001present and today by the way is August 3rd 2023 roll call please here thank you Mandy moving on to the adoption of the agenda board do we have any questions or comments on the agenda overall as a whole okay seeing everyone shake their head no um we're gonna go out to public comment see if there's any members of the public who would like to comment on the agenda as a whole not pieces of the agenda right now we're just talking about the agenda as a whole Louis is there anyone online with their hand up okay seeing none and I don't see anyone here in person who's making their way to the podium uh Mandy can we have a majority vote please or Josh do you have anything you want to add what changes okay we've
002got a couple of changes the agenda today uh consent Item B in the minutes they reflected now they're current that they're currently reflected Brian trustee Swanson was virtual and was present on consent s the mou with Gateway Center of modern County the amended agreement is uh included in your in your folders it's available on the website and available for the public outside um we had a correction to the agenda on the public hearing approval for tentative agreement with pgta the recommended language was inadvertently left off of the cover sheet that's been since amended and then information Item B review of legal fees we included last year 2223 actuals in your pocket again posted on the website and out front for the public both item info Item B okay thank you anything else and then we
003have under action f um we are that's the uh Board calendar future meetings we have leadership Associates recommending the change to candidate selection date that will be discussed at that time from September 28th to October 2nd um that's all I have thank you I hope that as well because we are continuing to talk about this I'm going to just ask Lewis if there's any member of the public online who showed up and want to comment okay thank you so much all right with that um can we get a majority or can we get a motion please first and then a majority vote I'll move to approve the agenda with the Amendments and Corrections oh second thank you motion made by clerk McNary seconded by trustee Ottmar majority vote please hi thank you motion passes unanimously
004moving on to closed session this evening in closed session we're going to discuss the following topics number one negotiations collective bargaining session planning and preparation with pgta for the 2023-2024 school year number two negotiations related to collective bargaining session planning and preparation with CSEA for the 23-24 school year number three Public Employee discipline slash dismissal slash release complaint number four conference with legal counsel anticipated litigation two cases do we have any public comment on closed session topics all right Lewis is showing that there's no one online wanting to comment on these items and I don't see anyone here in public making their way up to the podium with that we will adjourn to closed session thank you good evening and welcome to the Pacific Grove unified school board sorry School District regular meeting coming back
005into Open Session now at 6 35 reporting out on closed session items on item one negotiations related to collective bargaining session planning and preparation with pgta for 2023-24 school year no information was given as well as no Direction item number two related to negotiations for collective bargaining session planning and preparation with CSEA for the 2324 school year no information was given as well as no Direction item number three Public Employee discipline dismissal release complaint information was received and Direction was given the last item item number four is conference with legal counsel anticipated litigation and has two cases within the item of number four one of the cases information was received and Direction was given the other case excuse me the other case um we had a voting uh we voted on the item and the
006voting tally was a unanimous vote and um uh let's see I'm sorry we had acceptance of the of the action with a unanimous vote so the board approved the settlement in the matter of oah case number 202360766 and the substance of the agreement um and Josh Jordan I'm just going to ask you really quickly on this document the substance of agreement in the parentheses may I read that thank you in exchange for Educational Services and fees oah case number 2023060766 let me read that again just to make sure I didn't do any errors two zero two three zero six zero seven six six will be dismissed with prejudice and all educational claims against the district will be waived and received and with that we will do the Pledge of Allegiance Brian Swanson will you lead
007us thank you all thank you Brian all right the next part of our meeting comes to the communications part of our meeting and first up is written Communications and this is where the board details out any written Communications that they have received so I'm going to go first I have a list here board members if you can be ready with yours that would be appreciated so first is um I got I received an email regarding an invitation for the Walk of remembrance uh an email from the California Latino School Board Association regarding their conference an email that was a follow-up on a previous board request an email regarding item H uh fiscal officer which was an item on our June agenda a Saturday choir follow-up uh photos from Delray Oaks Pride flag raising verbiage for
008potty learning and a parent handbook three emails related to June Juneteenth usage of The Culinary Kitchen one email related to transitional kindergarten concerns an email related to the seaside Pride flag raising Community Human Services Board member orientation and ask for a donation to The Schumann Hart house email in favor of ethnic studies curriculum an email related to superintendent search information and feedback an email from the military school liaison um related to Naval support activities an email from Community Human Services an invitation for doing site visits Monterey County School Board Association meeting invitation an email related to a question or comment on consent item n for tonight's agenda and I was copied on a media request email related to consent and on tonight's agenda I'm bored I'm just going to go around and see if any
009of you have any additional so Brian trustee Swanson nothing additional thank you nothing thank you clerk McNary nothing additional thank you an interesting nothing additional okay thank you all next up we have board member comments and so we'll start tonight with clerk McNary please I don't have any comments tonight thank you okay thank you trustee Omar nothing for me tonight thanks okay trustee Brian Swanson a couple quick things I wanted to give a shout out to Billy Mankey because I believe it's her last meeting and 16 plus years right 18 18. you know so I mean I think about you know when we a lot of us get to breathe a little bit during the summer and that's when Billy doesn't and that's when it it's really kind of knuckled down and and this year
010especially so many positions to fill and for my years on the board I think eight now or nearly eight it's like she's always presented everything so thoroughly and um it's just been an absolute joy and pleasure to work with you and you will be sorely missed but I wish you all the best in your future endeavors you just always had the district and the students at the Forefront of what you do and it's not lost on me and I think everybody else in this room that what you brought um so thank you for that you bet thank you so much Brian I don't think any of us could have said that better ourselves um I'm the last one left so I just wanted to say really quickly um this is our first school board meeting
011technically of the new school year so we're all kind of excited and um looking forward to when the kids actually come back to school next week August 9th um it was a beautiful sunny day today and I actually kind of felt like the magic of first day of school kind of starting already so um just a shout out and thanks to support for all of the staff members who have been working over the summer who have been able to take a break over the summer all of our employees are scrambling right now to get things rolling and and um I think I can speak for the whole board saying that we appreciate them and that is all I have for board member comments uh interim superintendent report yeah I'll just um address the fact that
012we're starting our new school year next week everybody's really excited about that we had new higher orientation today um there's a lot going on we have our breakfast on Monday morning which has not been in person for some time I believe uh since prior to covid uh so 7 30 to 9 30 over at the high school we'll be having our welcome back breakfast the kiwanas will be doing pancakes and on a personal note I'm very happy uh to be here this is a transformative and transitional year um within this district and I'm here to support this district and and this board and these students and these families to the best of my ability as a community member and as a parent so thank you all very much for your support and Trust thank you
013so much interim superintendent jorn throughout the meeting you might hear us call you Mr Jordan or Josh or Joshua and is that all right with you okay thank you so much okay uh moving on so next up in our meeting is the time of the meeting where individuals Desiring to address the board can do so you've got two different ways of doing so um if you're online you can raise your hand digitally and we have a wonderful um Louis algazi um watching for that and he will let me know if anyone's raised their hand and we also have a Podium here in the center of the room for anyone who who's here in person you would just need to make your way up to the podium and if there's multiple folks just get in a
014queue and we will alternate between the folks here in person and the folks online we really do want to hear from you and I'm just going to read out a couple of kind of um a couple of guidelines I will say for the folks who would like to comment tonight so public comment on any item of interest to the public that is within the board's jurisdiction will be heard the board will also take public comment on each specific action item prior to board action so what that means is if your item that you want to comment on is further down in the agenda we will allow for public comment at every single one of those items so this is the time to comment on an item that is not on the agenda at all any
015individual wishing to comment on a specific item on the current agenda agenda are kindly asked to wait until that item is being discussed the board will allow a reasonable amount of time for public comment on each agenda item not to exceed three minutes per speaker and no more than 20 minutes per agenda item pursuant to board policy 9323 and with that we're going to open it up first to Pacific Grove Unified School District staff who would like to comment on non-agenda items and I see we have some staff who are making their way up to the podium so it's lovely and then Lewis is keeping an eye on online folks as well shooting board yes please go ahead director I am director Buck roggeman the director of curriculum and special projects and uh I just
016wanted to um reinforce what uh interim superintendent Jordan said about our staff orientation this this morning um the new hires are really excited to be part of this district and it was so much fun to be there welcome them and to think back all those years ago when I was sitting in the same seat that they were so that Spirit of um you know starting something new and with the sunshine that we had this morning it's one of those signs that the school year is about to begin it's like uh we keep the fog in while the kids are out of school they go back to school and the weather becomes beautiful so um it was a great morning and uh The Hires the HR department did an incredible job um staff in the district
017as they always do thank you thank you so much director roggeman and please feel free if you you can queue here or you can queue down the middle of the aisle whichever you prefer we've got a new kind of layout here in the boardroom this this meeting it is oh yeah please feel free full frontal yeah and there's a camera at the podium as well so please continue yeah go ahead director for Martin hi trustees um Barbara Martinez coordinator for safety and principal at Pacific Grove adult school I just want to give you an update of what's been happening with safety over the summer moving into now in the fall so this summer Kimball and Associates the we've who we've contracted with completed two of the three phases of the district site threat assessments this
018included all site parameter plus one mile radius assessments for Ingress and egress to sites they also completed the on-site infrastructure assessments to include interviews with two keeps to keep staff at each site and drone permits were granted to complete aerial assessments as well this fall in the coming weeks they're going to conduct on-site interviews with staff at each site which addresses the staff's top 10 concerns strengths weaknesses observations and threats to sites while school is in session and an active killer response Readiness analysis and following these assessments Kimball and Associates will assist the district in our updating our site safety plans which are due in March and help updating our emergency operation plans yeah uh the big five Big Five trainer of trainer series continues with mcoe safe school coalitions yesterday Alside Administration attended the
019second County training focusing on reunification lesson plans for teachers for elementary middle and high school related to Big Five and lockdown protocols this morning all new staff to the district were trained in Big Five in the coming weeks site principals will hold their site safety meetings schedule parents safety nights so that our community is aware of our safety protocols as well SRO Andrea Hill and Commander were also present today who supported the presentation and um the new staff coming in I also want to give you an update on Narcan we were approved for an additional standing order renewal for 800 doses of Narcan new staff will be trained in Narcan and it will be distributed to sites when it arrives hopefully we can distribute during back to school nights where we can have a computer
020stations where the parents can just briefly download the application of Narcan and then we can distribute and get it in the hands of the community that need it that's it thank you thank you director Martinez hey I'm a person that doesn't like my picture taken I'm sorry oh I'm sorry that's unnerving a filter or something but there we heard your plea thank you thank you so um just I have a few things um one is that I would like to acknowledge Karen Levy from Robert down Elementary School she is retiring and after 35 years of service in the district and it's just it's amazing she's an amazing teacher she's going to be missed and I'm sure we'll talk her into coming back and subbing but it might be a little bit before we're able to
021do that so um I also wanted to thank all of our employees that worked all summer long to get schools ready for staff and students coming back our maintenance operations grounds Department you can go to any site and you can see the progress that has happened this summer also our district office staff in particular um our HR staff that has worked tirelessly to get positions filled and then they also um the team at the district office work worked to get the new employee orientation put together for this morning it was a successful event I think everybody learned a lot had a good time it's important for us to let our staff members our new staff see the support people at the district office because oftentimes it's just it's an email or a phone call they're
022not always coming in to see these people so this you know gives them that opportunity to see who is actually supporting all the staff out there and and them in particular as they are new to the district so I felt very good about that today and I want to welcome again all of the new employees to the district I think we have a great crew coming in and um and they're all very very excited to get going and start their careers here in our our district along with new employees you know that our admin team has changed quite a bit and so I wanted to just um announce those new people to your administrative staff remembering that the board and admin are a team together also directing and supporting the district right so um we
023have Angela Rodriguez our fiscal officer in the district that was a confidential employee and um she is be has been moved into admin she went to our admin Retreat and she's been you know slowly getting her feet wet and joining us in all the different meetings that that happened for administration we have Larry hagquist um who has moved into the assistant principal role at the high school and um we have our new director of student services Yolanda cork Anthony and she is in the back and you saw her in closed session today we have our school nutrition director Robert Silvera and Robert silveras right here in the back um we have Miss Abby arbron Elementary Forest Grove principal and and we have our adult school coordinator Kristen Arps I'm not sure if Christina's here okay
024so Kristen is on zoom and then last but not least um I want to uh recognize um Claudia Ariano she's from South Monterey County she will be replacing me as the HR Director in the district and I just want everyone to know how confident I am in her here at the district she's a she's the best fit we could have found and um she's an expert in human resource School human resource compliance and as I said earlier this morning we've worked together now thank you board for our cross training for close to a month and um Claudia leads with integrity and with Grace so you're going to be in good hands and I look forward to seeing all the great things that come forward in the future thank you so much director Menke welcome thank
025you and just a quick check in Lewis do we have anyone online any pgusc employees online with their hand up okay seeing none please continue principal roach all right good evening everyone Sean roach craft principal of Pacific Grove Middle School um hope you guys had a great summer just wanted to give you excuse me it's been a while since I've spoken into Mike um I just wanted to give you a couple of updates first of all um having attended the management meeting our new Folks at the district level are just phenomenal they're going to make us better and stronger and we can learn a lot from them so I welcome them definitely um number two on the last couple of days we've had our registration Roundup for sixth seventh and 8th grade students they've had
026the opportunity to who learn their um their schedule practice their lockers find out where the bathroom is and all those kind of things so it's been a really good thing for them to kind of lower that stress level before the first day of school um last night we hosted a parent boot camp for sixth grade and our new students um and the parent boot camp really kind of consisted about how to navigate the technologies that we use at the middle school one of the refrains that we had a couple of the refrains that we had was it's a really important time for parents to gently kind of step back from their kids and allow their kids to mess up if they need to because Middle School is a perfect time to do that so that
027was one of the refrains that we had in another one is really having them partner with us at the middle school and we uh I have to give props to artosa Bryce gamble who really led the technological component we taped it we put the captions in Spanish so that everybody could get it the attendance was phenomenal between the online folks and the in-person folks we had about 80 to 85 which is amazing um sorry it was a really good night you know and then we had about a 30 minute q a session which really turned into a learning opportunity for everybody so it was a fun night something we were definitely going to put on the annual docket and um can't wait to get this school year ready thanks thank you principal Rhodes I have
028a quick question for any parent who's listening if they haven't started getting emails from their site yet does that mean that their child perhaps is not registered or what would you guide them to do on that register your student make sure you're registered email the site office manager for each school like if yeah no if you if you were to go to the pgmiddle.org website it will guide you exactly how to do that and all the yeah and if they need additional help or if there's a hiccup or anything like that definitely give us a call okay I think we're down to like eight students though it is way better than in years past and so that allows us to generate schedules get everybody acclimated as far as their locker so we win yeah it's
029absolutely okay so parents haven't seen emails yet they should have and there may be a glitch so they should just check in with the schools absolutely yes and don't let it go too long don't let it go till the ninth okay thank you so much and assistant principal hand Quest hi hello board members I would um just like to say I am very excited to start the school year uh 25 years already in the district this is my 26th year and I've never felt like such a newbie so I'm starting fresh I wanted to say thank you to lito Garcia our principal I I just couldn't be more fortunate to be working under a principal that has had so much experience he's a task master he's so efficient and he takes time to help me
