001good afternoon everyone welcome to our board room this is so exciting to have all of us up on the dais where we belong um roll call rosa park trustee you'll see here justin bartow here trustee montoya here trustee anderson here trustee crane here trustee or soyulu here trustee weigand here mr lisan here adoption of the agenda and i would like to move a dot i would like to recommend in the adoption of the agenda that we pull item 14 b5 for further study i'll second you know you make the motion oh i'd like to make a motion that we pull item 14 b5 birth further steady second any other comment okay uh world cup we have one more amendment to the agenda okay trustee president we have one more amendment to the agenda uh staff
002is uh recommending that we pull item four f from the agenda in closed session or f okay okay i move the agenda do we have yeah i move the agenda be approved as amended oh second yeah but i don't know if it's before i vote or after i vote right now okay i'd like to have the opportunity to discuss why we're tabling it so that the public can understand our mindset when we vote on this and and you know because then i would feel more comfortable tabling it or not okay well i i'm recommending we remove it oh 14 that's 14b5 not not to vote on it i think we need some more information it has language that we had not seen before and i think it creates issues in our community and we need
003to do a little bit more research and decide the direction we want to go and we also have uh assistant superintendent torres who has joined us just this week who has taken over who is going to be taking over this entire area of our human relations task force and i think we need to talk to her and how we want to proceed with that yeah that's good but i still would like a discussion to hear from all board members what they think about so can we just can we just say i mean you can yeah so that's my only comment you know i just wanna i would love to hear what everyone else thinks about it as far as as tabling it versus discussing it within the agenda well like or pulling it pulling it
004out of you now to pull it right but now we're in discussion i would like a discussion right yeah yeah so does anybody have i will be happy to comment um personally i would feel a little more comfortable seeing what the curriculum says and i just want to make sure that what our our district tenants of compassion empathy kindness and respect are the fourth at the forefront of the curriculum and once i've seen that then i'm i'm happy to to vote on it but i it there's more curriculum in there that i didn't wasn't aware of so that's where i stand on it and my thoughts are we set it up for a specific purpose going along with human relations we had a discussion about human relations and we didn't really talk about that specific
005component of it i want to make sure i really that we that we're not spending extra money that we don't need to number one because we've already committed to doing things a different way than we had previously and then two i want to make sure that the purpose stays intact and some of the trainings that i um you know i don't want to decide on something without fully knowing what i'm deciding on and if what we put in place i think was great and i think it had its purpose and if it's still fully that then that's great okay um but i want to make sure it's actually that yes i do want to hear your your thoughts so that's that helps anyone else one for me i thought it was that there was it
006was a continuation so there were some staff who had done it and some who had not so for me it's more about the balance i would i would rather have all of our staff go through something rather than half ah and for me i think it's just let's look at what the training was used for um in the last two years and see what we actually need now and if it is effective with our teachers and students and really you know go through the curriculum in today's environment and see you know what uh harbor and um cdm really need so to be clear this is for specific teachers ones that are new to the to the training which is 101 and then a follow-up for the 201 those who took it last year and to
007student leadership right not students in the classroom right per se not students right right it's not a curriculum in the classroom it's for student leaders who have been chosen to be representatives okay all right i just want to clarify before you all uh take a vote on this the the um motion that's been first and seconded is just to determine whether this item will remain on tonight's agenda uh or not okay this is not about the actual um merits or your position on the items just whether it will remain on the agenda or not okay that's what this vote is and then certainly with direction from the board we will agendize at a future board meeting and just one other little comment on this i did have a conversation with peter levy the director of
008the adl today and talked to him about what their um what their training was for the past two years and what they intend for it and i told him regardless of what we decide tonight um that we will meet with him and figure out our next steps so i like that yep that's great anybody else thank you for listening so just to clarify so are we going to discuss it did you want to move it to discussion action or are we moving it i just wanted to hear well i just wanted to hear and i want the public to hear why we're considering tabling it or pulling it out tonight so that i just wanted to understand the rationale behind it and it makes sense to me so thank you the motion is to pull
009the item which means we will not discuss it tonight right call for the question okay um rosie roll call trustee elsie yes trustee bartow yes trustee montoya yes trustee anderson no trustee crane yes trustee or soyulu no trustee weigand yes okay community input on closed session items we don't have anyone in our room [Music] so we will now move to closed session the items are 4a conference with legal counsel one case 4b conference with legal counsel one case for c threat to public services or facilities 4-d conference with labor negotiator for e public employee discipline dismissal release employment and we will go into closed session at thank you we will return at 6 pm for a regular meeting for everybody's information we're going to youtube live so i have to give a 10 second pause
010while while they uh load that up but while we're doing that i just want to welcome everybody to our board meeting we are all really excited to be here improv well we've been here in person but we have you at our audience in person so we are really excited about that and to all be sitting up in the deus without mask because we've all been vaccinated so it's a good night before we begin i would just like to read a statement that we will enforce and try to recognize for all of our meetings now that we are back 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
011the 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 you sell cellular telephones or pagers any person who disrupts the meeting shall be called to order by the board president if such conduct continues the war president may request the person to leave the board room until they can conduct themselves in a non-disruptive manner any board member may move to require the board president to enforce the rules and the affirmative vote of a majority of the board shall require him or her to do so so we will be begin our opening uh ceremonies with a moment of reflection and pledge to the flag led by trustee mctway since it's her birthday thank you ready begin
012i 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 adopt the minutes just so everybody knows we now adopt our agenda before closed session we found out that legally that's the way we should be doing it so in our adoption of the agenda we did pull item 14b5 off the agenda so that will not be on here we also pulled for four f yes we also pulled one item that we discussed that would have been discussed in closed session uh move by available crane seconded by trustee weigan roll call vote trustee elsie yes trustee bartow yes trustee montoya yes trustee anderson yes trustee crane yes trustee or yes trustee wagon yes okay
013we now um usually at this time we have harbor council and our federation speak and i know our newport national federation of teachers is not here for the summer but csea is with us so pam saunders would you like to speak my glasses just broke so oh it's okay good evening president yelsey board superintendent lisa cabinet and guests thank you for this opportunity from csea first and foremost we'd like to thank all of our classified employees throughout the district for their 15 months of hard work and dedication during the pandemic at times prioritizing the district over their families csea has been an integral part in getting us where we are today and must continue to help to lead the way to educational normalcy our members have done a great job and we never said no
014since 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 usd with the all agencies taken into account csea wants to ensure that classified members needs and concerns will be addressed especially with the changes regarding mass social distancing and vasculations as per newport mesa guidelines and following all the rules from all the agencies looking forward to changes for classified staff in the near future with ample notification again thank you for this opportunity csca chapter 18. thank you thank you thank you and nice to see you in here you here in person as well next we have community input on non-agendas items trustee mccoy
015this is an opportunity for the public to address the board regarding items not on the regular meeting agenda comments on agenda items on comments on non-agenda items sorry um 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 um we have one item on csea interest pam saunders thank you again csea would like to take this opportunity to address the board directly regarding current negotiations we want to acknowledge and express our appreciation to the district's negotiation team for their collaboration and time newport mesa cse members have supported the district throughout the multiple stages of covet 19 pandemic and have been committed to completing their roles roles through their ever-changing work environment our members endured unimaginable loss and worked under
016highly stressful circumstances and we continued to prioritize our students well-being and district priorities the current negotiating parent parameters do not meet our members essential needs or respect our efforts and commitment there have been repeated disinterests and issues that greatly affect cse members thank you for your time and we look forward to process progressing in our next negotiation session thank you very much thank you uh we have seven comments on one topic um and if we keep everybody keeps up to three minutes we can get them all in so we will start with haley jenkins hi my name is haley and i'm a costa mesa resident and parent of two young children so thank you for allowing me to speak tonight to begin i have to share a quick story this morning while taking my daughter
017to swim lessons at corona del mar high school we drove past the side of the school which had a giant mural painted on it and the mural had pictures of students doing different activities and reasons they were proud of their school and one quote in large letters said cdm is special because of the resources that are provided by parents and the community they are proud of what we provide to them so i wonder how proud they're going to feel when they're led through the trainings by the anti-defamation league telling them that they're biased towards people of a certain race or religion but they don't even know it it's unconscious how proud will the teachers pulling into school each day feel when they go through these same trainings 24 of them and are told that they
018need to check their privilege or that they're an oppressor or that they themselves are oppressed is this even true absolutely not but you're all here to approve thirty eight thousand five hundred dollars to the adl to teach this stuff to staff and students so you must all feel proud of it right let me ask you all a question have each of you had a chance to read through all of the materials in these trainings have the parents do you all know exactly what they're training these children in the staff let me share with you on your own agenda on the school board website it boasts that the adl is a global leader in exposing extremism and delivering anti-bias education so are we seeing extremely violent hate crimes occur on campus or is this the result
019of a very small group of people on your task force i believe the average number was 30 pushing critical race theory in our schools now i've spoken to a few district members recently and one told me oh it's just teaching about the holocaust and tolerance and another board member told me to not listen to the buzzwords that the companies attached to their trainings words like equity anti-bias privilege intersectionality and i was assured that crt is not in our schools but here it comes so you're telling me it's not here but your actions speak differently when you paid forty five thousand dollars to true equity last month you have high schoolers attending a diversity inclusion and racial healing program and now you're rehiring the adl whose goal literally states to provide students the skills to be
020role models and social activists so are you telling us all loud and clear that your focus is not on improving the children's education is that like something that you're proud of i wouldn't be so you all want to deal with bullying and i get that and there are hundreds of companies out there to teach kindness and acceptance and love for everyone so why are you choosing this company in conclusion i'm asking you do not approve this payment trainings from the adl in the very least at least delay your decision a month or more until parents as well as all of you have thoroughly read through all the materials because we need to live up to that mural on the wall at cdm to be proud that we're providing students and staff with resources for a
021great education not training them in activism thank you next we have excuse me if we want to get through 20 minutes we should give everybody the time to speak uh next we have kathy johnson and i just wanted to reiterate i already announced that we have pulled this item from our agenda so it will not be discussed it will not be voted on just so you know that's kathy johnson hello i'm kathy johnson i'm the grandparent of children in your school system to quote the african the first african-american lieutenant governor mark robinson on his fight against critical lace race theory ctr growing up poor my family saw many struggles my mother had a fifth grade education when my father passed away i was 12. but my mother took on the task of raising us and
022she did she did it quite well she knew that she lived in the greatest nation on earth all opportunities were open to her and her children and she told us so i'm now living my dream he ended with that's why ending indoctrination in schools is such a passion of mine we have got to ensure that there are things like ctr are not creeping in and causing our children to hate this nation you can inspire your students you can convince them that they are victims or you can overwhelm this to an overwhelming system that they have no opportunity to overcome for the others assume that they are guilty of oppression victim or oppressor you do them a disservice if you put them into pre-defined groups i have spent 20 years working in school districts and educa
023with educators providing resources and services that hopefully inspire them to prepare each student to find their life direction can build their skills so they can follow the path of their career potential i'm confused please help me explain how the following quote from the california department of education's instructor manual a pathway to equitable math instruction dismantling racism in mathematic instructions makes any sense quote this is a list of characteristics of white supremacy culture that show up in our organizations culture is powerful precisely because it is so present and at the same time very difficult to name and identify despite the difficulty to name or identify white supremacy culture the authors were able to come up with 15 characteristics that according to them are embodied in white people quote the characteristics listed are damaging because they are
