001okay we will begin our meeting at 3 p.m roll call trustee bartow here justine latoya here misty crane here trustee anderson trusteer solo here trustee wigan here trustee elsie here dr smith here okay move to the adoption of the agenda may have a motion move adoption second moved by trustee gelsie seconded by trustee mattoya rule call vote trustee bartow yes trustee montoya yes trustee crane yes trustee yes yeah trustee here sorry lou yes trustee weigand yes christie elsie yes wait i a point of clarification if i if i if i would like to make an um an edit on the minutes may i do so now or we're not on the minute we're not on the menu oh sorry we're on the agenda sorry about that apologies the minutes will be after and open thank
002you um okay uh move to community input on closed session items do we have any community inputs no we do not thank you we will now move to closed session the items are a conference with legal counsel existing litigation case number l a c e 6414-e b conference with legal counsel existing litigation case number g0610 c conference with labor negotiator b i'm sorry d public employee discipline dismissal release employment e public employee discipline dismissal release f public employee discipline dismissal release employment number two zero two two zero two hr g confidential student matter one case h student discipline one case okay we move to closed session at 3 02 pm i'd like to call the meeting to order at 6 pm in closed session by a vote of 7-0 the board took action to terminate
003the contract of employee number 202203 we'll now move on to uh pledge of allegiance one of our student board member lee thank you ready begin i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all all right we move on to adoption of the minutes may i have a motion to adopt the minutes move adoption second it was moved by trustee elsie and seconded by trustee anderson roll call vote trustee bartow yes trustee montoya yes trustee crane yes trustee anderson yes trustee or solo yes trustee white gand yes trustee elsie yes and now we moved on to our recognition of fall athletic sports champions which is exciting yes we've got dr bauermeister that's going to
004come up and bring up the coaches and principal and the team most importantly president bartow members of the board dr smith cabinet and distinguished guests it's with great pleasure that i present to you another cif champion from the fall season tonight we'll be recognizing the newport harbor high school football team championship seasons are forged in different ways some teams dominate from day one and walk through the competition for the sailors theirs was a story this year of perseverance of staying the course and believing in one another and being rewarded for that faith by a magical run to a cif division six championship i'd like this time i'd like to call up newport harbor principal sean bolton to introduce his coach and the champs dr bolt thank you dr bauermeister president bartow members of the board
005dr smith executive cabinet distinguished guest thank you for recognizing this football team 49th cif title we've been celebrating a lot of cif titles at newport harbor fortunately it's the fourth cif title in school history four years ago we had the impossible task of filling in and replacing a legend jeff brinkley was there for 32 years won three championships and four years ago we made we made a decision to bring in someone new to rebuild the program and to make it in their own image and and coach lofthouse really really did that you'll see tonight that the beautiful diversity at our school is woven within the fabric of this team and they're emblematic of who we are as a school as a community and as an educational group of scholars and instructors and so forth but
006i think the the run was magical like girls basketball they caught lightning in a bottle and the one variable or the one takeaway from all of this or the close games that we had in in the playoffs and the first round the second round they weren't close games i like those games i like winning by 30 points with five minutes left knowing that you've got a nice ride home or you're at home and you're thinking about dinner what i'm gonna watch on netflix that sort of stuff but it's those nail biters and dr smith and dr haley principal costa mesa high school played football they coach football so they know football and our team was down in the semifinal and i got a text from dr smith of course you know everyone wants to know
007the score how much time is left who's got the ball and both dr haley and dr smith were like we got him right where we want him i think we were down at by 14 at that point we came back in the semi-final game won 20-19 in the final we were down 21 points and we wound up winning 42-35 and at the beginning of the fourth quarter dr smith dr haley we got him right where we want him we're gonna win this game and sure enough we did and after the game you know i talked to coach lofthouse and we're like we're a fourth quarter team i'm a golfer i don't understand football i love football but i don't like those games they age you a bit but i'd like to introduce coach lofthouse his
008coaching staff incredible run again for cif title and school history for football 49th title in school history overall so congratulations [Applause] uh first i'd like to start off and thank the school board the superintendent mr smith and the cabinet members all here and thank you from the bottom of our hearts for allowing us to be a part of today's festivities it's an exciting day for all the players all the coaches and our program and our parents as a whole uh if there's one thing i think that really sums up this season and and what has really just encompassed you know basically two seasons in a year is and about this football team is their ability to fight adversity uh and and i think that's one thing you guys could really you know be very proud
009of these kids they've been through a lot without a doubt for the last couple years with everything that's gone on and you know when when the season seemed to be at its most bleak uh we got an opportunity to get to the playoffs we won the first one then they won the second one then they got the third one and then all of a sudden they come back from perhaps one of the worst comebacks worst holes you could put yourself in as a football team and they never they never flinched they didn't waver they trusted each other as a team they've always called themselves break it down on a family and that's what it was it was a family effort and they they gave their best effort and just fell one game short in a
010state title run and so it their ability to be a gritty team to to see that the hard work pays off and and fighting for those little inches they add up and they matter and to find success i think you guys should be really proud of what they accomplished because it wasn't easy for sure and so thank you again for having us here today thank you [Applause] so i'm going to call the players out one by one uh first one is uh wyatt atkins freshman oh sorry yeah okay sorry all right uh next we have uh sebastian or sorry matthew beekman [Applause] then sorry sebastian i'm gonna see sebastian ayala [Applause] aiden burt now [Applause] jagger bowling camp [Applause] george bonus [Applause] senior brodie bradfield [Applause] jackson brennan [Applause] jack sarita [Applause] johnny checks [Applause]
011carson diablo [Applause] cameron denoon [Applause] hayden farley [Applause] daniel flores [Applause] david flores [Applause] jeremy francisco aust leonard francisco aust [Applause] eric fulsing damien gallegos [Applause] carter gomez [Applause] aj gutron moore senior [Applause] gabriel hendricks [Applause] everett hinninger [Applause] cash in hinjum [Applause] nico carbra [Applause] lynnell harkman [Applause] mckay ketchum [Applause] eamon mccola [Applause] brandon medina [Applause] tanner muir [Applause] javier padilla [Applause] john pena [Applause] hudson perez [Applause] nathan peters [Applause] george ramirez [Applause] omar rafa rafate [Applause] trey riggets [Applause] daniel remson [Applause] john richardson [Applause] makai sung yao richard sanchez [Applause] jackson young grayson simon [Applause] and then zachary zamora senior [Applause] there are a number of unfortunately other players who wish they could be here they did have on some time commitments with track meets and things of that nature we are a
012growing program which is exciting the first day i came to harbor almost four seasons ago we had 40 kids in our program and going into next season we're expecting 110 kids on our jv varsity program and we'll hopefully with another good size of we're expecting about 50 to 60 more freshmen to join our program so it's exciting to see the numbers grow there's a lot of excitement and we're very blessed to be a part of newport harbor and newport mason unified school district thank you okay how to take [Applause] congratulations uh just very quickly coach lofthouse would like to introduce the coaches as well that are here tonight some of them again can't be here because they're coaching other sports and just a final shout out to the district and everyone involved in the program
013because as you know football is a community of cheerleaders marching band football and we go on the road i mean it's like a caravan out there so thank you from transportation all the way across to the school board for all the support jv head coach frank albers quarterback coach and our new jv head coach uh ray diablo receivers coach andre velasquez [Applause] d-line coach mark denoon [Applause] all right uh if i'd like to extend an invitation i know our parents are eager to know uh but if any of the board members or cabinet members would like to join us monday at 5 p.m we're going to be doing our ring ring ceremony with the championship ring at newport harbor high school and if anybody loved to join us we'd love to host you thank you
014[Applause] thank you is [Music] this goes well the room i think there may be a couple here all right we're ready to move on to student board member reports um we'll start with nicole mcmillan good evening president bartow superintendent smith and board members our topic tonight was to give a recap of our experience as a student board member as our time here is beginning to come to a close first my expectations were a little unsure i know this is a pretty new program but i did know the person who was in my place last year so i had a vague idea of what it would be like but before i spoke at my first meeting last year i'd never even been in this room before as for what it was like i'd like to say
015that it was great i've gotten close to my fellow student board members and we've had a great time bonding at these meetings it's cool to compile these reports we're usually asked about stuff like what the students think or what they want how program is going etc and it's super important since the districts serve these schools so we need to know what the people want and it's certainly a lot easier for people to tell me how it's going rather than an adult they might not know and i know that to some people that might be thinking of joining it might seem a little scary with all of these official people up here but it's really not the board has been very welcoming to us and helping us adjust to this environment it's also very cool to
016meet and get to know the people in charge here it was of course a little intimidating at first speaking um in front of everyone but now that i've gotten to know what it's like i can definitely recommend it one of the many positive things is i think it makes us feel important um especially if you're up here where i am right now it's really cool but we are important and it definitely gives us a chance to see what it would be like to have a role here as an adult i'd never had an experience like this before but being able to actually have a vote in what happens in our district is really empowering and it's very real so uh one minor thing sometimes getting here is a challenge since we do stay pretty late
017at times but the board has been super lenient and generous if we ever need to go so it's been a great experience and i hope to continue it next year and for any perspective student board members i highly encourage you to join thank you [Applause] right our next student board member report is from newport harbor high school kate cherry good evening dr smith president bartow and members of the board over this past year i've really enjoyed my time being a student board member i've learned so much about how our district just run and also the importance of having the general public interact with local government i've also loved getting to know the other student board members as well as board members before i was a student board member i didn't really understand school board and
018its importance and so throughout the year i've learned all that goes on in the inner workings of our district and that's been really interesting to me because again before i've done this i've never stepped in this room before i loved working with the others in the district as well since everyone cares so deeply about the students of the school and they are all passionate about creating a safe and fun school environment at all grade levels and schools all board members are very understanding of the importance of schools and grades aren't flexible with trying us trying to understand what it means to be a school board member originally in the year when we have no clue what we're doing so being a school board student school board member has been a great experience and i would
019recommend it to anybody who is interested in applying for next year thank you [Applause] from costa mesa high school sophia katana good evening president bartow members of the board and superintendent smith i would like to start off by saying that i really enjoyed my experience as a student board member i am so honored to have been able to represent costa mesa high school this school year my experience has exceeded my initial expectations i went into the position thinking i would attend the meetings and relate updates and information to our school in addition to this however as student board members we are listened to and are given the opportunity to express how each of our schools are doing in our opinions of certain topics we would collect student input from our school communities and report it
020so all schools are equally represented in the choices being made it has been a great experience being able to interact with the board especially our liaisons president bartow and vice president mattoya who have made me and my fellow school board representatives feel like we are part of the process and have shown us how they truly prioritize the student and community opinion in all their decisions furthermore i enjoyed hearing the input and stances of the community every meeting expressing their concerns on both agendas and non-agendized items being exposed to different beliefs and opinions within our district has made me appreciate our community's diversity i'd like to thank my fellow school board representatives and vice president mattoya for their kindness and open communication that led this to the to be the eye opening and learning experience it
021has been thank you and good night thank you uh normally we would have our harbor council pta report but at least was not able to be here this evening so we will move on to csea and nmft president's comments starting with cse president pam saunders good evening board president bartow school board superintendent dr west smith cabinet and guests csea pr appreciates this opportunity to speak tonight it has been wonderful to both see the students and co-workers smiling faces again since the ma updated mandate such a simple human gesture that has been so sorely missed the past several years as we continue to work together through the endemic we thank classified employees for their diligence in supporting education and in-person learning for the students of newport mesa usd we are looking forward to upcoming negotiations thank
022you again from cse chapter 18. thank you next we'll have nmft president sarah atwater good evening that was really inspiring hearing from those young people you guys did great i don't even know if we had school boards when i was growing up good evening president bartow board members superintendent smith and cabinet members it's good to be able to speak to you tonight the first thing i want to talk to you about tonight is the concerns raised around special education that have come up recently at every check-in meeting i've had at various sites including elementary middle and high school many people have reached out individually as well it's our view that these are mostly long-standing issues that have been exacerbated by but not created by the pandemic also please note that the comments related to workload
023are not to the exclusion of what teachers are experiencing right now in their classrooms but i'm focusing tonight on what we're hearing from special education teachers speech and language pathologists counselors psychologists and support staff first is the issue of greatly expanded workload sped teachers are in great need of extra support right now it's my understanding that there are currently 70 open aid positions in the district the shortage puts a tremendous amount of pressure on the staff they're on a virtu they're on virtual double time and i'm being told are doing it willingly to ensure the safety and quality of instruction of their students teachers are regularly working through lunch and breaks just to keep afloat the bottom line is that the shortage of aids is being absorbed by the sped teachers and service providers to
