeting and I asked what is the process what is the system how can we do this together right but I haven't have any answer about that so I do demand an answer what are we going to do our kids are getting bullied getting hurt they cannot learn if they are not safe at school so please I need an answer I I expect an email I expect a text I expect a phone call something because her mom she needs answers she cannot send her to school if she's going to be hurt really she has a lot of steam now because she's not safe okay so it's the

025second meeting the second time I'm here with the same topic the same worry right um we don't want our students to go through that what are we gonna do what is the next step for me um I don't know a formal complaint do we have to call the police when she gets hit because we already went to the office we already talked we go through protocol I I advise the parents please go go with the teacher first then the principal then go to the district and we're following protocol we want to do this in a manually uh form okay so thank you so much for listening and I I hope you can give me an answer thank you thank you next we have Sarah Hardiman foreign thank you superintendent Smith president Bartow and other members

026of the board for allowing me the opportunity to speak tonight my name is Sarah and I'm a junior at Newport Harbor High School as I followed the past several weeks of discourse on the group Newport Mesa uncensored I have noticed one thing in particular it is mainly composed of adults with a large lack of student input well I as a student am here tonight to voice my opinion as one thing I have learned throughout my educational career at nmusd is to never stay silent when I believe something isn't right and I believe something is very wrong I refuse to sit back and watch as my teachers are slandered by people who do not sit in these classrooms every day let alone have children in these classrooms these attacks on my teachers are unwarranted and contain

027a large amount of misinformation despite what those delivering these attacks might claim if the members of Newport Mesa uncensored truly care about the children and students they will listen to what my peers and I have to say tonight instead of trying to speak for us you are not protecting us by labeling our Educators as sexual groomers and pedophiles for supporting clubs like prism which is a safe space for lgbtq plus students Bridges which draws attention to hate and bullying on campus and inclusion Council which brings together some of the school's most vulnerable populations you were not protecting us by attempting to remove important resources for lgbtq plus students like myself and you certainly are not protecting us by putting the safety and livelihood of our administrators at risk by blasting them on social media in

028fact we're doing the opposite a large portion of students at nhhs would say they are happy with the school and that includes our teachers and curriculum I have had several of the teachers being labeled with vile and unfitting terms and I can confidently say that they are some of the best teachers I have had in my time in the district and I'm proud to stand here and support them as they have done for me every single day these teachers genuinely care for the students something I cannot attribute to those involved with Newport Mesa uncensored I am so privileged to attend a school that values me not only in my learning but in my transition into adulthood I would like to give a huge thank you to all the teachers in nmusd especially those who have

029been so brave these past few weeks and standing up for their students and the communities they represent in the words of one of my wonderful teachers who are brilliant kind and deserving of only love I may be young young enough for you to brush me off as a silly uninformed teenager but I can guarantee you that I understand so please stop pushing these false politically motivated narratives at the expense of our public education just so you can stack a couple of seats in the collection in the end it benefits no one the support of queer students should not be up for debate we deserve to feel seen protected and represented in the institutions where we spend most of our time oh and one more thing the school's lgbtq plus Club is not called prism to

030convince parents that it's about science it's called that because a prism reflects a rainbow thank you for your time next we have Lauren Boyd and then Malia Lavoy and then summer race president Bartow superintendent Smith members of the board thank you for your continued commitment to students and for your time today my name is Lauren Boyd I am currently a senior at Newport Harbor High School I am an Alum of Benson intermediate and of Newport Heights Elementary my parents have been involved in my education for my entire life by volunteering for School site counsel superintendent's Council the PTA by reading with me talking with me and supporting me from kindergarten through 12th grade however along uh with the support from the two people who have raised me there are three words which I think are

031important to bring into this conversation in Loco Apprentice the doctrine dating back to the 1800s which gave schools the responsibility of protecting students when not in the care of their parents both in regards to education and are well accepted shared values for example if a child falls off the monkey bars hits their head and is physically hurt who calls 9-1-1 the school does what about the kid who's bullied because they don't look like me speak like me or dress like me the school has the same responsibility to keep them safe just as they would the kid who fell off the monkey bars through in local Apprentice teachers have continued to support our students your children and my classmates with excellence and Grace however lately you've been hearing from a minority group of citizens who who

032would have you believe that my teachers don't have their students best interests at heart this group would have you believe it's not the school's duty to protect children from physical and emotional harm this group would have you believe that they know better than the school better than the teachers better than you the board to which I'd like to respond look at me grandparents parents uncles aunts brothers sisters look at me I am a product of the system I am a proud successful product of this system I believe in myself I believe in my critical thinking skills I believe in my peers abilities to direct their learning I believe in the validity of my own learning I have thrived in school I have a bright future ahead of me and more importantly I recognize that this

033is the result of an entire system of qualified and talented teachers I am a product of teachers teaching me a full history of teaching me our shared values who wouldn't want students to receive the same comprehensive education that I have who wouldn't want students or who wouldn't want teachers to teach students in the same masterful way which they have taught me so when you go vote in the upcoming weeks please remember what a wonderful job our teachers are doing and support the people who will support them don't let those who would divide us we Are Better Together support our teachers support our students [Applause] next we have Malia LaVoy good evening superintendent Smith president Bartow and other Trustees of the board my name is Malia lavois and I am a senior at Newport Harbor High

034School I'm here today to address the group Newport Mesa uncensored I went on a deep dive of their Instagram account and was met with horrendous accusations as well as assumptions on about my teachers clubs and overall School District some of these falsities include allegations of racism from District members sexual grooming from teachers and deceitful curriculum in clubs they are especially concerned with nmusd's track to inclusivity insisting it has done quote major damage majors in all caps while they and their followers claim it has quote no place in our schools I do not agree with any other protestations the inclusive environment nmusd has created in its driving form is ultimately beneficial for its students staff and all members of its Community which leads me to this one question what really is their goal they imply they

035are an awareness group yet the only thing is they are publicizing are both false and unrepresentative of the Newport Mesa Community they declare their mission is quote is to quote restore parental rights to animusd as well as to quote Advocate on behalf of students within the Newport Mesa Unified School District on behalf of as in they are speaking for the students rather than continuing to let this small group of parents represent their fabricated and deluded claims shouldn't we focus more on supporting students the first-hand source and feeling welcomed enough to advocate for themselves like I along with my fellow student representatives are doing here today thank you thank you next we have a sunny right sorry hello president Bardo superintendent Smith I'm board members my name is Sonny Ray this is my fourth year at

036import Harbor I am a senior I have felt safe and accepted on campus and part of that has to do with the administration and the club prism prism has allowed me to interact and get to know other queer teams in the past I have been belittled made fun of name called and shame due to my gender expression and overall identity I have more often than not felt like an outsider due to my upbringing race and crewness even though we have supportive Administration teachers and even students there are still ignorant people who make me feel unaccepted unsafe and make me question whether or not my queerness is valid I've often been called a Dyke and asked sarcastically if I was gay I've been referred to by my pronouns in the most awful attitude I feel like

037a joke and less than a human being harassed on and off campus regularly makes it difficult for me to focus on my academics my mental heart my mental health starts to deteriorate and I start to get depressed I have to assess whether or not I am safe in a current situation I'm in when things happen I have to choose either to fight back ignore them and take it or walk away it's gotten to the point where I don't feel safe I always have to be near or with someone joining the club prism has made me feel less alone the club the inclusion council meeting and the administration have really helped making the school feel safe the Administration has been doing an amazing job by creating safe places for us giving us resources and trying to

038make things more inclusive thank you for your time hey next I have Michelle Rankin thank you Newport Mesa Unified School District board members for giving me this opportunity to speak in front of you as well as our community that is here tonight as part of the Newport Aquatics Community I would like to first thank you and show my appreciation for the relationship your board has built with the Newport Mesa Aquatics Community it's very much appreciated just before summer of 2021 your board introduced a plan for the repair of the Newport Harbor High School pool after members of the aquatics Community reviewed it we knew it was not the best plan to move forward with and we knew we needed a full facility renovation not just the pool we provided you with our feedback you listened

039you heard us and as a result you went back to the drawing board increased the budget and we are now looking at a complete Aquatics facilities renovation that to me is very positive working relationship and again I appreciate that the aquatics community in Newport is unique and far from exclusive it is quite the opposite and that it includes student athletes from various programs such as culinary arts ASB yng and most are scholar athletes some are City of Newport Beach ocean and pool lifeguards and many of our athletes return to coach we also work together with CDM Estancia and Costa Mesa High Schools as well as the City of Newport Beach and USA swimming and water polo to ensure we are supporting members of our local Statewide and National communities it may be shocking for members

040of the community who are here tonight to learn that the Newport Harbor High School facility supports the City of Newport Beach lifeguards with training and recertification the City of Newport Beach Junior Lifeguards program with training and testing the City of Newport Beach with swim lessons and summer family activities the state and National Water Polo with national Exposition games training and tournaments it supports close to 100 high school student athletes with swim in water polo over 50 Master swimmers and over 300 local private and public school kids with swim lessons and meets and water polo lessons and tournaments we've now just added one more two more programs to this list the Newport Mesa Unified School District has just launched an EMR which is emergency medical responder course and two periods of swim PE class with 25

041to 30 students in each class the pool deck classroom is home to these courses while at the same time being used as the aquatics gear and Equipment room coach athlete film review and coaching room The Athlete's study room and the tar TV video room I say this next comment with sheer Delight I promise we're busting at the seams over at the Newport Harbor High School pool we are keeping the facilities together with duct tape luck and a whole lot of Wishful Thinking hoping that our pool pump and heater won't break down again so I ask you the board members to keep the renovation project on track I ask anyone in the community who may have questions about the project to email the board or send an email we can't afford to let this be delayed

042anymore thanks [Applause] next next we have Julie Castillo superintendent Smith president Bartow distinguished board members I just thank you so much for the opportunity to make a statement concerning the Newport Harbor pool renovation but in light of the agendized speakers before me it kind of makes this uh statement kind of Superfluous not Superfluous but just seem kind of small and um but anyway my sister Dana black served on this board for 24 years and so I'm very aware of the magnitude and the weight of which you carry in which you just um are kind of fighting on behalf of your constituency who voted you into office as well as just trying to make a safe and an incredible learning environment for our students as well as pulling in just quality Administration and faculty and staff

043and you know Sean Bolton we adore him he's a gem and we're so grateful for his leadership um but anyway my name is again is Julie Castillo I am a parent of an Uber Harbor water polo player and I've had the privilege of having six kids go through Newport Mesa schools and they've all had incredible experiences um my husband and I like I said are alumni we've had the privilege of seeing the evolution of the district and especially in these last years of just the focus of the District of renovating and updating and bringing um you know new facilities for our students that you know just Elevate our the opportunities for our students which is incredible um you guys have a big job and so I'm just really grateful for your efforts and how you

044Endeavor on behalf of our students um like I said six students were kind of a sports Centric family my daughter came to me one time and said Mom how come you never put us in dance and I was like what's dance so I mean we just you know volleyball we pretty much every sport at Newport Harbor we've had an experience and we've had um experiences on the booster board so our experiences varied and I just want to say that um I've served on the Newport Harbor volleyball booster club a soccer booster club we just um Sports is our thing and we've had fantastic experiences all um five of my six have gone through and played in some form or fashion in college or just allowed them to the impetus to get into a four-year universities

045so I'm just very grateful um let's see so like I said I was booster president right now I'm just a snack bar coordinator and so I am so grateful for that opportunity because you know it's given me a firsthand View at the unique umness of the aquatics program just High parental involvement we have this amazing youth program thank you Julie anyway just thank you so much next we have Nicholas Verdugo and then Michael lucer uh we'll go to Michael Lister and then we can come back and then after that will be Jill hunt good evening superintendent uh board members my name is Michael lucer and my son is a senior waterfall player at Newport Harbor and I want to come here tonight to express my thanks to you for all the work that you've done

046in support of the Newport Harbor Aquatics facility renovation project and I want to urge you to keep please keep this project on track and moving towards a timely completion Newport Beach is an Aquatics community and the Newport Harbor pool is Central to that identity it has made a profound impact not just on the student athletes who have competed there but on the entire city you guys know about the Olympians that have come from that pool the multiple College all-americans the kids that go on to Stanford ivy league UC schools State schools there have also been numerous Newport Beach firefighters lifeguards at Newport Beach Newport Mesa teachers and coaches who daily make a positive impact in our community but I know that there are still those out there questioning why this needs to be done I've

047seen their postings online I've heard complaints and I wanted to them I want to say this the Newport Harbor pool is 50 years old ancient by the standards of modern facilities and it is literally falling apart our CIF Champion boys water polo team now uses a locker room where a couple times a month the drains in the floor back up with urine and much worse substances the preparation for last year's CIF Championship run had to be done at other pools because our pool was breaking down over and over and over multiple times a year swim lessons Junior lifeguard training for our City's children are disrupted by the equipment that breaks down the entire facility is literally at this point unsafe unsanitary and unsustainable which means that the Improvement to the pool are Urgent and long

048overdue this facility should be one of our City's crown jewels and it needs to be brought up to a level that corresponds to the positive impact this pool has made on the City of Newport Beach and its residents superintendent board members thank you again for the work you've already done and please continue the effort to keep this project progressing without delay our students and our community desperately thank you thank you thank you yes we have Jill hunt and then Jake Lighty good evening superintendent Smith president Bartow board members my name is Jill hunt and I'm a proud alumni of Newport Harbor High School I have two freshmen who are proud new Sailors and our oldest son is a freshman at Harvard University and was a valedictorian and proud sailor graduate of the class of 2022.

