001not good all right calling the meeting to order at 4 pm roll call vote justy Bartow yes Justine matoya here trustee crane here Christy Anderson here trustee or soilu here trustee weigen here trustee Yosi here Dr Smith here Now we move to adoption of the agenda you have a motion so moved second okay it's been moved by trustee crane seconded by trustee Montoya roll call vote justy Bartow yes Christy matoya yes Christy crane yes trustee Anderson yes trustee ursulu yes trustee weigen yes trustee yelsea yes and we now moved to community input on closed session item only seeing no Community input we move to closed session the items are 5A conference with labor negotiator and 5B Public Employee discipline dismissal release employment we will return to open session at 6 PM we are moving to
002closed session at 401 pm I would call the meeting to order at 6 pm we moved to the moment of reflection Pledge of Allegiance led by student board member Kate cherry the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God all right adoption of the minutes from 8 16 22 may have a motion to adopt the minutes so moved second it's been moved by trustee crane seconded by trustee yelsea roll call vote justy Bartow yes Christine Montoya yes trustee crane yes Christy Anderson yes trustee your story yes trustee weigen yes trustee yelsea yes okay it is our pleasure to introduce new staff Dr E Sanchez principal of T Winkle Middle School Dr Torres hi good evening it is my absolute pleasure to welcome Dr ishel Sanchez this evening
003Dr Sanchez is our newly appointed principal of T Winkle Middle School and love to share just a few facts about Dr Sanchez she has over 21 actually 26 years of experience in education she spent 21 years in the Downey Unified School District 10 of those is a teacher teaching ELD and many years of administrative experience she has experience at both the middle school and the high school level so I'd like to welcome up Dr Sanchez to say a few words this evening thank you hi good evening Madam president members of the board Dr Smith and cabinets um first I want to say thank you so much for this opportunity to work at tiwinkong to serve the community um it is my passion and my ongoing dream to work with an education to work with children
004and I am so privileged to continue the hard work that's being done at tiwinkle with the expansion of learning opportunities for all students and to focus on the whole student so thank you thank you for allowing me to continue my dream as an educator and allowing me to continue to work with students and staff and community members because it's not work it's my passion and I just want to say thank you for the opportunity thank you all right now we move to 11 presentations uh Newport Mesa Spirit Run 2022 check donation we have a presentation from Diane de Rudy Newport Mesa Spirit Run chair I'll go ahead and just mention that she walks up that I've said this many times 11 months we have amazing Community allies that support the great work in this district
005and the Newport makes the Spirit Run Incorporated is one of those we're going to ask trustee Elsie to go up and receive this big check foreign [Applause] can I just say would you like to say something first I just I on behalf of all of us all of the district I just want to thank Diane for doing this um she's been doing this a long time she was involved when it was part of our Corona del Mar Zone school system it went away the schools decided they could raise money in a much easier way and she knows how difficult it is to put on this race but decided she wanted to continue it so she kept the Spirit Run name and has been doing it ever so how many years now 2006 yeah 2016 years
006because I know that was the first year I was on the school board so 2006. uh 16 years and she's done an amazing job has included all of the schools in our district which was pretty amazing it's not just for one District it's for every school in our district and she does such a great job of bringing in kids from all those schools so thank you thank you thank you we really appreciate it thank you [Applause] thank you perfect thanks and now we move to our student board member reports we have trustee matoya leading this one thank you we're so fortunate tonight Newport Mesa has student board members one representing each of our high schools that attend our board meetings give us the input straight from the students on what we're doing and how well
007we're doing and they take turns but this time we're gonna we start with the student that's on the diocese and then we move to alphabetical orders of the schools rather than the students so thank you and Kate you can lead us off perfect yes um as long as the pointy end points at your mouth you're good is that good cool thank you um good evening superintendent Smith president Bartow and members of the board tonight March the first official board school board meeting for the new student board members and myself and also the beginning of a great New Year tonight we were asked to report on how the beginning of this school year is different from last year's this year we did not start school with mass or distancing which allowed for students and teachers to
008connect with each other more and to have better interactions students have been engaged in the classroom and established a better connection with both their peers and teachers personally for Newport Harbor we've been able to have indoor rallies instead of outdoor which has also been really good because we've been able to keep the attention of the students which was something we struggled with a little bit last year we also have introduced the Raptor system which encourages attendance and punctuality it has mixed reviews at the moment but in the future will become more effective we believe I think the biggest difference however is the bell schedule difference so instead of starting at eight we start now at 8 30. with the students are able to get more sleep and especially for those who stay up late doing
009their homework because of sports or other extracurriculars this gives them at least another 30 minutes of sleep which is very much appreciated um since we're able to study more and be more interact different class and just kind of overall be more present so that's really helped especially I know personally for me and a lot of my other peers that I talk to this has been a big change for us and that we feel we are more productive both in class and Outdoors and outside of class so those are probably the biggest changes from the start of this year and the start of last year thank you perfect thank you um feel free Cloud campus Ethan hello superintendent Smith president Barto um members of the board Cloud campus oh yeah changed off firstly with our schedule
010changing from a more teacher-based schedule to a block schedule like other high schools have we also did a beginning of the year assignment which was called the uh which was called the boot camp Club campus boot camp where each department did a different type of assignment in order to get you ready for this school year for example the language Department such as my Spanish class did a what they expect to see from you on Zoom so like no PJs make sure you have faces in the camera um or other skills like being able to look around on your on the website of cloud campus and a lot of other stuff that would help you later in the year and we also start a bit later with um the change to the beginning of the day
011and that is all thank you thank you [Applause] TJ from Corona Del Mar glad I was able to sneak in here on time yes good job uh shocker shocker coach Roche let us out late again so my apologies um good evening board superintendent Smith an executive cabinet I'm TJ rocos ASP president Corona Mar and of course a student School Board member uh before I deliver my first report I wanted to express my gratitude for the opportunity to serve my community um we've had a tremendous start here at chronomar we've hired enrollment is way up so we've hired five new teachers schools with that school spirit has also skyrocketed skyrocketed as evidenced by attendance at our home football games I'll use last Friday night as an example uh despite hurricane-like conditions and the tough loss of
012San Clemente [Laughter] has to be planned a neon night which featured a DJ bright colored t-shirts and lights even my usual too cool for school teammates commented um sorry I lose my comment on how great the atmosphere was and yes for those wondering my teammates and even some coaches give me a hard time for my work in ASB and on this board but this time that seem to have appreciated it seriously anything that goes wrong at the school they like to blame on me so I know how you guys feel we've worked on Outreach to new students at the school with new student luncheons we have a record high budget thanks to our new parking system that was put in place I worked very closely closely with Dr Haley this summer to get that going
013uh overall yes there is still a barrier of super entitled children at CDM shocking um we are working hard to break that stereotype with our many inclusive events I also praise all of you here for appointing Dr Haley's principal I couldn't have picked a better pick myself he has shown a willingness to work with students and has really found his place in the community he loves football so we bonded instantly and he even texts me after every game usually highlighting the plays I messed up on uh yay he also picked a great athletic director and Mr Walsh to see him feels like a community in after coven uh now that the easy stuff is out of the way I do feel the need to address the controversial issues facing the school in the district I
014wasn't going to at first but it was after student demand uh coming to me as their leader and saying we don't agree with this stuff uh so first certain pages in my health textbook are extremely concerning I come to these meetings and I see people talking and you know I didn't really know what to think until I actually opened it uh first certain pages in my health textbook contain 10 gender identities and whatever romantic orientation is sorry this doesn't get my vote and it also doesn't have the backing in my school student body not to mention science I know the CDM Community is more conservative than most and not I'm not here on some political Mission uh these concerns were simply brought to me as I said by students and parents at my school these
015hot button issues should be discussed at home but regardless of your position on sex ed something that no one in the audience has brought up is why are we teaching it to seniors uh I don't mean to get inappropriate here but whatever is actually helpful to my peers and myself in that textbook which does not appear to be much we have already experienced in real life um in America will this keep it brief here but people lose their virginity at 17 even younger for men we teach them what they need to know usually one year past this Mark uh so now you've heard a lot of complaining from me that's not what my brand is so I'm going to give you a solution let's teach Health to freshmen or at least sophomores not seniors and
016let's get a fact-based textbook root in abstinence secondly and finally there have been concerns brought up to me about the American Pageant textbook I was actually a fan of this textbook at first it prepared me very well for the AP U.S history test which I received a five on and I'm going to ask for Round of Applause because that is that's a very challenging test I will point that out um we didn't even read the controversial part uh in the end talking about the former president class probably a smart move by miss Mayberry because I know some people would have objected to their claims they made the sad thing is those last few pages in question don't even appear on any tests including the AP1 so I'm appalled at why they even need felt the
017need to mention it in the textbook because besides that I had nothing but a positive review anyway after reading those last few pages I'm calling on the board to replace those textbooks with ones do not have a political agenda thank you for your time [Applause] thank you Costa Mesa Isabella Mills Issa good evening board members I'm Isabella Mills the representative for Costa Mesa High School I will admit that I was recently informed of my uh position so I am not as prepared as I believe I should be however I would like to um speak a little bit on this prompt one of which is I believe Costa Mesa High School has experienced many of the same things that Newport Harbor has in regards to obviously the bell schedule and there are mixed reviews from that
018but very many people are very grateful for that extra half an hour of time um we would also um I I talked to a couple of my peers and I did get a couple of um you know complaints but there was a general consensus in that um they liked the new bell schedule and also uh would like to um point out the harsher restrictions about student whereabouts on campus which very many of my senior peers are a little upset about um not being able to access their lunch from their cars and I personally have experienced this and very many people are saying that we should be using our lockers which is understandable to say the least but it is very convenient when someone has a car to be able to put all of their textbooks
019and belongings and sometimes lockers don't really fit all the things we need during the school day so um I would like the consideration of a little more leniency um aside from that uh that's it thank you very much you're very welcome thank you typically at a board the next person up would be Marcelina from Early College High School um while you're coming up yeah um come up and I'll just keep talking okay it's hard to stop me once I get started um we typically have two student board members report out at each meeting because like today it's a lot of things can or cannot be similar so that way you don't always have to have one more homework assignment every single time but you guys all have a schedule now so we're good thank you
020very much you may proceed thank you okay good evening members of the board and good good evening to everybody attending this award meeting I'm Marcelina Sanchez from Early College High School one thing I've noticed coming back on campus is that we can plan Spirit weeks in ASB planning house comps for those of you who aren't aware what house comps are our school is basically divided into four houses like Harry Potter and we compete against each other for house points um before covid we were doing that online and that made it very difficult to play like different games but now that we're back on campus we can do outdoor activities and we're planning our spirit weeks now and we're also planning a dance which is really exciting because now we can all be together and interact
021with each other which is amazing what I have noticed at school is people are especially the freshmen are really excited to be involved something that was way more difficult before covid and online so I'm really happy to see that the freshmen are getting involved in our school and wanting to learn more so thank you so much thank you [Applause] High School Fernando baranon it's a double r can I use this yeah just talk and it picks up everything you don't have to touch it or move it or anything hello superintendent Smith a president Barton fellow Board of Trustees the star of the school year was different than last year and the sense of students that it's not here now starting the school year off without having a mass mandate and looking more closer closely at
022last year we were limited to what we can do such as uh school activities with pep assemblies uh lunch games as well as field trips and now the lyceum program at Estancia is preparing for their first field trip in a few weeks to UCI and I also wanted to bring up about like the time change now that there's this whole new policy where schools start 30 minutes later for me personally that doesn't really like affect me because I have like a zero period so I have to be there early anyways so I mean it's great that I'm there like 30 minutes uh I'll like later um it's still the same for me but um but for many students it's kind of been a struggle uh but for others it's like great because like aristancia there's
023been like issues with attendance but I recently spoke to the principal and the assistant principal Mr Hall and Miss Chamberlain at Estancia and I asked him about how the attendance rate has been uh compared to last year and they said that it's been a major Improvement like now that it's 30 minutes uh later people are attending their classes are actually motivated to go to school but the downside to that is that with students is there's a lot going on in people's lives like you don't really know the circumstances so sometimes when you show up late to class unintentionally that kind of like really brings down the the students Vibe or energy because um because like I said so many people go through things and to like have to stay after school for like 20 30
024minutes I feel like that's too harsh and now what I've been trying to like suggest to uh Estancia is that we kind of like create a system where we like give like warnings instead of detention and after like the third warning or so you get a detention but um overall it's been great at Estancia uh the school spirit has been improving gradually uh now that we implemented the five-star uh app where you uh get points based on the events that you tend and uh I feel like this year is gonna be a great one for sure thank you excellent [Applause] and Mrs Franco um student board members this is like one of the rare occasions when you're all here so we would love to get a picture of everyone Mrs Franco you didn't I didn't
025prepare you for this but would you take a picture of all of our student board members if you'll come up and stand in front Kate if you'll go down and join them [Music] DJ you know your world is in the back you may not even have to there's there's not there's that oh perfect I want a picture of that make sure we get that well done you guys I didn't look to see who was officially assigned as everybody just here so stay until you everybody stays today because did we we didn't tell them sorry you're all in for it tonight okay thank you so much oh just Kate has to stay no okay stay as long as you like okay you get to be here till The Bitter End with the rest of you you're
026good um we have a little we have some Harvard Council reports coming up you're welcome to stay and listen to whatever you'd like to so thank you so much and we really appreciate you all thank you all right now we have our Harbor Council PTA report uh Vicki Waldo tonight Madam president members of the board Dr Smith and cabinet it's my pleasure to be here tonight to represent Harbor Council ptas we have 28 ptas in the district and we're proud of every one of them they're out there right now working on their membership campaigns trying to grow and get the Surge from covid going now we have been we've been quite successful with it we're over 50 percent of our goal for the year already and a big help to this has been the join
