Board of Education Meeting - March 14, 2023

001okay let's go ahead and uh reconvene uh we're going to reconvene to regular session at uh 1808. 608. and the report out of closed session uh the first is the board took action to appoint Deborah Kojima Elementary principal effective July 1st 2023 motion by Marilyn Anderson seconded by Carrie Buck this past five zero the second item the board met and voted to approve the amend stipulated amended expulsion agreement between pylusd and the parents of two three one five c three this was a motion by Kerry buck and seconded by Marilyn Anderson and it passed five zero the third item the board met and voted to approve the stipulated expulsion agreement between pylusd and the parents of 2316 A2 this was a motion by Kerry Buck seconded by Todd Frazier past five zero uh on the

002fourth item the board met and voted to approve the stipulated expulsion agreement between pylusd and the parents of 2317 A2 it was motioned by Leander Blades seconded by Marilyn Anderson and it passed by zero okay folks at this time we're going to go ahead with our Pledge of Allegiance if you would kindly stand all right thank you very much okay so I'll let the record show that all the board members are present and accounted for including our student board member welcome and I need a motion for the agenda please I'll make a motion to approve the March 14 2023 Board of Education agenda as recommended by the superintendent in a second I'll second any comments all those in favor aye actually I have a question I wasn't here I read all through the minutes so

003maybe I should abstain since I oh agenda never mind we're getting two minutes I'll do that then okay hold that up though because I think I did speak with you yesterday we have in the back if we look under a board discussion number two an opportunity for the board to provide input regarding the required number of years of math courses to meet graduation requires I was wondering if you guys would be interested in sticking it under And discussing it under the revise of the board policy the requirements for graduation for compliments for compliments of high school just so we can like just talk about it all at once we don't have to come back to it is that acceptable can we do that ease of discussion okay does it work I don't have a problem

004with that all right okay let's do it just don't let me mess that one up okay excellent okay so uh the motion carried uh five zero with a an I from our student board member thank you foreign public comment um now the public comment cards are available in the foyer cards must be completed and turned in prior to the designated time for public comment um each uh each speaker has is provided a maximum of three minutes per person if translation is needed an additional three minutes will be given but please let us know ahead of time so we can ensure that we're prepared also we have a civility policy Education Code 220 prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability gender gender identity gender expression nationality race or ethnicity religion and sexual orientation or any other

005characteristics that are contained in the definition of hate crimes set forth by section 2 422.55 of the penal code including immigration status okay with that said we do have a public hearing public hearing will be held relative to the adoption of 2023-2-4 Transportation plan so at this time 1813 we are going to open the hearing is that correct okay no blue cards all right um all right with that said no uh no no participants willing to speak on Transportation okay as a part of a new law providing funding for transportation plan we are required to allow remote public comment during the public hearing we have advertised this on our board agenda and now I will ask it the pylusd chief technology officer to facilitate any remote public comments Mr Powell we do not have any

006remote public okay with that said we're going to close that public hearing portion at 1814 uh 614 and we do have another number two there's a public hearing uh being held relative to resolution 22-18 the dedication of easement to the Southern California Edison to replace the electrical pole and add a support system for a new poll on a portion of Valencia High School property so I opened that at 1814 is there anyone that would like to speak on that now everybody's okay with a new poll there all right if there's no speakers then we'll go ahead and close that at 1815 6 15. okay here we go I need a motion for the minutes I'll make a motion as recommended by the superintendent of schools that the Board of Education approved the minutes for the

007regular meeting on February 7 2023. no second Marilyn Anderson the Enterprise any comments is this the one trustee Buck you were absent so yes I'm going to abstain from this if I wasn't here although I did just so you all know I watched from afar as it was live so I figured okay okay so with that I'm going to go ahead and take a vote all those in favor aye any opposed and an eye from our student board member excellent okay moving on this will bring us to our student board report um our student board member Mr bang if you'll go ahead and give us a report testing all right uh good evening president Youngblood trustees superintendent Dr Matthews and executive cabinet members I'm happy to be here tonight to share recent happenings from our

008comprehensive high schools and alternative schools from Buena Vista Virtual Academy this past week Buena Vista Virtual Academy had its wasc visitation the committee found the school to be effective or highly effective in every area examined they noted that Buena Vista consistently shows a positive attitude towards staff and students Fosters a positive School culture and implements strong teaching strategies to engage Learners way to go wolves at El Camino Real High School uh El Camino Real recently participated in several enrichment field trip activities a group of students went to Fullerton College to explore college and career opportunities to take advantage of After High School graduation in the coming weeks El Camino Real High School will take a whole school field trip to Medieval Times this trip will close out we'll close out cross-curricular studies for students as

009they have been exploring diseases during the Middle Ages in health vocations during the Middle Ages and career classes writing a newspaper article from the Medieval ages and language arts and understanding the feudal system in in government at El Dorado High School the Golden Hawks just wrapped up their sixth annual nonsense in the nest Nest competition nonsense in the nest is a friendly school-wide competition between classes where every student is encouraged to participate in fun and engaging activities to build connectivity to the campus this year's winner was the class of 2024. congratulations at Esperanza High School spring sports are in full swing Esperanza encourages everyone to come out and watch the Aztecs play softball boys volleyball track and field and more Aztec Pride week is coming up where Aztecs who have embodied Pride which stands for

010positive responsible Innovative determined and engaged will be celebrated at George Key School George Key's parent student staff organization has purchased nearly one thousand dollars in new sensory items and sensory toys sensory items and toys assist students with learning and experiencing the world around them at Venture Academy students have been invited to participate in the school's first annual talent show to be held on April 21st 2023 in the golden multi-purpose room at Parkview school during the last week in March the Parkview Panthers will undergo a full wasc visitation for accreditation of Lynch High School at the end of February the village high school girls water polo team won the CIF Championship they celebrated this they celebrated this Championship with the water polo team the next day at school where they received the official CIF Champions plaque

011at Yorba Linda High School the students are enjoying several fun activities planned for March ASB will help celebrate many special days including International women's day Pi Day St Patrick's Day and the first day of spring the school's Academic Decathlon team earned fifth place in division 2 and 25th individual medals or n25 individual medals at the Orange County competition that's all excellent report um person real quick um what would you wish everyone in the community knew about our pylusd schools in my experience I think I want really everyone to know how much effort I think a lot of our staff puts in especially teachers we had Missy mukuba here last month and really that's just one of many teachers that I've had in my last four years and like whole life in the pyo USD school

012system and I think a lot of people kind of Overlook how much effort they really put in teaching their students and like how much they care for their students and like staff too especially not just teachers I think go underappreciated thank you okay at this point uh we're gonna turn to our superintendent and uh Dr Matthews what do you have for us thank you president Youngblood good evening trustees and executive candidate members I want to talk first of all about impacted schedules um back on March 8th I shared a letter with families of our current 8th 9th 10th and 11th grade students about our newly implemented schedule impacted schedule guidelines our current graduation guidelines offers students who have impacted schedules the opportunity to take online summer courses as a means of completed required courses to

013meet graduation requirements when a student has an impacted schedule that typically refers to a sequence of courses in a pathway or CareerLink Academy that means a student cannot take all the required courses for graduation within the school day all this symbol was shared in my letter it's also available in the district website and we'll have an opportunity where we'll have an opportunity tonight to discuss those guidelines as part of our graduation board policy that comes on early in our agenda um we are doing our principle for a Day event coming up which is something we've been doing um for some time but in collaboration with our partners at Placencia and Yorba Linda Chambers of Commerce we look forward to hosting our annual principal for a day coming up on Wednesday March 22nd Our Guest principals

014who come from across sea Placentia and Yorba Linda community will get an inside look at our school campuses as they Shadow our outstanding principles that morning and the day will culminate right here in our boardroom as we have a luncheon and conversation about our experiences at the school we truly appreciate the continued support of our community and our Chambers of Commerce and our Community Partners and look forward to the opportunity to share the day to showcase our students our staff the ones that Preston mention there thank you sir programs facilities the dedicated work of all of our site employees next um certain programs in our schools require outside approval as a check and balance to make sure we're offering outstanding high quality education for our students and excellent training for our new teachers for our

015high schools that agencies the accrediting commission for schools Western Association of schools and colleges otherwise known as wask and for induction programs for our teachers it's called the commission of teaching credentialing for those who don't know about our induction program our California school districts are required to provide induction programs to help teachers progress to a full understanding of the California standard for the teaching profession I'm pleased to announce that we've had four very successful accreditation visits as of late this includes Valencia High School which did receive a six-year clear wash accreditation one of the very highest accreditations you can get and we've heard great feedback it's worth applauding for thank you we've heard great feedback on our induction program on Buena Vista Virtual Academy and we were today we were down at Camino Real High

016School and heard great feedback there as well and Parkview will host a team in the coming weeks so thanks to everybody who's prepared for these visits Dr Linda adamson's spearheaded the preparations for those for induction for our induction for site leaders and it requires a lot of work from a lot of staff to do all this work so thanks to everybody who does all that work um next I want to talk about a lot of our high school students and middle school students who participated in the 24th annual Chapman University Holocaust remembrance art and writing contest the theme of this year's contest was the strength of love and the will to survive each year students from around the world participate in this contest to conduct research on the Holocaust and World War II their students

017are instructed to listen to the testimony of a holocaust Survivor or rescuer while thinking about that individual's motivation as they tell their story and they tell their story the students do through an original piece of art film or writing that's retold and reflected on through that individual's experience we've participated in this for years as a part of the competition and students from middle schools and high schools are proud to be doing so this year is no exception 38 of our students including three from each secondary site and a handful of alternative sites participated notably one of our students Kiana atashak from Travis Ranch School was identified as a competition finalist for her original film entry and her teacher is Kimmy Carlos Miss Carlos sent me a copy of the video I got to watch that

018today it was powerful it was well done it was artistic and very proud of the work that Kiana did and then we got to several of us got to attend the ceremony at the year at Chapman University uh board trustees were there district and school administrators and several of our students it was a powerful moment there were Holocaust survivors in the audience it was a very powerful moment and just to see the the worldwide competition there was something special so thank you for our students commitment to sharing the stories and the authentic authentic voices from the Holocaust um just found this out today but as you're aware our maintenance facilities team has been hard at work about making improvements to The Esperanza High School theater many of the improvements have been uh the upgrades have

019been made over the last several months and it was finished two weeks ago over the weekend the school hosted its first event in the renovated space and we heard really positive feedback from school staff and several members of the community so my thanks to our Maintenance and Facilities department and my thanks to our Trustees for your support of this project uh glad it happened and it's uh it's already being used so that's great and finally my one of my absolute highlights this month was uh go into the Unified sports basketball game between Valencia and Esperanza high schools on February 28th for those who don't know about Unified sports it's a program that brings special education students and general education Partners together to practice and compete Esperanza has held several events I know board members have

020spoken about those in the past and Valencia is now creating a problem a pro program of their own this time Valencia hosted Esperanza for a friendly and spirited intramural game the game was dedicated to Esperanza 9th grader Stacia who recently passed away we'll be closing our meeting in her honor they retired her Jersey before the game started in a very poignant moment that was incredible I know her parents appreciated that we had a big crowd we had cheer squads there and it was a thing where you you smile the entire time you're there and I was just so pleased with the enthusiasm from our students I love the the giving nature of all of our students and staff who helped them out and my first time to see something like this and just know we

021have powerful things happening in pylusd so that concludes my report for the evening thank you thank you Dr Matthews okay this brings us to uh public comment public comment it's an opportunity for the public to provide input to the Board of Education during public comment period board members do not dialogue with speakers or make comments regarding the information shared we have 17 so it's a 17. people wishing to speak tonight so that gives each speaker will have a minute and a half um I asked speakers to repeat their names when they come up to the podium to speed thanks Jeremy um and I will be calling the uh the first four speakers to sit in the first four seats in the first row of so be ready for their comment and let's see here there's

022writing communication okay here we go so the first four that I have uh Sue Sawyer uh Kira ormenta Preston Wilson and Abigail Braun come on down exactly Sue you'll be first yes ma'am thank you welcome to the people USD School Board my name is Sue Sawyer I'm a teacher at Esperanza and at this point in the school year we are all exhausted I know teachers are I know students are and so when I'm exhausted and I have my pretzels and Diet Coke for my supper I want to find gratitude with purpose so this is with gratitude and a quote that comes to mind is kindness is not an act it's a reflection of your soul so I want to thank students I see a bunch of students in the audience working hard pushing through coming

023into your own you don't even know what gaps you have but we're helping you get through that so we're grateful for you I want to thank technology for making it work when especially with the rain and things don't work and Jeremy Powell you are a steely-eyed superstar and he will never say anything for himself but he's in classrooms and Friday night he's back in classrooms on Monday morning Debbie Ortiz is amazing for all the CTE orders that she puts through Food Service campus supervisor site admin counselors parents caregivers coaches everybody and the board for approving educating for careers it was a phenomenal conference I have not been since covid I love going I hope to present next year and especially for the pay increase for the extra hours A lot of us are exhausted because

024we work so many extra hours and it's the only profession where we make less for working overtime so hopefully more teachers will get involved thank you and I'm grateful for all of you [Applause] hello I'm Cara Wilson armenta thank you I want to address the subject of summer school I have a junior at Esperanza High School who's benefited from summer school within the impacted scheduled guidelines the ability to take summer school prior to each Academic Year including ninth grade has given my son the ability to take electives he so enjoys he has thrived because of it the tightened restrictions to summer school were moved for so many the motivation to excel in the core classes choir Visual Arts Sports provide an outlet of expression a source of pride and joy that may not be present

025in the academic courses by eliminating the opportunity of incoming 9th graders to take summer school opening their schedule for more electives the district is limiting the breadth and variety of courses withholding the opportunity for the classes that provide that joy and source of Pride and in imparting a perception that the Arts are expendable when classes need to be cut the Arts are often the first to go fewer and fewer ninth graders will be able to take classes like Choir in the Arts jeopardizing the program in just a few years yes the class during the school year is more comprehensive than the summer school class but rather than limiting the opportunity and making it harder to access revise and revamp summer school why should the kids have to decide between choir and other courses when they're

026Limited in the classes they want to take our goal is to produce well-rounded graduates that not only colleges want but who want to be an asset as adults in our community we want graduates graduates who do more than the minimum let's not limit them by restricting their summer school thank you uh hello my name is Preston Wilson I'm a student at Esperanza high school at EHS I'm involved in the medical Sciences Academy I'm part of the show choir and vocal Ensemble I'm concerned about the negative impact of this new p-well USD impacted schedule policy will have in the Arts and the futures of students to start the implementation of this policy we'll have a negative impact on the amount of people who will be able to enroll in the Arts although it is true that

027being in the Arts does not make one uneligible to take summer courses it doesn't necessarily make one eligible for kids who want to be involved in multiple elective courses such as ASB Athletics in the Arts but are not interested in taking the pathways offered they will lose out and the chance to gain the experience necessary to make them well-rounded students according to the pul USD Advantage page on the district's website the district has a quote unwavering commitment to better prepare our students for college and careers unquote colleges seek out students not only by their academic merits but also by their involvement in different activities by implementing these policy changes the district is only making it more difficult for students to enroll in these programs to increase their chances of being accepted into colleges finally by

028implementing this policy the district is encouraging the bare minimum from students by denying students the chance to get ahead in their education you will be setting a mentality that students who do not take the courses listed in the new policy should be involved and strive for the bare minimum because that's all they will be allowed to do by allowing students to take these courses you are enabling students to broaden their Horizons I hope the board will take this into consideration undo the changes made to the impacted schedule policy [Applause] hello my name is Abigail Braun and I am a junior at Esperanza High School working towards both the Seal of bi-literacy and the Capstone diploma additionally I have been in choir since fourth grade and will be continuing next year from a very young age

029I was taught to stand up for what I believed in and I never truly understood what that meant until this issue surrounding the new District policy not including Arts ASB and Athletics for summer school eligibility emerged while I understand that this policy does not specifically exclude these classes from summer school it is not specifically include them either decimating programs such as choir because of scheduling conflicts this policy is not Equitable to students involved in multiple programs at school and prevents students from getting up the opportunity to grow school is meant to provide experiences and learning tools in all subject areas for students before they must face problems on their own however preventing students from taking important classes like arts and Leadership stunts the potential of all students regardless of their chosen path after graduation music

030classes are important classes and they are more than just a fun elective I can honestly say that I have learned more about myself and the world from my music classes than any of my other classes in my school career I'm tired of feeling undervalued and under-supported because I haven't chosen to be in a school offered career path but instead have chosen the path that I want for my life I'm not asking to be revolutionary but I am asking for your respect and for your reconsideration on the value you put in our Arts thank you [Applause] next up Andrea Braun Audrey Imelda chori and Jenna Chang I'm Andrea Broad and I'm also here regarding the change to the impacted schedule this policy was changed without board approval with zero transparency by some secret committee made up

031of who knows still trying to find that out after two weeks of calling meeting emails and I have heard nothing from Dr Adamson or Gina Aguilar the committee was okay as you can tell eliminating or limiting ASB leadership athletes and students in the Arts from summer school to help with their schedules so they can continue with these classes excuse me I'm not a public speaker this is discriminatory and from and far from Equitable for all students to succeed in our district it has been clear year after year the administration in our district has been far from far from providing adequate support especially for the Performing Arts now this yes our choir students have been told to quit freshmen have been told they aren't offered this because they summer school is not an option so we

032aren't getting choir kids we aren't getting Arts kids in these classes which in turn will eliminate I am asking the board which should have been asked in the first place and should have talked about this in the first place to reinstate the previous policy thank you [Applause] hi my name is Audrey Almeida I am a senior at Esperanza high school I'm involved in vocal Ensemble show choir and ASB the new policy policy dictating which classes qualify one for an impacted schedule and the ability to take summer classes does not include arts classes ASB or Athletics the message this sends to students is that is that those with interest outside of academics or what the district considers career paths are not valued for me the arts classes I am in are my career path I am

033pursuing a career in the Performing Arts and choir has provided me with the Education and Training necessary to prepare me for a college education studying the Arts I was recently accepted into a 16 person BFA musical theater program which would not have been possible without the Arts education I've received from Mr Myers I've built my schedule in a way that I knew would benefit me and my future plans it should not be up to the discretion of the district to determine which classes are the most important based on a list of programs that only caters to certain students the fact that fine arts were excluded from the list in the first place shows a lack of support and respect for the Arts in the district when I saw the list I wasn't even surprised that

034the Arts have been excluded I've gotten so used to the fact that Arts are overlooked in the district that it was just another instance out of many arts classes provide so much more than just Technical Training we are taught the importance of self-accountability leadership and confidence I know how to present myself in interviews and professional settings because of choir these classes provide just as many applicable skills as the career Pathways yet they are constantly overlooked it hurts to be in a district where I do not feel respected or supported in my passions it feels like there is a constant battle to be heard and I hope that changes can be made to better support students in the Arts and ASB thank you [Applause] sexual harassment is against the law in all schools in California according

035to Education Code 200 to 12 48900 pylusd board policy 5145 specifically states that pylusd prohibits unlawful sexual harassment of or by anyone in or from the district it also states that any employee who permits or engages in sexual harassment to students may be subject to disciplinary action up to and including dismissal the definition of sexual harassment includes verbal visual or physical conduct of a sexual nature specific examples of sexual harassment may include written verbal physical and or visual contact with sexual overtones such as slurs jokes touching blocking movement sexual cartoons or drawings and obscene language pyo USD has broken Ed code and their own board policy when it comes to sexual harassment I was here three months ago and read a book to you all that was found at Yorba Linda High School that clearly

036had visual sexual images and obscene language today I will read from genderqueer and milk and honey both are currently in our school libraries you all have copies of what I'm reading genderqueer quote memorably I got off once while driving just by rubbing the front of my jeans and imagining getting a milk and honey quote you must have known you were wrong when your fingers were dipped inside me searching for honey that would never come for you quote he guts her fingers he guts her with his fingers like he's scraping the inside of a cantaloupe clean quote you move my hand between my legs and Whisper make those pretty little fingers dance for me the sexual harassment needs to stop I encourage all parents to file formal complaints against the Librarians and the staff thank you