030out um as I learn so super appreciative of that also we've been on site for several weeks now and just want to let you know that there are teachers that are already in their classrooms getting things ready even our start day is tomorrow so I just wanted to give a shout out to all those hard-working teachers and say thanks thank you so much okay and we have one more in person Lewis is there anyone online at this time am I supposed to press anything here you know as long as this little ring is green on the mic you're good good so Claudia Arellano new director of HR and I just want to say thank you Billy for those kind words and thank you for allowing the cross training I could not agree with you anymore
031um she leaves some big shoes behind for me to fill and I will try my best to do everything that I can to continue with the great work that she's done for the district and continue to support this staff who are our greatest asset that we have I had the opportunity to attend the new employer orientation no I did not take any credit for all the great work that the department did this year in fact I tried to convince Billy to stay and do a job share with me I told her you can take from January through June and I will do the rest but she's still not convinced so I'm happy to be here and super excited and I look forward to a great year with all of you thank you so much and
032directoriano um okay so we're looks like we're closing up our pgusd staff comments are you a staff member sir you look so familiar to me okay so just one moment you're in the right spot and Lewis has already went online waiting okay thank you so now we're going to transition into our community members who would like to address the board on non-agenda items and it appears that we have one person here who would like to do so so feel free to make your way to the podium uh sure oh go ahead and speak in the microphone and um so um our um Mr Jordan is our secretary as well as our parliamentarian of the board meeting so he will answer your point of order question go ahead um Mr Jordan and I have the background
033view also um yeah Lewis sorry we have shy okay go ahead so the question is uh point of order or can we not con uh comment public comment on the consent calendar before the vote is taken and I'm not sure who I'm I'm addressing me to answer it Mr Jordan okay sure so for um so it's a great question and for anyone listening so consent is the next item on our agenda what will happen is we will talk about it as a board and as you see on the agenda on page five there will be board comments and questions and then directly after that there'll be public comment right and at that time is when you you'll be able to you've already voted no no we have not voted we're not at that point of
034the agenda yet okay it hasn't happened you're thinking into the future no problem um so any other community members who would like to speak now anyone online raise your digital hand um anyone in person it would want to address us on non-agenda items okay Lewis is letting me know that there isn't anyone online who is asking to speak and it doesn't look like we have anyone here in public who wants to speak on this part of the agenda so what we're going to do now is move on to the consent agenda part of the uh agenda and so first what we're going to do is we're going to go around to the board and we're going to ask for any board comments or questions on consent and so who we're going to start with is
035trustee Omar I have no comments but I do have some that I like to pull would you like me to do that now yes absolutely and go slow and I will make a note I'd like to pull consent item H okay and and V h n and V and so H is a ratification for out-of-county overnight activities correct okay n is contract for services with Monterey County Office of Education correct and V is contract with positive behavior supports court for 23.24 that is correct okay thank you so much uh trustee Brian Swanson um uh no comment and nothing to Paul thank you okay thank you so much trustee um sorry clerk McNary nothing additional for me thank you okay thank you so much I'm just gonna review my notes really quickly to see if I
036have anything to pull I do not okay so at this time we're gonna go out for public comment and Sir if you would like to comment during uh for um anything on consent this is the time we welcome and warmly welcome you to um step up to the mic and make a comment and anyone else online either can raise their hand digitally so we will wait here for any public comment related to any consent item last question clarification sure as long as you get up to the Mike's restaurant what does the word pull mean means pull it off the consent agenda yes so it's no longer on the consent agenda what will happen is the item will be pulled from consent and moved into action and before we approve the motion for this yeah we're
037in the process of generating motion we will let you know yes of course any other questions and and we welcome these really good procedural questions so if you have one please don't be shy please come and ask and Louis is there anyone online no one online in general did you want to ask a procedural question I say okay no worries okay so at this time we have a um board member who would like to pull items n h and V so what we did need to do is make a motion and include those items to be or exclude I should say those items from consent so that we can move those um and and I would recommend that we re we remove them directly to sorry I thought I heard somebody saying something in the
038audience um I I recommend we move them to directly after we approve the consent agenda so you know what with that I'm going to make a motion I'll make the first motion and somebody can second it so I make a motion that the board approve our consent agenda omitting items n h and V and placing them directly after our consent agenda vote I'll second your motion thank you motion made by Carolyn Swanson seconded by clerk McNary majority vote please thank you motion carries unanimously so now what we have in front of us is items n h and V and they're not in alphabetical order but as I mentioned them in my motion I mentioned them in that order so that's what we're going to follow so right now we're going to open up item n
039and trustee Ottmar you pulled that so please go ahead but this may take a little bit of time so I don't know if do you want to still do it in that order sure okay I think so yeah uh I just had some general questions about um Equitable grading so if there's somebody here that could thank you yeah okay great so we've got principal roach making his way to the podium and Mr Jordan I think we also have someone online right we have Rod Garcia from the Monterey County Office education Lewis can you verify I saw him earlier fire away thank you um so I went online to to do a little bit of research about Equitable grading because um as I as I looked at this consent and it seemed extremely generally I understand
040that we're just approving the um 500 presenter fee but I couldn't find anything solid about about what Equitable grading is and what it looks like or what it will look like in pgusd um so I wondered if you could expand on that and just kind of give some examples of what that would look like for absolutely and um a Google search would probably yield quite a bit so I didn't understand specifically at pgusd and I I saw two presentations one was from a vendor and then the other one was one that director rogueman had put together and I still kind of struggle to find like a solid explanation of what it was that we were kind of looking at for sure so as you know the district's um goal and vision is equity in education
041and equity for all and so the specific title of what we're going to be studying is grading for Mastery Equitable practices in support of Student Success so it really deals with effective feedback and student achievement it it causes us to kind of reflect on how we assign grades and all those factors that come in it and we assess our grading systems across different levels Implement strategies to enhance accuracy specificity and the timelessness of our grading we incorporate new technologies to streamline and enhance the grading process and it's really a reflective thing on the teachers and so it's really taking every extraneous thing every subjective component out of grading and really focuses on grading the student based on Mastery and content and so it is Far and Away the most effective and accurate means of grading
042for students at this point um we envision this as being a reflection a touch point something that we want to begin thinking about and discussing but also to continue that conversation as we share and kind of reveal things about one another and things that might influence grading that really don't have to do specifically with student achievement we really want to focus on what the student knows and really this is going to lead us to the most accurate way to see what a student knows and can you give specific examples of what ways you'll do that I mean it sounds very objective so if we're not using something that's subjective I don't I guess I'm struggling with how do you so how do you understand if the student has mastered a subject if there aren't objective
043um marks that they're meeting well that's it we would focus on the objective marks that they're that they're meeting so uh an example would be if you were to grade a class of essays and you were to remove the grade of the names of the students on those essays and grade purely on what is written and what is mastered that is Equitable grading with the assumption that looking at the name the teacher would somehow assign a different grade based off of who that student was it it it it it causes us to examine our own influence and what lens we look through and it really kind of refines what we're looking at specifically which is student grading so all the extraneous things there's a number of examples and and kids come into classes with a
044number of things that are going on and it really allows us to kind of push that to the side knowing that we are a link in the K-12 chain and allowing that student to really firmly know where they are in their learning and begin to build some goals for them throughout the year and continue on um it like I said it just takes everything extraneous out of the grading and really has you focused specifically on the learning and what the student can produce and master at that point and that really gives you a more informed decision about what you need to do for that student or that population As you move forward is really to focus on where that student is at that point and and continue on it really just it takes all the
045subjective things out of grading it really focuses on like you were saying the objective the objective do you have other examples of what the grading would be based off of you mentioned essays so one of the things I was reading was that um homework and work ethic and participation would not be exactly because what that does is that fluffs up a grade it muddies sometimes where we know a student is struggling with us right now because work ethic I'm having a hard time believing that a work ethic and in-class participation muddies anything I mean it really it really severely focuses on what the student can do and our job is to diagnose um successes and challenges on what a student can know so that we can employ strategies to strengthen that specifically there's nothing to
046say that hard work isn't a wonderful thing it absolutely is but to use a subjective measure like that in grading could not might not necessarily give us the most accurate read on what a student can do and not give us the road map about where we need to go to help that student improve and so can you offer some more examples of what um Mastery would be a subjective idea another another one that ties to udl would be um allowing student choice and how they demonstrate their Mastery and so when we went to school it was a Scantron it was an essay or something like that which does not hit all the Learners that we're talking about so by differentiating the way that they can demonstrate Mastery we're allowing them their choice so that they
047can choose the best Avenue in which they can demonstrate their Mastery the entire thrust behind this is to get a more accurate clear read about what a student can do so that we can do our job and grow their learning okay um is there something that you can offer that is sort of a game plan or a play-by-play what that looks like in in real time for a teacher in the district so um if I'm teaching let's say history or is this all subject matter so math and well the training would be for that yes and then we also um our Equity site goal is to use rubrics instead of grade so for rubrics we're really looking at a student's Mastery solely and we're bringing that student into the the um the thought process so
048they can reflect on their learning and they can see growth that is not necessarily tied to points it's more about okay what a student can do I guess what I I'm really looking for something that's solid like I was saying maybe a game plan a play-by-play what does this look like for math what does this look like for history what does this look like for a teacher that's teaching and there's a student that wants to I mean I'm guessing now but you know one student wants to test on paper another student wants to maybe put on an expressive play that I don't know now I'm grasping but is there something that you can offer that that really gives hard examples as to what this is well what you just excuse me what she just described
049was Universal Design for Learning that's a training that we've done where they pick the Avenue that best represents how they can demonstrate their Mastery I think at this point it's really looking at removing external barriers to learning in the classroom and really giving them the opportunity to um to to demonstrate what they know I know there's a gentleman online that can go into greater depth on it but it is yeah it's really it really gives the school the ability to really know where a student is as opposed to looking at a you know a grading scale and saying that a student comes in with an 80 when maybe they are not as capable as that grade dictates so it really allows us an opportunity to see definitely where a student is or gets us closer
050to that goal so that we can do our job and improve that learning and continue to monitor that student I think the uh the rubric component is good because a student throughout time will see their Improvement and they'll also reflect on areas that they can improve on the feedback from teachers is powerful it's much clearer and specific than just a test where you got an 85 or a 95 because the learning tends to stop when you do that but if you are here at this point that Journey still continues does that make sense does think that I'm think that I do better with it if it was in front of me and I could read something and have an example of it yeah I have some other concerns do you mind if we actually go
051to the mcoe individual or the representative who's zooming in they may be able to help with your questions as well would that be okay with you yes can I just make two more points and then maybe he can take those sure one of the things I was concerned with is that the discussion of um homework and in-class participation and that not being um sort of taken into account it goes against what our board policy is and so those don't mesh so that brings concern to me because they're not in line the other piece that I'm concerned with is if this is something that will continue through high school I mean we all know that it life doesn't stop after high school and our students are going to go on to college and if the expectation
052is that um you know work ethic or uh participation those things are not important and then they go off to a university they're going to have a very Stark uh and rude awakening because it's competitive and I don't want to trap our kids in a bubble right and release them out of the bubble and all of a sudden we've done them a disservice so I I feel uncomfortable no I I get that um let's not say that what we're intending to do is devaluing hard work if anything it's really empowering the student to understand where they are and they're learning ethic does not count toward a grade it does devalue that that that to me is what it feels like this is why I'm saying if I can't find information I'm kind of left to
053make assumptions and all of this came from a simple two-hour uh training and I feel a little bit like it's there's a blind I feel a little blindsided okay to be honest and I'm not trying to be rude and I hope it's not coming off that way I just want to kind of Express and I think a lot of other people might be wondering about okay can I jump in really quick please um so first and foremost this isn't we're not bringing forward full implementation of said practices right now this is simply a professional development to explore this concept with our teachers so I want to be very clear maybe we weren't about that can I just it's implementation is that implementing Equitable grading in the classroom so it sounds to me it's the beginning
054of implementation and this is the professional development that's being presented by the and I'd love to have Rod Garcia jump in because he is an expert as it relates to this matter but I do want to be clear this is not something that the district right now is taking as a as an initial uh move away from our grading policies this is something that we are entertaining the possibility of and we're starting now at the at the middle school level because it was it was requested uh well and and it's also it's at this point it's a reflective process so this is this is where teachers begin to kind of reflect on their practice they they take a look at how their grades are comprised and how their students do from year to year and
055they they need to audit kind of how we're doing things currently and see if we're serving students the best way we can serve them could we have Rod I know Rod's on is there a possibility we could have him jump in and give us a quick summary of what the content plans to deliver yes and thank you Lewis Lewis has turned on his video so um we'll just hear from Rod in just one moment anytime you're ready Mr Garcia thank you um thank you for having me here at PG USC board um and thank you I'm sorry Mr Garcia we can't hear you um one moment and we'll see if it's either on your end or ours testing testing okay one moment Mr Garcia it looks like it's on ours ready now try it testing
056testing you're on perfect uh good evening everyone thank you for having me here tonight uh pgusd4 and thank you for giving me the controls to interact I was trying to actually respond to you um superintendent Jordan when you're like are you here I was here I couldn't respond um but to speak more frankly to the two-hour training that's happening on Friday the the professional development is really um to emphasize to the teachers just in understanding of what grading for Mastery is you know so that we could create meaningful feedback structures and supports to help them really provide um meaningful feedback to their students so that they could reach their full potential right and just as principal Rocha was reiterating it allows the students to be active roles in their in their learning goals or be
057active participants in their in their learning as they're getting meaningful feedback loops from their teachers and the training it's only two hours it really is going to examine uh some of the teachers own own grading practices and allow them to be reflective upon when it is appropriate to give feedback feedback to the students to really elicit this deeper learning that principal roach is talking about it's um it's a it's a method out a method that they could use across subject matters because it's about building meaningful feedback loops and feedback structures of support to help every student reach their their full potential and and really grasp The Core Concepts and skills thank you Mr Garcia um trustee Omar you brought up a point where um you were saying that board policy conflicts with a part of
058the description and I would like to dive into that because as policy makers that is very important to me and I believe the rest of the board so um uh super interim superintendent Jordan do you have any response to that do we need to come back and bring it back next time I can reference the policy if you're interested it's um board policy 5121 and I can read it it says grades should be based on impartial consistent observation of the quality of students work and their Mastery of course content and objectives students shall have the opportunity to demonstrate this Mastery through a variety of channels such as classroom participation homework tests and portfolios board policy 5121 okay so trustee Omar if I'm understanding correctly you're reading a policy that says we're basing grades on among
059other things homework and work ethic and et cetera and class participation and then you feel like you're hearing that we're going to do um that we're going to take resources to kind of um I don't want to say negate the policy but that contradicts you feel it contradicts and specifically this came from an email Equitable grading strategies measure how well students understand the instructional material without penalties for factors such as Behavior work ethic homework and in-class participation okay thank you that's clear to me at least what the what the concern is so thank you so much um at this point um we're going to go around to the board and see if they have any comments on this so far and then we'll go out to the public and receive public comments on it okay