049and most importantly he was a member of the boys CIF Championship water polo team I am here tonight to show support for the Newport Harbor pool project so many things have improved at Newport Harbor since I was in school there the teachers are incredible the programs offered rival the top private schools in Los Angeles and Orange County and I can honestly say that much of it is thanks to the incredible leadership of Sean Bolton the captain of our ship do you know what has not improved since my time at Harbor the pool so thank you for finally recognizing the long overdue need to improve the pool and your unwavering commitment to bring the pool to the same standards as Estancia Costa Mesa and Corona del Mar High School your commitment to improve the pool is

050the right decision for the best boys and girls water polo program in the country not only does Aquatics program at Newport Harbor High School develop great athletes but under the coaching of Ross Sinclair these players are some of the top students and Community student leaders going off to college they are our future lifeguards teachers doctors lawyers business owners and someday school board members the pool project benefits so many other members of our community as well my children have all been involved in various clubs and teams that practice at Newport Harbor High School I have seen lifebirds do their trainings at the pool I have also received many an email canceling the practice when the pool systems were broken and have had to hold the bathroom door shut with one hand while using the bathroom while

051watching my children play their Sports the facilities are old and the locks have been broken since I attended school there it is time so thank you for bringing the pool which is home to the best water polo program in the country up to standards I am shocked and dismayed that Newport Mesa uncensored would critique this long overdue pool project they do not speak for the community on this issue nor do they speak for the majority of this community on many other levels half of your audience here today is here to support the Newport Harbor High School pool so thank you for your commitment to keep the pool project moving without interruption or delay the kids are counting on you [Applause] good evening Dr Smith president Bartow and school board members my name is Jake leafy

052and I'm a proud alumni of Newport Mesa Unified School District I attended Mariners Elementary Ensign junior high school and graduated in Newport Harbor High School in 2019 where I was a member of the Newport Harbor boys water pool team I'm currently a fourth year UCI student student athlete on the men's water polo team where I've played for the last four years I was also in Newport Beach City lifeguard for four years and currently on the age group coaching staff along with uh being a volunteer High School coach during the summers at Newport Harbor I'm here tonight to thank Dr Smith president Bartow and board members along with prince prince sorry principal Dr Bolton uh and Coach Ross and Claire for pursuing the Newport Harbor High School pool facility Renovations project and approving the budget at

053the last board meeting I as a student athlete believe it's long overdue and well needed as this is the 50th anniversary of its opening as a water polo player player and a Newport Harbor Heist the Newport Harbor High School pool has been a big part of my life for the last 14 years I've played since I was nine years old through the Water Polo club into my high school career and I'm excited to see the improvements that it desperately needs over the last 14 years I along with my two brothers have been fortunate enough to have this facility in our community for swim lessons Junior lifeguard training and testing age group water polo and training competitions High School water polo training competitions Newport Beach lifeguard recertification and training age group water polo coaching now and

054just recently a volunteer High School coaching um and Newport Harbor High School pool facility is in constant use from 5 a.m morning workouts as I've fully am aware of I'm glad that I don't have to do any more as well as Master swim training High School swim EMT classes during the day and swing the water polo practices up to 9 30 p.m which I currently coach so flip side I guess when you include swim meets Club water polo games and tournaments as well as high school competitions during the seasons both men's and women's the Newport Harbor High School pool is used by the community 12 hours a day seven days a week as well as improving the safety maintenance and cleanliness the proposed improvements will keep this facility available and accessible for future generations to

055enjoy thank you all for what you do for our district school and community and thank you again for seeing this project across the finish line thank you so much we have Alan slutsky hi my name is Helen slutsky I'm a parent of two Newport Harbor High students that participate in the aquatics program and I myself attended Newport Harbor and participate in the aquatics program a long long time ago um but when I walked back in that pool deck recently this pool just as it was in the summer of 1977 when I took a swim lesson um remains a beehive of activity from morning tonight as you've heard you might have toddlers getting swim lessons from a city employee the swim Newport Beach lifeguard training along with the swim club some Splash ball water polo all

056age groups coming and going it's just never it never stops it it may be the most utilized pool in the country um and that's I'm being serious about that and you know all that leads to a really terrific energy and community that Community that's formed um around that pool but as you've heard and that was true in 1977 but what's also through is all the physical assets are the same as they were in 1977. um so I was thrilled to hear that you guys uh approved a budget um I won't get into all of the things that need Improvement I will say that the bleachers are a hazard uh you know making a simple trip to the from top to bottom is very treacherous and for my kids grandparents they really need the assistance of

057others in the stands to even make that happen so um you know I will just say that uh I will I just want to encourage you to get that get get this going so we're on par with the stancia CDM Costa Mesa and we can put it on a footing to be enjoyed uh by the next generation of sailors thanks thank you [Applause] and then I had one more Nicholas Verdugo hi uh thank you superintendent Smith president Bardo uh I just want to say that the water bottle Community is very important to my family the girls I have two daughters I have a freshman in Newport Harbor I didn't attend Newport Harbor but uh the waterfall community kind of gravitates I should say the Newport Beach Community as as I Know It uh kind of

058gravitates towards the pool um just kind of following on Allen I'm just being around it I've noticed the the bleachers are very scary to walk on especially if you're older um yeah my my daughter's grandparents I have a little trouble coming up and down the stairs um I just think from a community standpoint from a growth standpoint I think investing in the pool is is investing in the children that actually are really good kids all the way around I mean there's such there's so many Role Models as far as from the coaching staff to the parents just as a tight Bond um you know I just when when I heard that you guys approved the budget you know my wife encouraged me to come here and I'm just you know I just want to say

059let's keep pushing forward that's thank you so much [Applause] all right with that we move on to reports and we've got 16a report on debt issuance and management oh I'm sorry I skipped right over your comments I jumped the page I apologize I think they have superintendent's comments I'm going to start with the Aquatic Center since there are so many people here with that on their mind more than half of the audience and just say that in all my conversations with the board to a person I've never heard push back on that timeline I've just heard commitment to the project same for my team committed to getting the work done in fact I had a conversation with principal Bolton the captain of our ship I love that I'm probably going to use that Weekly now

060and I just said you know if there's a delay that we can address please let me know and you said he absolutely immediately would so that's our commitment tonight to you I'd also like to thank my team if you don't mind because when I got here one of the first parents or groups to reach out to me was the Aquatic Center parents which it surprise you because there's such a meek and shy group of course I think it was week one and I asked my team in your conversations with the parents what did they say they wanted at that Center and uh the comment not from folks currently in the room was we had Nast so I said what should we do I said we should ask so Jeff and otta and the team got

061together and asked the parents how would you like for us to proceed um and uh that's where we are today and I'm grateful for the team's effort I'm grateful for the honesty of the parents and the advocacy for your students later on tonight we're going to talk about test scores and we're going to share again that anyone that thinks you can define a student a classroom a school by a single metric especially a standardized test doesn't understand education there's so many things we have to look at when we evaluate our our schools when we look at our students and one of the things is the character of those students nothing I say tonight or my team says tonight will be as articulate as the character demonstrated by our students tonight I've been speaking most of

062my life I get paid to do it [Applause] if you're going to criticize uh without information use one data point you just don't get it listen to the students and you will get it um and and something that was said tonight was something I was thinking as we were listening to another one of our community members that our students have rights right that absolute rights one of those rights is to be valued feel safe be seen and be heard now safety part's a big part of that that is our professional and moral obligation to make sure those rights are met and so a compliment to the Educators that protect them and their rights daily we have some of our leaders up front we mentioned our teachers all of our teammates who have the students rights

063and their interests as their focus it's so impressive I was with a teacher yesterday and someone said hey did you check your email and he said how would I check my email I was teaching all day and I'm like absolutely guess where that teacher teaches Harbor right but we've got over a thousand right teachers and other Educators classified staff that's their focus uh and so I want to say that safety is a priority and with regard to that and the comment about bullying uh of course it's a focus for our schools and where we miss the Mark we want to respond immediately and so to Olga I'll commit that our team will get a hold of her tomorrow and see what we can do to address the issues at Ray and T Winkle in particular

064that will be our commitment to folks as they come to these meetings that concludes mayor marks thank you uh we'd have Community input on agenda's items do we have your comments 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 relinquish his or her time to another person speaker cards for items on a discussion action calendar may be held until that item is considered by the board if the speaker prefers we have uh on item 17 A8 Michelle Murphy would you like to go now or would you like to go before the item no oh I'm sorry would you like to go now or would

065you like to go before the item no no I can go now okay I have a son who really wants to get to um to Kaiser Woodlands Trunk or Treat oh yeah priorities but um just wanted to say thank you for putting um the upgraded uh seating at Costa Mesa High School on the agenda thank you so very much for doing that um we are thrilled I did hear something about locker rooms and upgrades to those so I don't know if that's on the agenda somewhere one day down the line but that would be great um also wanted to thank you for approving or hopefully approving the um the education and teacher administrator training for Kaiser Elementary in Woodland Elementary my school's two so thank you so much for that I hope you all vote

066for that and also reflex math such a great program all of our kids at Kaiser in Woodland really appreciate it so I hope that gets approved as well now on to truck or treating okay all right thank you all right uh with that we move to 16a report on debt issuance and management Mr Trader good evening I'd like to introduce Mr Jason Chung and as he comes up to the podium here to make a presentation he is with uh he's your Municipal advisor and we're required to have one because we have debt and uh according to board policy 3470 staff annually reports to the board regarding debts issued by the district and that information includes tax rates bonding capacity credit ratings Market updates and refunding opportunities and the district's compliance with post issuance requirements I

067will address districts compliance with post issuance requirements we are compliant with all of that so uh with that then uh Mr Tong he has some information for you hopefully that is you visible for everyone in the audience but good uh evening members of the board my name is Jason Chung I am with field and roll app and Associates my boss and I head our firm's education practice and we've been the firm's Municipal advisor for about six years now it's been a few years since the district has issued debt it's been about two years since you've issued your refinancing bonds about five years since the last new bonds for construction so there's no essentially new news to report on your old measure just an update on how things have gone as far as assessed value and

068your tax rates but we also look at potential funding for new funding if there's a need so on slide two we'll start with the historical assessed valuation and assess valuation again is very important because this is your taxable value in your entire community and so your bonds that are currently outstanding now they are charged based on a percentage of your assessed value and so obviously we would like that to get higher and higher each year and the great news is since 1980 year for nearly 45 years your history is about as consistent and strong as any District I've seen in the state there's only been one year of Decline and that was in 1995 where you declined by three tenths of a percentage point so overall incredibly consistent the most recent fiscal year 2023 the

069district increased in value by seven and a half percent that's outstanding pretty consistent throughout the county of course thanks to the rise in home prices that we've all seen lately the bottom left chart are your averages so we looked at your five year average all the way down to your 40-year average and all of those are consistently above the five percent range which is very strong the bottom right as a unified school district you can have at any point in time up to two and a half percent of your assessed value in bonds outstanding and so you multiply 88 billion by two and a half percent at any time you can have 2.2 billion in bonds outstanding thankfully we are nowhere near close to that you have just under 225 million so about a tenth

070of your current bonding capacity is outstanding so we lot left to do if you if you decide that need is there now just a very quick overview of the first Bond measure a and this was approved in June of 2000 for a total authorization of 110 million two series of Bonds were issued in 2001 and 2003 for the full amount so there's no new construction to be generated from this there's only really looking at refinancing opportunities just like when you buy a home and you look at refinancing that and in since that time the district has refinanced these bonds up to four times and that was I think in 2002 2010 2012 and 2000 or 2017 and 2020 so you've taken a lot of advantage of low interest rate market conditions 2017 was a great