037[Applause] thank you I mentioned during our last meeting why 500 plus pwell families are in support of the 2B calendar shift for our district tonight I would like to share with you why many of our people teachers and coaches support the calendar shift reason number one summer vacation is shortened every year for our teachers and coaches to coach fall Sports because they start season practices the first week of August due to the CIF calendar the coaches from our neighboring School District are not affected by this since they have already adjusted their calendars reason number two are pyo teachers that teach apib or Cambridge courses need more time to prepare their students for their exams pyo students are being compared nationally to students who start their school year in August and often have additional preparation for

038these tests reason number three our first semester has traditionally ended in January after winter break making final exams difficult with an earlier start date first semester could end at winter break making for a clean split between semesters reason number four by starting the school earlier the school year could also end earlier allowing for more time off prior to Summer sport camps which often started early August and some as early as July again our current calendar doesn't treat our teachers that coach fall Sports fairly when it comes to their summer vacation days please carefully consider all these inputs that have been brought up by our pyo teachers and coaches as you further discuss this topic tonight thank you okay next four is uh Jenny pack Michelle Schneider Linda Manion and Paula powers foreign hi my name

039is Jeannie Pake and I'm up here again about changing the first day of school to mid-august I'm making this effort because 537 people signed my petition and I feel responsible to speak up on their behalf we aren't asking you to do something groundbreaking almost every High School District in Orange County made the transition as you can see on your handout I know many of us are comfortable because it's been like this for so long many like the late vacation but its pros versus cons priorities over preferences the priorities here are what is best for our students educational experiences and opportunities Dr Matthews clearly outlined them in his survey these benefits apply broadly this isn't just for the AP kids the most popular part that Everyone likes even the people who don't want the change is

040to end the first semester before winter break equally appealing is ending earlier in June which will enable access to more summer camps internships and Community College summer classes we also ask to move up by two weeks and not one if we only move up by one week but still want to end the first semester before winter break the number of instructional days between the two semesters may not feel balanced now is the perfect time to start planning for this change for the 24-25 school year we have Dr Matthews who has the experience and has been supportive we just came out of the pandemic and adjusted to a new bell schedule now is the time to add one final change with the instructional calendar and let the dust settle as the district moves forward with a

041new superintendent thank you [Applause] hello my name is Michelle Snyder and I have children at I have two children at Esperanza high school and I'm also an alumni of Esperanza so I've been in the district for quite a while my children could not be more different in both their academics and their extracurricular activities and as a parent it's my job to make sure that they both feel supported in their in what they're involved in with the new changes to the impacted schedule it's clear that the district favors certain programs over others while true these changes are not telling students they cannot be involved in these programs it is inhibiting them from attending a four-year University by impacting the decisions that they make the competition is tougher than ever to be accepted into a four-year University

042and colleges that colleges want students that are well-rounded and involved in extracurricular activities by eliminating these programs from being eligible for summer school you are reducing our students chances of attending their dream schools all of our neighboring districts allow for these programs to be included in their impacted schedules our enrollment is down in this District by tapping this change we are going to have more parents move their kids to other schools in other districts that will allow their students to be involved in the programs that give them the most value and value their passions um I cut out other things because it was going to be longer so thank you [Applause] Linda mannion and um welcome everyone thank you for being here tonight and I want to thank Preston for your kind remarks about our

043teachers I know that it's heartwarming when we hear students really acknowledge the hard work that our teachers do and I want to thank Dr Matthews for for really highlighting all the wonderful things that our district does I want to bring tonight another thing that's coming up another opportunity to honor our teachers and our students and that's open house at the elementary level our teachers have been working really hard getting the rooms ready showcasing all the wonderful wonderful work that our students are doing and they're so anxious for all of you to come in and see what's going on this is just another example of how our pylusd students are meeting the challenges every day and in every way and so I invite you every board member to come to our open house they start next

044week on March 23rd every Thursday our elementary schools will be holding their open house and I know our teachers can't wait to meet you and see you and show off what they have going on and what the wonderful things that their kids are doing so I want to make sure that that I extend that invitation to you I also want our high school seniors in the in the room to know and parents of high school seniors that we are offering scholarships one for every high school and applications are due to your counselors by April 10th so take a look at that we give a scholarship for every high school so thank you [Applause] Paula powers to begin with I would like to thank the board for recognizing Valencia school teacher Wendy Uma kumbo last meeting

045it was heartwarming to see the community support her but no most notably see the gallery filled with high school students who came to honor her takes a very special teacher to touch so many hearts in this community and have felt so good to finally have a meeting focus on what this District does best serving our children as a parent of a son and a daughter in the district I can't say thank you enough to the dedicated Educators that put in the extra hours to engage my children in relevant lessons spend time reaching out to them when they don't understand a concept and take a moment each day to connect to them personally I appreciate you and your efforts it's hard to hear how dedicated Educators have had such a positive impact on my own children's

046lives spoken negatively about sometimes I think each teacher that sees my son and daughter as more than a test score I thank you for never leaving either of them behind because you they don't learn at the same Pace as others in the room I appreciate and understand that you accept their uniqueness and always make them feel welcome at school I'm saddened to learn that some of our board which has always supported our children by respecting their teachers have implied that the seat at the proverbial table is no longer welcome please know that this community appreciates its Educators and everything you do each day to support my children [Applause] next four speakers uh Nicholas Goldstein shoddy Murray Robert Hammond and is that Genie I can't read the last word Bremer and we'll go ahead and have

047a who's this Brooke Brooke Jones all right Nicholas you'll be first hello I'm here excuse me hello I'm Nicholas and I'm here as a student of Esperanza I've spent most of my entire school and career at pylusd and in this District a claim is made this claims that our district seeks to improve and Elevate students to their Highest Potential in all areas yet how can that be the case when we routinely fail to provide our music programs the basic needs that are and should be expected in order to help our students grow for example across our District's 21 elementary schools there are only two choir teachers thus giving students in these programs the ability to meet only one time a week on top of that our district has now chosen not to include Arts Athletics

048and ASB in the qualifying classes for summer school not only are we as a district not supporting our choir students in the beginning of their Journey with the Arts but we're now working against them in their later Journey please tell me how that seems fair now let me ask you how can we as a district promise to work for the best of all students and then exclude and refuse to give them the support they need to be successful so I'll ask you as a student and a choir member please give us the support we need to thrive and live up to this District's ideals [Applause] foreign last month during public comment I prematurely thanked the district for discussing safe and respectful schools three board members later tabled that discussion Sean Youngblood said it would cause

049a needed controversy in Leandra blades argued argued that it was divisive politics and would do nothing to raise our test scores I respectfully disagree of course py almost focused on academics but academic Excellence starts with a safe and supportive environment I also think it would have been a great opportunity for Leandra to discuss how culturally focused music programs can help cultivate an environment where students feel welcomed and respected since the last board meeting I've heard of at least two instances of locker room bullying at two different schools one targeting a student with a disability I emailed Richard Linden about this but haven't heard back I don't think student safety is controversial and positive School environments increase attendance and engagement which improves learning outcomes so please revisit the topic especially given recent concerns I've heard around

050pyl funding for wellness counselors and also I just want to say I love seeing all the students talk tonight and both of my students benefited from taking summer school with impacted schedules so thank you thank you ma'am Mr Hammond would it be possible to go Alaska if it's okay with the board absolutely yes thank you sir Genie you'll be up good evening I'm Jenny bremmer teacher at El Dorado High School first I'd like to thank all the students that I see here lots of familiar faces and parents too I'm so proud of all of you for coming and using your voices for something that you believe in so good for you thank you for being so civically minded I'm here to give my monthly report about how great Multicultural studies is and give you an

051example at my Multicultural studies class at El Dorado we're studying California Farm Workers and as a little bit of an add-on my students were analyzing orange crate labels from the orange grows from Placentia and Yorba Linda and they really loved seeing this kind of micro local aspect of our culture and they took a look at these different orange crate labels and they saw what kind of stories they told whose stories they told and then we folded that into our lesson on the farmworkers one of my students is a docent and training at Key Ranch which is one of our museums locally and she was so excited she needed to answer herself in a lesson and of course she should have got opportunity to do so and uh that weekend A bunch of us met over

052at Key Ranch on Saturday and this student was able to give us a tour of King Ranch and talk about how they have a whole thing about orange crate labels as part of their tour and part of what they have there at the Museum so it's a really great way for my students to be able to honor each other and our local community here and our history here and to tie all that into our Multicultural studies class so just spreading that happiness about Multicultural studies thank you so much thank you ma'am [Applause] good evening my name is Brooke Jones I'm a 45-year Yorba Linda resident and four of my children all four of them went to the Yorba Linda school system Placentia or Belinda school system so I'm very fond of this District I have

053a question however and I hope that you can help me with this um the state did very well a couple of years ago we had about almost 100 billion dollar above the budget that was requested and of that 49 billion approximately is supposed to go for educational purposes my question is what fraction of that came to Placentia Yorba Linda School District and how has that been used so if you can make that available to us I'd appreciate it thank you [Applause] Mr Hammond together name is Robert Hammond members of the board and superintendent um just wanted to say uh it's an honor to come before you guys I'm the current president of the board of I-9 Sports Association we're a non-profit Youth Sports organization and we focus on introducing children ages 3 to 15 to

054many different sports such as flag football cheer soccer basketball volleyball Terry ball and now tennis we've been operating for 10 years and our first season was right here in this school district I'm also a former special education teacher and varsity coach and over the last 10 years we've dealt with many different school districts City departments and other organizations to be able to offer our one day a week program and the reason I'm coming before this honorable board tonight is to share that the use of facilities Department that you all have here at this school district which is run basically by Mr Paul Juarez and assisted by Mrs Teresa Solario and Mrs Jamie tune they have been absolutely consistent in being professional courteous and really constantly going above and beyond and providing outstanding communication these three

055individuals they have to just put it in another way they have blessed uh our organization and allowing us to focus on helping children and really serving the families within this community if it may please support could I have another 15 seconds I would like to uh devil dog but uh unable to at this point I'm sorry well I have these I'd like to just leave these letters with the board if that's okay absolutely uh Dr Matthews will will get those as well thank you very much and it's an honor to work with them because I'll tell you what they set the bar for the whole County thank you appreciate that [Applause] difference okay folks this uh brings us to our action items be uh General functions I would like to have a motion please okay

056I'll try that one more time let's go with a communication and board report yeah here we go uh we'll go ahead and start with uh trustee Buck I think that's a small stroke thank you well well I missed you all last month so I'll give a little bit of update of what I missed sharing about and then um ongoing since then um you had mentioned congratulations to Valencia High School's Women's Water Polo team to um as their CIF champs this year and also congratulations to Valencia High School's decathlon team who are now going to be going to state so we wish them all the best they were they were second place division one but we also had Esperanza high school and Yorba Linda High School that both placed in division two as well so congratulations

057to them um I had a few School visits over the last couple of months that I just wanted to touch on I had the opportunity to go visit teffrey Middle School which was a fabulous tour and got to visit all the classrooms I went into a class though that I hadn't seen because no kids are actually in it but they have a culinary class in there and I thought that was quite interesting and since we have a Culinary Academy at Yorba Linda High School and that classroom was sitting there I just kind of wanted to give a heads up that it would might be interesting to create some sort of class that could be there that might funnel up to the high school it was great to see that I went to Linda Vista and

058had a school visit there I was there during their month of kindness and saw all the way this that the students were demonstrating and encouraging kindness on campus and even at home um I attended Fairmont Elementary School one day and at the time they were doing their steam genius day which they do on a weekly basis and the I believe it's fifth grade might be fourth and fifth grade get together in their multi-purpose room and they imagine near all kinds of solutions for problems while I was there they were doing building Rube Goldberg machines which are machines made out of anything that they possibly could find and they were transporting one thing to another so it's kind of like almost like a mousetrap game if you haven't seen that before where you have the marble

059go down and it has to go around to get to the end it has to go through all these different challenges so they were having a ball playing and doing and building those machines I was able to visit Glenview and visited the classrooms there and of course the dual immersion program and seeing what that looks like now as we get ready to expand up to Bernardo Yorba so I'm looking forward to seeing what that looks like with a whole new school that we're going to be adding to I was able to attend the Unified Dance when you mentioned the the game the Unified Dance at Yorba Linda Middle School was another one of those events where you smile ear to ear the whole time you're there that was very fun got to see Mrs Anderson

060there I attended the PTA Founders dinner back in February and got to see lots of our our ptas and all of our hard-working parents out enjoying their evening also participated in the lcap online that Dr Matthews and Dr Adamson LED and then the Chapman Holocaust day that was the art music contest it's really an emotional day and if you don't have tears in your eyes at some point you're just not paying attention because it was remarkably moving and I've been attending for many many years we I don't know if we still are but at one point we were the only District actually in the world that had all of our middle and high schools that submitted I hope that we're challenging other districts out there to to meet that as well but we used to

061have a number of Holocaust Survivors there a couple of rows and over the last few years they're aging out and so there were only two or three that were there this time so it's incredibly important that we listen to their stories and get to hear their stories so I'm proud that our students get to do that I attended the El Dorado High School orchestra concert with their feeder schools the teffrey and Yorba Linda Middle it was our a luncheon attended with Mrs blades and we both got to stand up and say thank you to all of our students and the families out there that do support our music and arts programs um moving on our North Orange County ROP meeting will be tomorrow it's my first time actually having the back-to-back meetings because they're just

062Wednesday night first time they were a week later so I'll be going home and doing additional studying and working on that in the morning as well so I'll report back any updates that we have at the next meeting in a couple weeks I'll actually be able to participate for the first time in their celebration of success they have student of the year interviews so I'll be um interviewing three students to to select who is going to be the ROP student of the year for CNAC which is the Child Nutrition advisory Council for superintendent Tony Thurmond and the California Department of Education we had our spring meeting last week and spent a half a day working working out the previous goals that we had set at the previous meeting we worked to develop white pages and

063strategies that the CDE will be able to use and the three Focus areas that we're working on right now are increasing access to breakfast increasing or um increasing access to nutrition during the out of school times especially summer and ensuring there's adequate seat time that students have to eat we'll be meeting again in May online and then meeting in person in Sacramento to wrap up hopefully these goals and then those items will be placed on California Department of Ed's website and used as resources throughout the state Orange County School Board Association we had a fiscal seminar at the end of January we'll have another one coming up here pretty soon to talk about the budget last week I attended the ocsba and AXA joint dinner meeting candy Kern from a board member from Cypress Elementary

064School received the Marion Ferguson award for outstanding contributions and service promoting and enhancing public education and the speaker was not Alina Nassar Dean who is the author of rise up for you she talks about closing the gap between you and your potential she teaches about emotional intelligence to educate Empower and transform companies and individuals through emphasizing soft skills confidence and leadership ability that's needed to end today's world she has a book out and some people were able to get that book there and and have her sign it it really is what she talked about was really um important and talking about how we need to teach kids how to regulate their emotions they might not be able to to identify what that emotion is there's there are steps that they they need to be able

065to be successful so being able to identify what their emotion is label it and then have strategies that can can help um you know and those that are difficult um and actually in all of our emotions um let's see so there's a program that I recently learned about that I just wanted to share it's called civicology and it's about it's it's built to create caring connected motivated students through Civic engagement and Civic discourse the program was developed by a high school government and economics teachers in Northern California who are also school board members and they developed a unique way to approach learning and mental health they Empower students to solve local problems and help others which makes them feel confident optimistic and connected to their school and Community it really is like building a non-profit

066within a high school and that's what it's developed into after the 11 years that they've been doing this um they began 11 years ago because they knew learning is best by doing and doing is best by serving others we all feel good when we go out and volunteer as we know and we do love Placentia and love your Belinda I do a lot of that in in my uh my work we have a lot of volunteers that come and they want to give back and giving back has intrinsic benefits to it and this program is really built around that it's a multi-faceted curriculum that brings together pieces of mental health civics government economics engagement and civil discourse that works in one unified program it's a workshop where the salute the students they come in and

067they work they have a group of students they pick a cause together they brainstorm and identify some of those Solutions and then they learn how to partner with others in the community and plan a culminating event that um that well for the first one they did it was a financial goal but it's ways to give back to the community the first the first one that they actually shared 11 years ago that they did the students in this school had been working at the local elementary school and one of the students was a five-year-old and over the Christmas break the student was in a car accident with all of his family and all of his family members died in that accident and so the students chose him as their cause they wanted to make sure that

068because he lost his parents that he still had the opportunity to go to school so they wanted to raise money to pay for his college not only did they raise money but they they utilized people in the community to help them figure out how they were going to where they were going to put the money how they were going to use it and invest it so that by the time that he graduated from high school he had enough money to to graduate or to um to go on to college so they raised thirty thousand dollars they figured out through all of their investigation that it was going to cost 131 and dollars for him to go to school so they invested all of that money figured out with their yes with the the other people

069that um the experts that they had worked with got a 9.9 rate on that return in that student um is actually now at the age of graduation um and has 131 thousand dollars to go to school so it was just an amazing story that all the kids those the kids were the ones that figured this out and wanted to to wanted this to be their cause so I will pass along the information it's a it's a one-day event they come down and they work with the students and and they figure out what that cause might be it's something that can grow from there in the 11 years they've been doing this they've now made it into a pathway and they've given 1.2 million dollars to support underserved children and they've created an experiential learning program

070with a purpose so I just wanted to share it was really an amazing amazing program that I had never really seen before and since I do a lot of that same work a lot of us do that same work in our community it really does change how you feel and and with very little um I just wanted to highlight a couple of things that I've read recently as well Orange County Department of Ed has Regional Mental Health coordinators and they have received a grant through the mental health services act that is now going to expand that to seven count seven coordinators that now will work county-wide and will support any additional Mental Health Services that we need beyond what we have here so it's nice to be working with this the same pathway as the

071county um lastly I just wanted to also share on Tuesday March 23rd at Esperanza high school it's going or actually it's Valencia High School Esperanza High School choir and even an evening with Tanisha Wilson I hope I said that correctly if you've ever seen Hamilton you should go and and see this show I plan on seeing a couple of other performances coming up in the near future Yorba Linda High School has urine Town that's performing and El Dorado High School has another one um forget the title but it's the following week so please go out and experience all of our art music programs they're fantastic so that's it for me good evening everybody um this was a very busy month so I'll try to keep it as brief as possible I had several School visits

072I went to Yorba Linda Middle School where I got to see the drum line in action as they gave me a little preview in their class I also learned more about the video production and all the videos that are made for the school the announcements so that was exciting to go into their class I saw a lot of great novel discussions reading forecasting about what could be happening next on some great novels in different classes I also got to listen in on some 8th graders learning about the western migration and the Oregon Trail um PE I learned how to tie some knots for archery and I actually learned the proper way to serve in pickleball I didn't know you can this is wrong you have to go this way is that right okay yeah and

073um I really enjoyed watching um the staff and administrators interacting with all the students and you could because I stayed during break and you could really tell that they had such a great rapport with their students and and each of their individual needs and so that was really fun I also went to Buena Vista Elementary School where I got to observe music class and here are beginning band students a little bit different than tough than Yorba Linda I got to meet one of our registered behavioral therapists and then later on in my visit I got to see her in action and it was really um impressive to see her work with the student and every school I go to I hear testimonials of how important our registered behavioral therapists are and I'm grateful that we

074are have them I learned all about the letter P in TK and I saw some great word to Cody I saw lots of happy and engaged students I learned more about the intermittent math program for elementary students and how we help students that are in advanced math in sixth grade really get to bridge that so that they are ready for algebra in Middle School um I learned about irregular past tense verbs and I was really in awe because one of the students explained the difference between irregular and regular verbs and he did an amazing job and I'm like this is a student this is is a teacher in the making right here I it was so clear and precise I was very impressed I went also went to tuffery middle school and I got to

075hear the band and the choir that day and it was the first thing I saw so it was a great way to start the day I got to go up into Europe and I was treated when I entered the room with a salute from students and um it was fun to see their enthusiasm I got to see science in action one of the classes was working on circuit boards and magnets and it was really interesting I got to listen to a little talk radio from a radio that the students built they were looking for music but we got some talk radio another highlight was actually seeing every Middle School I keep going to they talk about how they have these video production classes and they they make the announcements while I actually got to see

076it live and that was fun to see the students putting their work together and seeing their creativity I got to learn more about the web program there and all the Outreach that they're doing to make the students feel welcome and included I watched a little bit of a language arts lesson on Dr Martin Luther King where all students were having discussions and learning the importance of not all agreeing on issues and it's okay and I think this is really a lost art um and I'm hoping the Next Generation brings it back up um I got to meet the wellness counselor there and visited the wellness room and it was really quite impressive and I could spend the whole day there Glenn Knoll I also went there I got to visit a third grade classroom where

