001good afternoon everyone um this is our regular our meeting of august 17th 2021 roll call please trustee you'll see here trustee bartow here trustee montoya here trustee wagon here trustee anderson trustee crane here trustee your soyulu here dr banzer here adoption of the agenda um and before we make a motion i would like to move item 18a after 14a on the agenda so we would have a discussion action of that item after a report so do i have a motion so moved second uh moved by trustee mattoya seconded by trustee crane roll call vote trustee yossi yes trustee barto yes trustee matoya yes trustee wagon yes trustee anderson trustee crane yes trustee your soil yes community input on closed session agenda items i do not see anyone here for community input so no need to
002read we will now move into closed session the items are for a threat to public services or facilities 4b conference with labor negotiator 4c and public employee discipline dismissal release employment and 4d student discipline 1 case we will return at 6 pm thank you i'm calling the meeting to order at 6 00 p.m according to this clock i've been told we're two minutes off but we're starting here at 6 p.m opening ceremonies with a moment of reflection and pledge to the flag led by trustee anderson please rise 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 before we get to the agenda i have um [Music] before we get to the agenda
003i have something i'd like to read when the board of education is in session all persons present must preserve safety and order no person shall engage in conduct that disrupts disturbs or otherwise impedes the orderly conduct of the board meeting members of the public should sit in the seats provided unless addressing the board or entering or leaving the board room should not block the aisles with personal belongings and should mute sell telephones or pagers any person who disrupts the meeting shall be called to order by the board president if such conduct continues the board president may request the person to leave the boardroom until they can they can conduct themselves in a non-disruptive manner any board member may move to require the board president to enhance the rules and the affirmative vote of a majority
004of the board shall require him or her to do so carol is frozen rosie carol is frozen move move adoption of the minutes from 7 13 21 and 8 12 21. do you have a motion i move to adopt the minutes second motion made by trustee bartos seconded by trustee weigan roll call vote trustee elsie yes trustee barto yes trustee mattoya yes trustee wagon yes trustee anderson yes trustee crane no answer can she do a thumbs up just your soil yes okay um association presidents uh welcome back uh we'll first start with pam saunders president cse good evening president yelsey board interim superintendent doc hank banks are cabinet and guest thank you for this opportunity from csea first and foremost we'd like to welcome back and thank all of our classified employees throughout the district
005for all their hard work and dedication especially during this pandemic at times prioritizing the district over their families csea has been an integral part in getting us where we are to do and must continue to help to lead the way to educational normalcy we look forward to the positive impact and student growth our members have done a great job and have always said yes since the beginning of the pandemic we are the ones that have always been there to support students and district needs no matter the circumstances as the district plans to reopen we will continue to follow the rules as outlined by newport mesa with all agencies taken into account csu wants to ensure that classified members needs and concerns will be addressed especially with the changes regarding mass social distances and vaccinations as
006per newport mesa guidelines and following all the rules of all agencies we are looking forward to the ample notification we are looking forward to ample notification should any guideline changes for classified employee be needed we appreciate all the time spent with us in negotiations we look forward to further collaboration with you on 2mou summer assistance program and mer's miscellaneous earning report these will help strengthen our employees and will be a huge benefit for all of them thank you for listening to the to the importance of everything we had discussed regarding all of our employees we would also like to welcome and acknowledge dr hank bankser our new interim superintendent again thank you for this opportunity csca chapter 18. thank you very much thank you and president all water and welcome this is your first meeting
007with us hello good evening i am far less prepared than that it's been a busy couple days my name is sarah allwater i'm the president of nmft i look forward to working with everyone this year and working on behalf of our wonderful teachers and service providers i was a teacher at pomona elementary for many years and i've worked on my executive board and as a site rep and enjoyed this work and i'm i'm pleased to take this challenge just before me to work with and on behalf of teachers with you for the betterment of our wonderful district and this is a very challenging time i know that and we all know that it's not easy and this last round of negotiations if that's any indication of the kinds of things we can do together wonderful
008i think we can do more of that we are cautiously optimistic right now with getting back to school i encourage all of us to just listen and see how it's going modify as needed hopefully gain support of what we need to do from the community and all the stakeholders we look forward to continuing in being a process of selecting the new superintendent no offense hank we met there's just so many things that uh we can do together and we look forward to that and in these next few weeks we see how it's going we're all really worried about how it's gonna work and i know firsthand i know that no one gave us specific exact directions for what we need to do and sometimes that's the impression but it isn't it's it's not we don't
009have the memo of this is exactly how it's going to go so i'm i'm looking forward to really high levels of communication i know i'll do that on my part with everyone and excited about doing this together and thank you very much for this opportunity to speak to you tonight good evening thank you uh item 11 introduction of staff uh mr drake yes uh thank you president elsie uh and dr banks here it really is a pleasure this evening to to be able to introduce to you our kind of new director of nutrition services and i say kind of new because todd hatfield has been in our district for about 20 years um and and uh for the for his tenure here for the first 10 years todd worked in our accounting department as an
010account accounting supervisor and it was actually in 2013 when todd transitioned over to nutrition services as the coordinator of nutrition services and he's worked in that position since supervising and managing and supporting all of our sites our central kitchen and and even our warehouse when it when it comes to nutrition services beyond nutrition services todd has been an integral contributor contributor and i can attest to this in my days in human resources as well todd's been on our joint benefits committee for 17 years and really is a historian who brings a lot to that group uh in relation to support and information and he's also part of our emergency operations center and then this past school year unique in many many different ways as we know todd served our district and our community as the
011interim director of nutrition services as the previous director uh retired towards the end of last year and it was under his leadership uh and his team where he and his team served over a million four hundred thousand uh meals uh to our community and and to our kids just just in the uh an incredible job he did it all with a smile um he's an extremely effective communicator highly respected in the district um and from my perspective he really is the definition of servant leader he takes every situation and works it through with grace and humility and we are really lucky to have him as our director of nutrition services and so i'd like to introduce to you our our new director of nutrition services todd hadfield [Applause] well thank you so much mr drake
012after that introduction i don't think there's very much to say so president yelsey members of the board mr bangser members of cabinet and and uh guests just wanted to say thank you so much i'm honored for this opportunity i'm grateful to be serving in the nutrition services department i'm so grateful to be part of such a wonderful team and work with such a wonderful staff and i i'm glad for you know i'm grateful for what we were able to accomplish during the pandemic and i look forward to offering our students uh even better levels of service and higher quality food as we continue to keep moving forward um returning to normal operations during the upcoming school year so again thank you so much and look forward to continuing work our work with you and thank
013you so much for your support for nutrition services and congratulations on the official announcement we know you've been working hard all this time and we our nutrition services does such an amazing job of so many meals every day day in and day out summer throughout the year and we really appreciate all that you do to uh to support the kids so thanks thank you so much we're expecting big things because we've seen it happen thank you so much appreciate it i wanted to say especially thank you for pivoting and doing so much during coven and making sure that every child in the city was able to take and both cities were able to get food thank you so much thank you trustee anderson [Applause] next we have community input on non-agendized items uh clerk metroid
014this is an opportunity for the public to address the board regarding 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 okay i'm just getting oh okay i'm just getting all of these together um we have different topics so we can have up to 20 minutes only uh 20 minutes on each topic most of these will be easy we have more than we have quite a few comments on mask i will limit it to 20 minutes so that's two i'm going to take two minutes maximum per comment and we'll get through as many as we can and i will be calling about five names in a row so
015you'll know when to come up uh one after the other um the first one is mary lynn gattis good evening uh board of directors uh the new uh interim superintendent welcome into our two board members that are joining us remote my name is marilyn gattis and i'm current resident of newport beach with three children who have graduated from newport harbor and one that is a senior now i have two areas to comment on first as the school year starts i'd like to find out what follow-up the board and the new superintendent have done since the march board meeting when i addressed the hate crimes towards asians and blacks to date there hasn't been a stance condemning this in our district whether it is the nazi red cup party the kkk flyers what is the district
016going to do to make a statement and not tolerate these unacceptable behaviors it is my understanding the whites make up 55 percent hispanic 30 percent and the remaining being asian and black or other in our district what is the plan to make a statement and post it at all the schools that hate crimes will not be tolerated second as a mother of children of color i'd like to show my support of the teaching a critical race theory diversity is having a culture that values uniqueness people of different backgrounds cultures genders and races a critical piece of this is belonging and that makes each individual accepted for who they are i believe the core curriculums that have been developed to open the dialogue are based on historical facts and students need to be educated on these
017facts having open dialogue and having our educators share with the students a space for a difference in opinion by asking questions listening with curiosity empathy and an open mind will only allow more bridges to be built create a way that there is an acknowledgement of feelings of others in yours as a community and a school district can we love not hate life is too short to sit with negative energy anger and hate don't hate or mistreat people just because they have different opinion or their skin color or ethnic background differs from you watch out for biases unconscious racism prejudice the board of education has a decision to make and one should be a way of how we can work towards more inclusion and belonging in our country thank you thank you um juana trejo i
018believe she's outside oops she's outs trustee anderson said she believes she's out in the foyer okay or outside somewhere okay i'll take another one and can someone get her to is this is she here yes okay thank you for the safety of our children and for them to arrive at school safely [Music] so not all children have the luxury of having their parents or someone drive them to school les pedimos the so thank you very much i hope that from the bottom of your your heart you advocate for all of our children gracias thank you [Applause] lucia maisia with me here it's probably mejia mejia can't hear you are we doing this is there a bunch of people on a topic or did they not put a topic um those were all individuals oh okay
019yeah our next level i do have three no i three more with less go ahead my name is lucia mejia my name is um so i'm here to ask you that you do not take bus transportation away from our school um it is a necessity for many of our families i uh personally don't need the service but i know many families that do need the service so that's why i'm here tonight thank you have you could you speak into the microphone it's really hard to hear for both of you um so i'm here tonight uh to ask that bus transportation is not removed from the school um i although i don't need the service there are many families that do need the service so that's why i was here today many of the kids live
020very far away from the school so we need to support all of those who need the support the help because when we are united that makes us stronger thank you [Applause] okay i was given three more so they may be outside i'll call them all at once elena perez alicia esquiville and then we have sarah alwayer so uh elena perez do we want to have people sit in the face and have her sit in the front row so my name is my name is elena perez um this year my child will be starting at t-winkle so we do need the bus transportation i'm here to advocate for that and i ask that you advocate for that for bus transportation there are many other families within the school that need that transportation thank you thank you
021alicia [Applause] buenas tardes my name is alicia is yesterday so i'm here to petition that bunch bus transportation uh stays at our school we need it um i have nieces for example that live on shalamar drive they have to go to newport harbor and it's really difficult for them to get there i know many families that need bus transportation and for example there are three bus stops that go to twinkle wilson costa mesa i see that every morning i see many children walking to school so that's the reason why i'm here tonight is [Music] is so i live i live in by the ray uh ray uh zone we walk to school so we're lucky that we can walk there but i might be moving to another area where i might need bus transportation so
022that's why i ask you all to consider keeping bus transportation for all of our schools and i i agree with everyone who has spoken about bus transportation so i'd like to thank you thank you sarah sarah good evening again so i work right across the street from ray or worked and i've seen i'm worried about this because i've personally seen or almost seen where the ambulance comes two accidents at pomona and the first street in from victoria and it happens in a lot of a lot of places because people just aren't looking and one of the one of the people hit was the crossing guard and another and the other and they were both okay but and the other person was um uh was hit when and it was an adult was hit when the