071year you saved and I also have it on a future slide you've saved in total over 150 million for your taxpayers but um when you refinance municipal bonds it's a little different than a home mortgage when you look at a home mortgage you usually re-up for a new 30-year rate at a lower rate to show savings what municipal bonds are done you cannot extend the final payment you have to show Savings in every year and so the all bonds related to this measure a are going to expire and completely fall off the taxpayers bill in about six years so now they go to the most recent measure 2005 measure F and this was approved in November 2005 for 282 million and what's unique about this measure is that when usually new Bond authorizations are passed

072the taxes are directly additive on top of what's currently outstanding what you promised to your voters at the time was you would project no higher than the rate that they were currently paying so all bonds related to 2000 measure a and all and 2005 measure f are restricted to a tax rate limit of 18.87 and that's a pretty specific number because that was the most recent tax rate that was charged on your voters at that time and so since that time every time we've refinanced bonds or structured new bonds for new money we've always adhered to that 18.87 projection and again uh three series of bonds have been issued you do currently have about 88.4 million of remaining authorization to be accessed in the future you cannot access that now because you are right against

073that limit which I'll show in the future but this authorization never goes away this uh this never expires for you you can access it when you have that tax rateability in the future just a very quick summary on the refinancing bonds I'd mentioned we've done it four times in the past saving taxpayers over 153 million in total that 2017 was the largest refinancing and that was great because that's when interest rates were very low we refinanced a lot of capital depreciation Bond at which is that expensive debt and we place that with a much lower interest rate bonds and thanks to those refinancings and the strong assessed value that we've seen the last five years your tax rates since that time have not eclipsed that 1887 rate uh slide uh the next slide is just

074a quick roster of all the bonds related to 2000 measure a and 2005 measure F so 5 Series in total just under 225 million in bonds outstanding on the far right are those dates that we can next look at refinancing your bonds so there's two bonds that currently cannot be refinanced either because they were Capital depreciation bonds or because their their repayment term is just too short usually when you sell a municipal Bond you have 10-year lockout period before you can look at refinancing but your next opportunity is in August 1 2027 so we will definitely continue to monitor rates at that time now this is a pretty um a lot of info on this chart but I'll try to uh explain it pretty well so the bottom chart each of the different colored series

075of bars represents a different bond series The Red horizontal line is that 18.87 projection per 100 000. so if you've um moved in the community and bought a home for three million dollars or so uh your 18 87 tax rate will be roughly uh let's see um about five uh 18.87 multiplied by three thousand so it'll be around that um and then I'll actually be a little lower so 88.4 million left in remaining authorization and then you see that white space beginning in year 2039 that's when that capacity really begins to open up for the district and this is just a projection if the district continues to grow at the pace uh seven and a half percent or six percent for a number of years then we see that white Gap start to increase and

076come a little earlier say in year 2030 or so but really that capital appreciation bond refinancing erased a lot of that debt that would have been in year 2039-46. now we get to we talked about how that 88.4 million is available to you when you need it you are currently locked out due to tax rates so we looked at what a potential 2024 measure would look like we do have that November 2022 election coming up in a few weeks so your next opportunity would be that March Primary in 2024. and this is just a quick snapshot of where the district lies in relation to every other school district in the county and it's no surprise that Newport Mesa is among the lowest in the county right now your current rate is 17.24 cents per 100

077000 so about a dollar and a half lower than the projection to voters which is great news the median tax rate of all the counties in the district is 26.34 as of this current fiscal year so you are considerably below that level which is great uh the next slide is just a projection of what a new measure could look like and uh following a similar approach to 2005 measure F where we're not adding directly on we're wrapping around what's already been issued in 2000 and 2005. and we're wrapping around but with a new aggregate tax rate so this would increase the limit from 18.87 up to thirty dollars per 100 000 and so that extra eleven dollars is what really you can generate and in four series of bonds we've projected 260 million in total

078par amount from 2025 through 2031 and again this is where we limit all of your bonds all everything that's been issued so far and everything to be issued in the future at that 30 level uh this next slide is a more traditional approach this is where we look at a fresh new tax rate 10 we looked at a ten dollar as a minimum and now because we're not adhered to wrapping around old debt it's paid off more efficiently and so we can generate more Bond proceeds you get a little bit more bang for your buck so to speak so at a 10 tax rate you get 283 million projected and then I won't go over the next two slides but it's a 15 you get 420 at a 20 you get 560. it's pretty linear

079relationship there we didn't we as a unified you can go up to the full sixty dollars but we do realize we're we're in a pretty tax sensitive Community we didn't want to show for for uh showing illustrative purposes now anything more than twenty dollars but you could get well over a billion if you had that need uh so now just a summary of what that could be generated in four series or four total scenarios the top was that 10 new election everything that we've shown is a current interest Bond nothing nothing to do with cabs for the future um this is a really efficient form of repaying debt and then all of them relatively end in the same final payment date so again um nothing to do tonight as far as a new authorization this

080is just for your purposes but that would that next opportunity would be March 2024. so appreciate your time very much tonight and if you have any questions I'd be happy to address them I just want to thank you so much for all the work that you've done and for putting it into believe it or not an understandable format it's very complicated charts but as not only a board member but a property owner and a taxpayer I appreciate how low we kept everything but I also think thirty dollars isn't very expensive either or 38 dollars to get that 20 rate I I mean I know I know how much we get from doing all of that it keeps our property taxes High it keeps our schools safe and healthy and it's it's nice to see it

081in a in an understandable way thank you so very very much trustee yelsea and then trustee crane oh yes I thank you for that and I also want to thank Jeff Trader and Paul Reed before him for being very mindful of the Public's interest in the assessed value of keeping it at 1887 and I think for anybody who's been around a long time and has seen that in the community they know that's what it is so we were to talk about about going above that good luck guys yeah um but I do want to thank them because they've been very Mindful and we have refinanced at the appropriate times to get lower interest rates and that's been terrific as well we've been able to take more out of the bonds so thank you very much

082it's it's always good to know that our money is well managed yes yes to add on to what trustee Elsie said it's also nice for us to look long term at what is ahead if in we need to you know resort to something so the big picture helps a lot in in your projections as well and I just love seeing the um the one where it shows Newport Mesa at the bottom at 17.3 I believe so again thank you staff and we've been LED well we've been we we trust your judgment and you have also very much served your community your taxpayers well thank you for the report and I just want to close a big thank you to Jeff as well and um I appreciate this report we haven't had in a couple years

083it's just nice to know that we've kept an eye on physical responsibility thank you and that there is hope for the future with that we move [Applause] uh with that we move to consent calendar but there are some amendments to the consent calendar um staff would like to mend consent item 17d3 student services register mou with project Hope Alliance the amendment is in the funding notes and we'll specify that project Hope Alliance will receive 25 of the total payment up front with an appropriate invoice subsequent payments to be made monthly upon receipt of an invoice for services rendered and both parties have agreed to this change in language additionally from consent we earlier pulled 17a2 we'll be discussing that later and then 17a1 for additional comments so um ask for a motion to approve as

084amended in a second and then we'll move to the comment on 17a1 so moved second then moved by trustee crane seconded by trustee matoya okay so now we'll discuss item 17a1 please so um there was a question about this would you like me to yeah the question was not that I don't want California to get shade because I really do want California to get shade I also know that there have been several other schools that have asked for shade coverings that has that has arisen from our expanded kindergarten areas and TK so that sometimes the kindergarteners used to eat where everyone else ate now they're eating by themselves and it's right now it's nice wonderful warm sunny days but in August it was hot and miserable so shade coverings are being requested and I just

085wondered what the process was for you know why did California get to go first so it was truly that was what I was thinking so if you could go through the process and where everybody else gets to jump on the bandwagon we appreciate the question you know we I have to tell you we have heard the board loud and clear about shade structures and about the need to get those uh constructed um and that's a competing priority with the board's priority for a master facility plan and if you think about um you know these construction projects it's almost like a moving ban you put the big things in first otherwise you may not get it all in there and so what we're competing against is is having all of the information from the master facility

086plan and what the state is doing with universal transitional kindergarten which we are honoring and that's going to spin our world a little differently in terms of facilities and so we're Gathering all that information and so one of our fears about putting up a lot of State structures right now is that we may have to tear them down the very next year because of changes with utk and those kinds of Master facility projects that will be uh that will go on so anyways that's our concern um we we looked at all of the sites and California appeared to be a site that would be least impacted for that kind of shade structure so um in summary we hear you and and we will get uh really busy on those shade structures as soon as we

087get this master facility plan I know that it would also be nice for as a former site principal if there was a if there was a timeline in a list and I knew where I was on the list I could deal with it accordingly and be excited about it and help my parent Community understand and make my other accommodations up until that point so it would just be helpful which is also part of the master plan I understand that but with something like this hopefully before the next major Heat Wave they could have that information thank you very much thank you and trustee Anderson thank you um since it was brought up um because I I've asked this a few times I think I know that we're going through that process and it could take

088a while um it seems like we are doing shade structures though the few that have been done are at schools that have foundations and it's not District many that we're using to pay for those so if possible it would be great you know I think we're getting towards the the colder months so the ship has sailed a little bit but you know maybe in late May if we don't have a specific plan in place if we can figure out something that you know the big kind of kite looking triangle ones aren't that expensive they're not permanent structures so to have some of those at our other sites would be really wonderful I would love to see some short-term fixes um because some of our schools right in particular it's been really hot out there for

089years and utk is a new thing that that is true but we've been eating shade for some for some years at some of our schools so I just I just want to make sure that we aren't prioritizing schools that have foundations that can pay for it over those that don't thank you we'll look into those temporary solutions yes thank you thank you uh with that roll call vote just do you make a motion we did yeah I'm great I moved it and thank you I seconded it yeah good Charlie Christy Berto yes trustee Montoya yes trustee crane yes trustee Anderson yes trustee your soilu yes trustee whitejen yes trustee Elsie yes thank you with that we moved to public hearing recommendation for Board of Education to hold a public hearing for their personnel Commission appointee

090oh 17a2 I moved to discussion action Miss Olson yes thank you we would ask that the board open um the public hearing for their personnel commission appointee you might recall we came forward back in September and the Board of Education took action to announce Sharma Toya as its intended appointee to the commission and then there's the wait period and then tonight we would ask the public hearing followed by a vote so with that I'm going to open the public hearing at 7 16 pm say public comments seeing none the hearing is now closed at 7 16 pm okay with that we moved to 19 discussion action calendar 19a recommendation for Board of Education intended at Point t to the Personnel Commission I may have a motion so moved may I have a second second it's

091been moved by trustee crane seconded by trustee weigandt roll call vote I'm sorry go ahead discussing before voting if there are comments yes um yes since this is something that doesn't come up very often um it was new to some of us and I think one thing that I find really important is um we have decided um to the next time that this position comes up is it in three years it's renewed every three years that it would go out to the public so the public would have an opportunity to apply because the the timeline was so short we weren't able to do that this time and I think that it's really important that the public has an opportunity to apply for these positions so I just wanted to make sure that was clarified before

092we had a vote I don't think that was exactly but I think going out to the public was the spirit but I think we didn't formalize what the process would look like so we were yes all right thank you if we were gonna have more of a presentation or if we're just voting or I just wanted to make that clear because to me I would I would be voting no if we weren't doing that process because I think it's really important that the public and our staff has an opportunity to apply for positions like this thank you I'll go for a roll call vote student board member Ethan Krauss yes trustee Bartow yes trustee matoya abstain just a crank yes Christy Anderson yes Christie ursulin yes trustee weiken yes trustee yelsea yes thank you everybody

093all right we moved to 19B approve initial planning budget for NPR audio visual standards development at various locations Mr Trader on um August 16th the board uh made a determination regarding the Irvine Company endowment and the board uh committed 494 876 dollars for specific uh projects and at that time the board gave us some guidance on that and we bring to you tonight uh an item for uh our multi-purpose rooms they are in need of audio visual equipment and so this item here will do the initial study for uh what that equipment standard should be and we believe we can move pretty quickly on this and and wrap this up in this year okay you may have a motion nope it's almost second then moved by trustee Anderson seconded by trustee matoya any comment yay