024an overwhelming extent second is the perception by everyone to which we speak and and so and surrounding special education that the changes in the special ed programs and the forthcoming next year plans for the programs are not being communicated well enough at any level there is consistent communication by staff to us that teachers do not know what the plan is to meet requirements with the severe severe staff shortage other than to work in a flurry of emergency like mentality for now but i hear over and over again i don't know how much longer we can do this or how much longer we can keep this up sped teams are proud of the efficient work teams they're relying on within sites making it work but they say the same thing it's just not sustainable finally there
025are many questions and concerns about how students are being placed and why classroom teachers have increased student trauma and behavioral issues and the support they need is simply not there we know there exist structures in place but there is a disconnect between what's happening within written plans to what's happening in the trenches if you will everyone knows it's not for lack of staff wanting to assist but for impacted workloads we're also hearing a lot that sped teachers have been denied work days to prepare for ieps this is this time resource of protected uninterrupted time is necessary for teachers to do the work that supports students and shields a district from liability many of these concerns are historical but have been made worse by changes in program and staff shortages we have frequently heard that the
026sale team which seems to be a great idea and concept but we have yet to feel the benefits of its full execution we want to be assured of the district's high level of commitment to this program because we're hearing that often that members of the team are on temporary contracts and due to staff shortages and other demands are frequently pulled away to perform other duties we will not we will be requesting information so that we can determine the current rate of effectiveness it's also concerning to us that a special ed meeting occurred and the outcome by of that meeting left many questions unanswered related to students in the mod severe category also conveyed was an overall confusion regarding the structuring of the programs clearly the staff shortage shortages are out um a great a great
027deal out of our control what we're expecting though is to be provided with more operational clarity from top to bottom and back up to the top again um this is you know this is one of my things i need to do is you know when tons of people are telling me there's a problem i this is just part of the process you know um and next i want to let everyone know um that um the teacher of the year um is is underway and the the uh the recipients are going to be notified at the end of this week um the two that have moved on to the are moving on to the county level have been celebrated a little bit at their site and we're going to put out more information about that so
028i wanted to end on a positive and thank you very much thank you [Applause] now we will move on to community input on non-agendized items 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 thank you we have five comment cards so we're going to move ahead with bill dunlap uh thank you very much president bardot board members and dr smith i found out the best way to speak
029first is to be the last one coming in because your card's on top so thank you anyway uh i appreciate your time i'll make this brief um there's a group of us that have been working on um trying to understand how the district is going to deal with a critical race theory and it's been floating around for a long time and we had bits and pieces of it and we are trying to bring together a cohesive group to address that issue and whether we should how we're going to deal with it in the district and one of the things that's happening in orange county in other school districts specifically right now yorba linda placentia has gone through two drafts of a resolution that would prohibit critical race theory easily said but what does that mean
030what is critical lace theory to me to you to the teachers so we're going to have to put our arms around that and what we would like to do and suggest is that we have either a study session or an open forum allowing good strong debate on both sides of it those that may be in favor and those that are not this somewhat took place at orange county board of education if you recall they brought in experts and had testimony about critical race theory to better understand it so that's something that we would like to promote we're going to be meeting with individual board members to discuss that and how we can move that forward it's it's interesting um critical race theory you know part of it if i understand it correctly and if you
031agree you may or may not is the whole idea of trying to segregate and trying to pit one group of people against another which we think is totally disingenuous we went through the solo cup deal which was an interesting point ironically that we had oppressors and victims we had very insensitive kids that didn't understand what they were doing it was gross negligence on their part regarding what took place during world war ii and yet in critical ace theory they're also talking about oppressors and victims again oppressors in this case being if you're american and white you're a victim if you're anything else so we want to see if we can bridge that gap together and find out what that means and if it's something we don't want in our district we think a resolution would
032be appropriate the other item i want to just mention quickly is we think it's time for curriculum transparency other districts are embracing this which is basically to put the curriculum online so parents don't have to go through their students backpack to find out what they're learning what they're being tested on there's no reason it can't go online we're in that environment today with the internet and so forth so those two things we're going to be talking about in the future with you and i appreciate your time thank you thank you to grace hopps hi everyone i'm grace hobbs i wasn't expecting to be speaking about this today but i'm pretty upset about it there's a healthy kid survey floating around the district right now um that i got a notice from cdm about and apparently
033it's a survey that fifth seventh ninth and eleventh graders are supposed to be taking at school and i got a notice on friday afternoon from cdm and on tuesday apparently the kids were supposed to be taking the survey it was something that had an opt-out on the bottom of it that said oh you can opt out of this yet it didn't have a date of when the survey was supposed to be taken but yet we could opt out of it so i kind of you know skimmed through my emails and didn't really think much of it until i got an email from a friend saying have you seen this horrendous survey that the kids are supposed to take on tuesday in skills class so i opened the survey up and my mouth dropped and i
034had a panic attack because my seventh grader was supposed to be taking this survey in class and the questions that are on the survey i would hope that you guys have all read um are horrible they're things that i would never want my seventh grader to look at because they're leading questions and i'm not sure that i feel comfortable even saying them in front of this group of people um to me a health survey would be how much exercise do you get how many fruits and vegetables do you eat and you spend you know 30 minutes outside after school you know what's your calorie fat and calorie intake that's a health survey this is a lie that's not a health survey when you're asking children if they're you know what their sexual preferences are when
035they're 12 and 13 years old that is not a survey that includes your health okay um so after forwarding it to probably about a hundred different parents everybody's angry cdm is now postponing their survey because parents are so upset about the fact that the survey was sent out for it with an opt-out on a friday afternoon with no date and it was supposed to be started today so the teacher emailed me and said now we're waiting because parents are upset well of course parents are upset because you're saying it's a health survey it's not a health survey it's a sexual preference survey with very leading questions about drugs and alcohol on it and i'm not sure why we would be giving that to children that are 13 years old the fifth grade survey is a
036little different i did look at it it's not as bad but still bad because it's talking about drugs and alcohol you know leading questions for fifth graders um so i'd like to understand first of all there's some supplemental questions nobody's really sure i know somebody did reach out to michelle we're not really sure if those supplemental questions are on there or not we want to know that and we'd also like to know when this all started because none of us know anything about this until this year seems to be a common theme with our school district we're a little concerned about that thank you next we have wendy leaf good evening president bartow members of the board and dr smith my name is wendy lace i was a school board member from 1994 to 2002
037and also on the costa mesa city council from 06 to 14. so it's hard to believe but it's been three years since mr dunlap mentioned that the red solo cup incident and it kind of uh rocked our city and our community and that we were embarrassed in preparing for tonight i found an article that actually appeared in education week in 2019 the holocaust is ancient history for many students and it refers to the experience here not even two months ago a photo showing students making a nazi salute over a swastika made of solo cubs at a weekend party garnered extensive news coverage it didn't reference newport mesa i'm a teacher and i often use freedom writers the movie and the freedom writers book the three different editions to teach my students about the holocaust because
038they need to know and they need to have empathy and compassion and and they are intrigued and i also teach literature with anne frank but i bring this to your attention because after that incident i signed up to join the human relations task force meetings that we had across the way at um and we i know that uh dr browermeister is here and and um i even organized this chart and which i printed off the website because it was what you voted on for action in other words how can we not let this happen again unfortunately we had coveted and that kind of changed everything but what happened in my opinion was instead of focusing on the holocaust which uh barry freeland invited me to go to the 2000 and this was 19 holocaust uh
039event at chapman where young people are recognized for their writing and their their video performances we focused on uh implicit bias and other subjects that had nothing to really do with the whole cost per se i went over to the chapman university awards presentation three weeks ago you know what we didn't have we had two schools only two schools that entered uh the uh t-winkle had three entries and early college had three entries and the early college won uh honorable mention and we should recognize that person um i have their the name here almost out of time uh emma bronker one and her teacher is anne laurene i don't know why this is not a priority in this district but it's time to to do what we said we were going to do and emphasize
040the holocaust and not critical race theory thank you for your time thank you next we have dennis escher good evening president bartow distinguished trustees superintendent smith dr shaka stressed that getting students through elder one in ninth grade is job one pre-teach after-school tutors whatever works is necessary all hands on deck if students don't pass cells row one the first time life in high school becomes a quagmire wisely california law only requires algebra one and one additional math course two years focus on the law escape the siren call the trap of uc is the district's main goal follow up elsewhere one with mandatory geometry creates a road to nowhere for far too many students it neither supports algebra 2 nor data science well many will claim geometry provides value but they ignore its incredibly high opportunity
041costs treat geometry as elective not mandatory algebra 1 followed by algebra 2 anchors an ap calculus pathway open to all with incredible results algebra 1 followed by financial algebra supports both ap calculus and data science ap statistics pathways more subtly offering 10th graders engaging hands-on applied statistics allows all students the chance to succeed while letting them either continue with data science or simply end their math journey usefully and yes students can still take geometry in short follow algebra 1 with student choice make financial algebra the default no skip courses and equity can work together accelerated students in middle school would thrive in 8th grade geometry in effect offer geometry algebra and algebra geometry sequences lastly people claim that geometry teaches critical thinking i wish in truth only 40 percent of students are college-ready in math
042which means 40 percent have a 75 chance of getting a c in algebra pathetic we are actually mimetic creatures we copy we model students leave schools with models on how the world works and we pray they created deep ones we fail when they model learning as hoop jumping and screen watching measure your policy by cutting the need for credit recovery not the number of uc eligible hoop jumpers not useless state test scores while ignoring the repeat treadmill comprised of damaged deadened lives without sacrificing the top five percent make learning without failure your goal for all students thank you very much thank you [Applause] next we have christopher argonier hello good evening newport mesa i am christopher argonier candidate for orange county board of education now last meeting we had a consultant come and and present
043to the board a million dollar program uh it's going to create this this great new idea to take students away from their homes take students away from their homework in order to give them an extra math class to help them with the regular math class well i this is a desperate attempt to raise college-ready numbers by the consultant's own admission newport mesa already graduates more college-ready students than there are college positions in california i want this board to stop the ever higher spendings to get ever smaller results to get that extra one percent ready for college where there's no seat for them we need to focus on everybody else that you know there are other options there are businesses there are other ways to get education when you're done with high school you don't have
044to worship the god of college in order to get there there are plenty of businesses that offer tuition assistance there are plenty of businesses that offer management training there are even businesses that offer you know technical training and there are thousands of other options for kids that want to study further and want to you know learn to code do woodwork you know work in auto mechanics welding there are lots of other options we can't worship the god of college the colleges are full so my suggestion is that you divert these funds that really aren't getting the results and help kids realize that there are other options and it's okay to pursue other options don't stigma stigma stigmatize the kids that have trouble taking tests and that don't want to go to ap classes my name
045is christopher argenier i'm an architect i'm a parent i live here in costa mesa and i'm running for the board of education for orange county and i ask you for your vote thank you very much thank you [Applause] um next we move on to consent calendar number 18. did we have comments on this okay oh i'm sorry sorry i skipped ahead yes please apologize not that you're skipping me no no no it's very important i made i made some little arrows to where i was supposed to read things and that was my fault yeah so and just let the board know we've we've met with mr dunlap continue to we've we've discussed his uh ideas about what they might bring forward we've invited him to come back uh president bartow is with me in our
046last meeting um hank bankster when he was here before said we don't teach crt i've been here and said we're not going to teach it while i'm here but i understand and mr dunlap he mentioned this a nuance of what is the definition what does that really mean and so we've invited him back and always will and and look forward to seeing him and continuing this conversation um and then curriculum transparency i'll certainly work with the staff to see where there is more we can do there certainly nothing that any of you up here the staff the table are trying to hide so i'll i'll circle back to the team and figure out where we have gaps with with that the healthy kids survey is something that we've been doing for many years in the