023crossing guard was gone that day um it's just like clockwork and then with more people driving erratically it seems lately because of covid and the reduction in police service i mean ever you know it's just it's kind of a crazy uh environment out there on the road and um i hope that somehow we can provide that busing even though it's going to be an expense because it is a very dangerous area over there and i'd be concerned about the stars being aligned and something happening thank you thank you [Applause] okay the next group are regarding mass so i'm going to call four names at a time and if you could sit in the seats up front just to be ready we'll start with henry henny abraham uh then chris jones then libby frolichmann and lindsay
024murad so henny hi thank you good evening um thank you for allowing us to speak again this is wonderful um i'm speaking on cdc recommendations in the mask mandate is one of them did you know that for children ages three to five they recommend activity throughout the day because it is crucial to their growth i pulled out the out of the cdc's website and i'll be sending you a copy of the studies children ages through to 17 60 minutes per day of physical activity now correct me if i'm wrong but we only have about 50 minutes twice a week for physical activity for pe right now next study is about nutritional recommendations per cdc limit sugary drinks i know water is available to all of our kids but so is chocolate milk and he also
025says that they encourage family to drink lots of water i have yet to see a water bottle in a lunch bag plenty of fruits and vegetables the little carrots are great but it is not sufficient for their growth and also it says include low-fat or non-fat milk or dairy products including cheese and yogurt did you know whether it's non-fat low-fat or whole milk every cup of milk has 12 grams of sugar it's natural sugar but it's still sugar so that by itself contradicts their next recommendation of limiting sugary drinks if you're going to take recommendations from an organization that i personally have worked for as a pharmacy technician and i followed the recommendation why are we not implementing everything why why are we picking choosing i know masks are there for a reason but where
026is the encouragement of healthy eating for our kids where is the encouragement where is the policing of you know what make sure you're eating healthy where is the water drinking psas where is it it hasn't been there so please let's teach everything and make sure our kids are healthy because healthy immune system is crucial right now thank you so much thank you chris jones hello board members my name is chris jones and i'm the mother to four children ages 11 8 6 and 4. i have the responsibility and privilege to demonstrate to my children that we will not live our life in fear i'm shocked that after 17 months of this pandemic we are still talking about how to manage this virus here's the kicker the reason we are no further ahead is because we
027are implementing the wrong mandates over and over again we are not listening to actual facts and science we are listening to the cdc who have contradicted themselves at every turn what we do know and many studies and statistics have confirmed chronovirus like all viruses are spread by tiny aerosol particles small enough to pass through masks including one by the nih please look at the side of the box of your masks they blatantly state they do not eliminate the risk of contracting any disease or infection what about the physical and psycholog psychological damage we are inflicting on our children the short and long-term effects of trying to breathe through a spit and sweat-soaked masked masks collect and colonize viruses bacteria and mold they decrease oxygen in the blood and elevate carbon dioxide levels just to name
028a few masking our child children is child abuse plain and simple several school districts have already approved mass choice in the state of california including alpine rocklin wheatland and sutter we would like to join forces with those school districts how can we in good conscience tell parents and children that after two months of enjoying life and the freedom of mass choice thriving in summer camps and playing at the park with friends it is now time to muzzle our children yet again in a bacterial soaked rag i want to thank you today for your time for hearing our voices for your support and for putting mask choice on the agenda for september 14th thank you very much [Applause] i want to clearly state that i support the governor's mandate that everyone in school must wear be
029wearing a mask science is proof please i didn't interrupt your speaker science has proven that mass significantly reduced the spread of covid and until our young children can be vaccinated it is the best protection available no one should be allowed onto any campus unless they are masked and no one should be allowed to remain on campus if they remove their mask our freedoms end at the tip of someone else's nose we are not free to risk someone else's life by potentially spreading a disease that can kill or leave a lifetime of consequences although i have heard of many cases of children being hospitalized for covid i haven't heard of any child hospitalized for not being able to breathe due to a mask thank you thank you lindsay murad if point of order please can we
030please read this ability code this is a public meeting we are not booing people that is part of our civility code and we will stop and it will be part of the 20 minutes so be nice if everybody would be respectful of the speaker up at the podium thank you thank you my name is lindsey murad i'm speaking to you today as a parent of a third grader and a first grader in this district i'm also a licensed mental health professional as you know the last year and a half has resulted in cost beyond measure because of covid i've seen the toll as taken on my own kids despite my attempts of recovering them and i've seen the pain in my clients as anxiety depression and isolation from covert restrictions rose and resulted in the
031busiest season of my career i am sure you have stories to tell too probably including the pressure you feel in these roles and responsibilities as board members i appreciate you sitting as representatives of the people of this district at this time i'm asking you to stand against the cdph mandates on schools with their coveted restrictions there is lack of science of our kids needing to wear masks and an abundance of sign saying masks are hurting our children you probably don't need me to remind you that youth related suicide behavior rates have increased significantly in the last year the youth aren't dying from covid but we have to face the reality of the damage being done by the ongoing restrictions being placed on them i know you have limitations because of state mandates pushing down on
032you but i know you care about children you wouldn't be here if you didn't despite these limits you still have things you can do you can be our voice a voice of the people who elected you and gather here tonight and want the choice of making decisions for the well-being of our children winston churchill once said fear is a reaction courage is a decision i'm asking you to stand in courage and conviction by making resolutions to remove any mandatory required requirements for preventative measures such as masks quarantines and asymptomatic testing be the advocates for parental choice when it comes to masking and vaccinating our own children use the board of resolution on cdbh guidance from the let them breathe organization as your guide for creating this you have people who've elected you to push back
033on the state mandates and tell the state you want the control back for this community thank you okay [Applause] the next four jessica gibson barbie george dory crepton and ali burchette jessica hi my name is jessica gibson i studied emergency medicine was a paramedic and i've been in the healthcare biotech and pharmaceutical industry for almost 20 years most importantly i am a mother of two amazing kids going to kindergarten and first grade and i'm here today as a tax paying woman to ask you to provide parents that elected you the choice on the medical decisions that are applied to their children the application of medical procedures have to have benefits outweighing the risks and there has never contrary to what you may have heard been a case-controlled study evaluating the benefit and effectiveness of masks
034in the spread of stars coveted especially in children that have less than a one in a million chance of contracting and dying of covid they have had greater risk of contracting and dying of the in seasonal influenza and this has never been a consideration previously to force masks on our children based on the cdc's own evidence evaluating 14 randomized controlled trials for influenza virus in non-healthcare settings there is and i quote no reduction in viral transmission with the use of face masks additionally under fda's own emergency use authorization on april 24 2020 page 4.4 required that mass products must state or imply that the product is not intended for antimicrobial antiviral protection or related use or in the use of infection prevention or reduction the burden of proof is to show the evidence additionally there
035is significant harm that is occurring to our children psychologically emotionally and even physically a publication that came out in 2015 a randomized trial showed that cloth masks actually increase influenza-like symptoms and because of the moisture and bacterial retention and increased potential for bacterial bacterial pneumonia and other respiratory conditions if you're operating under the auspices that mandating medical treatment to a low-risk group i.e children is designed to protect a higher risk adult population i would like to share a little copy of something i carry in my big mom purse which is the constitution the constitution is law and it supercedes ever-changing opinions recommendations guidelines or even mandates please support our choice thank you [Applause] good day my name is barbie george and i am the mother of five children two that are in the newport mesa
036school district i'm here today because um and i don't i didn't want this to be personal but it's going to have to be the children and i see their faces they're miserable and they can't see each other's smiles they can't communicate with each other my youngest she requires speech therapy and most of the children can't even understand what she says because they usually lip read and she lip reads and it's such a anxious situation to fidget and fuss with the mask now my my daughter is uh multi-racial and she has very big wiry hair and it would get in the way of the mask and she would touch and pull and tug on the mask and the teacher would reprimand her about touching the mask so my middle child came with a handful of hair
037and she said hannah cut her hair because she doesn't want the teacher to tell her to don't fidget with it because of the mask this is hannah and she's wearing a headband because the crown of her head she decided to not be ostracized and i do not see anything on any box any cdc any government that says that the mask is a hundred percent effective and unless you can give me that guarantee i don't think it's necessary thank you okay [Applause] good evening my name is dory crepton i'm a retired teacher i taught in the public schools for 40 years grade 6 through university level i'm a resident of the county and i have a daughter who is now attending san francisco state university i'm here to speak of the value and the importance of
038your child wearing a mask today we know that over 500 children have died of covet 19. and its variant the delta is spreading faster among the young population than any other population in this country it also carries lasting effects and impairments to the heart to the lungs and to the brain hundreds of studies have proven unequivocally that there are no negative health effects on children wearing a mask i know that every parent in this room cares about the health and safety of their children you want to protect your child you've done that all of your lives you taught them how to ride a bicycle safely you taught them how to cross the street and to look out for oncoming traffic so why would you now exaggerate the wearing of a mask to be more than
039what it is which is to protect the health and well-being of your child the children in the classroom and the teacher we need to keep our children and their teachers safe a mass kid is a safe kid [Music] don't abandon your responsibility to protect and risk putting them in an uncompromising position that affects their life in years to come the research and all the studies indicate that in this time of their greatest please please sum it up thank you that's it a math kid is a safe kid thank you ally burchette allie burchette and then lindy kennedy we're only going to have time for a few more lindy kennedy and karen bates after that i just want to recognize the lobby full of parents as well here good evening i'm a resident and parent in
040newport mesa unified school district i'm here to make comment on the mass guidance cdph has given guidance but you have the power to enforce it we have precedent ramona county and alpine county in san diego have opted for mask choice we have a way to make everybody in this room happy it's called choice by giving the choice to the parents it's a win-win make no mistake you have the ability to do this an alarming study has just been published by brown university funded by the nih stating babies born in the pandemic have 21 lower iqs quote it is not subtle by any stretch you don't typically see things like that outside of major cognitive disorders dr martin cool dart for from harvard kids are not at serious risk from covid but they are at serious
041risk of cognitive deficits from being massed medical side effects include increase in viral load increased carbon dioxide levels decrease in oxygen levels and toxic chemicals the data against long-term mass wearing is large while the data to support it is admittedly very limited why is it i can take my kids to a dinner table and take off our masks safely and yet they can't go sit at their desks and remove them safely as well those who want to be vaccinated have those who want to wear a mask can experts agree covet is likely to be with us for the foreseeable future it is not something temporary we can just mask up and get through it has been almost two years it's time to remove the burden that we've so irresponsibly placed on our youth you are
042elected representatives which means we need you to represent us here in the room and in the lobby we did not elect you to do the easy thing we elected you to do the right thing it's time to step up be brave be creative do everything in your power to fight to give us the choice thank you thank you [Applause] we have time for two more lindy kennedy and karen bates okay hi [Music] my name is lindy kennedy and i am the mother of three strong healthy beautiful boys my youngest goes to lincoln elementary of which he's a hundred times more likely to die in a car accident on the way to school than he is from covid he's also more likely to die in the swimming pool that he was in today than kakovid he's
043also more likely to die from lightning twice than dying of covid when i was a young mother i took my first son to the pediatrician every time he had a runny nose and cough and that sweet pediatrician sat me down kindly and said i know mom you're new at this let me tell you something about a virus they're around they always will be and guess what your bo your little boy's immune system is doing exactly what it's supposed to do it's working you don't need to come here i don't need to give you anything you need to give them rest fluids vitamins and extra love so after that my brain went back to biology 101 which we seem to have forgotten a virus loves a host an unhealthy host it wants to jump around it