094thank you very much thank you roll call vote student board member Ethan Krauss yes trustee Bartow yes trustee matoya yes trustee crane yes trustee Anderson yes trustee or soilu yes trustee weigen yes trustee yelsea yes 19c first reading and Adoption of modifications to board policy superintendent Smith we have trustees who are on the edit and Review Committee that can answer questions if they need support we do have Annette Frank at the back of the room willing to come up to the mic and help as well as Sir jockham on her item I'll get a motion in a second and then I will get some questions I move oh I you think after eight years I could say this in the proper order I move that we waive the second reading and approve all four policies

095at the same time when it comes to it after discussion any second second uh the only question I had was in regards to board policy one one one two community relations um with regards to the student directory information I assume that's boilerplate but it's it seemed different than what we had in the past I want a clarification on that one we asked that hi good evening president Bartow members of the board superintendent Smith and executive cabinet I'm Annette Franco public relations officer for our school district um that is the standard information um directory information includes their name their school their grade level that is detailed usually in an AR board policy 1112 does not have an AR so if if it is the desire of the board we can be specific on what that directory

096information is and then as a reminder that information that directory information is only given about a student If the parents have given um release authorization to release that information and that's the when that when parents register for the year and they go through that Aries process there's that option for media that's what this relates to correct thank you and the language of student directory information is directly from the csba sample but again if it is a desire of the board we can clarify what exactly that references I don't know that we so much need to occur to clarify that as to maybe put that in the um registration form so parents know exactly what they're consenting to because I think um that would be important for people to know perfect and I'll follow up with

097you tonight from the bag or tomorrow and give you that exact language that we use for registration as well thank you trustee crane yes for BP 1112 under crisis Communications plan um can we keep the sentence let's see one tooth third paragraph where it says the board also recognizes that the media has an important role to play in relaying this information to the public and then put it as the leading leading lead in sentence and then say as such the superintendent or Communications and public relations officers shall develop strategies I think we need to have the sentence the board also or recognizes that the media have an important role to play and then as such the superintendent or Communications and public relations officer happy to make that if that's the desire of the board the

098one thing Leah talks about is this is under the section that talks directly um about the media rather than about parents and Guardians which is I believe in the parent handbook um but I think you had an answer for that so one of the things that we discussed was that this section is Crisis communication plan so it is not necessarily the media relations piece of it and I will tell you we do have a crisis communication plan that's currently being updated with new processes as we have new faces in certain positions um so in our conversations we decided to remove that piece of it because it didn't seem to apply specifically to crisis communication that seemed to fit better with media relations on campus okay which is in a different policy okay I'm fine with

099that that's thank you any additional comments or edits thank you thank you um all right may have a roll call though a student board member Ethan Krauss yes dibarto yes trustee matoya yes trustee crane yes trustee Anderson yes trustee or soyloo yes trustee weigan yes trustee yelsea yes right we moved to 19d adopt resolution 09-10-22 selection of Farmers and Merchants Bank as depository for various accounts of district and authorizations there with Mr Trader these account authorizations are due to changes in Staffing in their routine thank you may have a motion to approve so moved may I have a second second it's been moved by trustee matoya and seconded by trustee weigandt roll call vote student board member Ethan cross yes trustee Bartow yes trustee Montoya yes trustee crane yes trustee Anderson yes trustee your soilu

100yes yes trustee yossi yes thank you um we have item 17a2 which was pulled from consent so uh Mr Trader would you be the one to speak on that so I'd like to introduce uh otters resni she is our facilities director and she is intimately uh aware and has information on this item good evening Ada sarasny with Newport Mesa facilities Department uh good evening president Bartow superintendent Smith executive cabinet and guests so tonight we're bringing forward a request for approval for a preliminary budget to develop a plan for the California t-winkle parking lot reconfiguration in May of 22 we conducted a engineering study of the existing operation of the parking lot at that time there was a 40-minute stagger start and end time between the two schools so we did an analysis to see what

101the existing conditions were and we developed a proposed plan and so now we want to go into analyzing what is happening now and what the impacts of those times start and end changes are and so what we're asking for is a preliminary budget to further understand what those impacts are and what the project May entail and so what we're going to do is go back out and analyze what the um what the traffic conditions are what the walking conditions are all the parent drop-off Bus drop off to compare it to what we had done before and validate what we had thought we would need to do to make the parking lot configuration changes and so this will allow us a little bit of money to further analyze that and then if we deem that a

102change needs to occur then we will go into a schematic design and in that schematic design we may have to do things like a topo survey some geotechnical surveys and so this is just giving us a preliminary budget to do that exercise and then once we understand what the full need is of the project we'll bring that back to you and we will propose a project and a total project budget for your approval and so we know we have new principles at both of those sites and so we've been work we had worked with the former principal so we need to bring them up to speed and understand what their concerns are versus the prior Administration um because they may be doing things differently we did make some recommendations for the start of school to

103open uh the gate by the gymnasium at t-winkle which was a little bit of a change and so whether or not that's working whether they feel safe doing that or not are all things that we need to further discuss so that's why we're bringing this to you tonight yeah I I wanted to I'm the one who pulled the pulled it off the agenda because I I did have a couple of questions in mind before I I realized this is an initial step it's now we're not improving the project obviously um so but I did have some thoughts in my mind regarding uh the new leadership on both at both sides uh also um I had a question about what was the main impetus for the change that California typical as far as is it because

104the traffic congestion is it because of a bell schedule what was the premise to the to this redesign I'll hand it over to Carrie Torres we work well together so yes um you may remember trustees is that we explored adjusting the T Winkle bell schedule last year and we did it just to that remember our high schools were also changing their Bell schedules due to legislative changes and we took advantage of that moment with the T Winkle staff who had an interest of going from 8 40 to about 8 o'clock so in doing so we ended up adjusting the start and the end times and so now we have two schools that start within just a few minutes of each other and so that was why the change occurred and we've spent the time in

105the first months of school just evaluating what the traffic flow looks like and of course living the impact of that change and um as far as far as families drop off and making it uh making it convenient for families so they don't do it two trips and all that is that also a consideration and all that when you're thinking about the proposed plan right the proposed plan are you talking about a family that may have a California and a t Winkle student um so what the proposal is without seeing what's happening today is to have basically the at so there's three driveways when you're coming from gisler and you turn right on California there's the first driveway coming out of T Winkle which is an exit then you get to the next driveway and it's

106an entrance only and from the center driveway the entrance only you can either go straight and loop to the left for California or go to the right and loop around t-winkle but what happens on the t-winkle side is the loop pushes them to the right which is parking and then they have to make a full circle to get to the curb drop off and then they have to Circle back around to that parking area and then they have to try to get out that first exit and so what's happening is parents are coming into T Winkle they're turning right and they're stopping in the dry vial in the parking aisle and they're just dropping off kids in the middle of the drive aisle because they don't want to have to do do the loop yeah

107and then wait for the parents who are dropping off kids in the middle of the aisle right so um I know the staff was working really hard at trying to correct that we were all out there Carrie John everybody was out there trying to help the situation but unless you go you know grab the kid and say no you know you're not getting out of the car that's difficult so um and then California goes straight in and loops around and so the proposal is to have that first driveway be an entrance to t-winkle so then they hug the curb and they can pull up against the curb before they hit that parking area and then they would continue to go forward and turn right and follow the California pattern so they would stack out that

108that way and they would have a second opportunity let's say they came in the center dry vial because you wouldn't be able to come in the Center Drive aisle and turn right anymore we would we would eliminate that and you would only be able to go left and be in the California um stacking area so this would allow them to go out that direction and then if you were a California t-winkle parent you could come in drop your t-winkle student off at the gymnasium continue the loop and drop your California Student off and then exit so that's the proposal right now but we want to see what's happening out there since the bell schedule has changed does that help yes it does thank you sorry I know I have a lot of hand motions they

109help yeah so are we also making sure to include the bus driver since hewinkle is a largely busy included transportation in the discussion to date um we definitely Shelly and I get along really well so we talk about a lot of things so we will definitely continue to do that thank you all right may I get a motion yes I'm I moved to approved initial design budget for the parking lot project at California Elementary and t-winkle Intermediate School second been moved by trustee crane seconded by trustee ursulu student board member Ethan Kress yes trustee Bartow yes trustee matoya yes trustee crane yes trustee Anderson yes trustee your soilu yes just do you like it yes trustee yelsea yes thank you for having me thank you thank you Ara all right now we move to discussion

110item 20a um report on 2021 2022 starter balanced assessment foreign good evening everyone good evening president Smith trustees student board members families staff everyone who's waited for holding out for the show so before we get started I'd also like to thank the team that got this ready because there's a whole village for this and I want to thank George and his team for preparing all of the data for the thought Partners I have across the district in getting this data right and for Gloria Brios who makes this all doable and hopefully she's not watching so thank you uh we understand that this is a lot of information we have so many points of data in the district as Dr Smith mentioned earlier that we take into account as we think about how our students are

111doing and we focus our efforts and we focus the resources of the district our talent our time our finances on where to address Improvement efforts and so this is a lot of information this is one single point of data it's important it helps us kind of calibrate across the rest of the state and how we're doing it's an important time of course for our institution and other public education institutions as we think about where we go next and it does give us room for pause but also hope for the future I'll hand it over to George we have a whole team presenting tonight it's a tag team lots of points of views good evening Borge president Bartow Dr Smith cabinet everybody and Rosie rose again so I wanted to start off just by saying part

112of the team that helped us build this was you so I've appreciated so many comments from you as a board and questions that you had and so we've developed a lot of what you see today based on on what you said and I appreciate your deep look into Data your data people and I like those kind of people so thank you uh context so context is critical important you might think an elephant is just a rope or a fan or a spear you got to look at the whole thing right so let's look at some data facts in terms of this type of context part of the context we'll look at is what is the smarter balance test what is it not um smarter balance test is an accountability test um that the the federal

113government through Essa the law of the land for education for the United States Department of Education which is every student succeeds Act says the states have to have some sort of an accountability test and we chose the smarter balance test for English language arts and um and math so it's not a college entrance test although it has parts of it that is a college interest like Assessment program that lets students into community colleges and it's not a reading test per se so it's not telling us grade level and things like that we have that and star reading um it's it's it's an accountability test that's standards-based accountability test how well our students perform met or exceeded nearly met and not met given a set of standards that are tested on the smarter balance test so

114just to keep that into context of what the the test is and what it isn't so in 2015 and to 2019 we had five years of consistent data for smarter balanced so this data was the smarter balance assessment SBA as it known um that's back if we were the Consortium we add that to it but that five years of consistent data was um had uh well it was the first time that we took the smarter balances in 2014-15 and um that remained consistent for five years and I'll show you why that's important in in a second here um on March 13th that fateful day the state mandated they mandated closures to our schools so we all went home and learned from home it was putting Square pegs into round holes for most of us it

115seemed like we we pulled off The Impossible on what that did to testing is it it disappeared there was all testing was suspended we had no testing in fact most of my data sets just doesn't even conclude 2019-2020 and online when you go to look at it it just doesn't include that year there just isn't any testing we had local testing and we had plenty of that um but we tried to do less and less because the impact it had on the students didn't want to overstress them in an already stressful season in 2021 we had a hybrid year so we were in person for half the time and we were online and asynchronous the other half of the time the the the testing on the standardized the state standardized testing smarter balanced was in

116math um we used the smarter balance for three through eight and eleven English language arts start reading it was a local assessment we used that for three through eight because the state allowed us to do that to reduce the amount of testing that the students had to experience in that year so we use the local assessment um which was welcomed especially by 338 but 11th grade needed to use that one test that is for the college entrance um to help those students and we gave them that opportunity so we used the smarter balance for math 11th grade and the smarter balance on in ela okay so that was the hybrid year and in it I kind of put two colors there so we can keep this all straight so we got back to consistency we

117recalibrated and then tested in 2021 had a 50 reduction in the computer adaptive test so the part that the computer could grade they reduced it by 50 percent now I think that was in in the works already for the State of California but they introduced it here because it gave less impact of testing on the students and we will continue with that moving forward but the psychometricians state have said that it you can compare scores from year to year moving forward so those those five years of testing here 2015 to 2019 can still be compared to these tests so we don't have to throw away everything we can actually compare it and we will continue to compare but it is recalibrated okay so we also had this impact it was tragic for many students and

118fifth graders they didn't take the test in third grade and fourth grade middle schools almost disappeared here so we there was large impact for the students during that time some school reminders Cloud campus um and Monte Vista school is the same school according to the state so if you go on to data Quest and socora will show you a little bit more about data Quest at the end um these schools are all um one school so CDM middle and high schools one School Mesa middle and high school cloud tk-12 and Monte Vista at the high school they're all connected so when you look at data especially when you look it up online and the public should know this that they have to keep that in mind that those schools are all the same they combine