024used to norms to use as norms and standards without being proactively named or chosen by the group they are damaging because they promote white supremacy thinking they are damaging to both people of color and to white people it goes on to say organizations that are people color led or majority people of color can also demonstrate damaging characteristics of white supremacy culture if both races can demonstrate white supremacy culture how can an instructor manual assign the behavior only to whites i request that you keep the parents fully informed as to what is being taught in the content of the curriculum thank you thank you i'm having i'm having difficulty with reading this one um sean bedeau did i pronounce that right no that's okay welcome to marvel missing all right thank you for letting me speak
025today i understand it's not on the agenda today i just want to make it clear so in case you is on the agenda on a day i'm not here i just want to be able to share my opinion i came here because i'm a parent of a newport mesa student and i oppose any funding for any anti-bias education programs including the program called world of difference i do not do not renew the contract with the anti-defamation league or secure any contract with any other organization providing training as it relates to race the anti-defamation league says that their goal is a world with in which no group or individual suffers from bias discrimination or hate but the contract you are considering is going to explore privilege and perspective and this is all a code for critical
026race theory this training will create and promote racism and divisiveness in our schools it's not about equality and equal opportunity for all it will be used to divide our children into groups of either perpetrators or victims and they are sentenced to this position for their entire lives no matter what not taking into consideration their individual actions or their individual character is all based on their skin color one group to be elevated over another and the tribalization of our races this goes against everything that was fought for by the civil rights movement with by with martin luther king these types of programs will undo the years of building of equality of the races by promoting these concepts you will be causing the development of discrimination harassment and racism that you claim that you want to eliminate
027these types of programs destroy relationships between students families and friends i'm now starting to hear about kids being uninvited to parties because they're white these programs have a negative impact on the mental health of all students the supposed perpetrator as well according to the theory and the lifelong victims should be category this should all be categorized as child abuse to characterize them as this this is offensive not only to the white students but to all students i ask that you look at what could be the unintended consequences of a scenario like this that you are looking to create by signing on with companies like this or maybe it is your intention to divide our children by skin color and promote hate and racism in this generation but i hope that's not the case please do
028not enter into any race equity privilege and power-based programming contract with the anti-defamation law league or any other organization it should be up to the parents to teach the children about these concepts and not the school thank henry you henry abraham [Music] good evening thank you so much for letting me speak today um i am a resident of costa mesa i have two kids one of them is too young to be in school but one of them goes to woodland we love costa mesa it breaks my heart that i'm pulling my kid out of public school as an immigrant who moved here at the age of 14 it was public school that granted me the privilege of getting a full-ride scholarship to college i will not send my kids to school that my half-white half-persian
029child has to be thought about either he's a victim because of his ethnicity or he is privileged because of half of his ethnicity it doesn't work like that as someone who comes from a different race who wasn't born and raised here trust me there are plenty organizations the teachers are amazing at making sure that everything is taught top-notch to our kids it's a shame that there are hundreds of us pulling our kids we are giving up our jobs to stay home and homeschool our children because of one subject that you guys who we voted for to represent us get to vote on please listen to the parents it's a huge concern in the community if any of your member on social media you know how the parents feel about it so please from someone who
030knows both sides of the aisles i would love for my kids to go to public school i worked since i was 15 years old i paid taxes for our public school but i will not be able to send my kids to a school where they are not going to be taught properly and they're going to be taught about a privilege that they don't have let me make it simple as a minority and an immigrant i had the privilege of going to school on a full scholarship yes i had the grades but i also was able to check the box that made me eligible for a scholarship my husband who graduated high school at the age of 16 with honors had to work three jobs to put himself to her school because he was white there
031is no white privilege we need to stop talking about it this country is a great country and we are privileged and honored to live in this country that provides us to be free i come from a country where freedom is not an option so please consider what you're going to be teaching these young kids we need to be proud to be part of this country thank you so much [Applause] michelle gambian thank you for listening to us to this afternoon um it's going to be really hard to follow that wonderful woman because her expression was i think what most of us feel here today i also have children in newport mesa unified school district and i didn't prepare anything but i wanted to go on the record to say that i'm not supportive of any
032kind of teaching or any kind of programs that would promote critical race theory in our schools i don't think it's appropriate i don't think it's i don't think the um that the underlying policies that critical race theory teaches or supports or promotes are accurate i don't believe that they are appropriate to our community or our children and i would object to any funding going to any kind of program that would is anything like critical race theory so thank you very much thank you lisa webster lisa westerhout thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak um so first off i just want to say that i'm here as a student advocate i have four students that went through the newport mesa school district they have all graduated i'm also a school counselor i'm not a
033school counselor at the newport mesa school district however because i live in the area i felt that i wanted to come and speak i my head is off to all of you this is a challenging time for you all to be in your seats and i have no background on where any of you stand on this position and it's been a tough year and i wanted to come in and perhaps like give you a different lens to see this through and i've been very fortunate in that i've spent my school counseling career doing what school counselors are trying to do which is council students i don't waste my time doing scheduling i don't do anything like that i've had the opportunity to really build programs and work with students research-based programs as you can see
034this is like close to my heart here okay so that being said i would strongly recommend i do know many counselors and the newport mesa school district and there are some amazing counselors that are more than capable of doing needs assessments for their schools and getting an understanding for what their schools need and actually implementing programs to help their schools we have master's degrees in counseling it's not your old school counselor you know that just you know sent you off to college they have a lot more training and skills and i would recommend i know you guys earlier met with some attorneys i have no idea what it was for i was reading the agenda but you met with attorneys because you needed somebody to look over something that needed that expertise is what i'm
035assuming right so i'm sure you have very smart educated friends but you wouldn't take that same issue to someone who has a phd who's also very smart but doesn't really know the issue i encourage you to take things like this before you make any sort of decision and run them by some of the school counselors include them in the conversations because they are trained to recognize this it it took me two seconds of being on this website to know like i cannot tell you why the world is upside down right now but what i can tell you and this is wrong this program is wrong um it goes against everything you learn in counseling i mean i knew the parents would come with great arguments here but i wanted to be the voice of a
036professional counselor because i don't feel like we've really been asked our opinion or expertise on this matter if this comes across your desk it will come across your desk again in many different forms i'm sure over the next few years i just like encourage you to one um on this particular issue if you vote to not i know it's off the board for voting well eleven seconds left um if you decide not to go with it um whatever that means no harm done if you decide to go with it there's harm that's going to be done to the students thank you [Laughter] i feel kind of goofy okay so i am a mother of newport mesa children and i am here today to object to the rebranding of critical race theory or as it is
037now called restorative justice or restorative programming as the grandchild of cuban immigrants one of the lessons i was taught is that socialism's first order of business is to divide the people they are fractioned into groups on a pressed clap as in a pressed class in a victim class and this tactic creates a desired decision needed for control this evolves into a perpetual socialist symbiotic relationship similarly this strategy can be used in schools as a seemingly well-meaning and well-worded curriculum disguised in the syllabus students are taught that they are victims of their skin color or socioeconomics or that they are oppressed by those who seem to be in a position of privilege this is racist also camouflaged within the lesson another group of students is taught that they are the oppressors guilty by the color of
038their skin or for their socioeconomics and that they are to blame for the oppression of their classmates this is divisive and also racist i believe one of the most profound statements made by a true advocate for racial equality is that man should not be judged by the color of his skin but the content of his character please take this in consideration before making the decision to renew the next tier of the newport mesa unified school district contract with the anti-defamation league thank you okay that's all of our comment cards we will move on to item 11 superintendent comments mr lisa all right good evening everybody good evening trustees uh first of all i want to comment how great it is to be here in person uh it's been a long haul and it's great to
039see uh our community and folks in the room there's a enter we've been in person for a while but it's nice to see uh the energy in the room i also uh i'm happy that we're not wearing masks in front of uh or between plexiglas so a lot of great things and you know one by one one thing at a time we're getting back to normalcy here and one of the things that i want to talk about is uh something that has been on all of our minds is what is the guidance going to look like for the state in our schools okay and so uh we had a couple of big uh announcements with the cdc uh coming out with their updated guidance related to uh schools okay and our state california department of
040public health was waiting for the cdc to come out with their guidance and i want to highlight a few things for our trustees tonight and for members of our public if they haven't been following along with that and there's some things that are actually quite positive things that we've been looking forward to there are some things that maybe didn't go as far as we were hoping it to so i'm going to kind of summarize a few of i think the key things now in the area of positive changes one of the things that we committed to here in the district was that we were going to have full in-person instruction in the fall we announced that months ago and one way or another we were going to make sure that that happened and with the
041release of the cdc guidance with the release of the state guidance that confirms that and that was a big theme a big area that they wanted to make sure that schools all schools here in the state of california could open with full person uh full in-person instruction and so that validates the decision the direction that we made months ago the other thing that is very welcome is that there are no distancing requirements and this from a school perspective and an operational perspective as you know we have some principles here in the room that is the biggest challenge in everything that we do if we have to keep kids apart whether they're in the classroom at lunchtime recess coming in and out of the campus so the great news is that there's no distancing requirements either
042inside or outside so that is very welcome and and that goes for students as well as staff because we weren't sure okay we were hearing okay maybe students but what about staff and our staff our teachers they want to move around the room they want to interact and connect with the students and that's really important so with the lifting of those restrictions they're able to really uh what we believe is get back to the normalcy build those connections and those relationships in a much more normal setting the other thing that is welcome is again they validated that there would be no mask requirements for outdoors so our kids when they're out there on the playground or the high school kids moving from class to class there's no mass requirement there and i know one of
043the big concerns is the amount of time that our kids have had to wear a mask at one time so this at least gives them that opportunity to take that mask off outdoors now here's an area where it didn't go as far as i think we were hoping and expecting is that mass here in the state of california are still required indoors and it's required indoors regardless of vaccination status and as we know our our students that are below 12 years of age aren't even eligible for the vaccine we know that many families and parents have chosen chosen to have their students take the vaccine but some have not and we need to understand that so there is going to be a mix of vaccinated and unvaccinated but here in california the mask rule applies
044to everybody elementary secondary as well as whether they're vaccinated or not so that's the area that i think we've been getting some comments getting some feedback that there's a lot of concern for that and i know the state just put this out yesterday it's something that we're going to very closely analyze here in the district like i said this just came out the other day what we typically do is we meet at the count at the county level with all the orange county superintendents we get feedback from our county office of education feedback from legal analysis of this new guidance and once we get to a good point we definitely will be putting communication out to all of our staff and to our parents on an update with that but at this point that is
045the guidance that is issued by the california department of public health and the mask requirement indoor is a requirement is a requirement there is one aspect of this that they have given to local school boards and that is the enforcement part okay and that's something we have to look at very closely to determine what flexibility do we actually have with that and that's a part that right now is really challenging and a bit unclear so we're going to take some time to analyze that we don't start school until august 23rd so we've got a bit of a time okay so so please bear with staff bear with me we will analyze this and we will report back to you on exactly uh what that is so so there's some good things in there and i'm
046sorry i've missed one thing looking at my notes there is one area that is an advantage of having masks uh one of the challenges that again we had to live through is when somebody is covet positive that anybody within proximity of of that person has to be quarantined in other words has to go home cannot come to school and one of the advantages of wearing masks according to the state and this guidance is that there will be modified quarantine protocols so it will be a better set of rules to allow kids to stay in school in the event one of their classmates is tested positive okay so that's a that's another benefit i wanted to mention today so bottom line is that we will continue to analyze this and we will come back to you