044actually does not want to kill the purse its host it wants to keep going so what do you do you get healthy so you're not a viable host my kids and i we eat lots of fruits and vegetables full of vitamin c bees zinc spotlights we go outside and get oxygen and sunshine i keep zinc around so we can think blast when we start feeling a little under the weather my mom was a schoolteacher for 20 years her friend was the one that developed airborne she knew that around all those 32 kids every day she needed to get zinc and vitamin c in them to help them from getting sick she'll have my time is running out oxygen is the number one form of nutrition for these children they shouldn't be in face masks all
045day i'm gonna skip to the end there's enough plastics and masks and all the things that these kids are putting in their bodies to make a debit card in a week these days i prayed i prayed to god that he would tell me what to close with and he asked me to just bring you to him he wants your hearts in mark chapter 9 verse 42 it says whoever shall offend these little ones it's better for him to have a millstone hang from his neck that were cast into the sea i will be looking at my creator one day and know that i did what i could to stand up for the voiceless and help the helpless thank you will you thank you [Applause] hi my name is karen bates i have a daughter at
046cdm she is a sophomore and my son is a recent graduate at cdm i have a master's degree in school counseling and i will tell you that maths are psychologically damaging our children there are no scientific facts that say that masks work here are the scientific facts covet poses almost no risk to our kids 4.2 million children have tested positive for covid a total of .008 percent of them have died the cdc estimates estimates that 480 kids died from the flu in the 2019 season that is more than died from covet in a full year and a half did any of you recommend the kids wear masks for the flu before this because the flu is more dangerous to our kids than covid and that is the fact forcing kids to wear masks for a
047disease that poses almost no threat to them is child abuse and it's munchausen by proxy it is delusional psychotic and hypochondria wearing a dirtier bacteria-filled and fungus-filled mask every day is far more dangerous than covid and what do you think that does to a child's developing immune system remember a year ago when tons of us were saying that face covering mandates would quickly escalate into shock mandates and all of you were saying that we were ridiculous conspiracy theorists yeah i remember that too here is a quote from a hungarian jew from the documentary the last days people wonder how is it that we didn't do something we didn't run away we didn't hide well things didn't happen all at once things happened slowly so each time a new law or restriction came out we would
048say well just another thing it will blow over when we had to wear the yellow star to be outside we started to worry this is a slippery slope this is un-american we are losing our rights and our freedoms it is time to stand up for our rights say no to mask mandates my daughter will not be wearing a mask in the classroom and i will back her on that thank you [Applause] that's all we have time for i will tell the people who didn't get to speak if you email us your comments we read every comment we get every email so you can email to the board of education we will get it i want people to also know there are many people tonight who have contacted us contacted us with emails giving their point
049of view and did not want to be in a room with a crowded room in this situation with many people who are a mess so i think you know there's always two sides to every issue we listen to everybody but please email your comments to us and we will review them all and thank you for speaking uh superintendent comments dr bangser well it's my pleasure to first of all thank everybody who's welcomed me both tonight and before tonight uh i i go by the motto that i like to say the same thing to each constituency so i don't have to figure out what i said to one or two but not three and so what i'm gonna do tonight is start out by saying something for which i received a standing ovation although people actually
050were sitting when i when i uh addressed the staff at the first couple of days and that is in all my 31 years as a superintendent nobody ever chastised me nobody ever criticized me for making a speech that was too short and i promise tonight i'm going to follow that motto you know i have come to to understand in illinois new york and now california that the one thing characterizes parents across the country in all different kinds of districts for which i've served as a superintendent and done some consulting and that is parents care deeply about their children and can differ greatly about how they view how education can best be delivered and what i'm going to say tonight to you whether you spoke on bus transportation or on the mask issue is that i
051was very impressed with the quality of your thought the quality of your presentation in general i think you were respectful a couple of times we lapsed a bit but it was quick and i will tell you that what i saw tonight is very consistent with what i've seen in my two and a half weeks here in terms of the quality of people with whom i've met this is a first-rate school district and i've had the opportunity [Applause] had the opportunity to be in others and so i think i know from which i speak um what i'm not going to comment on tonight is the way in which we should address either of the two issues that were not agendized i'm positive that what karen said is absolutely true and that is the board reads every
052email because i receive comments from them occasionally about how they feel about the emails and i can also tell you that the key administrative staff with whom i work take very seriously the kinds of questions that come through me to the board so i would just say to you tonight that i am proud to be here i'm proud of the way in which you constructed your comments and i hope you'll be proud of how we unfold the first few days of school i know there'll be some disagreements about how we have implemented the cdph guidelines i understand that but we're going to do our best to be respectful and responsive to whatever it is you place before us in terms of issues that have to be resolved plus transportation and the whole implementation of the
053mass policy which does in fact as you know in california come from the state and i hear you about some districts in the state who have passed a resolution to undo that i hear you that's simply not what we're talking about tonight or will i but i thank you very much for your welcome and i will pass it back to president elsie thank you next we'll move on to reports 14a report on anti-defamation league professional development partnership with secondary schools and just for those who all of you who were not here at the beginning of our meeting before closed session in the approval of the agenda we moved our discussion action on this topic which is a um up to right after this so we will have a report we will then take the comments
054on it and we will have discussion action thank you all right all right good evening everyone i was just waiting for the technology to come online here this evening um i'd like to say good evening to president yelsey board of education and our interim superintendent hank bangzer and the newport mesa community i'm keri torres i am our new assistant superintendent of secondary education i concur with hank bankser's comments on just the quality of individuals and schools that we have within the district i'm very thrilled to be here and be part of our community and finishing up my very first month with the team so it brings me great pleasure tonight to share with you some information related to human relations newport mesa has done a wonderful job really focusing on building relationships amongst our community
055within our community and amongst our community so tonight we wanted to highlight um and provide to the community more information just on revisiting our human relations campaign and the things that we've done to improve relations in our community so tonight you will briefly hear the goals and objectives that we have for newport mesa is as it relates to human relations uh just revisit briefly our mission and vision statement share with the community the timelines and events of the trainings that we've done we're going to share and hear from our high school principals who've been involved with the program and we will talk about next steps and hear briefly from the anti-defamation league themselves so that's our presentation this evening so when we talk about human relations here one of the wonderful things about newport mesa
056as we talk through this is we have really worked hard to create a proactive and productive human relations campaign at all levels of the organization it has been a priority of our school board our school principals and our schools to really work on deeply cultivating empathy compassion and kindness within our students and we have tried to take a proactive approach so instead of being reactive really trying to create program activities for students and staff so that we can work on this together and be proactive and this has helped us create diverse and inclusive learning environments for our students to learn in and that has been an absolute priority of our school principals and our staff in 2019 our school board came together and decided that we were going to have a human relations task force
057that was really going to be charged with dealing with these particular issues and making recommendations regarding concepts such as diversity and equity and inclusion to further the district's commitment to create these types of environments so our board invested in the time and the energy of creating this committee that was made up of many different individuals which we'll speak of later that really we're going to focus this work and then in alignment with that we created a mission excuse me an implementation plan based on that mission that really helped guide the work and included action items that were directly related to anti-bias incidents anti-bias education and provided great thoughtful recommendations for staff development student trainings and parent involvement and parent education so this action plan created many opportunities for us to drive forward this type of
058program to create anti-bias space so if we could just revisit for a moment because we experienced a little lapse in our lives that coveted year that kind of took us out of our time frame here so i wanted to revisit for the community the timeline so in 2018-19 in particular we had an incident that occurred off campus that really generated a lot of attention it was an anti-semitic incident with students from our district again happened off campus but we all know kids are connected and things that happen off campus return to our campuses and at that point in time we were responsive the newport mesa school district responded to the incident and they at that point in time dealt with the incident but also created this human relations task force that i mentioned part of
059that work was a contract with the anti-defamation league that we refer to as adl and we contracted with them to provide training to staff and students in particular regarding that anti-bias lens in particular we started off with a focus with corona del mar high school and newport harbor originally but again you'll hear a little bit later that we've trained other schools as well and other individuals and then we had student peer leadership kids that were trained because we all know that in secondary school and in education students lead a lot of the change on our campus our students actually drive that and so it was very critical that we help identify student leaders at our high schools that we're going to go ahead and lead this work and then those students in turn would train
060others and train others and eventually create that culture of empathy and kindness that we were looking for and then we had plans to train other campuses and kind of spread our training out throughout the district and then covet hit so that's why i have the covid school year because unfortunately we postponed some of the scheduled trainings that we had we just could not deliver it in the in the environment that we were living in during that school year so now we have the 2021 school year like we talked about and we are now rolling into 2122 and so that begged the question we're kind of back right i want to say back to normal but we're back to our new normal we're returning to campus and so we were going to go ahead and move
061forward with those trainings that were postponed and so in the month of july actually my first one of my first board meetings here we had an item that was brought forward to renew our contract with the anti-defamation league to go ahead and provide those trainings that had been postponed however we went ahead and tabled that temporarily so that our board of education could gather more information and learn more about the training and so that's where we are right now and so we have a collaborative partnership with adl and we went ahead and got together and started to discuss the trainings that were presented and here we are tonight to suggest an amendment to that contract and we'll be talking about that in just a moment so it's been quite a journey it has been quite
062a journey and definitely a worthwhile one but if we could just revisit for just a moment this human relations task force this was an important group of individuals that in the beginning when we talked about an incident we talked about being responsive and we had to be also reactive at the same time we had over 100 people who attended the first meeting who came forward and really shared some of the incidents that had occurred on campus and they really supported the effort of anti-biased work and anti-bias trainings and throughout the year that the human relations task force met we refined that group and it ended up being a smaller group that was very focused on creating that action implementation plan that was led by kirk baumeister and a few other staff members in partnership with
063the task force members and i believe even our trustee carol crane was part of that group karen our president karen yelsey was part of that group as ashley anderson so we had quite a few individuals who were very invested in this conversation and so what did that lead to and so that led to the trainings that the anti-defamation league or adl were going to provide or have provided okay hold on one second zoom is connecting i don't want to close it i see her give it just a moment if you would please there we go okay all right oh that's not what i wanted there we go okay so we had adl 101 which was the foundational anti-bias training and this really was just the basics um that was delivered to our um to our
064staff and that is what was done back in 2018-19 then we would have had a second level training for anybody who was trained and that would have been adl 201 which is advanced anti-bias training and that item was on our board agenda last month and that is the item that was tabled for more information okay and what is really important to note here is that after reviewing the contract and after reviewing the content and after meeting with the adl partnerships and partners that we have we removed that from tonight's contract so as you see it this evening you will not see the 201 training on our agenda item this evening it will only be for the 101 and you will also see that it is for the adl peer leadership training and that training was
065strictly again for students who are student leaders who volunteer to be a part of this program and help lead this type of work on their campus but it is really important for us to note that tonight the contract you will see trustees will include the adl 101 and the adl peer leadership training in the amount of approximately 28 000-ish dollars and that's important because it was a little higher last time when we brought it forward in july student leadership has been going on over at two of our high schools specifically with the adl work and that is corona del mar high school and newport harbor high school and each group has been about 25 to 30 students and in addition newport harbor has also done the no place for hate with about 50 participants and