060so um trustee artmer thank you thank you so much we're gonna move on trustee Brian Swanson any questions or comments so when would we actually this is supposed to actually start tomorrow right yes yeah so if we're if we're pushing it then it's not um my only thought on this again is that we're just as I understand it we're investigating this we're having somebody presents we're not changing anything no we're just taking a look at something so I mean I'm still in favor of moving forward just as we're examining how we educate our kids and here's an opportunity to take a different look at things and and but we're not upending anything yet we're just spending 500 bucks to take a look at well and and it's also I think it's an important thing for
061a staff to do at least on an annual basis is to review what they do how they do and is that serving people the best it is and that's what this process is this process is going to be reflective it's going to result in conversation it could result in change um is this going to be a change in policy that with poor policy absolutely not we don't know that yet but we definitely want to explore Avenues in which we can be better and serve our kids better 100 percent so yeah I'm so all due respect it's like again it's like we're not we're not changing anything right now we're just examining how we might be able to do better how we might Advance things to do better but we're not upending anything at this point
062but if what we're if what we're doing is um contrary to our board policy then that's not something that we should be bringing into the classroom right now I think until we investigate further because I get what you're saying but again we're not changing we're not implementing anything yet we're not changing board policy or not we're not putting anything into action that goes against board policy the purpose is implementing Equitable grading in the classroom though but right now we're just examining taking we are we are learning we're we're learning we're learning about things that we don't know so much about right now and we're ascertaining whether or not they make us better Educators thank you principal roach uh clerk McNary comments questions thank you for raising the conflict about the board policy I think that's
063worth looking at um principal roach can you tell us how the train this training was selected we spent quite a bit of time with cultural proficiency and one of the Avenues that we studied within cultural proficiency is our grading practices and are they Fair are they supporting our most struggling students which caused me to kind of think along with our Equity team and kind of throughout the district an examination of how we grade students and are we doing and looking at that data not only for middle school but high school and Elementary as well to ascertain are we serving our kids well are they thriving are they doing the best the the grading systems I I think that should be something that we always can with different curriculums okay we're always trying to look do
064better for our students and an examination of our grading systems to see whether or not we're doing the best for our kids I think is a natural part of this so our initial step is just to kind of learn more about Equitable grading in the classroom to see for us in a reflective manner to kind of take a look at how we grade kids is there anything that's affecting them how can we provide them with more support that's really what this is all about yeah I guess another way I see it looking at it is potentially removing barriers for students absolutely that is our that is our goal yeah thank you I don't have anything further okay thank you so um at this time um let's go out to the public and um we as
065I mentioned um several times earlier but I'm going to say it again anyone online who would like to speak please raise your digital hand if there's anyone here in public thank you so much for queuing up um we're gonna alternate in person and online and so I see folks in person right away so um AP Hogwarts please you've you've got the floor um so last year I was a tosa at Pacific Grove High School and one of the things I did as a tosa is I worked with the instructional leadership team it was a basically a team of teachers from every Department to uh try to implement effect to help Implement effective practices and really help teachers reflect on our pedagogy and share best practices in order to get better one of the things that
066we did was we did a book study that this is really two years long of a book called grading for Equity by Joe Feldman and uh we all read the book and in my 25 years at the high school um I feel like it was the most comprehensive actual book study that we've ever done um we took a very methodical approach um to trying to understand what is a very very important question and that is what is Equitable grading what does it mean right and one of the problems that we have I think in our current culture is that people start to make assumptions right away about what it is without really diving in and understanding it and sometimes when we dive in to try to understand we feel more confused uh it's sort of
067disequilibrium that helps us to grow right and so what we did when we read the the book together is that we uh dialogued about some very challenging questions that people had some strong feelings about and those dialogues helped us to be a little bit more vulnerable about our own practices some of the suggested strategies for Equitable grading that came up were things like waiting more recent performance so if a student doesn't do well at first but suddenly performs really well on the final do all of the poor grades at the beginning of the semester should they be impacting the grade when the student is showing Mastery on let's say a final exam grades based on interval individual achievement not group sometimes we work in groups and different students participate at different levels in the group
068but the whole group gets the same grade so we talk about like how that impacts our grading practices things like grades being required um uh based on required content not extra credit are there teachers out there who Maybe haven't been grading regularly or you know have gotten busy and suddenly they've got a a student that's far behind and not recognizing that and give a bunch of extra credit I'm sorry AP address that's three minutes thank you so much Lewis is there anyone online okay seeing no one online who would like to comment we're going to go to the next person in person oh the queue has gotten public or Florida this is for the public you're you're you're welcome to to comb it and just so you know the device that's on the podium there
069with the looks like the stop lights it'll start at Green and out your and then warn you with a yellow and then red will be your three minutes very good thank you so much and please state your name if you don't mind yes I'm a uh part of the PG community I appreciate the opportunity to voice my opinion about consent item and and I appreciate the explanations which I've learned something tonight a little bit more about what uh the word Equity means at least to the pg Unified School District um bless you this item involves approval for staff as we has been discussed I I do believe Equity grading is a mistake for pgusd not only are we changing the grading criteria to satisfy perceived social injustice but we are adding another social or social
070political charge responsibility on our wonderful teachers Equity grading is ultimately cynical it descent incentivizes all of our kids not only those students who routinely work hard and receive good grades but those students who are perceived as Equity lacking these kids are being subliminally programmed to feel disenfranchised that system systemic oppression is real that privilege on microaggressions are constant threats that will face as they grow up that social justice anger rage equity and safe spaces are appropriate ways to deal with life and that they will need government help in being who they are and who they aspire to be how about preparing our school kids for the amazing opportunities that this country and life in general offer opportunities such as hard work teamwork self-regulation optimism Independence self-worth Family response family responsibility determination service respect gratitude Freedom
071of Choice freedom of speech freedom of worship civic duty Law and Order rule of law private property free enterprise life liberty and the pursuit of happiness it seems like these values are have been upstaged and our children's education in favor of a more pessimistic and ominous message we all want to see disadvantaged youth be successful we all want educational assistance for Learners with disabilities we all want the end of bullying and discrimination we all support our teachers and want them to be paid more but anything to do with Equity is ultimately D disincentivizing and capricious we must keep the focus on education not on whatever social or political debate happens to be whirling around us at the time please disapprove the staff training for Equitable rating in the classroom it is a cynical perspective on
072the educational excellence and potential of both our teachers and our youth thank you so much Community member Louis is there anyone online okay there's no one online who has their hand up next up we have director Oakman you have your three minutes thank you good evening trustees Buck roggeman the director of curriculum and special projects just wanted to clarify a couple things with regard to the board policy especially regarding class participation and homework as it um applies to uh the um grading for Mastery um it's not that those things can't be counted um it's just that when you're looking at classroom participation you're going to be as a teacher reflecting upon the way that you grade for classroom participation in your present practice if your present practice is um you kind of take a subjective
073um gauge of how much a student talked in class and you're giving a participation great on on that what you are doing um is the students that might be a little bit more shy that might be an English language learner who wouldn't feel real confident it speaking up in a class wind up suffering under that kind of a grading system whereas a classroom participation is going to be based more on a task that is assigned during class and the level at which if someone in engages in that task and then has a task that they can show for that work that kind of classroom participation shows Mastery of this of the standard as opposed to being a subjective measure the same kind of thing with homework if homework is going to be something that still
074has a tie to objectivity rather than being something like a worksheet that students can fill out and then if they haven't filled it out they can quickly copy someone else that's not going to be a real accurate home or grade either so teachers can reflect on the kind of homework that they're assigning and the kind of grade that's going to be attached to to that and then uh finally once again this is training that's going to instill a reflective practice among our staffs and really see if what we're doing is grading students on the standards that were charged by the state of California to teach our students or if there are subjective measures that are coming into play that are affecting the grade that we're giving students so what we want to do is make
075it as objective as we can um and then also uh Empower those students who have those skills such as hard work so what you're talking about are the study skills that you need to have when you when you get to college right you got to organize your schedule so you get to class on time you want to put in the hard work uh outside of the classroom so that you can perform on the two midterms and a final that you're going to take in college right so um those are the kinds of things that would happen when you're grading for Mastery as opposed to um chasing points okay thank you thank you directorman Lewis anyone online with their hand up okay I don't see anyone either thank you oh thank you so much next person
076in the queue okay thank you so much hi I'm David Henderson I'm an Emeritus professor of Economics Naval Postgraduate School and I've been an educator for 40 years one of the things I always did was give homework so that they could track their progress we heard a lot about tracking progress that's one of the main ways you do it and if you want them to do it you have to make it count moreover as Educators we aren't just trying to get Mastery that's the main thing we're trying to get I agree but we're also trying to get responsibility and so if people don't do homework that shows a lack of responsibility right there I did look at I have not read Feldman's book but I did look at some quotes from Feldman's book and one
077of the things he said is that retakes should be available whenever a student wants to improve his or her performance that's crazy I taught at Santa Clara University in 1980 81. and I had a young woman come to me after a test and say when's the retest I said there isn't one but then I thought well I should at least find out why she missed it she was honest she had gone surfing I don't think that talk I I think by hanging tough I taught her responsibility now the one thing I did hear principal roach say that I agree with I don't know how you do it in a class of 20 or 30 people because you start to recognize handwriting my father was both a teacher and a principal in the Manitoba education system
078and in grades 11 or 12 and 12 we had what were called departmental exams where tens of thousands well 20 000 students at one time wrote the same exam and people graded them after the fact who didn't weren't even from that school and they didn't see the name I think that's a great idea I'm not sure it applies when you got 30 students and you start recognizing uh writing styles I also noticed that principal Rhodes talked about implementation I I'm glad Ms Ottmar that you did emphasize that because it isn't just is this a good idea it does say implementation and that means something it means implementing and so I think we should be very careful about that um now this is something that someone said Feldman said so if he said it I think
079this is crazy but maybe he didn't say it but that is that students who cheat in assignments or tests should not receive any grade penalties since in Feldman's view grade should reflect only a student's knowledge not their ethics effort attitude or Behavior now I don't know if he said that but if he said that that's awful because as teachers as Educators we are trying to Model A Certain ethic and it's very important that people learn that cheating doesn't isn't a good idea thank you Mr Henderson thank you for respecting the time thank you Louis anyone online thank you so much next up in the queue hi good evening board members um I'm uh I'm a PG parent of a middle schooler um and I don't believe that applying Equity grading is the solution to students
080that are falling behind and I think that's probably primarily the the reason why this is trying to be implemented um instead the district should be focused on offering help to students and provide their parents information about those resources as well the concept of heightening grades for those students to provide raised self-esteem is only going to last so long until the young adults enters the workforce or seeks higher education essentially kicking the can down the road will further increase the chances of failure later in life regarding the programs no more zeros for missed assignments and no deadlines will not equip young minds for the reality of the workforce the notion that a student can have unlimited retakes if they want to improve their performance will not be manageable for the staff and detrimental to execution of
081timely learning milestones if the program is preventing a student from working hard to achieve the goals then what message are we sending to an entire generation many school districts around the country that have implemented this Neo Marxist program are now trying to undo this problem that has been exacerbated many skills such as the ability to study for a higher education will be left behind for students that were able to just get by without too much effort students that are not considered minorities will feel demotivated why would an individual work so hard when a race-based preferential bias is attributed for certain groups poor academic performance all around will be the result of this implementation so I asked the board to re-examine the need for this program and instead concentrate on providing additional help to those students
082that need it also we need as a community to re-engage retired teachers or other members of the community in providing pro bono tutoring for families that cannot afford such support I have helped in that capacity myself in the past and it is quite rewarding thank you very much Community member Lewis's or anyone online waiting thank you so much principal Garcia Leto Garcia principal Community High School and PG high school so our school as Dr hag was so elegantly stated earlier did a book study grading for equity it's an incredible book and if you would like copies board we'll get you copies I vehemently disagree with the people who have just gotten up there to speak against this what we are doing As Leaders of our schools is creating an opportunity for all of our students
083and all of our teachers to be better at what they do that's it your job is to support us we vet everybody that we bring forward for contract approval we've done our work we've done our due diligence stand by us do the right thing thank you principal Garcia and Lewis is there anyone online waiting no okay next person in line please good evening board my name is Carol Marquardt and my daughter went all the way through Robert down middle school high school I'm a grandparent senior citizen but I do play golf at the PG golf course and I don't think I could talk though I'm not being snarky but I don't think I could talk to the ladies in at my golf club into Equitable scoring um based on my income my race my age
084and my enthusiasm and I can't get unlimited Mulligans they would kick me off the golf course okay so that's just one thing um ah Equitable grading is the antithesis of the things that Benjamin Franklin spoke up about and it is a byproduct of the diversity equity and inclusion movement which is fast drawing a sharp backlash in this country as you read the newspapers and that's the Dei movement is a ripple effect well the ripple effect is a decision that the Supreme Court made that about the the action of college admissions where they give racial preferences it is unconstitutional and the primary mission of pgusd is to educate and not to promote racial balancing um so I know I sound like an old fogy but Benjamin Franklin was right about the work ethic and he helped
085build our nation and I think we're getting away from that your job is to educate students and not to do racial balancing thank you miss my court Lewis thank you so much Lewis next in line Erica Chavez I teach kindergarten at Robert down I also have a seventh grader and will have a high schooler and I can just say as a I don't golf but as a wife of a golfer I do believe that golf actually levels the playing field with strokes and it's called a handicap um on another note I'm really excited as an early childhood educator that no offense to my upper grade colleagues that you're finally doing what we've done in early childhood forever which has give them the time to develop and show what they know when they get there if
086I tested the kids in October and they couldn't read and they said sorry you didn't make it and I stopped doing my job I wouldn't still be here so the fact that we're learning that children develop at different rates and need different scaffolds along the way and different ways to show it at the upper grades thank you thank you thank you Mr Chavez always but we have one person who has raised their hand online oh he's actually a board member trustee Hazen hello I I am so sorry I'm not there in person with you guys but driving back from the airport I just wanted to weigh in I really appreciate the public comment we've been getting on this item but I also feel very strongly that the voice from the staff has been very strongly
087expressed as well so I think it is important that we focus on the issue and not some of the broader political strings that have been attached to it because I do feel as speaking as a parent more than a board member this concept of meeting kids where they're at will only make our kids better School members and better citizens ultimately we've gone away with a lot of colleges have done away with SATs and standardized testing I know people are not 100 for that in my field we do what's called double blind review because we recognize that there's a current bias when you have knowledge about a product of somebody when even if it's unintended this is not trying to level a playing field in any balancing way it's trying to make sure we're meeting people
088where they're at so I just want to speak up on behalf of the staff that put this together and thank thank you all for doing this tonight and sorry I can't be with you thank you Elliott Hazen and I just want to clarify you were speaking just now during public comment as a member of the public because you're not um here in person and we don't have any proper agendaizing for your location at this time but I do really appreciate your dedication to contributing to the board meeting and do we have anyone hello we do have someone here in the queue thank you so much I almost didn't have to hear from you tonight but um Laura lagona I am the government and econ teacher up at the high school I'm also a member of