119all their scores my team is able to break that out for the principles so that they can see their scores relative to other middle schools let's say um so that's an advantage of having me and my team job security so here is a context that is important because we compare ourselves to other unifieds in the school in the county Newport Mesa has outperformed the state and the county for as long as I've been here for 13 years um so this is the new Mesa line then you have Orange County because it's orange in the state of California because it's yellow um these are the scores that came in this year so this is on 21 22 scores and anytime you see blue with the data sets that we use that it means Ela so there's

120blocks of school districts that I tend to think they kind of own this block these then they bounce back and forth but rarely do they ever go below and there's this middle group here they bounce back and forth and you can see how close they are most of the time we bounce back and forth here between Saddleback Tustin sometimes Garden Grove comes up sometimes we go above Tustin so Through The Years this is kind of where this this group vibrates where this group vibrates and where this group vibrates below but we always beat the state and County average I show this to you just to say the rising tide raises all boats that's what happened during this um State mandated closures is that these this is about where we always land on a little bit

121of movements but same thing with with math there's Newport Mesa and then Orange County State California it looks almost identical so and again we beat the the county and the state this is growth this is where things change a little bit you know no one had the secret sauce during the state mandated closures during covid no one figured out how to put this square peg into a round hole but they had different growth when you compare over seven years um so here is the state and County once again Newport Mesa and Ela we're above both same thing with math but our growth is comparable to the upper end in both categories we're a little bit above the middle a little in the middle here um some districts over those seven years actually declined we grew

122maybe not as much as we'd like to I'm here just to tell you what it is not to give you my opinion on it I wish we would have a hundred percent and I'm sure you do too and maybe the growth isn't fast enough on and I think most of the Educators in this District would say the very same thing but we're growing and that's the key so I can turn it over to Socorro and I'll come back a little later if you know so one of the things that was important for me as we think about relatively how we're doing is understanding who we are relative to other districts because it's easy to make local comparisons oh we're all in the same county we're all but one of the things the state taught us

123about a decade ago was thinking about who's similar and as we think about who's similar we think about size we think about types of students that we serve someone mentioned vulnerable communities earlier like who it is we're serving and that's the way we think about who comparisons are Who real comparisons are in terms of how we should expect to do who we might want to be to do better than and all of those things and so this was really important to me to include to understand who we are as a district cow pads is a state level pupil system for data and so when we report data so this is a trusted source this language of unduplicated is something the state has been using to note vulnerable populations one of the things what the reason

124we use unduplicate it is that they're count counted once because a student could be a member of multiple groups that cause them to have unique learning needs and so this unduplicated count is a way to kind of level that out across the state and use that as a way to measure who's alike who's different who has these students and needs and unique learning opportunities in their districts so you see us one thing George mentioned the order in which the districts are listed you can see here when you see our size when you see who has large numbers of unduplicated student accounts if you refer back to the others in the county comparisons they land usually at a certain place in those ranks and if you have low unduplicated students low percentages in your population you

125may be able to score higher and this is consistent both in our County and across the state this kind of inverse relationship to demographic data and so we wanted to make sure that as we as you as board members as the public as families and communities think about who we are and how we do we understand how to make these comparisons in reasonable ways would you mind just listing what the what kinds of categories are in unduplicated sure um English Learners so the state considers English Learners Foster youth and students from low-income families those are the big three that make up um the unduplicated count also homeless students we included migrant as well but for the state unduplicated count there are three key categories English Learners student learning students learning English as their second language

126or third or fourth uh families below a certain threshold in income and Foster youth thank you and I'm going to invite George back up we always love putting pictures of our students making sure we understand students and staff drive all of this and they're the reasons kind of these scores exist cute okay so this is the math scores it's green um and like I said over the last five years this is consistent data and I love me an arrow that goes up and to the right um slow and steady growth we'd love that to be faster we'd love for that to be higher um but we did make growth and then we hit which I think looks like a basketball but we hit this giant wall in 2020 and all testing was suspended we had

127a shorter test here we had student experience in between this that that was more than difficult um but we did have a just a small percentage growth in math from 2021 to 2022. when I looked at the the growth for the entire County from night uh from 19 to 22. not a single Unified School District grew not one Capo had like 0.6 or something like that in a decline but nobody grew it was clearly this impact um we we had a little bit of growth here so between here but from here to here nobody grew so this dip is consistent through every state yeah and it's likely through the entire State as well so like I said and I've been using this phrase that Rising tide lifts all boats that's math I think we can

128agree that up and to the right exists again a little bit higher here in 2019 we're in the right direction had Great Hopes for this next year and the next year probably should have been around here but then we hit the basketball or the red wall once again and all testing suspended we used um we didn't have Smarter Balance here we used the local assessment the star reading assessment for three through eight only 11th grade but we can't compare 11th grade to the entire district and the other so there was no data there and then we landed on 58.61 so a decline from 2019 for sure um but I will let my colleague John Drake come tell us what we're doing about it so again just to draw our attention back to who we're serving

129um and why we're all here and before I jump into Solutions uh I have an enormous amount of gratitude of of where we are right now um and that's really the result of um of the the adults that serve our students uh and teachers um to to get the results that we're out right now again not satisfied with them but have already put plans in place to move us forward so an enormous amount of gratitude for our principals getting us to this place of looking forward with mandated closures in the last couple of years and adjustments to the environments all the directors in the room all the assistant soups superintendents really have gotten us to a place to start looking for the other part of this as I think George mentioned Dr Smith mentioned earlier

130this is one data point um from which I know publicly were measured um but again once we get the students up in front uh we see there's many other results that are uh are are an outcome of the work that's being done in classrooms having said that um we started work prior to these uh these scores coming out and putting a plan together to really address the priorities of our district to get back to and overcome and go beyond the outcomes we were getting prior to the state mandated closures and adjustments to the classroom environments and that work has been ongoing uh so even before we we got these these uh scores using local assessments local conversations with principals um and uh teachers uh and then also taking direction from our priorities to get back

131to really some of the basics and focus our efforts uh in in making sure that our students by third grade are reading and so here are a couple of the things that we have jumped into to support our teachers in building their capacity around literacy um we started uh in in our August PD days with our TK through second grade teachers really jumping into understanding how phonemic awareness plays what role it plays in kids acquiring literacy um along with the other pieces and also provided them some tools along with building their capacity around phonemic awareness but provided them some training in in a a strategy and a program called hegarty to be used on a daily basis to impact phonemic awareness in the classroom our third through sixth grade teachers really focused on complex text

132and giving kids access and tools to dig into and understand and make sense of the complex text that's put in front of them and then use thinking maps within the classrooms to organize their thoughts in a way that they could then then take those thoughts and put them into writing which we know is probably the greatest indicator of reading comprehension so organizing their thinking really pulling out some of those deep ideas in the complex text and giving them tools to do that so our TK through sixth grade teachers really received initial training in that that training will continue November 1st and and even Beyond to make sure that we're addressing that a letters training for all of our ptosis and our our full-time classroom reading teachers or in-class teachers letters is language Essentials for teachers

133of reading and spelling and this is a two-year intensive training for these teachers to deepen their capacity around really all of the components of of reading that need to be really tightly in place for kids to demonstrate literacy so if quite a few teachers in that Mr Drake yes you did it right yo you go first um would you explain to the people who are here what funny muck awareness is and a bit of some of the tenets of what the science of reading are composed of sure people understand so the phonemic awareness is um the the letters or the sounds give the ability for kids to hear the sounds of words right to hear them um individually the phone the individual phonemes and as well as be able to segment them or bring them

134together um along with that you know if we think about all of those um all of the letters and sounds and how all the different um organizations of letters that make these different sounds kids have to understand the phonics and the different blends that sounds make to form words that's the initial part those are all of the the components and I'm sure I'm missing a few but a foundational reading the kids really need to understand that letter sound blending segmenting portion of reading so that they can then become fluent readers and concentrate on making sense of what they're reading so between kind of Kinder and second grade that's when all of those those foundational pieces have to be in place because we make that transition from learning to read to reading to learn and so

135those are the big pieces so starting with just that component of phonemic awareness and making sure that our teachers not only have strategies to to provide kids the ability to understand and and become aware of the sounds they're also working on all the other pieces but our Focus has been just on phonemic awareness this year um and this work is doing I I liken this to sharpening the saw our teachers come to us trained and they're trained in a lot of these things but we all need periodic Refreshers to go don't forget about this or there may have been a new scientific way of doing something that we hadn't had before but I it I just want to make sure that the public understands our our teachers know the science of reading and they're really

136good at what they do but we all need to know how do we take this child from where they are to the highest Heights they can go so this training all augments are their good core that's absolutely true yeah our teachers come out with this knowledge but again as they're working with kids um new new ideas new ways of going about it can come out and um this these are just more tools for them to have in their uh in their toolbox along the same lines we've continued to build the capacity like I said and refine our focus on literacy around uh with the with the mandated closures we kind of had to step back and put on hold some of the regular trainings that teachers had access to but we're back to those they're

137a monthly TK uh trainings for our staff around all of the different skills and optimizing the learning environment for development in the appropriate approaches in our TK classes many of our Sai teachers are some of our special ed teachers are also accessing Moonlight series of that Letter's training so that they can also support their their their people we also continue while we are focusing some of our efforts in at the end of August and beginning of November on thinking Max for Upper Grade we do have monthly and rarely scheduled kind of um additional support for teachers to use thinking maps so we're getting back to some of that um ongoing training that teachers want alongside those those district-wide days the other thing that we have done and this actually started in the fall of last

138year is under the direction of of Kathleen Leary and Lori Hernandez have put together a group of principals teachers toses and District administrator Administration to really look at our P3 approach our preschool through third grade approach to literacy to really systematize and make sure that by third grade our systems are in place and tight from assessment to core instruction to supplemental supports as well as all the different tiers of obstruction that they're systematically put in place so that our kids are literate by third grade that started last year before any of this these assessments came out another piece that you're aware of so that everybody's aware of that we're actually starting earlier we did jump into the kind of the state direction of TK for four-year-olds over the next four or five years um and

139happy to say that again under under Kathleen Leary's Direction um uh I know Dr sir had a lot of uh play in this as well we do have a TK classroom at any every one of our elementary campuses with the exception obviously of Kaiser and we do not have one at Davis since that is our magnet Lottery school but every other school has a straight T case we've already jumped into that pool and we've actually actually almost doubled our enrollment to start serving those four-year-olds and by 2025 it will become you know a complete four-year-old grade all four-year-olds and we'll have access to that and then one of the other pieces that we recognized and really Dr Smith has brought in lots of support and made sure that this becomes a priority is to reconnect

140and expand the learning time for kids while at the same time like I said reconnecting them to school and we've done that in a couple ways we've talked to you before um under Lori hogard and Lori Hernandez over this last year have built a really incredible experience for kids in the summer that addresses their academic needs while at the same time enriching and expanding um you know their their connection to school it is a nine hour day um and we did that for 20 days this last year we'll do you know 30 more this year um and so that's been a huge lift for us at the same time we didn't just leave it in the summer um Dr Smith challenged us again um to start building the best expand expanded learning opportunities for kids

141during the school year extending the school day to nine hours while enriching and supporting their academics and Kathleen Leary has done really an amazing job with that in expanding that we've gone from about 500 kids last year in our in our programs after school to over 750 and then with the addition of a rotating enrichment block for kids an additional 700 will be joining that throughout the year um we have nine sites running with these programs as well and with that let me turn on over to Carrie you're getting all of us tonight so uh good evening everybody and as John Drake said we really have hit the ground running when it comes to recovery from these State mandated closures and we're really proud of the work that we're doing in secondary and one of

142the most exciting pieces about secondary schools is that there's multi-tiered Dimensions to data and metrics within secondary schools because we do a lot of different things as kids emerge into the older grades um but we've been doing a lot of work in mathematics one of the greatest challenges for us as a school district and as a team is to ensure that our students are prepared and ready for something After High School whether that's career whether that's College wherever they're going they need to be prepared and one of the data sets that's most interesting to us is mathematics and so we've been doing a lot of work with our director of teaching and learning our principals and our teachers centered around math and so when we look at what are we doing to respond and act