066again i will have our principles up here in just a moment sharing with you the highlights of having those programs on their campus and how powerful they've been and our plans again for 2122 because we've heard a lot of information this evening but one of our plans our plans are to continue to provide all secondary school sites staff that has not yet been trained in 101 we want to give that to our staff so if we have anybody who had not been trained a campus for example that hadn't been trained and then any new staff members would be trained as well and that could include classified two and then of course we would be continuing on with the peer leadership program for select students select meaning those who volunteer to be a participant okay so
067any student who's approached if they're not interested they don't have to do it but we do have students that step forward they really want to take on this work and so these are two pictures actually that um sean bolton had sent me early on just sharing the images of the students who were actually participating in the program in the training two years ago real kids so at this point in time i would like to welcome up our four high school principals and they're going to share their thoughts on the program and i know they're around here somewhere yes so if i could have josh jake mike and sean come up here please thank you and they're in no particular order other than alphabetical order so we're going to go ahead and have josh hill start
068us off thank you good evening trustee elsie members of the board dr bankster um i just wanted to share with you a little bit of a perspective related to this training in the context of a school like current del mar high school um first we have to be aware that conversations about ethnicity conversations about race conversations about all sorts of topics are prevalent in our students lives they see a lot of things and all of those issues come to our school so the fact that they exist is something that we have to acknowledge and we have to decide how do we help support our teachers in creating an environment both where students are safe to be able to have those kinds of conversations but also where they're taught how to have them effectively and safely
069as a history teacher i have to tell you that i took one class in my entire university training that was related to diversity or more multicultural education and as a boy who grew up in lake arrowhead california very small town rural community who went to school at a very conservative university my experience with diversity was very limited and so i would imagine that someone like me as a history teacher who's supposed to know how to handle these kinds of conversations in a classroom would be taxed without some sort of formal training and to be honest as a principal i don't want teachers giving kids their own opinions i think it's very important as an organization that we have a message that is shared out commonly with all of our teachers now that message should be
070a message that is you know decided by by everybody involved in that conversation but it shouldn't be something that is different from class to class teacher to teacher hoping that somehow in their life experience they picked up the exact terminology the exact messaging that we want our children to be able to hear in a class parents send their kids to be educated in the school district not for any one specific teacher but because they believe in the values of the district so i think it's very important as a district that we have a common message and i have to offer one more thing too and it's the reality of this as a teacher it's important to be aware of the fact that i and my experience growing up does not reflect the experience of the
071people sitting in the classroom learning from me the way i learned might be different than the way they need to learn and so as a teacher it's important to be aware of that so i definitely advocate for and appreciate any kind of direct guidance especially an organizational level that can be provided to teachers because i think it will be of great benefit to them both in knowing how to kind of manage conversations in their classroom but also how to approach teaching and education in a way that is sensitive to the fact that not every student is like them and those students need to be recognized for the differences that they have so thank you very much for considering this i this recommendation and just know that cdm definitely supports it [Applause] so good evening president
072you'll see uh dr banks are members of the board i'm gonna echo everything josh uh said and i will just add on um as uh we've got a great group of colleagues and uh i've been fortunate enough at our school to have this training come three years ago and i can't tell you how important it was for our staff to have the dialogue and discussions that were brought forward about implicit bias and i can say that no training that we've had and that's our job is not only to educate our students but also to educate our staff to make sure that we are listening to others to have the most inclusive and supportive environment that we can have at our school sites and no training that we've had was better at in instituting dialogue amongst
073our staff that eventually percolated down to the student level and we're fortunate with estancia high school to now be a part of a program at university of california irvine and our diver program you know really celebrating and informing our students student-led discussions about diversity inclusion racial healing that is really starting to now percolate throughout the entire district so it started kind of at the top of the discussion of our staff and then it filters down to the students and now we see student-led organizations we also are going to be a school that's in no place for hate with adl shannon is very great at getting back with the emails and really hearing that student voice i know new per harbor was successful last year and so really it's impacting our entire campus and our wasps
074report reflects that that we are striving to be an inclusive environment we have to have discussions and as josh said we need discussions led by professionals and this training is deeply important to our schools so thank you [Applause] good evening president elsie members of the board concur with my peers uh as the principal of estancia estancia is the face of southern california today we're a minority majority school and yet myself and the majority of our staff the people who hold the levers of power in that building in this district office and our board don't reflect our student body they reflect the current power structures as they are and it's important for us to really make sure that we are aware of our own not just our backgrounds that josh talked about but our own implicit
075biases the training that has been offered is essential we've had a lot of staff turnover uh since the first round if you think about this training and this sort of journey that we've been on started over 30 months ago after an incident in the boundaries of our school district but in the last 19 months there's been numerous instances across this nation kovit has helped highlight a lot of the inequities that exist inside our country they certainly highlighted the the challenges that exist for the students and parents at estancia we've been able to get a better glimpse and understanding of some of those challenges that our students face because of the increased awareness that we've been through these last months together but that increased awareness will be lost if it's not coupled with increased understanding and
076increased training more so than when this incident first occurred it is essential that we as a district really take a look at who we are and how we can best serve those who come to our school and i thank you for your time [Applause] president yelsey members of the board superintendent banks are executive cabinet and distinguished guests thank you for allowing us to speak about this important topic tonight i can say unequivocally at newport harbor high school the adl peer leadership training has made a huge impact on our student body we've been on the forefront of this since 2015 actually and the partnerships that we've developed with the adl and other organizations in the community have given us the the lens the structure and the format to really move the paradigm forward and educate our
077students in a way that they understand their own biases the discussions that dr haley talked about on campus with colleagues have been enriching and we've really evaluated our curriculum in many different ways to deliver a cutting-edge curriculum that informs that empowers and also really educates students at the end of who they are in their place in this world at the same time we never shame we never blame we never teach differences and so all the concerns that have been brought forward are very valid and we've listened to those concerns about the different trainings that have been on campus and the different aspects of what we've tried to do but they've been absolutely phenomenal rabbi levy dr mcgowan have been great to our school to our community and i just can't thank you enough for supporting
078us in this endeavor and moving the paradigm forward and i'll just i'll just leave you with this that the the peer leadership training that we have on our campus is representative of our student body we have every walk of life that have participated in this peer leadership training over the last two years and has benefited our campus because we've learned that we can't do it alone we have students out in the community out in the hallways and in the classrooms that are calling out other students about silly things they do hurtful things they do and about the hateful things that come across that seem like a joke but they're really not and whether it's anti-semitism racism or hate it's been called out by our leaders on our campus and it's been fantastic to have that
079and also our staff empowered and in turn our school empowered over the last six years really the last three years with our adl partnership so thank you very much thank you i knew they could definitely share their sentiments and and tell the story much better than i could and as you know it's just such a piece to the fabric that we really need to consider this evening and so our last um our last conversation for the evening is actually from adl and so i'm going to welcome up um peter levy who is our regional director and dr shannon mcgowan who's the education director for orange county to share a little bit about their thoughts on our partnership here in newport and how they approach the partnership and how they've made refinements to the things that
080we've asked for thank you president yelcy and superintendent and the trustees of the board we are grateful to be here and for our partnership so as you know anti-defamation league is a 100 year old anti-hate organization with the mission to stop the defamation of the jewish people and to secure justice and fair treatment for all we have long believed that education is the best antidote to hate and bias which is why for the last two and a half years we've successfully partnered with the newport mesa unified school district to create safe and inclusive schools for all students we know that newport mesa usd works hard to cultivate diverse and inclusive learning environments by teaching empathy compassion kindness throughout the schools and the greater community and as part of newport mesa usd's commitment to provide students
081with the knowledge skills attitudes to achieve career civic and personal success the school district's board of education began working with adl in 2019 to provide foundational anti-bias training for employees and anti-bias peer leadership training for high school students in leadership roles who are interested in participating we are proud to have offered this foundational antibiotics training to faculty and staff as well as peer leadership training to student leaders who volunteered for the program with the with the goal of combating hate and bullying we truly value and appreciate this partnership with the district and with you its board members and trustees and as our students and teachers appreciate the partnership as well 98 of the students indicated a strong understanding of what it means to be an ally and a willingness to offer support to targets of
082prejudice 91 percent of teachers agreed that the training tackled the issues they face and they reported greater comfort in addressing students bullying and biased comments and in incorporating anti-bullying and anti-bias themes into the classroom instruction and whether or not we believe it hate is an issue deeply affecting our children inside and outside of school we believe orange county students deserve an education in how to detect prevent respond to hate bullying and harassment and we certainly hope that you do too um uh we know we're available for any questions you have i know we work together to modify uh the contract which uh is satisfactory which is more than satisfactory right it really meets the needs for the district and our goal is always to be a resource and support to meet whatever your needs are
083um does the board have any questions for us this evening trustee anderson thank you thank you um i was wondering how many of our staff went through the 101 training in the first round yes thank you so we had in that first round um all of the certificated staff from uh corona del mar costa mesa high school and newport harbor high school went through that first year i believe estancia create uh had their own anti-bias work um so we we worked with them um as a resources and support but they also had um anti-bias work done outside of that and the rest yes exactly so those are the only certificated faculty that have gone through the the anti-bias 101 and so the plan was to have the rest of this the classified staff from those
084schools as well as all of the staff and faculty from the other secondary schools go through that same foundational anti-bias training such that everyone had the same language had the same knowledge had the same skills to be able to fight bias and fight hate um at that level at the district level thank you and then how many elementary certificated went through that was 101 so at this time we have not had any of our elementary schools go through the training i believe that was part of the multi-year task force plan was that we were going to implement it again in these stages and so my understanding was that in the coming years we would be working with the elementary schools both with their classified and certificated staff as well okay and so there's a plan
085in place for classified of elementary and secondary as well to go through the one-on-one training so we usually train about 30 people per session and so just mathematically with what we're able to provide we chunked it up and originally when this started a few years ago the priority was the secondary school so we started with the high schools we're moving it to the middle schools and we did have a plan to onboard our elementary not all of them at one time but that we would we would definitely roll them in so next year when we come back to you we would ask for a contract that would include those schools so we'll continue the process okay great um and then i just had one more question um i was not in favor of pulling 201
086for our staff i think that it's important for our staff to go through it i think there was some confusion perhaps about people thinking that it was for students um i am wondering i had several staff reach out to me and say that they wanted to go through the 201 and i'm wondering i would like to make a request that we do a survey maybe for certificated first if they would like to do the 201 component because i think that there's still great need and interest for it so i'm not in favor of us not doing 201 first for any of our staff i'm so i that that's something that i would like to have considered thank you one is not part of this when we get to the discussion it's not part of this