027totem program which you can go online joint totem.com and find the school that you'd like to be a member of put in a credit card you can print your own membership card and it's super simple and this has been a very streamlined effort for our schools to be able to easily sell memberships without doing it person to person joint totem.com so we have over 3 000 members now as of today uh we are sponsoring also the PTA walk to school day on October 5th we are participating in that and have uh had several of our schools sign up for this and you can get posters you can get banners you can give little freebies to the kids that do it PTA sponsors many little things that will help contribute to this the schools that have
028already signed up are Anderson Kelly Brook Mariners Newport Heights Victoria and Whittier and we hope to join some more in the next week or two upcoming programs we are sponsoring uh an informal coffee chat with Dr Smith with our schools uh Harbor council is trying to put together a schedule now where we would have one session in September to November and one session in February to April it would be sponsored at two of the high schools one day and another two of the high schools another day where he could come out and for a short time just have coffee with parents that would like to have answers to their questions meet him interface with him Etc so we're very excited about that we want to promote the community involvement with that we are also going
029to sponsor a candidate form for the School Board elections that are coming up um it's going to be held either October 10th or 12th we are still waiting to hear back from the moderator as to which they will work best for her we're going to have Bev Berryman from the 4th District PTA come down to be the moderator which we're very excited about because she's held many many forms before so we're busily right now putting this together and are very excited about it and that's where we're at today thank you thank you [Applause] um we've got CSEA president Pam Saunders good evening board president Bartos School Board superintendent Dr Wes Smith cabinet and guests CSEA appreciates this opportunity to speak tonight I would like to thank the negotiations team for all their hard work this
030year thanks to the school board and chief negotiators Leona Olson for always hearing what we have to say and always listening to all our concerns for classified employees thank you for approving our tentative agreement and mou's tonight thank you to the commitment and dedication from all classified employees I would like to thank doc doctors Wes Smith for always showing our classified employees how important they are to the district it is with happiness and sadness and a heavy heart that I will be retiring October 10th it has been an honor and a privilege to serve as CSE chapter president for the past six years and an employee of Newport Mesa for 21 years I would like to thank everyone so much for all their hard work for the last six years of my presidency I appreciate
031everyone so much I am so proud of all the classified employees I would like to thank the district for all their collaboration with us we have accomplished so much in the last six years I am going to miss everyone so much thank you so much for this opportunity speak thank you CSA thank you [Applause] Thank you Pam you'll be missed um and then we have nmft President Sarah allwater good evening can you guys hear me okay all right I'm not retiring good evening president Bartow board members superintendent Smith and cabinet members it's good to be able to speak to you tonight I want to start by thanking all of our teachers and service providers for a successful start of the school year we see how hard you are working and know the relationships you're creating
032now in the beginning of the year will lead to the Future successes of the kids and the school district as a whole next I want to acknowledge and pay special thanks to the classified staff all of them but in particular the instructional aides we couldn't do our jobs without you we know you are spread thin at times because the Staffing shortages and we want to support you to do the vital is you do the vital work of assisting teachers and specialists we know that the district is making and has made significant efforts to fill in the hiring gaps we just want you to continue with those efforts and know that the shortage of AIDS is being felt significantly I encourage the board to support in any way possible whatever is asked for by the district
033to increase and maintain AIDS where and when needed it's my understanding that also that at times this can be mean more shifting around and movement that's requested by people and I just want to let those staff know that we see and understand those challenges and that added stress that can cause and again thank them um and we want to encourage everyone to remember the important work they do and to help convey appreciation I want to let the board know that nmft continues to work with Sarah jacquam and other sped leaders to address any and all issues that arise in Special Ed I remain committed to my last comment before you hear that nmft considers seeking information listening to the teachers and Specialists and conveying that information as promptly as possible is vital work of the
034nmft this year especially finally I want to preemptively support some of the comments that will be made tonight from teachers that are here independently to support the work that you do as public school board trustees and all of the employees and Educators that make this great Public School District run we are in a business of maintaining the greatest vessel of democracy and freedom in the entire world that's what you do that's what we do and the attacks inflammatory at times unfounded accusations against the work they do it wears on them and they see it and it detracts from our good purpose and it needs to be checked at times and I support that thank you and now we move to community input on non-agendized items clarify one thing really quickly I just wanted to share
035how everyone is here before people may leave um several other dates about walk to school day so people can include them in their calendars or do we want to do that later okay thank you this is an opportunity for the public to address the board regarding items not 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 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 okay thank you um we have Michelle Pompeo Linford sorry Pompeo president Bartow superintendent Smith and members of the board thank you for this chance to speak
036on a topic close to my heart books and the students who love them I'm just ankle high in my 38th year of teaching English at Costa Mesa High School but I am shoulder deep in anguish at some of the remarks to you I deem as extreme and deeply unwise regarding a proposed Cavalier removal of books from our students hands years ago I taught Ray Bradbury's novel Fahrenheit 451 to supplement the novel about the Folly of banning and in this case burning books we studied the sordid Real History of book Banning and burning under repressive regimes on both the left and the right and shook our heads my students believe that book Banning was the province of the small-minded of the fearful and of the anti-democratic and so do I our district does not want to
037be on the wrong side of History we do not want to be the book Banning District of course there may be any number of reasons to include or remove a book from our curriculum and rest assured that our schools have robust processes in place to do so but flat out Banning a book short-circuiting our professional processes limits the potential of our students I acknowledge that every book is offensive to someone and anyone can find or feign a rationale for Banning virtually any book I acknowledge that we as teachers are not infallible and as the parent of a high school student myself I think that parents have a vested interest in school curricula I would go even farther I think parents are a child's most important lifelong teachers we Newport Mesa teachers have earned our degrees
038study Child and Adolescent psychology and understand how vital the right book at the right time can be for students our district already has comprehensive systems in place for curricular design which properly include heavy layers of public oversight we follow federal state county District site and grade level guidelines along with Professional Standards such as set those set forth by the college board and the international Baccalaureate to select a variety of texts however this variety means that potentially any text may be seen as inappropriate uncomfortable or even distasteful to someone but if you ban a book because one person or even a handful of people object to it you cheat the majority of students out of a rich reading life I do not need to school anyone in this room about how empowering and magical reading is
039and I thank you board for standing up to the forces that would have you pull books off shelves for all just because of the view of a few thank you for trusting your teachers and Librarians to continue giving just the right book at just the right time to our students for it is our greatest joy thank you next we have Matt Armstrong thank you president Bartow superintendent Smith and board Trustees for your service in 2019 a change.org petition in our community gathered 668 signatures among its numerous canards and mistruths it claimed our schools promoted white supremacy and what was their demand anti-bias training this year a new change.org petition to form a book Review Committee garnered 444 signatures the petitioners claim not to want book bans but they can't explain how they would enforce the
040committee's clear parameters or what would happen to the Health Resources denied by their 12-person jury when your first line is I don't want to ban books you probably want to ban books I was intimately involved in responding to the complainants years ago and they had a lot in common with today's in each case the petition was written by people who had children who did not have children in our schools their arguments were rooted in factual errors the protesters normalized violence and back then the board ultimately cut off the conversation and we've reached that point with the current cop of partisans they've made their case in every forum they've taken up a year-long residency in these meetings they've been printed in the local papers and picked up by the national press they've worked the cancel culture
041angle through Newport Mesa uncensored and they've been in the email accounts and offices of Administrators up and down the chain of command we've engaged in hard conversations we've listened we've worked to assuage their fears we've spoken candidly we've endured their misrepresentations we've held our breath and prayed when they've made thinly veiled threats and now they call us groomers pedophiles and there is guidance for reporting sexual men misconduct and board policy anyone who suspects inappropriate activity should report it as this Podium is not the place to adjudicate such claims it is not the place to make such accusations for this reason alone the board could easily refuse to hear more from these Fringe elements then there are numbers there are about 80 000 tax paying households in our district so when 444 petitioners come in hot
042arguing I'm a taxpayer they represent only 0.55 percent of those constituents even a gracious assumption that every signature represents 10 others and you're still only dealing with five percent of the community at most yet somehow they think they're fighting for a majority for too long these folks have been the only voice and though you wouldn't know it from listening to them most students and parents are pleased with our schools you have a clear warrant to cut the microphone off on them either way we are here to put on the public record a counter narrative from the true majority the centrists who you were elected to represent thank you next we have Bill Dunlap thank you board members Dr Smith and all those here I'm going to share with you when I walked in uh someone
043commented on my coat and says it was extreme so with that being said I think I'll uh kind of uh point to a letter that was written by Dr Bolton and some comments that were made publicly by the last speaker um the statements that were made in in Dr Bolton's letter I'm sure you've all read it I'm assuming that a lot of you might have worked with Dr Bolton on that letter because it seemed to be timed interestingly enough with Mr Armstrong's release of his comments calling me and I'm taking that seriously and extremists and I wore my coat accordingly um so with that being said there were some comments made first was false narratives um in con he named four people one of them was me and so I'm trying to figure out where
044the false narratives are I won't go over this in detail but as you know Fox News has been an investigative report regarding the ADL the ADL admitted that their Mantra of being anti uh defamation League to stop anti-Semitism was not exactly their total purpose there was embedded in that obviously implicit bias training CRT whatever and they've admitted that but we'll move on but I don't know what he's accusing what false narrative that is misrepresentation of op-ed I responded to Mr Armstrong's comments regarding a article written by Wendy Lee's in May and now all of a sudden here we are five months later and I'm labeled an extremist I don't know it's because of that op-ed I actually complimented him on what he was teaching in the class which he'd shared in his article so anyway
045I don't know where that misrepresentation is hostile emails to teachers again I'm up here representing myself I don't remember him or excuse me I don't remember myself ever writing an email to a teacher so I don't know where that fits in and so um the other part that's in Dr Bolton's letter is we want to make sure that all those involve the students can create their own meaning so it's kind of what is the what is the definition of is what is their own meaning does that mean their meaning is that they can create their own truth in in truth them becomes relative and we get right into the diversity deal I can create my own biology so I don't know what that means but there was that comment made in Dr Bolton's letter um
046instruction uh Newport Beach in there it says excuse me a Newport Harbor that we're here to support inclusivity and diversity well if we have an opinion that doesn't agree with them where is the inclusivity and diversity of our opinion no we're called extremists so anyway I could go on but thank you very much next I would like to pop next I would like to call Kirby Piazza please and then we've got one two uh thank you to the board superintendent Smith and especially all the parents and community members who are active and take pride in the Newport Mesa School District I'm here tonight speaking as a parent teacher and advocate for both present and future Newport Mesa students as a parent and teacher I respectfully show my children and students multiple sides of social and
047political issues I frame these issues in context and discuss questions that arise we call it the Socratic method and it stimulates critical thinking and helps to draw out ideas and reveal assumptions to the individual it's a type of Cooperative dialogue that defines a reasonable and intelligent Democratic Society now what I've been seeing at our school board meeting scares me we have been witnessing a small but organized group of extremists that don't want dialogue reason debate and intelligence they only want their extreme and conspiratorial causes to prevail they're using a proven method to create doubt mistrust and action from those not aware of their true plans they are conspiracy without real Theory and they see doubt without any real facts they're dangerous people and they're trying to organize and fund candidates with similar views to take
048over our district their most recent assaults in our community are the fanatical and extreme views that have long caused pains suffering and distress wherever they have taken hold children have been bullied beaten and killed by holders of these views this is not some hypothetical threat that these viewers hold they are real and present award-winning author Salman Rushdie is in a hospital in New York right now having been stabbed multiple times because of these extreme views that were carried out to their logical conclusion we must be wary question everything they say combat their lies and facts with logic I'm happy to say that I trust in our elected officials and administrators here to stand strong against any form of censorship race-baiting anti-lgbtq plus and the stunting of our children's and students Minds please know that the
049overwhelming majority of the community supports you in the common sense decisions that you make to ensure our kids have the type of education a free and open Society promises thank you thank you [Applause] next we have Grace h I had planned on saying something but I'm not sure I can follow that um so anyone who knows me knows I'm not extreme this is some of the silliest stuff I've ever heard in my life I'm a mom to three kids I did have kids in the school district up until this this year in September because we pulled our kids because there was a lot of issues that we've all spoken about the absurdity of what some of these people are saying is just mind-blowing nobody sent any nasty emails to teachers we love our teachers I
050especially at East Bluff I absolutely adored all our teachers this is I I honestly don't even know what to say let me go on record saying I don't know what to say about this nastiness I was slandered at an email that went out to hundreds of teachers thanks to this map character I've never seen before so my name was mentioned more than once and I'm not sure why it was my name and not anybody else but that's something I guess that will be discussed later but anyway um I I it's just so absurd I can't even speak anymore thank you next we have Henry Abraham good evening um I apologize um I requested a translator but none was available to my language so I am going to speak I'm in my native language first and
051then I have the translation for you I will translate for myself um foreign Armstrong casting Newport Beach translated and that's the end of it um good evening board members thank you for everything that you do surrender Smith um my name is hang them Abraham sorry I haven't speaking Farsi to this length in a professional level in a very long time I used to be a translator so my finglish comes and goes so I do apologize um since everybody thinks they're an expert and knowing what it means to come from an extremist background let me give you a little snippet of what it means to come from extremist background I had no choice in a country that I was born and raised till the age of 14 to cover my head against my will to since