089the ilt the instructional leadership team that did this study with Dr hackbis last year um I think we're we get very stuck on words I mean they teach government teach AP government it's a volatile world and so we we have to choose our words carefully and I think we're kind of losing the picture of what this really is in Pacific Grove uh last year we members of the ilt from all different departments came together we read the book and we discussed it at length but we also implemented pieces to it we chose what pieces we felt best suited what we were teaching and what our goals as educators are um there are some things that I was like absolutely not I don't agree with that I am acutely aware that the students in my classroom
090are going to walk across the stage and they are going to enter into the workforce they're going to enter into job training they're going to enter into colleges on the entire Spectrum right I have students who are getting fantastic educations at Monterey Peninsula College I have students who've gone to Yale and Harvard and the Naval Academy so I'm very well aware of what they need because it is this is a competitive world but I want us to remember that schools our job is to give the kids the tools and the knowledge so that they can compete we are not Harvard yet right because not everyone can go there my own daughter is over at NPC flourishing but we are there looking at what best allows us to make sure that our students leave that classroom
091knowledgeable at the beginning of the year I always show um clips from on the street with uh like Jared uh Jay Leno right and they're asking questions about the Constitution and what the stars on the flag mean and I always tell them I'm like the one thing I want to know when you leave this school if Jay Leno meets you on the streets and you cannot answer these questions I'm going to find you because I want you to know these things because if you don't you cannot be the best citizen and so what we're looking at are what are the things that we can do in my class I do do retests for quizzes because the tests are going to be all those quiz things so I want them to see and I had students
092who thanked me for that this year they said you know I was stumbling at the beginning but you let me redo those it's work for me but it makes sense we're using those rubrics because then they can really see it's not just a B on the paper it's a be on the paper because of this and next time I'm going to try to work on that particular thing so in leading because I'm on the red but just know that we're not just looking at these programs and taking them Full Tilt and saying everything because we know our students better than anybody else so we know what they need and we know what best works for us so we're taking the things that we think make it Equitable regardless of their economic status regardless of their
093race regardless of their ability we're looking what can we do that will make this class a better place and make these kids better citizens thank you Miss piano yes please Louis is there anyone online waiting okay great we've got one more individual here there's no one there oh no oh yeah that means no okay please go ahead hello my name is Vince tuminello I'm a local Pacific Grove resident and I was a school teacher I'm retired now and uh I want to point out I heard a lot of word salad I came in a little later I was busy earlier this evening but um in my experience there's a big difference between what we call teaching learning experiencing and Grading and I have kids who I'll never forget this Martin Spindler his mother called me
094up said Mr tuminello what's wrong with your grading system I go what do you mean she goes well my son he has F's in every other class but he has an A in your class and she was upset she wanted to know how I could possibly have done that and what was wrong did I make a mistake I said Mrs spindling your son does all of his work he comes to class prepared he does a nice job and he's educated he was in C Track by the way I doubt he would have ever made it to college and anyone who would have ever evaluated him in a professional or serious manner as to what his grade was yet I taught AP classes where it was very competitive and the kids came to class with their
095heads down and they wanted to get the highest possible grade so they could get into the best college and those kids got academic numerical grades based upon how well they get in class on their tests on their papers on their homework so on and so forth well kids in both classes were learning and that was what the important thing was and I think felt it was appropriate for a kid like Martin who was in the C track probably never saw an a grade in his life at least his mother didn't I don't know if he brought his report card so but um I think it's important that we distinguish the difference and to have an across the board system that you're going to apply to all students in all learning situations at all grade levels
096I think is a tremendous mistake should I have given the advanced kids who are far and above more intelligent higher IQs more successful and they were going to be more successful many of them became doctors and lawyers and businessmen and army officers and naval officers and all kinds of things and Martin he's probably installing audience you know in Sunny areas nice kid and he's very happy he's probably making good money and he's very happy so I want to encourage you not to pursue any type of across the board Equity grading system learning is much different than experiencing and much different than grading thank you very much thank you and with that we will close public comment I'm looking at Lewis and I can tell that um he's letting me know that we don't have anyone
097online so I'm just closing public comment on um on this action I pulled consent item I should say item in we're going to go back to the board one more time around and then we're going to vote on this item or determine whether or not to not make perhaps vote on it and postpone it um and actually Mr Jordan let me start with you because earlier in the discussion you had mentioned that you um would be in favor of bringing it back once you had a moment to kind of do some more research is that guidance that you would like us to follow no I was more concerned about the reference to board policy and if this this item and the training was in conflict with board policy and if that were the case I
098would recommend bring it back but I don't I don't believe that looking at board policy 51 you had a chance to review it yeah okay I'm actually the one that referenced it when I sent the sent it to the trustees okay and you do not feel that this is in conflict with board policy I don't currently think of it okay that's important to clarify thank you so much okay uh trustee Brian Swanson please uh well I'd like to move forward with it gosh I had no idea we would have this amount of commentary on something like this you know I have to commend our staff and our um and our teachers in particular because when I look at this one of the things that I see is that they're trying to do better that they're
099trying to examine how we reach our students and I think about my own children and the children across the district too and everybody has a unique path and I think that that's so much about what we're trying to find here right now is how do we reach these kids because they all have different ways and yeah there's a center of the bell curve and then there are the fringes and people learning in different ways and I I think you know we're talking about spending 500 here to just take a peek at what we're gonna do and how do we address that and how do we help our students um I don't see anywhere in this item race mentioned one time not at all and that drives me batty that that has been brought up a
100couple of times in this conversation this is not about race Equity seems to be a trigger word for a lot of people now and it shouldn't be it's like we're trying to teach our kids and how do we do that and also education is not a zero-sum game it is not a contest to who can do better we want everyone to do the best that they possibly can and I think that's at the core of what we're talking about here right now and I want the community and my fellow board members please listen to what we heard from our staff too they've looked at this we have to trust them they're not just sitting around all day long you know they're examining this and they brought this to us for a reason so I could
101go on for a long long time I'm not going to do that I think you guys know where I am on this so thank you thank you trustee Swanson clerk McNary I'm ready to move forward with a vote this evening okay and trustee outmar um I'm really glad we all had this discussion I think it was fruitful I learned a lot I would actually love to read that book so if you would be able to get me a copy I would be so interested I oh thank you very much um it I'm ready to move forward with it I don't want to hinder um help I don't want to hinder what's happening here because I can hear the passion I can hear that you guys are all coming from where you should be coming from
102which is supporting the students supporting education I do have a lot of questions about it I don't think that having a two-hour class is going to necessarily move us down a road that um is going to be harmful in any way um yeah so thank you everybody for contributing and for being so passionate and um that's it thank you thank you trustee Ottmar okay um I do have one question um just because you can tell by the discussion tonight and I appreciate everyone's comments um we can tell by the discussion that there is points that need Clarity right I think it was director roggeman who said it might be one of those things the more you kind of dig into it the more questions you may have that may not feel comfortable for a lot
103of people including the public who we represent as elected board members including families who may be listening et cetera Etc and so when we have something like that being in the education um quote-unquote business I will say it it does all of us a service to get a report back after this is done so if this is voted in favor of by the majority of the board and this takes place tomorrow I would be in favor as a board member I'm looking around at the other board members to have a report back let us know how it went let us know if you're going to implement it at more than one school maybe it was something that all the teachers or majority of the teachers or you know someone who we respect and trust and
104entrust our kids do every day is not in favor of we want to hear that so that's all I ask is a report back after this if it does go through and yes go ahead um so I am I am comfortable moving forward with this um two hour class or lecture but in by no means am I saying that I'm comfortable with a full implementation I would assume that that's something that would have to come through the board before um something like that was done if we're changing grading and that type of thing that's a great question and some procedural questions did come up tonight in the course of this discussion you know are we changing board policy how do we do that you know the set or the other and so that's a great
105procedural question principal roach please please uh before it even came to the board I'd have to go through the staff I didn't have to go through the families so I can't stress enough how entry level this conversation is but also how important this conversation is status quoing helping a bunch of kids you guys so if we do not evolve these kids are not gonna do any better so well before we take it to you guys we want to hear the staff and how that's happening we want to see the data see if it is helping these kids so thank you very much thank you and we do have Rod Garcia on I have a question for him so you know what is in writing is what we have to go off of right um so
106what is in writing it does say the purpose of this is to implement Equitable grading in the classroom I trust that what we're hearing from the staff is accurate that this is uh this is an exploration exercise this is let's investigate so if we can change that wording um it's maybe change one word on page 63 of the packet at the top where it says purpose instead of implementing Equitable grading in the classroom exploring let's call it some something that accurately reflects what what we're hearing tonight is actually going to take place is that possible and we have them so we see we rep here are you qualified to to give us that guidance because if we do we would have a motion that would include that change so Mr Garcia sure yeah I could
107change that to um I could change the wording on that okay and then I want to ask staff or Mr Jordan is that re is that accurate is that reflective of what's going on I would say it is accurate as reflective and if you look at that which we didn't include in the board packet this this the summary of the session overview the title's grading for Mastery Equitable Equitable practices to support Student Success so I would think that that that probably more likely than that should have been the title in the contract not the title that was on the contract and where is that at so I can say it in the motion um it's grading for Mastery Equitable it's it's on the trustee document and this is the session guidance document that I shared
108with the trustees prior to the board meeting oh it's not on in the package it's not in the package okay then I will have you repeat that okay okay um I'm closing out board conversations at this clerk McNary did you have something you wanted okay thank you so much all right um so I'll make a motion that we um approve the staff's recommendation on pooled consent item n with the addition of um replacing the purpose as it is now on page 63 right now it says implementing Equitable grading in the classroom we're going to replace that with grading for Mastery Equitable practices to support Student Success I'll second that motion thank you motion made by Carolyn Swanson seconded by trustee Ottmar can we get a majority vote please hi thank you motion passes unanimously thank
109you to the members of the public who came tonight thank you so much okay moving on to you know what let's see it's 802. we can either take a break for five minutes right now or we can push on for about another 30 minutes um board are you would you like to take a break now I'd like five minutes too so okay majority of us we're going to be coming back at eight oh you know we're gonna come back at 8 10 it's going to be a seven minute break thank you all so much we're picking back up with um hold consent item h equal consent item H is ratification of out of County or overnight activities trustee Ottmar please go ahead um I had just had some clarification about that and I do not
110need to pull it so um we I am it's already pulled oh then um congratulations to the softball team and um I wish you a great season this year okay um any other board questions on this item questions or comments no okay we're gonna go out to the public um Louis anyone raising their hand to comment on pooled consent item H which is ratification of out of County or overnight activities okay nobody I don't see anyone here in person making their way up to the podium so at this time can we get emotion I'll move to approve consent age hold consent called consent age thing okay thank you thank you so much Brian okay motion made by trustee Ottmar um seconded by Brian trustee Brian Swanson can we get a majority vote please thank you
111moving on to pulled consent item v contract with positive behavior supports Corp for 23.24 school year so this of course is about fingerprinting and I am comfortable moving this through and then um adding I saw that fingerprinting was on a future agenda item I would just like to get a date on that so um sure we will put it we'll plug a date into that um when we hit that part perfect then I'm comfortable moving uh you're okay okay great um any other board members have any questions or comments about item pulled consent item v no okay I see everyone shaking their heads no Lewis anyone online wishing to speak to this and this again is a contract with positive behavior supports corpse okay thank you I don't see anyone in person making their way
112up to the podium so at this time can we get a motion please I move to uh approve pulled consent V and all second so motion made by trustee Ottmar seconded By Carolyn Swanson can we get a majority vote please bye thank you okay moving on to the next item which is public hearings so this is pgta slash pgusd tentative agreement this is being recommended by director roggeman and um I will let him make his way up to begin the public hearing I'm actually going to open the public hearing now at 8 13. good evening trustees this is a public hearing to talk about a tentative agreement between PG USD and the the the Pacific Grove uh Teachers Association um the majority of the negotiated items were settled um by the end of last year
113there were uh two um things that still needed to be resolved so we met in May and you see the result of that in the packet what we did was we reworked the extra Duty stipend language and also adjusted the stipends one of the things that had been brought to our attention was that uh last year our stipend payment for extra Duty assignments was among the lowest in the region and so what we've done is we've increased the amount I think that you can see the bottom line is about it by about a hundred and fourteen thousand dollars overall which brings us uh closer closer to the top we are a little bit above the middle of the pack now so so um that was the major change also there was one uh item that
114uh had repetitive language in the class size item in the contract and so we rectified that and made that part of the tentative agreement as well so I'm happy to answer any questions that you might have thank you director roggeman so we're going to give the public a moment this is the public hearing portion of this item so anyone online please raise your digital hand or come up to the podium I have a quick question for you director roggeman um on the fiscal impact it mentions the funds that it's going to affect so it's fund one general fund um 11 12 and 13. did you just list those because at any point there could be a stipend that comes about that could affect those funds or is there because I didn't really see like a
115stipend that would I thought affect the cafeteria fund at this time so I was just kind of inferring that so while I handed the bulk of the text of that item I think the budgetary work was done by yes right so the fiscal impact for 114 000 was the full impact of the the negotiated stipend list if there were all stipends put into place okay so they could potentially be affected or they could be drawn from any one of the of the various funds that's why I mentioned the fundo 1 11 12. thank you so much that was the only question I had um any board members have questions on this item okay trustee out more does not clerk McNary no thank you for all of your work and to the um teachers union as
116well for finishing this out right yeah yeah absolutely trustee Brian Swanson nothing thank you okay we'll go out to public Louis um I don't see anyone oh good we've got a member of the public making their way in person up to the podium hi Beth shamos um what this reminds me of is last year when the the parents wanted a volleyball class um for the Freshman girls I believe and there was this jockeying back and forth like well can we you know can we do it and and so this is kind of gives more clarity to how that could happen and you're having if I'm reading this right like if there's a proposal for a new uh extra assignment clap which would be a stipend class that this would have to come forward first before
117it comes to the board for uh approval so just pointing that out that that's what I'm assuming is going to be a result of this thank you for your comment um all right we don't have anyone online who would like to comment I'm closing out that oh please director Rogan or you're just coming back up in case well I'm coming back up in case but also um I never want to take for granted the positive relationship that exists within the negotiating room with our pgta colleagues and so I just like to publicly recognize just how productive the meeting is and we truly are working together to make the contract work better exactly for the kind of thing that Miss shamas talked about that we wanted to put in place a process so that we are
118sure that any new new stipend or change in a stipend amount gets negotiated first before it comes to the board because that's the proper process so um uh many many thanks to our friends at pgta for working with us to get that straightened out thank you thank you and um I'll mention it I was not going to mention it but if there's anyone listening who's interested in being a garden coordinator we have positions now that are listed and they're one of the new stipends and it's a it's would be really exciting to have consistent Garden coordinator at all of our sites making the gardens lovely and helping our kids learn about that so plug for that position if anyone's interested with that I'm going to close out the public hearing unless I have anyone who
119doesn't want me no okay all right so closing it out at 8 18. thank you all so much moving on to action discussion and this is just part of our procedure we're going to have the same item now on action discussion which is the tentative agreement for the board to approve or disprove we're going to vote on it now so board comments or questions any board comments or questions I'm just going to look at you guys as a whole okay thank you we are going to allow for public comment on this item so again anyone wanting to do public comment please come forward no one online and no one in person is coming forward so with that can we get a motion please I'll make a motion to approve action discussion item a on staff's