087i understand that okay yeah so are you talking of talking in future yes like in october after school has started and we're you know the the year to do a survey of our staff to even just gauge interest but i'm all i'm of the opinion that i would like to have our staff go through the 201. thank you any other question nothing for them okay thank you for that thank you thank you for this thorough update it filled in the pieces we were missing thank you and i don't i don't know if you're staying for our just when we just have discussion action but if you are i can make my comments then if are you okay great i like you know you moved the agenda item but that was i'm finishing the report okay
088oh okay thank you if there are no more questions thank you thank you very much thank you all for your time thank you okay so now um we are going to move to 18a um but because that also will involve comments trustee matoya can you read community input on agenda's items i certainly can this is an opportunity for the public to address the board regarding items on the regular meeting agenda comments on agenda items are limited to three minutes per comment up to 20 minutes per topic a speaker may not relinquish his or her time to another person speaker cards for items on the discussion action calendar may be held until that item is considered by the board if the speaker prefers thank you so we will move to 18a which is approve agreement with
089the anti-defamation league for professional development for secondary schools dr torres would you like to make any other comments i don't have anything to add and i have noted um trustee anderson's comments thank you um carol crane trustee crane had some questions on the okay trusty crane yes can you hear me can you hear me hello hello can you hear me hello hello can you hear me oh now first of all excellent can you make the volume to your computer way up can you hear me would you like to read my question that i put in your chat because normally it would have been this particular time we would do that in summer that makes sense okay that's why we had it in the july agenda because we would have had the student peer leadership training
090immediately after that july date and then we would have had the teacher training this week so i just wanted to outline that we're on plan b plan b and that's great that's what we do best we are nimble [Music] are there any other questions or comments um i and i just wanted i wanted to make just a comment about this whole issue um first of all i really appreciate the adl's collaboration with us on this and you know i really i personally have to go back to um rabbi levy says it was 20 months ago it seems hard to believe it was 20 months ago i know it was over two years it was march of 2019 and i remember so clearly the night this happened the anti-semitic incident in our in our community because
091it affected us all very deeply and it affected me personally because i'm jewish and so i remember that very clearly i remember that sunday morning at 6 a.m when i started getting texts and emails about everything that's going on and i talked to our superintendent at the time throughout the day and i said we have to do something so we had um later that day was my first conversation with rabbi levy when he called me and he said we can help and we talked about everything that was going on he was very reassuring we then had two forums one at chrono del mar and one at newport harbor both in the theaters with standing room only crowds in each of them because we had so many members of our community who felt so strongly about
092this having happened in our community that's when we contracted with the with adl the first time to do this training because we felt we had to do something to show that we are better than this and our kids can learn and we want to inspire empathy compassion and and kindness and that wasn't really reflective of who we are as a district and i know the schools that were involved very much appreciated this 101 training the board who was here at the time we went through it so we experienced that here in the boardroom with shannon and i felt it was really appropriate what we are recommending is the exact same training we did with new staff that did not get it before and obviously we have new peer leaders at each of the schools so
093it's the same training something between 2019 2019 and 2021 has changed just in the rhetoric of what is going on not only in our community we all know it's nationally but we know what's happening and that is really unfortunate because we're reading into things that shouldn't be issues or read into we are doing what we feel is best for kids and so i personally am really appreciative of this i know we're going to vote on it but i'm kind of playing my cards and saying how i'm going to vote but i i do feel very strongly that this is something we need i'm so pleased that carrie torres is here to lead our human relations task force in the direction we continue to go because we've done a lot of work in that area i've
094been to the high schools i've seen some of the programs they've done in addition to adl training with holocaust survivors and special speakers that have come in and it's really great for our kids and one thing i remember when they were the principals were doing the comments which i thought were great because they're the ones who were involved um but josh hill who gave a little bit of his background how he came from a conservative background and he was probably more isolated and he had you know just limited knowledge on this and i think that's appropriate because the staff at all our schools we don't know where they come from in their thinking but it's good to have a solid uniform framework for every teacher to be able to allow kids to talk within their
095classrooms so they know how to react how to frame an open dialogue and they don't have to we don't want them bringing in their personal viewpoints we want them to be objective and just be a leader in terms of what they're talking about and and i think he had some really good points on that and i think um very appropriate so um if no one has any further comments do we have a motion to approve um leah trustee or sorry lou had a comment okay um bob we are back with trusteers can you hear me yeah okay great um i just wanted to thank the adl for for this partnership and for working with us and i want to echo the sentiments that were raised earlier um as one of the very few elementary parents
096that was on the human relations task force for that period of time um i do want to echo um what trustee anderson was saying and i do hope that our future years we do bring this training all the way down to the elementary staff because you know hate it doesn't just happen in high school it's it's a grown learned thing and it's very important that we that we get everyone on board as to uh president yeltsin's comment about the framework having that common framework extend all the way from elementary all the way through high school so i'm really excited to see our future years so thank you and we do have comments um we will limit it to two minutes because i'd like to get through the 20 minutes of comments so i will start
097calling names libby frolichmann are they are if we have a lot can they line up like the other ones well i think it's easy they're all in the room now we don't have people out there okay hello um what i wrote is sort of redundant of what president yelsey said so i'll try to edit a little bit um but at that instant the what i'm calling the red solo cup incident um the students formed the swastika made a heil hitler salute and posted it on social media and we knew we had a problem at least some of our students weren't understanding the meaning of their actions and still more didn't have the skills to say no out of that out of sheer coincidence anne frank's half-sister was in town that week and agreed to meet
098with those students i believe it was a productive meeting but the opportunity for small meetings with holocaust survivors is limited and vanishing quickly we need a more sustainable solution to fighting hate and bullying as a result the human relations task force was formed and the contract with the adl was perfect and satisfied exactly what they were looking for those that have participated in the adl training over the past two years have given it overwhelmingly positive reviews and i'm having a hard time comprehending how the renewal of this contract has become politicized and divisive don't we all want our children to learn to stand up to bullies and don't we all want our children to learn how to recognize bias don't we all want our children to be the best they can be i strongly urge
099this board to vote yes on item 18a to prevent any delay in implementing the program for this school year thank you thank you ann goodner hi i'm ann gordon here and i've had two sons graduate from the district and i was a pta president at cdm i'm quickly editing in light of president elsie's remarks but as a parent and as someone very involved in the student body i was shocked at the decision to put off this program at the july meeting our high school needs this effort high school students need this more than ever this is a valuable voluntary program to develop student leaders and it's so impressive the staff will be trained that way too to speak in a framework of language that's consistent not opinionated not biased and the whole point is to
100promote kindness empathy and anti-bias among our student bodies who come various back from various backgrounds that need to be respected and honored nurtured um none of us want to revisit the horror and shame we felt in march 19 when the red cup swastika party became national news and showed that maybe cluelessness but extremely hurtful prejudice and bias among our young people the i've been very concerned about bad remarks being said against the adl which is one of the most respected organizations in the world and has been promoting anti-hate educations for over 100 years i am concerned about anti-asian crime rising throughout the county and the nation in the and in the last two years everywhere the nmusd should be joined in pushing back with these alarming realities the last thing we should do is cut
101or table the renewal of a program that provides anti-bias prejudice and bullying among our our students as a community member i'm counting on people being civil yes barbie george good evening everyone barbara george and i live in newport i have two children in the newport mesa school district and i understand what is implied by this that uh they're trying to pass this evening but i have to say flowery and um creative words do not take away from what this truly is and it's basically critical race theory and critical race theory states that a person is defined by their color and their race and by nothing else my husband is african-american and in newport beach the african-american population is .6 so less than one percent but we do not feel that we are victims when you
102teach children that you need to just focus on their differences and not on who they are it causes and creates a division and it does not do well for a child i do not want my child to feel that she's oppressed and that another child is an oppressor that's not what we need to be doing i had brain surgery and i received blood products and i never asked what race the person was or racist because it might have been multiple donors it didn't matter all that mattered was that it was human and that it was giving me life so we do not need to divide our children we need to teach math english history and science and that's where our funds should go because they've already missed one year of education so please i would
103ask you to consider no thank you catherine hardesty catherine apple sheila okay um andrea golan good evening i'm andrea golon we have four children who have gone through the newport mesa schools three of which have participated in the anti-bigotry and anti-bullying program created by the adl prevention and anti-bias is not a political program it's an educational program it teaches students to be better human beings by empowering them to understand prejudice and bias and to effectively address bias and bullying among their peers we will be doing our kids and our community a great disservice by halting this program on the basis that it is a divisive quote divisive critical racist training program an assertion which is wholly unsupported by the actual facts thank you thank you scott ketchum is here bill dunlap diane wells good evening
104school board i'm gonna have to put my glasses on um good evening everybody my name is dianne wells um i'm a little bit intimidated and a little nervous to speak right now um the presentation by the adl report was was overwhelming for me to take in tonight i am urging our school board to not renew the adl training for our high school students without full transparency of the curriculum and its cost to our students a cost to our community my students my sons attended our neighborhood schools here in newport beach their school experience was very positive because they were surrounded by a big-hearted and dynamic community they learned about love and kindness and the golden rule at home they also learned about friendship and respecting others through their friends teachers coaches and mentors so it
105concerns me to hear that our school board and our school district is considering renewing this anti-bias program this program comes from the anti-defamation league an outside and highly political national organization which i feel we do not need to be spending thousands of dollars deploying a national top-down program that the community has not fully seen instead i recommend that we the district and community work together to develop our own social and emotional programs about kindness and respect which empowers students toward positive behavior our community has a voice and our voice is and our voice is our right to vote we elected you as school board members to represent our students and our families equally in their k-12 education we entrust you to uphold your oath of office to work for the best interests of all of
106our students tonight i urge the school board to not renew any agreement for adl programs without full disclosure of the curriculum and its costs to our community thank you adriana forshay good evening president yelcy and members of newport mesa school board and interim superintendent hank bangzer oh i'll get closer over here i have rewritten this five times um i really did appreciate the uh presentation from the high school principals it was really excellent and also the discussion i thought that school board member carol crane had some really good questions and that was where i started to change what i was going to say it appears like we've lost the time frame to be able to implement this because it was supposed to happen in july and technically i i don't think that's appropriate to either
107take kids out of the classroom to do some sort of teen leadership program or to divert more money towards taking teachers either you have to pay them extra to spend extra time on this and the reason why is because these kids let's let's look at intention versus results these kids really have lost a year of school and that's what you've heard from many of these parents that are just so upset they've lost a year of school they didn't get full time in class learning they're way behind the ball we need to focus on teaching kids the main parts of school and also with the adl i'm not convinced that they're not a political organization when i looked at their website i saw things that made me question that um maybe historically they had uh really
108been strong on the anti-semitic issues and that is fine but i think that they've diverted and in some of the things that they were saying i actually got the impression that there seems to be an intention of taking this down to grade level and that should not be in the in the in the kindergarten you know through sixth grade so my recommendation is to table this maybe look at it next year but potentially bring somebody else in besides adl thank you thank you okay that's all our cards we lost a few people along the way do we have any other comments or would someone like to make a motion i'd like to make a motion good um i can't find it yeah i i don't have it directly in front of me um it's 18.