052the age of nine it didn't matter what I look like I had to that's called extremist I could have gone taken to jail after the age of 12 or my dad could have gone taken to jail if I chose not to wear cover against my will that's called extremists if you all look around at bill me Grace and Wendy and you think we are dangerous and we need to be stopped or that our mics should be cut off I urge you to take my dual citizenship and live in Iran where we do not even have mics to speak in a public forum that's called an extremist this is called a democracy this is what this country is about even if you don't agree with what I say you are gracious enough I am gracious enough
053I have met with at least four of you board members personally and I have respected you personally but to be called an extremists when I personally come from a country that we fled because being an extremist was the form of government is an absolute slap in the face so please as an English teacher pick a better word thank you so much thank you next we have Haley Jenkins foreign hello superintendent Smith president Bartow and members of the board let me start out by saying that I've been in this back and forth with you all for two years attending almost every board meeting and calling and emailing person meetings submitting tons of Pras all over something little that I noticed on your agenda when it came to spending and the ADL curriculum I started paying attention
054and I continue this because you really have stepped on the gas pedal lately when it comes to Bringing very radical policies and spending my tax dollars yes on unnecessary garbage that in no way benefits the education of these children for example why are our tax dollars paying for Carrie Torres to get her Dei certificate at Cornell University why did last year you spend 40 000 on Dei expert Teresa neighbors why hire another assistant superintendent who was previously fired that's also a Dei expert to me I'm noticing a pattern and yes an agenda yes Matt Armstrong Kirby Piazza all of you you can call me an extremist but when I hear Socorro and superintendent Smith discussing wanting to dismantle the system because it's not Equitable or it's racist we have a problem myself and others have
055spent hours upon hours researching the programs books and organizations you work with as smart parents and taxpayers should basically what you all should be doing when we come to you with our concerns they are almost always shut down and ignored when we share these with the community some of you in this room get mad you're mad that we're noticing you're mad that we're taking action to Simply inform others knowing you cannot defend these concerning programs and spending you write worried lengthy emails have meetings and call us all kinds of names we're here to inform parents and help protect children because you will not please don't lie about this nobody is racist or anti-lgbtq nobody wants to attack teachers we really truly love the teachers and a lot of them are in it with us we're
056highlighting what you voted for and presenting the books and curriculum you feel comfortable showing to children and people are noticing and that makes you uncomfortable personally I have called Grant Thompson a groomer because if you're buying nine books to give to a third grader about excuse my language drinking come that is a groomer I don't know what else to call it so I guess that is extremist um I'm angry that I have to email and call and I go by the district and I cannot see the curriculum still we ask for it weeks in advance and we still don't even have a reply for some of it it should be transparent I'm angry about the sex ed curriculum that has a little gingerbread man talking about multiple genders people little girls and boys that are
057now boys and girls with the word revolution in the background um saying that maybe the dinosaurs were transgender I'm angry about history books that are not balanced thank you thank you foreign Gregory hello everyone superintendent Smith and trustees I appreciate this opportunity to speak I don't really know how we got to this place where sorry this is difficult for me we're teachers and administrators and staff and board members are pitted against parents um what I do know is that it is crazy that the state or District or teacher would defend their right to teach my children what you feel is best when objections are raised it's hurtful that parents are obstructed and shut out have to request foia's denied topics for agenda and are labeled domestic terrorists bullies or racists that you want to take
058our voices away yes we pay our property taxes and it's our children sitting in these classrooms that fund this District without which there would be no board meeting or teachers positions yeah you defend your right to teach our children what you feel is best for them I am not Fringe I'm not an extremist I I don't actually even believe that we're the minority I think if parents aren't flooding your emails in your boardrooms with concerns about some of what's Happening then perhaps they're too busy trying to make ends meet or distracted or ill-informed because so much of the content that we object to is hidden in some Insidious ways I propose a community Forum with varied perspectives where we share and discuss materials that are in question openly and discuss critical race Theory or ethnic
059studies in his Origins I'd like to hear why you think that isn't fighting racism with racism or social emotional learning why is this form of Clinical Psychology practiced without a license in an uncontrolled non-therapeutic space on groups of children with no mental disease or dove into this explicit sex ed and gender Theory to express my concern that teaching sexuality or gender identity of any nature doesn't really belong in K through six I'd like to discuss opting in not opting out of sex ed in middle and high school after providing the parents with all of the materials that are presented videos speakers textbooks surveys present this sexually explicit material being taught see if parents opt in but regardless of whether we are a minority or a majority our voices matter um these are our children that
060are sitting in these seats these are this is our community and this is the money that we earn to put them in these schools and if it doesn't bother you that so many of us are coming at you so hard and urging you to hear us then maybe this isn't a position that should be for you if you're not bothered that parents are distraught over what is happening thank you thank you next we have Carolyn McAuliffe good evening president Bartow board members cabinet Dr Smith and everyone here tonight I'm Carolyn McAuliffe the proud parent of an nmusd student a volunteer for Mom's demand action PTA member and a concerned member of the community during the last board meeting I was pleased to hear nmft's president Sarah ottwater's comments with regard to her priorities this year
061including assessing and improving school safety through preventative measures and today I'd like to share some additional thoughts on this topic every morning I drop my son off at school I hope and pray he his classmates and teachers will not be confronted with gun violence while our district does have safety measures in place there is more we can do to help our kids stay safe it is estimated that 5.4 million children live in homes with both loaded and unlocked guns an incidence of gunfire on school grounds School shooters 75 percent of these shooters obtained the guns from their homes or the homes of relatives the threat of children getting access to firearms and bringing them to school right now is greater than ever access to unsecured guns also increases the risk of death by suicide by
062three times one study showed that over 80 percent of children under the age of 18 who died by gun suicide used a gun belonging to a parent or relative we can all agree these statistics are daunting but there are simple actions that we can take right now to help prevent some of these tragic consequences smart program was developed to help normalize conversations between parents and adults about gun safety and to take responsible actions that can prevent child gun deaths and injuries although safe and secure storage is already a California law additional Community awareness is needed with that I urge the board to pass a resolution for our district to distribute a letter with information and resources on gun safety and the safe storage of firearms to parents and Guardians in fact a bill has been
063signed into legislation ab452 which will require this however this will not go into effect or it does not have to go into effect until July of 2023. what I'm doing tonight is urging you to do this quicker let's expedite this that's 10 months from now if we can even save one life let's make that happen there are at least 27 school districts in California that send home information about Secure Storage every year including LAUSD and San Diego USD which are the two largest school districts in California as well as a Fullerton State Fullerton school district thank you thank you for your consideration next we have Olga Para good evening thank you so much I'm Mr Smith for uh your best your visit to our Center I'm Olga para um executive director from Wilson Street Learning
064Center so thank you also Ashley for your support volunteer and being with us through pandemic thank you Michelle for also your support through pandemic thank you so much to all of you today um I'm here with some of the parents we serve around 12 schools around our area and we have right here parents from Whittier Ray Pomona Back Bay and Adams schools so they are here with me and the first topic that we pick for this school year is bullying we are very interested in in knowing um what kind of prevention policies you you will have this year what are going to be the consequences for for that and what is going to be the support after the fact um unfortunately in my 12 years there I have seen so many critical cases where our
065kids come with Broken Spirits and sometimes even physical harm so to the point that I have seen that for fifth sixth grade and what's happening what are we doing about it this year um I'm very concerned about that I have always been concerned but I'm going to use push to see how could we prevent that how can we Face that problem who is in charge of observing who's in charge of applying uh enforcing rules um what are we going to do about it I had a case where the girl was bullied for fifth to sixth grade she was calling herself she was pinching her face um and on and on my heart breaks when I see this um I just need to know what are we gonna do about this because there is depression anxiety
066and all of these problems caused by bullying and yeah I can come and just talk about academics and success and we want that parents wonder I want that and that's what we have the Learning Center but they're not going to be successful if they if they come from that kind of environment we want our kids to be safe to be embraced so that way they can they can be successful thank you so much for all your work thank you next we have Mike rothmeyer good evening to the board Dr Smith I attended your entree meeting at Harper high school when you first came in and I was very impressed Ms Bardo and the rest of the board thank you very much I'd like to address the shortage of Staff members briefly uh by way of
067uh short background I have an engineering degree from Cal Poly Pomona 30 years in engineering as a licensed engineer after my 30 years I caught a case of Eric Erickson's generativity if you will and decided to get a master's in education got a teaching certificate specializing in curriculum development accommodations and modifications I'm currently a raptor certified volunteer in two of your high schools have two letters of recommendations from your teachers I completed my application package for substitute teaching and have heard nothing back in six months I understand you're in need of substitutes especially in technology and science I thought you'd like to know that there are Personnel out there that are looking for an opportunity to help the school district thank you very much good night next We Have Allison G good evening superintendent Smith
068trust the trustees president Bardo so I'm gonna switch gears a little bit so we all remember when parents all throughout the state put the shoes in front of the district Halls to represent the children that would be pulled out of the out of the various districts due to unlawful mandates so fast forward it was a I don't know meeting or two and Mr Trader did his interim financial review and as a recovering accountant I very much appreciate all your presentations and in your wit because members are dry and during that uh trustee yelsea asked for uh Mr Trader to clarify some confusion in the room on how we're funded and it was very clear that at that point that we are actually not funded by average daily attendance we're funded 75 based on the website
069based on property taxes and so last year the student cost to educate was 23 367 dollars per student with an attendance of seventeen thousand nine hundred and sixty two students the first day enrollment this year was down 317 students so multiply that out that's 7.4 million so I actually came here tonight for some clarification like what happens with that are the taxpayers proportionately refunded money does that stay within the school system is absorbed so now we have less students with more money so the price per student goes up but then I realized right before I was walking out the door to come here buried way down so I got some co-mingling things period way down 21. be in 21c we have uh we're I guess we're voting tonight on raises of 3.6 million dollars for
070executive management superintendents and all the assistant superintendents or the superintendent and the assistant superintendents so on one side we're down students they would equate to 7.4 million but tonight we're going to approve 3.6 million in raises so just help me help me with that thank you next we have Ruth Kobayashi thank you good evening I'm Ruth Sanchez Kobayashi a resident of Newport Beach and the mother of two graduates of Corona del Mar High School my background offers some context for the com comments I'm about to make so I'll make a couple a couple of comments about me I'm a conservative who has and will vote Republican in every election without exception I'm a Christian who has served on the school board of a leading Christian School in our area and who has stood hand in
071hand against anti-Semitism in our community you may know me for advocating for available parking near our high school lighting for athletic fields and the naming of an athletic facility after a beloved coach Sumner today I'm here to encourage and improve and to reject an ideology of Destruction parents like me believe in quality education focused on literacy Math Science and History that teaches children critical thinking skills with curriculum that is right for their age and meets the needs of all types of Learners from struggling to the highest achievers I'm also a believer in evaluation reflection and continuous Improvement what I'm not a believer in is dismantling I rejected it along with most rational people when it was targeting our police departments and I'm rejecting it now when it targets our neighborhood schools and this school district
072it is alarming that some in our community rather than working with our district to enhance and improve are calling for the dismantling of our district I've not worked for a perfect Corporation attended a perfect church had a perfect best friend or walked the halls of a perfect School what I have done is volunteered for a zillion projects respectfully influence leaders when the opportunities presented themselves and done everything possible to lift up and encourage those leaders what I have found is that when parents conduct themselves in this way leaders listen they care and often they make changes my encouragement to you as Leaders is to consider new and enhanced opportunities for Parental input including updating the superintendent's parent advisory Council which I have served on for parents to provide valuable input to the superintendent on Key
073Programs in our schools my encouragement to our community is to be confident in our schools to pay attention to our leaders to ask questions to challenge but to also consider the motives of those who seek to dismantle our district and what they can do to our district with a stellar reputation that provides an outstanding education for our kids and prepares them for College and Career excuse me just ask our students foreign [Applause] no additional comments we moved to superintendents comments we've addressed this to the Deus before so no no clarifications you've already clarified on our curriculum um we've done that multiple times as far as clarifications on Communications we did not make from the district office myself for the board I can't comment on that either you know certainly people have attested to the fact
074that there is some agenda to dismantle to divide and Destroy to rebuild or for whatever purpose I can just say that that has not been my focus for 11 months and those of you that have been in the community paying attention to what we've been doing at our schools in our meetings we talk about working together that only together can we do the most difficult work and that's meeting the needs of 17 000 students that's been my message it was a message in our welcome back video I said just that same thing we have said before we'll say again we do not will not teach CRT in this District can't say it enough people are using letters tonight and accusing me of saying think since I've been here that I haven't said referring to another
075conversation taken out of context in another time here we've been talking about doing the work together and when we take apart Dei diversity Equity inclusion diversity is a fact it's a fact I hear science all the time in these meetings there's diversity in this District all kinds of diversity and every single one of those students without exception deserves the best from us so we're not going to shy away from saying there is diversity Equity is a word that becomes weaponized all over the state we've talked about this here equity for this district is meeting the needs of every student where they have needs when they have needs right that's how we talk about it that's our goal that's what this board stands behind meeting and exceeding the needs of every single student in this District
076we had a student tonight talk about inclusion at CDM so students are working on being more inclusive and why wouldn't we if doing this work requires all of us to work together all of us then we have to be more inclusive that's not a political agenda that's a fact but I'm optimistic I'm optimistic for lots of reasons uh again 11 months tons of reasons for optimism that's 17 000 that I can think of first and that's our inspiring students they do amazing things they impress me all the time you get into our classrooms and you see why our teachers are classified staff our support staff work as hard as they do because these kids are inspirational we have a board that has a focus of every student every day that's powerful and they govern accordingly