047with more information okay i also want to mention we have somebody in the audience that i want to acknowledge later on in the agenda and i'm not sure if she's going to be here so i'm going to point this out right now but we are very privileged to have the superintendent of our coastline rop program carol hume carol would you please say hello and okay [Applause] and i i want to make sure i point out this because there is something in the on the agenda later on in consent and carol i'm not sure if you're going to stick around for that i hope you do but i wanted to make sure we acknowledge your presence here and more importantly our partnership that we have with crop there's so many wonderful courses that changes the life
048of our kids it gives them a direction and a career path and it's very exciting that you're a great partner with our district and we have our agreement our annual agreement it's a wonderful agreement and we uh certainly enjoy our partnership moving on for for many years so carol thank you for being here and all your support okay and i will say some words at the end because this may be my last board meeting okay and the reason why and the reason i'm smiling the reason why i say maybe this is the last regular board meme but i have a feeling we might have a special board meeting before the end of the month so i i'm not saying farewell farewell uh completely but i will have some words at the end of the meeting
049on that you penciled it in it's not an ink yet okay thank you very much okay um community community input on agendas items we do not have any cards okay so we will move on to item 13. uh we have two reports the first is to receive an update from leadership associates on our superintendent's search and i will call dennis smith and peggy and the reason we have asked them to come here is because we are in the midst of finding a new superintendent and we just wanted even though we have it on our website and we cut we keep updates of what the process is and where we are we thought it would be nice for them to give their update of where they are in this process and our next steps so welcome
050thank you thank you president elsie and superintendent lee song and board members are really pleased to be here peggy lynch is here and we're working directly with you in the community and we also have kent beckler and sandy thorson who are part of the team and so we just first want to say how privileged we feel to have been part of this process this began with the board of education we met well over a month ago when we chatted with you about what was important the new superintendent and based on that you had talked about us making sure there was a very broad outreach and so we conducted over six days 27 separate groups involving over 200 individuals principals teachers dlac members superintendent cabinet confidentials just every imaginable group city officials also and based on
051that we came up with some findings about what we thought the community was really focusing in on in terms of key characteristics and we want to share that with you today so i'm going to let peggy talk a little bit about that but we also conducted an online survey and over 1750 members of the community students responded to that both in spanish and english and so it was a tremendous response and so based upon all that we put together a position description that we'll share with you some of those key characteristics and we also want to thank rosie who was absolutely remarkable in scheduling all of that it was huge and she's been tremendous throughout this entire process so i'm going to turn over to peggy and then i'm going to also wrap up with
052some things great thank you very much i think and i know the board has seen from the survey some of the characteristics the professional experiences that people were interested in including experience in california public education classroom teachers site administrators track a proven track record of student achievement those kinds of things as well as the professional leadership characteristics around building your community bringing the community together has a vision for where you're headed accessibility communications all those kinds of things i want to spend a little bit of time though just for everybody's perspective to really focus in on the position description part of it because i think that really can is the piece that we use as board knows as our real recruiting tool in talking with candidates these are the things we say are you are
053you a good match for all these kinds of things and that's really something we use a lot with our with our candidates um i think dennis may say this but we've had over 20 we've had 29 requests for applications already and we don't close until the 26th and of those 26 we've had well over i think 11 or 12 who actually completed them already we have a number of out of state candidates people requesting as well out of state everybody said well wouldn't newport mesa be a nice place to go but they don't know they don't know everything yet so but i think the things that i want to just kind of highlight under the professional profile that we heard one is to understand and value the culture of this district understanding this whole culture
054of what this is like consistent and focused communication really the consistency the staying on message and the focused communication involving people in decision making and other groups and the people that are impacted by that comparable community experience they've worked in something similar to this they know they know understand the demographics of this community uh the collaboration uh experience in developing the capacity of staff working to build their sa their abilities as well those are some of the key things under personal profile really around strong communication skills effective listening problem solving a collaborative transparent leader they hold themselves and other people accountable they're articulate in their communication innovative and willing to really look at where we can go and and knowing that the district is highly successful and done lots of wonderful things but you can
055always grow you can always get better and i think we heard a lot of that so i think from our perspective those were sort of the consistent messages we heard both on the survey but in our interviews and communication with staff so we had we had a lot of fun i i enjoyed my stuff it i don't love zoom but you get through it it's a it's a really passionate community and uh and and teaching staff and uh just everyone involved just loves this school district i wanted just to wrap up um by sharing with you what we gleaned as some of the the greatest strengths and the greatest challenges as we talked to these 200 individuals the 1750 responses there's some themes that came up but the the strengths of the district clearly the
056dedicated teachers and staff members i mean people really valued and felt that the their kids were in good hands with the professional staff that you have here in the district and that came over and over again people commented how passionate they are about being part of this school district and so there's a real love for being a member of this community people talked about they went to school here we heard it from some of the parents here i went to school here we heard that a lot so people are feel like very invested like this is important uh getting a superintendent that really is is responsive to us and understands this culture so that was that came on over and over and over again um the commitment to safe schools that this came up that
057really you want to make sure that that our schools are safe and that we have a leaders and we have a board that really takes that into consideration as they they felt that that is the case um the other part was that there's so much engagement whether it's you know the city officials the foundation the ptos the booster clubs everyone is doing whatever they can do to help the schools and and help the kids and so those are some of the really strengths of of the district as we heard them the the challenges which are interesting and they're not new to you but declining enrollment came up over and over again and particularly you know which kids are going to show up in the fall and how did the pandemic affect that did some people
058make choices to go to private schools and so there was a worry there but that came from the board as well as the community members so that's nothing new to you but that was a reality um the the perception of inequities that there can be differences in schools whether it be social economics and how much the school can raise i've been part of this community for 30 years next door in laguna beach and irvine so this isn't anything new but it continues and so the new leader has to be really sensitive fact that there are differences in terms of how schools are perceived and the district does everything they possibly can but there's a perception there so that was a reality that came up uh in regards to who you were it wasn't necessarily negative
059it was this is something we need to continue to talk about and then finally and peggy mentioned it just communication this is a complex organization but consistent communication from the district to the schools and across the board was something that they felt was highly valued and would be important to to really focus attention on so that wraps it up we'll take questions if you have any the deadline closes on july 26th we're doing our vetting process we've made many personal contacts to recruit individuals we also get calls and someone says i think i'm interested we talk to them and we go through this position description and sometimes they'll select themselves out of the position and and that's a good thing i know it newport beach or costa mesa that may sound really glamorous but this
060is the reality of it and so some of the skills don't always match up and so that's part of what we do but we're feeling very good about the candidate pool and our recruitment efforts dennis could you um provide the expected timeline after the application closes where we're going from there very good so the 26th uh and peggy and i and ken and sandy are doing the the vetting as we begin but once that closes we spend about two weeks of heavy vetting uh contacting individuals new reference checking and then uh in the middle part of of august probably from the 12th to the 13th the board will receive all the applications and with our recommendations of who seems to be the best match you'll be able to review all those in the privacy of
061of your office or homes and then we'll meet and you'll make your decision in terms of who are the top candidates you'd like to interview and then interviews are scheduled to take place on august 18th following that the board will have identified hopefully a finalist but that will be pending as several different and very important things one will be a site visit either by zoomer in person hopefully in person to validate that and also contract negotiations if all goes well your first board meeting in september i don't have that off the top september 17th i think or 14th 14th 14th 14th if all goes well the board will take official action at that time uh if there's at any point in time you say we'd like to spend more time on this we'll do that
062until we get the candidate that you like although we think we're going to have a very very good group of candies to present to you and for you to to to meet with in the middle to the latter part of august was there more to that no that's great thank you any questions and you have an interim so you'll be starting we do have an interim that will be beginning prior to um so we'll have a little bit i can't remember and the interim really is to just bridge the gap they will not be coming in to set any new policies to make any changes there will be just a bridge between superintendent lee sung and the new superintendent when we come in we have a fabulous staff that has is moving forward and working
063on our programs for opening school into 2122 and so we're in good shape thank you thank you very much and i just would say that we have a chance to do searches all across the state and we've done it for many years and just for the community this board has been the most engaged and active and interactive with us and and and so open and free with your time uh which this is a time swimming process and there's a lot for you to review and so we really appreciate that it makes our job in terms of what we do so much better and we're more effective because of a board like you great thank you thank you thank you trustee crane yes jesse jelsey you um actually on this whole out of this whole group
064went through a superintendent search right because we haven't obviously um and so was the process about the same or how would you say it was different was the because we did the situation was a little different in the sense that we were in covet so a lot of zoom type interviews with the community and i'm just curious if we're going to involve the community at all after this point well the the huge part of the the process was the the zoom meetings that we had individual meetings and the online surveys and so that's generally the time which the community really has a chance to provide input and they do that then we present you with that executive summary one of the things in a superintendent search like this particularly with the quality candidates we're bringing
065forward um it's it's a confidential process so everything that we begin to share with you uh those those personnel files are just for the board to review and so generally speaking almost 100 of our searches are done in a confidential manner the board's input is provided or the community's input is provided through those other mechanisms it's also possible if you wish to take committee members or maybe some of the labor groups on on the site visit afterwards that can sometimes be done but this is the the time which is really the board's responsibility and and i think the the difference i remember is back then we didn't have zoom nobody had ever heard of anyone um hard to believe huh and so we had community input sessions in every zone right but i have to
066say doing it on zoom probably is a better process because we got more people engaged some people who may not want to come to go out to a school at six o'clock at night um to provide input but yeah they can hop on zoom so i think the engagement we had in getting some feedback was much greater having this on zoom yeah the access to input was wider because of technology yes yeah it really we are actually recommending that yeah because we're having so many more people participate because they can do it on their own time and i mean the scheduling rosie was scheduling trust me over six days it was it was really quite the task but we met with 27 different groups and some individually too so no the zoom actually works better
067and that's the protocol we're trying to follow moving forward because our participation so that's great and you can get more individualized groups like we did so many just secondary principles elementary principles certificated staff classified and when we had our meetings before everybody went to a location right and gave input yeah and specifically because of our timeline it happens to be in the summertime just to the way it's fallen so this is a better way as far as reaching out to families who are maybe in on a vacation a vacation location and can zoom in and or take a survey from wherever else and yeah and i was part i participated in two superintendent searches as a teacher and as a site principal and i can say that we had more people respond to this than
068we did to the other ones so it was surprising and comforting actually it was it was nice and just for the public to know because i've had some comments how do when when we hire many people in the district we have community people and staff people on the um interview panels and for the superintendent search is the only search where it is just the board that selects the superintendent because he or she is our only employee so we are the ones that make that decision but that's why we would like the guidance from outside we'd like to get the input of what everybody else is out there is thinking and uh what their concerns are so you were able to review a lot of those comments directly from from the community which is i know
069very helpful thank you so much for coming tonight thank you thank you and next we have a report on the district's site security projects um mr holcomb thank you president elsie let me bring that up on our screen looking for the expanded to full size i thought i had that here there we go my apologies i'm sorry i should have asked my team to come up would you all please come up thank you so as as we're as you all know we've recently completed um two major projects uh in the district's school site security program at uh ensign intermediate school and the chrono del mar middle school and high school site and this seemed to be a very good time to uh to reflect and and review the district's site security program there have been