077the students were in computer lab and the students had developed their own surveys and then they had asked their classmates answers and then they were actually inputting them and making graphs on the computer and their surveys were hysterical one of the student surveys was you know what's your most unfavorite vegetable not your most favorite unfavorite and mushrooms one out hands down um mountains one over Beach sorry Dr Matthews yeah and um and not surprising mac and cheese and hamburgers tied for the most favorite food so I was really kind of surprised about chicken nuggets personally but that it wasn't a top I learned more about CGI cognitive guided instruction and how it helps with our math problem solvings um I learned about mixed numbers and improper fractions and the teacher had a great analogy for

078the students she compared it to a 500 pound man standing over a baby and I don't think the kids are going to forget that um I found I observed an interesting lesson where students were looking for evidence in the text to support their theories in a in a book that they're reading and it was just so interesting listening to these kids have this mature like I like to add on and I disagree and it was really um impressive they were young they were I believe first or second graders it might have been a combo class can't remember um I learned how this school at Glen Knoll targets interventions for after school and it was it was very um interesting to learn more about how they they're doing that in their after-school programs I attended the

079Mustang Market ribbon cutting and it was excited to see their students hard work and organizing a business and doing their market research purchased seeing and being ready to sell on campus try twice a week their logo was act and I forgot to bring it was actually designed by a student and it's very creative and um they treated all the US visitors so nicely with little gifts and I just really appreciate them and all their hard work and with wish them the best I also attended the C esba and asset access dinner on emotional intelligence and I really liked how it's such a besides the student portion it was such a key part for leaders to have all that emotional intelligence I also attended the Holocaust and writing contest which has been talked about and it

080was really moving listening to the students read their works there was in particularly a Middle School student read his poem and it was it was incredible um I attended the community meeting at El Camino for their wasc accreditation and it was really interest inspirational to hear the stories of how El Camino has changed so many people's lives there was former students current students parents in there and talking about how the school has just blessed them and uplifted them and there might have been some advocating from parents and students for more electives and sports just FYI I attended the middle school basketball tournament I just I had a short period of time I got to watch a boys in a girls game and that at first I walked in and I was like what is going

081on and it was very organized chaos and watching these kids play to their full heart out and lastly if anyone knows me I'm going to put a plug-in for love Placentia it's coming up April 22nd um the projects are opening up this month March 23rd online La Placentia is going to be at every school in the in Placentia and doing projects throughout the city at non-profits um we're really excited to be back to our full strength from the pandemic and because I love Yorba Linda as well there love your Belinda day is March 29th so if you're interested in participating in those it's a great way for students to earn community service hours to get leadership opportunities so if you're interested meet new people really connect that's the part I love most about it is

082it really brings the community together to serve and and there's just something about planting or digging or painting next to somebody that you have an instant bond and so hopefully we'll see you all out there on the 22nd or on the 29th or maybe both so that's what I've been up to thanks that was good thank you but trustee Anderson that was uh especially the low Placentia in love Yorba Linda the last year was incredible definitely kept us busy and it was a lot of fun so thanks for bringing that up again all right uh well this last month I had opportunity to do a couple of school visits I got to go to Glendale Elementary and take a tour of the school itself got to see the library the computer lab Uh I that

083campus if you've never been and just stood up in the middle of that quad there you got a great look out over this it's just oh some of the campuses in this District are amazing I ended up Landing in Mrs Finney's third grade class and had a great time watching the kids uh doing some they were doing some grammar competitions which I'm a sports guy competition it was really fun and the kids were really into it and they were getting so many answers correct that they like the system was overloading it was found it was it was really phenomenal and then um I got to see there they've got caterpillars that they're turning into butterflies and then at the end they asked me to read uh so I said I don't know how to read

084this is me a problem and I was kidding of course so I read I read a book to the kids and it was it was really great getting to see the kids enjoy they like they enjoy reading they enjoy this story that the incredible Ivan I think was the book um and doing voices of the animals and stuff I really we've got some phenomenal kids as they're coming up and then after Glenn Knoll I was able to attend the Mustang Market uh opening with Maryland and a few others I have to say there were students that spoke there and then the students that spoke tonight we have an amazing group of kids that are articulate that are clear and concise they share their ideas and they are going places uh the thing I love I've

085said it several times I think probably every meeting the CTE programs we have at this school are this District are awesome and specifically the Mustang Business Academy got a tour of the the uh almost at office space the classroom there it feels like it's a startup feel they've got um it's a real opportunity for students to feel what business is like and see what that actually would uh would be like in the real world it's again if you have students that are interested in any of these CTE programs getting involved I think is a huge thing and it's going to benefit them more than here in our district but beyond so that was really really great and then finally I've been doing a deep dive into the difference between uh policy procedures and guidelines a

086lot of us have been diving into that this week and I seeing a lot of things that need to be um corrected defined and then there's just a lot of confusion I think that needs to be cleared up with communication so I'm looking forward to many things that are on the agenda tonight to help do some of that and um that's the end of what I have to say after my last two board reports I'm going to try to be quick as well I did go I visited Mabel Payne this past week and got a tour of the campus had a great time meeting all I went through every every class on campus and that also has an amazing playground too I know Glendale I was there last month and that view is is great

087but we do we have some really really nice campuses I did also go to the El Dorado orchestra concert I attended with uh Carrie buck and we sat next to each other when I realized is um so she plays the piano and Todd plays the drums I can play the tambourine and I Karaoke and so we're kind of wondering what you two do because we kind of feel we could be brought in on some of these music collaborations and take the show on the road and so uh yeah so you learned something new every day so we'll see we'll we'll find out what Marilyn uh Sean hidden talents are but I did find it really funny they did a lot of Beauty and the Beast songs and that's the song me and my brother karaoke

088too quite often so it was just it was a fun night um and it was really they were just spectacular we have so much so much talent in this District um and so that was a really a really special night and so I wanted to thank everyone for the invite who reached out I attended Travis Ranch for a read Across America I read to the all of the TK classes and also to fourth grade and fourth grade was ready for me because fourth grade are some activists and so what they also talked about they still want walls in between the uh the classroom which I said hopefully we're working on that but um they complained about the lunch meals they would like breakfast to have the not so hot all the time they do not

089like the sausage and the egg sandwiches they would like to have some muffins that are wrapped up in granola bars that wrapped up because sometimes when they get there they're not necessarily hungry but they're hungry at snack so they would like something that is wrapped so they could take it with them they would like more uh more options right now they just have a milk and chocolate milk option they would like some juice options they would also too which they you know uh may have started a petition in that class on that day when we were in there but they also had a lot of great ideas on how to minimize the lunch lines and so they were saying that what you were talking about they don't have enough seats and they also too they

090don't have enough time to get their food and then sit down and eat so they are bringing forward to their Administration over Travis Ranch how to uh have two lunch lines or some fabulous ideas in there they would also like more basketballs and the rims on the basketball court some of them are too small they bounce out too much oh I loved it it was great it was awesome one of them really is problematic I'm gonna give I'm gonna give the kids that and so while we're uh they had a lot of good things to say and a lot of good things to improve their school and I think too what was really good about the teacher and the classes that I was in is there's a lot of like we you can advocate for

091yourself and also too there's ways to approach Administration with your ideas and as I told them to you're nine years old but you're never too young to speak out obviously of all these kids speaking out tonight you know learning to speak out and advocate for yourself I think it's just amazing for these kids especially at this young age I also I'm part of the Yorba Linda Women's Club and so they had their big craft fair this weekend so I volunteered and one of my sons volunteered with me and so walking around the end I ran into a group of students and they had I didn't know they were students at the time this looked like you know cute girls selling bracelets and I needed a gift for a friend's daughter and so I met from

092Travis Ranch I met Alyssa Azar Aria Flores taliana Katana Sophia I'm in a really I'm gonna screw up this name Sophia and Alex master rosian and so they are a part of the peachy Boutique and so they do custom bracelets they do custom necklaces they actually personalize a bracelet and so I did ask permission if I could give them a shout out tonight because they are going live on an Instagram page pretty soon this week or next week so if you're looking for some really cool bracelets necklaces I mean it was really really cute I I did they have venmo so it's great I had no cash so I'm sure everywhere I go my husband really gets irritated with me because of that venmo option um so yeah so I bought some good things and

093I just thought you know too so creative they're out there they're networking you know they're selling their stuff I mean just a really a great group of kids that we have in our district um attended the California policy Center in Sacramento myself and Sean we flew up after the last board meeting and that was a two-day event and a lot of it was legal updates a lot of it was what's going on with the schools and one of the things that we found out up there and I'm sure we may have known about this but this was really kind of one of the big deals is that 25 of the children in the United States are dyslexic and they need screening and so in K through third grade that is the hot that's the time

094when you need to hone in and find this you know to be able to stop it or not even stop it but to I guess diagnose it and be able to like um you know help them and and not affect their their education and so the next day we were able to go when we were meeting with a couple people um that's in the assembly and there's actually some bills that are um that's being moved forward and there's been bills in the past and this is going to sound like very um like as a hit but it's not a hit on the Union at all but they've said the CTA has been blocking this bill and it is they think it's going to block it again and so my hope is that us and the

095union can work together to start screening for dyslexia in our school district and that we can all work together and the teachers the parents and students we can find a way that we can do the screening necessary and we don't have to bring politics or anything into this let's just find a way to screen in our district and move forward and get these kids the best education possible I think I also have been advocating for Excel Accelerated Reader which is our AR program and I am really really happy to say that it is now back for the 20 23-24 school year um as of right now the PTA is supposed to pay for that and I'm also wondering um if there's any way that the district needs to could possibly help pay for that because

096if a PTA you know if it's a need at a district or at a school and the PTA is hesitant to pay or doesn't want to pay I don't think teachers should have to miss out in their classroom on something especially helping children to read um okay I talked to um I talked to some Middle School Wellness Specialists because that was a Hot Topic this last week and obviously mental health we our kids need mental health and so they do a lot they were giving me statistics on how many kids they see and I just want them to know how much they're appreciated but I also wanted to let everybody know that our District staff our executive cabinet here and all the staff is working very very hard to find the money to you know

097fill these positions and they're dedicated to doing so and so I just would really like to ask everybody just to be patient and just to know that everyone understands how important this is and everyone's working very hard to find the funding and I mean Dave Giordano he's a rock star so he he'll find it if it's there um I also talked to Jay our an alumni of Valencia High School he is now at Cal State University of Long Beach he did an interview for one of the newspapers at Long Beach about the critical race Theory ban and some of the stuff that that's entailed and so we had about an hour-long conversation it was a great conversation and I was just very very proud of him his name was Richard Mendoza and so I told

098him I was going to give him a shout out tonight because it was just a great conversation he did a great job in the interview and so I look forward to working with him and he just said that to thank everyone here because Placentia or Belinda you know was a good place for him to be and then lastly we talked to a lot of teachers and you know everywhere we're kind of just all around especially like you know when your kids in the school district and you're doing lots of things our teachers sometimes feel like there is a disconnect between the district and what's actually going on in the classrooms and so they've actually asked if we could possibly have a teachers Town Hall and where they can come and talk about their ideas and

099talk with other teachers what's working or whatnot and air what they think could work what could not and so I said I would take that I'd bring up the board meeting and so that's what I've done um and so I'm looking forward another busy month ahead I'm attending the uh The Esperanza um music I don't know what the name is yeah I'm I'm attending that I'm really looking forward to that um looking forward to a lot of cool stuff that's coming up and so that will end my board report all right thank you [Applause] the fact that she stole most of my thunder there I mean I did it me too it's really going to make my mind short but uh it was a it was a great trip to uh the state capitol um

100the on the first day as uh Miss blades mentioned it was a more of a parent seminar and so we got to meet several parents that were you know concerned about education and the future of Education which was really nice to to kind of connect with them also also we got to uh to talk to several educa or to legislators um actual lawmakers and uh um one of the things that I was really impressed with is uh the fact that uh a bill is being being placed or it's going to be shown that is a bipartisan bill that talks about dyslexia testing and uh I think you'll start seeing that here coming up in the very near future in which they're going to require it I believe up to second grade that they're looking to

101require it for all School settings public private and even for homeschooling so we'll see how that goes uh just kind of you know anything in which we can help kids you know succeed better I know my oldest was dyslexic and we could not understand why it was so difficult for him in school because super smart kid is just he he was just seeing things differently than what I would have seen or reading was different for him but um once once we got it figured out with a lot of testing and uh you know a lot of praying about it uh he was uh he was fine he made it through but uh um I would love to see this diagnosed early on uh so these kids won't have to be so frustrated and parents won't

102have to be so frustrated as well um other things in which uh were done we've been uh spending a lot of time with our um our superintendent uh firm in which we've been dealing with we've got a couple of things on the agenda for that coming up and which uh I've been uh talking with a lot as well as our Law Firm we had some some District things that were happening and which was uh keeping me pretty busy as well and even some Community parents had some questions about the district or some concerns about some of our our policies and uh I usually um set aside some time for them with a lot of coffee involved so I'm pretty coffied out right now but uh needless to say those those times were really good I

103look forward for this this month as you're hearing it's going to be very busy month but it should be very productive so um that'll end my board report and we'll go ahead and get uh get moving on okay here we go now the action items sorry about that General functions I'm going to go ahead and get a motion please I'll make a motion to adopt revised 2023 Board of Education meeting schedule a second motion by Todd Frazier executive buddy Andrew blades okay any comments I just wanted to confirm this is only a one-year addition to this date correct this isn't ongoing and subsequent years one year yeah just this year okay yes ma'am we're we're just doing the April 18th one for the purpose of the hiring perfect excellent okay any other questions no no

104okay so let's go ahead and uh vote all those in favor any opposed all right five plus our student board member all right moving on okay I need a motion for number two please I'll make a motion to you vote for no more than nine candidates for the California School Board Association delegate assembly okay a second all right motion by Miss blades second buddy Miss Anderson okay guys so um what they have in the packets uh folks is they have several delegates in which we can vote for up to nine the only two that I really know are on this Dias right now but they did give a little bit of information on all these other candidates um that we're also buying for these seats so as far as I'm concerned I just have Miss

105Anderson and Miss blades that I'll be voting for but so Mrs Anderson and I talked a little bit about this because we both attend the ocsba meetings and know some of um I know all the people okay actually not all but a couple so we talked a little bit about it so in addition to Leander blades and Marilyn Anderson we have Michelle Bartow Bonnie castry Carrie Flanders Jackie philbeck Susie Swartz and then what were the other two we um Kelly Osborne and Lauren Lauren klatzker so that was nine and some of them I've worked with so I have some experience the other ones that I didn't we we kind of looked at their resumes and felt who might be the most beneficial to us as a as an Orange County delegate to be able to

106speak on behalf of Orange County we kind of looked for various you know interests and expertise as well excellent perfect definitely feel more confident if you guys uh have an idea of who else to vote for awesome okay so let's uh go ahead and take a vote on these nine which were brought forward all in favor aye aye any opposed olive stone from this and your lips you don't want to vote for me and don't know anybody oh you could pay for them I'm just kidding I'm kidding okay motion carries five zero and uh abstain student board member I'll never insane again really okay moving forward um I'd like a motion please I'll make a motion to revise board policy 5128.1 requirements for graduation from Comprehensive High School first reading the surprise policy includes guidelines

107on impacted schedules get a motion buddy Mr Frazier seconded by Miss blades Dr Matthews if you would uh will thank you very much um president Young Buck trustees and executive candidate members this is board policy 5128.1 requirements for graduation we're bringing this forward for your consideration to facilitate um to talk about a recent change the impactor schedule guidelines we mentioned during the report the the policy also has some updates better based on new laws that are out there I first of all want to thank the speakers who came forward and talked to us about this um as uh I think we're what we're trying to do here is bring us forward as a board policy because in the past it's been a guideline the intent has always been to help students to take more electives

108including the Arts and so but I understand there's consternation about this has not been part of a board policy before but we at the board request we are bringing it forward to include it in our board policy on graduation I do want to note that we've seen very few students who've been unable to register for a class of their choosing due to the courses they want and later on I'll go through a few of those just so you can see the kind of uh courses schedules that we're approving and that we are not approving we have encouraged every family who believes they've been affected to speak directly to their school counselor to see if they really have an impacted schedule if it can be accommodated in the families that I've spoken with in in every

109case they've been able to accommodate the schedule so uh the uh you can find this out if you're at home at www.pylusd.org so I'd like to first of all look at a few changes we're recommending in the policy this is a first reading and then I'd like to go through some slides that have uh some examples of schedules that we're looking at so the underlying portions are ones that we're recommending changes to so on the first page is a policy um one change that we're making is uh and this is uh a requirement in Ed code now but um we currently have to complete two math courses to graduate and uh algebra one is one of those and we have stated before that if you completed algebra one in eighth grade you only needed to

110complete one more ed code requires that if you complete algebra 8th grade you still need to take two more courses in mathematics we want our a student who are taking eighth grade math to do two more courses of math if you're an advanced math student we want you to keep on going because we think you should be doing your a through G so this this should not be impacting anyone with this the second one will take some more explanation um it talks about a third year of math being taken as a computer science course and as we've done done more research on this that is if we have a three-year math requirement then we can make that a third year that's required there and so if that kind of fits into our next conversation about

111the three-year math requirement so we'll talk about that and determine whether we're going to keep that in the policy or not on the next page the CTE language there is just uh it doesn't change anything that we're doing it just specifies how we uh how those courses are supposed to be labeled and then finally we get we get into the language on um on impacted schedules so the language we are recommending is the policy God that's what we did put forward I I do uh I do believe we're gonna have a robust conversation at the board tonight that uh that could alter this but we put forward what we put forward earlier in the letter we sent out so and that's basically that a student has an impacted schedule if they are in a Career

112College and Career Readiness Academy or pathway or program that requires that be involved okay and so some of those include the Air Force trotc the AVID program the Aztec engineering and Manufacturing Career Technical Pathways digital media arts academy the Law Academy the early college program the international Baccalaureate IB program as well as the AP program medical Sciences Mustang Business Academy the steel of our literacy is a big one because anyone who's who's pursuing foreign languages really has the option hasn't in our mind an impacted schedule so especially the first three years if you're in a Spanish One Two Three French one two three uh you're going to qualify for an impacted schedule and that allows people to take a lot of electives and Val Tech and so that's the impacted schedule policy that we've been

113we've been operating by I would like to if we can get some slides up here look at a couple of schedules that um that might show you what we are looking at and maybe it helps people to understand where we go okay thank you very much um so here's a few selected transcripts that we have all right so here's a ninth grade student taking Japanese one taking AP Computer Science principles taking Orchestra and then Algebra 2 chemistry PE and language arts so there are three electives in there and because they're taking Japanese one towards us and the CTE pathway they they qualify as an impacted schedule um all right so another one would be a 10th grade student here here's taking language arts geometry chemistry Spanish four Avid Medical Careers Athletics this is a three-time

114qualifier for an impacted schedule it's a little Overkill actually but they would qualify to take an online course as well um here's an 11th grade student [Music] um there we go taking AP English Language Spanish three pre-calc physics AP Chemistry and Athletics they qualify because again they're pursuing towards the sealed by literacy so they would qualify to take those courses um and these are very typical Squad here's another 11th grade student taking Ceramics AP environmental science business common Tech and Athletics they qualified because they're in a CTE pathway here's a student another 11th grade students taking Spanish three Algebra 2 trig concert choir ASB Abbott accounting Athletics they they qualify for an impacted schedule again for Avid and the by literacy seal and um then we go to another 11th grade student with Environmental Science

115Theater Arts psychology psychology so they this is the student who would not qualify under our under our guidelines right now because um they there's there's they have the Theater Arts elective a psychology elective a sociology elective um and and so there's three electives on there without being in one of our impacted programs and so under our current guidelines they would not qualify another one with a 12th grade student uh taking you're allowed as a 12th grader to take just five classes it's the only only grade when you can do that and so they are taking AP seminar AP German pre-calc medical assisting um and and and so with only taking five classes we would say they could take a government econ class in their sixth period day again a big part of the reason we're