077we have Educators that lean into high expectations for every student our teachers our support staff they're not shying away from this work and they're not saying we're only going to help some students we're gonna help them all right because that's what they're committed to doing and we have community members that lean in and say we're going to do this what do you need I'm at Anderson Deans and they say Wes can how can we help other people we know how to help our kids how can we help others right Olga mentioned it tonight about the way that communities can help support the work that we're doing we have a community just like that I think about Community too and I I can't help but but mention this our law enforcement I prioritize communication and working
078with our law enforcement communicate with the Chiefs regularly you can ask them I wouldn't speak for them but I know what they've said about our relationship since I've gotten here but but the facts are important and we've invested in more sros in this District since I got here because we know that our students need to be in safe learning environments and we value that relationship we have so thank you for being here tonight and and for doing all the work that you do we are the Newport Mesa Unified School District and we can have public debates that's fine but one thing we we can't debate is that if we're divided we're not going to meet the needs of all students only together Unified United will we do that and we'll work with any interest any
079party that really wants to do that to work towards benefiting our students that concludes my remarks thank you all right we moved to community input on agendized items this is an opportunity for the public to address the board regarding items on the regular meeting agenda comments on agenda items are limited to three minutes per comment up to 20 minutes per topic a speaker may not relinquish his or her time to another person speaker cards for items on the discussion action calendar may be held until that item is considered by the board if the speaker prefers okay we have one comment um Paul ruber I believe and and if you'd like to speak now your item is on the consent or you may speak before the consent thank you oh all right thank you thank you
080uh uh superintendent Smith president Bartow board staff thank you very much for having us I'm with Big Brothers Big Sisters of Orange County Inland Empire I'm Director of Education and career development and maybe getting ahead of myself a little bit but I just wanted to say thank you all for your support your continued support for our programs it's a high school Biggs program where we match high school students some of the high schools here today is anybody that big at our high school beats program you know we want to get you there oh I'm gonna we're gonna make you aware but our high school digs program is an opportunity for high school students to Mentor elementary students at the elementary students and this year we our goal is to Mentor 60 elementary students with 60
081high school students meeting weekly throughout the year we are promoting SEL we're promoting Dei we're promoting relationship building leadership skills all of these things that you know as superintendent Smith said are extremely important to not only this District these students but districts everywhere so uh really just want to say thank you for this opportunity to serve these students we look forward to this year getting going on this year and we look forward to a continued relationship with Newport Mesa School District so thank you very much we move on to item 18 a report on summer programs with Lori Hernandez and Dr Mike Shaka yeah if I can ask Dr Shaka and Dr Hernandez to head on up they're going to give us a report this evening on our summer programs one of the tasks you've
082kind of put in front of us is to expand the learning opportunities for all of our students summer programs is one of those expanded opportunities that we've really delved into along those lines we've asked Dr Hernandez and Dr Shaka to share some of the highlights and details of this past Summer's programs a couple things to note and you've heard me say it before and I'm sure you're going to hear these two say it these programs touch not only thousands of our students but they're only uh we're only able to do them with the support of every single one of our divisions from transportation to Food Services to human resources to facilities maintenance operations we continue to run a very small District compared you know to all of our kids but throughout the summer it's not
083just a school here or there but it's a it's really the size of of many districts in California that we run our summer programs through so we've asked Dr Shaka and Hernandez to share some of the highlights from this summer thank you good evening president Bartow members of the board s myth executive staff and guests before I get into the details of our elementary summer program I would like to take the opportunity to thank and recognize Dr hogard present principal of Ray Elementary she planned and executed the elementary summer programs for 2021 and 2022 so all the incredible details I'm going to share with you tonight are the result of her vision her hard work and her dedication to our students the elementary program for 2022 was designed based on input and lessons learned from
084summer 2021 in addition to information we gathered throughout the school year at the end of the summer school 2021 Dr hogard conducted parents student and staff surveys about the summer program experience then in January we began planning for summer 2022 we had teacher and principal surveys some key findings from all of these surveys included the need for extra support with social skills the value of student participation in enrichment activities and the desire for a well-rounded opportunity with a mix of academics and enrichment we also took parent input through the spring lcap process and we used State guidance for the Extended Learning opportunities program Grant which requires us to offer a full day experience for students this was one of the biggest changes we made from the prior year we had to offer a nine hour
085day as part of elop so another requirement is also that we offer the program to at least 50 percent of our unduplicated students which is a category that includes students who are English Learners Foster Youth and students from low-income families we satisfied this requirement because we opened our program to all Newport Mesa students who wanted to participate so our elementary program design we had six sites where we hosted the program and those were Killy Brooke Wilson Newport Coast Ray Sonora and Kaiser and Kaiser was unique because we co-located with our extended school year special education program and we collaborated with them to make sure it was really one program and many of our esy students were also able to benefit from the enrichment in the afternoon the program was open to all Newport Mesa students
086as I mentioned with additional recruitment efforts at Title 1 schools through our school Community facilitators we made a lot of calls and made some extra effort at some of our sites the am program had two sessions for each student and 90-minute academic Block in a 90-minute enrichment block enrichment offerings in the morning were assigned but students experienced two different enrichment options so for example a student might have had two weeks of brainstorm stem followed by two weeks of an art class students who stayed in the afternoon had a choice they selected either Arts stem or sports camp and they stayed in that one activity throughout the 20 days one of our most successful enrichment activities was a theater program through the Arts and learning Conservatory which culminated with musical theater shows at all six of
087our sites which many of you had the opportunity to see we offered options for parents to pick up either at the half day point at 2 30 or at the end of the day and this design was intended so that kids wouldn't be pulled out and interrupted in the middle of an art lesson or painting or a stem project and our program hired a mix of Newport Mesa staff and Community Partners so we had many of our own teachers office staff instructional assistants and Elementary Specialists and then we supplemented our own Staffing with groups like brainstorm stem strategic kids fibo arts and learning conservatory and others and recruitment began began at the spring parent teacher conferences so here are some quick statistics about our program we had 1 707 students that attended at least half
088of the program so they attended 10 days or more and most parents offered opted for the full day option they wanted to leave their kids all day at the end of The Experience uh parents took a survey and 89 percent of parents rated the X4 or a five out of five and we're very proud of that of those numbers and the parents really appreciated the program a goal of our program was to provide time for students to socialize and collaborate with each other and so we were also happy to see that 82 percent of our students reported that they made three or more new friends at summer school so that's a success for us in Illinois foreign [Applause] focused on academics taught by our own Newport Mesa teachers we had Daily Journal writing a daily
089math lesson a daily reading lesson we had literature books with discussion and text-based writing and writing was the area we measured and we did see growth in students quantity and quality of writing so teachers were measuring their their growth and we saw a lot of improvement in confidence in writing with the daily journals reading lessons and math lessons were driven by grade level standards and were developed by teams of Newport Mesa teachers and then in the enrichment side we also had big success students parents and teachers all commented that those experiences were valuable for students parents were asked what students came home and talked about at the end of the day for summer school and 86 percent of parents reported students came home and shared about their enrichment opportunities so we know that's the part
090of the day students really liked students also commented on their surveys almost every student made some kind of positive comment about their enrichment their art their science all those experiences they had so in thinking about the program we offered students we had successes to reflect on and then also areas that we're you know considering as we plan for 2023 so we wanted to provide our staff and contracted partners with additional training um for students that's one area we want to think about how we can do that for 2023. we also want to consider different dismissal options well it made sense on RN to offer the half day 2 30 and end of day dismissal we had a number of parents that commented that they wanted a little bit more flexibility and what being able to
091basically pick up their child at any time so we need to think about how we can manage that we're also thinking about what will be the best balance of academics and enrichment moving forward so coming out of the pandemic we had a strong focus and need for social skills peer collaboration and enrichment opportunities and so our team is discussing what the best balance is moving forward also elop requires us to offer 30 days outside of the school year and we only offered 20 this last summer which means we need 10 more days before the end of June 2023 so we will be starting summer school we know this year a little bit earlier to satisfy those 10 days in June so some are so those are just some of the things we've started discussing as
092we're thinking about summer 2023 and now I will pass the presentation to Dr Shaka to tell you about secondary thank you Lori [Applause] president Bartow members of the board Dr Smith executive cabinet and all of our guests today thank you for giving us a little bit of time to talk about summer school uh I have to start off by giving a very genuine authentic thank you to all of the people involved in summer school it was a big process like John mentioned we had transportation we had office managers we had nurses we had school uh campus safety supervisors our admin interns and certainly our amazing teachers all partnering with our parents and students for this this experience so the design of secondary is a little bit different and the first thing that we looked at
093is secondary was we wanted to significantly expand and improve the experience from years past and I think that we did just that so when designing the program the first thing we did was we talked to students what do they want and what do they need we looked at data grades credits student interests little fun fact driver's ed was offered this summer which was a direct interest of our students to offer over summer school we also built upon the work that our admin interns did this previous school year each one of our four middle schools and four comprehensive high schools had an admin intern last year and their job was to really focus on learning recovery they did some tremendous work throughout last school year and was able to mitigate quite a bit of learning that
094we focused on last year we use that data we built upon it and we used that uh to assess the needs for summer school and that's what ultimately led to our program design of summer school for secondary one of the biggest changes was we offered summer school at all eight sites previous to last year summer school was generally offered at one site a year ago and now building upon it this year we offered it eight different sites which did a tremendous job at connecting students to their Community uh making it close by more convenient really really overcame a lot of the challenges we'd faced in the past program options Middle School we offered a seventh grade bridge and an eighth grade bridge which I'm going to go over in just a second on on the
095next slide in high school we also offered a ninth grade bridge we had traditional Credit Recovery classes where the kids would come uh come to school algebra one for example they would sit in the class be instructed by the teacher and learn algebra one we also had Edgenuity credit recovery options where they would do self-paced ingenuity-based credit recovery both in seat and remote we had in-seat initial credit offerings that we've expanded from previous years so kids who chose to in certain classes could earn initial credit and get further ahead in the next school year and then we had online classes we had online government economics health and again driver's ed which was a fan favorite so our seventh eighth and ninth grade bridge I want to spend a moment talking about the experience because this
096was new and I think this was one of our biggest successes generally what happened was a student's day was broken up into three blocks an Ela literacy writing block a math block and an enrichment block we partnered with some of our elective teachers in Newport Mesa as well as ROP to offer a variety of elective options or enrichment options kids were able to learn medical they did culinary they did Robotics and it was a fantastic way to break up the day learning academics as well as providing a pretty cool enrichment opportunity in addition these were incoming seventh incoming eighth and incoming ninth so think about this just for a minute all of our exiting sixth graders now have a head start coming to their middle school campus connecting with the campus connecting with the teachers
097so day one is a far less intimidating far less scary experience for all of those students our ninth graders our ninth graders were able to attend the ninth grade bridge and earn five credits so they stepped on campus day one in High School Ahead many of these students were traditionally used to being behind and all of a sudden the script was flipped and now they're ahead full of confidence starting their High School career another another big win for uh for our program so let's take some numbers 1450 secondary students participated this is almost three times as many as we've had in years past so this is big impact for our students 36 15 credits recovered so 3615 credits were recovered in summer school this past summer in addition 900 credit 920 initial credits were earned
098again so students were ahead these students if we had not offered the summer school program would have been taken either intervention classes or taking their traditional classes during the school year but instead they were able to make space for more classes more electives um staying in their grade level classes with their peers a huge Advantage for these students so again the impact was beyond just earning credits so how'd we do so I want you to think about this for a second you have a high school student sitting in a classroom in summer taking a survey about how much they appreciate the experience and 93 of them rated a three four five we consider that a big win in addition 90 of our parents rated a three plus and 95 percent of our teachers again who
099did a tremendous Job rated their experience a three or higher and we we consider that um uh really impressive um I I looked at some of these quotes and something that jumped at me with these with these student quotes and and parent quotes um the teacher has done a great job re-inspiring inspiring is not a traditional word for summer school yet yet there it is um one of our students mentions the enrichment they're building Rockets roller coasters cars again a powerful connection to that school they can build upon in the in the traditional school year um and and then finally one of our one of our seniors that was able to reflect a little bit on some of the choices they made and how they can learn and grow and improve moving forward so we
100thought some of those quotes were nice to share and then reflecting um celebrating successes but also not staying stagnant and continuing to reflect on where we can improve and continue to grow um we love the fact that we offered it at eight sites we we really appreciated that and saw a lot of benefit um we created high quality Bridge materials a balance of ela math and enrichment so it wasn't just the students there it was the students there with high quality curriculum and and really learning those core skills of writing mathematics and enrichment um we offered both remediation credits and initial credits which again uh that that option so it's not just focused on one the other it spoke to more student need um and then we significantly increased the number of students served that's
101always a good thing we believe and then considerations again things we want to improve on moving forward we want to continue to explore more initial credit options we think that we got some traction there we really wanted to explore where those opportunities will continue to be as we move forward um we want to consider adjustments to the start and end dates of the school there was there was feedback related to um higher teacher recruitment possibly more student retention if we if we re-examine some of those start and stop dates so that's something we want to consider as we move forward um and then continue to develop indicators of success we have credits we have grades we have student surveys but we really want to continue to drill into student learning and be able to do