120recommendation I'll second the motion thank you motion made by Carolyn Swanson seconded by clerk McNary majority vote please Mandy thank you so much moving on to action item B which is the adoption of resolution number 1110 designating authorized agents to sign School orders Mr Jordan this is your item any comments no comment other than the fact that the district does need a second uh signatory in case there's an issue with the primary which is myself and I'm acting in two roles so that's the reason for bringing it forward and then historically the senior director of Human Resources was also named that's a really good point yes you're interim superintendent right now but you were our assistant superintendent so you've got a lot of hats that you're wearing plus a shoulder harness and um and we
121did we did in past historic historically institutionally we have had the um soup assistant soup and um director of HR and we have incoming director of HR here tonight so anyways I'm going to stop talking that's enough information about that so um any board questions or comments about this item this is a routine item I will also add um okay any members of the public wanting to comment or question please raise your digital hand um I will just make a quick comment I guess so um I was asked about like what safeguards we have in place as a district right we've got the board who approves expenditures but who actually signs the checks and generates the purchase orders on a day-to-day basis verifies that invoices are accurate are stacked um and a lot of that
122responsibility comes down to the person citing the check so um as far as safeguards what safeguards we have to prevent any kind of diabolical situation happening I mean we do get audited routinely as a public entity um anything else you'd want to add to that yeah I would just say that we've had zero audit findings related to that practice in itself staff are my staff in the business office and staff from the Human Resources office develops a lot of the items that move forward for approval by the assistant superintendent CBO and the the Director of Human Resources so there's there's a number of different safeguards in place meaning that we are not executing these on our own it's it's a collaborative effort amongst the staff absolutely and payroll gets vetted through mcoe and so we've
123got actually quite a few safeguards as a government entity in place okay thank you so much for that information um Lewis anyone no we don't have anyone in public making their way up to the podium so at this time um can we get a motion and this is a resolution so we're going to do a roll call vote ultimately I'll make a motion to approve on staff's approval well second who said that me trust you out more okay motion made by Carolyn Swanson seconded by trustee Ottmar can we get roll call please I thank you motion carries unanimously all right action item C contract for services with Santa Clara County Office of Education this is a Mr roach principal roach item um I'm going to ask the board if they have any questions for Mr
124roach if they would like him to do any presentation or comment on it if you would like hello again Sean roach principal of Pacific Grove Middle School and one of the other trainings that we are going to discuss tomorrow is restorative conversations in the classroom which really involves if I can put in a nutshell in a very small sentence it is positive interactions in the classroom it's taking the punitive nature out of some of the interactions between teachers and their students and turning those into positives teaching students how to relate in academic conversations with one another in in a positive manner so I don't know well hopefully you guys remember some of the stuff that we did last year within 10 versus impact and that kind of stuff which dealt with peer-to-peer relationships outside of
125the classroom now we're bringing it into the classroom so that they can use that academic language um in a positive way they can wait to speak and instead of focusing on behaviors in a negative way you use a restorative approach you you you highlight the positives and so that's what this training is about any questions thank you Mr roach I just have a quick question on the dates so this is going to take place tomorrow as well so you have a busy PD day for you you've got an action-packed day tomorrow yeah um okay that's as far as I'm going to go on the date question so um any other trustees have questions about this item okay I see the trustee shaking their head no we are going to allow for public comment as we
126always do for agenda items so um Lewis is there anybody thank you um and I don't see anyone here in the room either so with that thank you so much principal roach um can we get a motion I will move to approve contract for services with Santa Clara County Office of Education action discussion seat thank you for that very thorough motion trustee Brian Swanson um any second I'll second the motion okay great so motion made by trustee Brian Swanson seconded by uh clerk McNary can we get a majority vote please thank you all right next is action item D contract for services with positive coaching Alliance this is a director roggeman um item and so I do believe there are questions surrounding this item so he's already at the podium okay wonderful thank you for
127being so Speedy with that trustees uh trustee Ottmar any comments or questions about this item no none from me thanks thank you trustee Brian Swanson nothing here thank you thank you clerk McNary yes um I read through this item including the brochure from the positive coaching Alliance um part of the language in the brochure to me um is concerning it um on page 155 of our packet um it the paragraph talks about coaches are important in developing SEL skills and then it separates kids by gender for boys this is done by supporting them to try new things brought in their Horizons set and manage goals that are important and build upon their passions for girls coaches are most effective by spending time to build relationships and ensure that those young women's voices and opinions matter
128they share power um I don't know I guess my concern is that it's not necessarily in line with when I read our district mission statement and our values I also wonder if this kind of approach would comply with like state federal legal Title IX um I see it as problematic sure um yeah can I speak to it sure sure um I I think that one of the things that's not clear about the packet is that that portion is um stating the findings of a study that was done by the laureus group it says in February of 2021 glorious USA released the results of a comprehensive study okay so this isn't um like embedded in the positive coaching alliances teaching it's it's making the case for youth being involved in sports and so they were quoting
129the study and the studies findings were separated by gender so they reported out on the studies with the impacts that Sports had on boys and also what the impact that Sports had on girls so um that portion of the document is talking about what the study found coaches have an impact on and they separated those impacts by gender for boys and for girls I'm 100 in agreement um we would never bring to the board a group that was going to separate the um Sports for the girls Sports and the boys sports in high school and in middle school and conduct separate trainings as though um the aspects of positive coaching are different for boys than they are for for girls every Workshop that ppca does is all inclusive and in fact that's one of the
130um uh main points that they stress is that in inclusivity of sports and um really trying to provide a positive experience for our students I know that the trustees have a pretty good idea of my sports pet background I coach the high school football team for eight years here I coached six years at other high schools I played Football in college I played football baseball and basketball growing up whatever season it was I played it played a sport and I had coaches in my life that were incredibly positive and left um remarkable gold in my soul I also had coaches that were awful right and to this day standing before you when I'm 56 years old I you know I've still got scars from coaches that um put winning before people instead of putting people
131before winning and so what this um three-year commitment with two workshops every year is designed to do is to put our coaches in that frame of mind that they want to coach people first and player second that um while we want our teams to compete and do well that's not going to be nearly as important as the experience that we walk away with and the positive coaching Alliance really is the gold standard in the area around us for doing that kind of coaching and trustee McNary I understand 100 percent why that jumped off the page at you so I contacted uh Sean kargaskadin who was our representative from positive coaching Alliance and he's the one that explained to me that those are the findings from a study it's nothing um that uh it's it's not
132a message that's going to be given to our coaches that there's that that sports are going to benefit boys and girls in different ways honestly Sports benefit individuals in their individual way and what we want our coaches to realize is that we want our Sports programs to bring out the best in the individuals so they're better people when they get done with the sport that's that's really what the whole purpose of this training is I hope that helps answer the question and I know that it's concerning that it's in the literature and that's really kind of what sticks and sticks in your gut yeah yeah that's where I'm at I mean I I appreciate the explanation truly and I hope that that's consistent with the programming um I just when I we are given information
133and it's limited to a brochure and the brochure cites a study that chooses to cite these findings I mean it's basically advertising like these are things we find important if nothing else and I think that's what concerns me about not necessarily being um in line with being inclusive for all kids all kids learning all skills um yeah okay um Sean Carter Skadden is here um if you'd like to hear from him that he can speak to that as well too um I did my best thank you I really appreciate it okay thank you we're going to continue with trustee questions and comments um and we'll get to um the the guests from the the vendor at the end of the trustee questions and comments so um trustee Brian Swanson no comments okay and Laura you
134said you didn't have any right okay I am in an agreement with um clerk McNary I don't see how there's any reason that that should be in this brochure that was chosen to be highlighted from this company um so I can say right now you know what I'm going to hear from the representative um so Lewis do you mind unmuting the individual okay um please state your name and um and comment accordingly you have three minutes sure yeah my name is Sean car Skadden I am the Northern California representative for positive coaching Alliance um yeah just to reiterate what Buck uh mentioned that was purely from a study that was done by the laureus group and the only reason that that portion is even in there is a lot of what my role is is
135actually selling the benefits of sports to people like boards or city council members or you know different youth leagues and so literally the the portions of of that study were shown that here's how Sports can benefit youth here's here's how kids can learn here's what kids can learn um none of the workshops that we actually do separate by gender we work with over a thousand high schools across the country and our goal is to impact 20 million youth over the next five years so we're very experienced in this we you know the high schools we work with we do not separate by gender we actually have our own gender Equity Department that comes up with resources on how to you know get more girls more involved in sports and increase participation in sports um so
136our our goal is is really to to make Sports Equitable for everyone our tagline is to ensure that that sports are Equitable regardless of Social and economic circumstances so um yeah you know if you know I will certainly bring this study to our marketing team because they're the ones that kind of put our packets together and and bring your um you know thoughts to it and appreciate you guys bringing it to to me because you know I've never had someone kind of really dig deep into this material to kind of showcase you know some of the language that we're using may not be as inclusive as we would like so I'll I'll pause there I know it's been a long night for you guys I'm happy to answer any other questions though thank you any
137public comment on this item either um online or in person I don't see anyone online neither does Lewis anyone here in person want to say anything okay principal Roaches on his way everyone Sean rochcraft principal at Pacific Grove Middle School I um was nowhere near as good a coach but I did coach football at Monterey High School before six years um and I carry some of the same uh scars that uh Buck addressed and this item is really closely akin to the one that came before with restorative practices it's kind of the athletic version of how to positively deal with with students and student athletes and so I would put this definitely in that same box um to go a step further uh unlike a teacher you really can't evaluate a coach you're not there
138writing notes about a coach and so this is a vital training for them to be able to kick the season off in a positive manner and relating to students the way they need to be related to in a positive manner um because it's going to be more motivating for thank you looks like we have one more speaker we took Garcia principal of all the high schools this impacts particularly Pacific Grove High School as director roggeman stated to all of you this is the gold standard and our sports program exists because we are able to have walk-on coaches we need to be able to provide Education and Training to our walk-on coaches they don't have the benefit of being on campus every day and receiving the training that our staff receive this opportunity will make our
139Athletic program that much stronger and if our students have more positive experiences I'm not saying we have any or broken we need something fixed we're going to make something better if we have more opportunities for our students to have a greater positive experience on the court in the pool on the field we're going to see better results and I want to win and this is going to create that opportunity for our coaches and our players thank you thank you principal Garcia all right trustee Ottmar any questions comments no questions but um just a comment I mean I thoroughly trust buck with uh understanding the social emotional needs of players and I know your history in this community and um I just I I trust that that this is the appropriate thing to to do and
140I'm on board with this thank you trusty Ottmar and um I would stick my reputation on this group I have complete faith in them trustee Brian Swanson uh no questions just thank you for bringing it to us appreciate it I think it's great idea trustee McNary clerk McNary I am in favor of training for our coaches um I would be interested in looking into a different vendor personally thank you okay um so with that we don't have any more members of the public who would like to speak and we've gone around now to the board as well um do I have a motion to approve this item which is action item D contract for services with positive coaching Alliance I will so move I'll second motion made by trustee Brian Swanson seconded by trustee Ottmar
141majority vote please I know motion does not pass we have two trustees in favor and two opposed Mr Jordan what do we do when we have essentially a tie excellent thank you so much and we don't have enough of a majority to direct staff in this moment to say to bring a new vendor back correct okay thank you so much next up action item e contract for services with newsella this is an item for that is director rogueman's I don't know if we necessarily need um um too much of a description but board I'll go to you would you like a little bit of a summary from director roggeman no I'm seeing no okay um so uh this is contract for services with new Stella um board comments and questions we're going to go around
142quickly um trustee Brian Swanson no okay um I don't have any questions comments clerk McNary no questions thank you okay trustee Elmer I have no questions thank you and I will say that um we did send in questions in advance for this item we got really good answers back um one of the questions was um uh about if this was the only news source that could be used in schools and um that was my question I just want to be aware of I don't want us to be censoring but I also want us to you know realize that we have a certain age it's a balance that you all deal with so um so the response was really great and director rogueman if you don't mind just answering that question for anyone listening um you
143know one of the things that we tried to include in the packet and you can do it on the digital version but there's a link and so you can see um you know the more than 100 news sources that they have but teachers also have the ability to pull in supplemental content from various sources what Newsela does is it gives them a reliable vetted resource that also has lessened plans Sparks they call them like ideas plus it's also aligned to the adopted curriculum that we have so for studysync if you're a seventh grade teacher teaching unit two there are supplemental materials grouped by unit two so they're right there for the teacher so it's really a way to make supplemental materials easier for teachers to find and there's a good breadth of materials that are
144there too however if a teacher doesn't want to use Newsela they don't have to and they have other sources they can use thank you so much okay we'll go out to the public see if there's anyone online or in person I don't see anyone in person making the ripe to the podium and I don't see a notice from Lewis that anyone online is Mr Jordan did you have anything no okay sorry um okay with that we're closing public comment and we just need a motion to move this forward I'll move to approve the contract oh second motion made by clerk McNary seconded By Carolyn Swanson can we go to majority vote please I thank you so much directorman okay motion passes unanimously next up action item F Board calendar future meetings this one um Josh
145and I are kind of sharing this one a little bit tonight um we do have a request from leadership Associates which which is the firm that we hired to conduct our superintendent search and they um looking at so on page 166 of the packet we have on there right now a calendar item that is currently on Thursday September 28th for a special board meeting candidate selection superintendent and Leadership Associates would like us to move that date to October 2nd they said that will not affect the remaining timeline it's just a shift within the timeline and so board when we go to approve this tonight I will be making a motion that will include that shift and hopefully we can all agree on that scheduling item so um as far as the rest of the board
146calendar goes I'm going to go around and see if anyone has any questions or comments so uh trustee Ottmar foreign yes I am okay thank you uh trustee Brian Swanson um I'm fine with the bump to October too and that's fine okay great and you have no other questions or comment stop okay um I have nothing further clerk McNary um I am fine with October 2nd and nothing else for today okay thank you so much we're gonna go out to public comment see if anyone wants to comment on our thank you Lewis on our Board calendar future meetings it looks like no one has raised their digital hand and I don't see anyone in person moving their way to the podium so I'm going to make a motion that we approve this item with the
147shift from um the special board meeting for candidate selection from September 28th to October 2nd can I get a second oh second okay motion made by Carolyn Swanson seconded by clerk McNary can we get a majority vote please Mandy [Laughter] okay moving on to the next page of the agenda although I feel like I missed something so just one second no I did not okay information discussion items up first is item a which is the 2022-2023 school year organizational review of pgusd Human Resources and we have a representative here from SSC I believe moving their way to the podium thank you for being here it's 8 44 and I just want to thank you for staying our meeting started more than two hours ago and you're here and you're enter appear to be energetic to
148share this information thank you yes thank you so much for having me president Swanson Board of Trustees Mr Jordan District staff and the school Community it's truly a pleasure to be back here um to share the outcome of this report my name is Danielle Conley from school Services of California and I'm here with my partner on this project uh Miss Wentworth who is supporting from the audience and she is also excited to be here at 8 45 or whatever time it is um yes thank you for Miss Wentworth as well get that on record we're thankful yes so uh what I have for you tonight is a presentation which we've somehow taken this 100 page reporter however many pages are in it um and I have highlighted some of the areas in some slides and