109okay it's 18 approve the agreement with the anti-defamation league for professional development for secondary schools yes i would like to make that motion and i'll say uh carol would like to second oh carol may second okay i have one later little piece of discussion just because that's okay thanks um i just want to make it really clear that the student portion of this is a voluntary student portion so any parents that would be upset about it talk to your kids and don't let them volunteer and the kids that volunteer are the ones that will be getting this training so and it's not during instructional time it's not dirt it's will not take them away from their instructional day we too agree that every minute is precious especially this year thank you um so i have
110a motion uh made by trustee anderson seconded by trustee crane and it's a roll call vote trustee elsie yes trustee bartow yes justine montoya yes trustee wagon yes trustee anderson yes trustee crane she said yeah she's done they can tell me yes oh that's it yeah do you want us to find some other trustees and thank you [Applause] i'm moving back and forth on this now consent calendar move approval of this consent calendar a second it was a second um moved by trustee mattoya seconded by trustee bartow i do have a comment that i need to read please note consent calendar item 16 e1 and 16 e2 under superintendent pertain to amending dr sher and dr baumeister's respective employment agreements including change in salary placement effective august 1st 2022. so we moved in seconded roll
111call vote trustee elsie yes trustee bartow yes trustee montoya yes trustee wagon yes trustee anderson no trustee crane okay um motions carried six one next we have public hearing i thought i wanted to make a comment i have are you i moved thank you um i just wanted to articulate why i voted no on this um there are one two three four fives uh over seven items in the facilities portion of the budget um that i believe um i'm not comfortable voting on i think we have a new superintendent coming in we are doing interviews tomorrow to approve multi-year facilities agreements with um for consulting to me is not a prudent use of taxpayer money i have asked a few questions of them but i have gotten not a lot of answers i was told
112i would get some answers here today um i don't want to continue spending more money redesigning the ensign right away we already know that there's there were problems initially i don't want to keep using the same firms i would like to wait until we have a new superintendent for huge decisions like restructuring ed services i am not in favor of changing the um employment agreements for dr sir or for dr bauer meister um so i've actually never had a consent calendar item where there are so many items that i don't agree with um so that's emphatically wanted to say no thank you thank you for the clarification okay um we will move on to public hearings and the action calendar a is a public hearing disclosing the provisions of the 2021 2022 tentative collective bargaining
113agreement with the newport mesa federation of teachers mr trader good evening so yes on june 29th the district and mft reached a tentative agreement uh that agreement um calls for a 3.6 percent on schedule increase and a stipend and a benefit unit cap increase the total cost of the agreement is expected to be 8 million hundred and seventy two dollars and that includes all benefits and step and column cost and a certification that the district can afford that thank you i am going to open the public hearing and we have a speaker tonight speaking at the public hearing sarah and walter i'm sorry to sound so excited but we never had today [Laughter] she'll be fine i love it i even went to a labor law conference this summer voluntarily [Laughter] um so um i
114just want to speak in favor of the ratification of the ta and i want to thank my team nicholas stix he's our lead negotiator hwang nguyen rhonda reed jamie ropp and um also our jbt team members because that really goes into it um tamra fairbanks jamie ropp kathy adamak and nicholas dix and it's just really rewarding to get together with all the different people on both teams and have an experience where you're working together peacefully and with such respect on both sides even when you disagree vehemently about certain things and especially in um this you know climate that we're in um i mean the whole room at times it just felt so good even if we didn't agree just because of the um amount of um respect that we have for one another in particular
115the leadership of leona olsen olsen and i know her name and uh nicholas dix by the way the reason some people don't come up here and say all the titles is because they'll flub it horribly and that's why i just say good evening it's really for you not for me that i do that but their leadership in this process was just refreshing you know in particular um because of just you know what's going on around us you know and um i we we all appreciate that and um so i just want to speak in favor of that and um knowing that we have confidence no matter what comes up down the pike we can work together okay thank you so much are there any other comments for public hearing if not i will close the
116hearing 17b approved tentative agreement and mousse between the newport mesa unified school district and the newport mesa federation of teachers 2021-2022 so moved second okay sarah did you want to come in again because you had 17 a mb okay president president i'd like to share a few comments if that's okay um as you know uh leona olsen uh is dealing with some some things and can't be here this evening so i said i would step in and share her comments um and echo many of the things uh that uh sarah water you know shared with all of you um leona wanted me to make sure that that you all know how proud she is of both teams and the work that they did together really to reach this agreement it reflects uh hours and hours
117of discussions as you know and conversations resulting in you know really mutual interests of both um you know groups and ultimately supporting the environment you know for our students is really what it came down to for this group some of the highlights of the agreement are evaluation tools for our counselors librarians nurses psychologists speech language pathologists and social workers all critical components of of the education we provide kids but not classroom teachers so they'll all have their own evaluations specific to their jobs adjustments to the role and recompense they'll be effective next year health and well welfare benefits the district will make an increase to the uh an increase in to district costs and no increase to employee contribution uh a 3.6 salary increase and acknowledging the the difficulty of this last year a one
118thousand dollar stipend for full-time uh teachers and a five hundred dollar stipend for part-time or less than fifty percent teachers um and and that for those who worked this this past year uh and as sarah said uh it was an extremely collaborative process uh and leona wants to make sure that she highlights uh the the team members um and the work that they've done uh throughout the you know negotiations to to bring this agreement before you this evening so we want to say a big thank you to the nmfa nmft team uh sarah ahwater jamie ropp kimberly clader rhonda reed quinn nguyen and nicholas dix and then also to our uh newport mesa team newport mesa unified school district team dr kurt sir dr kirk bauermeister dr mike shaka amanda estrada dr megan brown spencer
119covert and of course our lead negotiator leona olsen and one last comment that's not on script but i would 100 concur with sarah in relation to the mutual respect uh that leona and nicholas have created in that room together and that they have for each other to really you know move this forward i think for the first time in a long time before summer even approached so i urge you as sarah did to approve this agreement and congratulate both sides for coming together thank you and you represented ms olson very well in your comments and i also was going to mention that uh having been here for a while now this is the first time i can remember where we have an agreement before school starts and i think that's no that's a testament to
120the two groups working well together and so i think we're all pleased with this [Laughter] we're gonna see a lot of you i did not i did not mean to omit the wonderful lovely kimberly glader i and i'm going on that that was because of nerves and i was jotting notes down so thank i forgot to say her name and she was there and i'm sorry i love you kimberly the text should not come did she just text you no no i i understand thank you thank you for coming back up um so we have a motion by trustee and we have lights and we have yeah i was first all right is it trusted did you light for trustee critics look at that cooperation and that's what my comment was about it warms my
121heart to see the cooperation and collaboration between our two teams this year it just shows that even though there are individual points that are disagreed with that working together can get stuff done in a timely manner and i'm just so proud i i have not been in this seat but i have been and you're out in your seat and it's nice to be able to start the school year knowing what's happening as a teacher so i really appreciate the work that you did thank you trustee crane yes um thank you i think after a grueling year is so refreshing to have a a good start when it comes to a contract signed before first day of school um i i the collaboration was was wonderful we got reports consistent reports from ms olsen i do
122want to just compliment the team who put together the evaluation sheets that were for the non-teaching certificated staff and personnel like the school counselors and the uh therapists librarians etc because before it was one one evaluation form for all certificated staff and we know that they're not all the same and i just love the fact that the language was changed and forms were were created for the specific job responsibilities because if you are someone who's being evaluated you want specifics and you want something that is custom made to you and your job description and so excellent job i went through every single one of those pdfs and i want to compliment you on that great job everybody thank you okay we have a motion up by trustee mattoya seconded by trustee bartow roll call vote
123trustee elsie yes trustee barto yes trustee mattoya yes trustee wigan yes trustee anderson yes trustee crane yes trustee or soyulu yes yay okay um action uh item 18b approve management confidential and supervisor compensation and benefits for 2021 2022. mr drake is that you again real quickly yes yes real quickly so last month um leona olson our assistant superintendent of human resources did meet with management confidential and supervisor employees employee groups and regarding the 2122 compensation uh we're pleased to bring forward tonight for your consideration compensation for those groups equitable to the compensation approved for newport mesa federation of teachers thank you do you have a motion so moved who is this sometimes i can't read lips with masks uh i have a motion by trustee crane seconded by trustee anderson roll call vote trustee yoshi
124yes christy berto yes trustee mattoya yes trustee wagon yes trustee anderson yes trustee crane yes trustee here so yes okay next item is 18c which is approve the executive staff compensation and benefits for 2021-2022 and dr dr bankser um could you please provide a summary of this for a minute sure uh actually before i do and i i promise this will be quick i want a second a number of the comments have been made thus far about how wonderful it is to enter a school year with agreements now i recognize that the csea is yet to be fully formed as an agreement but it was great to see the cooperation uh just in my first week here in that domain and i congratulate leona and everybody else who worked with her to bring this to
125bear because it makes a huge difference in the operation of school districts and then this gets me to 18c the other thing that i appreciated however you got to this point i think it's a real testimony to the way the school board and staffs look at each other on an equitable basis so that recommendations can come forward to the school board where every single employee is treated the same way percentage-wise in terms of recognizing the stipend for this past year in terms of benefit increases caused to the district not borne by the staff member it's it's rather extraordinary to be honest with you and that's a very strong statement i think about how people view each other within the district and that i think will pay very long-term benefits uh as you go forward now
126then to 18c there is ample information here under the details of of the financial agreement again 3.6 percent all the things that jeff talked about before and a very specific cost for salary and benefits of 138 dollars that accrues to that group as you see on the page a group of 10 and i strongly recommend approval thank you do i have a motion i move to approve 18c executive compensation and benefits for 21 22. second matured by trustee bartow seconded by trustee mattoya volkov vote trustee yelsey yes trustee bartow yes trustee montoya yes trustee wagon yes trustee anderson yes trustee crane yes yes um we'll move on to resolution consent calendar 19a adopt resolution 0108.21 to establish temporary interfund transfer of special or restricted fund monies mr trader so as you're aware the district enters
127a has a cash dry period of july to december and in order to keep the general fund solvent we borrow from the district's other funds this is uh authorization to borrow from those funds with exception to the endowment fund and this is something that happens every year correct and we do this so that we don't have to borrow from someplace else and pay them interest right absolutely yes do i have emotion so moved second moved by trustee montoya seconded by trustee weigan roll call vote trustee yelcy yes trustee berto yes trustee mattoya yes trustee wagon yes trustee anderson yes trustee crane yes trustee or soyulu yes okay 19b adopt resolution 208 21 authorizing approval of signatures on electronically printed checks produced by the orange county superintendent of schools so moved second mr trader would you
128like to say anything we want those checks simply to add dr bangser to the signature story moved by trustee crane seconded by trustee mattoya roll call vote trustee yossi yes trustee bartow yes trustee montoya yes trustee wagon yes trustee anderson yes trustee crane yes trustee or solu yeah was fun oh yes thank you we'll go on to informal reports superintendent's report doctor well so here you go this would be a little bit of a different superintendent report i want to start out by talking about tonight a little bit and i'll get to maybe a couple of other things before i finish a lot of work went into tonight's meeting and i want to commend particularly kirk powermaster for managing you know what was clearly a one i would say wonderfully challenging environment right and he
129was the captain of the team of 11 adults out there who work both in the district and near the district six principals and some security people and eduardo great job we also had wonderful cooperation from the costa mesa police department uh good good that they didn't have to really do anything except be here so kirk thank you kirk thank you uh then i want to talk a little bit about this i mean this is really really getting in in the nerdy area i want to talk about two things one i have probably walked into as a superintendent and search consultant and a sort of mentor to people probably 25 school districts where i've seen the construction of board meeting agendas and i will tell you this is the best one that i've seen it's really
130really well done albeit you know we had to sort of work hard to get it out on time and we're going to think about getting a little bit different calendar for september but the substance of it is just first rate so if you take a look at what i call the white pages right you don't have to i know carol you got it really got into the weeds on some on some of the buff pages of the support but if you take a look at the white pages if you're a community member you can learn a lot about what this board is doing on many many issues like a hundred right if you go through if you go through the consent calendar about a hundred items there and i sat in on the agenda prep
131and i couldn't believe that we processed that that quickly so congratulations to the assistant superintendents and the board and rosie rosie great job you had to put up with me for about a week and a half that was that wasn't easy uh but i really appreciate it and uh just a word about jeff talking about my getting nerdy uh you know i love school finance and coming here coming from ojai where i was superintendent uh that's just a typical lcff thing you know you get money from the state and all that when i heard that this was a community-based funding district it took me back to 23 years in new york and illinois where everything the whole state is community-based essentially so you keep your property taxes and then you have to work on it
132so jeff we had a good time didn't we yeah we had a good time and i i i probably pushed a little bit on some line items but i learned a lot so thank you that was really good last thing i'm going to say is a segue to the assistant superintendents i already talked about jeff we have spent a lot of time together in the last two weeks and before i ever sat down with them as a group i wanted to meet them individually learn about who they are as people learn about their families as much as they want to tell me and i shared a lot with about my own did the same thing with board members and that's just how i always enter a new school district you know there are always issues
133to resolve okay but if you don't meet the people and sarah you and i had a similar conversation i'm looking forward to our conversation now that you're back here you go and so that's a way to do it and i just have tremendous respect for the people who are in leadership positions in this district they care deeply about their work they have been responsive to questions that i have which i warned them up front i was going to ask a lot of questions because that's just how i learn and you know i want to do the best i can for them and for the board obviously in the community in the however many weeks i'm here until the new superintendent comes so that's really what i want to talk about tonight are the people i've