102a really good job at being able to assess how much our students learned in the summer experience so we can build on that moving forward and that said thank you all so much for your time if there are any questions we are happy to answer them um I'm going to let our student board rep go First dress Dima toy and then you're next go ahead mine's really quick it's just uh students have asked me are you able to get art credits um like during the summer like is that possible great question Kate this summer we didn't have initial art credit offerings although that's one of the things that we also heard in our feedback that we'll be considering as we move forward but that was not an option this past summer for initial credit thank
103you all right trustee Mathway I'm so proud of this program um the fact that it's grown from last year to this year last year it was a program that we needed to do to stop the bleeding this year what we saw was the healing that was taking place and the fact that we didn't just sit back and we I love it's the Royal we it's you guys that are doing this but we didn't sit back on our heels and go wow we did a great program let's do it again next year you're saying we did do a great program it was great what can we do to make it better how can we get more kids to include it now as a parent nine hours of Summer with my kids being somewhere else and being
104happy with air conditioning that would have been fabulous alone but you're offering the opportunities to get ahead and they're doing that in elementary and secondary because in elementary when you're getting your education over the summer that gap of forgetfulness is way narrowed down and in high school if you can get ahead of something and maybe you don't have to take zero period the next year so that you really can take advantage of that 8 30 start that would be huge I can't thank you enough after all the work that you've done and the work that you're going to do in the future thank you thank you trustee Anderson thank you um thank you this is very exciting as you know I have I love our summer programs and that we're doing them and hopefully we
105can continue doing them for years to come um one idea for also adding more days is during our vacation breaks or intercession we often hear from parents that that is a huge need so if you need a few more days you know we can maybe go 10 on the plus side um that that's something that I hear from lots of parents I also want to thank you for two big parts of this um one for listening and asking for student feedback and secondly for listening and inquiring about parent feedback and what they needed and wanted I think this is one of our better efforts at doing that and even including things like art and continually making things better and the other is having our successes and considerations I am a firm believer in continuous Improvement
106and and in the past we didn't always get that and so I love this I love that people are thinking ahead of how we can make things better so thank you and I just like to add that one of the questions I get the most is what our district is doing to address um learning loss and it's really wonderful to be able to respond with a practical tangible thing that we've already done that we've already started and I love these these facts and I love the quotes that the the roller coasters for middle schoolers is great because I think a lot of our elementary students participated in our stem and Engineering camps before and then it got to middle school and we kind of left that piece out so it's great that we're including that
107all the way through thank you so much and I've got more comments trustee or soilu and trustee crate I just had a thank you like everybody said for the great presentation just a logistic question just in light of what some of the student board members said about the later start time for secondary is the summer next summer going to be aligned with starting at like the 8 30 during the school year time or does it not have to align legally I just don't know I just again a great question I was hoping to not think about summer school for like a week and then re-engage we haven't decided to skip the schedule yet so that's that's a good question that we'll be considering as we plan trustee Crane and trustee weigand and then uh student
108board member okay again amazing thank you uh we we had the pleasure of going to visit the classes and also attending the performances and it was amazing to see the kids so engaged and the staff so caring just the legislative Logistics alone from Transportation nutrition services as you both mentioned is more it was all the Departments collaborating for an amazing output um I also wanted to add the fact that there's an economic factor to this because a lot of parents can't afford to put their kids at camps in the summertime and I remember talking to one parent and she became teary eyed basically saying I can't afford summer camp I can't you know 500 a week for this one and the other one and this was a great service not only were there kids safe
109at school learning being with friends and all that it was a necessity a basic need that was being met and I thought that is amazing I'm using amazing a lot but it's just because it's true thank you trustee weigan and then Kate cherry yeah I want to thank for thank you for um building upon what we did last year and then adding on to it and it was great this year I loved it seeing the um the plays it was great when when there was like the kids are just hilarious and it really brightened my day I have to say um on on the theme of continuous Improvement I knew you said for the secondary we're going to evaluate to see how well our students do from um you know from the summer school and
110if it helped them in school are we going to do the same for elementary school where we just we can say hey the student was here maybe below grade level but they did summer school and they're now at grade level are we gonna do some kind of Assessments in that way just to fine-tune everything for the next year we are working on coding the the students a certain way if they attended our summer so we can see if there are any correlations but as far as like directly a big part of our program was on those soft skills collaboration and you know making friends and communication and writing and those kind of things and so we didn't have any like Direct measures but we will be able to look at Trends with the kids that
111attended summer okay good yeah not all academics at all but I I thank you for that yeah it was it those plays were just great and hilarious and some of our schools are actually going to hire on some of their um our vendors to do other things on their schools so I think some stars were born seriously some of these kids were like that was their thing for sure student board member Kate Cherry uh this is just a clarification question do you guys have like is it is there a secondary like online program with it or is because I took Health Online but I don't know if this was connected through this or if it was nothing I'm just curious yeah Health was one of the options for the summer if you took it over
112the summer it could have been this program in the past it probably was um but it expanded outside of just health so yes we had health government economics and driver's ed that was an online more asynchronous experience option okay I just had an idea based on what trustee weigen said um since we are now doing preschool to third grade as more of a Continuum would it be possible to maybe use like early developmental index questions about social interactions so then we would have also kind of more common language and longitudinal analysis of okay the child has really improved over the summer this child's really improved over three years so it would all correlate that's something we could look into yeah thank you thank you all right thank you very much all right we thought we'd
113move on to item 19 consent calendar if there's any board comment on Personnel commission recommendation item 19 C1 please let me know otherwise we'll move to adopt it just my script literally says if there's any board comments so do you have comments okay thank you that was a new one oh okay um yes uh first I want to say thank you for um taking the time to adjust um and add back in Lexia and also ST Math for our school sites um I know we have a lot of extra money currently for the next few years and so I really appreciate the extra licenses that we're able to get for all students um and then I do just have a concern that I saw today that I so I apologize for not bringing it up
114before but um when I saw the care for 19d10 the carousels contract prior to this one was only thirty thousand dollars and I just noticed that it's doubled and it's 61 000 and so I think they were using it less than during the pandemic yet we're paying twice as much so I was just wondering what happened there uh are you okay I don't mean to put you on the spot and if you need us to come back to that we can do that okay so we'll move to adopt the consent calendar and we can do uh 19 D1 separately if you'd like if you'd like to answer on that sure thank you okay okay uh well there's some other mous attached to that one can can we just take up that one mou and then
115okay would someone like to make that motion um I'd like to make a motion on 19 D wow 10 10 um to just pull the carousalis um mou and evaluate that for discussion move to discussion action there's a second second all right so then may I have uh may have roll call vote on that trustee Bartow yes trustee matoya yes trustee crane yes trustee Anderson yes trustee ursulu yes trustee weiken yes trustee Elsie yes all right so um with that we will I may have a motion to adopt the consent calendar with the exception of 19d10 carousels contract so moved we have a second second okay it's been moved by trustee mitoy it's been seconded by trustee crane roll call vote justy Bartow yes trustee matoya yes trustee crane yes trustee Anderson yes trustee your
116soilu yes trustee weiken yes trustee yelsea yes okay so then we will move to discussion action we will go first I'm sorry we'll go first to public hearing action calendar and then we will get to uh the care Solace item with 21 discussion excellent calendar so uh moving on to 20 public hearing action calendar we have 20 a public hearing disclosing the provisions of 2022 23 through 2024 25 tentative collective bargaining agreement with the California School Employees Association Newport Mesa chapter number 18. Mr Trader Jimmy comments it's recommended the board hold a public hearing to disclose the collective bargaining agreement the the cost for the 22 23 years three million 950 681 dollars and for the 23-24 year 2 million 331 839 dollars these amounts have been budgeted and therefore affordable thank you the hearing
117is now open at 7 43 pm are there any public comments okay seeing none the hearing is now closed at 7 43 pm we moved to item 20b approved tentative agreement and mou between the Newport Mesa Unified School District and California School Employees Association and its Newport Mesa chapter number 18 concluding the 2022-2023 and 2023 2024 negotiations Ms Olson thank you very much we're very pleased to bring to the board tonight the tentative agreement for a two-year agreement but I think at first I really need to recognize the teams for csca we had Pam Saunders our president and we are going to miss you greatly and Stu Tedford Gary Logan Sean Katz Troy Hall and Amy Gonzalez with CSEA senior labor rep has their lead negotiator and representing the district was Sarah jock on Lance
118bidnik Becky Goble shashana agano and Kristen Clark served as a resource to both teams and I recognize them because negotiations is not an easy process and it's important to acknowledge that commitment from both teams to really engage in some difficult conversations from different perspectives or surrounding issues that are important to provide a strong a wonderful environment for our students and make sure that our employees are taken care of and the organization is as well and so we have reached this agreement that does support our employees it also is important we hear about employment shortages or difficulty hiring that the district remain competitive amongst our competitors and and this agreement does that as well so some highlights is the that I would draw your attention to is a Health and Welfare benefit so we are now
119sharing we shared the costs a little bit more with employees with a small increase to the monthly contribution and I think that's important to acknowledge because that too is a collaborative conversation that happened with our joints benefit team and that made up of negotiating both all units nmft CSEA and management and again engaging in those conversations and being open to those really emotional conversations and so we were able to do that so we are sure we're it distributes more equitably the share the costs of our Health and Welfare benefits yet still offers a very reasonably low-cost option for employees we also have some you'll notice language updates clarifying some work days as well as food transfer and attached to this ta is an mou that assists with our after hour emergencies and creates a team
120to do that this is wonderful and benefits the organization it also provides employees an opportunity to develop some leadership skills and demonstrate those skills so it's a promotion it can help them perhaps in their promotion desires as well so with that I asked the board to approve the TA for a two-year agreement with CSEA Chapter 18 concluding the negotiations for 2020 223 and 23 24. yeah you have emotion so moved second see why yeah trusty white again okay all right um it's been moved by trustee matoy seconded by trustee weiken roll call vote trustee Bartow yes trustee matoya yes trustee crane yes trustee Anderson trustee or soilu yes trustee weigand yes trustee Elsie yes thank you now we move to item 20c public hearing disclosing the provisions of the 2022-23 through 2023 24 tentative collective
121bargaining agreement with the Newport Mesa Federation of teachers Mr Trader it's recommended the board hold a public hearing disclosing the costs of the tentative agreement the Newport Mesa Federation of teachers the 2223 cost is 14 million 27 272 dollars the 2324 cost is seven million eight hundred and ninety one dollars I'm sorry seven million 891 247 dollars of which all is budgeted and therefore affordable thank you right the hearing is now open at 7 48 pm are there any public comments seeing none the hearing is now closed at 7 48 pm item 20D approved tentative agreement and mou between the Newport Mesa Unified School District and the Newport Mesa Federation of teachers concluding the 2022-2023 and 2023 2024 negotiations Miss Olson thank you again so yes um I want to start by thanking our teams
122um again courageous conversations happen around the table and the dialogue is significant and it um the teams work extremely well together in having those honest conversations to reach these agreements what I would point out again is the Health and Welfare benefits and um again that is an emotional conversation for all parties involved but we are able to reach agreement we also were able to address some um obsolete language within the contract I'd also highlight for you that in the agreement you will have noticed that we now have evaluation forms for our service providers so that is our SLP speech language Pathologists our psychologists our social workers our counselors our nurses and our Librarians and in the past they've had to adopt we've had to adapt a teacher evaluation tool to those to those professions which
123was really really difficult so that is that we piloted and we've agreed on that there's also an mou for this coming year and the following year to teacher evaluation forms so continuing to move that on continuous Improv another highlight is that we have calendars adopted for 2023-24 and 24 25 so people can plan ahead which is fantastic I think the calendar committee for their recommendations and then there's plenty of clarification throughout the contract that we also addressed and again that's because of the hard work and the respectful conversations that we had with the team so the nmft team I just wanted Sarah Atwater who is um our president sitting here tonight Jamie Rob Rhonda Reed Laura Mayberry Sandy's here with us tonight Sandy Gordon Kathy adamack and their lead negotiator is Nicholas Dix who is
124their executive director and then the district Representatives Kirk bauermeister Megan Brown who's with us tonight um Amanda Estrada Kurt sir Mike Shaka which you who you saw and then we have Council of Spencer covert so again I asked the board to please please through the tentative agreement that would conclude the negotia go she's for 22 23 and 23 24 with our labor Partners in mft thank you may I have a motion to approve so moved second yeah it's been moved by trustee crane seconded by trustee Anderson Roll Call vote Jesse Bartow yes trustee matoya yes trustee crane yes trustee Anderson yes trustee or soilu yes trustee weigen yes trustee Elsie yes all right so we will move on to 21 discussion action calendar president Bartow would you prefer to go back to the um consent
125or do you want to wait till you're done so we moved it to discussion action so we'll make it 21 H perfect thank you um all right so 21A approved meeting date change from yeah that's right October 4th to October 11th I think we have an amendment there trustee matoya yes um we realized that we would that moving it out that would be a big conflict first of all it's a conflict with our state of the schools morning luncheon but I it definitely needs to be um changed due to um observance of the Yom Kippur holiday which starts at sundown so um I would like to change that um to October 3rd it's a Monday I know Monday is like oh my gosh you can't have it yes we can we can have a board
126meeting on a Monday but if we move it to October 3rd it doesn't affect the whole board can be there and it doesn't affect any religious holidays that we oops done trustee weigand um I'm seconding that that sounds like a good idea well we haven't made emotions we're just doing an exercise I guess I'm just supporting her okay I was going to introduce quickly the item and um and take the blame for it I just want to be clear to the public that um when staff looked at the calendar we referred to the Interfaith calendars we always do every year and it had it on the fifth not the fourth and then someone brought to our attention that the Interfaith calendar was wrong um but but that was our fault not the board's fault I
127just wanted to make that clear to the public all right so may I have a motion to approve meeting date change from October 4th 2022 to October 3rd 2022. so moved second okay we can tag team this been moved by trustee weigants seconded by trustee matoya roll call vote student board member Kate Terry yes justy Bartow yes Christy matoya yes Christy crane yes Christy Anderson yes trustee your soilu yes trustee weigen yes trustee Elsie yes okay we just all voted right I just want to let the student board members know I'll get back to you on how we have to shift and when well in theory it would be the Friday before we're not going to do it on Friday so I'm gonna just ask you to let me know if Thursday is a good