047district it's not a health survey it's a healthy kids and it looks at a variety of health indicators our team in the fall decided that coming back from the pandemic they wanted to see how students were doing and it collects anonymous data but overall what were some of those things they were seeing that they could help with maybe some interventions some supports and so they decided because it was anonymous because parents can opt out of it that they would like to see that data and so that decision was made in the fall and if the rollout was ineffective then then that's certainly something i can work on with the team to make sure that you know parents don't advance so it's not the day of and things like that and if there's some confusion around
048how you opt out we certainly want parents to have that that right so any confusion therein is on us and we'll work with the team to make sure they're communicating that in fact they're supposed to be reaching out again to parents to say if there's any confusion about how to opt out let us know because at the site we'll support you in that um recognize the student i think her name was emma i believe but but uh miss lisa and i we we communicate and i'll reach out to her and find out what the student's name is i think that's absolutely great i have it i know i've known her since she was born good good well then i'll reach out to both you just to make sure that wendy feels listened to as well
049and then you can give me that also and let's let's celebrate this student that's awesome um the math pathways i think you know a lot of that was about the notion of a uc default graduation requirement and that certainly isn't something the citrus has engaged right now during mr dr shaka's presentation one of our staff members there was a conversation about do people do that that isn't something that this district has engaged yet and i certainly have been directed by this board to look into that currently and i i think that's what our last comments were about as well perhaps dr shaka's presentation there certainly aren't any funds going to making the uc grad requirements the default graduation requirements no funds are being used for that we don't have any consultants right now in the
050district making that the priority and certainly we have robust cte programs in this district i've been amazed at the things that this district teaches students to know and be able to do critically acclaimed programs in fact we recognize the state winner last board meeting and the culinary arts certainly that's a career for folks and there are there are many many more i would just say this we're not telling students they have to go to college students should have a choice but the system should never choose for them so it's our obligation to prepare students for whatever choice they want to make hard stop and that's what we'll do you know here in the district um and that's it on on agenda topics thank you and again i apologize i make notes when people talk sometimes
051it distracts me um all right so we've got now moving on to community input on agendas 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 speed speaker may not really 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 all right we have one two five cards on our consent calendar and the additional items we have additional comments coming those will be with the items themselves so on item 18 e1 we first call alicia b good evening board of trustees and superintendent smith my name is
052alicia i'm a mother of two a school psychologist board certified behavior analyst and a very concerned citizen an aggressive slate of covet 19 related bills to mandate vaccines for children to allow 12 to 17 year olds to get the vaccine without parental consent and more remain in play under the the dome at the capitol taken together the adoption of these bills would make california an outlier among states and it would give the country's strictest coven 19 regulations why would we want to advance this kind of policy that would further burden districts within the district each year enrollment rates have seen a sharp decline in addition to shrinking enrollment dropout rates limited academic progress failing grades and looming mental health crisis are a warning for an even greater educat education crisis in california i am standing
053before you stated again as a concerned citizen one of the many that you were elected and appointed to represent as you work for the best education interest of all i want to remind you that we the people design the scope of influence on legislative outcomes you are required to engage all stakeholders including the community on perspectives and positions we demand that the con consulting and advocate advocacy agreement between capital advisors group llc engage parents in communication and decisions as required by law within the state of california and within your district policy and goals for far too long you have given power to the state and unelected officials rather than the families that you were required to represent i'm here to remind you that you will be held accountable for not only engagement but the outcomes
054that represent the areas that you serve we are not yet celebrating the hold on ab19 1993 so assembly member buffy wicks intends to work with labor and employers to allow space for progress and ultimately come to the table to make sure that all workers are vaccinated we remain vigilant and need you to advocate with us and for us thank you thank you okay now we move on to also on 18e one danielle m hi everybody this is regarding the superintendent's approval of consulting an advocacy agreement between newport mesa unified and capital advisors group i guess i'm just confused why there is going to be monies going to a group to push the interests of the district advance the interests implementation pursuing the interests at the capitol what interests are those how do we know that
055the 4 000 plus travel every month that you're going to be paying this consulting agency is going to be advancing what we the people who vote you into pro into power what we want not what some bureaucrat says or what what's going i'm so upset because we're here every month advocating for what we want and nobody seems to be listening so now there's going to be an extra layer and this person this group is going to be pushing for policies and who are they accountable to to you guys why not to us we're the ones whose kids are in this district we're the ones who are here every single month advocating for our kids and trying to get you guys to listen and and now we're going to have lobbyists lobbying for goodness knows what
056at the capitol there are one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven and there's more than that there are all of these in the assembly and the senate regarding vaccines and man and laws and mandates um what are they what is this consulting firm going to lobby on all of these issues i mean there are dozens of them this is just a few so officially i disagree with paying a lobbying firm why don't you go out into the community and see what your constituents want and then take that to the state capitol why are we paying a lobbyist i don't i don't i just don't understand it's the parents who are the most important things we vote you and we vote you into office the lobbyists don't have anything to do with
057that the capital doesn't have anything to do with that and our property taxes pay for our kids schooling we have the most say and we should have we should have first say and community involvement should come first before going to some lobbying firm who's accountable to none of us thank you now we have haley jenkins good evening superintendent smith president bartow and members of the board i'm here tonight to request that you delay your vote regarding the hiring of kevin gordon and the capital advisors group before shelling out four thousand dollars a month of taxpayer money i feel it's important to ask parents and community members if this is the person that we want to lobby for our children because i'm sure that hasn't been asked yet knowing what we know regarding mr gordon and
058his political background i'm not certain that he is the correct person to advise and fight on the behalf of our children's well-being honestly i'm not really certain that you need to hire anyone as i feel this is your duty as elected board members in every social media post lately for many of you i see i advocated for this i advocated for that and you're all very proudly advocating for something so between all of you actually doing your jobs and all of the parents and community members that call and email and show up here every month to share their concerns with you i think we could get it done for free there are many many bad bills coming down the pipeline in congress right now and parents have been here to discuss and beg you month
059after month to do something about them the public have been advising you for free as i said i look at the crazy things happening in our district this past year and i urge you to listen to the people that are here voicing your concerns their concerns over these issues instead of hiring somebody that's all the way in sacramento in the least please put it to a parent community vote before you make your decision thank you thank you next we have bill dunlap thank you for making the list a little farther down i was going to go to dinner but i did get that in um anyway so you've heard from the ladies about our issue with the consultant agreement i guess from a procedural protocol standpoint someone who's been a consultant hired consultants did we
060did we do bids did we take bids on this uh normally in the public arena you would get two to three bids and those bids would be reviewed for their scope dollar amount and so forth if you didn't take bids i think you might be in violation of one of your own rules which is you are not supposed to spend public money without it going through a bid process you do that with the school construction you do that with everything else so that's one question two dr smith i'm aware that you know kevin gordon somewhat and i think that relationship should be disclosed to see if there's any conflict of interest regarding that especially because mr gordon worked in sacramento you've worked in sacramento so i think the public would like to see that as
061well the other part is consulting and advocacy the ladies have mentioned it somewhat already but what are we advocating for uh as we've talked about we've got these bills pending up in sacramento are are we gonna or is the district gonna have him advocate for or against those bills we need to know that um it's interesting to note that the teachers in the state of california and it's pretty much all over the united states the latest poll shows that 80 percent 87 percent of the teachers are liberal or democratic that means 13 percent of republican this district is at least 50 50 democrat republican and i would say it's more republican and so we have a situation where we may be hiring a consultant as been mentioned before that doesn't represent the constituents that are
062paying twenty thousand dollars per student uh to have them educated so i think you ought to look into those things one did we do bids on this and two what is he going to be advocating for and three does dr smith have a relationship and is that something that we should discuss thank you thank you next week wendy leaf thank you board president members of the board dr smith um i this year i will have been a taxpayer in this school district for 50 years uh all five of my children at one time attended the newport mesa schools four thousand dollars a month is ridiculous when we don't know what he's going to be advocating for and when we have all these controversial bills that have to deal with children and parents and unfortunately items
063like this are like hidden for most people they wouldn't even know that we're doing this tonight i would respectfully ask you to to postpone this until we're kind of like you're putting the cart before the horse because you need a process to listen to the community especially on these bills sb 866 it lowers the age of consent to 12 to get the vaccine without parental consent my goodness are we going to send mr gordon to sacramento we better not because there's a whole lot of people in this district to oppose this bill but they're taking kids to soccer practice music lessons helping with homework right now but we are here to tell you this is a bad decision and we don't want you to vote on this tonight there's no hurry you know when i
064was on the city council governor schwarzenegger wanted to sell the fairgrounds and we found out about it kind of it was a secret and we didn't hire a lobbyist i went up there myself twice with mayor and katrina and and guess what we didn't sell the fairgrounds we won and it's the same thing you need to go madam president you need to go to sacramento and represent us on these bills you can you can do it we do not need a four thousand dollar a month attorney you can pay me a hundred bucks a day and i'll do it okay and you know i can in fact i made calls to all the subcommittee members this morning on 1993 and left messages at 8 30 this morning because i didn't if i if this bill
065has passes i will lose my job at college hospital i test twice a week and i don't mind doing that but if they if if college hospital forces me to take the vaccine i won't do it because i have issues i've had cancer you all know that but please don't make this decision we don't need to do it there's no hurry to hire a person for four thousand dollars a month for the job that you should be doing and advocating for the people and get out there in the community kevin was president of or he was the director of csba when i was there he's he's very entrenched in sacramento we do not need his voice in this community thank you thank you okay look i think we're done i'm only five right we have
066five so we're doing item just for clarification we're doing items on the item itself for additional comments okay so those were just consent calendar all right um i'm going to move to have a motion to have the approval of the consent calendar so moved okay so we have a second okay second any discussion okay so um i would like to address however briefly um item 18 e1 because there is commentary on that um i i guess i can speak and if anyone else has comments they can reply um i think that there's maybe a misperception that a lobbyist is a person who speaks on their own behalf and that a somehow a single school board member has more influence than somebody who knows directly who to call i know that many of us have personally
067called advocated been to many of our local representatives during legislative action and there is there is something about the ability to express how a district is feeling especially a basic aid district like ours which is subject to different kinds of funding to have somebody to be able to call a perfect example is our universal tk which will be forced to implement and we do not have the funding to do so a lobbyist is somebody who can call a legislator and say look we don't have the funding to uh employ this mandate that you've required us to do and it will cost us 15 million dollars that will come out of every general education pocket to fund this new classroom um i know that along myself along with many other school board members have met with
068our representatives to make the case for that um a lobbyist is somebody that you can call and say this is where we need help and they can make that phone call and actually be connected where many times us even as school board members and elected officials are sent to the email and answering machine box so i think the purpose of a lobbyist is perhaps misunderstood and definitely can be used incorrectly i know the intent in our district is where we have issues that specifically affect us as a basic aid school district and otherwise uh those issues may fall in depth ears with our local legislators who do not understand necessarily how all of our funding comes directly from our taxes and not from the state that voice is very helpful to make that case in
069many sorts of bills in regards to those other bills that come through i know that many of us have individually been on the phone but every little bit helps and a lobbyist is under our uh employee to make the case that we ask them to make that's all i have to say thank you trustee elsie um yes thank you um i agree with what president bartow said and we have had lot this is not new to us to having had a lobbyist we have had lobbyists in the past and we direct them what we want them to accomplish on our behalf but i also um want to just ask since this is under the superintendence list um dr smith would you like to comment on this item since it is under your purview oh we