070numerous people involved in this program throughout so i thought tonight that i would let them share it with you one person who would have been here and sends his regards is vlad anderson isn't with us tonight many of you probably know that he is a veteran and he is over at the orange county board of supervisors meeting tonight speaking on the gypsum canyon proposal for a veterans seminary and so he sends his regards he wishes he could be here he would be talking about the portions of this pardon me of this presentation that he had worked on with me back in 2018 this is by the way very similar to the presentation uh from december of 2018 when we initially approved the ensign and cdm projects so you'll see many of those same slides and
071you can be able to compare some of those to each other with that um let me tell you who we have and in order otta zaresni we'll uh we'll start out give us a little bit of history and then she'll go on and pass it on to our architect jason donchi who was with me touring all of our school sites back in 2018 to prepare the initial security study report with vlad anderson that formed all of this program all of the district security standards so mr donchi is here tonight from studio plus architects he has his security consultant here who works across the country and has worked on our projects also mr bidnick lance bidnick from our maintenance and operations department and our new risk manager jonathan wilby is here with us this evening so
072with that could you talk us through uh the past projects good evening everyone nice to see you all president elsie board russell superintendent russell and all of our guests so my part's easy today this is probably the least you'll ever hear me talk up here but it's the history of it and so what we're seeing here is a list of sites that we did some modifications to associated with securing our site and so with the first group of schools the intent for those schools was to create a perimeter not necessarily every single time was it on the property line but there was a perimeter the other important aspect of those projects was to create a lobby or an entry where once the gates were closed and the fencing was locked during the school day that
073you were able to come onto campus into the lobby and not have to walk through the administration building not walk down the hall past the principal past the nurse and really create an in and out opportunity and so those seven schools are the schools that we um initially completed and then we went through the comprehensive study on all of the schools which just was another layer of security measures and minimizing the entry points so as you know we've just constructed the ensign and cdm projects and we're looking forward to the next group of them and seeing what new opportunities we have with those projects being different types of sites and configurations and i'll pass it on to jason questions do you um well this was this was actually um vlad anderson's slide uh and again
074he apologizes but uh vlad uh walked us all through at the time the uh crime prevention triangle and the fact that the three components of a criminal act are the desire to commit the act the knowledge and ability and the opportunity and um what the next two the next slide talks a little bit about desire and knowledge and ability but one of the key things we talked about back in december of 18 is that the district as of that time and has still even more so committed funds to provide counseling and the structure for addressing the issue of desire and desire particularly to to to do something uh at a particular site we we've brought in the challenge success program which has been very very successful we've brought in psychologists and other student supports and
075and this district has really committed a significant amount of resources to that the next part really is the part that's addressed by septet and at the time we did this uh mr anderson and mr donchi and i all went through the septet principles in the federal guidance on this because they really are about addressing the ability to do it and the opportunity and how you can impact that through environmental design so septet is the crime prevention through environmental design program uh it addresses the issue of natural surveillance the ability to see what's going on around you access control the ability to control who is actually able to enter and territorial reinforcement the ability to make it clear that this is not the same as the public space that you're immediately adjacent to now we're ready
076for mr donchi yeah so since we do have real world examples now with the cdm and ensign projects completed i wanted to take the opportunity to talk a little bit about the septed strategies and some of the implement implementations that we made which may not be so apparent as security measures so uh the first strategy insepted natural surveillance that means that around the perimeter of a site people can see in and people on the site can see out so the reason why this is important it's because if if somebody is there on campus or outside to prevent a crime or nefarious act we all know that if you feel like you're being watched or at least visible it's a deterrent to doing that so one strategy that we used and as an architect you know
077we even though this is uh these are security projects we look at opportunities to beautify campuses so landscaping is a big way that we did that as we work through plant materials and analyzing what to utilize obviously we need to keep plant material low around the perimeter of campus if they're trees the canopy needs to be high so we don't obscure those sight lines so there was a lot of coordination with our landscape architect and the district and lance and emino department access control obviously is a crucial part of septed obviously there were big changes at cdm and ensign right now during school hours to get on campus you either need a credential a card they'll let you in the gates or you enter through the admin building so essentially during school hours anybody on
078a campus is approved to be there which is a good thing territorial reinforcement is another septet strategy so that's marking your territory is a k through 12 public school campus reason why that's important is because there's a different set of rules right on a on a public school there's a code of conduct it is not a public park when we uh we're developing the standards in 2018 something we heard a lot about from the school sites was people were on site utilizing playfields during school hours so you know and you can't fault them a lot of the school sites look like a park which is a good thing but you need to define the perimeter during school hours another thing we talked about a lot during standards development and implementation is the notion of passive
079and active solutions so just to touch real quickly a passive solution as you can see here this is the fence at newport harbor high school off i think 16th street so that's a passive solution it doesn't need technology it doesn't need maintenance to be effective is a security barrier so in a pure security sense you would want to surround any site with with fencing no gates right but the school site needs to work and it needs to operate emergency access needs to be provided so obviously we need to implement gates um that's a that's a major part uh why we brought in charles leblanc from imeg engineers he's a security expert ultra knowledgeable about access control and everything to do with security on campuses so charles is going to talk a little bit about a
080little bit more detail on access control and security hello as a as a physical security consultant and doing this for many years my role in this was i was engaged to actually come in and help the district assemble and determine what was the most appropriate technology to deploy to help make the schools safer and so for us it's a very important element we have to look at things from several factors and one of the factors that we actually do use to begin with is septet so these are principles that are founded and used everywhere not just here they're used in all different disciplines all different environments we use them when we do corporate campuses when we do hospitals when we do public universities private schools they're used everywhere we then combine that with the concepts
081of integrated technology with operations so we work very closely to make sure that we have these passive elements in in place first things like the fences and and the elements that we need to do then we think about the operations who's going to operate them how they're going to operate them how can we make these systems work efficiently and effectively and very much cost effectively and then finally we look at the technology and how we put it in so the first thing that we actually started doing uh soon after we started talking about what was going on from a technology perspective was what exactly or is the district doing with their campuses and so we started actually looking the first thing we did was we looked at the plans for these two sites and it
082was pretty apparent from the very beginning all of those septet principles have been taken into place there were a lot of different things in place that really made the technology support very very well for the district so we have a really good foundation with this type of approach that's being deployed and it makes it very easy for us to go back and ultimately add and make the technology work better for you and actually make it a force enhancement it actually helps you to enhance all of these principles you're trying to do at the sites and be very flexible with it so one of the things we're looking at right now is access control we're also looking at camera coverage and other elements in technology but we want to blend them in so that they match
083up and the first element we had to do was to actually look at the locking mechanisms and basic functional things so the nice part about the the designs and by the way we were not involved at that early stage so we just came in and we started to look at these plans just recently and so this was our opportunity to see what was going on and we saw two things as we evaluated the plans the first thing we saw was this adherence to very very good septet principles the second thing we saw was a very good plan and implementation so the quality of the fencing the way it's laid out all the different principles that are being used are really solid and really help us to enhance those with technology so what we're doing now
084is actually helping the district to select a good appropriate technology to deploy and to ultimately integrate that in with all of these nice things that are already being put into the campus so that we can help you secure the campuses and the students and staff and faculty and and all of the people who work on these sites for you thank you charles mr bidnick has worked uh very closely with charles in developing the access control standards and the the new key card system which is new to us but it was not new to mr bidnick he had experienced it in other projects so we might talk about that good evening my history with the newport mesa unified district goes back to 2019 so i came on board after all of the uh the designs were
085already in progress and the december 11th 2018 meeting one of the things that i was looking at or asked to partake it or participate in was to look at the projects that were being undertaken by the district for improving security at the school sites the one thing that i noticed very quickly is this is all very familiar my history with the san diego county office of education my history with the i'm sorry the anaheim union high school district we had just finished a very similar project it had very similar septet concepts involved for the security of the school sites and very specifically with the electronic access control so perimeter fencing around schools even my daughter's school in the nearby ocean view school district they just completed a lot of fencing projects very similar the feel
086for this project was very familiar beginning with the most visible part of it is the the perimeter fencing another concept even back to my my experience with san diego schools was advising schools with the moving towards a single point of entry and something that's very difficult to achieve with a lot of southern california schools that were built in the 1960s with the idea of open campuses a community space that didn't really have a lot of barriers the implementation of these fencing the re routing of the parking and some of the sidewalks and some of the architectural features that were included in this in these both of these projects to draw people towards where you wanted them to go specifically to the front excuse me the the front entrance of the schools um the additional parking
087and electronic uh i'm sorry the drop-off areas kind of aided in in that directing visitors as they come on to campus to know exactly where to go with this project we had not identified the exact locking mechanisms or the electronic access controls but all of the infrastructure was there put in place pending a finding or a determination on what type of technology would be used we actually used all of the existing infrastructure very successfully implemented new electronic access control technology at all of the entrances including the office entrances at both cdm enclave and high school offices and the ensign office we also have in plans for surveillance cameras to be installed our timing is is probably less than perfect with delays on camera delivery because of covid and then one of our employees unfortunately suffered
088a personal injury and and was not available but the cameras will be installed shortly with the intent that these are going to aid us in forensic activities and investigations into the activities around the entrances of each of the schools if we detect any kind of illicit activity or questionable activity we can go back and forensically review camera footage one thing is really nice is the renderings from the project are very similar to the actual representation of or the actual condition at the school site steve morris from our facilities department recreated the renderings with actual uh photographs of similar angles at each of these schools the smaller picture that you see there is the rendering and the larger picture there is the actual footage so very similar to what was what was presented to the board
089in in december of 2018 you can see a lot of the uh the concepts and again the the large septet feature of an actual physical barrier corona del mar had a lot of the same features um with a high school it's a larger larger campus a lot more activities a lot more complicated to set standard programming for all of the activities that the high schools require it's not just the school of apple programs it's the school athletic programs it's community use it's weekend activities it's it's very difficult very complicated to program some of the things that we did was not only did we create training materials for our own staff our mno staff school site staff on how to use the system what to do what not to do also administrative documents that would aid
090the principles and how to manage the system we also updated some of our our existing key policy and key control forms created new access request forms and new procedures and processes to to help implement the electronic access controls not only do we provide training and ongoing support for our maintenance and operations staff new technology we need to make sure that we can maintain it but we also provided the training for the school sites we're also actively working with the school sites as they become familiar with the system and the programming and modifying the programming the the times that people can come and access the school site who can access it and win when you flash a badge for example at the card reader and this is an example of one of the electronic id badges
091it will do certain things depending on who you are and what kind of credentials you have we have the ability for example to lock down the school site with the push of a button in the office we have the ability to unlock all of the gates if we choose to for example to allow student arrival and dismissal so somebody's not standing at the gate opening and closing the gate every time and we've been working with the school sites to kind of figure out what works best with the schedule and then also updating in the training materials with the school sites working on the programming so it's consistent with their school site safety plans more pictures from corona del mar all right good evening um so so my part here is to talk about the next