116looking at this policy is we love the idea of students having an impacted schedule and being able to take an online course but we also recognize that a six-week online course does not compare to a 36-week in-person course for us here and so we're trying to draw that right balance between what's best for the student and what what's best for their academic progress along the way um here's another 12th grade student uh with language arts four then they have Wind Ensemble Jazz Ensemble Jazz Ensemble and Orchestra and teachers Aid again we think that our classes of a 36 week schedule and of course are are you know a teacher's aide while we can be a great option for a kid we'd rather see them take a government econ class with us during the course of

117the year and so those are examples of schedules as we've been put forward so I'll open up to the board this is a first reading of a policy um and so the way that works is we listen to our board conversation we uh and we will come back to you with if there's consensus on the board on where to go we'll put that in writing and bring it back to you at our April 11th meeting can you define the difference between a guideline and a policy for us right a guy so policies are um in our graduation requirements are listed in there and so we are often trying to figure out um which courses student can take to figure that part out and so um every detail is not figured out as we uh sort

118of set a policy we will often have counselors come to us and say okay how do we do this what is that I mean this is the policy how do we go forth and make this happen What are the details of it because if you've ever spoken to a high school counselor they they have a gazillion problems they bring up that come up that we didn't anticipate in the policy so we're trying to figure out the guidelines for that led us to have consistent application of what we think will achieve the board policy would it be fair to say a guideline's a suggestion well what we want to do is be consistent with all of our schools and so we try to apply those guidelines consistently across in this case all four high schools sure

119but the guideline is not a policy it's a suggestion for the students we again we we want to uh it can be more than that it can be how we interpret that and if the board disagrees with that they can bring it put our policy and say we we prefer to do it this way so but if it's a guideline it didn't come before the board this is something that was created by outside of the board and there are many things that happen that way those are still just suggestions to how to do things as opposed to a policy that dictates this is how you do things the policy is intended to create the overall structure for how something is supposed to happen and then the staff figures out how to apply that policy uh

120evenly across the schools and this is a guideline that we're talking about you're trying to make it a policy in the graduation requirements right we're I think there's been enough concern raised about this that we should clarify bring it to the board's attention and see where we go from there okay so I actually this has actually been said that this is now a policy because I have an email that says the pyl USD impact is scheduled policy and I was your created on 217 of 2023. and that is not on a day of a board meeting and that was done without the board so I think what what trustee Frazier is trying to say is we have now said that this is a policy because you have put it out to our our teacher you

121know teachers staff parents as a policy that didn't go before the board so when are we now breaking board policy by enacting board policies or saying that their board policies and creating without board approval because this is impact I mean this has caused chaos absolute chaos throughout this school and so here we have this that this was created on 217. did you vote on anything on 217 I didn't no this has never been a board policy but it but it said IL USD impact are only guidelines and then all of these kids have lost out now they've gone through Esperanza the junior class they have been told they cannot take government or econ over the summer time I just got a text message from someone that said my daughter's in Yorba Linda High School she

122is in zero period band yearbook and soccer with all other core classes she had to take health and careers over the summer she wanted to do the same classes next year but her schedule is too impacted so she has to drop something so she is dropping soccer in order to stay in band in yearbook not what what she wanted to do but yearbook will lose all but for current students because of this so there's five there's five students in one class because this is impacted and so my concern is that we there has been so much misinformation we've been told that the teachers and the union brought this forward and then we were told as a board the teachers in the union were brought brought this forward the union says they had nothing to do

123with it and so where did this come from where did this start and we need to be honest as to where this came from because he can't give the union a bad rap saying that the union brought this forward but it was outside of negotiation and you can't you know the teachers abroad forward or is this just done internally behind everybody's back because this is not transparent whatsoever yeah again when you talk about policies there's asbs set policies for dances sport teams set policies for how how they operate as well there's a so many different organizations that set policies for us a board policy is a board policy everything else operates from within those and so when a board policy is created that is what must be followed and so uh again if the if

124the board wants to do that that's great but what we do is when we when this policy was created because our counselors wanted consistency on how we did that so we were meeting with our counselors and figuring out how we do it if the board disagrees with it it is your right to set a policy where you describe that more fully and so we're go we're going to take I mean again there are so many details that if we brought all those details to the board for every meeting you'd be meeting every day we have to have the we have to have the ability to interpret policy and and go forth with it and again if the board sees a problem with it bring it back and make it part of the board policy I've

125still never heard of like a problem that we're solving that's and we had the conversation there's not really a problem it's just a preference that these classes in the summer are not as robust as during the school year but there's not a true problem that we're solving by limiting the kids taking summer school is that correct I I the only problem we're creating is that being I mean so the Tas are good I don't think the TA is a good example I mean I I really believe that one of our courses is a is a better schedule than a ta uh it I mean I I do believe that and so what it Where is the line that we draw I mean I mean I I love the schedule with four arts classes in it

126but is that worth not taking a a academic class um uh to get those four electives in there that's the hard line to draw I I think that's the original in 10 in 2015 and then now you have 1200 kids taking these classes so now you have kids that were in eighth grade that are trying to go to ninth grade to take a health class and it is impacting so many it's impacting hundreds of students just in this one text message it was impacting five students and so why are why are we do why are we doing this first of all where did this come from and what is and like what Todd said what is this solving because these kids have a right if you want to go take zero period and take your

127book and you want to be an athlete and you want to be an ASB and you need to take a couple summer school classes to be able to make that work why would anybody stand in the way we are trying to bring out so many well-rounded students and and by doing this like you're saying you can own this only if you're doing what we deem is good this is the only way that you guys can go forth these impacted schedules I mean so we're really going to take away like six 800 you know of these students schedules they're going to be impacted because I mean you just said that it went up to 1200 was accessing all of these summer school classes and so they could take additional classes and so not everybody I'm gonna

128know you said that the the number is low but not everybody has come and complained to the district or complaining to us and a lot of kids just went in there to their counselor and they were just told nope you can't take that class this next year you can't do the summer school class so you have to go drop something and they haven't necessarily reported to that to the district but they reported it to us they report it to their counselors and it's just not fair and it's not right and I don't see how you can go forward and it was like nobody knew anything like who who decided to start this like who brought this forward where was this committee who was involved on the committee and why was it why was the board

129kept out when you have hundreds of students that are impacted and it just causes chaos like that's where we want the questions that's where the audience people in the audience people at home they want to know why this was started all these kids were impacted and the board was left out because it kind of seems like we get reoccurring certain instances where the board is left out of a lot of decisions and then it starts you know stuff starts to catch on fire and like we're here putting out the flames and so here we are with all of these kids who have had to make these decisions well now I have to give up soccer my senior year well that's not fair to make a kid give up soccer because you guys wanted to change

130something around it's not fair and it's not right and so we need some more transparency from the district because like look at where we're at now are you going to send all of these kids back to the counselor eighth grade through 11th are we sending them back all the counselors and say you know what your schedule is not going to be if we vote a different way tonight like we have to go back and fix it all we don't think there'll be that many to fix but that's exactly what we would do if there if if I mean let's I think the issue before you tonight is some of you don't like the way the policy we've been using um let's what do you want to do make a recommendation for a policy and let's

131have a discussion we'll bring it back to you and we'll we can move forward well if we're going to talk so this is where it's getting muddy you keep saying policy but then you also are saying what's the word guidelines guidelines we're setting a policy tonight yeah I'm saying setup board policy tonight can I suggest that we just remove number three from this yes entirely but without any limits on summer school or make do we need to make a statement about I think you need to make a statement on that we I think counselors need that Clarity when it when when a student can take a summer school uh online summer school course so can I just just weigh in just a touch I have three daughters that have been through high school all three

132of them have taken summer school classes because of impacted schedules one IB one that was AP and ASB and the um the the Spanish the sale of bi literacy my oldest one started down that path or my youngest one started down that path has taken a summer school class but this next year she's going to be a junior and she doesn't have an impacted schedule and she still wants to take a summer school class but she wants to be a TA for one of the classes I don't want her to be a TA I did no offense to being a TA if but at her level of achievement I expect her to do something that's more academic so in that sense I would much rather her be doing an academic class maybe a a even

133an art class music class something that's that's on campus that's not TA in in exchange for a summer program if it's an art and music those classes I don't have any problem with that I think it's great I think we um honestly we could do more for for art and music um you know we could even toss around creating some sort of pathway that has to do with with art and music I think that would be phenomenal and really create it into something deeper and richer I think that we can expand it a little bit and talk to you know and make sure that the kids that want to take art music as especially as they're getting into their senior year I mean there's really only one class right now that has a four-year requirement

134which is language arts so we know they're going to be doing language arts as long as they've met all of the other criteria they should be able to do other classes but again it's meeting the other criteria I have to agree with you know the the economics is going to be economics and and social it's going to be different in the summer I mean it just is my my daughter's primarily took history my youngest one now wants to do a dual enrollment class with Fullerton College and do business so that she gets dual enrollment for that but I don't want her to I want her to get a to be at school and to be learning and this is her only opportunity to do that so I don't want to to take it away because

135it opens it up there for that ta position um because it's there's not a lot of structure to it you know you're just helping um in that sense but the art and music I I believe that if there's a you know if that's an interest and that is a passion and they want to do that then I think we we definitely um could look at that I also think too like when you're talking about the TA spot I think it was 12th grader who was a ta so sometimes 12th grade am I on sometimes 12th graders they run out of classes and so that's when they ta and so I think too as a parent you said no to the TA but there's going to be some parents who are going to say yes to

136the TA and it's fine and so I think that we just have to leave that up to all of the the parents and the students and how they want to handle their education but as but as a district and as Educators we're supposed to be educating so for them to not be taking a class or to take a smaller class in the summer so that they can have an open Period that's that's a defining line for me I they I still think they should have a full schedule I actually I I want to add something I agree with uh trustee Buck I'm all for like having performing arts and schedule ASP obviously I'm in ASB right now and then I have a younger brother who'll be an ASB and uh he'll need to take summer

137courses but at the same time I know people with like three periods and ta periods throughout the day and then I think that if our priority is uh like the education of the student then we should be looking at like the quality of a 36 week course versus like a six week summer course and for something like econ maybe like history or health and careers over the summer I think that's like easier to fit in but for for a big class like econ or some other rigorous courses it's not I think we should like draw the line there on whether we want to let the student make their own decision on having a Tae class when they're kind of ignoring the possibility of taking such like a big course throughout theater I I don't disagree

138with what you're saying however I feel like we're bordering on getting into the parents business yes that's that's my sir but a TA is not educatal educational I don't disagree with that but I'm wondering is a TA may be something we shouldn't offer like is that what we're saying don't offer ta if the TA is a sticking point why do we have it right I like asking the question why why do we have ta the um a ta a TA can be a great elective for a kid I mean it can be something they put in their schedule that really makes them feel meaningful where they're supporting a teacher and they don't have to go to summer school to do it they oftentimes they don't want to take another elective they don't want to be

139in a foreign language they don't want to they they may whatever it may be and it can be a really nice part of their day so so Tas are good ta can be a can be a valuable thing I I agree it's not I agree it can also it's not academic that's two different answers for the same question so we're we're now we're in a preference situation where the student and or the parent gets to make that decision so I have a question if they take two art classes in a music class and two ta classes I don't know can you I was at TA once on accident a question serious question can they take more than one TA in a year I can find that out for you I don't know that seems that

140seems is there a limit on number of hours to be a TA in general altogether 20 credits period and just for the audience at home we said that 20 units Max is Junior and senior so it could be one per year in each of those years okay I [Music] school early to do band she has yearbook and she has soccer and so now she has to give up soccer because of this it is not right if one kid has to give up a sport it's not right of 20 it's not right if a hundred we shouldn't be making kids because we've done what we're doing or I wouldn't say what we're doing um it shouldn't it shouldn't be this way these kids like you have kids who are passionate about certain things and if they

141want to take a summer school class I mean that's time out of their summer and if they want to go to a zero period so they can carry like a band or ASB or whatever we heard a story about last year's ASB who she won her election and then she was told no you need to quit ASB because of your schedule so she took classes otherwise other you know another place but like we shouldn't be putting these restrict restrictions on these students if they want to take a summer school class let them take a summer school class and if you know if they bomb it they bomb it they have to retake it you know during the school year but we should be opening up these kids for as much I mean we're talking about

142a TA like I don't think that there's a ton of kids that are having these schedules with ta what we're talking about here is band yearbook soccer ASB um the Arts we're talking about music we're talking about all these things that we're asking these kids to give up and it's not right to make them give it up if someone wants to be that well-rounded and they want to be in sports they want to be in music and they want to be an ASB or something else we should give them that opportunity that's what this is about opportunity [Applause] what would you like the language to be okay why don't we just add I mean would you be opposed to adding those well why would we even have somebody else that comes into well well no

143this isn't a part of this why don't we just take this away and let the counselors like they can't we have great counselors right like why are we not trusting our counselors to do what's right like are has anybody complained my counselor screwed up and I don't have the graduation requirements my counselor screwed up and I can't go to a CSU or UC have are we are we getting those emails are we running into those problems like so let's just go like let's just go as we've been doing and and see and and continue on and give these kids opportunities and if they want to go to summer school they go to summer school and if they don't they don't foreign [Applause] so let me get this straight the um are we looking to do

144to bring forward the board policy that wasn't a board policy before we don't even know what's going on is this basically the foundation of what we're going to do for future because now we can make it a board policy instead of a guideline that uh was considered well I'm sitting here wondering because since this was enacted and I questioned the email that went out knowing that this was going to be discussed tonight that it had such finality to it last week I did question that I did understand why I would send an email out when there was going to be a discussion and a vote tonight and so I think that as far as this one goes I would just say scrap this whole thing and let the counselors do their magic and what we

145should do is put this part enact this part immediately because a lot of these kids are going to have to go back into their counselors and say please put me back into my soccer class please put me back into my music class please put me back into this for next year and then for the other stuff all of the other graduation requirements we could have a second first second tenth reading but this is this is a stressful situation for parents and for students and this needs to be rectified immediately so okay good suggested solution we remove the impacted part of it completely and then we just have the first paragraph read all students have the opportunity to take up to 40 credits so you can take one class of Summer why are you reading but

146that part of the policy I thought that same thing Mr Frazier I thought that same thing but what that policy is about is you can take extra courses for extra electives like if you want to take uh an extra math class you can do that but it doesn't we're looking for clarification of what gets you out of a graduation requirement in our in our in our in our what graduation requirements this get you out of the 20 units really not anything no I don't understand but what graduation requirement does the impacted schedule get us out of uh it doesn't specify that so I mean one of these yes one of these that's listed in here I understand we understand we're talking about impacted schedules right now that's what we're talking about we aren't the other

147ones I think they're Leandra if we do the what you're suggesting then you're leaving it up to each individual counselor to make a decision and they will I agree with you we have great counselors they're going to make great decisions but they aren't all going to be the same and you'll have some counselors some high schools making say saying yes and some high schools or other counselor other schools saying no why would they say no yes or no why if you have an opportunity to go summer school then you have that opportunity like why would we say you're starting out anything I think because we believe that a 12 a 36 week course is important but if you want to put it into policies that a student should be able to take an online course

148in lieu of okay I see what you're saying they are allowed to take online courses in lieu of one online course in lieu of a a graduation graduation requirement okay I mean that's we can we can research that make sure what we're doing is legal put that in there sure and bring it back to you next time yeah it's been legal this whole time though right what we've been doing so far has been legal there's been nothing I've been doing it since 2015. there's been nothing set as policy though and we're going beyond that we're going beyond what we've been doing the past so um and so but I think it will be I think it will be so then we can I'm going to suggest we remove the impacted schedule section completely and we

149have language put in there to allow for students to take summer school to for graduation requirements so can I add so in section three air number three here that first paragraph that references board policy and ARs and it talks about students can take up to 20 credits it doesn't and navigate conflicts if we take that second paragraph and that whole box out with all the detail um does the first paragraph in number three address the needs that we want it to as well as board policy AR 6178. I think it doesn't it doesn't take care of that that sounds like a an extra on top of that I I think the language you're suggesting does make sense I guess one question I would also ask is are you is it are Tas included in that

150I mean is there a good Tas for summer school no okay like take a summer school class so that you can be a TA all year is a huge problem right now again I think we're bordering on our parents decisions as to what they want their students to do because there's there may be a student that wants to be a teacher and being a TA is an awesome opportunity for them to say this is what it's like to be a teacher right that we do have a teacher pathway we can that's extreme sure but maybe they didn't decide that until their senior year they're not in the pathway and they're like I need a way to see the classroom it's just an opportunity I'm saying I'm good with choices I would say too one of

151uh one of the counselors too like was talking and she said sometimes the kids they have a very rigorous rigorous schedule and you just need a class that gives you like a little bit of a break and so that could be a TA class that could be some of these other classes and so is there a uh a limit to the amount of times during the four year you can be a T8 twice okay so you can only be twice in your high school career that's a pretty good cap so what I'm hearing uh the will of the boards bring it back as a allowing students to take that course and really any anything goes anything goes but we're still leaving the TA as the two years and then right they can sub in art

152music ASB yeah so everyone's included everyone's included whatever your passion is let's do it yeah so then um yeah if there's uh like no sectional impacting schedule would a student then like theoretically be able to take all their core classes over the summer other than like the required language arts I believe we're saying one one okay there's there's not enough time yeah and then to take all the summer and be successful yeah right right okay I will bring it we'll bring that back to you and to answer answer your question Miss blades um we'll notify our counselors immediately that this is going on so they're they're they're ready to deal with that and and and it won't be policy until we meet next time but we can adjust uh we will make sure that we

153know exactly what's happening with that and be able to serve all the students that we're we're working with could we also track how many of those were making adjustments on just so that we know that that would have been definitely that now because we're looking at this that now they're coming back and um and making changes I believe so there's no I mean I think we should have an email go out but still at first reading so we have to have a second can we wait we can waive the second reading though technically well but we need we need language though on how to handle the online what it does say though is this is not policy is what we just said impacted schedule is not policy right I think what it that's that stays

154true right okay right so can we okay so then let's if we're not gonna if we're not if we're gonna go with the second reading then can we have an email go out to all of our parents and our staff and everybody saying that this has been if you feel like you're rejected if you feel like your schedule was created in a way you want to adjust it yes you have to do something differently then please go back sooner than later so we'll work with our principals on that sooner than later for sure I just I just want some clarification so we're letting our students take one course every summer so instead of the 20 credits on the course and that what and that so it would be one course this summer so it's up

155to like four uh and then they won't take an extra thing to add to their uh schedules they can do that too the 20 credits includes like college like dual enrollment stuff so right vice versa right that's what I'm just trying to declare correct I'll bring that back to you next time okay thank you very much but we have the Assurance a letter will be going out tomorrow no not tomorrow you have the Assurance a letter will be going out well can it be this week then we'll get a letter out this week that is fair thank you so we kind of tabled the math to this time to this time right yeah and then I had some other changes in here that so maybe maybe I think I think we were talking mainly about

156impacted schedules so should we go back to the beginning is that what you have notes on yeah Maryland or do you have stuff on impact at schedule no I have I'm done with impacted schedules um but I just wanted to at the beginning um I was thinking we should add the um cultural studies in here because that is is Law and it's going to become effective it's a graduation request as a graduation 20 30 right 20 30. 2026. the graduating class of like 2024. 29. so maybe we we can include it saying right that was actually in the suggested language from csba to put that in there to be effective with this group we could add that certainly that's when you guys have to start [Laughter] okay so let me get this straight uh this

157is the motion that's on the table right now oh I'm sorry Marilyn go ahead I'm sorry I'm looking at my notes but I um I wanted to also to to add into what Mrs Buck said I really think it would be um impactful if we had some type of Performing Arts Academy or pathway for our students that are really passionate about it so they're getting a more broad base of Performing Arts you know like more music theory or oh like adding it to a CTE pathway correct oh agreed yeah no we can't technically we can't discuss it so maybe that's something we can bring back because I was thinking for impacted schedules that that would be a good adding that as a pathway for impact but since we're not doing that now yeah so this

158is the suggestion well it guideline it's only a guideline that's all it is and I think that's everything about this but we could move into math the math oh can I have a clarification on on the section B about math before we get into adding another year of math I wanted to clarify the second section that would be that we're trying to add potentially if we're adding more years of math I'm moving ahead but does that apply if we're not adding another year that counts as one of their two years computers no there's not it does not at this time that's correct good question and no it doesn't Okay so if there's a third year then computer science could count can we allow it even if there's not a third year question mark can we