149so what I plan to do is go through the presentation and highlight some of the observations and recommendations from our work and then I want to open it up to any questions that the board has and I also have the report here that I can refer to um because I have not memorized the report here we go yeah sorry I have a quick question for you the entire report tell me about that as far as can the board read I would like as a board member I would be in favor of reviewing the entire thing is it a public document is it not public how do we do that yeah the board can review the entire document okay we can and is it something that will be available to the public or no because it's
150it can be available with the public and they have to Daniel's here today to disclose the findings of the report in Open session so we'll have it made available to the public put on the website if that's the desire of the board okay so today is the summary of The 100 plus page report correct yes thank you so much today on the summary and some some districts will after I share this because this is a work in progress this there's a lot um some will share it on their website and then perhaps schedule updates from the human resources department in terms of progress and in areas of the report um and it's uh it's a very public document thank you okay all right so want to get into the scope first of this uh project
151before we move into some of the data and the observations and recommendations so we embarked on this journey sometime in I believe it was February and before I share some of these findings I want to note that and acknowledge that a lot has changed since we visited in February however a lot of these recommendations still apply so the areas that we were looking at in HR were the organizational structure the positions within communication practices policies and procedures specifically one of the functions we looked at was recruitment selection hiring onboarding processes and then there was a comparative analysis portion of this work where we looked at selected districts that were similar to Pacific Grove just to take a look to see how other HR departments were staffed and I want to note that that doesn't mean
152that just because they're staffed that way this is the way that you should staff it just provides another perspective if you are looking at making Staffing changes then you have that context there to use so in terms of this work it's based on industry standards best practice statutory legal compliance we conducted interviews with District staff from HR from business services from school sites union leaders and also the customers that the department serves so you have that internal perspective where you believe things are operating a certain way and sometimes that's not what customers of the department experience and so that's a really powerful perspective to gain as you develop analysis analysis and balance that out in addition we collected many documents from the human resources department just to look at some of the facts actual data
153to develop our analysis and I just want to emphasize that this review is focused on operations and organizational processes it is in no way an evaluation of Staff we visited here for two days it was lovely this is a lovely area in District you're all very aware of that um but I am in no way able to evaluate staff just from those two days of visits um the other aspect of this is that it's not an audit it is certainly not an audit an audit starts from this deficiency standpoint to really find everything that is not not going right or well or maybe illegal illegal processes or practices that are that are of concern this is really focused on operations so I want to start with some of the key overall observations and I do
154not say this every time I don't I this is not my only board meeting so you can Google me and see I do not say this every time but this is a this is a functional HR department they're functioning overall staff customers internal external uh they are appreciative of HR staff's efforts they're working very very hard um and they were very welcoming and when I say that we truly enjoyed our visit we really did so so everything overall is functioning but that's not why you called us here to tell you that everything is going well we wanted to look at some areas where we could improve and and we certainly found some of those areas so from the employment perspective when we think about your recruitment profile for prior to the pandemic prior to the
155pervasive Staffing shortage that's plagued this entire State this district has enjoyed a very positive recruitment profile you didn't have to try very hard to attract qualified candidates you had a lot going for you but what happened here and what's happened throughout the state to similar districts who had your experience is the pandemic came and it transformed the workforce which magnified the Staffing shortage and what it did to some districts similar to Pacific Grove is it caught you a bit on your heels because you didn't truly have to recruit recruiting is actively contacting reaching out and targeting certain candidates that you would like to invite to apply you were able to really put something on edjoin and things just happened for you and so that was that was a significant observation that we made in terms
156of the overall organizational structure of HR it reflects a structure of a small district and what I mean by that is you have a lot of utility players within the department you usually in smaller districts your employees will wear a lot of hats you're doing a lot of different things and a lot of different areas which is good because you build that depth of capacity but what is challenging with that is you're dealing with constant disruptions you're pulled in many areas and it's difficult to really gain that specialization in a particular area um in terms of your overall Staffing which I'll get to in a minute in HR your Staffing level is uh within the comparative group it's ranked number one within the comparative group as we look at the ratio and I'll that's my
157next slide um so it's not necessarily the number of FTE that are assigned to FTE it was the way that they're assigned to the department and there were some observations of the partial um the partial FTE the partial in this job classification and then in this that's really difficult to manage in your day I don't know about you but um if your assignment was 0.375 FTE I don't even know I you're the math guy I am not mhr but um but who knows how much how many hours in your day that is and how you're supposed to spend that time so that was certainly something that uh was a challenge so this is a comparative Staffing table we just just took a snapshot of a summary within the report there's detailed detailed tables with some
158analysis in each category in terms of the categories we see here that are going down the left hand side executive management staff those positions are your assistant superintendents your Chief business officials your cabinet level positions typically in a smaller District many times your directors who are your management staff will serve in cabinet because that's just a reflection of the size of the district supervisory staff those are working technical transactional managers they'll be your supervisors fiscal managers those folks and then Department staff these are these are really your your workhorses within a department these are your technical analysts Specialists they're the folks who are really keeping the operations going some observations for I'm sorry administrative support staff are clerical in nature and they typically work in concert with your department staff so a couple of observations
159about your Staffing you have just two categories that you're Staffing here management which is your director and then your department staff and you see here where some of the confusion comes in with the 2.4375 and those split assignments that are quite quite difficult to dissect um in terms of where the staff are supposed to be and when and then what their specific Duties are so you'll see that you are the only District in the comparative group in that department Staffing area that staffs at this partial FTE okay so that was a significant observation another detail that I want to point out is you are ranked first but some of the duties within the HR department are not truly HR work and that's another symptom of small District where we're going to just put everyone where
160we need them and get the work done and it's fine but it should be acknowledged when we talk about HR Staffing because volunteer management Community engagement those sorts of tasks they're not truly HR functions um and so what that does is it provides this false sense of FTE that you truly have 3.4375 FTE but you some of those duties in there are receptionist duties and so I I would argue you actually really don't okay so I want to make some more key observations here so just to summarize what I've already reviewed uh you you in terms of the Staffing table for leadership you're I think you're ranked number four for leadership so that's not where you're heavily staffed you have one director uh position and so you're in there along with various other districts there's
161three other districts who um have a higher level of management Staffing with actually two managers and there are a couple who provide that executive leadership in terms of an assistant superintendent many times in a smaller District the assistant superintendent will not just oversee HR typically it could be utilized in another functional area such as Enrollment Services student services sometimes we see those various hats in different ways so the analytical and Technical functional positions um this is where you're heavily staffed this is also an area that's very common in our industry where if we have a problem we want to solve it with Staffing we're going to add in this Staffing area I do believe at the time of field work I think a 0.56 FTE position had just recently been added and that was working
162its way out as we were visiting so as I want to note once once just one more time and then I'll be quiet about it some of the responsibilities are not are not HR functions so again as you're looking at this and thinking about the Staffing level it's important to consider and contemplate that detail as far as administrative support within the department you don't have that you don't have any of that that area of support and that's something to definitely think about and that's also how that District receptionist position is being utilized and this correlates with some of the external customer experiences where they conveyed well we call HR and we can't get a hold of anybody or you know no one answers the phone well because they might be hiring somebody that might be
163taking care of something else and so that's a very important detail to add that well perhaps it could be beneficial to have a position in place that's not just serving human resources that serving the entire district office in terms of customer service communication and in a community engagement okay so I talked a little bit about the organization and how common it common it is to to staff positions that have a hybrid uh function um in terms of this utility position that's used for many things and your organization definitely reflects that so yourso is very significant because you have this partial FTE and I'll make recommendations later and in org chart in terms of how I had recommended in the report to to modify that to centralize those duties and to help with role Clarity because
164that's one of the challenges that was noted in the report sometimes it's difficult to tell who's responsible for certain duties and one of those reasons is attributed to the the FTE assignment in terms of the district office receptionist duties as I noted before for the recommendation is to consider centralizing those responsibilities and when we get to that functional org chart there are duties there that include volunteer management Community engagement supporting other departments and just providing that coverage and customer service for the district office it's also a safety safety detail as well if one of the school sites needed to get in touch with someone in the district office they'll have that Central position somebody is responsible and somebody is monitoring the phones in the case of an emergency but if we have HR folks who
165have many other tasks that they need to do that really pressurizes things so in terms of the director position their HR work HR work is a mystery to many most folks are not interested in HR until things don't go well in HR when the outcomes are not what is expected everybody is is very interested in what's happening and there's often misunderstandings about why it's happening there's many reasons for that but there's a lot of hidden work in HR where we go behind closed doors we got a lot to do and then things just happen when we open the door one of those areas when it comes to a management level position is things like complaint complaint management um and and this particular position at the time of our visit was inundated with complaint management and
166what that does is it pulls the incumbent out of Department operations and Department operations are things like recruitment selection onboarding evaluation supervision all those things pulling them away from that a complaint um on on a good day can take you 40 hours of work time just to investigate that doesn't include writing your findings and doing all those things so it's recommended that the focus of this position be allowed and accommodated to focus more on operations there's ways you can do that by empowering some of your site site level administrators I know we have some in the room and they might say no but not everything is a formal complaint not every every problem so if we build in systems and we train our site leaders and train our supervisors on how to conduct informal inquiries
167how to make an assessment when you need to call when something requires a higher level of attention that can help alleviate some some of these workload stressors in terms of the Specialists and technician positions as I noted before what they do it's directly related to recruitment so when you think about the core function of a human resources department the core purpose it's only purpose it is to attract and retain employees if you are not doing that then you're really not functioning so that is how important those positions are and because of some of those operational difficulties that I've spoken about that is leading to some of the workload stressors in terms of bottlenecks within the recruitment process and some of the difficult difficulties with the selection process as well so this is the revised organizational
168chart and I wanted I want to also note that these are recommendations and it's really a framework I've I've visited here I'm a lady in the suit I visited this my third day here that's it I'm not here to give directives or say it's this or it won't work this is a framework for Mr Jordan to talk to staff for internal staff to just revisit and take another look at how the department is organized so on this side here I I just was trying to fit everything on this slide so on the left side I did make a recommendation for an executive director of Human Resources but you have a director but I made that I made that distinction because some of the other comparatives had that and I think that allows for a higher
169level of oversight in terms of the Department leadership you'll see that I simplified things there are no partial ftes here we have two Personnel Specialists who are operating all within a recruitment Focus that's the first dot under their responsibilities very specific we have a district office receptionist and at the end of the day with this particular configuration you drop down to three FTE supporting HR functions with a district office receptionist that is supporting the entire central office so it really takes away the FTE here and there with pockets of work and streamlines things so that's that's a major recommendation in terms of some key observations with procedures there was no complaint log when I visited a complaint log is very important to track workload track timelines and basically just the operational aspects procedural aspects legal
170compliance details regarding complaints so we make that recommendation as well in terms of training like every School District in California the district does not have a formal training program especially for classified staff but what happens over time as we rely on just the skills and abilities of our staff and without that formal training if you continuously get trained by your predecessor at some point the environment is going to pull away from you because you're learning things that somebody else taught you right and if they are not in compliance or not current practices then that's how you get this culture where we don't have that necessarily professional training so your HR staff have learned by doing learn by trial and error and while they're surviving and obviously functioning that's not really the formal recommendation that we
171make so in terms of written standards we got a lot of documentation with written standards but they're not very effective if they're not communicated regular really if they're not if your site administrators are not trained on the the procedures and if we don't have standards established and what I mean by that is you have this procedure and then you tack on if you submit this request we are going to process this request in five days right and that creates expectations principles will stop calling asking you when you're going to do something and everyone starts building building this trust in this culture of responsiveness so the department is already using an annual calendar there were some little details on that in terms of there was an assignment of work so whether we recommend they continue to
172use that but then assign specific staff so in terms of complaint management um just to summarize that section we recommend that the director duties be shifted in the area of complaints to help the position focus on operations uh the the department should create a procedures document where it's shared electronically and each employee can basically document how they complete their work and then professional opportunities for all HR staff there should be a budget for HR professional development and this plan should be implemented during the evaluation process so each each staff member with their supervisor can select and discuss their training areas for the year in terms of HR and payroll operations you may say why is this here that wasn't in your scope of work you are right but during during my visit I uncovered some
173stuff that needed to be talked about especially as it relates to recruitment so you have some areas where your bottlenecking and your Recruitment and what this has resulted in is some frustration because some of your new hires you've lost some of your new hires based on delays in contact and and we can't do that right so you've gone through this entire Recruitment and selection effort and then the person took a job somewhere else because they didn't hear from the district um and core and Central to that was the hiring procedures with the personnel requisitions which is the document that communicates essentially through HR and payroll and so we found some details that we wanted to talk about so the first area and this may have changed since my visit I I'm not sure Mr Jordan
174May chime in but there was three forms when I was here there's a Personnel action form there's the board assignment order and the Goldenrod they each have their different purposes and they are slowing you down there's they they are slowing you down because there's too many steps in that process and you want to think about this in terms of let's set our goals for our hiring Cycles so if we identify a qualified teacher we want to hire them within a week within two weeks we want this to be done right you're going to identify all of your steps and we're going to do all of this within this time but if you have things bottlenecking because they need to come to the board for consideration or they need to go through multiple approvers um then
175we have a problem so we make a recommendation to streamline all these forms into the personal action form of course all new hires should be um either ratified or approved by the board if it's an existing position that means that it's already in the budget if it's a new position it should come through as an action item right because it's new to the budget but there's definitely some areas here where the board can work with Administration to try to streamline this to get this to work a little faster so that was that was a major recommendation there we also make a suggestion in terms of your personal action form process what we're doing here is we're sending it to essential approvers you see that new positions have a different path if it's special funding if
176it's a special Grant then the person supervising or monitoring that Grant or special funding should be able to approve that first and then it goes on its way now Mr Jordan may say no business services needs to be first before HR fine but um those two can those two can switch as long as it's going through the major areas so something like this in my former District we as a Cabinet met and we said we're committed to approving our Personnel requisitions within three business days so principal request to replace a teacher that thing is approved within three days we are posting We are going to post it for seven days we are interviewing within 48 hours after we interview we're going to make that selection we're going to do our reference checks and then we're