128day for us to have our prep meeting rather than we don't want to do it on a football night that's crazy thank you yeah for everybody so I that's my just off the cuff thing and let me know all right moving to 21b approved management confidential and supervisor compensation and benefits for 2022 2023 and 2023-2024 Miss Olson thank you likewise um with our tentative agreements for management we bring forward to you a settlement for 22 23 and 23 24. I've met with the leadership of nmaa who represents our administrators and our confidential employees the president being Carrie Adams and then also with our supervisors group met with Bobby Lombard and Tim Waller and discussed the the conditions and the um for helping welfare benefits and for salary and so we ask that the board approve
129with Equity the same as our other employment groups any discussion questions all right to make it because there was a question about it earlier and I think this is something I used to have a question about just to be clear that the approvals that we are doing are directly connected to what we are doing for all of our employees so it's not that we're picking and choosing or that we're giving only management raises or any of that conversation so could you explain that a little bit more because I I know that was confusing for people certainly so um settling with our management groups can happen either before or after our other Union groups in this particular case we settled with both csca and nmft and then met and conferred with management and it has been
130historical in the district that the what is given and granted to our other employee groups is given to management thank you thank you may I have a motion I move that we approve the management confidential as supervisors or compensation benefits for 2022 to 2023 and for the 2023 and 2024 school year of a second it's been moved by trustee matoy seconded by trustee weigandt roll call vote student board member Kate Cherry yes trustee Bartow yes trustee matoya yes trustee crane yes trustee Anderson yes trustee ursulu yes trustee weigen yes trustee yelsea yes okay we move on to 21c approve executive staff compensation and benefits for 2022 2023 and 2023 2024 Dr Smith the the sentiments in history have been articulated several times now I'll just say that this group similarly is treated like other units
131and they have contractual agreements with the district and those cost of living adjustments are in contract language and so we bring those forward tonight and Mr Trader has budgeted those items and we can't afford them can it's been a long night all right um since we can afford them um I'd like to request a motion to approve so moved second been moved by trustee matoy I did not see him second year it was Mrs Crane and Mrs Wigan simultaneously your choice okay let's give it to Mrs yes yes all right so it's been moved by trustee matoya seconded by trustee or soil roll call though student board member Kate Cherry yes trustee Bartow yes trustee matoya yes trustee crane yes trustee Anderson yes trustee your soilu yes trustee weigen yes trustee Elsie yes okay we
132move to 21d approved first amendment to employment agreement for superintendent um this is a relatively routine in nature but this is something that we have as part of this contract which pending a positive uh review we agreed to extend the employment agreement for superintendent Smith did anyone have any comments on that thank you all right may I have a motion I so moved second it's been moved by trustee crane seconded by trustee Anderson roll call vote student board member Kate Cherry yes trustee Bartow yes trustee matoya yes trustee crane yes trustee Anderson yes trustee or soyloo yes trustee weigen yes trustee yelsea yes right we moved to 21e approved the 2021-2022 unaudited actuals report Mr Trader thank you it's good to be with you tonight is this um alt what oh did it wrong um
133there we go sorry I just want to take a minute to gush on Pam Saunders for a moment she's worked in our accounting area for 21 years her work ethic is renowned in fact many times late at night I declare her the winner which is the last one in in the office so uh she'll be sorely messed in we'll probably have to increase the budget because it'll take two people to replace her so we're really happy for her so let's uh I'm sorry let's take a look at our unaudited actuals and I appreciate the the opportunity to uh come before you because it's so important that you have confidence in the numbers and the numbers have been prepared according to Ed code and governmental accounting board standards and that's a lot of work so there
134you approve them by law they conform to all of the laws and regulations and believe me there's a lot of them out there and so there's a lot of work that goes into these reports but if the key is is that you have confidence in the numbers that's so important that the board has confidence in these numbers we also at this time we update our 2223 uh beginning fund balances so you'll see you know as we end the year in in 2122 you know we're we're guessing of what the ending fund balance is going to be and therefore guessing what the beginning fund balance is going to be in the 22-23 year now we know and so we're going to update those and you'll see those changes so let's talk about this is this is
135a rear view mirror look at things so you're usually looking forward right when we talk about budget it's always a forward glance now let's get in the rear view mirror and take a look and see what happened and this should be the most boring uh presentation you ever have because if we did our job perfectly you would see a flat line on all of these charts and so therefore you can ask about why they're not so flat but let's talk about enrollment Trend enrollment trend is starting to flatten in fact this year our enrollment exceeded our projection okay and that tells us because our projections are based on uh birth rates and what's happening in terms of development and because they exceeded our our expectations our budget that tells us that something good is happening
136out there and so we're seeing enrollment flatten a lot and um that's a good that's a very good Trend and it exceeds our expectations so let's talk about restricted Revenue restricted revenue is is a little bit higher on the uh on the unrestricted side so remember we're kind of split up into restricted unrestricted and so when you look at here this chart here this is going to show you where two two lines are unrestricted restricted in total and then we're going to parse that out into June adoption and then you know we always come to you at the interims and then we have an estimated actual and then we have on audited at actual and so if we did our job perfectly again you would see all these bar charts would have a straight line
137Flat Line because we would be exactly according to what we said we were going to be a tune adoption um so let's just take a look and see where we're at so if you look here there we are at June adoption for unrestricted there we are restricted and we have a total and so on and so forth and so you can see here beginning at the first interim you see there's a slight change in the unrestricted but more change than the restricted side right and that pattern is going to continue as we move forward here on that and so you see there again on the unrestricted side we kind of back down again and restricted continues to go up and you see there the total so that where we end up with unaudited actual it's
138all the restricted side on on the revenue side and and that's because the state and the federal governments have um really supported us in helping our students with the tremendous needs that they have associated with covid-19 and in fact we've got 10 major programs for 65 million dollars that we're spending over a multi-year period and so we're we're trying to catch up with that and and you can see there that um restricted Revenue was we we missed that by about 75 percent a little wrinkle there um and this is just for all the accountants here in the in the room we booked uh in on behalf stirs payment uh for the very first time and that's for gasby 84. aren't you loving this is like watching paint dry so but the first time we did
139that and that's to recognize the uh the contribution the state makes towards uh calstrs uh retiree benefits on our books so let's look at expense expense was lower than expected and again this is kind of a trend that we see normally because we we always think we're going to spend every dollar and we don't quite make it there but you can see there June adoption there we are and coming here at first interim we're down a bit but look at the restricted side it's up right that that matches the revenue increase right we would expect to see that um and then you come here that second interim again up and then uh estimated actuals were coming down because we're realizing all right where are we at right we're taking a look there and then of
140course unauded actuals and you can see there that we're we're slightly down uh from um but very close in terms of overall because we're we're lower in the unrestricted side but higher on the restricted side so encroachment impacts we had very little encroachment in terms of if you look here it's there's a couple things going on yet transfers out and encroachment encroachment supports our restricted programs special ed Transportation the nutrition services and so you see with the this here transfers out June adoption and encroachment we increase a bit staying pretty stable and then when we come to estimated actual UC transfers out making a large tone there and then uh encroachment slightly down but then you see that continue unaudited actual and so the big change there is uh transfers out of the general fund
141so then any fund balance change we had a unrestricted balance change of 9 million increasing and our restricted ending fund balance increased by 16 and a half million and again that's for all of the restricted money that we're recognizing in in this year and so in its significant so you're seeing there a ending fund balance change but it's primarily driven by the restricted side so with that then um when we look at our reserves that those that black line is the ending fund balance and and this um red line is the percent of reserves for um economic uncertainties and cash flow needs and that happens to almost correlate we're almost there to 17 which is uh recommended by the the state's Finance Department of Finance indicating that 17 percent Reserve is appropriate and something that
142that districts should have and so we're almost there at 16.4 percent so with that then you'll see uh here's how expenditures were in the 21-22 year you can see there most of it is instruction and pupil services and then Plant Services now Plant Services is up we um you know the board has a made a commitment at measure a we made a commitment to the community that we would spend four percent on our routine restricted maintenance and we've had a hard time getting there and so there's a lot of work in getting to four percent and and this year I really have to hand it to our maintenance and operations and Facilities folks because they got to 4.7 percent and and that translates to millions of dollars it translates to fluorine to roofs to to
143keeping our schools open and in good repair and so I'm really pleased with with that so with that then I just want to uh recommend this to you that uh you approved this and and we're uh I'm open for any questions that you might have all right I see one question Christy Anderson somebody else wanted to go oh now they're coming oh um I thank you for this thank you for making it so clear um I was noticing um as you said there oh there's a big change from June of going from 4 million for restricted to 16 million now do you have any and I know that's federal and state money so there's a lot of strings attached do you have any recommendations on things that we should use that money for so we're
144not leaving it on the table so I'm really glad you brought that up because we don't want to leave a scent on the table and we have um charts that are tracking this the these dollars and we're putting I know um perhaps um uh ed services can chime in here about what we're doing in terms of Staffing because we're we are really Staffing um to help the students um do you want to comment on that a little bit uh as you know all of our sites have a an additional full-time reading support teacher literacy teacher or intervention teacher as well as additional hourly support um and so we have increased Staffing as well as although you know like every District in Orange county in the state um you know we are also Staffing higher in
145instructional AIDS but having a difficult time fulfilling those positions because of the work Workforce issues that we're having but as they come open and Human Resources doing a great job you know churning any new application out and getting those to the schools so those are the those are the main areas that were in Personnel increasing service um additionally in secondary schools it looks a little bit different because we don't necessarily have that one-on-one intervention specialist at every School site but we do work with our secondary school principals to look at target areas where they're trying to increase um student academic achievement and then we provide additional Staffing in those areas so it's very targeted and while we have resource right-sized our resources at the secondary level meaning we have at times reduced and adjusted Staffing
146to be more reflective of the number of students we have in each classroom we have work really closely with principals to Target that instruction and give them back what we call ftes or teachers but ensuring that they're working towards a targeted goal that has measurable outcomes in an area where we know students need that support we also increased the unrestricted allocation to the sites by 10 percent this year and I know we're looking at that and seeing um where where that what what that is doing and and we may need to adjust that further as the year goes by reporting is specifically at our school sites so on on the unrestricted side that's purely uh the principals are able to use that for a myriad of kinds of things in terms of even you know
147supplies uh PE kinds of things recess sort of things they can use things for training for staff and other supports in the classroom so it's pretty unrestricted and and self-directed by the by the principal and are you saying that number go up because I think it was less than 10 previously right so if it's at 10 and it's we're still possibly needing more what are you what are you seeing our sites reporting back to you so I think what the so we increased the per student rate by 10 this year but what's happened is we we have benchmarked enrollment kind of like the state did the state said hey you know what we know that covid is having a dramatic impact on your enrollment and so we're going to keep your enrollment the same and
148that's what we did with our sites but this is the first year where we adjusted enrollment enrollment for for the the decrease that has happened and so the sites are looking at this and they're saying oh my goodness my budget as even though the per student rate has has gone up the total amount has gone down and so we're watching that really carefully and working with ed services to make sure that that the sites um have the the appropriate resources to do what they need to do great thank you um and as you mentioned about the um routine maintenance I think I'm always one that I would love to you know help our elementary mprs and do some of those routine maintenance items that seemed to have possibly been on pause for several years um
149so I just wanted to thank Lance for really prioritizing that it looks like there's 29 million dollars of unrestricted funds for that to keep up with their buildings from night the 1960s so I really appreciate that investment I think we're seeing it at a lot of our schools um I'm hearing from a lot of people in the neighborhood like great the schools got painted near me so thank you thank you for adding in the 8 million dollars for fun 17. I'm really excited for us to continue to discuss possibly using that and one idea that comes to mind is science camp because I think that's something that could help every school in the district and so it wouldn't just be one side of town or the other that is all I am done speaking because
150I know someone else is eager Mr Trader did you um as you mentioned many a big part of these funds are covet related so they're not they're finite and so are we making sure that our staff knows when we give them this extra help in the classrooms and all this that's not necessarily going to be sustainable right or are we committed to maintaining certain programs that are working or so yes there will be in the year 2526 there will be some changes but we're very thoughtful about it and the board has six I say the board has sufficient reserves to do that thoughtfully and so we can take our time in assessing what's working what's not and adjusting at that time okay and then my uh I do have a question that has to do
151with the districts you mentioned you mentioned that the state recommends a 17 reserve for best practice and we are almost there I I am aware that some districts around the the not well the state um are bankrupt and things so how how do we rate as far as um stability when it compared to other districts in our state I would think we're in that top tier when it comes to Reserves um you know I I think we're solid I wouldn't I wouldn't consider us uh uh you know heads and shoulders above other districts but we we're in a good place in terms of being able to ensure stability yes for our students and and we know that times are candidly times are good now but they aren't going to be good going forward in a
152couple years we're going to see some slowing and so the board has reserves and that part of that 8 million in fund 17 can be used to thoughtfully um take make changes as its funding goes away thank you Jeff did you want to clarify to the the state recommendation for Community funded districts and why that recommendation is as high as it is because most districts in the state are not Community funded and so they don't have that same threshold but maybe a little bit more about why so we're clear thank you so being basic Aid we have a cash Drive period between July and December and it's significant we get very little cash between July and December and if we don't have enough cash to um to survive that we have to use a credit