159allow computer science to count as one of their two math courses if we do not add a third I don't believe the State graduation requirements allow that gotcha that's a statement okay shall we move into the map to the map okay all right I'm going to turn that over to Dr Adamson we have some data for you before you start your discussions so we'll go ahead and present that sure well good evening president Youngblood members of the board executive cabinet and Dr Matthews this discussion is an item brought forward by two board members who have expressed interest in increasing Placentia Yorba Linda's current math graduation requirements from two years to three to help facilitate this important conversation it's our pleasure to provide the following initial information including current graduation guidelines and language as outlined in

160our current board policy mm-hmm board policy 5128.1 which outlines the placenta Yorba Linda graduation requirements states that students must complete two years or 20 credits of math which includes algebra one some students complete this requirement by taking algebra 1A and 1B While others might take Algebra 1 and geometry in addition some students may start high school on a more accelerated pathway beginning with geometry or Algebra 2 trigonometry it's important to note that both the Cal State and UC systems which represent the majority of four-year colleges Nationwide require students to complete a minimum of Algebra 1 geometry and algebra 2. remember the data science it now meets the algebra 2 requirements for which our students are eligible based on the board's recent approval of data science course offerings next I'm going to ask Miss Aguilar to

161provide you with an overview of practices across other districts that we feel will be important for you to be aware of reflecting data showing in addition to reflecting data that shows our own students performance on the state assessments I'm stopping good evening president Youngblood members of the board executive cabinet Dr Matthews in looking at other districts across Orange County you can see that pylusd is one of six districts with a 20 credit math requirement five of six including pyl requires students to complete algebra 1. Tustin Unified School District requires students to complete a geomet geometry course within those 20 credits the remaining nine districts have a 30 credit math requirement of those seven require students to complete Algebra 1 while both Saddleback Valley and Santa Ana requires students to complete algebra 2. can I stop

162you just for a second there um Irvine has moved to three years have they yes um recently I was talked to the board member today oh interesting okay that's good to know and looking at the most recent graduating class the class of 2022 84.6 of students took three years or more of math it is important to note that this could be any three math courses for example a student may have taken algebra 1A algebra 1B and business math 15.4 percent of graduates took two years of math this slide demonstrates how pylusd students in the class of 23 performed on the math Casp last year as juniors it is also important to note that the cast test students on standards from Algebra 1 geometry and algebra 2. first pie chart represents students who had taken two

163years of math this means some students were exposed to both algebra and geometry standards While others had only taken algebra one of these students five percent met or exceeded the standard the second pie chart shows that 65 percent of students were exposed to Algebra 2 or higher prior to taking the cast of these students 67 percent met or exceeded the standard thus students who took three or more years of math performed significantly higher on the Casp we feel it's important to Just note that I while we're looking at that cast data it's not necessarily the only measure it is important data because it's obviously the way that the state tracks progress across schools and districts and really I know that's very initial data that we want to give you we know that as you have

164this discussion there will likely be additional questions that come up I will you know happily track and and track those questions as well and provide any additional information that you would like to see at a later date as well and at this time I'd like to return it back to you Mr Youngblood to facilitate the conversation excellent thank you a quick question for you um Miss Aguilar is the numbers that we're seeing in the two years of math is that also um or I should say let me buy let me back up the one in the three years is that include honors and AP students it does yes if I may Preston we love you staying but I know you have to some steady things you got to do tonight too so please feel free

165to go over here he's taking more than two years of math I guarantee you that so my question is is a lot of you know if you want to go to a four-year College they obviously you have a lot of math that you have to do and so if you don't want to necessarily go that way is the two-year I mean I think the two years of math is sufficient I mean I think I did three three or four in high school you know because I was on a certain path and then my brother was on a different one and he did you know two and my sister four so is this going to what would be the benefit for the people who don't necessarily need the three or four years of math to go

166to college like for someone who maybe just isn't in that path so do you mean someone who isn't going to go to Community College either like someone who might be going to a trade school or something like that the military military yeah if there's not a math requirement for whatever their post-secondary goals are then they don't necessarily need to take the more advanced math however studies show that if you take a third year of math you have a significantly better ability to manage your own personal finances it doesn't really matter what math that class that is but just having that additional year of math if you think about our students who may stop at a sophomore year by the time they're by the time they're graduating they've missed three years of math repetition is important

167and and when we lose out on that when we we stop using it we lose it and it is really incredibly important to people that are that may be low income or that that is something that they're exposed to so there are I agree to in whether it's students going to a trade school or the military there are some applications of math so maybe an Algebra 2 course isn't required but there are applications of math that they would use and whether it's you know manufacturing trade or culinary or I mean there are applications of math although there's not a requirement to complete Algebra 2 or data science right that's yeah and that's definitely not not what I'm suggesting is is setting it up to be algebra two it really is just we're not requiring algebra

168two correct it would be basic math uh just saying three years as as a math guy I appreciate this a lot um I have a question about this chart here the the 65 percent of people Juniors who took the Casp in 2022 were exposed to Algebra 2 or higher how many of the three-year students so 65 which means 35 percent of the students did not take up to Algebra 2 but they had three years of math in this section correct no okay can you explain that to me then am I I'm I'm missing this somehow on this chart yes it's not about three years of math it's algebra two or higher oh it's not about three years I mean it says you have to have three years but I mean they they did for usual

169math and they took algebra too yeah these I'm sorry yeah these are who were exposed to all three areas that are on the cast prior to taking the cast okay yeah and the slide before that are students that took any three years of math that's why we use the class of 22 because they've already graduated we don't have all the data on so in this slide 65 on the right 35 on the left combined is the entire student population yes okay that helps um yeah I mean I think as long as we're not saying Algebra 2 I'm not pushing that at all but where do you like well let's think about this though so a lot of kids are taking pre-algebra in seventh or eighth grade so they have algebra one and they have geometry

170and so they either have to go take a data science where they have to take algebra two for that third year or it could be but in theory the kid that's going to go algebra one in eighth grade and then geometry they're not necessarily interested in stopping for the most likely they'll probably be taken I mean that was me right so um and I think that math is good we're talking about scores I think this is a potential good solution for math scores to increase right I mean I think if we're talking about overall hypothetical Theory I don't know I don't we don't know but I'm saying it would make a little sense though if you stop math and as a sophomore and you're taking your SATs as a senior or your Casp as a

171senior you've got two years that is a gap there um and and to go back just a second we have 84.6 of our students that are doing this anyway so it's really catching the Gap that isn't so of those kids in that Gap what class would be likely for them to take is it going to be that next level of math or is it likely going to be it's maybe a lower math that would help them move along and maybe even be before they get to algebra one wouldn't it probably be a math in which they'll use you know more in in their lifetime like a real life or you know something of that nature because managing your finances being able to balance it checkbook we do offer business math at all four high schools

172as a math elective and so I I use that as the example that's what a lot of students do and it does have financial literacy built into those businesses yeah the concern always is are you putting more pressure on a kid that's just trying to survive right now so extra extra math class might be the breaking point so um you know I would I would be very concerned about that well and I think with 85 percent that have already are voluntarily choosing to take three years of math because of their the way that their path is going I think that I'm fine with the two years just because I think we go back to the whole parental Choice thing if you know your kids does not like math they do their two years to get

173their graduation requirement they don't need to do any for further yeah but if it can help them be more financially stable as an adult if it doesn't though but it shows Studies have shown that that is the case I like to put some input in here please do I um Mrs Buck has been talking about adding three years of math since I've been coming to board meetings to be honest I didn't really care about it and it wasn't a big deal to me um but then I had a conversation with a friend and she works at Fullerton College in the records department and she asked me how is our district dealing with ab705 the new law that has been passed and I'm like what law are you talking about and so she explained to me

174this law that basically says that our community colleges cannot offer students classes that are not transferable so basically what she says is they're having a huge gap problem like cosmetology students welding students that go to Fullerton College to get their certificate they have to take college algebra now they don't get the to get in no as their math requirement to get out to get out yeah not to get in to get out so um she says it's causing you know issues in the community college because now these kids are coming and they're not prepared and there's this huge gap and so what you know and the college is trying to manage it by taking um their college algebra courses and turning in them into six unit classes or more so that the kids get the

175help to take it so my perspective is what are we doing for our students here to prepare them to go to college or to the Community College to take those certificate programs that we don't like in my head you know I was like well if they don't take it it's you know their choice but now because of the law in California they're they're kind of being forced to take it and that's why I think we should add the third year of math I think we should better help our students prepare to go to college that is what our advantage plan says that we help them for career-ready classes not just College ready but career programs and I've been doing a lot of research on this California is only one of three states that require two

176years of math all the 27 states require three years of math and 17 states require four years of math so it's only Maine Montana and us um in the in California during the 2018 and 2019 year 59 percent of districts enrolling 66 percent of our students population required three or four years of math and that is from the public policy Institute and we discussed breathe out again okay so during the 2018-2019 year 59 percent of districts in California enrolling 66 percent of the states K-12 population required three or four years of math can I can I say something just to add on to what you're saying so I feel like if we're going to add on the three years of math then I know over at yorbel in high school the way the math department

177grades it is 85 test 15 homework and that is extremely extremely hard for students who are not good in math so if we are going to go into this math thing and and make extra we I feel like if we're going to do this and we're going to force the third year of math on then we need to talk about some grading guidelines and we need to talk about some things because if you were to tell I mean I took four years math and it was hell and it was like but for me that I didn't grade that way I needed homework I needed all this stuff to help better my grade because I wasn't a wonderful math test taker so I think if we're going to add this in we need to add some

178type of grading guidelines so our so our students are successful because you know a lot of kids are like two years of math and I'm done but if we're going to cause a third I think for them to be successful we really need to look at how we're doing the grading and make it a district-wide echoatable thing so if we're going to force this on people who math is not their strong suit it it's going to be something that's not going to completely stress them out so if I could I had grading is a whole nother topic but I think what we need to to think about is what is the philosophy of of where what we want the kids to learn what it what is the ultimate goal is it to because I I

179was a better text taker than I was getting my homework in on time so 85 15 is great 85 would have been good for me but if it were to be anything different it may have impacted me in a negative way right so we need to as a we just need to figure out what the philosophy is are we going to be grading students by what they're completing and turning in or are we grading students and and assessing them on what their on their comprehension so that may be or a combination or a combination because there are some skills that are required yeah we might be sticking but we should celebrate their efforts so well celebrate their efforts but we want them to to be able to be successful yes um so so that it

180really to me it's not about whatever class it might be for math it's just the fact that it's it's still calculating and and it's practical it's reasonable and it's what we do in real life yeah right I mean balancing a checkbook is a perfect example um oh I think that there's stuff every day I don't know how to do it most of it is basic math right it's very basic math so I think too I I like it I just wanted to share one more thing um this was from an article from the public policy Institute of California in February of um 2021 and it said higher math graduation requirements are associated with better outcomes particularly for students in high need High poverty and high minority schools these requirements do not appear to lead to

181lower high school graduation rates or higher Dropout rates outcomes for students in rural schools and lowest performing schools do not appear to be affected so I think there's a lot of fear that you know it's going to cause kids not to graduate or they're going to drop out but um statistically Wise It's it hasn't proven pre-algebra algebra one algebra 1B could you go pre-algebra algebra business math could we do could there be some things that for people who just aren't good at math can some of the lower and divide it up between an A and A B or currently I mean we can offer anything right but currently um algebra one in the General Ed setting is the lowest level Math course that's offered we do have a general math for newcomers class at Valencia

182High School for our new English language Learners and we offer pre-algebra and general math sparingly and some of our special education Sai programs that currently in the general education population algebra 1A is the where people start in math so 90-ish percent of our student body their first year they're in some form of algebra yes I'd say higher than that probably higher than 95 okay so you could technically could you technically do algebra one algebra or 1A algebra 1B geometry or could you take a the business math could you go that route and and satisfy your three years well that just depends on what the board policy is yes for us to give leeway to the kids who yeah so if you look at if you if you look at the others come on math is

183a superpower yeah if you if you look back at this slide that has the graduation requirements you can see that of the districts on the left who have a three year math requirement I don't know seven of them still only have algebra one as the minimum requirement and so it's really there's two factors it's what are the requirements for math how many credits 20 or 30 and what's the minimum class that students have to complete so those are two decisions that go hand in hand with if we alter this board policy when you look at testing and they have the the minimum is geometry they're I mean they're already kind of taking it up to that next step anyway looking at this graph does it show that Saddleback Valley and Santa Ana require Algebra 2

184for graduation and in Santa Ana I would have graduated but it would have been you know a little sticky yeah you know when we're if we're talking about adding a third year of math we're also now adding in computer science which is a whole different thing that could yeah kids that that would because you're talking algorithms you're talking computer programming I mean something that I would not do well in what if somebody made you take three three years I would go slowly and I'd get well that's but we're not forcing computer science I mean I think although maybe we should there's a lot okay so this is the kind of policy that if we do it it would take great we can't it would only impact the incoming class the year after we last great

185class the year after we do it right I would like the ability to study that 15 of our students who aren't doing three years of math and figure out how it might impact them yes um if the board would like to move forward this is something that was a board request we have no at this point there's no staff recommendation on this and so um but if we can study that look at what how it might impact those students I'd appreciate that opportunity to do it and come back to you with that information also I'd like us to reach out to the Community College District and learn more from them and see what they're seeing and how we can assist them so our students are better prepared we can gather that information and bring it

186back and I just want to say two things I think the first one that Dr Matthew said we were not you know we really wanted to present the the slides to you and what a beautiful I think conversation that you all had and laid through that and came to so many of those conclusions yourself and I think the second piece you know we're all in the agreement that it's about you know ensuring that students are going to be successful so whatever we do agree and if that's this is a board policy you're wanting to pass uh you know we get to I think set those parameters but the scaffolds will be in place to ensure the support is there for those students who couldn't wait to drop math after that second year and at the

187same time I think the grading piece is a definite part of that conversation that we would want to explore and and is you know continuing for us to to explore and and investigate again I would love to have a little study session or something like that to discuss this after you do a little more digging sure that'd be great about math it sounds so fun we'll have some problem solving parts of it too we can bring M M's and count them um if I may Mr Youngblood I I gave you bad advice I think we did need to vote on the previous motion because we did do a motion in a second on it and the emotion would be to amend the policy as indicated with removal of the impacted schedules and the addition of

188the of the ability online courses so if you can just say so move we'll figure out how that how that gets worded so moved and so voted I guess are we all five five oh okay yeah okay thank you very much hi okay thank you ma'am uh how about we take about five minutes yeah about next item we'll talk about uh I'll need a motion for please I'll make a motion to prove the continuation of the 30-day public review of tci's social studies alive for K5 history and social science adoption a second okay I have a motion by Miss Anderson second by Mr Frazier Dr Adamson again president youngblad members of the board Dr Matthews executive cabinet and members of our community we are pleased to present you this evening the material selected by our

189pilot committee for both Elementary and Middle School history social studies including the steps the committee took this past year all materials are currently on public display in the main lobby of our district office and the only action for which we are seeking your approval tonight is the continuation of the 30-day public review we intend to bring forward all materials for your final approval at the April meeting we're so grateful to both piloting committees for our elementary and middle school teachers toses and administrators for their incredible dedication and commitment and can only say thank you for their guidance and direction from start to finish I cannot describe the pride and maybe a little sense of relief that I know they're all feeling as we move on to the next exciting steps it's my pleasure at this

190time to introduce two of those remarkable leaders Dr Leon and Dr spessard to provide an overview of the process and final recommendations to start us out Dr Liz Leon thank you good evening president Youngblood trustees Dr Matthews and executive cabinet this evening we come to you with new history and social science materials for board consideration of the TCI social studies alive textbook for Elementary grades in the National Geographic textbooks for Middle School please allow me to provide you with details of how we've come to select these materials since the adoption of our current textbooks there have been many changes to history and Social Science Education the framework encompasses new content literacy developments aligned with the Common Core State Standards inquiry models of instruction and Civic engagement applications these emphasize investigation close reading analysis of evidence

191argumentative writing skills and inquiry the pilot teams were LED through the pilot process by the Orange County Department of Education these committed teachers have spent nearly a year working to select the best curricula for our students during the Spring of 2022 there was a formation of pilot teams there was training on the new framework that was provided by Orange County Department of Ed in the summer of 2022 there was a paper screen curricula with the pilot team and through that there was a selection of two Publishers the publisher training was then provided for pilot number one in the fall of 2022 the pilot one gathered feedback and data thereafter publisher training was provided for pilot number two in the winter of 2023 pilot number two then gathered feedback and data in March of 2023 we

192are here before you with the recommendation of TCI social studies alive for K-5 and National Geographic grades six through eight to present to you Orange County Department of Ed provided data-driven pilot expectations and a textbook evaluation toolkit from these teachers at every grade level collaboratively selected a unit with at least three lessons or activities to Pilot over a two to three week period and one open-ended inquiry-based Common Assessment both students and teachers were expected to provide feedback on their pre-selected common lessons at the end of the unit teachers were asked to evaluate the differentiation and critical objectives of the unit in order to make an informed decision teachers collected data on what students learned textbook readability and the effectiveness of each lesson they assess the textbook's alignment to the framework and its teaching strategies paying

193close attention to a support for enrichment and intervention students pull students applied feedback on what they learned the readability of the text and how effective the lesson was in all nearly 700 Elementary and 3 000 Middle School feedback surveys were collected now I will specifically speak to the details of the elementary pilot the pilot team consisted of 17 teachers from varying schools this team evaluated the four state board approved texts for alignment with the framework program organization assessment universal access and instructional planning and support using common textbook assessment tools provided by the Orange County Department of Ed teacher selected McGraw-Hill and TCI to Pilot at the end of each pilot teachers scrutinize the data collected and discussed the textbook experience in detail after both textbooks were piloted teachers overwhelmingly recommended TCI for adoption of the

19417 pilot teachers 16 teachers strongly recommended this textbook that is a 94 percent offering their strong support just one teacher six percent of the team offered simple support of the recommendation xero teachers reported anything other than their support this determination was based on strong student and teacher feedback after each lesson our elementary students were asked how much did you like today's lesson 96.4 percent or 640 of the 664 surveyed students reported either liking or feeling neutral toward the lesson with the majority 67 percent or 444 students liking the lesson in terms of how accessible the curriculum was students were asked in student-friendly language how hard was the book to read 97.2 percent of the students found the curriculum to be readily accessible to read at their grade level or felt neutral about its difficulty only

19519 of the 664 surveyed students or 2.8 percent rated the text as hard to read at the grade level TCI is known for its interactive lessons with students engaging in simulations and creating their own record of learning in their interactive student notebook this model of instruction allows for students of all abilities to engage in demonstrating their learning here's a variety of samples from kindergarten to fifth grade foreign teams sincerely enjoyed the TCI experience of instruction they reported at every grade level that students were engaged and excited about the books and activities the lessons LED them to think and develop their own ideas about the content students of all learning styles could enjoy and access the instruction because of the multiple modalities embedded in the lessons teachers reported that students experienced success with this curriculum and

196that the students could discuss the content more readily and have an in-depth analysis of the materials the curriculum itself was accessible to students easy to follow for both for both teachers and students relatable to student experience and varied enough to remain interesting the lessons start with direct instruction and gradually release students into collaborative groups and Independent Learning teachers become the facilitators while students become the owners of their learning experience now please let me introduce to you Dr spessard Who will be sharing the Middle School pilot experience and results thank you so much Dr Leon I think we're just going to take a pause there because I think we'd have to either open it up for discussion and take a vote before we do a motion for the middle school one so we'll talk uh questions

197folks and then at this point we're just opening it up for review so correct just the 30-day public review and then I'll come back and we can we can vote on it I'd just like to say thank you for the data and the pre there's a lot of good information thank you you're welcome okay so we'll go ahead and take a uh take all those in favor aye any opposed all right the motion carries forward 5-0 thank you ma'am thank you I'll make a motion to approve the continuation of the 30-day public review of the display of world history ancient civilization world history me the evil and early times and U.S history stories beginning to World War one for the sixth and eighth grade history adoption second okay uh Dr Adamson well at this time