143on behalf of our students and our math data we've done a few things most recently and one of those would be we have implemented a new algebra pre-teach class at all four of our high schools many of our students struggle in math once it leaves sixth grade I say once it leaves once math leaves sixth grade because we go from arithmetic to computation to abstract and once a student hits abstract mathematics whether it's algebra or geometry or Algebra 2 it's different and some students um kind of move into that a little bit more easily and others do not and so we've been able to take a look at our data from our Algebra 1 classes and see who is struggling and let's do a pre-teach class and that has been successful and we implemented our

144first sections of that mid-year last year um as a district we invested in paper tutoring which is an online tutoring resource that our students have taken advantage of so students in any and all disciplines can jump online at their need and get help at any time which is wonderful and then also we're currently creating a pre-teach curriculum for math 7. so again trying to get to students as they're emerging from sixth grade to seventh and looking at that transition from arithmetic to computation to abstract and creating some pre-teach resources for them and to see if that could help them learn more in algebra um I had a question on that yes thank you um on the algebra let me start at the bottom on the pre-teach curriculum that you're moving forward I know that two

145of our high schools have um an eight period a day so that children and and one has seven and so their opportunities are there and the high schools technically students start with a core of six periods so my question is is the algebra pre-teach class an add-on class or does it take away the elective that a student has which was would defeat the purpose of us having all these elective opportunities yeah we try not to take away electives from students we really try to fit it into their schedule and for example when we implemented the um the algebra class at the high school last year we added it as an additional class excellent so they didn't get anything taken away from them right now we only have one of our middle schools I'm correct with

146six periods the others all have seven or eight and so there's quite a bit of flexibility in there to be able to add these types of interventions absolutely thank you very much and that is important because we don't want to take away from students as well but we know that some of our students definitely need some support um additionally um again John Drake stole my thunder um earlier our teachers do a wonderful job they come well trained and many of our teachers have invested in themselves and continue to do amazing things but we continue to refine and sharpen our skills and so a couple of additional actions that we've taken this year um would be to contract with ocde and we have a math specialist who works with us who we work intern with our

147director with our principals and our teachers to help us learn more about instructional pedagogy we hold meetings with every site that includes the principal and department chair um to really talk about the instructional strategies in math and how are we delivering mathematics instructions to our students after we had um most recently uh went through a math adoption and we went to illustrative math which is a different way of teaching mathematics a little different than the way you and I learned so our teachers are constantly getting new training and refinement on that we've been working on eliciting and responding to student thinking and that means more student talk in the classroom and teachers doing a lot more listening and a lot less talking so students are being able to demonstrate and explain and communicate their thinking

148having many frequent team meetings with District math team professionals and departments to plan the priorities so where are we going and so we talk a lot with our school sites and our department chairs and teachers to ask those questions and we bring them together to help inform the work we have focused algebra one guidance documents that really help teachers Drive where they're going because you know content is this big and we really have to help teachers be able to prioritize what they want to teach because there's just so much out there that they could do and so we've been working on that and then just you know when we look at the August PD day and we have one coming up here which is next week oh my gosh November 1st we're going to continue

149to work and refine in some of these areas and provide additional professional development um additionally I just want to remind us that we have quarterly data meetings as well as the instructional team so our high school principals middle school principals George myself our director of teaching and learning we sit around the table and we start talking with schools about their local data every quarter I had my first one today at Corona del Mar it was a great conversation with our local team just really taking a look at what they're also dealing with above and beyond what you've seen tonight regarding SBA data but grades you know chronic absenteeism rates credits all the other things that matter to us as well um additionally other um other things to consider here is all of our students who

150are enrolled in math 7 through Algebra 2 will take a benchmark assessment so we're really proud of this moment because um benchmark assessments in mathematics is is a challenge and we had not yet mastered it but we started our first one last year this year we have two and we're thrilled to be able to say we'll be able to measure student progress now more accurately throughout the year in these courses and so we will eventually have three but right now we have two and we're really excited to be able to have that and we have one coming up very soon and then you'll have another one in March Math teachers will be reviewing Benchmark data on that November first day and that's the power of the PLC model and the collaboration discussion of data to

151be able to understand where you move instruction forward uh district office and our principals meet in zones and we talk about data and that again data we have SBA data but we also have again what courses are students taking how how are they performing in those courses what are the challenges that they're facing and then again one of the other exciting things that we've done is we added a data science class that has been introduced as an alternative to Algebra 2 that is also a to G qualified so a student who might be a little fearful of taking Algebra 2 or not as confident could take data science and it still qualifies as a a to G Math course and this data science is kind of what it's kind of what it sounds like a

152little bit more about uh I kind of think it's like statistics but uh it's a little bit of that a little bit of 21st 21st century coaching mathematics not as much algebra so if you could think of it that way so Algebra 2 you all remember what Algebra 2 looks like our data science is a little bit of a deviation from that um and we have had let's see this is our first full year technology yes it is for the future okay it's a more applicable mathematics to Industry less abstract like less abstract basically yes and so it's just something that students feel that they can attain potentially a little bit better this is our first year where we have three sections of it at our high schools and next year we'll be adding it

153to Corona del Mar um so we intend to have it everywhere and we'll also be able to see how students do this year so that's another piece of data we'll be looking at but it's good to have options in that third year of math and then additional um ins we are taking a look at additional in the schedule courses for math 100 which would be our dual enrollment opportunities for students who would like to get their first level math out of the way while they're with us and that would be able to help them not have to take remedial math if they ended up in the Cal State system and or the Community College those are uh exciting maths yeah just a lot of options for students and that's what we find really provides success

154with secondary students is options um additionally just focusing we did not forget about our English language arts but we are also taking the listening and responding to student thinking into the English and social science domains again eliciting students discussion around topics that's really important and being able to have more student voice in the classroom focusing on language routines you heard um Socorro talk about our demographic data and the fact that we have a population of English Learners the best way to acquire English is to use it and to use that language in the classroom practice oral routines we do that as well and then again we have aligned professional development um throughout the year in all of these areas and then who could forget if you were at Battle of the bay and you're going

155to be at Battle of the bowels again I hope but you know we're back we're back you know in school connectedness you can't not recognize how important that is to to the school setting particularly the second secondary school setting there's just so many activities and ways for students to fill apart you heard that tonight in our our student Voice tonight in the student speakers that we had of how important all of the clubs and activities are to the different groups of students and so we are definitely back few other things I'd like to mention in closing for my part would be um we do so much more than us back when we prepare our students to leave us and a couple of things to consider is college readiness so we're preparing our students for some

156to go to college and we look at our a to G rate which is our College eligibility data set and we're doing such a tremendous job in that area we have students who are going to universities colleges all over the world not only here but they travel abroad and they're getting accepted into tremendous institutions and we continue to work towards increasing that goal for all of our students uh we have students who take advanced placement exams one of the assumptions that I made coming into this when we were emerging from these State mandated closures was that maybe our AP scores would have dipped and the reality is they actually increased and so we're really proud to say that we have seen an increase in our advanced placement scores across the board with Estancia knocking out

157of the park for themselves and having the highest rate of passage on a three that they've ever had and so you you know we have really been able to gain some wins here that go above and beyond the state state metrics additionally we have CTE Pathways which students are involved in which are very powerful and connect students to career and then we have career internships that are booming and we continue to add to those groups of students all of those factors kind of calculate into our career and college index which eventually the state of California will eventually give us again but those continue to help us increase that metric as well and finally John Drake talked about um summer school in the summer expanded learning opportunities that Elementary got to have and we too and

158secondary did something similar while we didn't have cute plays and dances we did recover 3 600 credits and so when you think about Secondary School students who were struggling and emerging from that time in their and their space and their learning managed to recover 3 600 credits just required so that is definitely a metric that the state won't give us credit for but we absolutely need to recognize it yes own it that's fabulous and we just wanted to also bring it back to things that are happening across the district not only do we have our uniqueness of Elementary and secondary but we also have a Harmony across the district in terms of these advancements and as John Drake said about coming back like returning these efforts of assessment locally that matter to us these indicators

159that matter to us how do we make sure we're improving as a system what are the things we need to alter during the course of the year these are all coming back online you heard Carrie talk about a lot of the efforts that are happening in math and object other subject areas at the secondary level you heard John talk about the efforts of early reading looking at Diagnostics and screeners and other types of Assessments that are happening throughout the year we just want to make everyone aware that we understand that we don't wait till the end of the year to make changes in our programs and what we're doing and kind of look at where we need to direct more resources and more supports for outstanding staff both in the classroom and other support staff

160so that's going on all year as well as really back to fortifying our knowledge about who our students are including including expertise working with multilingual Learners understanding their unique needs what it means to be learning a second language or third language and how we do that in the classroom with intention as George mentioned this data is public there is you could Google thank you Google for making everything possible you can have a data request and this will come up you can find us by searching the level and the subject area that you want to look at any parent any Community member anybody can do this this is open to the public there are those small caveats to think about our district in terms of some of the schools are 7 12s those type of unique

161items but this is available for anyone this is different data than the dashboard the dashboard with the colors that we spent years trying to figure out what is all this what does it mean that is coming later that hopefully is coming in early December this rolls into that and helps color and you know place the district schools everyone on that but this is not that that's next and then we just really want to acknowledge and I think you've heard that throughout the presentation where we are is not good enough we want to continue to improve we know that has to happen for all of our students all of our schools and families and so it is a continuous process to get better to think about where we are to look at data to understand our

162resources and work together to figure out problem solve and look forward in advance there thank you thank you everyone I do want to just bring your attention there are some information slides at the end we weren't going to spend necessarily a lot of time on them but John mentioned that our enrollment has nearly doubled in TK these are some facts around our TK program and then some of the AP data that Carrie referenced as well is also in there for people who who like that sort of data thing so thank you for your time thank you for caring about the students of the district and how they do and for trusting the professionals who are in the classrooms and schools with them every day thank you wow thank you that was a lot of work

163and very in-depth thank you very much don't give us papers and say don't read them and I just appreciate the attention to detail on the different data points I know that um you know that we we had a couple rough years there so thank you very much for all the teachers who really supported us through all of that trustee Anderson you thank you so much that was wonderful um I had a couple of questions or things that stood out to me um one of the things that I thought was interesting was um that we actually now only have about 3 000 students that are designated English Learners which is dramatically lower than it was even five years ago so I'm interested to see because I know a lot of that has to do with random

164people moving out of our area but I'm interested to see um this specific chart with maybe 2018 or 19 just to see those numbers would be really interesting as well as the homeless students I know we had about 99 homeless students before the pandemic and now we have nearly 700 so I would just love to see what those numbers are um one of the things I know we've we've talked often about math and I know that some students are taking advantage of paper and doing the online tutoring but as somebody who struggled with math myself I needed somebody to sit with me and do math to help me catch up um so I'm wondering um I've heard from some students that they would like some in-person opportunities um so I'm wondering if we can add

165more specifically for our upper elementary kids but also our middle school students because I think oftentimes we we do that at high school but we're not doing it early enough um so I would love if we can maybe see if there's interest I think that there would be um and then I was also wondering too about I love that you guys are doing the quarterly um kind of data conversations with secondary and I I know um at times with your husband involved with Ensign having conversations about what does math look like um and I was just wondering if we're doing that with other subjects so we're doing that with social studies are we doing that with English language arts so the fifth and sixth grade teachers really have targeted information that they know this is

166what your your student will need in seventh and 8th grade because I know in the past that wasn't necessarily happening and I think that's huge particularly now because some students have really accelerated and some students have fallen behind um and then lastly I'm really interested in the math 100 and the possibility of doing something like that I know I had several friends at OCC that took math 100 about four times and it was holding them back um so I was just wondering what the kids said we're considering it what what is the consideration is that like in three years what does that look like thank you foreign I'll respond to those if that's okay in terms of tutoring I would like to comment that we do have tutoring available at some of our school sites

167and we do offer it um to teachers as in extra earnings at some of our schools and in particular for example at T Winkle we just finally got some teachers to sign on to do some tutoring so we're excited about that I could always get back to you on exactly where and how many hours we're planning on doing that thank you um in terms of excuse me collaboration we started that last year with Whittier to look at math that was kind of our focus with Whittier Ensign and harbor with their math department I think Sarah gave me her cough excuse me um and we're also doing it this year with foreign language between Estancia and T Winkle um so we have not gotten to every single department or discipline just yet but that's where we've

168started the work just in the last 12 months and then in terms of math 100 those are conversations we're having with the Community College partner that we have with Coastline and we're trying to figure out how we can put that into our schedule and where it would fall but we want to be able to provide that as an option for students to kind of get them a jump start so it's something that we just started talking about this year so since July so if we were going to do it we would have our first test class would either be in summer or in fall of next year awesome thank you and just to add a few quick things in relation to data conversations there are actually starting this next month our team is planning monthly