070i was going to let the other trustees first unless those we have a few comments all right so there's more likes okay i know i know but you're called you want to take comments you want me to respond to that um [Music] sure i i think the the first thing is you know i would be concerned about conflict of interest i think that's a fair question i know probably every major education lobbyist in california and have no conflicts with any of them haven't been paid by work for none of my relatives work for there are no interests there that i know people doesn't a conflict make what it does though is gives you a unique perspective and what i would hope that this community would appreciate is a unique perspective and a peek into who
071moves the needle there and i can tell you without question there is no more influential law firm and i think kevin working at csba helped that but there are others jack o'connell the angela reed barrett snyder etc etc they've got a bench deep and influential and they work for you and as one of the community members stated you work for them so you hear their interests they regularly come and share their interests with us and when you've heard from them what this community wants then you'll direct capital advisors to act and you know there are lots of things folks can do i've been in that building right and the calls the letters the resolutions but what what really matters is having relationships in that building to say do you know that this is an unfunded
072mandate and it's discriminatory to make newport mesa unified implement a new grade level with no funding because you just think we are something that we're not for example issues around the the vaccine mandate i've heard folks at this deus have concerns with that and capital advisors would be able to take that forward on your behalf and amplify these voices for me having worked at that level this is a bargain for what you can accomplish on behalf of 18 000 kids but that's oh as far as the bid process go it doesn't qualify for bids contracts the size we don't have to go through the bid process but but that's the technical thing and mr dunlap and i we can talk about that but certainly no conflicts and i couldn't think of a better firm to
073represent our students and if my kids were in this district i'd be pushing hard for this one thank you i have trustee weigant oh trustee lcd okay trustee weigand and then trustee or soyulu yes i just wanted to clarify when we talk about lobbyists they they take what we want and i think everyone describes it here what the community wants right i hear you guys um you guys have had a clear line to me um and the people up here on the board and we take it and we hear and we push believe me your your voices and now we have a voice that's going to be up in sacramento that can take that um uh your concerns about all these bills that are coming up which i have the same concerns and we can
074tell we could take that and and talk to these uh these assembly members or these state senators that we don't normally get to talk to here we have two people that we can talk to in our um in our area but when they're up there in sacramento they have everyone that they can get to and that is the most important thing and they're more likely to take their calls than they are to take our calls and we will and i would like to see us have a discussion where we do discuss um out in the open the bills that are coming out and seeing what the capital groups telling them how to how to advocate for us so just to let you know that we they will advocate for the way that we want them
075to advocate um additionally um you know having them maybe have some more democrats on their board than republicans in their in their company you know this state is obviously has a super majority and sometimes someone else might not be able to get to that person however having people on both sides of the aisle or having someone that knows and can sit down with someone that is maybe on their side but advocate for a position that we have say as a more conservative district is very influential it's very influential um and so i just wanted to let you know i know you guys are angry but they will take the way that we want them to discuss and things that we feel and they will advocate for for us up in sacramento trustee or sailing no
076i think thank you i think everything has been said but i just want a second um what dr smith said you know i in the past have been a lobbyist and um sacramento is a very small place and capital advisors gets work done and we want work done for this district for many reasons there's budget fun there's different so many different pockets of money that keep the education system running the way we want it and these lobbyists understand how to get those dollars into our district when we need them and so from my vantage point it's it's just a win and to dr smith's point it's a bargain also um and i think you know to many of your points that you know we up here should be doing that work and i can tell
077you that many up here are doing that work they're on zoom calls with different committees education committee members and things like that you know and we're doing that with our what is it 400 stipend 500 stipend um and our full-time jobs and raising our families so with that this is why a lobbyist is functional because this is not our full-time job it's the lobbyist full-time job to look out for our interests and we help wherever we can so well that's all my two cents thank you that's okay that's fine no additional comments all right so it's been moved and seconded may i have a roll call vote please trustee barto yes trustee matoya yes trustee crane yes trustee anderson yes christie or charlotte yes justine weigand yes trustee elsie yes thank you with that we
078moved on to number 19 public hearing action calendar thank you so tonight we bring before you four agenda items that are packaged together which begin the negotiations for a successor agreement with csea it starts with the public hearing uh on the csca initial proposals followed by the board we ask that you accept their proposal and then mirroring that process is having a public hearing on the district's initial proposal and asking the board to approve our initial proposal thank you thank you all right so the public hearing is now open at 7 13 p.m there were no speaker cards submitted for comment the public hearing is now closed at 7 14 p.m we made it a minute this time i appreciate that okay all right and now we move to receive the california school employees association
079chapter number 18 initial proposal for success or agreement to the newport mesa unified school district for negotiations commencing we have a motion so moved second it's been moved by trustee mattoya seconded by trustee anderson never roll call vote trustee barcha yes trustee mattoya yes trustee crane yes trustee anderson yes trustee or cerelu yes trustee weigand yes trustee elsie yes okay move to public hearing of the newport mesa unified school district's initial proposal for successor agreement to the california school employees association chapter number 18 for negotiations commencing 2022 the public hearing is now open at 7 15 pm there were no speaker cards submitted for comment the public hearing is now closed at 7 15 p.m it looks like we took a minute on the other one and didn't take a minute on this one but
080oh well all right uh 19d approved newport mesa unified school district initial proposal for successor agreement to the california school employees association chapter number 18 for negotiations commencing 2022. may have a motion so move may have a second second it's been moved by trustee yelsey and seconded by trustee crane roll call vote trustee bartow yes trustee matoya yes trustee crane yes trustee anderson yes trustee or shoilu yes trustee weigand yes trustee elsie yes thank you all right we moved to discussion action calendar and 20a approve april as kindness month okay so um i am someone speaking on this topic and the cities of uh newport beach and costa mesa have adopted april as kindness month um so we are doing the same i believe there's a resolution is a little different but ours is a
081kindness month um because i think in regards to uh what we're seeing in the world today this is not a bad choice we have several other months dedicated to many projects but i i have seen many of these kindness projects in our elementary schools in my students elementary schools and it's had a good impact on students when they're having a bad day so however school sites choose to implement that is up to them but i think it's a good reminder for the month and for the district no comments all right so then i'm going to ask for a motion i move that we approve april's kindness month second yes who is second okay all right so it's been moved by trustee elsie and seconded by trustee weigant roll call vote student board member nicole mcmillan
082yes trustee bartow yes trustee mattoya yes trustee crane yes trustee anderson yes trusteer soy lu yes trustee weigand yes trustee elsie yes i just want to say one of the things that i hear most from parents and from teachers coming back from covid is bullying is just rampant on some of our campuses so i think one of the things that we saw just kind of across the country was a lot of unkindness and incivility and so i'm really proud of the way that this board operates um now but i also just am really concerned about a lot of the students in our classrooms because there's just a constant issue with this so we really wanted to highlight something so every teacher they can they can do a kindness activity every day they can do something
083as a school and as we continue this we can do things you know as an entire district so i just i think this is really important and timely thank you all right we'll move to 20b consideration of an alternate site for the proposed location of the new estancia high school theater project and provide public notice for community input we have two comments so we have nine comments so we're going to give everyone two minutes each um that way everyone gets the opportunity to speak so we will start with taylor nash hello my name is taylor nash and i'm a current sophomore attending estancia high school i'm speaking here today as a student who is part of the group representing astanzi's drama program to discuss the location of a new theater many have expressed their opinions
084with building over the senior law to create the new theater and while these are all valid concerns i'd like to counter these points as well bring in points of my own my understanding of the problem is that those who do not want the senior law to be built over argue that it is the only place on campus that provides a friendly environment it takes down 30 trees in that area and it is a place of tradition on campus to address the first point as a student at estancia i can say that there are many areas on campus that provide the same level of community as our senior lawn for example the commons presents a friendly area to socialize immediately upon entering campus and right outside the commons is an area that has lots of plants
085and space for students to eat at during lunch or talk with friends at any hour there are other places on campus like this but the point remains that the senior lawn is not the only area that provides these benefits secondly the construction to create a new theater for a school would require taking down 30 trees in that area but this fails to mention the 40-plus trees that would be planted with conte with the continuation of this project i'm not happy about unnecessarily getting rid of our trees but the greenery would be replenished bringing benefits to the ecosystem as well as the students finally the senior lawn is seen as a traditional part of our campus many students are being said to show disinterest in placing the new theater on the senior lawn due to how
086it has been a part of our campus as shown in the petition despite this i and other drama members witnessed how they would gain support of other students they'd get pizza for every signature and when the food was gone all the students left immediately showing us that saving the senior lawn was not something that concerned the majority of students who signed that paper this isn't to claim that there aren't those who truly want to advocate for a different location but is more to demonstrate that placing a new theater on the senior lawn would not harm the student body as people are stating it would i am aware that even if construction begins this year i will probably be already graduated before i could ever perform in a new theater but it would benefit future drama
087students and the drama program as a whole people who are pushing for a different location are delaying the creation of a new theater and it is unfair for our program to make us wait any longer thank you for listening thank you all right if i miss out next time i just wanted to make a comment um i i'm concerned this item specifically is related to providing public notice for community input if we only have nine speakers in my opinion i would like to have them be allowed their three full minutes i know when i used to come and speak i timed my comments so i really particularly if we have other students i want to hear their full comments so is there a way do we want to like decide amongst ourselves or if we
088do that can we do two and a half i don't know [Laughter] i mean because that would fit us all within 20 i think i think we're just gonna go with what we've always gone with which is the two minutes because i think i don't think we're going to have the problem um if if we do really go over i think that we're hearing lots of emails and regarding the community input um i think that that's the purpose of setting this up and we'll have additional opportunities for people especially those who aren't here to give extended input um so not to block anyone's voice but i i do think that we'll have time and it will give us more time to discuss as a board which i think is important so um next we're gonna
089and plus i think it would be unfair to the person who's already spoken i mean she was rushing that's why i don't want to have people have to do that and i to me yeah like i think from i to we have been doing three minutes not two like nine is not not a lot so i disagree but that's fine thank you next we have donna swift uh mona mcclanahan and then carlo opiciano in that order and then we'll take more after that we can listen fast i don't have much to say good evening members of the board dr smith and president bartow thank you for having me um i am a former member of california school t-winkle and estancia and both of my two children were part of the drama program and not only
090were the ap students and on the asb and the tennis team and the aquatics team they multitasked in the theater department helped them just ground them and they they were able to multitask and and do everything and always show up um with the powers of miss pauline moranium i just want to say how important arts is to just everything and i think is what we're speaking to tonight that it's really you know with the whole april kindness month and everything that's going on with everything it's really important to education um it enhances communication improved cognition you know through the arts students learn skills like resilience grit and not to mention how about coach lofthouse and the sailors that grit that movement that growth and all that will happen at estancia when we we it's really
091imperative that we get the theater and not parlay it and move it somewhere now and and let it and let it happen because it's been promised for a very long time and it needs to happen so very powerful very impassioned by it but um we're here to you know do whatever we can thank you thank you [Applause] good evening superintendent and the board my name is mona mcclanahan and i come to you tonight maybe with a little bit different perspective i am a resident of the mesa verde community i tried to attend adams elementary school when my daughter was a second grader leaving our parochial school that could also not meet her needs came to the board the district and with all of my concerns i was offered a transfer out so i'm not here
092to talk about that per se but my perspective is i came back to this district to attend estancia high school and what i learned was as the parent that i am i had to investigate what this district had in store for my senior excuse me my daughter who was going to be a freshman in high school i love the small school environment the special attention that each and every student gets at estancia high school but more importantly and this is off topic i want to say kudos to gabe de la real for bringing all the positive academic and other changes to adams elementary school i wouldn't have gone down the hill if he'd been principal then and these changes had been heard and addressed so that brings me to tonight estancia high school my daughter
093attended in the year 2009 and graduated in the year 2013. we are going on nine years of being promised this amazing facility and i have spoken is that the timer and asked all those powers that be along the way and i'm sad that i'm here tonight still asking and still waiting thank you [Applause] carlo then laura orsini marroquin and then pauline morania thank you since the time is a little short i'll just cut right to it uh it's carlo oduchino my name is always hard to pronounce but i'm a 1995 graduate of estancia high school i went through the theater program uh i actually was promised a theater back then too uh so it goes bit back longer than that but um the reason why i'm here tonight to just i since i graduated i