198it's my pleasure to introduce to talk about our Middle School pilot Dr spacehart good evening president Youngblood trustees Dr Matthews and executive cabinet this evening I provide an overview of the Middle School pilot for the board's consideration seeking your approval for the continuation of the 30-day public review of the National Geographic curriculum I will now provide you with insights into our selection process for these materials please allow me to provide you with the details of how we've come to the selected materials the pilot teams from both middle school and Elementary School were in sync with their regards to their process and timeline following the training of pilot teachers on the new framework and evaluative tools the pilot team evaluated five state board approved texts for grades six through eight these texts were assessed for their

199alignment with the framework program organization assessment universal access and instructional support and planning through a paper screening process with the help of the common textbook assessment tool provided by the ocde teachers chose to Pilot McGraw-Hill in National Geographic textbooks after completing each pilot teachers carefully analyzed and collected data and engaged in detailed discussions regarding their experience with the selected textbooks following the completion of the pilot for both textbooks the pilot team highly recommended National Geographic for adoption of the 21 pilot teachers surveyed 18 percent supported an 82 percent strongly supported National Geographic for adoption zero teachers reported anything other than their support this determination was based on the overwhelmingly positive feedback received from both students and teachers students participated in a variety of activities during the National Geographic lessons these activities included reading from the

200textbook engaging in peer discussions writing three paragraph essays using graphic organizers maintaining field journals and completing both digital and paper formative assessments in terms of how accessible the curriculum was students were asked about the text readability 2729 students were surveyed 79 percent of the students found the text to be mid-range and only two percent of the students reported that it was too challenging 19 reported that it was readable which means that the material was at grade level students had a more positive preferable attitude towards the digestible National Geographic text this suggests to us that the use of the engaging and accessible materials can positively impact students engagement and motivation to learn when asked to describe the pic to describe the features of the lessons that helped them learn the most common Student Response was the

201pictures the highlights this highlights the importance of visual aids in enhancing students understanding and retention of information teachers can consider incorporating more visuals such as diagrams charts and infographics into their lessons to support students learning based on the survey results the majority of Middle School teachers found the lessons to be interesting and engaging only five percent or 134 of the 2729 surveyed students reported that the lesson was not very engaging in the mid-range we see that 23 percent of students rated the engagement as a 2 on a four-point scale with the largest amount of students 53 percent reporting that the text was engaging ninety percent of the students five which is 532 out of 200 2729 students reported that the lesson was engaging having these lessons is important because it helps students stay motivated and

202interested in the subject matter engaging lessons can also help students retain information better and improve their overall learning experience the pilot team's response to National Geographic was overwhelmingly positive as mentioned before each grade level reported that National Geographic engaged students through its use of eye-catching visuals videos graphic organizers and primary documents she found that the lessons were accessible to all Learners through clearly defining concept words appropriate text length and inclusion of scaffolding enrichment and inquiry additionally teachers appreciated the quick access to challenging questions for honors students as well as the differentiation and English learner strategies available within the text group discussion questions embedded in the lessons help to solidify learning and teachers value the flexibility to modify and adapt the lessons for all learners based on our pilot team's response it's clear that the National

203Geographic is highly recommended as the best option for students the program's ability to engage students support different learning styles and abilities and provide opportunities for enrichment and differentiation is highly valued by both teachers and students our next steps for our elementary and middle school history social science adoption will include the continuation of the 30-day public display which began on Friday March 10th of the TCI social studies alive for K-5 and National Geographic for 6th through 8th grade this evening we are seeking the board's approval only for the continuation of the 30-day public review We intend to bring the curriculum forward again for a final approval at the April meeting with expected implementation of TCI and National Geographic to begin in the summer I'm sorry in the spring and summer thank you so much for your

204time and we'll answer any questions you may have thank you questions I don't really have any questions I've just started to dive in um partially through one of the textbooks already I was just surprised at how many students participated having 500 and 1500 that weighed in and got to to go through that was very informative so thank you is that unusual that it's that big of a sample question I can't answer I've only been here a short time it's about it's about average and what we what we have come to expect it what depends on how many teachers are participating obviously and because they you know obviously administer the lessons to their students the Middle School level that's more than Elementary because they see you know up to six classes yeah and did I see

205that right that the curriculum is built so that all levels of Learners use the same curriculum and that's impressive I just have a question from the early or the younger to the elementary to the middle is how how does that translate through so we don't have McGraw-Hill which you would think if it was elementary and middle it would be an easy transition how is there any anything that we should be concerned of because there are different Publishers going from fifth grade into sixth grade I want to be respectful um so there is not a concern because we're using the framework to guide and so the um textbooks are resources and we are accountable to the standards and So within the standards we also follow the framework anything else I think the last thing just that

206I'd like to share on behalf of all of us is we couldn't do this without the teachers they did incredible work and we're just putting a bow on it so we just thank them so much yes thank you so much okay so all of those in favor to continue with the review hi any opposed motion carries five oh need a motion I need emotion I'll make a motion to approve the continuation of the 30-day public review of GW Essential Health skills for High School 4th edition 2023 for the 9th grade health adoption to bring forward for approval at the April board meeting these materials will be available for review on a 30-day public display for March 13 to April 11 2023 at 1301 East Orangethorpe Avenue Placentia 92870 during regular business hours second killed that

207one absolutely pretty official okay uh Dr Adamson one more time please yes we have been busy this year a lot of piloting so all right once again good evening uh president Youngblood members of the board Dr Matthews executive cabinet and members of the community we're pleased to be bringing forward before you this evening the high school health materials and textbooks that have been selected by our pilot committee including an overview of the piloting process that the committee followed all materials are currently on public display in the main lobby of our district office which means once again the only action will be asking for your from you this evening is approval of the continuation of the 30-day public review all materials will be brought forward for your final approval at the April meeting I'd like to

208take this moment to share once again how grateful we are to the piloting committee for their focus and dedication we wish to thank them wholeheartedly for their critical involvement in helping us proceed once again to these very exciting steps it's my pleasure at this time to introduce one of those key leaders involved in guiding those steps our director of High School Miss Gina Aguilar to provide an overview of the process and final recommendations Ms Aguilar thank you this evening I come to you with a new health material for board consideration health is a one semester freshman course that is required for graduation please allow me to provide you with details of how we've come to select these materials since the last adoption of our current health textbook in 2007 there have been many changes in

209health education there is a greater emphasis on understanding mental health new sources of tobacco abuse and greater drug risks that our students need to understand in order to have a comprehensive education in this field in addition our instructional methods have shifted to include some online resources which our current textbook does not have it is important to note that in 2016 the California healthy youth act known as Chaya required additional content to be taught in health pylusd created their own lessons to meet these requirements both textbooks piloted were the essentials National textbook version which excluded Chaya content and the recommendation is to continue using the pylusd created Chaya lessons to supplement the new material with the hope of having new materials in place for the 2324 school year we created this timeline that began last October

210and started with a team of five teachers representing our high schools these instructors completed an exploration of two different textbooks to form our evidence-based recommendation please allow me to describe our pilot process initially a unit of study is selected in three different activities within that unit are evaluated after students have completed them these activities could include an exam research piece worksheet or any other part of the normal course of study for that unit our instructors then teach the selected unit with Fidelity in order to provide a basis for comparison once the pilot unit has been taught students and teachers provide feedback about their experiences the information provided by the students and instructors is then evaluated for the overall quality of the learning experience and student achievement the same process is then repeated with the second

211Health material once the evaluation of both materials are completed teachers then compare their results and determine which material is best for the success of our students our first pilot material was McGraw Hills Glencoe health this is the updated version of our current health textbook the updated version includes recent changes in laws related to Alcohol Tobacco and illegal substances and expanded mental health unit and an online learning component excuse me good heart Wilcox essential skills our second pilot material covers all of the national standards has current information follows health education Trends and an online learning component as well good heart Wilcox essential skills are second pilot material provides an updated approach and includes an expansive four chapter unit on mental and emotional health that carries a theme of managing stress and positive thinking there are also

212chapters devoted to avoiding hazardous substances such as alcohol and tobacco use and includes the fight against vaping opioid opiates and Fentanyl another appealing aspect of GW health is that the online learning component is totally compatible with Google Classroom which will allow for teachers and students to have the smooth transition to the material after carefully considering teacher feedback student feedback and accessibility of resources our instructors have selected GW Essential Health skills as their recommendation for adoption the material ranked higher in each of the assessed categories clearly showing the strength of the curriculum when examining all assessment criteria including material coherence effective teaching opportunities support for students with diverse learning needs and the ability to monitor student progress you can see that GW Health scored higher in each additionally when student work was evaluated to determine how

213the curriculum supported authentic student understanding GW Health once again ranked higher the majority of teachers gave this material a 5 out of 5 as indicated in purple and here are a few quotes from our pilot teachers and students that allow us to see the positive feedback that came as a result of the GW pilot the health materials are currently on a 30-day public display in the main lobby of our district office and we are seeking to approve the continuation of the 30-day public review the materials will be brought forward for your final approval for adoption at the April board meeting thank you just for our viewers at home yes I think that this question probably come up and just for the clarification we're not replacing our health curriculum this is just in addition to the

214up there's just updates to it yes as far as the drugs and everything goes but we're not changing it we're not going to a different curriculum there's just additions to it to make more of the sections more up to date yes and as Dr Leon stated we teach the health standards and the textbook is a resource to teach those standards and this is a more updated resource okay because I think that's what a lot of people were concerned about tonight they thought that we were scrapping what the board did in 2018 and we're going a totally new Direction and so I'm just clarifying for everybody yes yes perfect in fact that's why we piloted the national adoptions of the textbook because they excluded that portion that we were planning on keeping okay perfect thank you

215so much yes here here a quick question of the um reviews that you'll have on this 30-day uh review will we get a chance to to see those in the the April meaning by chance are we taking any comments I'm sorry are we taking comments from we are the community there is a QR code where everything is set up and so any members who we invite them to provide feedback and any questions they may have so we can respond to that as well so we will have data hopefully to be able to share assuming everyone is feeling filling it out that's right I was just clarifying what you were saying make sure I understand excellent yes any other questions okay so we'll go ahead and we have the motion let's go ahead and everybody in

216favor all those in favor aye any opposed motion carries 5-0 all right next I'll make a motion we approve the continuation of the 30-day public review of persopolis I hope I said that correctly a story of childhood for a novel edition of 9 through 12 core and extended reading list to bring forward for approval at the April board meeting these materials will be available for review at 30 days for public display March 13th through 11th here at this Center I'll skip the address 1301 East Orangethorpe Avenue 9280 870 okay I have a motion bike Miss buck in second brightness blades Dr Adams thank you again well once again good evening president Youngblood and members of the board Dr Matthews executive cabinet and members of the community we're pleased to be bringing and presenting to you

217the novel persepolis which has been approved by our literature review committee to be added to our existing core and extended Literature list it's currently on a public display in the main lobby of our district office and as with all the other actions we've brought forward so far I will continue to be on display and once again asking each of you to approve this evening at the continuation of that 30-day public display persepolis was previously approved as an option on the 6th through 12th grade studysync novelist which is an active online list the use of the study synclist was board approved in the spring of 2017 when we adopted studysync as our secondary curriculum for English language arts all books on this list were at the time automatically approved for Teacher use a recent adjustment to

218our review process now requires that all books including those on the studysync list are weighted equally which means they are read and approved by our literature review committee as reflected by the flowchart on the slide before you please feel free to follow along with me as I review each step briefly we're going to start all the way over at the left the and really what that indicates is that any teacher requesting a book to be added to the core and extended reading list submits a form which makes their initial request known the request is then reviewed by cabinet prior to the next lrse that is our literature review committee and I'll I'll be referring it to it as our lrc and moving forward at the lrc meeting a presentation of the requested novels is given

219providing a summary of each novel including the rationale for why the teacher requested that particular book the committee then votes to approve each novel to be piloted if it is approved two things happen next the committee assigns readers for each book and the books are then piloted next pilot teachers will work on compiling their data and student feedback to share at the next lrc meeting it's at that time that the data is reviewed and the committee votes on whether to approve the novel or not if approved the books are presented first to curriculum Council and then to cabinet for their final approval if approved by cabinet we then take the next step they are placed on 30-day public display prior to being brought forward for final board approval upon board approval the novels will then

220be added to the core and extended reading list for teachers future use please note that any parent or Guardian who objects to the novel that their student student is Reading in class May request an alternative novel by some submitting what we refer to as our opt-out novel request form to their teacher if this if this is the case an alternative assignment which is very similar in length and rigor will be assigned and completed by the student within that same class this evening the novel persepolis which was recently approved through this very same process once again as I refer to the beginning is currently on 30-day display and to present an overview of the book and a little bit of background I'm going to go ahead and introduce next Miss Aguilar thank you as Dr Adamson

221stated the request to add the novel persepolis to our list supports the ongoing effort toward expanding the core and extended reading list as a means of furthering the variety of books available to our students a summary of the novel persepolis The Child the story of childhood by marjane satrapi is an autobiography that tells the story through a black and white comic strip about the author's life in Tehran from 6 to 14 years of age the daily portrayal of Iran from seeing dethroned Emperors State sanctioned whippings and heroes of the Revolution paids the personal and political picture of what satrapi and her country experienced from her lens this novel was requested as a core literature piece by 11th grade IB teachers currently Valencia needs to update certain literary Works in order to comply with the latest

222IB requirements a balance of literary forms a gender balance of authors studied and a balance of Works considered Canon and newer works persepolis allows them to meet these criteria besides updating literary Works IB now allows students more freedom to choose which works they'll use in their IB assessments which include oral commentary written assignments and timed papers this work will give students another option for a modern work for a graphic novel versus novels or poetry and for a work by a female author persepolis is currently on a 30-day public display in the main lobby of our district office so we are seeking to approve the continuation of the 30-day public review this book will be brought forward for your final approval to be added to the corn extended list at the April meeting foreign questions I

223was just kind of two questions one is what was the student's feedback because we heard from students on the other things and I was just curious what the students thought about the book that piloted I don't have that with me but we can get that information too I'm sorry to jump in oh my second question would be um we're approving this novel to the 912 core and extended reading list but aren't we really just approving it for the IB Program I don't know that we just approve novels when we approve them they go on the list and they're for use we don't generally it's not in the literary review process as of as it stands now in the policy that we approve them for a certain class or certain program they're approved for a grade

224level and that's what's indicated on the core and extended Literature list now so so my my issue here is the actual the policy because you said that you uh somebody requested it is it a policy okay yeah is this a policy is this a policy the policy for the board is that you approve text to me only the board can approve text and put them on the Xfinity list we are the ones who go through their process to um review them and bring them to you no you go ahead I was going to ask so so the lrc process is something that was just put together on how you are implementing the policy correct and it isn't it's in accordance with board policy because the board policy states that it is up to the The

225District staff to identify means by which books will be selected So within those parameters it falls under the under the board policy gotcha um before I forget let me go ahead Okay so my issue on this is that I have no issue with the presentation on the submitted novels but we have vote to approve the pilots so then my issue is that in the parents issues have always been is that these books are piloted in the classroom without the board approval and so if they don't choose not to use it then their kid you know they don't really ever know and they have an issue with that so is there a way to skip the children or the students in the pilot process and just have staff do the piloting somehow so then that way

226we don't get any unnecessary grief that kids read a book that they deemed it was inappropriate like they're not the guinea pigs so that would be my issue can I ask a question do the parents get a any indication that the students are going to be reading this even in a pilot so they could opt out I'm going to look to miss Aguilar are we do we know if notification is sent home to parents prior to their readings in the syllabus and before students read a novel they're told what novel they're going to read because it is that it's a piloted book yeah that is not approved by the district that's a pilot I think that'd be important yeah I'm not sure into that and we can give a definitive answer and if there isn't

227one that can be part about it because there may be a student group that really likes to Pilot books and we might be able to use that but I think that one of the reasons that we like to Pilot textbooks or novels with students is we may think it's a good idea to bring a certain novel forward but the students are truth tellers right sure I mean they they're the ones who say great idea we love it or my goodness this is uh not striking home at all and we don't know that until we actually try that in a classroom right and I I think that's very important to get the student feedback however I think I I'm feeling like I agree with what you're saying here I I feel like we need a stop

228gap between the staff the the committee reading it and then it being piloted just to say hey are we okay piloting this with the kids from the board's approval level does that make sense so you're requesting a step in the flow chart or it would be from the parents approval yeah I think we probably need to just make sure that we're saying yes we are okay we the five of us are okay letting the kids pilot this book I think that may be for me going a bit above and beyond because we already have our staff doing it our executive cabinet our lrc which we value I mean we we've selected the people from the lrc and and in this box on the wait who selected the people for the lrc we didn't select the

229people but our educated District staff has chosen them just making sure that it was clear that we didn't select the box in the far left corner it says first lrc meeting and at the bottom it says vote to approve Pilots I'm assuming the lrc group is approving correct yes and I think that might be one of the issues because had the lrc approval committee had been really on top of it books like this might not have gotten through and placed in our library well it's not on our Core Curriculum book so that's that's a whole different book that's not something they're studying in class right right that's a lot that's that's what we're debating on right now my issue my issue though is that there are some books and we know that some books have

230not gotten past the pilot process and sometimes there's just books that just pilot and then they never take the next step and then another pilot and it doesn't take the next step and so we've heard of that and so I think a way to get around that is either to have the board approve the pilot process or we have some checks and balances that parents know that this is a pilot and like students can participate in the pilot just so if something goes wrong I mean who who gets blamed if something goes wrong you know that we get blamed and so we're just taking responsibility so either the parents know and like they sign something that says yes my kid can pilot it um or I I think I think I I would feel like

231it's a both and like the board says this is okay but I think the parents still should be told hey we're piloting a book it's been approved by the board but it's still a pilot it's not approved reading can we just add a step that's all I'm asking for we can actually add written notification to inform parents right before right can we add a step where you bring pilot before you pilot them to students that you bring it to us is that what the board is requesting at this time I'm not requesting that I think that putting it on 30-day review is that option to do that I think if we're piloting it in the classroom it definitely should have a note go home to the parent saying we're piloting this book this is the

232book you can opt out if you like but it's adding so much more initially for us to to bait and go through that one it might not even get to that point so I think it's stepping too far over before we even get to that pilot piece if we're talking about a book that's for an IB class it's age appropriate it's it's designated for that specific grade IT addresses the guideline science that is specific to teaching in class it's not a library book it it follows along there if it's made it to to the lrc and our and our cabinet is reviewing it I think that it's appropriate to Pilot it and as and let parents know we're piloting this book and then if it goes to that next step where the students like it

233and the teachers like it then it should move forward to the next process that's true why does it hurt to say hey board check this out because I'm afraid that we're going to be limiting books and removing them before we even have a chance to Pilot them but you can pilot it and we can still not vote on it true so it's the same thing and I think too you it doesn't get to the cabinet until after no the cabinet gets first approval right first actually in the first date we start reviewing them and reading and so I'm gonna rely on them to know we know they know what we're expecting if they see anything that would be out of line then did you read this I've been through some of it yeah I just

234I don't see why it's a big to-do to say hey we're getting ready to Pilot this at a meeting or one or two books however many the lrc says that we want to Pilot these books just have us say okay go ahead or no let's not I mean it's if we're going to do that I want to end public at a board meeting because I'm afraid that our board is going to be taking books out of the hands no I'm seeing out a board meeting I'm I'm not suggesting behind the scenes what kind of Prior notice would the board want to be able to review the books to be piloted I personally feel comfortable if we are sending notification to the parents letting them know that we are piling this novel giving them content information

235about the novel including some type of a rating system you know you can't watch television without it saying sex drugs violence smoking you know it's something simple that gives them a thing I and I'm comfortable with that and that the parents you know are concerned then they can check out the book they can read the reviews they can opt out and they can still do that after the board votes to say go ahead but I think it needs to go through the process we don't do that with textbooks we don't do it but textbooks are limited like we had a conversation about textbooks there was only five to choose from we're talking about the Sea of literature is yeah but there's a lot of requirements as Mrs Aguilar stated that lots of boxes that they

236have to to tick to check sorry to uh you know meet the the standards for the class based on the state of California we had on the state of California and the time limit that they have in the class so there's only so many novels you can actually read in in your classes it's not a library approvals oh right no I totally agree you know we're going to be studying it again no I've only like read two pages of the novel so far I read the whole thing and um you wanna hear it out loud it should be interesting just from what I've seen so far um but I think letting parents know is really all that we need and let let's go through the process that's my what do you think Sean um I