092steps but before i did that i just wanted to give a little bit of risk management perspective on the security projects and also the principles that have been incorporated into the projects and i think i have a little bit of a unique perspective just because i wasn't here when they were planned i wasn't here when they were approved i wasn't here for most of the time that the work was actually being done um you know i've really come in and and seen it towards the tail end of these two projects and um at the time that the planning and everything was going on i was working for the orange county fire authority as their risk manager and one of the programs i was responsible for was uh site security at the regional fire operations and
093training center so the the interesting thing about that is that the ocfa we went through a similar similar project three to five years ago where we looked at hardening our facility and it was similar to these sites that it was a facility that was built enough time ago that it was built on different principles and also when the world was a little bit different so it was an open campus and we went through and had to figure out how do we harden our facility to provide more security and also protect our employees and it was based on similar concepts to this it was all based on scepted we worked with imag and the same type of card readers and cameras and integration that we're talking about here so um i kind of have a little
094past life experience in that since being hired by newport mesa i've spent a lot of time just getting up to speed on school security and school safety and one of the resources that i've used to do that is the federal commission that the president puts together after every act of school violence like major active school violence and they put together a report after each of these reviews that they do to look at the incident and also look at ways that basically school security and school safety in general can be improved in the future and reading through these reports all of them have similar types of discussion about site security and physical security of schools and it all talks about school building hardening limiting entry points and utilization of technology such as access controls and cameras
095so when i came in i felt good when i started to to learn about these projects as far as what we had done and also the principles that we had used to get there so now what's next so what's next is just as important as what we've done coming in in doing all the physical security putting fencing in place cameras in place that's all great but you know our planning our training our drills those are all really important as well because that's how we get people to act a certain way during an emergency so the next step is a revision of the comprehensive school safety plans so those plans are required for each of our schools they're required by the education code they come through the board of education every year for your approval and
096they need a revision part of it is to go into more depth as far as incorporating the changes that we've made as far as site-specific changes and the security changes we're also working with a group called i love you guys and what they're all about is a common set of language and protocols to use during an emergency and the reason you want those and you want those across school sites is so people started becoming familiar when they hear certain words and certain things they know what to do so we're working with them on incorporating that into our site-specific or our comprehensive school safety plans also these plans are are very comprehensive documents they're over 100 pages long and they may meet the requirements of the education code which is very specific on what you need
097to have in your plans they're not the best documents to use when you have an emergency so part of this revision is trying to streamline the plans as much as we can but also putting together other resources for the school sites to use when they actually do have an emergency so resources and tools for the classrooms so that they have a more condensed version that they can act on resources and tools for our instant command team so that when they manage the incident they have good tools that they can use in managing that instant and the comprehensive school safety plan itself isn't the best tool to do when you you actually have an emergency training is another big piece training our staff and students on those changes and on those plans so they know how
098to act and what to do during an emergency and then also a big part is the drills so we have scheduled drills every single year fire drills earthquake drills disaster drills and lockdown drills they're on a specified schedule that is included in the comprehensive school safety plan and carrying those drills out now one of the things i'm excited about is a couple months ago you approved a a safety software safety management system software and part of that safety management system software has a inspection and audit module that we're going to use for our drills so we'll be able to build our basically our checklist for the drill into the software we'll be able to use cell phones or tablets to go through and actually fill out the form right after the drill takes place we'll
099be able to schedule the drills so there'll be some oversight to make sure they're being done on the schedule and also the findings that come out of that drill as far as things that went well and things that can be done better we'll be able to build into that software as well so now the corrective actions are tracked they're assigned to people there's a specific deadline as far a target deadline to carry those out and there's some oversight as far as whether we're actually acting on the information that we get out of the drills and one of the really nice things is data collection that we'll be able to look across all our school sites and see what are the common things that come out of our drills that need to be improved on are
100there any trends in those do we need to build those into our comprehensive school safety plan updates in the future and really try to build continuous improvement in our programs as well as our training and also our drills in the future thank you jonathan thank you team uh that concludes our presentation uh if you have any questions for us or uh superintendent lee sung if you have any comments questions first yes so that is a really great presentation thanks for the updates on next steps um answered a lot of the questions that i had a question i keep getting from the community regarding ensign is there additional work left to be completed or are we done additional work left to be complete the cameras is a significant uh or is one of the parts that
101still needs to be completed at ensign so that particular portion is there there's also an area at the vocational building uh where there used to be a ramp it was right next to the uh where the fence ends up the the way the water flows in that area wasn't working very well so as we looked at that in construction we said you know what we really need to do is we need and there used to be a restroom building in front of that i don't know if you remember that so that made it not really easy to do surveying to figure out where the water you know what was underneath the restroom building so we basically took that entire scope out of the contractors package and have been designing the completion of that particular portion
102of it other than that otta's my expert sometimes when you're standing up here you forget the little details but there is additional work so the other two scopes of work are we're working with the city in regards to improvements in the right-of-way area so in some cases you'll see where our fence line everything on the interior that work has been completed but on the exterior it appears there's about two two and a half feet of undeveloped area and that's because it's the city right away so we're working with the city on what that design looks like we've had a couple of meetings with them and sidewalks at both of the beau cdm and ensign and so we'll continue to work through that with the school sites primarily we're just trying to create a better area
103for circulation around especially ensign to white and sidewalks so things like that the other scope of work which is probably somebody has to remember this is the student gathering area and so that was the districts and the board's commitment to enhancing enhancing an um on-site space with all of the trees that were displaced at ensign so we are doing that there um at cdm i think really it's just the right-of-way area with the city yeah i think there's a small i think at cdn there's a small little area across from uh on mar vista across from the us oh yeah this is a great one so that again is in the city right away and so what we're doing um is we're asking the city to allow us to push our improvement onto the city
104property and that was really to reinforce that requirement to be able to run around a building on campus so that was the one pinch point if we had put the the fencing where on our property line you wouldn't be able to get through adjacent to the 500 building so we're asking the city to allow us to build our fence along the 500 building in there right away to allow that circulation around the building and it's only maybe how many feet the path itself isn't going to be too significant but it's the length of the 500 building of that elevation that you see off of mar vista yeah it's it's not that that extensive do we have a um timeline for either of those projects or is it too preliminary we're working on it now um
105like we said we just we walk them with the city we have to put a budget together and then once we have that budget identified you'll hear back from of us thank you that's very helpful um trustee mcguire are they putting surveillance cameras up at cdm also yes well that will be a standard for all our sites it is but i should clarify with regard to surveillance cameras and partly so that our audience on on the video as well understands by surveillance cameras this particular project the objective is to be able to see what happens at our entry points it's not full campus surveillance everywhere throughout the campus it's really cameras that are focused on the gates so if the gate gets left open and i get the caller actually it's usually mr bidnick gets
106the call on the weekend somebody is on campus we don't know how you know we can at least go back then and look on the video and see you know did somebody forget to lock the gate we can go and talk with them remind them you know please make sure you lock the gate when you leave those kinds of things thank you trustee wagon yes thanks for the presentation and clarification on our security measures in the district um i have a couple questions so you're talking about cameras focused on gates and is there a plan for when that will be done for all sites and is there a site specific so when the board chose to do ensign and cdm as the first two initial projects uh in this next phase there was an entire
107comprehensive listing of all sites for the district and they were all listed in their order of of when the district would likely be handling each one of those different sites so as you see in the item written before you we actually had proceeded with a design contract for the next five sites and those were the ones that were determined to be the next uh priority uh in the list of projects and then there was a schedule for for the rest of those uh at that time thank you um and then a couple other things you know recently we had some vandalism at some of our schools and i wanted to know what we are doing um i keep hearing from the community do we have sort of you know motion detector lights or do we
108have security systems that would have gone off uh when these vandals would have come into our schools and and you know i obviously know that we don't want to tell everyone what our security protocols are but um what are we doing to prevent those types of acts when it's non-students on campus so one of the we do have some campuses that have some security systems so there are places within the district where there are motion detection systems uh and and intrusion detection systems and and those reports come to mr bidnick as well in the middle of the night when they come the the key thing about this particular program as we've studied the literature is if they're not on the campus then it's a whole lot less so the first it's about layers of security
109so if you get a big chunk of the potential people not on the campus because you have eight foot high fences you have limited entry points they have cameras on them those types of things then all of those other things are still good and they still are part of a program we would recommend going forward but they typically are very expensive and are typically done as part of a major modernization or something like that because they are so intrusive in each one of the particular buildings at each campus and then just one word i'm sure we're not going to um talk about this today but you know there is a concern with e-bikes and kids safety coming in on e-bikes so i don't want to drop that bomb here but it is a concern i
110think with parents and non-parents alike that and trustees and trustees about student safety coming to and from campus so yeah let me let me share a little bit on that topic thank you for bringing that up um so uh e-bikes is a real concern uh you know it's not the typical bikes that we all grew up with there have been recent discussions i just want everybody to know between myself and the police chief of newport beach because anson in particular has a large number of our students riding electric bikes so we committed even before the end of the school year to work in collaboration between our police department and our site administration to do a lot of bike safety okay so they did something before the end of the year but as part of our
111normal routine we do bike safety at all of our schools and we'll make sure that we i i think beef up the e-bike education part not only for the students but for their parents to know the risks involved in that and to make sure they're safe there was a question about whether e-bikes were even allowable for anybody younger than 16 years old and that depends on the type of e-bike that it is so so there isn't just in case everyone is wondering there isn't a blanket uh rule that says if you're less younger than 16 that you can't write an e-bag it depends what type of e-bike it is okay but i just want you to know we have had talks about that particularly ensign the interim principle was very much on top of it
112and uh we will make sure that that continues can we be updated occasionally on how your discussions are going so we know where we stand absolutely thank you and definitely be ready on for that first week of school when there's usually a very large transitional period with all kinds of um transportation whether it's bikes parents dropping off in their cars and all that trustee anderson thank you um i was wondering if there is a plan in place to put cameras at more of our schools i know that's one of the things that i first was concerned about and i was told that it would be cost prohibitive but for me it seems like that would be a great way for us to see particularly because so many of our campuses have a wide amount of
113users that's how they were designed and so some of our schools aren't like cdm or nsa and they're close to fences they're close to neighbors there's not a way to have all four corners that is our fenced in so i i keep discovering schools here or there that have cameras but i'm just wondering if there's a plan to add more cameras that hasn't been part of the district's security plan in the past as a comprehensive district plan certainly and there are some cameras in the district but as i say it's not part of a comprehensive plan for cameras this was part of a comprehensive plan for cameras with regard to this particular keeping ideas of who's on site then comes the issue of blind areas and once you start trying to cover all of the
114different areas where something that you want to observe could happen the the quantities of cameras go up by an exponential amount in these cases we're talking about handfuls to a dozen cameras uh once you start talking about cameras even to address a particular building you're typically talking uh a hundred for a building and now you're starting to talk about uh all of the rest of the campus so it's definitely part of what school districts are doing across the country uh a lot of it is with new construction because it is very expensive uh and part of modern are new construction and modernization uh the reconstruction uh so that's that's often what's done so uh if that's an interest of the board you know we would certainly be uh interested in looking at that as to