153card and and that credit card means we have to go to the to the Wall Street folks the money changers and let me tell you it's expensive we have to hire attorneys we have to hire uh financial advisors um Underwriters it's it's expensive and something that if uh we don't have to do we sure would like to avoid doing that I um I was I was looking um previously I know I had spoken with you about transportation and I know for the secondary Transportation um is a little bit different than it is for elementary um and there's not there's um it's kind of built into the secondary budgets um and one of the things as I was at back to school night that was mentioned to me from a few teachers um was the need
154and desire to do more field trips I know at Ray they do one field trip a year and I think there's a lot of projects and things that we can maybe catch up on for children that did not have a lot of exposure during Cova times um so I was just wondering um is that something we could probably use for one-time funds and how would we go about doing that for elementary that's a great question we'll take a look at that okay thank you thank you and just just to be clear Jeff was prepared tonight to go over the unaudered actuals I know there's got to be you know District processes for budget development and we're going to have a a conversation pretty soon uh next month about facilities in fact and some use for
155those funds and as we look at budget development we'll bring those ideas back to you Based on data and need and so on and so forth but mostly tonight Jeff was just trying to get the underwater actuals in in front of everybody thanks trustee matony I would like to make a motion to approve the 2021-2022 unaudited actuals second okay it's been moved by trustee matoya seconded by trustee yelsey they have a roll call vote student board member Kate Cherry yes trustee Bartow yes trustee Montoya yes trustee crane yes trustee Anderson yes trustee or soyluz yes trustee weigand yes trustee yelsea yes okay 21f approve addition to high school course of study Dr Torres sorry I got thinking about field trips for a second I got all excited I was like what are we doing this
156is exciting we do have one additional course of study so one of the things that happens as we um continue to build out our Pathways at the high school in order for us to be able to really provide students that College and Career Readiness more than one course is the goal and so we're so excited to announce that we're adding an additional class of culinary arts additional meaning we're having another level of culinary arts over right now at Newport Harbor High School so that's what you have in front of you tonight for your approval thank you any questions it really isn't really a question when I was reading this I was pleased to unders to note that a lot of the focus in this particular course is on the artistic presentation of food of food
157and all I could think of was oh wow our kids are learning how to make fancy tiny little dishes that cost a whole bunch of money so what a great career for them to have all that pretty food and I just thought it was a neat thing to do good for us our own Netflix special yep that's cool you have a motion still moved second it's been moved by trustee crane second by trustee weigand roll call vote student board member Kate Cherry yes trustee Bartow yes trustee matoya yes trustee crane yes trustee Anderson yes just do your solute yes Christy weigen yes trustee yelsea yes okay um we have some adoptions to board policy so 21g first reading and adoption two modifications to board policy um Dr Torres or Dr Jacob okay I'll take the
158first one so we have modification to board policy for independent study has been under review for the past two years due to covid and current legislation that sunsetted on June 30th and so the changes that you have in front of you are a result of that legislation having Sunset it and us moving forward anyone have any questions on these did the board policy Review Committee want to make a comment okay these are really long and complex I'm glad we did them ahead of time right um and then Dr Jacob we have board policy one three one two point three uniform complaint procedures this is actually a joint policy coming forward from um this side of the um from a human resources and student services and um essentially um uniform complaints are primarily around students and
159it's appropriate for student services to be the person who the entity that investigates those and so we're you know making some of those changes and then there was some recommended language to really kind of bullet out instead of having the information in long paragraphs about the different types of uniform complaints that are around so we would ask for your approval in approving the changes to this board policy any additional dressy cream just really quick did the policy team look it over and everything so all's good right yeah the policy team met and well do you would the policy team like to comment on what the process for policy reviews so we're confident excellent thank you so is this just to prove that this is this is to First approve the first reading and adoption we
160can break it up into first reading and then do adoption in the future if you wish we can also oh gosh there's language move to wave the second reading right but adopt it now we've done that we've done that in the past so that's what the agenda item is currently set up is to First reading and adoption okay right but that's because that's what we legally have to do but we can move to wave the first second reading and move to adopt yeah if there's some confusion in the audience because there certainly isn't up here um we we all get it uh but some districts the board doesn't weigh in until it comes here so the first reading is the first time any trustee has looked at this but in this District it's been the
161practice to get a group of the board together to do a first read for the board and bring this for the board's consideration to weigh gave the first reading accepted as a second reading and adopt if it's their desire to do so oh so we're not here until midnight yes because if we had all seven of us we had all seven of us doing what the three of us did well we are very grateful all right so um if there are no further comments may I have a motion so I make a motion we approve the first reading and adopt the modifications to the board policy next second second it's been moved by trustee CLC adopted by trust or Sorry seconded by trustee or soilu a roll call the student board member Kate Cherry yes
162yes trustee Bartow yes trustee matoya yes trustee crane yes trustee Anderson yes trustee or soyloo yes trustee wagon yes trustee yelsea yes okay so now we move on to 21 H Dr Jacob great thank you for the opportunity to take a few moments to pull the item and get the information for you so this is a renewal of a contract that we have with care Solace and as you recall care Solace is a a wonderful partner that we've had in the district for a couple of years and it allows students families or staff to reach out and be connected with an appropriate um you know entity to help them with their mental health or social emotional needs and issues the first year that we had care Solace was on a part-time basis we brought them
163in mid-year and so that contract was was definitely less our last contract compared to this year this contract is ten thousand dollars more it's part of the cost of of doing business um in talking with Sarah Coley we are going to read reach out to them to ensure what it's a per student amount as well as to make sure they're using kind of our latest student numbers for you know our Ada to be able to do that but the the actual usage of care Solace has grown and it's the feedback that we've gotten from the data from the company reviewed through our student services department is that it's a it's it continues to be a a worthy um partner for the district and we would ask for your consideration in approving it okay they have
164a motion I mean I move that we approve our mou with carousalis as stated may I have a second second okay it's been moved by uh any additional questions yeah one of the reasons that I I initially brought this up when we first got this contract I'm going to continue to ask about it especially now since it's gone up so much is because it is very similar to the free County 2-1-1 um and one of my concerns is we haven't promoted that with parents so we don't really know what the numbers would be versus what we're paying for a carousalis and I understand that they have a good reputation but I I'm really concerned about the the per pupil amount how much we are actually getting charged and how much we're using their services it
165does look like this is a one-year contract so I'm going to approve it but I I just I would like to see more regular updates on the numbers because I I ask at least twice a year and I haven't seen them in a while so I just would like to see and make sure that it is cost effective and it is doing the services that we wanted to thank you thank you with that may I get a roll call vote oh sorry trusted your soil no and just one item similar to what trustee Anderson is saying um it would be great to know the numbers from carouselis of actual connected referrals like that went all the way through because what I was hearing from families was that they were getting referred to services that had
166waiting lists that weren't taking new patients that weren't available so giving them those phone numbers to then call to then never get serviced um is is kind of tricky so I'd love to see like fully connected numbers of who actually saw a psychiatrist therapist XYZ from so if if um and we can also ask them but when you look at the usage data and so we'll clarify with them that when it talks about total appointments that's confirmed appointments with a provider so we can follow up to determine you know how long it took families to get in or is there you know a one and done or was there Continued Care so we can refine our data that we're asking them foreign documentation may I get a roll call vote student board member Kate Cherry
167yes trustee Bartow yes trustee matoya yes trustee crane yes trustee Anderson yes trustee or soyluz yes trustee weigen yes trustee yelsea yes great uh Now we move to 22 resolution adoption calendar uh we moved to 22A adopt resolution zero five zero nine twenty two conflict of interest code 2022 by annual biennial review Dr Smith yeah that's the requirement like it says biennial um to make sure that the codes and the people associated with the codes are accurate the codes haven't changed and the list is accurate I move that we adopt resolution 050922 conflict of interest code 2022 biennial review we have a second second it's been moved by trustee matoya seconded by trustee weikand real call vote Tristy Bartow yes trustee matoya yes trustee crane yes trustee Anderson yes trustee your soilu yes trustee wagon
168yes trustee Elsie yes moving on to item 22b adopt resolution zero six zero nine for me two again limit for 2021-22 an estimated Gan limit for 2022 2023 Mr Trader with the closure of the 2122 books is now apparent that the district's Appropriations limit from local sources do not exceed the can limit for both 2122 and 2223 it's recommended that you adopt this resolution do I have any questions may have a motion so moved may have a second it's been moved by trustee crane seconded by trustee Anderson Roll Call vote Christy Bartow yes trustee Montoya yes trustee crane yes trustee Anderson yes trustee or soilu yes trustee weigen yes trustee Elsie yes okay right I thought we moved to 23 informal reports foreign yeah I'm going to start where I always do with our students
169I had a chance to visit a lot of the sites in the in the first several weeks of school the excitement uh is again it is so motivating students look happy they're smiling they're better adjusted than they've been but also walking through classrooms seeing the impact of some of the training we've done thinking maps and things like that being implemented day one another TK classrooms spent some time in those and seeing how we got those ready Salud it's worth noting that this is one of those programs for which we don't get funding the state took one small portion of the districts in California and said we're gonna have an unfunded mandate for you the first time in Generations we've had a new grade level without funding so it's beholden upon the district to cover this
170and the board has and these class rooms are cool and the students are learning and if you get a chance and you let me know you're heading by we'll we'll show you some classrooms with the TKS they are inspiring you know there are quite a few funding issues like that by the way today we saw the summer school and expanded learning you'll remember that the funding is only for tk6 for Title One schools so anything we do beyond that and everything we do at the secondary level is behold upon the district to fund those things so really really great work being done with some of these funds that Jeff has talked about today I want to thank Harbor Council and all the work that they do supporting our schools and our students the council members
171at the first meeting I attended were just over the moon with excitement for the year and they commented on the positivity they're seeing at the school sites and and how happy they are to be back so um thank you for all the work that they do speaking of these partners and getting around I did get to go buy the Wilson Learning Center Olga had a meeting it was great I got to to work on my Spanish again I'll just say this um if Olga gives you a script and says come prepared to address this she may throw you a curveball and say now we're going to do q a instead so just just be ready to do a little q a but it was great because parents are talking about you know how do they
172help their students know about College funding right these are families saying we want our kids to go to college and how do we get more funding how do we learn about that how do we more easily enroll our students in your schools if we have family members or folks coming to the district how do we help them enroll and one of the reasons we moved the enrollment center back to the school sites because it's closer to them so we're able to share that and then a variety of other things also is able to meet with the Anderson Deans I mentioned earlier same kinds of stuff how can we help how can we work together met with trellis and also the Costa Mesa leadership group where they had similar conversations how can we help you better
173serve your students I say there's reason for absolute optimism and beyond that even confidence in this District because we have Community allies like that to support staff I'm going to keep bragging our labor leaders here are special the relationships we have in this District are special this doesn't happen everywhere and it never happens by accident the ability to come together and and do the the hard work that we do is because people are committed to the relationship and doing the work for students and this this is really really what it should look like across the state we'll be participating in the California Labor Management initiative so we can continue to be intentional about growing that relationship um and we'll report back on that and Pam you uh you're just special you really are and so
174I've done this a long time I know a lot of Labor leaders your your tops so thank you for what you've done there by the way I don't know if he's still translating is Xavier still translating oh man he bailed like 15 minutes too soon because he was going to translate this if I could pronounce it correctly I'm struggling tonight with cans and cans um but Javier zamarano got the award the multilingual Award of Distinction for our County how cool is that right and then and then one one more bit of good news since we're on a roll tonight um You probably saw that the governor announced that the testing requirement for unverified employees is no longer a requirement as of the 17th so after the 17th we'll no longer do that and that includes
175our volunteers so we've let our employees and our volunteers know that's going away and we can focus our efforts in other areas foreign [Applause] we have our board member reports and I'm going to go first tonight because I I have a little bit longer um I was very pleased to be able to go to many back to school um first days of school back to school nights and um it was really amazing to see students focused and one thing I saw both in summer school and in my own students writing and in the classrooms is the focus on on writing and robust writing and the level of focus on full paragraphs from an early age and complex ideas and comparing and contrasting is something that we've always talked about and um I am really seeing
176an action these past few weeks so that was really inspiring to see but um the other thing I wanted to share is I was trying to think of words of why I am so um why I believe so much in public schools and why I believe so much in this district and sometimes the best words come before us and it's important to admit when people have written better words maybe than what we could have said but um I was over there yesterday morning thinking about what I was going to say at this board meeting and notice there's a little plaque if you get a chance to read it's on the wall it's clear it's really small most people have probably never seen it but I was I'm getting some coffee and while I was waiting
177for my cup to fill up I noticed it and the words caught me and I'm going to read it's long so I'm not going to read the whole thing but I invite you to come and take a look at this plaque because I think um it's you know what a lot of our community believes about our schools and again what has been there for a long time because a lot of folks have believed it for a long time and I think it's part of why our community is so special so um we have this we believe our first responsibility is to provide a quality educational program that meets the needs of all students in this District we believe that we teach the whole child we expect academic achievement personal responsibility honesty cultural sensitivity and respect
178for people property and the environment we believe that all children can learn the best in a safe clean caring aesthetically pleasing environment we believe that when we come together as one Community we are enriched by our cultural diversity we believe that people are a most important resource and should be treated with respect and dignity we believe that with we need parents as partners with the school and District in sharing ideas and giving input to Major decisions affecting their children's education we believe that we have the responsibility to demonstrate the effective and wise use of money and resources we believe that we serve our students and our community best when we work together as a team so something that I've been in this room a long time and have never noticed and invite you if you're
179ever getting coffee in that corner to read it yourself or just come up and take a look thank you um I didn't know we were going that way which started with me last time so we could start with you um it it was a great opening to school I think we all went to classes during the first week we went to PTA meetings Foundation meetings back to school nights um everybody is really excited this year the kids are really excited I think all of of our student board members who are here can say that students in their schools are happy to be back and learning full-time so um that's fabulous one thing I just wanted to make everyone aware of because hopefully the word will get out more in the month of October the CDM