169data conversations with our principals at our monthly principal meeting and that data will vary primarily um you know especially with our focus on literacy I think it'll be around language arts and Mathematics but we can look at some of the other subject areas as well and then I do know while our expanded learning you know programs and opportunities for kids before school and after school are in full swing and you know are are continuing to get better as we get better one of the things we are looking at I'm trying to do is see if there are some teachers because the idea behind these expanded learning programs especially at our nine sites that they're currently going at is to just extend and expand the day and if we can interest some teachers to come even

170if it's twice a week three times a week for an hour to after school to provide some of the targeted support they know their students need we are definitely interested in that once we get the all the enrichment all those things kind of really dialed in I think that that will be a next step for us in relation to that tutoring or additional support for our kids thank you yeah I just I wouldn't want too much time to go by I know we're trying to make up and I love that we're doing a lot of the enrichment but I think there's some students that just need that the intervention dramatically as well so thank you oh thank you so much for that presentation it was really great and thank you so much staff for meeting

171with each and every one of us about data so I can't imagine how burdensome that was to deal with all of our questions independently so I just have two observations that I'm just more curious about it's it's not anything earth-shattering but it's not really about what Newport Mesa is doing wrong but more what is Placentia Yorba Linda doing right because we'd expect an inverse you know relationship between the data that's on page 10 and 11 to be inverse to the unduplicated count on page 14 but there's only one outlier and it's Placentia Yorba Linda so what I'm just curious what are they doing so well if anyone knows not for right now but they've clearly got the lock on something because they have about 12 points more of low-income kids than we have yet they're

172outperforming us so everything else makes perfect sense except that one so I just didn't know if anyone has inside school but another day that can be a discussion because it was just super interesting um and then the other item I noticed was just again another correlation that I'm not sure what to make of but maybe it shows us something that percent sorry the average number of AP exams that the average in these kids are taking for CDM and Mesa it averages about two AP tests per kid but for Estancia and um the other one Newport Harbor it's averaging 1.5 so I'm just wondering if that's because those first two are tied to a high school so those middle schoolers get to take more electives early on then by the time they get up through high

173school there's you know taking more APS and then taking more AP tests um because those are the two schools that are on the Block schedule whereas you look at T Winkle and Ensign have less electives and they're not on a block schedule and I'm wondering if that's impacting the amounts of AP exams that those kids are taking so that again was just an interesting correlation but I don't know what to do with it but it just seemed to jump out at me so thank you so much thank you for sharing one of the things with Newport Harbor is that they have the IB program so a lot of kids that would be taking AP classes are taking IB courses so they don't double up if for the most part so that could explain that one

174but I totally agree with you that it does make it easier to really give a full bodied program when you have a 712 campus and all that all that extra enrichment that comes in early uh trustee weigen and then trustee Elsie I have a couple questions on and just if um Dr Drake if you could elaborate on some of the things that we're doing in the elementary about um just for the public about our reading intervention teachers and how many we are um we are funding uh for each school and um a little bit and talk a little bit more about um how we're single singling out those students that need that service um so that we're not just waiting until like a parent-teacher conference or whatever um to make sure that we're we are

175really targeting those individuals that need it and the amount of money that our district has put forth with reading specialists in each school yeah I think what I'd like to do is ask Lori Hernandez to come on up and and help me with that uh question what I do know and and Vanessa galey um special projects has done a a great job to make sure that resources are allocated to each of our sites for additional support in the areas of reading mathematics with the main focus in reading and I think I'd like uh to ask Lori to kind of talk about some of the systems in place at sites to make sure that that we're targeting those needs of of kids with the supports that we're providing I brought a friend she can explain the

176the numbers and funding source of those people first yes so um at each of our elementary sites we have a full-time support teacher and those teachers are funded through our Esser funding our federal funding and that's to the tune of just under 3.5 million dollars then well we have we have a lot of additional support So at our title schools at our Title One schools we also have an additional full-time support teacher and those teachers are funded from District Title One at all of our Title One schools they have allocations based on their students their student poverty count and they have a budget then that they can decide what to do so some of those schools have additional part-time hourly teachers a couple of them have what's called a 0.6 or a 0.8 it's just

177more time in the in the work week and then also we have local control funding formula funds that that support a 19.5 hourly teacher at each of our schools as well so at this year every single school at the elementary level gets a full-time support teacher a part-time support teacher and then our title schools get additional one full FTE on top of that and we really are targeting our support for them professionally the full-timers in particular buy this letters training um that Dr Mr Drake mentioned earlier and is that more sorry just to ask again and is that more than what we did before covid State mandates yes so just to address the question um there's several layers to it so one is just as a district um district-wide we use screening tools to measure

178students progress um really targeting reading development so we screen the kids at at different points throughout the year identify those children that may be at risk for difficulties learning to read then those are the kids that we really dig deeper on and figure out you know is it a phonemic awareness issue is it a fluency issue what is that issue that that child is having because these are kids that are before the age of the cast which starts in third grade right so we're even looking at kindergartners not at the start right because kindergarten you know we need to get to know them first and then we start to say are they mastering their letters and sounds are they mastering you know can they rhyme can they identify Beginning Sounds ending sounds so a lot

179of that work is done at the local level so our teachers have when their kids are released early like on Wednesdays teachers have time to plc's meet with each other look at kids across their grade level identify those kids that maybe need support and we've been working with our principals to design schedules for all these support staff so a child in second grade we don't want that child pulled out of their core instruction to get that remediation because then it creates like a Swiss cheese effect right now they're missing that second grade content so really working strategically to help our principals create schedules that allow for maybe that support staff goes into second grade at a particular time in the day when everyone is getting what they need and then they go they they're targeted

180in first grade at a different time of the day so everyone can get what they need so it's kind of a combination of us providing some of that centralized guidance and support but then also at the local level them having that decision-making autonomy for how to use those people so like we're training all the support teachers in the letters you know we really want them to be experts on working with kids that may be having difficulties learning to read but we have some sites where they have more of a need in math and we've allowed that autonomy at some of our sites that maybe they're seeing less kids with difficulties in a certain area more maybe in math or maybe they're more targeted in the Upper Grade so so the decision of where those teachers

181work is somewhat up to the up to the teachers and their staff in their PLC process but then we do centrally support that and our whole Elementary Ed team goes out meets with teachers I'm going tomorrow to a site to have data meetings with a principal and some teachers so we're constantly providing more individualized supports because you know the difference of across our 22 including Cloud 23 sites right it seems like it would be hard for a kid to fall through the cracks with those types of systems hopefully we're hoping and we're strengthening those systems you know every month and every opportunity we have as a team to learn more about you know kind of how to assess what's happening and then fill those gaps that's that's what we're really working toward right now thank

182you and then I had a other question I think it's about the the test results um when did parents get their own and I don't think it's for you as maybe more secure uh super assistant superintendent Shields um when did parents get their own students results and um have we heard any information from the parents concerned about their results or anything like that they would have come home they would have come to them over over the summer and I'm not aware of [Music] can double check with questions or concerns or things and then trustee crane uh thank you excellent report by everybody and it it's clear that you put a lot of work into it you listen to all of us met with all of us so much appreciated and and I appreciate that you

183also mentioned that yes we do need to improve there is a lot of room for improvement but you do have a plan in place and I think it's pretty detailed of where you're going and benchmark assessments by you and for the for the kids and then when George first got up here he talked about the smarter balance assessment that it is just one that data point and I think that in today meaning in the last week or the last month and people expected these scores to come out and they're hearing oh scores went down we're failing our kids I think we have to keep that point in context because I don't think we're failing our kids this was one data point and before 2014-15 when we started the smarter balance assessment we've always had standardized

184tests when I first was on the board it was a standardized tests that brought along No Child Left Behind and we had to you we were meeting at schools all the time to see what are we doing to bring those kids up but that's still one data point that we were that we were looking at so I think it's real important that we look at that um and your question of um has anybody contacted the district about their child's individual scores it came out this summer I know I haven't received any calls and I get calls about lots of things that happened I don't I haven't not heard of any other board members getting calls from individuals individual families saying oh my gosh my child is failing what are you doing to help with this

185because I think they see the other metrics that we're using within our schools to help our children and what they're being tested on and especially in high school I appreciate you putting in that AP information in the um in the back of the report because to me what's more important for kids our students who are graduating in high school they want to be in the best place they can when they graduate and I think every single one of our schools prepares any of our students for a Life After High School that they want anyone who's motivated and wants to work hard and they have this dream of going to an Ivy League school if they have that dream they have the resources to get there if they want to go to a big school that

186has a great football team and just all around college career they have the ability to do that and they want to go to a UC school our kids get into every UC school in the in California so private schools public schools all over the country we see them going there all the time and what I think concerns me and I think other board members is people look at this and we fail our children and we're not failing them and I know the state um I'm not sure exactly what this when this is going to happen but the state will be providing a College and Career index if they haven't already that will include an index of collaborations with AP scores IB scores um Career Technical education seal of by literacy college credit for community colleges

187that they get and we need to look at all that along with where our kids are being accepted and we're doing pretty well in all those aspects so I think we all should be very proud of this and those people who are listening to the outside chatter of we failed our kids I don't think they know what's going on and I would urge anyone who wants to go visit a school to make an appointment with the principal any one of us would go to any school with them and walks through some of these classes and just see on an average day what these kids are learning in our high schools we saw kids here today speak better than I think any of us possibly it's articulate tonight so we produce pretty amazing kids and I'm

188proud of everyone I'm sitting next to one right now yes thank you trustee Crane and then trustee matoya yeah and and I do believe that parents were expecting a learning loss because of covid and what we also need to realize as a community is that it's not just Newport Mesa it's it's Nationwide I was reading an article in edsource on October 13 and the title was ACT test scores dropped to lowest in 30 years in pandemics slide scores on the ACT College admissions test by this year's high school graduates hit their lowest point in more than 30 years the latest evidence of the enormity of learning disruption during the pandemic the class of 2022's average ACT composite score was 19.8 out of 36 marking the first time since 1991 that the average score was below

18920. so we're not alone but what we do know is that we're not going to give up on our kids we can always do better and as tonight's presentation but our staff we're on it and we all care and we will do our best possible every single adult in this district will do that your kids are in good hands thank you it's it's one of those things where we are all looking going well that happened now let's go forward and let's pick it up and move on move on and I just wanted to mention that along with Mrs ylc we're you've heard our students tonight you hear our student board members regularly kid the kids are all right and if you really want to check and see how they're doing look at our graduation rate

190our graduation rates are 90 above 90 at every single high school and Early College High School consistently has 100 graduates that means that the when you come in as a freshman you leave as a graduate and when you graduate we've had so many comments too that say well not every kid needs to go to college no they don't and our kids go on to become certified Carpenters culinary arts experts EMTs they get jobs and speaking as a mother of five children I am that job one is the most happy one that you ever get it's when you say my all five of my kids have jobs and are functioning that's a good thing and our kids are proud our kids come back to their schools and thank their teachers they could be thinking their kindergarten

191teacher but I know they're in high school telling all their High School teachers most of the time thank you for doing this for me you have no idea how what a great District this is and I I just wanna Echo everyone else thank you team for putting together such a fabulous report it really is terrible when we look at something and go we worked so hard and this is the number that we got it's like being on a diet I can work like crazy and when I stand on the scale the numbers just don't show what I've done for my body and ml so I that's how I look at some of these s back scores don't give up oh I don't give up absolutely not it's like I wake up in the morning and

192then eat a banana try again that's it so thank you very much and I just I Echo what all the other trustees said but um one thing I've really been impressed by is our plan for going forward because we just are we're in conference week for elementary school um and I'm seeing that with my own students and with uh you know friends students I'm seeing that with my middle school and high school students a lot of their friends were struggling with different things English math and these targeted interventions are really helping them um walking around talking to students they feel more confident in math than they ever have before and it's all of these wonderful programs that you guys are putting into play so I would be I am most intrigued to see after conference

193week is done how that data kind of reflects because just personally I have a student who's dyslexic and he was able to progress just in these last two months in ways that I hadn't seen him progress in two years and I really think that's all of the creative ways you guys are approaching um addressing different students needs so thank you very much excellent right now we move to informal reports so since we're on this thanking people uh band here I I want to draw attention to the Gratitude my team has for our board I wasn't here 30 days and you challenged us with the priority to improve our outcomes not based on the prior year mind you from 2019 after a five-year trend of data in the right direction you ask us tough questions and