237think uh yeah I think the idea of having the parents receive a note that says hey we are piloting this book uh we'll give them the option especially because they can research it online as well just just as easy as you and I can so if they didn't want to have their child in that book they could opt out of it so so what about and they could do that they can do that for any book that we have yeah that's that's always true that's not a new thing right telling them as piloted it sounds like a new thing I'm just asking for a step between at a board meeting with a vote to say are we okay piloting this in the classroom are you interested in that I'm interested in it absolutely I'm interested

238because then I mean it did get you know it got to this point and I think reading it so I this is my thing I I wasn't into this book at all I think the kids would be much better if this was like a novel just dealing with what it was but I also think too that we have to start to be very careful because if we are suspending if kids are getting in trouble for calling names and using vulgar terms towards women then I don't understand how we can allow these types of books these with graphic um you know graphic pictures um derogatory towards women making these these statements how can we continue to like expect different things in school when they're reading these in a book and the language that comes out of

239this is what it is do you know what I'm saying here the reality is is that's real life and that stuff happens even here not even you know beyond I understand that if it's real life and they're using these terms if they're going to call people and and all this stuff then we cannot expect them not to use if we're bringing these books into the classroom we're essentially as a board saying it's okay this type of I wouldn't say that I would say that that's where you have a discussion about why they're doing that and why they're saying that and what that means here and why we we don't have those conversations but you can say well we've brought this in this book in and so in this book oh they're calling the women and

240and people are pissing on people in here there's graphic pictures of that and so are we saying that this is acceptable behavior to put into our classroom and then when they act out like we've had a problem of what we're talking about people using certain terms and we know that our middle school kids are listening to 90s gangster rap and there's certain word words that are in that wrap that are now being used on the playground and so these kids are being punished for that so we need to educate them because that's what's happening in the world it's happening on the radio it's happening in conversations that book is not the only place that they're going to ever hear the term or so we need to accept to have those conversations they're hearing they're not

241listening to the radio in the classroom because we don't allow that type of language in the classroom so you're saying it's okay to allow this type of book with this type of language in the classroom I would add that when you're studying an IB curriculum history in literature we talked about the Holocaust earlier the atrocities that happened in the Holocaust are unmentionable and yet if you don't mention what those atrocities were you're not teaching about it and so you have to be pointing out the degradation of women that happened in the in the Iranian and continues to happen to point out the the anti-Semitism the led to the Holocaust to point out the atrocities that happened uh in slavery and before in the Civil Rights era that's just knowledge of what happened it creates outstanding

242discussions along the way do we condone the language of course we don't condone the language do we recognize that kind of treatment happen to other human beings in the world yes we do I understand that and I'm not saying that it didn't happen and that it shouldn't be discussed but there's proper novels that don't have this type of language and have the type of behavior and stuff that that are more easily discussed and I'm saying if we're going to allow books into the classroom that have the f word on every single page and have all these different slang all this stuff that's probably not necessary to be there and we need to take a step back and say we are bringing this into the classroom and when the kids start throwing f-bombs everywhere we're not

243going to hold them accountable because we're allowing this to be we're allowing it again if the point of it is this is deplorable Behavior which shouldn't have happened back then and which won't be we want to make sure it don't happen in our society we're trying to learn from the past so we can treat each other as fellow human beings better okay but that's there are books so in the meantime we're going to ban books who's talking about banning that's exactly what this is talking about talking about approving or not approving books to be used this Core Curriculum that's what this process is about right eliminating we're talking about no we're talking about a 30-day review we're not even going to allow that I understand but it's been piloted and my question again are we

244interested in adjusting the process to allow the board to approve piloting that's my question I know the question you ladies are not interested in that no I'm interested I'm interested three of us are interested in changing that so that would be a revision of our policy on this isn't about you're asking for a revision of a policy because you right now the board has authorization over a certain area and you're asking to augment that policy with this okay but who put this Paul where did this policy come from because book approval policy when that's what I'm doing then I'm requesting to change the policy that adjusts this process that is not a policy but it's used to it's used to implement the policy that exists I understand so that's all I'm asking okay would that

245be considered a future agenda item okay okay all right I understand the request so so the motion that's on the table right now is the approval of a 30-day policy or 30-day review of this particular novel is that correct okay yes so do I have a so that so that we're not approving that this book would be used as Core Curriculum we're proving that parents get a chance to look at it absolutely because parents haven't had a chance to look at this necessarily yeah I would suggest any book in which we put out as a district parents should be looking it over should be researching them themselves not just relying on us five in a in a uh in a review board in order to make their decision so until we eliminate it well I

246don't know that's a good question is it going to go into the library if this is not allowed in Core Curriculum are you not approving books for Core Curriculum like right this is a this is a very strange Avenue to be talking about this one I'm just curious is we're not even going to be piling it piloting it where do we start acquired reading okay if this book is in the library I don't think that I would have a problem with this being in the library Okay so all I'm saying is that if this book goes into a library that you can choose to you can choose to read it but do some parents want like look at this I I mean it's so Random in this book like right back here it was so

247off the wall what was said and I was just like what's going on here so this girl's you know she's about to go to Austria because she's fleeing Iran and so in this conversation her and her grandma are in the same bedroom together and she says Grandma how do you have such round breasts at your age every morning and night I soak them in bowl of ice water for 10 minutes and it's like what does that have to do like I don't know like that's just a weird thing like this whole book was weird like that with a bunch of these weird statements and so do parents want this in the classroom if you want to check it out and read it perfect but like when you have all of this weird stuff going on

248maybe people aren't very um comfortable with that which is where the opt-out comes in so or or we just put in the library and we choose a different book that doesn't make weird statements like that or controversial statements and until somebody comes and says we don't want it in the library then what well then we talk about whether we want it in a library or not that's a whole other conversation it's like we're sidebarring the whole deal I was asking for evidently a change in policy and now we're talking about whether this is going to be required reading that you can opt out of I understand but it's still required reading for the course so um I don't think the book was very good but it wasn't necessarily required it was one of the options

249that the students could choose correct yeah the teacher indicated it was going to be used as an option in in IB there's several assignments they have to complete and they have to choose from a variety of types of novels to authors Etc so not everyone will be reading this but by putting it on the core novels list a teacher could choose in their class yeah yeah okay so are we still are we voting on The 30-day review yeah okay all right all those in favor aye opposed motion carries 5-0 okay moving on uh motion please I'll make a motion to certify ab1200 slash 2756 report for the association of Placentia Linda educators as proposed in the 2022-2023 collective bargaining agreement second key motion by Miss blade second by Mr Frazier Mr Giordano will you take

250us there yes so thank you and good evening tonight under Human Resources action item number two staff will recommend the board approved the 2223 tentative agreement with the association of Placentia Linda Educators otherwise known as Apple in order to comply with the provisions of ab1200 and ab2756 districts required to disclose the major provisions of the agreement including the costs that will be incurred in the current in two subsequent years and this information must be disclosed prior to entering into the agreement included with the agenda item is the document titled public disclosure of collective bargaining agreement that highlights the key provisions of the tentative agreement with Apple okay any questions it's a lot of numbers I figured Mr Frazier you would have some input there no no all right okay then uh with that we'll go

251ahead and vote all those in favor aye now an opposed motion carry Supply vote thank you sir I'll make a motion to approve the tenant agreement between APLE and the pylusd second okay Dr Lopez will you take this item please yes thank you president Youngblood members of the board superintendent Dr Matthews and executive cabinet tonight I'm pleased to bring forward the tentative agreement with the association of Placentia Linda Educators for the 2022-2023 negotiations when brought forward to the membership the agreement passed with a 96 percent approval I would like to thank those who served on the Apple negotiating team including Jim Fox Marge Cooley Jeremy Kelly Karen alexic and Cliff Shuster I would also like to thank the district negotiating team including Nancy blade Renee gray Christina Michelle Paige Stills Olivia young and additional support

252from David Giordano we're grateful for the collaborative process with apple and shared commitment to the ongoing success of our students and District thank you for your consideration of this tentative agreement awesome any uh questions it's not a question I just I'm very excited about um the compensation rate for hourly assignments at the 55 rate I I'm saying it's tragic that we're only paying our teachers 24 or 25 an hour so this is excellent thank you thank you agreed awesome okay uh we'll go ahead and vote all those in favor none of pose motion carries 5-0 excellent number three let me get a motion please I'll make a motion to approve the proposal between Plum and pylusd for a seven percent base salary increase retroactive to July 1st 2022. second okay I have a primary motion

253and secondary Dr Lopez please thank you I'm pleased to bring forward the proposal for the Placentia Linda unified managers I would like to thank our District's dedicated leaders who Faithfully serve the students staff and community at pylusd this proposal includes a compensation increase aligned with those approved for Apple thank you for your consideration awesome questions all right we'll go ahead and vote all those in favor hi opposed motion curies50 thank you I'll make a motion to certify ab1200 slash 2756 report for the California School Employees Association Placentia chapter number 293 as proposed I'll second all right Mr Giordano will you go ahead and yes yeah thank you again and tonight this is under the next action item under Human Resources action item number five staff will recommend the board approve the 2223 memorandum of understanding

254with the California School Employees Association otherwise known as CSEA Chapter 293. again in order to comply with the provisions of ab1200 and ab2756 district is required to disclose the major provisions of the agreement including the costs that will be incurred in the current in two subsequent years and this information must be disclosed prior to entering into the agreement included with the agenda item is the document title public disclosure of collective bargain agreement that highlights the key provisions of the tenant agreement with CSEA people any questions yeah no all right let's go ahead and vote we'll lose some paper hi any opposed no motion carries five oh all right number five I'll prove the motion to approve the memorandum of understanding between CSEA Chapter 293 and the pylusd for an additional 0.5 off schedule increase over

255the 2021-2022 salary schedule retroactive to July 1st of 2022. second okay and you meant uh on schedule correct correct yes okay all right Dr Lopez if you would yes thank you tonight I'm pleased to bring forward an agreement with CSEA Chapter 293 to provide compensation Equity between the employee groups for the 2022-23 negotiations we appreciate the collaborative process with csca and thank you for your consideration of this agreement comments none all right all those in favor aye all right motion passes five oh moving on to number six motion please I'll make a motion to accept the initial Sunshine proposal from CSEA Chapter 293 and initiate the collective classified bargaining process for the 20 23 to 2024 school year second once again Dr Lopez thank you it is my pleasure to introduce the next two items

256on our agenda being brought forward for consideration The District in csca chapter 293 have a collective bargaining agreement through June 30th 2025 per Article 1 of the contract the parties agree to commence reopener negotiations for the 2023-2024 school year the educational employment Relations Act requires initial contract proposals made by both sides to be presented at a public meeting prior to the commencement of the employer employee negotiations in accordance with these procedures CSEA is submitting their initial proposal to open negotiations in accordance with these procedures the district is also submitting their proposal to open negotiations as is represented in the second action item before you tonight we look forward to working together with caca and our continued partnership in service to the students of pylusd any questions for Dr Lopez okay all those in favor aye

257aye aye all right motion carries five oh moving on to number seven I'll make a motion to accept the initial sun sign proposal from the district and initiate the collective classified bargaining process for the 2023-2024 school year second all right Dr Lopez if you would um we introduce both action items so if the board's comfortable with that you can go ahead and proceed with the vote excellent thank you all those in favor aye all right motion carries 5-0 okay moving on business and financial may I have a motion for number one I'll make a motion to approve the 2022-23 second interim Report with a positive certification a positive certification indicates that based upon current projections the district will meet its Financial Obligations for the current fiscal year and subsequent two fiscal years I'll second okay

258Motion in a second Mr Giordano please well thank you and good evening tonight we're going to be with you our 22-23 a second interim financial report and this report represents the second official revision to the district's adopt a budget that was Pursuit actually presented and approved back in June and it also incorporates the key components of the governor's proposal for next fiscal year 23-24 the report contains our actual financial data through January 31st and also includes updated revenue and expenditure forecast for the current and two subsequent years and so here's a look at our agenda for tonight first we're going to view with you the governor's January budget proposal for fiscal year 2324 followed by the changes that occurred since the first interim report was approved back in mid-December tonight we're also going to discuss

259some of the key budget challenges that lie ahead and then those next steps in our budgeting process so here's a glance at the governor's budget proposal for fiscal year 2324 and we know the proposal was released back on January 10th and it represents the start of the budget cycle for next fiscal year we also know the governor's forecasting slower economic growth but he's not forecasting a recession of course this assumption carries with it some additional risk that the economy were to slip into a recession and state revenues would deteriorate further from current projections and with that slower economic growth state general fund revenues are forecast to decline by 29.5 billion dollars below the 2223 budget act level which will trigger an estimated shortfall of 22.5 billion dollars in the state general fund next fiscal year

260and because school funding in California is based off of those state revenue collections the prop 98 funding is expected to be a leaner in the coming year as well as a result the governor is proposing an education budget that simply maintains the Investments that were made during the good years so here's a look at the stage general fund Revenue estimates that impact the proposition 98 minimum funding guarantee for schools for fiscal years 2122-23-24 as you can see from this chart State revenues are forecast to decrease from 214.9 billion under the current year budget act to 206 billion dollars under the governor's budget proposal for next year 23-24 and this represents a decrease of 8.9 billion or 4.1 percent less than the current year estimate and then importantly the governor's Revenue estimates are even less conservative

261than the lao's office in fact the Leo is forecasting even larger decrease in state revenues next year of 14.8 billion or 6.9 percent of bringing the total estimated revenues down to just over 200.1 billion dollars and so here's a look at the impact on the proposition 98 minimum funding guarantee for schools with that decrease in state revenue collections since the budget Act was approved back in June the prop 98 guarantee is down an estimated 3.4 billion dollars in the current year 2223 and then in 2324 the guarantees forecast to increase by 1.8 billion and that's up from the revised current year level you can also see from this chart that the governor's prop 98 guarantee estimates are roughly 3.1 billion dollars higher than the Elio's office over the forecast period which covers a fiscal year

262of 2122 through 23 24. and so what's the governor proposing for next fiscal year well first in order to help offset some of the inflationary pressures he's proposing 4.2 billion dollars to fund an estimated 8.13 a statutory Cola on our lcff funding for next year and for our district this represents an increase of roughly 11.1 million dollars in lcff base grants and an additional 1.1 million dollars in supplemental grants Governor is also proposing an additional 669 million and this is to cover an estimated 8.13 percent Cola on all those categorical programs that are funded outside the lcff which includes special education Child Nutrition State preschool and the Mandate block ramp program as well and additionally and even in order to provide even more funding to the highest need schools Governors proposing 300 million dollars in

263ongoing funding as an add-on to the lcff and he's termed this new funding source the equity multiplier which will provide approximately 874 dollars per student to schools serving the highest concentrations of low-income students and unfortunately the governor's also proposing a reduction in the one-time Arts music and discretionary block grant of 1.2 billion dollars and this is needed in order to help cover the cost of that statutory Cola that we talked about and this new Equity multiplier and for our district this represents a reduction of approximately 5.4 million dollars in that Arts music and discretionary block ramp next we're going to take a look at some of the key changes that occurred since the first interim report was approved by the board back in mid-December so here's a look at some of those key changes since

264first interim in this chart you can see the cost of living adjustments and the calstrs and Calpers employer contribution rate estimates for each of the next two years and for 23 20 23 24 at coal estimates been revised up from 5.38 percent at first interim to 8.13 under the governor's proposed budget for next year on the other hand for fiscal year 2425 that coal estimates been revised down from 4.02 percent to three point five four percent and that's based on the latest estimates we received from school Services of California regarding the Calpers employer contribution rates for 23.24 that estimates been revised up from 25.2 percent at first interim to 27 percent under the governor's proposal for next year additionally for fiscal year 2425 the estimate's been revised up from 24.6 percent at first interim to

26528.1 percent under the second interim report and you'll note that there are no changes currently proposed to the calstrs employer contribution rates which are set to remain the same at 19.1 percent for this year in the next two years and so this slide just highlights the changes in our enrollment and our average daily attendance since we last reported the board back in mid-December and for fiscal years 23 24 and 24.25 you can see enrollment's been revised down by additional 10 students and 23 24 and by 30 students in 24.25 and this is directly related to the continued decline enrollment that we've seen since the beginning of the year regarding our average daily attendance districts funded Ada's also been revised down by 90 students in 2324 and by 206 students and 24.25 and unfortunately like most

266school districts here in Orange County and throughout the state of California our district Ada did drop pretty significantly during the pandemic and our attendance rates have remained below the historical norms and we're going to highlight the impact of these changes and more a little later in the presentation next we're going to take a look at some of the key budget assumptions that we use to build our second in a report so taking a look at our district enrollment if you go all the way back to a 2015-16 our District's experienced a cumulative decline in annual enrollment of 2602 students over the last seven year period and the average annual enrollment decline during that same time frame represents a loss about 372 students each year and this year in moments declined by about 370 students over

267the prior year and regarding average daily attendance although the Ada declines over the past three years have been much steeper than the years we saw previous to the pandemic in percentage terms our District's Ada's declined roughly in alignment with other districts in Orange County so here's a look at some of the key assumptions that we use to build our second interim financial report and you can see we've included not only the current year but the two subsequent years as well and I'm not going to go through all these but I do want to highlight a few the first of course is the salary lines if you were to take a look at our sax Financial reports and you take a look at the salary lines you'd see that we have included the tenant agreements with

268our certificated and classified bargaining groups you'd also see that we've included the step and column increases as well and then if you drill down further and take a look at the statutory lines you'd see the increased cost for calstrs and Calpers pension systems we're going to take a look at the statutory Cola talk about that here in a bit in terms of the enrollment you can see enrollment for the current year coming in at just under 23 000 students and we are projecting declines in each of the two subsequent years of 400 students each year we talked about our attendance rate a little bit ago attendance rate is down in the current year at 93.3 percent that's the projection we are projecting a slight uptick in the two out years up to 93.5 percent and

269then we're going to take a look at our lcf funding projections we'll review our multi-year projection here in a bit regarding Health and Welfare benefit costs they are a 5.2 percent over the prior year and again that's based on the final negotiated rates with all of our Health and Welfare benefit providers and then in the two out years we're projecting increases of six percent and that's based on projected increases in Health and Welfare benefit costs nationally and next we're going to review some of the key financial information that's contained in this sacramentum report and so here's a look at that multi-year projection and this multi-year projection of course is in just summary format and here we're focusing on just our unrestricted Opera accounts so just our discretionary discretionary Revenue sources you can see we've included

270the current year and then we also included the three subsequent years for the current year 2223 you can see we're forecasting and operating surplus of just under a 1.3 million dollars that Surplus contains about 2.8 million dollars in one-time expenses and so when we back out those one-time expenses we're left with a a structural Surplus in the current year of 4.1 million dollars when we move into 2324 you can see the operating Surplus is projected to increase again just under 6.1 million before dropping pretty significantly in fiscal year 2425 to just over five thousand dollars and the reason for the decline in 2425 goes back to that Cola that we talked about earlier of 3.54 percent that coal is not enough to cover the projected declines in enrollment and the attendance rate in that year

271and so we're projecting a year-over-year decrease in lcff funding about 1.8 million dollars and so that's leading to that reduction you see in the Surplus in and then when we got to 2526 you can see we are projecting a deficit of 2.6 million and again that goes back to the fact that our operating expenditures are projected to increase faster than our operating operating revenues in 2526 and so again there are three key reasons that contribute to the general fund operating pressures that begin in 2425 first it's the 3.54 percent estimated coal it's just not enough to cover the offsets and enrollment and our attendance rate in that given year and that's going to trigger year-over-year a decrease in lcff funding about 1.8 million dollars and then on top of that we have cost increases for

272a step in column Health and Welfare benefits and then person stirs pension contributions which are going up on average about three percent per year over the forecast period and then lastly of course in order to be able to maintain a competitive compensation package we know increases in salary will also Place strains on our operating budgets moving forward and so this slide just highlights the all the temporary positions and services that are funded with the one-time covid-19 relief funding and it's important to be able to attract these dollars separately to ensure that those ongoing programs and services are not charged to a one-time funding sources and unfortunately this is one of those areas that districts can get themselves in trouble with if they're not making the required adjustments in those positions and services that are funded