180Foundation is having their 60th anniversary gala on October 22nd it is a year-long planning process for this they are trying trying to raise enough money to have an endowment so they won't have to keep asking parents for money it's an all-day celebration at the schools they're going to have they're inviting everybody who's ever ever had anything to do with the school including former employees parents students a lot of people are flying in for this specifically um they will have they will have tours of the school and I've heard some retired teachers say they're so excited because they've never seen the Middle School Enclave they've never seen the theater they've never seen our new Athletic Facility so that will be great and at two o'clock in the afternoon there will be a dedication of the bill
181Sumner track which we all approved up here but there will be a specific ceremony for that and additionally there will be a nighttime event at the dunes with three bands all kinds of food everything going on from what I've heard so even if you didn't attend CDM if you have anything to do with our community everyone is invited and please look out for the announcements on that um and then I just want to make an observation just sitting here and I know we don't respond to people making public comments but I I was really pleased actually that we had such a robust very group of people presenting tonight it was it was interesting I didn't know what anybody would be talking about um but then some people started getting up and saying that they're pretty
182sure the board had a uh part in crafting some of these messages that we're presenting presenting to us presented to us I know I didn't personally and I doubt anybody on the board knew what was being said by any of these people so I take offense to that and it's not the first time work we've been accused of things that don't actually happen and I'm looking out in the room and I'm seeing some of the people who made public comments but they're not the people who were involved in these public comments unfortunately those people make their comments and leave at every board meeting so they never have an opportunity to hear all the wonderful things we're doing or give any feedback and additionally I guess I'm just at the point where I'm getting tired in
183general of people coming up here and accusing us or stating lies misrepresented this representing what we say or falsehoods about anything going on and I'll give just a couple of examples this thing with the gingerbread man that keeps getting brought up at all our meetings we don't use a gingerbread man book in our curriculum in any of our schools but because people get up here and state that there are so there are people in the community that think that's what we do so it's really unfortunate I wish there was a way that we could stop the spread of these lies but we can because people have the opportunity to get up and we give them that opportunity not every District gives people the opportunity to stand up here for three minutes and state whatever they
184want to State many school districts now because of what's happening in their school board rooms go into closed session and they hold their meetings in private because they can because we're doing the public we're doing our business in a public forum but it is our business so we could go into a closed session we opt not to do that it's just very frustrating that they take so many of our statements out of context and I hope that the community is starting to realize what is going on in this situation all right thank you for those comments I want to say I was yes back to school has been great um yeah I know that from personal experience it's been inspiring to see our kids at school has been aspiring to see our teachers I know
185I've talked to a bunch of admins that have said that they've never been so excited about being you know start of a school year and they felt very excited and refreshed for this this year because of some of the training that we did do before the the school year started with our admins and then the PD with our teachers so thank you superintendent Smith for organizing those and and the assistant superintendents as well I attended the community liaison meeting with Newport Beach and we had that yesterday and uh everyone was an attendance and city manager police public works department and we talked about uh you know a lot of things that are going on in the community right now um we talked about e-bikes and obviously with the start of the school year we're seeing
186a lot more e-bikes on the streets and we talked to the police department about you know enforcement and they will start enforcing the e-bike regulations and ticketing um starting in the next week or so one thing that the the police did say is that you know at Ensign this year to be able to bring your e-bike on campus you had to take a test a class on on bike safety road safety and then get a sticker that you had to put on your um there we go it's right there put on your bike and um and then you can bring your bike on campus and lock it in the bike racks there so you know education is one piece but um now we're moving into enforcement so that's that's exciting and you know we're we
187aimed not to be mean and they'd aim not to be mean by any stretch of the mind but to just keep our students safe and that's what we're here for is heaping our our students safe on campus and to and from campus they also talked about how they are going to start working on a complete streets master plan so some of our our our streets might look a little bit different maybe there's some wider sidewalks or maybe there's some specific bike lanes that might be wider so we're taking that into account and as we work with the city we they can talk to us about the traffic flows and we can get input from the community and from our schools to make sure that we really do have um safe safe roadways to and from
188schools so it was all in all it was a great meeting it's a great always to to have us involved with the police and with the city so to make sure that you know we're we're ticked and tied with all the programs and services that we offer great yes I think um echoing what uh trustee weigan said I think you know September is like the happiest month of the year for parents the kids are back at school calm is restored in the Kingdom but we can get back to work um so I just had a couple comments um just to let everyone know we have actually a few Ukrainian Refugee families that are now over at Adams and it's been really a pleasure helping them get settled and I want to thank Sarah's team for
189getting the kids backpacks and notebooks and kind of getting them um more peacefully settled in um than where they were about a month ago so I really appreciate the Sarah's team helping out with that and making sure the kiddos get settled and the staff at Adams has been really great about that um and I just want to follow up on what one of the the public speakers said um Miss um Ruth kubiacci and then she presented us with this um I think it's a screenshot from a from an Instagram page so we will tear down to rebuild that sort of divisive language that she was alluding to because it is just really divisive and I I although I admire parents that want to get engaged I know Ruth was engaged in the human relations task
190force her and I were in a couple of the committee meetings together and I know we have very diff different world view but it was always fun to be in the Committees and hear other people's opinions and respectfully you know discuss and learn about tolerance for diverse thought and that's kind of the way I know most of us here want to roll and want to engage with folks but um some of what's out there you know I do admire the the parents that want to run for elected office too I was one of those parents that wanted to run for elected office you know you go out there you do it the right way you register with the FEC you get your ID number you get a Campaign Committee set up and that's kind of
191how you run the legit campaign and it just seems like that's not necessarily what's happening all the time it's more sort of this agitational vocal voice out there so I just wanted to also clear up a few things because I know folks come here and tell us that this is our job actually many of us have other real full-time jobs this is our voluntary position which if you do the math Jeff Trader probably knows we make about five bucks an hour maybe on a good day doing it on a good day but um I spent my weekend and then much of today um reviewing all that uh the the controversial health science book all like 700 pages of it so I can tell you that I've seen it and that the state sorry um trustee
192weigan and I have been invite infested here but ants ants have been crawling on us much of the night and there's one right here in my Mr Big take note but the Health Sciences book it is it is really in compliance with the state guidelines the state gives us guidelines and says hey you must teach about gender identity and sexual orientation and that's what the book does there's a table in it about the 10 Common sexual orientations it's not indoctrination it's not grooming anybody it's a health science book with some definitions of scientific terms so I I have a shot of the uh I took a picture of the table I'm gonna put it on my Instagram so everyone can see it it's it's really not rocket science or or Earth shattering but I think
193the folks that are really uncomfortable by this health science book it scares me a little bit because what's the next thing you know communism makes me uncomfortable um totalitarianism makes me uncomfortable should we not learn about them um so because something makes you uncomfortable doesn't mean that folks can't learn about it so I just want to remind everybody that although folks have been very vocal at this meeting coming up and saying their opinion on what they think of sex ed curriculum there's been a lot of other parents that have been in texting me emailing and saying that they want more age-appropriate sex ed at a younger grade teaching kids about menstruation in seventh grade to our CDM students point is too late right it's too late to be learning about things he was saying 12th
194grade was too late but 7th grade is too late when menstruation can start in fifth or sixth grade for girls so we are also hearing from a lot of other parents on the on the side of increasing the age-appropriate sex ed so I just want everyone to be aware of that as well and I just don't want to miss the point of one of the parents that was here about AB 452 the gun safety that is something that I hope I know Steph has been having to spend a lot of time on sex ed and CRT and various things but I hope that we can look into AB 452 and find out what she's talking about regarding gun safety and if other districts are already submitting those kind of letters it would be great so
195so thank you all right um I also was able to attend um all over the back to school nights um for my five schools which is tricky because they were very closely linked together thankfully Ray had there the night before but I got to spend um a bit of time in each of the schools thankfully talking to a lot of the PTA leaders um and that leads me to I'm really excited that we are partnering with the parents a bit more and doing walk to school and really getting kind of that sustained commitment I think it's really difficult for our principals to add one more thing to their plate so to work with the ptas is really wonderful and I just wanted to add a couple of schools because we're actually doing walk to school
196day on October 5th and on October 12th because our city police officers and people that are working with that can't do every school in one day and so on the for people who may want to attend October 5th is College Park and these are the Costa Mesa specific so I know um Vicki has a few that were in Newport College Park Victoria Sonora Kaiser Whittier Ray and Pomona Ray and Pomona are doing theirs together and then October 12 is killybrook paularino Wilson Adams and California Elementary and there was lots of discussion at the act of transportation meeting for Costa Mesa about including Ensign because a lot of students live in Costa Mesa as well even though school is in Newport so I would love for us I know we've been doing our respective meetings and
197cities but I think it would be great at some point soon to get together and have those conversations particularly about a safe way to school to Ensign um and I was just wondering speaking of Javier who is amazing is would it be possible to have our translator stay to the end of the meeting I I think it might be time limited currently um but I just think like there's parents that may need translation through the whole meeting um and I've noticed I think it's time bound and um I'm I want to also report back that parents are very excited about the change in time for the after school programs everyone is really excited including the staff at our on our campuses about all that we're offering for expanded learning opportunities and the ability to get
198kids out before 6 PM so thank you for doing that um and then lastly I had lots of questions about our budget because um formally I wasn't allowed to be part of budget development or any of those conversations so this will be the first time um and I think Jeff for all of the times he answers all of my questions so thank you all right well first um I do like the the news that came from Sacramento I was superintendent thank you for sharing that with us uh not only will there be some happy people out there but um I think we also save money right because we're not using the services anymore to get all the tests tested and all that so it's a win-win all around um I did want to uh you
199also had mentioned them piggyback piggybacking to a superintendent you mentioned allies Community allies and how important they are and I've mentioned that always as a theme of Newport Mesa aligning itself with amazing non-profits and such um so I wanted to do a special thank you to um the Patrick purpose foundation and and the Exchange Club of Newport Beach who uh just they just dedicated a bench a buddy bench at Whittier and the buddyman bench basically is a be inclusive bench so whenever the bench is when you see someone sitting on that bench by themselves then you go sit with them and it's the message is basically be inclusive and and be a buddy so thank you and um also wanted to thank the harbor Council PTA for creating an ad hoc committee for bike safety
200and uh the uh it's it's going to be an amazing collaboration we're so so happy that you are being proactive uh in regards to uh the safety of our kids so thank you um there will be on that on that note there will be a Community Alliance bike safety meeting on Thursday September 29th at 6 pm at Sanborn and thank you Sarah Coley and team for coordinating um the location and also being there and representing the district in a for um on a very important topic and there's an ant um lastly the Newport Mesa School Foundation is very busy we attended a meeting last week and they're very busy planning the state of our school event which is going to be on October 11th 7 A.M and being hosted by Newport Harbor High School thank
201you go Sailors and um it is open for everyone and again it is the event of the year so please make sure you get your tickets thank you which are 33 dollars because we have 33 schools which I think is kind of cool um trustee or soilu and why Gand and I attend monthly um Costa Mesa united youth sports meetings and it's wonderful because they discuss our cooperation and collaboration with all of the organizations including our district on using fields in Costa Mesa because sadly sometime way back well before all of us planning for Parks wasn't part of the key so we get to share our grounds with them but the city has worked on Jordan park by Kaiser and they now have pickleball courts which is apparently the hot topic for all people playing
202so in Costa Mesa we now have pickleball courts and the Jack Hammond field project upgrade has been completed so that shouldn't affect any of our AYSO tournaments coming up in the future the Chargers have effectively left which gives us two beautiful fields we have one more year of chargers using our fields to do their practices before their own facility is built up in Inglewood which has been very nice to have them visiting us um and also for those of you that are concerned about the Fields over at T Winkle they have been the most used fields for baseball that with Costa Mesa High School and we're re-irrigating the fields in at T Winkle and of course we have problems with getting parts to come in to finish doing it so we get started doing something
203then we have transportation and parts issues and it's through no fault of anyone so as soon as everything comes in we'll get them all done um everybody's talked about everything else I don't go to schools on the first week or two of school because I was a school principal and a teacher and I really appreciated not having to entertain a board member who's smiling as wonderful as they were so I'm going I'm doing my visits now and it's I'm happy to report thinking maps are still being used in the classrooms because they had their training right before so it's still going on I still have a few schools to attend and Costa mesa's back to school night is tomorrow night so I will be dropping in on them because and honestly it's for parents so
204I don't stick around because they don't care that I'm there it's for them to find out what their kids are going to be learning every year and we know that so that's good um could we reiterate Javier's wonderful award at the beginning of our next board meeting at some point when he's there when he's here that's all I would like us to do that and last but not least we have these beautiful flowers that are provided that we buy the some board members buy and these are prepared by our step program they have a flower cart they learn these are are transitioning students who are older than high school but under 22 and they learn how to do flower arranging anyone in the district can get them or order them for the year they come
205out at certain times I don't know what they put in the water but these things last easily two weeks long before they even start to hint that there's something going wrong so it's it's just a nice shout out to the program that Career and Technical education doesn't stop at High School so and it's always been a good week and I heard consistently from everybody that I've talked to what a great start of the school year it was thank you Pam Saunders thank you for your service yes thank you all right with that I will call the meeting to adjourn at 902 pm thank you student board members for sticking it out