115what uh the future objectives are for our district yeah i think i mean for me that's something that has continued to come up you know i think there are members of the public that are not aware that we are continuing to have hate crime related vandalism on our campuses that's something that really concerns me i would i would like to see personally some cameras that are in use i think too for me safety is not just physical it's also how you feel on our campuses one of our big pushes is mental health and social emotional health having control the perimeter and very militarized language to me is concerning i personally represent a lot of students who may have a different perspective or stress level when they see police officers or sro officers or feel like
116their school is a military zone so i'm i'm just concerned that this keeping people out as the only method of security alarms me a little i think when i've looked at some of the other school sites that have had incidences of violence oftentimes it's internal it's students who are on that campus who know that campus well who know how to prop open a gate so i think i would like to see some alternatives for what happens in those situations i haven't we haven't really heard about that we've talked about this before i i'm not hearing any of those kind of but how what is the contingency plan um so i would love to hear more about that so i want to jump in here that first of all if you're making a very uh and
117valid point and if the board who were here back when i took over the safety role that was a very important piece to this we did not want to create prison-like environments and we started with being the welcoming environment even though and it might sound kind of contradictory but that was always a big piece and a big part of our safety initiative was exactly what you're describing that's why all the mental health support all the proactive strategies along with making sure we can control our perimeter to know who's on campus you know if you recall the the raptor system the visitor checking system was something new around that time which only works if people go into the entrance that we want them to go into but but trustee anderson your point is very important and
118i will tell you every safety presentation that i did up here started with exactly that point okay and so uh you're not going to hear it so much in their presentation we can certainly bring that back in a future presentation but i just want to validate what you're saying we do not want to create prison-like environments okay that was one of the reasons why even in 2018 that issue of desire and you saw in the slide where we noted the investments that had already been made at that time and i don't remember all the figures as well as mr trader does but even since 2018 this district and with your leadership as a board has committed even more significant resources toward desire towards student social and emotional health and mental health services to provide a
119safe environment for students on campus thank you um there's also some things so when i was looking kind of further into this and one of the things that i actually heard from a costa mesa pd officer who he was actually a little concerned by what we might be training our students doing lockdowns he said that the costa mesa police is actually trained to do run hide run hide fight and he said flee is often the safest option for students i again would like to have more perspective and conversation on this if the fbi is saying that if our costa mesa pd is saying that again i we we've had some kind of closed discussions about this in the past and i feel like we continue to hear one side of like lock it down and
120i i would really like to hear more options and my last point that i would like to make is i'm i haven't heard again what what our plans are for campuses that are connected to houses or are in neighborhoods so if we are putting a an eight foot a 12 foot fence around a school but two sides of it border a person's house and they can just hop in that doesn't make a lot of sense to me so to me cameras would make a lot more sense to be able to monitor so i would really like to hear some solutions around that please yeah let me respond to the the the training and the procedures that we follow uh in the event of some type of uh intruder situation okay um and so we we
121all learn run height fight or run height act uh there's actually many versions of that uh that have surfaced over the years but we did a lot of work with our pd and we got to the place where we were uh working really well together we brought on the the concept of the i love you guys and some of their protocols there but then covet hit and that kind of got um uh you know put on the back burner if you will uh again my conversation with the police chief is to recommit to get those trainings those joint trainings together so that exactly what you're saying we're all talking the same language okay but the concept of uh running hiding or in the worst case scenario where you have to actually act in a situation
122uh it depends and the trainings that i was involved with and the conversations i had directly with the pd it's not you do one first and then the second one it's not sequential it depends on the circumstances and that's something that we you know have to get back to our training are we do drills uh but we're gonna recommit and get our pd and all of us talking the same language okay because running isn't the first option okay it may be in that circumstance but it but it uh isn't automatically and we've got to make sure that we train our folks the proper way they're they're learning to assess the situation determine what the best uh action is at that point okay so anyways but but this is something uh again going into next year
123uh jonathan wilby uh has my files that i've handed over and we've talked about that and we do plan to get back to uh what we were making great progress in uh just before covington thank you justine i was going to comment that i got to participate in one of those trainings from start to finish and it was for somebody that's been in school a long long time and done a lot a lot of drills many drills many many drills it was a very eye-opening drill but the first thing that ever happened was the school's perimeters were shut then all those other things start happening but but it was that exactly and it it is eye-opening that the because the school has to shut down not shut off but it has to take care of
124itself because the police are not just standing there waiting i was at an elementary school for the training and the elementary teachers staff and administration were part of it and it was it was wonderful so i'm looking forward to that coming back into its recycles and and it is tough the lockdown drills for elementary school kids are scary they are scary but from somebody who was a principal of an elementary school that was very close to pacific coast highway and three banks every time a bank got robbed we had to shut down so the kids the thing that was wonderful is it became matter of fact they didn't panic so much because they knew what to do during a lockdown teachers had a book they ran in the corner they read to the kids they
125did all the things they were supposed to but the more we drill the less intense it gets so that if there is a real crisis at least the first actions are to be safe and then get scared when you realize oh my gosh this is real and it's here but that's the one that's the big drill that's scary earthquake drills we kind of and you know trustee matoy you reminded me of something that i have not brought up i think in quite some time when you said that running those types of drills are scary for for our little kids um we brought on hero do you remember that oh yeah okay we brought on hero and we started it at two of our elementary schools actually very successfully and it was moving along and then
126unfortunately guess what coveted okay and uh so that is actually an agreement that we do want to bring back and expand that to to more schools because for the elementary students and the parents of those elementary students when they saw that their question is gosh why why don't we have this at all of our schools and that was the direction we were going it was a curriculum and it empowers kids using these types of skills and uh and it's not scary it's empowering so we'd love to bring that back i probably won't be here but i will make sure that mr wilby has all the information because we're actually up for a renewal thank you let's also remember that our kids weren't on campus last year so there's a whole year of loss of awareness
127and education and training for you know so even more more important this year than ever really any more questions thank you just yourself yes i just had um a couple questions about um the integration with the public information officer so for instance these um the safety plans getting them sort of translated for the public and the you know community ease of use um are those underway is it expected that there will be like easy to follow infographics for the staff so that they you know that are come out of those hundred page plans sort of what is the what does that look like that's that's actually mr will be on board now he's helping with that uh our education division uh mr lee sung when he was there mr drake and their staff have worked
128directly with the school sets and i know that this is an opportunity where everyone is looking at how we can continue to enhance this and so mr wilby has started to look at some of those types of things but i believe they're already translated uh in the appropriate way i that's not my department yeah let me let me uh add a bit here so uh so i know you love infographics in fact we all are just something easy to look at and one of the things that drew us to the i love you guys standard response protocol srp and the uh standard reunification method is the the very clear and simple uh graphics that they had and uh when we shared this with principals in fact dr shaka's back there and dr bolton we previewed
129this with the principals and they're going my gosh this is really great because it's clear it's simple straightforward and they have standard graphics that people don't even need to read it they will know exactly what that means but the comprehensive safe school plan like mr wilby said is not a plan that is user friendly if you're having an emergency you're not pulling out that 110 page plan right you are pulling the the graphics the cheat sheets the one uh pager but more importantly you already know it and how to do it instinctively so uh so to your point uh we're working towards that mr wilby's been doing some great work um to to get to that point and then um just to follow up on what trustee anderson had mentioned because it is something you
130know i i love the idea of using environmental design to prevent crime that's great i also love the idea of environmental design to foster healthier communities and with a public health lens and from that vein fences have been seen as sort of a public enemy number one kind of thing in in the past decade i would say many places are taking down their fences at schools in lieu of putting in technology and cameras and other ways to police an area that doesn't involve risking a kid trying to scale the fence to go play basketball and rip his leg open and then have a lawsuit at the school so um there's yeah there's a lot of instances where these fences although put there with the best of intentions the negative public health consequences kind of override
131that and with all of our attention to mental health having opener greener spaces that without walking into metal um every few feet is something that you know i would hope that we would at least start to consider that kind of literature and there's a lot of it out there more than willing to send it over because because at places like estancia for instance i have heard nothing from the community but their fear of having a perimeter fence people do not want one and they've asking why is there one where will it be what will it look like does it need to be there so um i know that that's sort of one of the next items up on you know cdm and encin are now done and looking to the future i'm just thinking of
132all the commentary i'm getting from those neighborhoods about look this is our you know neighborhood school people walk here there and everywhere and then the idea of it being encapsulated um in the name of safety for some is is a little uh disturbing so thank you justin between to that point in costa mesa most of our schools are joint use most of our especially our elementary schools and an excellent example of a successful collaboration with open space is adams elementary because their community used that on the weekends and it was like well we understand they were really once we got it up and everything they went oh well it makes sense that it's closed up during the school day when the children are there but on the weekends there is a ginormous gate that just
133rolls over it's our responsibility to open it and we get phone calls when we've forgotten but we're good at it now we open it on the weekends opened it after school and that does allow for the community to have the joint use space and if the kids are jumping the fence that's on their own because they don't want to walk to the gate but there's no reason why we can't incorporate that into our safety plans to collaborate to have that community space used because in especially in costa mesa we don't have enough park space newport beach planned it a little bit better than we did thank you newport beach but even so they still have many sites that are used on the weekends too so it's something that i think we i we have very
134smart people in the room i'm sure they can work on this and and we can we can do something like that but we have an example so it's like hey we've got an example where it works thank you superintendent lisa okay so i just want to wrap up this item and as you know this is not an action item tonight uh i appreciate tim holcomb and the entire team uh for first of all giving us a kind of a recap of what was done many years ago and to connect that to projects that are actually completed now so i think we all we all needed and appreciate that um what uh i do want to just clarify in terms of next steps is as you know that they started just with the first step of
135the next five projects and then again for a lot of reasons those projects were put on pause okay but we do want to move forward uh with these projects if this is the direction of the board and if that is the case i would like to ask if you would like staff to bring this back in another agenda item and maybe go into a little more details of the five schools that were already identified and maybe highlight what the features are of that and and get the formal direction from the board before they proceed what i think we all don't want to have happen is they're spending time and money and resources when this isn't the direction of this board this was a good opportunity to kind of recap and reset before we move forward
136to the next uh set of schools great idea superintendent i think i think that's good and i think that's the direction that we wanted when we first started this back in 2013 and you know a lot of us are new we'd like to kind of to see the project before those projects would like to continue that project yeah i don't remember what the next five schools are all right so we can we can work on putting that on absolutely okay thank you very much and thank you thank you and excellent team presentations thank you thank you very much um we will move on to consent calendar can i request more information on item 14 14a3 we got some information via email but um we're told we would get a little more at today's meeting do
137you want it fourteen so you don't wanna pull it you just want to discuss oh you wanna put it on discussion action oh well i just like to know yeah super quick yeah it's like a two minute update from tim do you do you need emotion and stuff before we do that or shall we listen first president elsie well well if it's quick um let's have a motion and a second but we if there's nothing else to be pulled then we can address that question okay okay i move read wrong thank you 14 b is pulled i don't do you want to no 14 b5 is what we already pulled yeah so if i'm approving the consent calendar i want to have already done it list all the actions oh so we don't have to