134met the construction of the agenda and i think the high quality of analysis that i've seen uh in the couple of weeks i've been here so that's what i wanted to say we'll get to issues i really want to see the schools open hopefully we'll do a great job by mid-september i'll have more comments to make about things like education but right now i really want to talk about people and the hard work that i've seen to help tonight be tonight so with that do you call them assistant superintendents what you do i think what you do okay okay good evening yeah so wonderful this is my first report um and i just wanted to share out that today was basically our teacher pd day you know we had our teacher first day back yesterday
135i had a chance to go and visit some campuses and just see people engaged in learning and it was just really exciting to see our staff back in action so that was a really dynamic environment as i bounced around town today i also just want to thank mike shaka our secondary director of teaching and learning who helped coordinate that effort today alongside the mtss team to present to our teachers in secondary so very grateful and proud of the work that they did today so thank you and then we're welcoming dr raquel stevens who's our new cloud campus principal and i'm just excited to see that campus really come together again and so we started that school last year which has been a you know was a tremendous asset to the district and um we're currently
136at 338 students and growing every day and so i'm just excited to see what that program is going to become and continue to become as the year goes on and i would say as you were giving your report uh mr shaka in the back was probably as excited as you were about the cloud campus yeah i think he's more excited i mean he heard new principal dr stevens i think he was sending flowers and over there but yes he did a wonderful job at creating it and so he's handed it off nicely and it's it's wonderful so mr dre yes uh thank you president elsie and to kind of build off of what kerry torres was just talking about and today being our district-wide staff development day and i want to let you know that
137i i own completely the design of our our day um and the design was around building the capacity of of our both our principals and our teachers around their their math standards which will be our focus this year um the other thing that i own in that are some decisions that were made in that one of as you've heard me talk over the years one of the things that we consistently want to do is build on students assets identify what they do know and with a strong foundation of knowing the standards being able to take them from what they know to meet grade level expectations today in four of our grade level trainings not all seven of them but in four of them i had approved an article for them to read that was really
138focused on it from my perspective in identifying and approving this article really helping teachers strengthen their lens for finding the assets and in what kids are doing mathematically there was a portion or there is a portion in that article that also talks about privilege as well as power and frankly in approving it somewhat overlooked that um in wanting the whole conversation to be about assets um you have been very clear in your direction as a board that you know we are not moving in the direction of critical race theory or incorporating that and that was not the intent of my mistake today in putting that article in in front of teachers our principals did a fantastic job framing the article around the focus of assets my understanding is that um the conversation was around that
139needless to say um the impression could be out there that uh you know i i am pushing um you know this critical race theory and i want to make sure that it's very clear that you've been clear to me and all of us that that is not part of our curriculum and that was not my intent with that article um having said that you know i think today was a really powerful day for our teachers and digging into standards focusing on really understanding them at a deeper level which was the start and the in the beginning of our work that will happen throughout the year the other part that was extremely impressive is that all of our principles led the the the the learning that happened today and that was with a lot of hard
140work on their parts you know working through uh you know really the the day with uh together and even learning some standards themselves but it was just powerful to see them in that strut in instructional leadership position and it was appreciated by teachers a lot was learned today um and i just wanted to make sure that you're all aware of of the mistake i'm owning um and uh while uh you know we will continue to focus on assets of our students there are different ways for us to go about supporting our teachers to do that and so i just wanted to make sure that you know i shared that with you thank you mr drake appreciate that um mr trader are on the verge of closing the financial books for the 2021 year so that
141means you'll get about 200 pages of pleasure reading material soon we look forward to bringing that to you at the september meeting in time for labor day weekend yeah in time for labor day weekend okay superintendent bangs are we can't wait yes [Laughter] and i just want to thank our warehouse group they've been really just on top of everything trying to get all the moves done and there is a lot of moves that is happening this year so thank you mr holcomb yes our maintenance department has been very busy this summer it's an unusual summer of course because of covid and and things in the supply chain but a lot has gotten done let me give a quick rundown of some things marquise you'll recall for the last few years we've been putting new digital
142marquees at our elementary schools those are being completed at this point basically all of them now will be done here roughly by the end of the week with the exception of one where the deliveries is still a few weeks away but uh very soon those will all be completed our pool at newport harbor uh the equipment that we had scheduled for replacement is completing this week as well so uh so that will take care of that project um roofing replacement um where we have found with the roofing replacements that uh there's a lot more rotted wood than uh and it's it's underneath things so um it's it's good we're glad we're after it uh it's going to be great uh it's going to take us a little bit longer than what we had originally scheduled
143but um i'm glad to be getting after roofing replacements at this point anderson uh the siding that's original of the school is being replaced uh as we speak uh so that's that's going on exterior painting uh ray is complete newport l is complete uh sonora will be finishing this week um davis uh will be beginning this week and hope to complete uh pretty much by the end of the month flooring is complete at mariners newport coast newport heights costa mesa high school summit davis t winkle corona del mar middle and high school and at transportation uh department um there have been field renovations at back bay monte vista harper and kaiser um and we've got to keep after our termites uh so we've had the fumigate campuses as you know that's that's a big deal
144uh a lot of work uh and we've fumigated five different schools and then uh refinished the terrazzo in the restrooms at victoria uh recently so many many things going on uh many thanks to mr bidnick uh otto's rest he has also been and she and her team have been assisting him uh our purchasing department it's been a lot of work from a lot of departments to to get that much work uh going and done this summer so we're very very pleased with that thank you trustee weigan did you have a question yeah i have just a couple questions on some of the facilities projects and their completion dates one is the roofing primarily at mariners there's a lot of material on the blacktop and i've had a lot of questions from the community about if
145that's going to be moved by the time that school does start and then when will that and then sorry another question when will that be complete um because i know you can't do roofing while children are in classrooms so and then i'll have another question yes and and as i mentioned we have found that that uh site is uh much more complicated than what we had originally anticipated working through it so uh as i've talked with this a bit nick a little bit about it he has the best update on uh figuring out uh from a day to day so mr bidnick would you mind coming up and answering trustee why you asked question please all right good evening board of trustees the interim superintendent banger uh great question we actually um it's not just
146the issue of the extent of the extra unforeseen repairs of the rotten wood at the at the school site it's also the material availability if we had bid open in may i think may 21st i was brought to the board for approval june 20 or june 17th and we ordered material right away it still it just arrived the last pieces arrived i think this morning or late yesterday so material availability also delayed that project pretty significantly um we did meet with the contractor today there's there's different types of roof sections that are being done the three buildings the office building the multi-purpose room and the kindergarten will be done probably by saturday end of day is what we're looking at the material on the blacktop has already been moved and relocated out by the portables
147and the contractor is going to erect a temporary fence we are meeting out there with the contractor and the principal tomorrow to go over the remaining schedule and look at the impact of the the roofing project on the school site i'll have more of an update tomorrow after we meet as far as what the plan is moving forward the disruption of class and safety of the students are obviously the biggest concerns making sure that nothing's going to jeopardize either one of those but we do have a tremendous amount of work still to do on that one um it's going to be uh difficult require close coordination with the school site in the principal so are you looking at three more months or what do you think the timeline would be well no more tomorrow okay
148so there's we do have a couple of options moving forward involving different types of schedules for the contractor um it's really going to see what the school site is capable of accommodating if we need to bring in crews for after hours and weekend work and really how long that schedule is going to take us out to so it's going to be we'll we'll know more tomorrow on the schedule and as as the project progresses we can also start moving material off the ground and onto the roof so that'll be another benefit there great and i just you know keep um mr b in in communication so that he can communicate out to the school site um so thank you and then um i have a question about um the newborn harbor pool and that plan
149and um when all the the i think we probably two meetings ago approved um updates to that so when are we going to have not only just the filter being replaced but some of the other enhancements to the school i can i can speak to the pool filter replacement they were filling the filth the last two filters on monday and water was supposed to be restored this this morning i haven't been to the school site to verify that that happened um we are planning on a complete turnover back to the school site by the end of this week having kids back in the in the pool by monday on schedule um and the question kristen i have the same set of questions um from the same members of the community um but and one big
150question that we had was the bathrooms in the pool area they need a bit of um love like not a huge overhaul but they have some maintenance issues especially the girls bathroom and so they were wondering if that was any improvements were scheduled to be done in the near future uh and the reason they ask is their uh aquatics boosters are ready to jump in and do it so i said well let's talk to our people first and see what we can do so i can send you they they gave me like a bunch of line items and some photos if that's helpful um it doesn't seem like the kind of thing that would be cost prohibitive or time consuming and maybe it's already planned but that you can just get back to me on
151one yeah that would be great yeah and we got it just and just we're not trying to blindside you we got the this list this morning so yeah yeah i appreciate it yeah thank you absolutely thank you dr jockle thank you um so before we scheduled and had our teachers back and welcomed a lot of our uh certificated staff back to start the school year uh we welcomed our leadership staff back and both of our cl both are classified and our certificated leadership we every year do a leadership advance and we switched it up a little bit this year in order to reduce the number of folks we had in the room we cut down two days of training into one and uh spread folks out over three days and so um i thank my
152my colleagues in the ed services division because a lot of their content was what was taken out and they were gracious to do that and to be able to provide that to principals and certificated staff in another arena so um i got my way and had and had we did a lot on mtss and as a as a priority for um the board in the district and uh appreciate and that some of the board members were actually able to come and be a part of some of the the training in some of those days um and i won't i won't go into detail about all of the wonderful sel content and mtss content we went over and we we're looking forward to doing a board presentation now that we have all of this new staff
153in place and kind of some of those plans um in the future but what i will share is um one of the one of the really nice moments of that day was a donation that was made to the district on behalf of patrick's purpose so patrick is a student former student who took his own life and his parents um set up a foundation called patrick's purpose and um uh kim the mom uh has reached out and worked closely with um kristen henry of what they could do to support social emotional learning for our elementary school kids and so they came up with a whole list of books for libraries at every one of our elementary schools english and then also books in spanish which was really um thoughtful and critical for for many of our
154students and we were able to give those all out um at the at the leadership advance and and the principals you would have thought it was christmas they were so happy to get all of that stuff and i think one of the other um the you know the testaments to kind of the work that patrick's purpose is doing is that they thought it was really important to support a small local um bookstores in purchasing these who have struggled during covid versus a big box real you know realtor for this so um that's a retailer for this so that's a you know that was just a really nice kind of little added bonus um of all of this but it was it was really heartfelt and and and appreciated the other real focus of of the
155leadership advance has been um arcovid 19 response and how we plan to start this school year and um i'd like to call up um jonathan wilby who is our risk manager and share just a couple things um from that um from that day with us and you know um in in a perfect world jonathan and i wouldn't probably intersect much our jobs are pretty different but um we are covered buddies and um we um we spend a lot of time together because uh he does a lot of this stuff for staff working you know closely with hr and then um i focus more on the student aspect of of coverage so i'm going to share with you a couple of the things that we're looking at for students and then jonathan is going to just
156share a couple of other insights kind of to what we're doing so one of the things that it's important to remember as we're looking at starting this school year is this concept called layered mitigation strategies and we did that last year as well right we we had the social distancing we had plexiglass we had masks we have the filters and this year with the focus on keeping students in school the state realized they were not able to support the social and the social distancing or physical distancing that they had put in place and in order so kind of to mitigate that that's the requirement that all students and staff wear masks indoors so that is one of the mitigation strategies that the state is is putting out and the cdph that we're following but that's
157not the only thing and so we're doing that but masks are not required for students when they're outdoors when they're eating lunch those kind of times however we still want students to follow a lot of our other safety protocols that we put in place we're asking parents to do passive screenings if kids are sick have symptoms to stay home from school we you know and that's really hard after kids have been home so long that and and now over the summer everybody's ready to send their kids back to school but if students are sick we ask that they stay home we're going to continue with the kind of the ventilation systems that we've put in place hand washing and and then we're going to continue with cleaning and all of those all those pieces that
158we put in place and then jonathan if you'll share a little bit more about some of those things that would be great yeah i think uh you and i have you pretty much don't need me at this point you uh seem to have it all down um yeah during during leader leadership advance i think one of the things we also did was we we all acknowledged that we didn't want to be here talking about covid at this this time last year um we all hope that at the start of this year would be behind us and we'd be moving on and um it would just be a thing of the past and we're all tired of it i mean my my job has been coveted for the last 12 months and i'm as tired of
159it as anyone but i think what's important is we also reflect on how far we've come you know last year at this time we weren't talking about reopening schools and we were starting out in distance learning a year ago and it was almost two months down the road that we even talked about going to level two hybrid and it was most of the year before we actually got to full-time in-person classes so we've come so far in the last year and really the requirements of cdph the requirements of kalosh are really minimal compared to what it looked like as far as doing in person education a year ago what it is like dr jockham said face coverings indoors not face coverings outdoors so we are going to get a break from wearing face coverings which