177going to make an offer of employment so we're moving people through and and it's important to remember that you're not isolated you are competing with your neighbors and if your neighbors are hiring faster than you then you are you are at a disadvantage so these things are very important and I'll share I used to look at edjoin if I had a position coming up I'd look at my competitors I knew who they were they paid better than us I would look I would see when they were closing it I'm closing my position first because I want I want to get them in before they do right so this part is is very important in all this so just to recap on that um can I think that at the time of our visit the district
178was in process of starting to look at these forms I don't know where you are now so we just said continue uh the process the pave approval process should um reflect accountability and efficiency and the routing process should include both HR and business this is a shared responsibility it requires communication and it also requires an HR acknowledgment that they are managing the biz the biggest per expenditure for this District which is personnel that they've got to get connected to the budget and its impacts and um so that's critically important in all of this as well so as far as recruitment I've talked about the Reliance on the good reputation beautiful area and all the great things I've talked about how the pandemic has impacted Recruitment and then we pulled some data and your data was
179very interesting when you look at and it's all you know it's all to scale so you look at a bigger District these numbers are in the 200 300 right but they have layers upon layers of staff to do this work if you look at 2021 um that's a year we probably all want to forget but we can see the effects of the pandemic in 2021 you're hiring dropped you only hired five certificated staff that year but then the emergency covid resources your emergency funding resources came you're coming back to school some people didn't come back to work and you see here that you went from 10 to 34 for classified and 5 to 15 uncertificated and then you're pretty much maintaining a much higher number in 2223 and so if you think about HR staff
180workload impact it's recruitment it's recruitment there could be 27 steps in the hiring process and so it's very very intensive so so that was very interesting your Trends also reflect uh what we often see where classified is more volume sometimes the part-time employees will turn over faster and we're hiring them throughout the year whereas your search certificated are more on a cycle that reflects your school year so the recommendations here is to develop develop a comprehensive recruitment plan and budget we've got to do more than just put your jobs on Ed join we've got to have some very intentional and specific recruitment efforts um in terms of the hiring process we would definitely benefit from training our site administrators and our hiring supervisors every year if not twice a year on legally compliant and unbiased
181hiring practices that's really illegal compliance liability recommendation that I would I would strongly strongly recommend there are some hiring barriers that are that are just operational and all you have to do is change change them right when we think about our recruitment practices and our screening practices we want to think of every way to invite candidates to apply but in public schools we are really good at thinking of every way to screen them out oh you didn't pass this test oh we're you know we're doing this you didn't make it so really kind of reframing your recruitment plan you also want to work to build a Workforce that reflects your school Community that's really important and that's built into that removing those hiring barriers but again there's been a lot of work by the HR
182department in this area and like was said right when we opened this meeting the HR department is working really really hard and continues to do that so I just wanted to acknowledge them there this particular slide I'm not going to go through every area but these are just the standard areas that the district would look at when we were thinking about well hiring barriers what does she mean what should we do these are some examples look at your posting timelines those are very important we want to stay away from open until filled that doesn't reflect a level of urgency in the hiring and people just won't apply and it also almost conveys a sense of desperation and we definitely don't want to do that as our first advertisement of the job opportunity in terms of
183this the candidate screening process um if if HR is not knowledgeable about that work include that supervisor who is let them in on the screening process I'll tell you what I couldn't screen technology candidates to save my life I'd be calling my technology director to help me out with that right in terms of the interview process we want it to reflect the position if it's entry level let's remove any requirements that don't truly reflect whether or not the candidate can do the job and then in terms of hiring managers they're the ones who are responsible for that employee so empowering them to call the candidate and say congratulations I want to let you know that I've selected you for this position and I'm forwarding your name to HR for processing right so that really removes
184that bottlenecking waiting for HR to become available to do it and it allows the hiring supervisor to do that there's also things like contingent offers of employment that supervisors can certainly issue that basically says I've selected you see here this this piece of paper pending you past all of our screening our fingerprint clearance all those things um you will be hired so that's something that's very useful in terms of holding candidates so you don't lose them to your neighbors um in terms of the new higher paperwork and information for onboarding a new hire we recommend that you digitize that completely and again this is their first Contact this is a really important part of their experience with the district so you want to make sure that we're getting in contact with them very quickly once
185they're hired and that's one of those standards I talked about earlier okay hiring managers once you've made that decision hire HR will be in contact with that candidate within 24 hours something whatever whatever is reasonable so just a couple of things in the very back of the report there's an implementation plan I said a lot this feels overwhelming if you get through one or two um great right this is a work ongoing work in progress um it would be beneficial for Mr Jordan to work with the HR department and assign some responsibilities to who's going to come up with the procedural template we have some examples in the report we actually also provide examples of some legally compliant interview tools and so making those assignments of responsibility and coming back to report to the board
186can be incredibly impactful but over again through all this I just want to emphasize this department is functioning and I'm very appreciative of our work with the HR department and I'm I'm very grateful for being here tonight to share with you our observations and with that I believe I'm ready to take questions if we have any thank you Daniel Connally [Music] um let's we'll start with the board as we usually do so trustee Brian Swanson questions comments well it's amazing the amount of information that you have been able to compile over the two-day visit I mean it's um and I have to say you know going into this I was before we well when we were talking about bringing somebody into to do this I was dubious about it and I was like I don't
187know do we really need to do this and I'm glad that we did um again I don't know exactly where where you start with all of it but it's it's great just to have it all um all put together in in such a great way I mean this is something that I think we could pour over for a long time um I don't know where we start with it but some great recommendations in here so appreciate the thoroughness of the report thank you trustee Swanson thank you clerk McNary thank you for the thorough presentation and all of your work on this um I look at this as giving us a really good Baseline um and telling us where our starting point is um and as a layperson who's not in HR it seems like a
188lot of this is going to be maybe a lot of work up front but it's going to put into place systems and supports for staff so like long term and as we evolve it's going to be easier for everyone and more streamlined um I don't really have any questions about the report I guess my question is more kind of the next step in um kind of transitioning to staff and um what that looks like in terms of a plan um if that's something that we're going to be able to see and then get updates on um those are my comments thank you trustee utmar thank you for this um it makes sense when I first looked at this I was a little overwhelmed at what I was looking at I mean it seemed like a
189lot of information but you explained it very well and you broke it down very well it it does make sense I agree that up front it's probably going to be a fair amount of work but in the long run um I can see how this would really streamline things and um and be more effective um I am interested in hearing next steps I know you just you had talked about uh Josh maybe coming up with a template initially I don't know how much work that's going to be you're like 12 hats right now so um and what the timeline looks like for actually beginning this process thank you um one of the things that really stuck out to me was the last slide that says that the recommendations in this analysis do not apply in
190isolation they interact with each other on various levels and in order for particular recommendations to be successfully implemented certain modifications must also be in place with Fidelity so it was I mean to me that's like okay we need to try to do as much of this as possible um that what we do when we do it is up to staff as a board we can direct you to um say this sounds good and please make us a plan and bring it back in 60 days or 90 days or whatever I don't know what's the industry what does the industry recommend you know none of us I'm not an HR professional and I want to speak for my colleagues but um we do want to balance the load I think that we and from your field
191work it sounds like we may have a staff that's at capacity or feeling Beyond capacity so I also want to respect that and all the work and the time that they've put in So Far So Mr Jordan when can we see a plan on this and one last comment is can you try to implement all of this and then just come back to us and tell us which ones are not possible for pgusd I would just say this it's not a mountain to tackle and there are definitely things that we've been doing to streamline processes and workflows since Danielle and Teddy were here with us however many months ago yeah the path was one thing you know path goldenrodden assignment order that's something we've been talking about at nauseam so um there are many things
192that we're putting in place right now in a more streamline um and kind of have a more linear approach to workflow and bringing Claudia on she has 16 years and a wealth of knowledge a wealth of knowledge and experience in a district that has had many moving Parts over the years so we're very happy to have her we've had many discussions about that about this with her and Billy prior to Billy uh in retirement so I would just say this the kind of the train is on the tracks were already moving forward um do we have a formalized plan that we have developed yet no but we already knew what some of the areas we needed to focus on were based on the interviews that were conducted here with school services and we began to
193to address those months ago would 60 days feel comfortable for you to bring us back a plan 90 days yeah I would sorry I would suggest we look more at a mid-year we're onboarding new staff right now um I think that Claudia and I have a lot to do here again this is not a mountain to conquer I don't believe um I think that bringing maybe a structured plan back to the board sometime in the fall would make sense with a timeline associated with that to carry out through the end of the fiscal year like maybe November December or even dare we say January because of the holiday those months just fly by we're almost in holiday season as it is so yeah I would like to have a more formalized plan and approach in
194place by November or December for implementation starting January 1. uh you know there's we're more likely than not will not will not accomplish everything by the end of the fiscal year but we'll have a timeline established yeah and just to be clear I don't expect you to be implementing all this by the end of the year I just want the board to hear what the plan is by the end of the year yeah we'll definitely have that and I mean there are many things that were brought up during this during this report that that kind of hit home with me as well just coming from another Lea and how that Lea did things and how this Lea did things differently not incorrectly but just different and I'm more of a linear thinker as you all
195know so I'd like to streamline as I mentioned the processes we have a great team and and you're right I believe that there's um there's an overwhelming amount of work for the amount of staff that we have in this office I think that goes it doesn't that's not said enough um but you know we are we're doing quite a lot with with limited amount of resources and um there are many things we can do right now that help that will help us streamline our process with the current staff we have in place before we potentially restructure but yes we can bring a plan forward to the board let's just say by December okay for implementation and then we'll work on a structured uh you know and as far as SSC goes um is this something
196that SSC would you would you want to retain their services further for the implementation or development of the plan to kind of help you out in this situation or or are we good and like I don't know how it works are we good with the review and we say thank you goodbye I think that we have a professional Network that we work with each other off you know early and often when there's issues that arise um and we'll continue to tap into that Network I don't think there's a reason to retain School services for to help us with implementation I think we know what what we need to do we need to structure it come up with a timeline and then we can bounce some of the ideas off of the group if need be
197yeah thank you thank you for the summary thank you both for coming and um having it all for us it's 9 26 so I'm going to see if there's any public comment um staff comment anybody who's in the members of the public would would like to comment um got somebody in person we're making their way up to the podium so you get first dibs on speaking okay that's jamas um you know you're your HR department is really the first Contact that new people have with our district and so it's so important how that comes across and I was glad to hear that there was an emphasis on speediness of replies to people but the one thing that I find and I don't know about our HR department but other ones that I've dealt with is
198when you apply for a job and you're told that they'll make a decision at such a point in time and they'll notify you if you don't get the job they don't notify you or what they do is send a letter maybe five weeks later so that's something I think we should always be aware of because again I mean we probably get so many very qualified people we had to choose one maybe there was somebody there that we hope we can choose again we got to leave a good impression with that person so as much as I like the the speediness I would also want to encourage that HR take into consideration the people that that didn't get the job and make sure that we are continuing to you know reach out to them or give
199them some kind of positive feedback thank you Mr moss and actually that's such a I agree as a trustee that that's a point so is that on your radar Mr Jordan and Claudia yes director Ariano I should say thank you so much okay um Louis anyone online machine just comment thank you no one online is wishing to comment board we'll go back around trust you out Mark anything no I have nothing else okay clerk McNary no Brian Swanson okay this is an info item so besides the direction of coming back in December with a plan um that's all we have when we don't need to vote on this so thank you all thank you for coming feel free to exit now you will not disrupt us and we really appreciate oh yeah sure okay information
200discussion Item B which will be a quick one and then we can get to our one I'm really excited about is the summer projects with director Anderson so a review of legal fees this is information item that comes up regularly it's um a review of um not even I should say a review it's a it's a spreadsheet of what we spent so far on legal legal fees and costs Joshua Jordan do you have anything to add um no just other than the fact that um that the 20 21 22 actuals versus 22 23 actuals went down so even though we had a number of different issues related to legal and legal fees um the reduction by 76 7 692 did occur over the course of the past two years oh thank you we've trended downward
201that's good thank you so much um so clerk McNary any questions comments no thank you okay trustee Ottmar I think trustee Brian nothing thanks okay I don't have anything either we'll go out to the public and see um principal Garcia you're not you're just standing okay and no one Louis has let me know no one online is waiting to speak either so um we'll close up public comment and I don't have any direction unless another trustee does for Mr Jordan all right thank you for that item um next item very exciting item information item c summer projects presentation well director Anderson makes his way up to the podium I will say that we had a really great post on our pgusd website that included pictures of some of our summer projects so I'm sure we're
202going to hear more thoroughly about that now but um thank you for communicating that out to the public and from my understanding some were measure a some were measure D some weren't you were just being really thorough and telling the community hey these are the things we're working on so I thought that was really super cool please continue that evening board ladies and gentlemen public very happy to be here tonight um I think my presentation is going to be a little bit different than you might expect but I hope it's well received um so it's I'd have to say that um in that I've been here 13 months now it's pretty exciting um I'd say we went from the pandemic to now the the storm gimmick you know and that's what I started under and
203so I I think we're probably going to talk a little bit about that in this um it actually had a quite a bearing on what has happened so um so I want to talk about um a little bit about the success of what has happened over over the summer um I've had quite a few people stop me recently and and say John I can't believe what you've done you know I like what you've done and and what I want to communicate tonight that I'm just the guy that holds the Baton and it's really about our success and there's a lot of reasons behind Exodus and so yes it is the maintenance operation and transportation department staff but it's also the contractors that were the winning bidders um one of the contractors uh negotiated with us
204and we got some savings from that and we're able to do more so we really appreciate that contract for doing that um I think it's also about the pgusd support structure that we have as well the district office played a very important role in this so as the site staff at each one of the locations and of course our citizens by providing the bond monies I do if we don't think then we're not really doing our job without them none of this would have happened so I want to talk about our site staff the custodial staff uh I think you know we need to see the faces of these people so um there's one missing he actually broke his finger so he was off work during the you know picture taking time um but we
205have our Forest Grove um Elementary get Oscar there over at Pacific Grove adult educate adult education we have Renee and Nina uh Robert down we have Thomas Andrew Terry and Eddie Pacific Grove we have you know Greg and all of our guys there in Pacific Grove as well at the high school and Community hi and and we just have a just a plethora of all these custodians and they they don't just come to work every day during the summer it's not vacation time it's deep cleaning time and so they're polishing floors they're dusting they're cleaning windows they're going and doing all those kind of cleanings that they can't do while the students are there and and we have to do this stuff during the summer and it's been a particularly a little bit of a
206problem for the folks at Pacific Grove High School and Forest Grove because there's been so much going on there we've created so much extra dust and dirt for them and so much so I really thank them for their patience we also put a new roof on at Robert down and had a year-long I mean Summer Long program there with it without with the city and so our poor custodial staff there had to do all their cleaning on top of dealing with all of that so I think it's important that we note the extra efforts that they went through okay um our grounds crew so we now have three ground screw for a long time uh Shea the guy on the right it was pretty much the solo act for Shea for quite a quite a