094want to kind of share a little bit of my story i am currently a owner of a small boutique consulting firm that that works with life sciences companies i'm working with senior leaders in those companies to become better leaders and the thing that we lean on is authenticity empathy relationship and as i look at all my entire education from kindergarten all the way through graduate school there's not one more important piece of education that i got then going through a theater program at estancia high school that taught me those foundational leadership elements so this is more than just about um what somebody might be doing and putting on a play or anything like that this is foundational life skills and it meant so much to me going through that program and barbara van holt who
095was the director at that time passed away last week um and um or actually a couple weeks ago now um and i committed myself to carry on her legacy and so i've come back to estancia and i've had the fortunate to direct almost 20 shows there to teach them the same life skills that were given to me and so i just hope people don't get lost in this sort of tension that comes with kind of fighting over things that kind of seem meaningless when you look at the life of a student thank you thank you [Applause] good good evening board dr smith thank you so much for having me here my name is laura orsini orsini-maroquin i'm a 1987 graduate of estancia high school and more importantly a member of troop drama troupe 1224 all
096three of my children graduated from estancia high school two of which were also in troop 1224 currently my daughter is the student teacher in the drama program to say that i am a supporter of this transformative program is an understatement i serve not only on the oversight committee for measure f which is the committee that oversees the financial expenditures for this new theater but i was also invited to be on the steering committee of the new theater in 2018. i've spent many hours in meetings discussing the specific theater the music program needs and examining the overarching objectives of the building during these meetings two principles focused our discussions one the theater at estancia needs to be on parity with the other facilities in the district two the building is it needs to be a showcase
097to the community if we are going to spend 25 to 35 million dollars the building needs to be located in the front of the school during the many months of meetings only four possible sites were presented to the district by district staff as being viable for the building with the information given to the group and the driving principles in mind the current site was selected and the school board at the time approved the site the site as they understood and agreed with the driving principles of the steering committee today i hear that we may have another location previously not mentioned may i continue i have just a minute previously not presented by the school district and it may meet our objectives this is exciting to me because the project is in limbo due to the
098the city of costa mesa's frivolous lawsuit i encourage the board to spend the time needed to investigate this this this site understanding the driving principles thank you for your time thank you i'm sorry about that um next we have pauline moranian and then fernando baranon and then brittany ebergenie as mrs moranian is coming up um thank you carlos for letting us know about barbara van holt she was one of my favorite teachers at estancia and i would like to close the meeting in her honor i did not know she had passed good evening i'm the current drama teacher at estancia high school i had the fortune of being selected by barbara van holt to be her replacement although no one could ever do that she was a dear friend of mine and a mentor and
099i won't miss her dearly the forum at estancia high school was named after her the year i took over it was her deepest desire that the newest facility would also be named after her i stand here to honor my friend and her legacy and i'm also deeply moved by the parents who've come out who are former booster parents presidents treasurer's current students my student teacher who was a student of mine carlo ruccino who is a student of barbara's laura who was a student of barbara's fernando who was a student of mine we deserve a theater in 1996 when i was hired i was told we were going to have a new theater i sat in this very room under the leadership of dr barbeau and looked at plans for a new theater that was 26
100years ago i may retire before a new theater is ever built and that's okay i want the new drama teacher to have a beautiful facility i want the school to have a beautiful facility i wanted to be the crown of costa mesa this theater has done tremendous tremendous things for the people who've worked in it myself included it's changed lives myself included i know we've talked a lot about trees i said it a couple of years ago yes trees can grow but but students need to grow more thank you hello members of the newport mesa unified school district my name is fernando baranon and i am a current junior at estancia high school and today i am here because i want to bring awareness from a student's perspective on the issue regarding the new theater
101placement at estancia high school throughout my three years in high school i've been involved in student government a member of several cub clubs including leo's best buddies arc and women's empowerment club i have also been an individual part of estancia drama and drama production program estancia has been among a few of the newport mesa schools that haven't had a new theater i think it is a great idea that we will finally get one after so long but the location of where it is going to be planned to be placed is ideally what many of us students would like removing the trees that so many students of all grade levels go in order to communicate and interact with one another wouldn't be a good idea this place holds so much value and meaning as these trees
102were planted by previous generations of astanti graduates it wouldn't be fair to previous generations of estancia guys to see what they once planted as a means of remembrance to be demolished human interactions have been made throughout these past years and to place a new theater in the same location would take up a portion of what's left of our nature and school i know that there are other locations at our school that have some form of nature but the magnitude of the trees like the meaning of that it holds dearly to so many of the previous santi graduates and even though we've had no mass mandate at school and students are able to eat inside students are still continuing to attend and eat at that location and interact with one another and that tells you that
103tells you one thing that that no matter what happens no matter because of the pandemic we are still out there and we are still communicating with each other and i've been out there because um for me i've been i've been a person who's been stressed a lot and that place holds meaning to me because i'm able to be free and and also the location of it is very um sacred like i mentioned before and i honestly don't think that this would be a great place to put it thank you thank you fernando next we have brittany ebergenie and then wendy lee i will try to be as fast as possible good afternoon trustee superintendent members of the public as a former student board member myself i know just how important it is to advocate for
104what i believe in and stand up and for the community that has given me so much i was here two months ago and i am here today to discuss a major injustice that is pending at estancia high school my alma mater destroying the nature that so eloquently encompasses the front of the school and has always provided the students with a safe free community space is not only dangerous but outright unethical although i am in support of the theater community and i think a theater is a good idea i don't believe that the location is right for so many reasons the senior lawn is a place where students congregate in an open safe area with staff supervision a luxury that cannot be possible under the public park next door fairview these kids are safer in the
105senior lawn and demolishing the safe space would be on your conscience furthermore the nature located at the front of the campus provides fresh clean air thanks to the abundance of trees for the eagles something no addition of concrete can provide well my concern is how as a district we've come to add machines into our classrooms to better the air quality yet made no hesitation in improving destroying literal decades-old trees on school grounds an active hypocrisy one cannot ignore furthermore the theater location presents a lot of traffic congestion which would severely affect the entrance of the estancia to the left side a side mind you that especially a lot of minority students live on every single day a cloud traffic edition would put these kids in harm's way a danger that you know to be true
106and you are allowing think about the kids the students of estancia a new theater is a good idea but not in that place now i understand that this decision may be easy for you a simple yes and move on but the ability to say yes and move on is the privilege you possess being an elected official in an office not having experienced the effects of your decisions every single day that's what these kids have to do because it will be them that suffers not you they have to face the consequences mental emotional and safety every single day so you don't have to move it somewhere else there's so much concrete already care about these kids be the adult they so depend you to be thank you so much thank you brittany next week wendy lease
107um i won't say too much but i love the diversity of opinion i have been a west side resident for 50 years so at least you know once or twice a week i drive down placentia and when we heard about the the removal of the trees uh a lot of us on the west side particularly thanks to miss anderson we you know we were concerned because it was not a transparent process to vet this new auditorium or new theater on that particular site and i know there was a committee but the board the previous board did not do a very good job of informing the public at large which means taxpayers about this design that was going to take down these trees so my suggestion is that um as you see that parents are awake
108and addressing the school board i've been doing it since the mid 80s but we've got a lot more people now that it's important for you on everything to be transparent and to know that we are engaged and we want to see you engage us with you know a robust uh forum about where the theater should be held uh we assancy have gone to many performances god bless barbara van holt just a wonderful person who did so much for the drama department and the kids that were part of that so make it a i don't know what you have in mind but do a little better than you have in the past as far as engaging the public uh whether it's you know meetings at different places and something more than surveys but get we're out
109there so to find us and let us weigh in on where you're going to put it but not on where the trees are thank you thank you [Music] um i'm going to get a motion and then i guess we can discuss so i may have a motion to approve 20b so moved let me have a second second all right uh discussion your light was on but it was behind a bottle so you're good okay um first of all i want to thank all the speakers that came out many of you i think i saw here when i was first on the board as parents as advocates for estancia high school for adams high school miss mcclena mcclanahan i remember being in a meeting with you with gabe gabrielle at um adams when we started the
110modern scholars program so i know how passionate all of you are about the estancia zone area and i know how passionate many of the alumni who are here have spoken as well as the current students and we all know i think the importance of theater we all want to build a theater at estancia there's no doubt about that i um i was part of the board that approved this almost two years ago and i've been part of the conversation for 10 years while we've been waiting to build this and we've wanted to build this when we approved this with our previous board and a couple of us are our current members who were here at the time but when we approved this unfortunately we did not have all the information that we needed in terms
111of being accurate information and in the past few months we have received some information that is more accurate that we didn't know about and i am disappointed in that and i wish it hadn't happened but it did which gives us the opening and as someone mentioned we have um there's a lawsuit with the city so that's very public knowledge we couldn't start tomorrow anyway and while we since with this new information and while we are waiting i think we should go out and talk to the community again even though we did a lot of community input back at the time we can ask a question we can have meetings and recommend 20 different times for people to show up and if they don't show up we can't talk about an issue and this happens with
112everything we you know parents will quite often will say well i didn't hear about this well we sent out notices five times we posted signs and people hear what they want to hear when they have an issue with something then they'll say aha i have an awareness now i'll show up so we did do that but i have no problem with going back and and um adding some community input um because we are waiting at this point and we also all of us all seven of us have new information we can look at so we will build a theater um we have the option now of looking at some alternative locations which i think we should do and get community input but you can rest assured that we will in the end approve a theater
113at estancia and it will be equal to any other theater we have in in the district we are not going to cut back on things um in any way so we we want that to be the shining star of the estancia zone and we know the history of theater at estancia i mean i've been going to performances there for almost 16 years that i've been on the board we know how great that program is it is and we want it to continue to grow so trustee crane oh yes sorry josie anderson i'm gonna move my laptop because i cannot see the full screen all right so um thank you charlene it's trustee anderson then trustee crane then trustee or soilu thank you um yes thank you for that i think that was really clarifying i
114think there's been a lot of confusion and misassumptions and i think we have a unique opportunity to kind of reevaluate and i just wanted to ask that this time when we do community input i would ask that we go to the students and make sure that we have a student forum because that did not happen last time i mean a lot of the students that i spoke to had no idea that this theater was happening and a lot of them were very happy um similar to fernando he's in the drama program but did not know that it was happening um and i think this is something that we can really highlight as a win like we're going to have this awesome theater and thankfully you know we're going to be able to also save the
115green space hopefully if we vote that way so i just um i'm just thankful for all the people that i have personally heard from i've heard from oh people i haven't heard from in 25 years um and i was at aston cien 96 and i remember a lot of the promises we got about a lot about our campus that never came to fruition and it's really frustrating so um hopefully with this new location it actually will be a faster process than if we go with what we had so um i just i'm glad that we're able to have this conversation and follow our board policy and make sure that we're pushing all this information out to the community in more ways than we have in the past thank you thank you trustee crane and then
116trustee ursula yes uh first i want to thank all the speakers that stepped up to the podium and shared their their insight and their experiences and especially to the students who come up here it's really it's daunting to be up on the podium and so thank you for being here also taylor nash we saw your play the soccer one you had a very large wait stand up if you were in that play because i recognized some of your faces yes that was keeping in the play that was absolutely [Applause] your your dialogue was absolutely amazing and i don't know how you write how you memorize all these lines for like an hour and 15 minutes just pure dialogue amazing so i know there's grit someone mentioned grit and and let's make it a theme of
117the night grit but most of all as a governing board you know we want to be known for transparency authenticity and a board that reaches out to the community and when new information comes up we need to reconsider absolutely some in favor of definitely having discourse more community engagement student parent staff etc so that's my two cents thank you trustee ursulu and then trustee matoy thank you and um thank you ditto to to trustee crane thank you for everyone who comes and speaks up and and i apologize ladies i didn't get to see her play but i did bring you pizza one night at practice so i hope that covers it but um as i believe um former president yeltsin just said it so eloquently you know you you know more you know you you