138do anything so we already have a motion to approve the consent calendar but we already did no we didn't did we not do that at the beginning of the agenda overall but not consent yes okay so i was moving to approve the consent calendar with the exception with the exception as it was amended okay which was removing 14b5 second thank you who has a second okay and understood could we have uh someone address 14 b three four four fourteen a three fourteen a three i'm sorry a means mr hulk i'm sorry i i see what it is a3 but i missed the question just could we get an update on the timeline and a little more information on this project we've uh we've had two items to move this project along and there have been
139some changes so i know a lot of the people in the community have been asking what the timeline is for these specific items and also the question that i keep getting is if the scoreboard is going to go back against the wall when it's done so i hate to give the whole discussion item to this because it's probably not of concern to everyone on the board but i would like to know what the timeline is and if the scoreboard is going to go back the issue so let me start at the end with regard to the scoreboard no the scoreboard is not going back in fact that was a key part of the whole process because the the orientation to be able to watch the two types of events in the pool water polo and
140swimming and competitive swimming provides for bleachers in two different orientations in a typical pool setting you see that most recently at the estancia high school pool design and so actually where the old scoreboard was is a place where they're ought to be right now the deck is rather short there ought to be bleachers there in order to be able to properly observe uh the swimming competitions so the we worked with the school site uh all of the staff there and all settled on a future plan for the entire aquatic center to plan to put the scoreboard in the appropriate place for bleachers both on the north side for water polo and on the east side for swim and then with that we looked at the bleachers and we looked at the shade structures and realized
141that with the completion of the estancia high school project the other campuses had shade structures and those sorts of things so we said you know what it really makes sense to um to move forward and and to talk about budgeting and to bring to you all which you approved a budget to provide shade structures uh for that campus as we looked at the shade structures for that campus then that as these often happen with a code and those sorts of things that then brought up the issue of the lights are low although they don't we don't get complaints about the lights there uh they're low and so now the shade structures would be obstructing the light so we said well we really need to put in the same type of lights at newport harbor high
142school as we have at our other aquatic centers so that added the lights to it uh in the dsa review of all of those things they looked at the bleachers and said your bleachers are not all the way up to code currently so you don't need to bring the bleachers up to code so these are the types of things that start happening uh with these projects so all of that uh what started out as a a relatively small project became a much larger longer more complicated project but a very good one because it brings that campus up to the level of other our other campuses that is completely different by the way from the scheduled maintenance of the pool equipment which actually was hoping to be scheduled hoping to be done in the last few
143months so we've had the the equipment we could have done it uh a number of months ago and talked to the site about it but uh they said we would really rat we were hoping during covid when we were going through all of that that we could get that done but they said no no we really want to be in the pool can you wait until the summer please wait until the summer so we have had it scheduled all along for july the 22nd for that work to start and it's still on schedule to do that we had a little bit of a hiccup where the equipment went wonky on us for a week in june got it put back together so we were able to get another good month's use in the pool before
144we do that so that's still on schedule that's scheduled to be completed before uh students return here in the fall am i correct mr bidnick yes as to the the rest of the schedule of the bigger project i'm sorry i don't know all of those dates as well other than to know that it's a significant size project that requires dsa reviews so mr rusty meets on a monthly basis with principal bolton and updates him and the staff on the project i know they're planning another update very soon so i'm sure that that information will get to the people there at the school who are most interested but as they get that together i can ask mr resny to copy me and and provide that to all of you as well so i appreciate all that
145information that's very helpful i'm just confused because we can we did stage structures 2019 october for dollars and then february eleventh twenty twenty now it's four hundred thirty three thousand dollars and now it's a million three we still don't have shade structures and all the feedback i am getting from the site is not that they want the scoreboard where it is that it is the exact wrong place for both swimming and water polo we did a site tour we got that information loud and clear when we did that and that it's about eight feet too short so i'm not sure where the disconnect is happening but like the scoreboard doesn't work there we have to either move it higher we have to move it back it has to be revisited and it's not just booster
146clubs it's all the coaches and stuff there are saying this does not work so i'd hate to go through this all this process now it's almost two million dollars to get a scoreboard that does not work and that does not suit the needs it's not an upgrade if it's worse than what we had and that is how the sites feel that they're not getting anything that they didn't have before other than shade structures which two years later we still don't have so i'm just i'm very frustrated with this whole shade structures by the way that initial amount you mentioned 33 000 was for design shade structures all shade structures are a very long process they don't happen very very quickly as a general rule uh so i'm not sure why they ever came to the
147idea that they thought that shade structures were going to be a very quick and simple process i know mr resny has been meeting with folks for the last number of years and in fact i'm very surprised to hear all of that about the scoreboards after i know how many meetings occurred on that project throughout that entire process we trustee weigen and i also were on that at that visit and the swim coach as well as the principal uh both it reiterated that those were issues with the scoreboard i think in this kind of situation it's going to be important for the principal and staff there at the site to talk directly to the staff there and and you what you're doing is alerting us that there is a disconnect and we will address that okay
148we certainly don't want to be spending a lot of money on something that isn't needed but but these as you can see there's a very complex set of series of things that have happened and sometimes getting the right people in the same place at the right time is what's needed so but what you're saying now with having to go through dsa it's a much longer term project yes that's correct and i appreciate that we're spending this money and then we're going through dsa i really do i don't want it to be that i don't want to spend this money i just want to spend this money in the right way that gets us the upgrade that that school needs yeah and this is this is why i don't change the curtains at my house because
149it evolves but but i think what you're describing in my first reaction when i heard this is you know in the end they are going to have a facility done the proper way so sometimes that's hard to hear that it's going to take longer but ultimately the end product is is what it should be so okay okay um we have a motion by trustee muchway yep i just wanted to say thank you just for clarification now that we i have the board it's really helpful if you push your button otherwise yeah i don't know she just did okay i just wanted to say thank you for 14 b the math um program working with uci thank you and also uh mr kaiser thank you for finally painting ray i'm so excited to see the campus
150fully painted thank you so in consent is 14 a three still on consent 13 13. so are you okay with that okay um so we have a motion by trustee matt twye a second by trustee or solo um for the consent calendar trustee trustee elsie yes trustee berto yes trustee montoya yes trustee anderson yes trustee crane yes trustee or soyulu yes trustee wagon yes okay moving on to discussion action the first reading and adoption of modifications to board policy well good evening um uh it's it's actually exciting to be here with a revision to the high school graduation requirement policy that i think you've all had an opportunity to read this comes out of these recommendations of revisions and additions come out of our discussion or report last week and several weeks prior to that
151a lot of work has been put into making some adjustments for back bay high schools uh alternative high school uh graduation requirements um uh so we did go through after that report receiving positive feedback for you to go in that direction of adjusting graduation requirements at back bay to 190 and also moving to the quarter system and those for the most part are the major revisions in this policy that we made the the revision committee or the edit committee had some time to look through that also provided some more recommendations some made it in there were two that we know we want to discuss in greater detail one being the and we can come back at a later date and do that one being the social science requirements is there needs to be a discussion
152around that the other piece that came up was kind of centralizing the the site requirements for the um the experiential learning plan and that right now those are site-specific some of those protocols and requirements so we'll need some time to work through with principles to do those things and come back to a later date with some recommendations there but for the most part you've had the policy revisions in front of you i think at least since friday i'm happy to go through any questions that you might have for those trustee anderson thank you um i didn't notice this when i was reading it before but um on the on the very last section where it talks about um retroactive diplomas it seems like that might be a very small kind of niche group of students
153is that like five students that would it seems like just kind of a unique how many students is that impact i i don't have a number for you this is policy that that came into play and requirement um once the high school exit exam um was eliminated so i can do some research and find out a number for you but i don't have that off the top of my head yeah i i i've now that i've read this this is language that needs to be in our policy there was some legislation that occurred that changed the ed code that required all districts to issue diplomas during this period of time when the the high school exam was in place so so that's what that is and that's standard language that should be included in our
154policy yeah it sounds like if they did not pass it they still were able to graduate but at one point they were not yeah correct correct yeah i would love more just information so like okay are there 40 students that didn't get diplomas like what does that look like let me find out for you trustee matoy i remember that it was brought up that trustee anderson was interested in adding more social studies but i don't remember that the board had any direction regarding that to happen so i didn't realize that that would be something our board would be our people would be exploring that's what mr drake said there were two items that we would not be revisit visiting right now one was the at the social studies requirements and the other one was experiential
155learning thank you very much it was so three seconds ago um yeah and so if the board doesn't have the direction to do that then it would save staff time that they wouldn't have to be going through to come up with a report for us or at how to add it in when i don't believe that that was the board's direction that wasn't when i asked what did you ask i asked if at some point we could have a discussion about social studies and adding more credits okay so that we don't have to do anything now no no thank you like i said i misunderstood yeah and and i think it's i think it's important that we just clarify this because we don't want anybody uh out there listening to our board meeting uh to
156believe that we are at this point changing any social studies it's just it was it was an idea it was something that yeah no okay i just wanted to make sure very very important newport mesa student i recalled taking more classes so i wanted to have a conversation very good okay that's not part of this action tonight thank you i just noticed some punctuation errors which i don't know we almost did that but there were several that we somehow missed so um there's still a lot of kind of extra semicolons that i hadn't noticed before but those are not big items so no but if we have it corrected this is when we do it otherwise they'll stay there forever so what did you find unless we're going to do a second reading and i
157don't think we need to well let's try if she has them now yeah that's what i said that's do now oh my gosh go for it okay i i just when it's listing the credits i don't think we need to have a comma and then a period so like where it talks about humanity's world languages we don't necessarily i mean it it's not a big deal it just doesn't oh i see after world language there's a comma we don't know like superfluous i don't know why good that that's i i missed that one before you did you it's hard to see it online it's like i don't know um that that that's it and then oh and then there was on number one underneath the experiential learning project under program requirements number four it should
158say like the fourth line under certain circumstances yes good eye that was essentially it good that was good thank you okay um so do i have a motion uh as amended with the little changes i would like to make a motion but i also want and mrs flora if you're watching this is when i would you would have the expertise i i think it's great and it's wonderful and i'd like to move forward so i'd like to waive the second reading so i would like to to make a motion to approve the well the revision is to approve and adopt the modification i would like to move that i we approve and adopt the modifications of board board policy as corrected today at board policy 61 46.1 and wave the second reading a second who
159is the second and barter bartow oh i still can't hear um moved by trustee mattoya seconded by trustee bartow any further comment okay rokovo trustee elsie yes trustee bartow yes trustee montoya yes trustee anderson yes trustee crane yes trustee or soy lu yes trustee wagon yes thank you mr drake thank you for helping me because and take note everyone because somebody's going to have to always be able to be the one that says and wave the second reading okay we'll move on to informal reports and we have our superintendent report again oh you want to go last okay we will we will put you last just as your final wish um nothing's too good for you boy yes you can go last um assistant superintendent torres would you like first of all welcome to thank
160you welcome to the table here we put a lot on your plate already so we're pleased that you're here and i've used the totally immersed yes thank you finished my first week and i said i am drinking from a fire hose or maybe a fire hydrant these days so just immersing myself in the culture and climate of the district office uh had the pleasure to visit teen winkle early this morning ran into trustee crane just getting out to the school sites collaborating with principals helping onboard some of our administrators into new positions so it's just been a good week for me thank you thank you welcome mr jay it's been an even better week for me assistant superintendent their workload was cut in half and i just handed it right over right no but seriously
161um it has been uh uh you know i know her first week but um has jumped in um and uh really is going to be an incredible addition to the team and i'm really excited to have her here both as a you know colleague um but also kind of as an advisor lots of experience that i'm able to also um gain from so well done i will say to you and thank you and then also to kind of play a little bit on trustee anderson's comment about bringing on the research practice partnership with uci and even expanding that to support our instructional leadership um is a move in the right direction uh really to you know transform our classrooms uh and and create responsive uh really humane classrooms um and i'm excited uh you know