160all of us need especially students um cleaning going to be cleaning the classrooms continue to clean those high touch points hand hygiene really reinforcing hand hygiene signage to reinforce all those different different aspects but what it's not it's not plexiglas it's not social distancing where we have to go to cohorts and we can't have full-time education it's not all the spacing in classrooms it really is minimal at this point and it's all focused on keeping schools open keeping kids in classroom full-time so we don't have split classes and really protecting that because that's so important to uh to education and students so that's where we're at what we'll continue to do is monitor monitor case rates continue to monitor the cdph guidelines the cal osha guidelines and all those changes because they do change a
161lot whether it's um you know hopefully it's changing in the right direction the cases are getting less and they become less and less restrictive and we'll monitor and implement those changes as we can and hopefully all that leads to a safe and successful in-person school year any questions thank you i i just wanted to make a comment i i mean you're a perfect tag team you may not have the same areas normally but i think it's worked really well and having been in a meeting where jonathan was talking earlier this week i couldn't agree more with something he said and this is something i feel that the entire board this is how we look at it our goal this year is to keep our schools open all day every day if we can do that
162i think it's a win for us in person and to do that we as a group will follow the guidelines to make sure that happens and i know some people don't agree with certain things nobody agrees with any i mean there's people who don't agree with anything you're doing but we all know that and i think we have to keep our eyes focused on what we want and that's to have our schools open and that's the most important part of this year so we all appreciate everything you're doing to make that happen yes thank you there's more questions jonathan oh trustee thanks for that thorough um description of what we're doing and and as i probably echo what you just said that hopefully the guidelines get less restrictive and you know next year at this
163time or maybe christmas time this is this is all over your november there you go um i mean i i just wanted to say you know i think as a board you know a lot of my community members they are you know don't want mass and i have to say you know obviously no one wants to mask their child up but my biggest concern and my biggest thought is let's keep our schools open because having to be online was horrible last year and i know from firsthand with my children it was bad and i would like to keep them in person as much as possible and i so i appreciate that and i am aware of you know all of the issues i've seen kids cry and having to wear masks and go into school
164and it is heartbreaking so you know while i i we got to follow the guidelines um i just wanted to echo thank you for keeping our schools open um i do have one question because a lot of my community members are saying well are there different rules for public or private schools and i just wanted to clarify that for people out there and if you can elaborate on that yeah i can elaborate it's the same rules for public and private schools and cdph has um recognized that there were some schools that weren't completely following the rules and they plan on enforcing them much more strictly than they have in the past but it's the same rules for public and private okay great so we are all adhering to the same rules under the cdph guidelines
165and the authorities i guess in orange county are aware of that as well correct thank you you're welcome thank you okay next we have our board member reports and before we just start that i just wanted to give an update on our superintendent search yes um and it is on our website so you can look to see our timeline and what we're looking at i have to say i'm really pleased so far we have followed our timeline to it yes we actually had a meeting with leadership associates who was doing our search last week and went through every application and i have to say we receive some very interesting experienced high quality candidates on paper and i say on paper because that's all we've seen so far is the candidates on paper we had to
166narrow it down and it was a tough decision because we had so many good candidates and we looked at newport mesa is a very unique district and um we feel it's important to have someone very experienced who has been involved at um a high level in a district before so we have identified six candidates that we are interviewing starting at 7 15 tomorrow morning um and we will be there until probably at least 7 15 at night tomorrow night um and if we have to we'll take it over the next day but we are hoping to identify one you know you never know until you meet people in person to really sit down and question and talk with them but we are hoping that someone rises to the top and it will be a real
167easy choice may or may not be we don't know so we all are looking forward to spending the day tomorrow interviewing candidates and if all goes well and we can identify someone and get all the details worked out that we could announce it for approval in our september meeting um so we'll we're not just going to keep on the schedule for the sake of keeping on schedule we want to find the absolute best candidate and so that's what we're taking time to do but we feel we owe it to our public we owe it to our staff who i know is anxiously awaiting um i know dr bankser who has been wonderful so far has plans to move on to the rest of his life return again retiring yet again for the fourth time um
168but we do appreciate everything he's doing in the interim so uh that's kind of the schedule of where we are and the september 14th may not be an actual start date because whoever this person is right but that's an explanation a lot of people think okay you start tomorrow right and wherever they are yeah you would absolutely not want someone who could start on september 15th right that's not that's not the kind of allegiance that you would expect from the district from which she or he is coming yes so um anyway that's the update and we will continue to keep the community updated on our website i know annette franco our pio is on top of this and we'll con and is in communication with our leadership associates team as well so that's it um
169board member reports does anybody else have anything oh i just attended the leadership advance and i was really impressed by two things uh one of the sessions was a big yellow post-it that said covered parking lot and i appreciated that because the conversation was about students and achievement and going forward and next year and the other thing i was really impressed by was just the excitement in the room with staff you know both sessions that i attended everyone is really excited to get back to why we are here you know educating kids and taking care of kids and making these schools um safe and wonderful learning environments for our students so that was really exciting to see because i think we go into this year it's the big unknown uh and we're a little leery
170from what last year was so it's great to see um everyone just so excited to be back and to be teaching and to watch our students grow and support our students and way of hiding them on the school bus i think i'm really excited for this school year and adding on to that it was also exciting to see our new staff working so well already with our experienced staff our veteran staff and the teams were already forming it was it felt seamless being in those chairs i know it's not but it felt seamless to us that the new people were happy for their new positions and the veteran people were happy to welcome them into their new fold with their new mascot and their new colors and and it was it was a very comforting
171feeling and i also attended the classified day also so it was it was the same it was the same with classified as it was because all the adults that work together have to do that in order to make our schools open and our kids learn so it was a wonderful feeling i'm excited for next week and grateful by the way to emino and the previous boards because it was really nice on those really really hot days knowing every single school has air conditioning yes and that was a hard thing we did trustee anderson did you ever come in oh thank you um yes i just wanted to um comment um on some of the items that the parents that were speaking about whittier i feel like this is far away and i'm like wearing my
172mask and i can't sorry um i have actually been able to be a part of several um groups um doing work in the city of costa mesa around pedestrian and bike safety first i was in the orange county trans octas safe routes to school working group for over a year and they go through all of the schools in the county and talk about which areas and neighborhoods are highly sensitive streets and intersections and are possibly dangerous for pedestrians it their map and their report show that most of west side costa mesa schools are in those zones that are industrial business zones and are deemed unsafe um which is why we have had until recently busing for several schools that appear to be clo people live close to them ray elementary is actually one of the
173most dangerous pedestrian and bike zones in the entire county the nearby intersection of west 19th street and newport boulevard is one of the top three in the entire state of california i have requested that we do the safe routes to school program multiple times over the past two years and that program that has not taken off it is a free program we can have it at any of our schools um so i would like to see that happen before bus routes are eliminated who sponsors that program octa the county pays for it oct octa yes it's funded by the county um they have been trying to connect with us we they've been going to principals not to the district and so they have had a difficult time and i told them that was not the
174best technique um but i brought it up in several board meetings um and i i'm i'm just concerned that we are eliminating um bus routes at ray and at whittier i have lots of parents from both of those schools calling me texting me very very very concerned we additionally i've been part of cal walks which is through berkeley it is a state initiative to make sure that neighborhoods are safe they have given us very comprehensive recommendations including things like adding 19th street we need to have a bus i'm sorry a bike lane for all of 19th street placentia is very unsafe for lots of our students and they have a very comprehensive report they have sent it to our district office one of the other things that we have talked about is adding paying for
175crossing guards the city is currently taking all of the costs for our crossing guards for our students so that is something that i think could be addressed and discussed um some of the the the cal walks report does pedestrian and bike and skateboarding accidents and we have had several on west 19th we have had several on 19th street we've had several on monrovia a lot of the zones are not the area is not safe for students to be walking without doing some of these programs first if we do safe routes to school and we have parents leading the effort and walking with 10 or 20 kids and everyone is trained then we can have conversations about eliminating busing it does not make sense to do it first i i continue to bring this up because
176we we just got an email that was sent to our parents two weeks ago that said that bussing is eliminated for rey and for whittier for the start of the school year so the students haven't been trained some of them the children will not know how to walk and operate that that safely i've continued to take pictures all along 18th street where there are semi trucks that are blocking there's often not sidewalks there are a lot of areas that are unsafe for our students i do not want something tragic to happen it is a really great concern that i have one of the other areas that's very unsafe is sonora elementary and i think there's just a lot that we can do as a district to protect our students better trustee anderson i will have
177oh i will ask uh dr bankser to meet with tim and shelly and review these issues and get back to you and us and if you if you have if you have it all written down there we look at you reading were you reading something yeah notes yeah i mean i have multiple reports i it's been a frustration i'd like to see him i'd like to see him this is my first shot at it okay so i'd like to see him that would be great okay um yeah and i think immediately you know we need to be working with the city we need to have our transportation department working directly with the city um and talking about streets and deciding you know we need to be putting in inside walks and crosswalks 18th in pomona
178is where a ton of students from both rey and whittier converge there is no crosswalk every single day it is very difficult to drive at that intersection so thank you thank you for reading that and acknowledging that we have a lot of of ways to go um and our board policy states that safety is the utmost concern not distance thank you thank you uh trustee crane yeah i'll take you back on the safety um safety topic i do i do know that we we as a board and community have discussed the the safety regarding e-bikes and awareness and i do know that chief john lewis just recently released a community uh awareness um not program but like a flyer to inform parents or he he's got something on that he's going to he shared with
179us what they plan on doing so that's that's good to hear they will have a robust program they're working with samantha payne at ensign yeah and then they're going to have community programs both in denver shores and the port streets at night for experience to be involved and i'm sure we'll continue to do uh additional trainings if we would like and i would think that it would be nice to be proactive and like snag the city of coast up the city of costa mesa because it's just going to be a matter of time oh guess what hurley the building i know they're moving it to her no it was just purchased by the electrical bike the e-bike company right right oh yeah we saw that so that's why i said it's just a matter of
180time so yeah if we can be ahead of that one too yeah and i i do thank you because i appreciate um chief lewis really getting on this we had a conversation and he's making something happen in newport beach so wonderful perhaps we should do the same thing in coastal medicine yeah thank you okay if there are no other um we there was a coast domain but mrs soyleu went i wasn't able to go that day so i didn't know if she had a report oh yeah i was there too oops all right um so the costa mesa the youth sports yes i was able to attend that and it was really great to hear of all of the you know exciting work that's being done in sports and there were some facilities type questions
181that um a couple members had and i passed those questions on to um to our facilities staff so i'm hopeful that they will be able to address those questions um most of them were around baseball fields but um after that meeting i shared those questions with our facilities folks so hopefully they will be able to address those safety and watering questions that that folks were asking at those meetings so um my other comment would be following up on trustee anderson and trustee crane their discussion about safety so i heard earlier you know our number one priority for this year is to keep schools open full-time i would just like to add a caveat keep schools open full-time safely so as our staff has talked about those layered mitigation strategies um it's important that we all
182recognize many of those layers um as our staff had noted things like distancing and other elements have been slowly peeled away so masks are sort of that last and hand washing and and that as well but masks are sort of that last line of defense that these that our kids have when they're in those buildings so i'm very proud that the california department of public health still recommends masking and um although it may not be convenient it's important that all of us remember that my mask isn't necessarily for me it's my mask is to protect you and your mask is to protect me because so many of the kids are asymptomatic and they may not know that they are are spreading quote so um it's important that we keep these layered strategies in mind although
183they might seem unideal no one loves to wear cloth on their face but the reality is it's still needed as the numbers are where they are in reality so dealing with that reality is very important and i just wanted to add one more um one more item following up on mr drake's report about the math article that was shared i've had the opportunity to read that article and although i do appreciate him you know giving more detail about how that came about in the trainings i just do want to be certain that people understand that that article was one teacher's case study and it was really a social justice asset based lens it was not a crt article in any means so um that folks can you know have peace of mind that there wasn't
184you know it indeed is not crt it was a social justice related article that mentions the word power and privilege so um that that just to clarify that for for the folks at home and to to follow up that there is no crt in the math um so that people can can ease off of that uh that perhaps false understanding so thank you thank you and that just reminds me um one thing i will talk to dr banks about is i would like on our next agenda to talk about some facilities use policies that we have and so policy committee get ready because can maybe asking staff to look into these so they'll bring them to you as well you bet okay if there are no other comments or questions um do i have a
185motion to adjourn the meeting so moved second all in favor aye aye okay thank you everyone i appreciate your time and involvement it's our only thing we get to have a voice vote on good job