118know better and you then you do better so when there's new information you can shift your your directions and your choice matrix because you just simply know different things that you didn't know before and now you know them it's on you to act on that information to the best of your ability so i just thank everybody for being engaged in the process and to know that it's not a choice between trees or kids it's never been trees or kids everyone up here as has been said many times wants the theater wants the best theater over at estancia estancia is the zone that i represent i want a good theater there um but seeing the the mental health implications of removing a green shaded area that i see every day hundreds of students using and relaxing
119under that was a cost you know benefit analysis that i err on the side of us reconsidering some other locations and looking really critically at how that space can be protected for for kids so thank you everybody for engaging with us i too was on the previous board that we passed this mrs jelsey and i have been really struggling and i am so frustrated that it has taken this long to build the theater but the reason it's taking this long is out of my control and because of that we're we're stuck with a time gap that we're we're stuck and if we can use that time to make better decisions to make uh to make this the greens be green somewhere we're not saying where what we're gonna do what we're saying is we're stuck
120in this time block but during this time block we've received way more information than we ever did we can make a better decision we can go out to the community one of the things this board has strived to improve is how we do our community outreach i know we did community outreach the last time i know we did so i don't want to put it on the old committee that well we didn't do community outreach because we did but it didn't ring the bells that it did now so if we've got this block of time that we can use rather than just sit and wait for some decision or some action then let's use that time wisely i want i would like to i would like to be in the theater i would like to
121go to the theater and see the estancia program it's been one of the best in our district for an awfully long time and once i am a firm believer if you build it they will come that program will grow every theater we have built has grown after the building was there so i know that that will happen it's frustrating but what the proposal said is consideration of an alternate site for the proposed location of the estancia school theater and provide public notice for the community input none of that seems bad since we're stuck anyway so i make i i move oh it's been moved in second it's so good it's we're just discussing we're discussing trustees discussion action got it trustee or soy yeah and i just wanted to add one more thing that i
122forgot um for those of you that are here that are engaged in theater i know my daughter was in the plays at california elementary and i just want to let everyone here know um if you don't know already but t-winkle is finally committed to next year there being drama either after school or during school but there will be drama next year so we are committed deeply to building that true pipeline of drama from the california and victoria and adams up to t-winkle and up through estancia so um please know that this board is dedicated to that and that we have made that happen um along with the the brazen staff that has really pushed these these things forward to get drama at t-winkle um for the next year so know that that that's only going
123to help propel um when there is a new theater at estancia okay um and then i just like to thank everyone who came to express their opinions and their diversity of opinions and um i think that one thing that coveted really highlighted not that it wasn't in use before was just the appreciation of our green space and the mental health benefits of being outdoors and i think that's something that kind of came to a forefront we reached a spot where we couldn't move forward and we needed to reevaluate our choices and i appreciate the the courage of our staff and of our board to bring forth new ideas and new thinking and look at the available options and say you know did we truly receive all the information we needed in the most transparent way
124the first go-round and if not how can we do better and how can we work with what we have to make the best solution for our community and for estancia and valuing the estancia school and zone as a whole and i would just like to support you thank everyone for coming out i know a lot of you were out to speak to us before at the board meeting that we got canceled right in the middle of people speaking so thank you thank you for coming back again to speak to us thank you mom all right all right thank you then we'll go to roll royal culvert student board member nicole mcmillan yes trustee bartow yes trustee montoya yes christy crane yes trustee anderson yes trustee or schuyler yes trustee wikand yes trustee elsie yes all
125right moving on to 20c first reading and adoption of modifications to board policy no we don't have them so we have to open up okay is it up is it will be on the screen can it be on the screen that's what it also usually does um that's okay you okay we just haven't done that yeah the last time we did it we had just had the group represent the edits that they had made and they weren't up there on the screen because we've done it once with this new process and then the committee just said here's what we discussed here are the edits we made but i'm just getting them out of my bag okay okay so then um we'll have the edit committee i guess would they'd like to present uh yes we'll
126offer this one is this one also on 20c if you guys don't have it i've got my copy with me okay i speak we have first danielle m and then brian dozer okay um i just thought it was very interesting and whether or not maybe i'm just up here saying this to make other people aware who might be watching who might not have looked into all the little details of all the changes being made but the policy changes in regards to infectious diseases was interesting and the changes are talking about age-appropriate information about the nature and symptoms of communicable diseases transmission um these are going to be given in health class maybe i'm not sure how this is going to be put out there to students um it also mentions let's see prevention mitigation education
127communication and training of students and staff so i'm just confused as to where that happens if that's in a quote-unquote health class and what kind of diseases and most importantly the in the blue in in one of the changes it says if the local health health officer notifies the district of an outbreak of a communicable disease or the imminent and proximate threat of a communicable disease outbreak or epidemic that threatens the public's health the district shall take any action deemed necessary to control the spread of the disease what does any mean can we get a definition of any what what kind of action does any include that is so broad um i mean are you talking about keeping kids home from school are you talking about keeping certain kids home from school are you talking
128about testing i mean what is any that is that is that encompasses way too much um students and staff shall be taught age-appropriate ways to observe universal precautions in order to prevent exposure of blood-borne pathogens or other body fluids to prevent the spread of infectious disease what are we talking about there like condoms body fluids or i mean it's very general and it doesn't say we're getting rid of a lot um and compacting it down so i'm just define any i guess and what kind of training are we talking about and where is this supposedly taking place thank you for answering any question if you'd like any was one of my questions so let's wait till we get to yeah because we have two comments questions yeah let's wait till we get to our discussion
129please um brian dozer good evening good evening president bartow um board members and dr smith i apologize i filled out for the non-agendized items to um just introduce myself so i don't know that it's appropriate that i'd be up here at this time so um well thank you for coming up okay uh should we have them up during rop reports is that best okay why don't we during the board informal reports we talk about rop wonderful all right thank you so much all right so i believe i need a motion and a second to begin our discussion so may i get a motion so moved second okay thank you so um may i ask the policy edit team to explain miss anderson that's that was yours can you can you first identify who the the
130three are yes yes thank you i am trustee mattoya our names are on there that's okay um i had a question as well about any any can mean no action so it can like the one one of the things that we um wanted to be really clear was that we can take any information from public agencies and we can choose to act on it and we can also our action can be that we don't we choose to not move forward so it's um any action is vague and the fact that it lets us have more leeway so a board policy is something that we try to make them as broad as possible and then the ar the administrative regulations that follow them are the more nuanced information and components and um this also too directly
131follows the health and safety code so some of the items that are part of this and as well as the administering medicines some of them are ed codes some of them are governmental codes and some are health and safety codes so we have to comply with them in some way but one of um yeah so i just wanted to clarify what what any means because that that was one of my questions too uh my question is how we i noticed there a lot in health and safety code is it because and i i'm not asking a rhetorical question i actually don't know um is it in this specific case because the healthy and safety code was updated that we're taking this action to our board policy was that how this came about so if i
132can jump in here thank you um uh it wasn't because of um necessarily any updates the last time this board policy had been updated was 2009 and i gave direction to my staff to look through the policies and and start to kind of bring them forward so over the course of the next few months you're going to see a lot from special ed health services and student services just in terms of being able to update our policies moving forward so all of these excuse me are the latest updates that we've gotten on that information but it wasn't it didn't trigger us to have to oh my time is up it didn't trigger us to have to make those changes thank you um this is just the uh turf one um so that it's just one
133of them okay were there any other discussions on additional policies i'd like um i i have a policy on 13 30 on a bp can i comment now okay um yeah okay school facilities for polling places first paragraph i i had discussions on that yes okay i have a question okay it had to do with um the clause one second first paragraph it had to do with storage facilities as being a storage facility oh here it is the board may authorize this use of school buildings it's polling places on any election day and may also authorize the use of school buildings without cost for the storage of voting machines and other vote tabulating devices so i didn't i didn't know that we're responsible for storing machines that you know and can help can you expand
134on that yes who who said yes oh good go for it i'm sorry go ahead trusty i'm sorry no please we had a lengthy discussion regarding this and just know that if a school district is is going to be used or a school site facility is going to be used for a polling place that there is going to be basically set up and tear down so it's not like we're a storage facility for a long-term commitment to voting machines and or anything else that comes from the voter the registrar's office but if we do or were to agree to be a polling place we would have to house those items for a temporary amount of time which means our agreement would include um a safe secure location for those select items they get dropped off
135x number of days before the election we have to make sure they're safe 90 of the time it's the multi-purpose room but then they get stored back where the music chairs and the music tables are so it can be a locked door but so that happens a lot well because i you know with the issue of election integrity these days and everything i don't think the district needs to be involved in any type of machine that we would have to defend the safety of does that make sense it does and that is something that we don't have to necessarily do and we had a lengthy discussion about that in the group discussing the fact that we don't have to sign up to be a polling place and that we haven't done that in quite some
136time just because in a school school district it's also a challenge because our students are typically in session on election days and so it becomes a problematic to be able to secure um to secure students away from the voting centers but however you know if if that was something that the district wanted to move forward with we wanted to become a polling place we would have to look at that okay i i think it's wonderful when when schools host polling places because it's a great um lesson in civic engagement um and i love seeing the kids be involved saying oh what's going on that's kind of their first curiosity about voting but i was just worried about the storage part of things so just so we're sensitive to that thank you trustee weigant i just
137wanted to say to the committee thank you for adding a blurb in here about the athletic feeder programs i know we've had some community engagement about that and their concern about utilizing our facilities and we have some beautiful facilities um that have been built recently that are great for our feeder programs to be used so thank you for adding that it's one step forward to keeping our um letting our schools be used by the public more often so thank you trustee crane i also wanted to uh thank you for updating the costs the the um the fee the fee schedule for the fields because i know that um uh when we had we were having a discussion a few months back i do know that other cities um charge way more and we're under value
138i mean we're under market we need to so i'm glad that we are now um keep you know updating our our fees thank you and in addition to being able to support our community we are also striving to make sure that we maintain our own fields for our students which is the primary purpose of building the fields so we have to find a way to share and keep everything still wonderful for 10 years lance bignick did most of the work on this policy so um we're very pleased to be able to bring this forward to you tonight and because i have the microphone in front of me i'm answering the questions but um he's out in the audience to make sure i don't make any mistakes thank you lance um are there any other comments
139about any other policies otherwise i'd like to go back to 51 42 22 the um infectious diseases one okay um i would like to propose that we revisit this one there's a few typos but also i think there's a couple areas in which regardless of politics we might be exposing ourselves to some violations i think we've never been in a pandemic before and i think a lot of this was written um when we had routine diseases and i'm looking you know and i i see a lot yeah i just see a lot of things that go to flues and colds and the purpose of this was you know teaching things like washing hands things like that that are age-appropriate um and then you know different things for high school i i do think that we
140should take a look at if the local health officer notifies the district of an outbreak because i think in addition to the health and safety code we need to build in some provisions for us and so i'd love to just talk either with our legal counsel or with other school districts for best practices because the other ones are a little more routine in nature and their routine updates this this one i just see a couple things that um because we are in turf and things like that don't um we can we can enforce those differently with our administrative regulations with this i see that we have some updates in the way we interact with the health department um that we should probably just revisit this a couple times so i'd love to bring it to
141a second reading or take a review of it that would be my preference well i i believe this is just the first reading yes we're not approving it yes you do as a matter of practice when you've had your in the past edit committee that can count as a first reading you do have the option with this item to adopt it but it's it's very very practical to bring it back if after that edit and then your consideration you want to visit it again so you do have the option to do it but you also it's very appropriate to bring it back i i agree with trustee bartow actually on both of these i would like to just digest it a little bit and bring it back for a final read and a second read