194you provide us the support from the Deus we need to make the improvements that we're absolutely going to realize in every classroom in this entire District I've done this work a long time I don't know I've ever seen a group so focused on that goal and asking the right questions and providing the necessary support so so thank you all for that I want to thank everybody that participated in the state of the schools the feedback has been humbling in its positivity and the thing that I love most is people said students were front and center that's as it should be students should be front and center of everything we do um it was the motivation that so many people in that audience needed uh to to move forward in support of of our schools uh

195to our our labor allies uh just beyond notice you're doing it again next year so uh some of you got told right before that you're going to do it apologies but you did a great job and what I heard Stu say tonight was he's doing so well and it's speaking that he's going to fill in for me now so I I can ask him because everyone's complimenting how great a job he did but but really to everybody thank you for for everything our students our school our staff getting that campus ready they were painting that morning uh making sure that we put our our best foot forward uh thank you for that the the facilities study session we just had we didn't have a lot of folks there I just want to uh thank the

196board for again asking the questions the team for putting that together and let you know that um this board is committed to hearing the feedback of all of our community members and sometimes they come in after they've had that chance to provide feedback but we always encourage them to send us emails to call us to come see us and and I want the community to know when they do that we report back to the board and in that vein one of the topics that came up after our meeting was that we ought to consider having an ad hoc committee made up of and this was echoed by some of the trustees uh some of the city members from both cities uh some of those youth groups right some of our allies and get in a

197room and say hey what do you think about facilities use and Associated fees Etc and do that work and then bring that back to you at the appropriate time to make those decisions and really really appreciated that that uh concept and even last week at our city meeting we started to do some of that with Costa Mesa we'll do it on a larger scale with Bo so wanted to thank them for that I continue to be in the community had a chance to be with the distinguished citizens in Newport Beach they don't call themselves that that's the name of the program um and and several of them were community members and they always ask questions in the end or make comments uh three of the four comments were about their continued support for our focusing

198on the whole child especially mental health and wellness that's what's on the mind of parents and they're saying please do more to help in that regard they certainly weren't politicizing that very very essential work I wanted to bring that feedback to you and then finally um and and they stole this again Lisa thank you you made this shorter for me I am not meeting with PTA and doing coffee chats uh in each of the zones and inviting people that can't get to the the harbor Council to come here wherever here is have a coffee and share what they want for their students and what they're seeing in our schools and I'll bring that information back to all of you so that's it for me thank you um I'm gonna go first and work my way

199down okay um and I'm sure many of you will have the same because I feel like I've seen every one of you every day this week um it's very busy time for Newport Mesa we have had the Newport Harbor Alumni Hall of Fame which was delightful and um so so thankful we don't live in the 80s because apparently there was an epic five hour long food fight that resulted in 200 children being suspended so really grateful we're not back then um don't give us any ideas um yes um and um just hearing some of the very impressive graduates who have come from Newport Mesa over the last 50 years and how they've given back and continued to support and the multiple generations of families who love Newport Mesa and Newport Harbor um it's been really

200fun attending Battle of the bay for volleyball girls volleyball for Newport Harbor football and CDM um and the track dedication for Coach summer was really a powerful hearing from our students how a coach who continues to work with our students has impacted their lives and continues to impact the lives of so many um and then last but not least uh played some golf with our other trustees in support of Newport Harbor athletic Foundation it was a labor of love because I'm a terrible golfer but I had a great time um and then finally I'll be attending the Julius Caesar play this weekend very excited to do so my son loves learning Latin on Duolingo so he cannot wait to go with me um thank you I've missed a lot of the things that I would

201have had to go to I finally I finally got to have covered yay I was so proud of being a novid but now I'm just with everyone else and that's all great but I missed so many things the week that I was out week and a half 10 days however many long time um but I did um join trustees Anderson and or soilu at the Costa Mesa liaison meeting we missed you but Mrs Torres did a wonderful job thank you very much and I just the Dr Torres Dr Mrs Torres assistant superintendent of secondary education yes Carrie was there and she did a really nice job um it I just wanted to emphasize the fact that the joint use the agreement was brought up and the comment was let's have an ad hoc committee we

202need to get together to get it started before it comes to us because it's detailed and then it comes to us we can always pitch in at any time because we all now have a copy um I was joined by trustee Anderson at the Estancia ring ceremony for the 2022 state champion baseball team what impressed me the most other than the fact that what did I say oh at Estancia High School um what impressed me the most while there were wonderful speeches and we got great videos of some fabulous plays but seven of seven of the boys graduated already and they were all there and that's how important this win was and the coach who was Coach of the Year by CIF um mentioned to them as did mayor Stevens you will remember this the

203rest of your life these teammates will be yours forever so when we talk about all the other opportunities our kids have besides math English science and social studies this is the thing that's why I was concerned about electives because I want to make sure those things don't get left out because some of our kids that's why they go to school um I'm going to be at the Battle of the Bell because I missed Battle of the bay and then while this is not a discussion action item I wanted to mention that thank you to our board members for appointing me as the Personnel commissioner for the next three years I am replacing Ken Wayman who retired is retiring this year who served on the Personnel commission for 20 years now I'm not looking to serve

204for 20 years so that's okay but I would like to acknowledge his service at our next board meeting so good I just I didn't want to just bring it up to Dr Smith and not talk to us everybody nodded so he definitely deserves that Accolade because that's a long time it's a very important commission it's a yes it's an unsung so and with any luck at all I'm done you know how I am I think of something later um attended a lot of the events mentioned by trustee Bartow and metway but also went to the East Bluff Elementary steam night and I wanted to do a special thank you to the Newport Beach Fire Department they are so wonderful coming to the to the schools and they bring their fire trucks and one of the

205biggest attraction of the night was the police the firefighters dropping the egg drop all the way down to the ground to see if it smashes and it's just been it was just so fun watching the kids but also watching the adults the firefighters dropping the the eggs from the top of the ladder so thank you Newport Beach Fire Department I went to the Hall of Fame at Newport Harbor the dedication the track dedication the Estancia ring ceremony I wanted to thank the harbor Council PTA for hosting the candidate Forum that was a great service to the community it was uh probably a hundred and some people there that's great thank you and um I'm looking forward to attending the Back Bay Monta Vista Fall Fair next week and I just was so impressed by our

206young adult students who were so articulate and so passionate and brave to stand up and voice their um their their opinions because that's what we're all about so that was amazing thank you to all the students who were up here um sharing their thoughts and lastly Stu may be threatening your position Jeff Trader as the emcee of the teacher recognition award so beware is through here I don't know Stu has a gold coat I mean that's part of the pizzazz I just want to say thank you to our superintendent for um really listening and hearing us when we were bringing up concerns specifically about joint use so something that I'd never seen the document um and it sounded like an intractable issue and so I just really appreciate the opportunity to have a study session

207and then a follow-up conversation with the city I think it's a really great opportunity for us to continue to be good neighbors and have joint use parks and open up some of our playgrounds hopefully I'm also going to be attending Battle of the bell with the former fellow Estancia student whose son is on the starting team and then going to the fall festivals at Whittier and Wilson and Trunk or Treats at the others um I'm also really excited tomorrow to celebrate those that retired from our district in the past few years um I think it was something that I know I had a few people reach out to me and say I didn't get to come to celebration it was really it would really mean a lot to me so I'm glad that we are

208able to do that tomorrow that's it and similar to other folks I um we were at the city meetings and then the Youth Sports meetings um where we're just always giving props to Lance for getting our facilities in line and he's just doing magical work and I'm not only um with otta getting the pool at Newport Harbor but also working on the PA system for the pool at Estancia as well so there's a lot of excitement going on in facilities so very enthralling um also I want to give a shout out if anyone has canned goods they would like to drop off at California Elementary until this Friday to help Girl Scout Troop 8485 please do so promptly you have you know in like 12 years go do it so that's exciting there's a play

209coming up at Estancia Little Women so hopefully in mid-november many of you will go and see that as well and um I think that's all I have I had a really fun time earlier this week talking to the AP research class over Estancia Miss de los Santos has an awesome group so I help the kids with their research questions and methodology which is again super riveting but it was a good time and it was really good to get to talk to the kids and hear the kinds of things that they want to research because it's super fascinating so um that's all I have for now but California drop your canned goods California Elementary until this Friday troop 8485 I drive anyway they have to drive however you need to get there because it's a hot

210mess but it's going to be fixed it'll be better you just pick up service yeah I will pick them up well by the time it gets down here we've probably attended all the same things so it's been great um uh one thing I'll have to say is thanks to the teachers for conference week this week and spending the extra time with our students I know that they're scheduled for 15-minute sessions but you know a lot of times they go over and um I think I've talked to a lot of parents and and been so thankful for the amount of time that they've had with their students um this week or time with the parents talking about their students this week um and the flexibility that you can do it online or in person has been

211really um really good for a lot of parents that have to shuffle many different um roles as parents and workers and you know all that kind of good stuff um as well uh the battle of the bay probably didn't go as well as the Harper Zone sorry but it was still great nonetheless and there's always next year as everyone says but it's just been really great also to see the whole um cabinet there that was really really amazing so hopefully we can all see everyone at the Battle of the bell and last year was my first battle of the bell game and uh Mesa won and they brought out the bell and it was going to be this big big thing they brought the belt and it goes ding [Laughter] I play magic bell we

212yeah but thank you also for for this presentation day on the on the test scores it was it's great to see how we're performing and see what we're doing to make our kids and students that much more great in the community okay I have almost nothing left um but I will just talk a little bit more about some of the things one the battle of the bay CDM came became out Victorious for the 10th year in a row um but I know Newport Harbor has a lot of other Battle of the bay successes this year so you know it evens out and there is a battle of the bay flag football game tomorrow the first one um at six o'clock at CDM girls girls like football yes so anyone interested it should be a good

213game um and then as part of the weekend celebration with Coach Sumner's track dedication it was part of the CDM Jubilee and they had this was a year in the making they've been planning this for a year a core group of of uh alumni and current parents who um are there and what they wanted to do with that was create an alumni foundation so that an an alumni endowment so that they can raise money to invest every year to pay for things that they need on an online basis they're well on their ways of doing that but as part of the day on that the Jubilee celebration Rock the endowment was at night but on the daytime activities they gave tours of the school for several hours and then they had a pep rally but

214what was very interesting about that tours of the schools they had teachers there that were actually before my time so these were teachers back from the 70s and 80s who are still here who came to tour the school they had my former neighbor who is 96 years old who was the vice principal of the school for 20 years until 1985. he was there talking to people come through but even more interesting to me was we had a lot of theater School families who were there because they don't normally have the opportunity to visit a campus and walk through it and take a tour and we had private school feeder schools because they took the announcement out to all the feeder schools Pegasus Harbor day all those schools so they had families from those schools who

215came toward the campus and then they had a pep rally and they could see some of the you know the magicals and the Pep Squad and I mean they had they had lots of activities for these people to view and it was really exciting and Dr Haley said you know we should do this every year and it's maybe something every school should think of doing every year every High School to bring in the communities because they don't normally don't just walk on campus to just highlight activities so the feeder schools and some of the private schools can see what goes goes on in that area so that was really exciting um and I don't think that uh president Bartow gave enough credit to our golf skill yesterday you guys are great we did we did

216come in 24th I think but Dr Smith out of 24. second and I'm not sure fourth wait no second second I'm not quite sure how that happened but we'll let it go for this it certainly wasn't because of me well they played with the golf coach so it does help and I think some of these teams make their own rules that's all I'll say that's all I'll say about that and then Kristen and I went to the first meeting of the um Newport Beach mayor's youth Council they started it back this year after two-year Hiatus because of covid and they do it in a little different format they do do it in the same way they did back in 2019. okay um when they had the students apply and then they were paired with a

217mentor who works somewhere in the city and uh so they will meet with them throughout the year so they won't have regular meetings that will be attended but they will be coming at the in May to give a presentation to the board so that's always nice I will Ethan would you like to give any kind of extra report closing remarks for us um all I have is that cloud campus had 73 secondary students registered for uh called for the college in Korea night uh of course we have a Elementary grade parent teacher conferences going on uh this Thursday Cloud Jefferson's holding a pizza party for students 9 to 12 and we have a Let's Be Kind day coming up on November 7th excellent I forgot about Willy Wonka I thought so sure I'd make it

218but Willy Wonka is coming up to Costa Mesa High School and and the and the single digit numbers of November that first week thank you next week thank you very much um and with that I'm going to adjourn the meeting at 903.