207while but now now we have efren's back full time and we have Jaren who's been added to the pot and these three gentlemen have not just you know gone around and done have just done their regular work during the summer this is where the storm comes in we had 62 trees go down during the storm season um I'm sure that's probably a record for Pacific Grove unified um and so it's it's a case that that when school starts our campuses don't look their greatest right now I'm just going to be honest and we need to give these guys a little slack because I I admitted a decision to file the FEMA claim to try to recoup some of the money that we've spent on all these trees um it's added to my plate a whole
208bunch of paperwork and a whole bunch of meetings but mostly when it's added to these poor gentlemen is they've had to go after those 62 trees because FEMA gives me a deadline I've got to get the work done and get the monies that we've expended on it demonstrated to them so that we could recoup the money so why are we might have a couple of high weeds here and there and some places don't look as great as I'd like them to look for the opening of school the important part is that most of those trees are gone now they've been chipped up cut up and and the debris has been placed everywhere but you know where kids are going to integrate them okay our driver and utility team so they drive buses all School Long
209and when summer hits they do everything Melissa's been working on painting and doing things to help him to flip the TK she's done some some product projects where we've taken dirt out and we've put some wood chips in we've actually I've repurposed the wood trips from those trees that went down when they had those wood chips when the trees were shredded you're now going to see those start showing up in planted areas reuse and recycle um Greg has been not only just cleaning buses and delivering things to the custodians to keep them working he's also been our gopher to go out and get stuff for the guys and he's run the tractor for us a few times helping with the tree cleanup and and Wendy has been instrumental in picking up everything else in between
210that the other two didn't do um and then we have our maintenance screw and almost every in-house project we've done these four have been involved in it up to their eyeballs or or up to their waist in the pool um we did a major cleanup and shutdown of the pool we went over all the boilers again we installed 12 new lights yeah we did an actual drain down in the pool to replace some of the water again and we actually physically they went and walked around and then they scrubbed the pool so with precious so the pool's looking better than it ever has again this year okay so now we'll talk a little bit about measure D and this looks confusing it looks like there's a lot there and I actually tried to make this
211slide look that way to show you just how much was going on um and this doesn't quite cover at all but you can see there's a lot that happened at Pacific Grove High School we had our fluid applied roofing system applied to buildings A B C D and M that's five buildings in one year in just a two-month period so this is this is a major Improvement I don't think five roofs have probably ever been re-roofed on one campus in the summer uh those same buildings had exterior painting and they have gutters without gaping holes in them probably for the first time in 10 years um we put new luxury vinyl plank flooring in the band room um that was one of our old 9x9 tile floorings that are left remaining so I had that
212abated and new new flooring put in it's almost finished we're getting really close they're supposed to be here tomorrow to finish up so we can reset the room um we're putting new abrasive walk-off mats in the library the library has a lot of traffic that goes through there and what we're with the abrasive walk-off mats are going to replace this old vinyl that was torn at the entryways and the abrasive walk-off mats just the action of walking across the mat wipes the kids feeds so so it's going to keep things from getting tracked through the library um where it hasn't started yet it's scheduled it's probably before hopefully before a baseball game comes up we're having the varsity baseball field uh fencing replaced and the backstop reworked a little bit to make it more regulation
213um we're right now in the midst of a major sewer line repair there the k l Wing sewer line has been damaged since the middle of the year and we couldn't really dig it up in the Middle School season so that's happening uh work began on that on Tuesday so hopefully it'll be done soon and of course all the new locks and keys are installed at the campus um Pacific Grove adult there's actually going to be a sewer line repair that occurs there um next week because they'll be closed for a week so we still consider it a summer project of course Robert down we got the new shingle roof portion of the building replaced that was leaking everywhere so knock on wood uh that won't be leaking this coming year um and then the
214rain gutters were copper rain gutters so we decided to keep them because they're quite valuable and so those are just getting cleaned and sealed and of course the locks and keys are now installed in that building as well um David Avenue another we've spent probably about six thousand dollars on clearing the sewer there last year uh you know and multiple times with sewer backups uh all located in their main bathroom they use at the David Avenue campus um we located the problem it was dug up and repaired it is now finished so again knock on wood we won't have spent six thousand dollars this year I'm cleaning the line there uh we're getting a couple broken windows replaced and um there's a a sink waistline that uh is corroded and that's getting repaired as well
215where we basically have to cut into the side of the building to do that um Pacific Grove Middle School the new ring gutters they're scheduled for Monday so hopefully they will be done before school starts and then do Locks and keys are installed there as well um Forest Grove Elementary again the fluid or Pride Roof System to building a g and K we really wanted to go after the G building because it had some pretty significant wood Rod issues and things is going on there and it's one of the you know a is the biggest building on campus so exterior paint to those three buildings as well and the new rain gutters it's supposed to be finished complete tomorrow we'll do a final walk there as well we put new luxury vinyl plank flooring in
216the basrp room it's my understanding the carpet in that room is might be as old as 50 years so kind of nice to get rid of 50 year old carpet um and then this weekend we'll be sealing and restriping the drop-off horseshoe there so pretty excited about that um other projects so this is what the in-house Crews did this is what the maintenance Crews and everybody else pitched in to do and a couple of them were contractor driven too um at Forest Grove uh room a which is actually behind the vsarp room it made sense we went ahead and put that same flooring in there um I worked with the guys in tech for the new E3 flex room and we put a new low VOC carpet in there which is really important for the
217kids so this is this is since the kids are going to get on the floor and work with that carpet and be all over it I didn't want it to be a typical carpeting so I'm kind of making this our new standard carpet it's a low VOC it's really good for the kids they're not breathing in a bunch of those small organic compounds um right near the the like the demonstration garden that we did out here right in front of the admin area right when you walk in the gate at Forest Grove we're doing a version of that there it should be complete tomorrow okay um again major classroom deep cleaning uh major storm debris removal that was one of the hardest hits hit areas I've got one little patch of trees limbs in the
218back that um that face the condos that needs to be cut up and will be finished on that campus a lot of tree removal there um and then it would have two bottle fillers that came in the other day but we're waiting for parts to be able to install them it's frustrating still still with the Epic you know the pandemic stuff it's still hard to get some parts so parts we ordered weeks ago have not arrived so we have we have the actually have the bottle fillers we just don't have the part to install them which you know is a very specialized P-trap um let me see so um Pacific Grove Middle School this is a success story so the ramps to the modular buildings were quite rusted they were deplorable they were not safe
219and they needed to be replaced and during the graduation ceremony this we had our Janie was graduating and she's our student a wheelchair and we could not find a wheelchair ramp anywhere to rent and so I approached Joshua Jordan and I said Josh we need to buy ramps for the modular buildings would you allow me to buy them early so that I could use those to get Janie on the stage and so Josh approved an early purchase we purchased the ramps we used one to get Jamie on the stage and now that same ramp is installed to the modular so we got to use it twice and I didn't have to pay a rental fee so it was a win um and then the the old wood shop at the middle school is now 90
220complete is being emptied it took about five dumpsters full of stuff to get rid of the debris that had collected in there of the year and none of this was anything that we could repurpose or reuse or sell it was just basically stuff and so it's finally out and the that place is now being getting to get repaired and and ready for classroom use um and again the custodial staff doing uh deep cleaning there Robert down the old Co-op preschool has been converted to a new TK classroom it's very close to completion it will be ready for school it's actually ready to use now but we want to make it a little bit nicer before we're done uh deep cleaning throughout the campus at Robert down and again two new bottle fillers will be installed
221there as soon as we get the other parts that we need so um Pacific Grove High School and CHS there you have new Fume hoods that um are they're about 75 installed the parts that we need for those just arrived today so we'll be picking that up and getting those done hopefully before class starts um again the major pool maintenance uh the sewer line repair that's going on there um and then um the adult school so the two play structures that were damaged are in process of getting installed right now they literally like the last one arrived last week and the other one came the parts came all the way from Denmark so again just waiting on parts and again major major storm uh cleanup at that campus as well so a couple photographs to
222show you again not everything's complete yet I wish I had finished photographs so these are basically photographs in progress so the center picture is that new floor at the um the band room the music room if you will and then some colors of our you know pictures of our new paint scheme it's scheme and the new white liquid applied roofs uh the nice thing about those roofs they're Title 24 roofs so they're going to do some Energy savings for us they are basically a lifetime renewable warranty roof so every 10 years we could have them spray coated and that'll keep the warranty going on those and um the paint colors are essentially the same colors only just slightly brighter and what I've done to standardize is we went to the fan deck of of our
223paint supplier and we picked a standard color was close to the original color so that way anytime we have to do color matches or touch-ups it won't be a custom color anymore I'm trying to do that everywhere we go um here's those wonderful ramps that we reused at the middle school and you can see those are going to be a lot nicer and safer for the kids they're the other ones were rather than they were ferrous metals so they were rusting probably from the first day they were installed on the right is the old wood shop it literally used to not be able to see the floor yeah it's so this these tables that are staged in there now they'll be getting those ready for the kids to use so we're just going to clean
224the floor before they start using it horse Grove it is remarkably changed um it doesn't even feel like the same school anymore again we went to you're going to love the color the color is called curious chipmunk and so it just to me goes goes well with the school it's a it's our little curious Chipmunks so um one of the projects like if you see the sign uh the Forest Grove sign uh we water blasted that sealed it uh touched up the white a little bit and then again it was quite a bit of you know just dead foliage and a couple of flowers coming up around the uh that and that's that's repurposing some of the wood chips there um again that was uh Melissa um for a bus driver and Cliff uh they
225they dug all that out because our grounds crew was so busy with other things um that's the BR basrp room with the um that's the luxury Lux luxury vinyl plank flooring that's a mouthful um what's beautiful about this product again it's a low VOC product it's very durable should last 30 years in this environment and uh what's nice about if you scratch it the color signal it goes through it you know for several millimeters so it's gonna it's gonna do well with wear and tear and what the reason I'm picking this floor and having this type of floor installed in many places is because it you know foods and things it's easy for it to just get dust mopped and wiped up it's not carpet to clean um and so it and Josh actually was
226installing this at mcoe um before he left there so we we think alike um and the reason I have pictures of trees over here on the the left is I used some year-end money to take care of some trees over by area G Building G and then I used some of my startup money for this fiscal year to take care of some more trees over there because there's some very suspect trees there a couple of dead ones and so if you walk on that side of G now I think we're going to feel a lot safer for our students and not have to pull kids out of class when we have storms this coming year um and then um Robert down uh nice beautiful roof again this is a Title 24 roof so it's going
227to be reflective we had a lot of solar gain especially on the west side of the building where some of those when we would have a sunny day since there's no air conditioning in that building we'd have some very untollable temperatures of 85 90 degrees in the building this should go a long way to help that um one of the other things if you look up in the right you'll see there's a couple little squares up in that photograph and those are actually venting for the roof this roof has never been up to code it was never vented so when I wrote this back I wrote the spec to bring it up to code so that is now a vented roof that's also going to help because the heat will not build up in the
228attic space it's got a place to get out now um and so the the other picture on the left that is the TK room over there that used to be the former Co-op preschool and uh that floor uh believe it or not that beautiful shiny floor Eddie polished the heck out of that thing it was it was almost the point where we should have replaced it but we didn't have the time or the money so Eddie went above and beyond and he I I mean you wouldn't know that's not a new floor right now so again the kudos to our custodial staff um these are those playgrounds that um Pacific Grove adult education um the one on the lower left was completely obliterated it is now functional again and the one on the right is
229in process and um what's going to have to happen there is you see that's all the the ground is compacted around there they're going to come back in and put that rubber matting in rather than the wood chips and fill so it's going to be great for the kids I want to end with a special thanks thanks to you board for approving my plan last year to redo all this stuff you've made all this possible by saying yes go for it I appreciate that I appreciate Josh and all his support um I come to him with things can I do this and he says yes almost every time um uh the entire district office staff has been supportive of me um you know I went without an assistant for a while and everybody picked up
230the slack to help me keep moving I really appreciate that and I have to say that everybody chipped in um again the entire district office and the site staff principals and their secretaries the site secretaries are very supportive they help me with work orders and everything else and they're very communicative of getting me information as I need it and then I finally do have an administrative assistant now and that's Desiree and she has been wonderful in helping me get my budget back together and able to move forward so thank you all and you have any questions thank you so just timing wise it's 9 52. I do hope that we'll get done tonight by 10 o'clock but I also don't want to squelch any questions or comments that are going to come in so um
231we'll start with clerk McNary anything um no questions thank you thank you thank you to you and your staff and everyone who has contributed to the work um thank you for showing us the faces of the people who are working so hard I feel like that's something we don't really get to see and as a parent you kind of don't get to see because a lot of that work goes on behind the scenes and when the kids are not at school so I appreciate being able to know who's who works for the district and who works so hard to make things great for our kids I'm nothing without them and they all get a break soon because not they didn't take much time off during the summer they all worked very hard to make this
232a reality it shows thank you trustee utmar I don't have any questions but that was a really cool presentation thank you thank you so much and your entire crew for all of that I mean I would love to just walk around every site and take a tour just to soak it all in wait about three days and do this we actually do have an item on our next item that will be just that I'm yeah so I'm excited I'm looking forward that's epic this is epic stuff thank you trustee Brian yes great presentation thank you and to your whole crew you know it's like a just the other day in particular I remember driving by Robert down too and and I didn't I didn't know about the new roof but then I saw it it's
233like oh my God it just it looks amazing Robert down in particular the transformation with the with the new paint earlier and the rough that every site everything is looking really fantastic so appreciate the hard work especially over the summer when people are taking vacations and I know that's when you don't get to do that I will now thank you um any members of the public wishing to say anything um we are definitely all grateful for it's just really cool to see thank you these are like high visually impact items so I know that you've been doing many other things in previous years but this year in particular is really visually impactful for so many so thank you uh Louis okay nobody on Lewis's end of things and I don't see any staff members although
234I'm sure they're all very thankful as well um so I'll close out public comment I don't have any direction board members do you have any Direction no um I will just make a quick comment we did experience in our district a situation where we had a very big back order of um a backlog of work orders and I'm just assuming that at this time there they have like a reasonable turnaround time and everything is going okay with work orders in general is that a pretty safe assumption I know it's kind of a [Music] um speak to that yeah so um we did have a little issue with facilitron where we actually finish work orders and close them and then two or three weeks later those same work orders that were closed while the sudden just
235pop up out of the blue so we're working with facilitron to make that go away um just a few weeks ago I went through and made sure and closed a bunch of work orders that were lingering that I know were finished and I've worked with the guys and you know I'm confirmed they were done and sure enough some of them popped back up and so so we're maintaining it usually about um usually it's about two to three pages worth of work orders so we have you know on a log um and it's been kicking back and all of a sudden I'll just walk into work one day and there'll be six pages and it's not new work it's old work the part of that is the frustration is that there's a there's an issue but
236facilitron's working with us to take care of that great okay well one more thing to kind of wait on the phone for but thank you thank you so much thank you um next is our future agenda items item we do have several things listed here which uh Mr Jordan and I and clerk McNary will work on at our agenda meetings to get those placed on future agendas um the only one I had was the equine healing collaborative which I believe Mr Jordan is working on um Yolanda Corgi Anthony maybe is working on it I'm seeing the eyeballs go back and forth yeah I connected Yolanda with them okay we'll bring it back okay so that's great that's the only thing I had um so trustee Brian anything thank you trustee Ottmar now I see my
237fingerprinting on there so yes it is on there the sooner the better okay noted um and site visits very exciting uh clerk McNary anything that's not on there that you wish okay any members of the public wishing to get an agenda item on our radar you can either comment now or you can use the online um submission form that's pretty easy to find let us know if you can't find it but um it is there for anyone who would like to submit so um any public comment Louis anybody out there okay no one wishing to comment in the digital realm and I don't see anyone here in public working their way up to the podium so with that uh last item I'm going to close that out and adjourn the meeting it is 9 57.