142and approval um for both of them actually which uh b514122 so the one that really stuck out to me and there's other things but the students with infectious diseases um where the ones where we're talking about on-campus instruction and we're talking about uh blood-borne pathogens i just want to make sure that a we're in accordance in accordance with any laws and rules in terms of how we can educate students or include or exclude all of that's recently changed i think that that's um before we get ourselves in a situation where we have an unenforceable board policy it'd be worthwhile to review this one and the other ones look fine i don't have any changes for the other ones um can i have a point of clarification on the um agenda there is three attachments and
143i only see here printed out in front of us two yes um do you have that agenda online in front of you yeah so it's the very it's 20 administering medication okay but then there's the infectious disease review as well that's 22. so medication this is 21 and then yes i should clarify 51 41 22 is infectious diseases and 51 41 22 is the administering medication and monitoring health conditions both are regarding health i was speaking regarding 51 41 22. okay thank you i am in agreement to um 51 41 41.22 to let's just you know good first reading let's go through it and look it over again and make some comments and and you know consult legal and consult see what other districts are doing as well trustee matoy my suggestion is we take
144these one at a time that sounds great and just decide is this a one reading and we pass it is this not because so that way we could yeah maybe be only four or nine sounds good lose my streak okay take too long tonight it's not me not so sure no would you let me would you like me to make a motion to approve board policy 1330. so we'll need to or how do you want to do them in order so we have the first reading adoption of modifications to board policy we have a motion in a second which means we need to let that we need to create a subsequent motion i always i always do this incorrectly let it die no one votes in favor of it okay all right so then we'll
145do uh yeah we have to do a roll call vote for this one and it will not pass we'll do a second one okay so a question are we gonna do we have to lump them all together or can we separate them the current motion is all of them together and so you want to separate them got it we do it together let the motion die with no support okay yeah so that that's my clarification because i didn't you do need to still do the roll call vote and that needs to die thank you all right so uh roll call vote student board member nicole mcmillan no trustee bartow no trustee mattoya no trustee crane no trustee anderson no trustee or solo no trustee weigand no trustee elsie no okay and trustee crane would you
146like to propose an alternate motion i would like to move to adopt board policy 1330 as edited from our um edit committee as a first reading and wave the second reading then i have i have a comment after there's a second one a second okay what i would like to know is was this the this revision passed through the principles at the schools because i know i wanted them to be very involved in what was going on here because they are so entwined with our community organization so i just want to make sure that they are in agreement with this policy um before we get to the final approval kirk's shaking yes yeah everyone's shaking their heads because um dr bauermeister you know dr torres they were very involved with our site prince website principals
147walked through the recommendation of staff makes recommendation to this group that then make some edits and recommendations to you they were very supportive of this and moreover josh was in communication keeping people apprised of where we were so there were no surprises in in the community so it was it was well received by them moreover communicated broadly uh with respect to certain zones i i guess just for next time because i think we all got this sent to us so for next time do we want to only like make the edits in this meeting or my understanding was if people had questions they would send wes dr smith the comments and then we would make edits and talk about it today just so we save time i think what we need to do is get
148our procedures clarified i agree yes so that would be we could send our edits but this kind of plays to what the doing the business of the board in public and so if we have edits that we want to send to you we can but we still need to have the discussion absolutely okay and and there's also a lot of value to uh community input during uh public comments that could also affect you know our changes so that's it's important to also do it in the public trustee you'll see you're like that was from before okay all right so it's been moved and seconded bamford will call out student board member nicole mcmillan yes trustee bartow yes trustee matoya yes trustee crane yes trustee anderson yes trustee air solo trustee wegandt yes trustee elsie yes
149okay so moving on to uh do i have a motion to would you like to move that we approve policy number 5141.21 administering medication monitoring health conditions and waive the second reading a second okay thank you so may we have a rule called student board member nicole mcmillan yes trustee bartow yes trustee mattoya yes trustee crane yes trustee anderson yes christy weigand yes trustee elsie yes okay so then we would have may i have a motion to approve first reading of board policy 5141.22 and then review at a second reading sir you'll bring it back for a second oh and bring it back for a second reading did you move it make the motion um trusty anderson moves second trusty crane roll call vote student board member nicole mcmillan yes trustee bartow yes trustee mattoya
150yes trustee crane yes trustee anderson yes trustee wigan yes trustee elsie yes may i make a suggestion yes between now and the next board meeting which is when we won't be voting on that um i think we should make notes and jot things down and if there are certain questions perhaps we can direct them to dr jockham because she's our guru for all things health and welfare any time so that way she's prepared with what our concerns are and has the answers for us at the next you can get into me we should be getting them to dr smith because that's our procedure i'm so sorry and he'll work with dr jacob i think it's always great to have mary gracika here she is a fountain of information so i would love to have her
151because i think we have pretty detailed questions and she would know them yeah there's a lot of normally not so much specific litigation on these sorts of things until the last couple years yep right so moving on to 20d approved the budget for renovation of npr stage at east bluff elementary school so moved second okay it's been moved and seconded trustee crane seconded by trustee mattoya may have a discussion i think missus yeah it was discussion trustee i thought other people were discussing um i am i'm very supportive of this i'm a little um perplexed of why this would be something that would be presented to us on a discussion action item because it normally is a type of thing that we just routinely approve when we've worked with foundations or or or school groups
152that want to fund something at their school and they've worked with the people in the business area to get it approved and i understand this is something that will eventually is on the list um in terms of priorities to be done but we have a lot of things on the list and there are priorities but if a school wants to do it in a timely fashion they want it sooner and they have the ability to do this i think we should always support that um we have foundations or or groups or at many of our schools who want to improve the schools um improve their campuses and i think it's important that we allow them if they have the means and the resources to do that to become involved to keep because there are kids
153at a lot of these schools that if we don't allow this type of thing they will leave our schools and they'll say i'm done with public schools i'm going i'm i'm taking my child elsewhere so it doesn't hurt us at all to have our community want to be involved in making their in and improving their schools and i hope we can continue to do that thank you trustee anderson and then trustee matoy thank you um i can answer that i asked to move it to discussion action um because for me it's something that i don't necessarily feel is a routine item um one of the concerns that i have heard from principals for schools that do not have foundations is a feeling of getting pushed down the line for schools that might have a foundation
154because our staff would be the ones that would be fixing this up so i i strongly feel differently that if the school has the means then they can have the project i think particularly one of the schools in my area of ray elementary has a dramatic need for their mpr to be completely renovated and fixed up and they have been asking for a while and so i just i think it would be helpful and will be helpful when we have a facilities master plan to know what the sequence looks like as to when some of the renovations are happening um but i think you know if if we're going to go about this where we we're functioning with schools that don't have a foundation and those that do um i i think for something like
155this specifically um i think the district should be paying for it if it's if it's our stage if they're um you know if there's an ada compliant ramp um if there's a shaky guard rail to me that's on us that the foundation should not be having to pay for that we have ample money um and so i think i would just like to see a systematic approach um i know four out of the five mprs in the zone that i represent are woefully under resourced i will put it lightly and if we're going to go about it this way you know i can go to ikea and ask them to fund it do i think that's appropriate no i think we need to be working within our system that we have so i would i
156would like to see kind of a new approach i think it hasn't been looked at in quite a while we've been doing things one way so i would like to see projects be approached in a different way with perhaps a different philosophy or the chance to talk about it as a board i'm 100 percent in favor of east buff specifically having a designated music space if they do not have that to me that's a problem i think do they need a portable do they we need to figure something out to me that's a bit separate from the npr i spoke with the teacher who does music in this site and the main issue is there's constantly you know there's choir there's something going on and then lunch happens and there's just a lot of shifting
157um and so it wasn't necessarily that it's like the worst stage in our district it's just that there are several kind of underlying factors so i would just like to see some changes when when she tells me at adams elementary she's nervous to stand on the stage that's more concerning to me i think we need we need to address things by um level of either need of repair or a systematic approach thank you i absolutely support this though i don't want you i just i think we need we need a new approach trustee elsie yeah i just wanted to say i think it's great that you announced that ray is in need of some work because unfortunately there's probably not a lot of people listening now i wish there were as many as we used
158to have two years ago on our meetings because there could be you know we're looking at community schools and we're looking at community community involvement and there could be some ikeas or or people out there who want to donate money to a school to provide something so i think it's great that all of us get out in our communities where there may be schools that can't raise the money from parent donations there may be other groups out there that would help us do some of these things in those places so my comments are i was principal at east bluff for six and a half years they need a new stage they they needed a new stage 12 20 years ago it's it isn't even close to being like a typical elementary multi-purpose room stage so
159even if music had to be on there it's just not there and what's there is definitely ready to be replaced i i never want to say no to parents that want to help support their school it's every pta does what they can everyone does what they have to we have many funding sources that go to schools that don't have foundations that are that so the foundations then pick up the slack so i have no problem talking about having a study session to look at how we do things and that's a whole separate issue but since this is one above the board i just think that we need to move forward and get it done and every multi-purpose room in the district needs help they do other than that other than the three and soon to
160be four brand new theaters they they are all hurting and well it seems like we could just go in and just fix them and it's not it's almost like we might as well just tear them down and rebuild them because there's so many ada things from the fact that they were built 57 years ago so that's i'd like to call for the vote oh i just wanted to add i've never been so excited to approve a piece of software on consent calendar ever with our facility software because that's going to help with our issue overall yes keeping track of where we are and moving forward with things and being able to schedule our very complicated district so um thank you all right so i'm going to call for the roll call vote student board member
161nicole mcmillan yes trusty bartow yes justin mattoya yes trustee crane yes of course anderson yes trustee weigand yes trustee elsie yes all right and then moving on to 21 resolution adoption calendar adopt resolution number 19-03-22 withdrawal from the alliance of schools cooperative insurance program a skip and declaration of membership in southern california regional liability excess fund so calvary mr trader the district um much like um everyone who has homeowners insurance or car insurance or those kinds of things we carry property and liability insurance and that is a a primary protection for the district the district has been a member of ace kip since 1991 and they've been a great partner and uh it's been a good fit for quite some time on occasion though we shop our services and we look at what the market
162offers and in looking at the market offers we've found a provider that fits our our needs and so you have before you a resolution to move from a skip to southern california relief and it's been vetted by our director of risk management mr jonathan will be and this is our recommendation to you there's i'm sorry and let me just mention there there is a projected five-year savings of approximately 679 thousand dollars there's a broader coverage with higher limits and complete access to the safe schools trainings thank you jeff might i add and if this is inaccurate please let me know but there are also because of the extensive coverage this policy would provide a chance for us to look at other coverage that costs us several hundred thousand dollars a year so besides the projected
163savings the level of coverage here would not this next year but in out years free up even more than the projected 670 thousand dollars yes on the access site yeah um and i just want to clarify because i brought this up in our agenda prep but um this is an agency that you guys have worked with in the past so we're not moving from the the known to the unknown for the sake of savings that's correct we use this uh firm for our workers comp side thank you okay trustee anderson and then trustee elsie thank you um yet again i'm very excited that we finally hired somebody to handle risk management so thank you i love seeing a recommendation for something coming from that um i had a question about how this impacts fund 17
164which is currently co-label i mean there's a couple of purposes for it but under um the treasury report and our and our agenda it's called the a skip stabilization fund so how will it impact fund 17 just change the name or uh you know that's interesting um uh yeah we would change the name i suppose because that really has a um an origination from uh insurance uh sometimes um we would get for example a rebate if we had a a good year in that terms in those terms we would get a rebate from our insurance company and that money went to fund 17 as a stabilization fund in the event that uh we would have a bad year so uh we probably need to rename that will it still be the same though with a
165new company would that still kind of come up that would still be in we would get money back there'd still be money going into that fund for that purpose well you know that um that's individual and um that may or may not happen uh i uh and it was not a regular thing uh with a skip either so um it could or could not happen depending on how our performance thank you i'll make the motion okay dlc i was just going to make a mode is that what you were going to do go ahead i was just so moved okay second second okay it's moved by trustee anderson and seconded by trustee elsie roll call vote student board member nicole mcmillan yes trustee bartow yes trustee mattoya yes trustee crane yes trustee anderson yes trustee