162to move in that direction so thank you mr trader good evening tonight it's good to be here um you know just a quick um review of the budget at the state level this is interesting you know they they passed a budget but there was nothing really in it and they're still working on it and so we're still not quite sure what the allocation rates are or anything like that but it's special it looks like it's can for us it looks like it's going to be kind of a a you can have your cake but not eat it that kind of thing so when you look at it the state is really on the plus side the state is in the great fiscal shape and on the minus side the state is in really great fiscal
163shape because what that means is uh and this won't impact this but i want to make sure you're aware of it so you have context so in case you hear about this so in 2223 because the state is in such great fiscal shape that means that the school district reserve caps are going to be in are going to be implemented for the very first time and that means that districts are then limited on the reserves that they can have however community fund district community funded districts like us are exempt from that thank heaven that's a good thing and then on the plus side we have lots of one-time money on the negative side we have lots of one-time money it adds a whole lot of complexity to what we're doing and we're we're being very
164careful about that on the plus side also the state is going to pay off all of the cash deferrals it's great news for us super helpful wonderful news on the negative side on the on the minus side um funding for universal tk does not appear to be coming to us yeah however don't don't lose hope as you have your as you use your influence hopefully we can work something out there to where we can do that um and then on the plus side special ed um dr jackham's going to be saving a lot more money because she's going to get a lot more money on top of that so the base is going from per 88 to 750 per 88 plus there's going to be another early intervention preschool grant which is wonderful news thank
165you thank you that sounded more good news i'm okay with that mr trader yeah oh because we we you know i believe trustee barto and i heard the csba budget uh webinar today and is it true so the deferrals was uh there were 12.5 billion dollars and all will return to the schools or whatever the term is except for 2.6 billion does that sound right that was the original uh proposal and the governor decided to pay off all of them so that 2.6 billion is going to come back to us yeah wow excellent great mr holcomb i'd like to thank trustee anderson for the comment about the painting mr geisler has been very busy since he's gotten here but particularly working with mr bidnick when mr bidnick was interviewing for the position one of the
166things that we looked at very extensively was his experience in putting together a maintenance programs to keep up with the timely maintenance of facilities and in fact we have a significant amount of deferred maintenance in the district that he's already made a significant impact on last year in the summer this year as well we have a significant amount of carpeting going on painting as you noted and what was the other one that was in my head just a second ago carpeting painting no no not not not so much i'll remember it in a minute at any rate uh he has been very very busy oh i know what it was roofing and the reason why significantly roofing is uh they're out there working diligently with roofing but we are finding a significantly greater amount of
167deteriorated um wood than even we knew it was going to be significant so um it's good we're getting after it uh the projects are going ahead well but we're very glad to be uh to be aggressively tackling uh our maintenance program this summer thank you good evening um it's very interesting being on the other side of the room just thought i'd share that i don't know if it threw you guys off but it's been a little awkward i just want to take a moment tonight because yesterday was a big day we launched our vaccine verification process and had we not done that and had not had the team to do so all of us would still have masks on and so i i do want to share with the public that while we heard a
168lot tonight about cdc and cdph and the school guidance cal osha it guides our the guidelines for our employees to keep our employees safe and so with the changes that they did for um on their guidance in regards to covet for non-school site at non-school sites are employees if they go through a vaccine verification process and their vaccine documentation is verified by hr then they are able to work on site without a mask if they choose and again i emphasize it's a voluntary process no one is required to but you do have to do it if you would like to have the opportunity not to wear a mask while you're at a non-school site and then of course the outdoor guidelines is consistent that outdoors everyone can remove their mask if they choose so it's
169all about choice but the process that was developed is secure all of you have gone through it and it's quick it's easy and now it lies with our hr department who will go through and do a verification send information to the employee as well as their supervisor and hopefully we'll get through the numbers that are coming in because it's a little bit of a tidal wave and then it'll be done but we'll so we just asked for a little grace and time so in that to develop that process i really think we need to acknowledge the efforts of megan brown our admin director in hr um jonathan wilby our director of risk management and awesome babovich ian who is our director of technology it truly was an inter-department project to get it done and all
170the people that work with them and i do want to thank our hr department because they will be carving out a moment in time actually an hour to a day so that they can get through all of the verification and get back to the employees as quickly as we can so i just wanted to thank them thank you yes thank you well i usually like to have the last word and now and you're not now the superintendent's gonna get it so you know that's not quite fair but um uh uh it's it's kind of nice having having new people over here to sit next to but in student support services things are moving along you know we have lots of new initiatives coming forward this year and just when i think we're fully staffed and
171i get my direct new director of due process and selpa and we finally got staffed with our special ed coordinators and candies in the back you know cheering for that and kind of making plans to move forward then we find out that dr d agastino is leaving the district so um you know trying to work with hr in terms of um i won't say replacing him but we'll say filling the position and kind of taking on some of those responsibilities until that time so it will be and it will be interesting but there's a good team of coordinators in student services who all do their jobs really well and know their job really well so it's kind of exciting to you know get a little deeper in working with them and figure some of those
172things out so and then on on behalf of those of us who sit on this side of the dia so we would like to congratulate our superintendent on his retirement it was kind of nice to you know to actually have a real meeting you know kind of one and done you can go out on top yeah with that um you know we will save the rest of our goodbyes for later but congratulations thank you thank you so much okay so this being our last regular board meeting with me here as superintendent i i do want to give uh just a short um farewell message and i'm not going to go too deep because if i go too deep you all know me i'm going to get very emotional okay so i'm going to try to
173keep it short uh but first of all you know i want to thank our board each of you uh for your support um you know this absolutely was a memorable year would you say it's a memorable year and we we made it we made it through some thick and thin times some successes each step that we accomplished you know we did it together we really did it together i'm very proud of that and i'm proud of the fact that you know i i had the opportunity to work here in this district had the opportunity to you know serve in several different roles uh but a real honor to be here in this seat in this role and uh you know some people say oh my gosh you know your timing is the worst you're the
174unluckiest guy in the world you know they'll make comments like that but you know what i i look back on it and i think i i am very lucky i'm lucky that i was here at the time that uh our district needed us we needed leaders we needed people and i'm glad i was here for that okay so you know i don't look back on this with any regret at all okay and i thank you all for your support in having me here in this role and supporting me and and one way or another we got through it we got through it very successfully so i'm very very pleased with that i want to take a moment to thank the first the leadership team the leadership team and first you know my own colleagues on
175cabinet executive cabinet extended cabinet executive plus we had a lot of new new groups that we created in this crisis but extending beyond that to our directors like candy back there and all of our directors and coordinators and principals and assistant principals and supervisors etc you have an amazing group of leaders okay very dedicated and again i look back on my my time as superintendent and all the meetings that we had and those zoo meetings and we were meeting every week even throughout the summer to stay connected and they were all there and i even though we were on zoom i felt that connection i made them do the zoom wave and i you know we did things to stay connected but you we have an amazing group of leaders and i'm absolutely going to
176miss working with them and problem solving and climbing that next mount everest right sarah you know we finished climbing one mount everest and then there's the next one and there's the next one and there's going to be a few more but you know what you've been through it and it's going to be successful um and then extending our leadership i i want to thank our union leaders you know pam we've been through a lot together right we we have and and yet again you know what this is what makes our district special we have great leaders eleanor thank you for always being here you know you're part of the the leadership with csa and if nmft was here and i will make sure i reach out to them same thing and think of all the
177agreements that we've made through this crisis okay and that is a testament to our district okay it doesn't mean we always disagree it is always smooth and easy but we get there and we've accomplished this and so again i want to say how much i appreciate leadership but but as well as our union leadership and then leaders of from our parents we had some wonderful advisory groups our harbor council pta parents our i met with our dlac folks we have amazing parent leaders too and i'm very thankful for them and then i'm not going to forget our student leaders didn't we have some amazing student board members this year and then for us to be able to bring them in in person for their last session was fabulous and i know you're going to have
178a new group next year and they're going to continue that leadership role and of course to all of our staff everybody uh does their part to keep this district going and they do it all the time year in and year out but even more so this past year and again i was just so appreciative to be in this role uh and to be part of that and so the last thing i want to say is that you know i learned many years ago that we are all just stewards we are stewards of something very special in this district and we come we do our part we carry on the mission and we pass it on you're almost almost dropped and that mission never stops so anyways so in about what a little bit less than
179three weeks i'm going to pass that baton on and i'm going to look back on this time very very fondly so and then i pass it on knowing all of you are going to carry it on and i feel good thank you [Applause] almost got through it and we too are all appreciative of everything you've done over the past year it's um it's been a wild ride it actually we we say a year it feels like maybe five years um and it's it's been you were put in a tough situation and you handled it remarkably and you know i always say just the fact that we have all we are already back to normal we talk about being back to normal in the fall well yeah it's a little more robust but we got everybody
180back and that was our goal over the year and it was because of you i can remember be well and by two times i have seen huge smiles on mr lisan's face the first was when he made that switch and said we're going to come back in person i feel good about it we're going to do this i remember having a conversation with you and he had just this feeling of relief and this is what we've been working for and the second was when he said he was retired both times with a big smile so you know we all wish you the absolute best in everything you do and we cannot wait to be at some of the events that you're doing we'll come to your piano bar we'll come listen we'll do whatever so
181keep in touch with all of us um board member reports should we'll go down the aisle if anybody has anything does anybody have anything that they no um i you know just want to say thank you to all the parents that are so active and are always reaching out with their ideas about how to improve things keep up the good work keep reaching out to us and telling us your ideas even if we disagree we'll listen to them and use all the new information to make decisions and and yeah i mean i spend all my time pretty much shuffling my kid around so i i'm doing nothing else this summer so that's all i got okay um and there's no committee reports i don't know we're kind of no but i wanted to make a
182comment that there's a couple of events because there's no way i'm going to remember it all the way until august 17th but um trustee your soil and i are going to go to the state of the city event on thursday and then on saturday i know that several of us are going to the opening of the norma herzog um community center it's not the library anymore and that's why we're all going because we want to see how they're fitting square rooms in a round building and and for those of us that live in coastal mesa your whole lives it's like they flip-flop the library and the community center and they both should be spectacular so we're excited about seeing that so we're going to do that and i don't want to have to bring it
183up in august that we do yeah there's also a state of the city in newport beach and i can't i i it's the 21st okay that um that somebody's going through all of us so we're covering those cities and we're handling that community center and i look at it as that and the fact that occ should be opening up enough that maybe we have another meeting room that we can access because they have a phenomenal meeting room and their new student uni their asb building so we should have meeting rooms available i don't know about parking but we can get the people in the room so so we don't have a meeting until august 17th officially an official board meeting that's our next may we have to have something in between but we will let
184everyone know i'm just a special meeting and um but we will be getting information as dennis and peggy told us on the superintendent's search so we'll be still involved with that where whether you're in town or out of town uh we will all know where you are [Music] it's like we have a find a phone thing on all of us yes first i want to thank uh superintendent lee sung for and staff who made tonight possible in person with great protocol in place thank you so much for making it happen secondly i had the pleasure today of being escorted by candy barella to go visit the special ed summer school programs that were around several campuses including tywinkle kaiser harper and woodland and wow what a what an amazing testament to all the work that
185goes into our district's special needs program the teachers were engaged the kids were happy and smiling learning was happening it was vibrant it was special and we're very lucky to be all able to offer this to our children and families and then lastly um superintendent lee sung you will forever be in my mind the guy who led us through covet plain and simple that should say it all thank you so much class act yes okay um if there are no other comments do i have a motion to object motion to adjourn the meeting oh second yes second motion by trustee crane secondly by trustee mattoya um all in favor hi hi okay have a great week and uh superintendent nissan you still have two and a half weeks of hard work