166weigand yes trustee elsie yes thank you and moving on to item 22 informal reports so no applause in the audience but tonight i'll be very brief i told you when i came to this community at your direction and because of my bias that i would be in the community listening participating i spoke at the wake up newport beach some time ago and because of that good deed i was asked to serve on the board the chamber board for newport beach and so i was able to attend our first meeting and hear about the things going on in the community and they asked about education so it's a great chance for us to talk about what we're doing to provide a stable uh and just amazingly awesome workforce for them and the quality of our schools
167helps them do work and then i can hear what's going on in the business community so we had our first meeting and i'll continue to report back if there are specifics that that affect us and then lastly been in classrooms at school seeing great things flag decks performances i got to go see a rally last week and it was the first time since the pandemic almost three years that cdm had a rally with all four grades in the auditorium and i gotta tell you i was moved it was fun and exciting and and mike and his team and the students are amazing but i was moved because it really felt like if i hadn't been paying attention for three years which i have that i was three years ago at a rally it felt really
168really good the students were so excited they were worried the students wouldn't remember how to celebrate their school their school spirit in a rally they did it was awesome so i just wanted to say it felt good to be on that campus to see those students and again a lot of campuses a lot of students learning a lot of things happening that really struck me last week so right we moved to board member reports committee reports um if if it's all right with you i'm going to invite um brian dozer the president of coastline rop thanks for waiting until the end to introduce himself as my committee report for coastline rop am i on a three minute time limit yes okay um so pardon minute and a half oh okay okay well president bartow board
169members and dr smith thank you very much for welcoming me tonight my name is dr brian dozer i am the new superintendent as of february 1st of coastline regional occupational program just right around the corner and it is my honor to be here and to thank you for your support for um all that we do on the presidio campus which actually is newport mesa unified school district property so we're you know we've been there for i think 50 years now so um but i just wanted to introduce myself and just talk a little bit very briefly about some of my plans for coastline rop as it pertains to some of our students my background is non-traditional for a superintendent of a regional occupational program i spent about 20 plus years in television advertising sales and
170then followed my wife to anheuser-busch in st louis missouri and decided at that point to go back to college go back to school and earn my doctorate in management um with a with an eye towards moving into higher education which i did and i ran the the campus of webster university in irvine for about five years and then i moved to vitalink which you may or may not be aware of i was president of vitalink for the previous two years during the pandemic um absolutely loved that and during that time and kind of at the end of my time at webster what i decided was that i wanted to devote the rest of my career um to impacting students and in particular in career and technical education because i believe that it is an economic
171imperative that we provide students with other options than just four-year or you know flipping burgers there's so much more in the middle and so that's what i'm going to do with the rest of my career at coastline rop as um the superintendent um i have a few key goals um one of the things that's really struts um that i really um noticed when i attended educating for careers was that there were five conferences or five presentations on middle schools and the importance of the growing importance of middle schools um for cte at our school districts and so we're going to undertake some initiatives to actually work with your folks to reach down into the middle schools and start talking to them about college and career exploration and we may partner with some other organizations to
172do that but i think that that's something that can really have an impact i want to spend quite a bit of my time being outside of the four walls of coastline rop generating awareness of career technical education and rops with students and businesses but also with parents and so if there are any parents here and you don't know about rop i would like to talk to you because i believe that parents sometimes can exert influence on their students and help students get into rop rop and cte classes are not just for those that are only going to go to a community college or straight into the workforce they're for all students right research shows that there are positive outcomes for for all students whether they're going to four year two year or straight into the
173workforce through that increasing awareness i hope to build new partnerships and increase collaboration with our district partners i just talked to one of the founders of alteryx yesterday about launching a data analytics program in conjunction with alteryx they have already been working on curriculum they have the platform for it this is one of those areas that is horizontal across all industries we want to be focusing on things like that and other curriculum pathways for careers in emerging technology areas things like cyber security ai ar vr drones cloud computing we actually will have some things coming online this summer for those we have four new summer programs that we're going to be rolling out this year in those areas and then lastly i feel very very strongly that coastline rop and newport mesa along with the
174other four districts we have the best districts we have the best students we are where the businesses that matter in orange county are and so um the the the parents of our students work at those businesses and so they have a vested interest in this and so i'm going to um be working a lot on that to lead from the front i believe coastline rop is the best rop in orange county and i believe we should be leading from the front and and so that's what i will be putting a lot of my efforts on um to dr smith's comment about getting out and visiting schools i'm doing the same thing i actually will be visiting estancia in costa mesa coastline rop classes on thursday and observing those and again thank you for your support
175and thank you for this time thank you before you leave yes thank you i just want to thank you we pride ourselves in providing an education for our students that is relevant to them as well as preparing them to make choices when they graduate but the programs you provide our our students and the other students are relevant to the students they see that what you're teaching them is either fun or hands-on or interesting or could lead to a job or all of those or all of those yes and sometimes they don't understand why english lit was going to matter later on in life but it could if you're on jeopardy so it it is such an important piece that school districts can no longer afford to have so many options we rely on rop and
176we're thrilled to have rop programs so thank you very much and from the bottom of my heart welcome to the best edge of the world well thank you very much thank you um all right so i only had one informal board member report because the rest of us i think we're all at a lot of the same events since the last board meeting but one thing i would really just like to share is i was at newport l for an assembly with um brent poppin which some of you may know he's at a lot of the schools and uh he is a paraplegic who was injured as a high school student and he um used to give assemblies for lots of our elementary kids he's very inspirational and it was really really wonderful to see
177him be able to come back and talk to our students and just the the impact that he had made and kind of where they saw their future going oh and the other thing is i was volunteering at the assistance league and i saw a bunch of our step program students who were back there working and were so excited because that was their first their very first day back they hadn't been back in in three years so that was really fun to work with them that day that's it take a deep breath this is what i did it's a big long list i'm only going to report on the fact that i attended the adams family musical and was again with my theater if you build it they will come and i didn't even realize there
178were two complete casts so they had four shows i laughed through that program it was so funny they did a phenomenal job of casting because you definitely could see the addams family performing it was lots of fun and it's just the beginning of all of our theaters and awards and wonderful things so thank you and our youth sports meeting was just a normal meeting thank you um attended the return of the battle of the books this past week this is it's basically uh where fourth and fifth graders get to read a list of books and they compete against uh the schools can compete against each other in a fun competition and the schools that that were represented were sonora elementary anderson elementary eastwood elementary and olqa and the the really wonderful part is oh our
179lady queen of angels um and the setting was our newport beach civic center and it was wonderful to see the collaboration of using a facility from the city and bring our schools and our kids to that venue is a wonderful um it was a wonderful event we also trustee barto and i hosted a the community alliance for bike and safety initial meeting where we had many representatives from civic leaders business partners in the community that were in yeah that have bike shops we have parent leaders and we wanted to begin a discussion on what we can do as a district and as cities of newport beach and costa mesa to further education on bike safety and awareness it was really a wonderful gathering there was about 20 of us there and it was a very
180good first meeting and then we're going to have next steps and lastly we trustee matoya and i attended the uh community community advisory committee for special ed hosted by uh julian director giuliana sauvao is that how you say her name and uh that the that was a wonderful gathering of parents trustees and the district staff in order to engage parents who um will who need the support because when you have a special needs student where do you go as a parent and how how do you support others that are in the same situation so that was a wonderful first step as well thank you um and then the newport mesa school schools foundation sent us a thank you for the 500 grant that we sponsor every year board members and the lcap community session for
181the corona del mar zone is this thursday um three is it is it tomorrow 3 30 at 6 p.m in the learning resource center which is the library at corona del mar high school please attend if you can and thank you thank you um i several of us attended the latinas unido spring dance at newport harbor high school it was very crowded there were so many kids there and i just want to commend dr bolton for the intentionality and support that he has given latinos unidos is now one of the biggest clubs on campus and the intentionality around cultural integration on the campus is really remarkable particularly coming from where things were so it was just a wonderful event i think we all had a lot of fun when we were there um and then
182i also just wanted to say thank you to vanessa galey um the last elac was the best one that we've ever had so thank you for the very authentic and engaging community engagement with the parents and hearing their perspectives and thank you sarah coley for speaking on positive and restorative discipline the parents that i sat with at my table loved her conversation and then lori hogart shared about summer school it was like extremely relevant everyone got to stand up and get very engaged so it was a lovely wonderful time so thank you um i have two things i'll talk about one was the city of newport liaison meeting and we attended with um trustee lc and trustee crane and it was great we talked about obviously cabs bike safety but more importantly we talked about
183after school programs and summer programs that are going to utilize our facilities um and then we we did discuss the opportunities that we do have with the california department of education um for their after-school types of programs and how we can collaborate when we get to that point um but they do some great work um in the city of newport um by collaborating with our schools for after school programs um another thing uh uh one little piece i go to obviously mariners flag deck a lot but one thing that struck me uh was that they were raising funds for uh refugees from the ukraine and uh one uh student and his family went to poland to help out these refugees and what they're doing is they're zooming with the kids this week to show the
184kids where their donations are going so there's boxes in each classroom to donate money and and in in one week they they uh they uh received about 1200 or sorry yeah 1200 and uh which is great for one week and the boxes will be there for for uh weeks going on but um zooming with our students from an area that looks a lot different than uh refugees in ukraine and refugees that that are now in poland and displaced with maybe just a backpack i think it's a very good way for our students to be able to step outside their little bubble and and have a world view of what um children are experienced through experiencing throughout the world and to give back so it was heartwarming and okay broken sorry um i just wanted to
185mention two just generalizations one i know all of us have been out to some of our area schools in the past two weeks since the mask mandate was lifted and some observations that i had one there are some students who are still wearing masks and no one that i encountered or any principal i talked to has seen any mass shaming or saying why are you wearing a mask everything everybody just accepts people not wearing masks people wearing masks and so it's really it's been that's been great but also just to see at the schools over the past two weeks the amount of enthusiasm and engagement from students especially at younger classes i've told this to a couple people i went to an elementary school a second grade class at newport coast and the teacher i
186tried to stand in the background when i go in but she knew me and she said oh mrs yelcy she's on the school board here does anybody have any questions for and a little girl raised her hand like that and she said to me can i come give you a hug and i said sure and then three other kids said raise your hand can i give you a hug and i said sure we'll have a group hug and you know what that was like the best time ever doing that and the kids just have smiles on their faces they're just so happy to be doing what they feel is normal and along those lines um dr smith talked about being out and i just want to thank you so much for how much you were
187out in the community and how much you just if you if we tell you something we go i was at newport coast jog-a-thon and then went to battle of the bay and i saw him there i go if you have some time you may want to stop at newport coast because it was the first day that parents were also allowed on campus so there were a lot of them and they were thrilled to be there and be involved and he actually went up there and you know took a few minutes to go meet with the parents up there which was really nice and uh mentioned to him about the rally and i go if you ever want to see a high school rally you should go to this and he changed another appointment so he
188could go so i just want to thank you for always just being out there and meeting all the parents they very much appreciate it thank you can i close the meeting yes nicole i don't want to put you on the spot but if you had anything you wanted to share that's great but if you're you're all reported out for tonight that's great all right thank you thank you all right um i'm going to adjourn the meeting i'm going to let trustee anderson thank you um yeah i just i wanted to close this meeting in honor of barbara van holt she was a long time drama teacher and english teacher i had her for ap english at estancia and a majority of students that went through essancia had her at some point um and she the
189last conversation that i had with her she said please name the theater after me it's my legacy to be on this campus um and so i i that's one reason the theater project has been so important to me um so i just i would love if there's a way that we can honor her um maybe like i know in the past we've done certain things but i know a lot of people didn't know i didn't know so um i'm not sure what we would we could do on campus but i just would like to do something special in her memory thank you so we adjourn the meeting in memory of barbara van holtz at 8 49 pm thank you very much