273with one-time dollars and so this is one of those areas that our fiscal Services team monitors really closely as well as our business office and we'll continue to do that and then here's a look at how we project to close out the current year this is for fiscal year 2223 our components of ending fund balance and you can see we're projected to close out with just over 115.6 million or combined General fine of that 56.7 million roughly is in our unrestricted accounts and then just over 59 million in all of our restricted categorical programs we also have that legal restricted reserve for cash in stores that's set aside at just over 317 000 and then in the middle of the slide you can see we set aside some reserves for other commitments which include textbook

274adoptions of 5 million a declining enrollment of 10 million a deficit Mitigation Of just over 3.9 million and again all those restricted categorical programs legal restricted set aside of 59 million we also have a contingency reserve set aside at 18.7 million and that will leave us with a reserve for economic uncertainties of just over 18.7 million dollars or five percent of our total operating budget and next we're just going to take a look at some of those key budget challenges that we Face moving forward as we've shared with the board in the past these are our challenges that are not unique to our district most districts in the state are facing these same issues and so here's a look at some of those of those challenges first we know a declining enrollment continues to be

275a challenge for our district as well as other districts throughout the county throughout the state in the nation for that matter and over the last three years alone our district enrollments declined by about 1850 students and this year enrollment is down by about 370 students over the prior year and that's primarily in the middle and high school grade levels in addition to the enrollment decline our District's attendance rate has declined as well during the pandemic and again remains well below our historical trends since districts are are funded often the number of students that attend school each and every day not actual enrollment this will exacerbate the funding losses in the coming years additionally of course we have increasing cost pressures for things like step and column Health and Welfare benefits and then pers and serves

276pension obligations again we'll Place additional strains on the Budget moving forward and then this slide just highlights those three primary cost drivers that school districts will see in the in the out years as you can see from this chart cost for step and column movement persons there's pension obligations and Health and Welfare benefits they're projected go up just over two and a half percent over the next two years on the other hand when you take a look at our lcff base funding it's expected increase at just under a two percent over that same two-year period And so with our expenditures forecast to rise faster than operating revenues in the next two year that structural Surplus that we've had the current year in projected to have in the subsequent year that will be reduced absent additional

277funding from the state and or reductions we're able to make it the local level and then finally we're just going to wrap wrap up with a look at our budget timeline and then some of the next steps in the budgeting process so again back in mid-December the board had taken action and approved the first interim Report with a positive certification tonight we're asking the board for consideration on approval of the district's second interim financial report again with a positive certification of course this second interim includes the governor's January budget proposal for next fiscal year and then in early June we'll hold the public hearing on our low control accountability plan as well as the adopted budget and then in late June we'll bring back both those items for the board's approval both the lcap and

278the adopted budget the adopted budget is going to be based off the governor's May revised proposal that comes out in mid-may and that proposal includes actual tax collections through the month of April and so that typically provides us a much better guesstimate of what the state budget is going to look like in the coming year this year it's going to be a little bit complicated by the fact that the state extended the tax deadline for some residents in California and so that will yeah that's right yes that's correct and so uh so it will impact uh our revenues and so we'll keep a close eye on the revenue Outlook I know the Department of Finance will be doing the same and so uh with that I just want to open up to questions but before

279I do I do want to say a big thank you to our two departments that worked on the budget our fiscal services department and also our business services office and Phong Tran our director of fiscal services in the audience this evening and Christine and Michelle our director of business services and a special thanks to their teams for all the work that question do we need to start breeding Labradors to make money for the district are we there yet I don't think we have to do that yeah so we've talked about breeding Labradors and having selling eggs getting chickens selling eggs that would be part of our new math when we've hit that point okay anyways um the 2425 Cola yes with inflation and all the things going on that's really low why are we anticipating

280that so the cola assumptions that we receive we get those from school services at California and what they do is they took take a look at the department of finances projections for the cola and they come up with an estimate as well that number that you see the 3.54 is the best guess of what that coal is going to come in and look like for the coming year they they'll adjust that throughout the year if they adjust it several different points well they adjusted 23 24. they did to eight and just to be clear is the cola the the amount that the cost of living increases or is it the amount of funding that we're going to be receiving in addition to what we have now yeah so the cola is it's it's based on

281an inflationary um a factor it's a basically an adjustment sort of like the the CPI and so um that's the that is the adjustment that we'll receive on our lcff funding it's also an adjustment that we'll receive on those categorical programs that remain funded outside the lcff so the special ed program Child Nutrition State preschool mandated block grant all those programs um what you we talked about the attendance rate being down what historically is the attendance rate yeah it's a great 93 what's the great question so the historically here the attendance rates been around the 96 and a half percent uh Mark and so um and it's and like most districts in the state of California during the pandemic that rate went down for most districts in the three percent range and that's about what

282it's gone down for us as well about three percent and so uh and I think it just goes back to the fact that you know the kids still when they're feeling ill they're staying home right and so and unfortunately we're not funded off of those students that don't show up each and every day and so we're funded off of um you know attendance period and so if they don't show up we don't we don't get paid for them um the the reserve for economic uncertainties accounts what would be an event that would cause us to be able to dip into or rather need to yeah it's a great question and so um you know we look at the states the state's budget for next year right um a state budget overall looks really good for

283education but there have been years many years where the education budget gets hit very very hard right and so if we ever got into a situation where we had to make dramatic cuts and we weren't weren't able to make enough Cuts in order to be able to get to a balanced budget that would be one one area that we'd be able to draw on that Reserve there's a lot of safeguards that come into play before we ever get there as soon as we indicate that we're going to have problems meeting our financial obligations we'll have to let the county know that there will be a different certification that will ask the board to certify a qualified certification would be the first step in that process which indicates the district would have problems meeting its obligations

284but well before we get there we'd be having conversations with the board about the financial condition but really it comes down to if you're not able to make the amount of expenditure reductions to balance your budget that's the situation we'd be dipping in but we'd have lots of conversations well before we get to that point well and we have a 60 60 million dollar fund balance so I mean we're we have that to deal with but still foreign we need to be creative I don't like red on that yes yes aside from uh labradors do we have any other comments or questions um I just wanted to talk about um the Arts and Music instructional material block grant what are we anticipating our share of that to be and have we received any of those

285dollars yeah I have to go back and look at how much of it received I know we received at least 50 percent of it and the amount we're expecting to received based on the uh the proposal by the governor with the January budget we're expecting to receive 9.6 million and so I can go back and let you know exactly how much of that we received is that included in the second interim yeah so we budgeted the 9.6 million and so and what we typically would do we have to record the the revenue estimate and so we recorded the 9.6 and then what we'll do is we'll budget out over the course of the the spending guidelines on that Grant expenses that match that 9.6 million and we'll adjust that after the board approves the the

286expenditure plan and that will bring that to you at a future board meeting when do you think we're going to be approving that spend the money I think we're April April April okay thanks thank you a lot of work thank you thank you to you and your team yes all of you out there yeah okay folks uh if there's no more questions Let's uh go ahead and take a vote on this all in favor aye aye all right motion carries five oh thank you sir I'll make a motion to adopt the district 39800.1 effective March 15 2023 through June 30th 2024. second okay motion buttons please second by Mr Frazier uh Mr Giordano one more thing thank you based on new Provisions that are included in the current your budget act and detailed and Education

287Code section 39 800.1 a school districts are required to develop a plan describing the transportation services it will offer to students and how prioritized plan transportation services for students in transitional kindergarten kindergarten grades one through six and students who are low income this plan must be adopted by The District's governing board on or before April 1st of 2023 and then updated annually by April 1st each year thereafter with that said it's my pleasure to invite our transportation director Mr Richard dimenas to the podium who will present The District transportation plan including information on all the new requirements and then feedback that we received from our different stakeholder groups Mr Jimenez good evening so here's a look at tonight's agenda first we'll provide an overview of the district's Transportation plan and discuss key requirements on how

288the district will meet the requirements we'll discuss the requirements in California Education Code 39800.1 which includes the following components development of the transportation plan describing services offered transportation service requirements for students with disabilities mckinney-vento and Foster youth priority transportation for grades tk6 and low-income students also included on the agenda will be stakeholder feedback and key Transportation data we'd like to give you an overview of the transportation plan requirements as defined in California Education Code 398-001.1 which was added as part of the 2223 budget act which states that eligible local education agencies develop a plan to provide home to school transportation report specific data about the impact of The Homeschool plan include feedback from various stakeholder groups and formally adopt the plan on or before April 1st the transportation plan includes data such as expenditure details

289information about ridership numbers of students transported and other data related to Transportation the plan also includes how Transportation will be will be prioritized for TK through sixth grade McKinney vintel Foster Youth and unduplicated students as a significant component of the transportation plan we will discuss transportation for students with disabilities mckinney-vento Foster youth students whose individualized education program requires Transportation will continue to receive services at no charge making eventual students where transportation is a barrier to accessing their Educational Services will continue receiving Transportation at no cost as well in accordance with the new requirement beginning with the 23-24 school year unduplicated students will be eligible to receive free transportation services within Transportation eligible zones identified in the plan unduplicating students can apply online for free bus passes or in person at The District's transportation office next

290we'll discuss prioritizing transportation for students in grades TK to six and low-income students an effort to provide easy access to Access Transportation Services in July of each year all students can apply for transportation transportation services online and obtain a bus pass for the upcoming school year based on new requirements and consistent with best best practice transportation services will be prioritized for students who are in grades TK to six and that are within eligible Transportation zones lastly in August of each school year Transportation staff will continue to provide community outreach Forum at a location within the community to assist families with the bus pass application process in this slide we show a brief description of Transportation data included in the plan currently there are 13 home to school routes and 48 routes that provide transportation for

291students with special needs we're also currently transporting over 2 300 students daily which includes 1400 general education students and 870 students that are students with special needs of the general education writers 81 percent are identified as unduplicated while 52 percent of the writers that are students with special needs are identified as unduplicated next we'll give an overview of stakeholder feedback staff distributed our transportation survey to District stakeholders including students parents classified staff certificated staff administrators as well as local Transit and air quality agencies the survey was distributed on February 3rd and closed on February 9th and the district received over 1700 survey responses top response categories from the survey include requests for free and or additional transportation services for specific programs and additional drivers to support High School activity trips the result of the survey

292helped guide decision making during the development of the transportation plan outlining services offered lastly based on stakeholder feedback received staff will review recommendations for the board to consider first although the requirement is to provide free Transportation only to unduplicated students staff recommends the board consider providing free transportation to all students that reside in eligible zones by offering free transportation to all students that are ineligible zones this may cause an increase in ridership and the need for additional routes based on current seating capacity staff does not anticipate the need to add more than two to three routes next staff is recommending to investigate the hiring of additional bus drivers to support school activity trips and reduce Reliance on contracted services in order to support school activity trips in-house and reduce Reliance on contracted services staff estimates

293the need to hire approximately five additional drivers this will allow us to accommodate trips for athletic and extracurricular activities which are which we had to contract out with private Charter companies at a much higher cost because the charters have a minimum charge for field trips including a fuel surcharge fee the district costs to complete a school activity trip is estimated to be approximately 55 to 65 percent less than it would cost a chartered company to do the same trip as an added benefit the additional drivers would allow athletic groups to utilize buses at a later time minimizing the amount of class time that would be missed with that we would like to open it to any questions the board may have I have a question regarding elop so we're going to be doing a lot

294of after school programming what does that look like for students who are staying after school and those yeah that's something that we would definitely have to investigate on what the outlook for transportation needs would be along with Dr Lopez and executive cabinet yeah because if kids can't participate because they have to leave that kind of negates yeah we need to figure out make sure they can stay and how do we get them home if they're struggling correct definitely something we can investigate so um an employee who drives a bus driver in our district brought it to the attention um about the electric buses that um let me see that that we have is it true that we're trying to look at renting a new lot to store these buses and that they can't make it

295up hills and the charge has only been good for one route and like there's multi like they the charging isn't that great so you can maybe go a route and then you have to go back and charge and then it takes all day so I'm just curious if this is something that if we're having to I'd rather hire more bus drivers than go rent a lot to charge electric buses and so I'm wondering if this is something that we need to look at I don't know what our program's about what the electric buses but before charging constantly and we have to look for New Lots and all the stuff should we just hire the five people and maybe get some more gas buses or is this what is this true is this what we're experiencing

296it is not true we're we're currently we have enough room in our lot to currently accommodate for any buses that we receive new early adoption of the electric buses did have a minimum like route of about 80 miles um that's about we only have 13 of our routes that go above 80 miles um so the new buses that we're getting have a 210 kilowatt battery pack which on average if you look at it averages about 1.7 kilowatt per regular mile so um it can go up anywhere from again depending on driver habit anywhere from about 110 to 130 miles per route so it's well uh you know it can accommodate for our routes that are currently set but um early adoption yeah there was some issues there was the issues but they've been worked out

297yeah and so we're not looking for a new lot just to charge the buses correct we're actually looking into a charge ready program with uh so Southern California Edison to look at uh infrastructure and we're looking at some DC fast Chargers which will charge our vehicles at a much faster rate and so we still have seven electric buses correct seven buses that are coming correct and and I'm just curious is there is there are they doing like like down somewhere at night bringing like our Sports people back yeah uh we were uh kind of uh patiently waiting to see what the technical because the technology is so new and we also saw these issues when CNG was adopted in the late 90s early 2000s and so um the buses that were were going we chose

298to to go with um have a good reputation so far uh Moreno Valley Unified has adopted those same particular buses and there you have a pretty good success rate out of 38 buses at the time when I went to visit they had three buses down but we I don't see our district adopting fully electric because of for that same concern um you know we we don't want to commit ourselves to something and be limited and even currently right now Hyrule Patrol is not letting our drivers test in fully electric buses so we will have to still keep other fuels such as propane gasoline unfortunately in California um Cummings who was a big manufacturer of our natural gas vehicles or engines they just didn't discontinued in January their natural gas yes and so we should really

299see in the state of California them forcing us to either go gasoline propane or electric yeah I just want to say I love the uh the hiring of new bus drivers dealing with especially with the sports and the extra routes I think that's the fiscal responsibility of saying we can hire more people pay less than Charters and provide jobs for more people so I love that my question is where are these additional routes do you anticipate them being so at this time with with a us uh going through fully for the students that live in transportation eligible zones for offering free Transportation what I anticipate right now where our current buses are full is for the Valencia High School routes that's where we're really impacted we do have some some room for the Rio Vista

300the more Sprouts even in the times routes but um if anything I see that being the potential impact for full free Transportation at no cost thank you very much you know I'm excited the uh new bus drivers that they'd hire would still have to maintain a Class B absolutely a Class B with a passenger air brake endorsement and the school bus certificate so we would look to um hiring uh already certified drivers but we also are starting classes for behind the wheel training as well excellent thank you that's awesome okay uh with that let's go ahead and take a vote all those in favor aye aye pose motion carries 5-0 thank you so much okay that now will bring us to our board discussion now was there ever a a stopping point that we were

301discussing here we can't make a decision on the calendar what's our deadline well the sooner we do it the better off we are all right I think certainly we should make plans before the end of this school year whatever it's going to do I'm happy with whatever the board prefers on this I think it's probably a 10-minute presentation on whatever you would want to say I think I'm okay oh I'm okay with tabling itself because it's not going well it's not gonna it's we can't do anything currently and we it would be nice to get through the rest of this if we can bring it back in April it's not going to impact what we're doing we already did number two so we're just a concern so I mean I don't know I know we

302do I know I know I know okay so do I understand that we're gonna table this discussion is that correct yeah it's fine either you'll knock it out either either is fine but it it isn't going to make a difference tonight we could wait until April yeah because it just gives them more time to create all the things related to it am I correct it's helpful yeah we have to is your feedback on do you want us to move forward or not I mean we give you the data on this which you I know you've seen but you haven't had a chance to discuss it yet so um we're looking for feedback is that thing we should stop working on or is there something we should continue working on that's the feedback we're looking for

303I want you to keep working on it well I went to the keep working on it I mean moving moving it Forward I mean despite the presentation I've I've read through it I mean I'm still happy to hear it but I think that means we should hear it no look your call folks okay go ahead that is an excellent call all right go ahead I'm gonna try to do it quickly for us okay uh we have a presentation uh I know ready to go on this of course we discussed this back in December and you asked us to get more information about it so that's what tonight's meeting is all about um and so I'm acknowledging the the hour and trying to move forward here again it was brought forward by several members of our

304community to move the calendar for by either one or two weeks um we've uh we start late compared to other districts we we know that um and in fact we're the latest Unified District in Orange County to start and so I think that was more more reason for that and so just again this is a little different way of showing the same data these are when other districts uh begin their school year uh other unified districts rather begin their school year and you can see that um we're at the tail in end of that comparison and then again so we typically we look at the calendar each and every year for the future get far enough in advance for parents to make their plans and for educators to make their plans but this year we're

305looking at community community feedback it's a little different process for us and so I want to share that feedback with you again just a reminder this was already said by the board the earliest we can make a change would be the 24-25 school year there will not be a change in next year's calendar it's been approved nothing is changing then I won't say it again so parts of making a calendar with an earlier school date and it was said it's in public comments earlier too but if we move it by one week or two weeks the first semester is probably um is going to end before winter recess and you'll see the data later on on this this is the most compelling data we have for making this change because our our high school students

306in particular could have a stress-free winter break and that is uh again having experienced it before it's a big deal to kids and a big deal to families something I've been addressing with some of our teachers out there with a confusion on it is the first semester will probably be shorter than the second semester it could be four days shorter it could be eight days shorter so you could have a 82 Day first semester and I uh what's the math on that 98 day second semester um that's okay I mean I mean you're required to have a 60-hour semester as far in advance of that it might mean you teach a little more of what you you're teaching the first semester you might teach that in the second semester it happens there can be adaptations

307to it and finally the the part that's hard it's just reflected the data too is during the transition summer or transition Summers the The Summer's one week shorter and there's no I mean when you're making that change that's the pain of making the change and then once you get through that change Summers go back to being normal Summers um so we did stay cool uh stakeholder surveys of employee employees our students our parents and Guardians and our community members and you can see here the numbers that we uh we had 30 almost 4 000 responses 870 employees 600 students 2 346 parents and Guardians and 49 community members all who had access to the survey and so we asked four basic questions uh the first was just a general question do you support moving the

308school year to an earlier start date after seeing some of the reasons for and or and and against it the preponderant reason was to the thought on a scale one to five one being strongly disagree to five being strongly agree five was the most popular answer one was the next most popular and then you can see four three and two being next in popularity if you look at that in simple mathematical terms 59 percent only agree or agree with that move 32 percent strongly disagree or disagree with that move so it's a strong majority there the second question was oh I'm sorry breaking this down the first question by by different groups we broke it down by employees by parents and Guardians by students and by community members and you can see the data there

309still for each of the groups um strongly agree was the most popular answer on that um and so it is consistent we were asking the question will we see one group be really out of line with the rest and we're not seeing that we're seeing the groups being in alignment of course there's differences but in rough alignment with each other um Sovereign question number two is if you what are the best reasons for moving the school year calendar an earlier start date um we asked we looked at the reasons we gave in there and I'll just go to the top three reasons on that the top three number one was like I was talking about ending the first semester prior to the winter break number two was being more in line with other school districts

310in Orange County and three was more time to prepare for students uh help for students to prepare for exams like the AP and IB exams so those were our top answers there the third question was the opposite what are the reasons for not moving uh the schedule to an earlier date and we had three reasons on there and those in order of preference were the number one popular answer was I don't see any negatives second was the summer will be shorter and there will be the move doesn't Benefit Elementary or middle school students as much as high school students and as I said last time the that is we know that to be true and yet we also know to be true the elementary and middle school students will become high school students and so

311that's a part of that as well and then finally oh yeah I did get several emails from community members wishing we had offered more choices for uh for not moving the calendar and some of the reasons people suggest you were it's nice having a later start because popular summer venues are less crowded in late late August um it's nice because students can find and schedule work in those last few months of the summer because other other students have gone back to school it's nice because it's easier to schedule vacations towards the end because again that's more available as well and that students will be on campus for longer during the hot weather uh in in mid to late August and so those were some additional input that people provided in their emails to me on

312that um finally we asked the question to have them choose one of three options whether they wanted to go two weeks earlier one week earlier stay the same and the data we saw on that we got a pie graph here for that or the most popular answer is two weeks the second most popular answer is one week excuse me no change and the third most popular answer is one week but if you add the or the orange and the red together with the you know moving it somewhat there's something you know there's that's a again a preponderance which Echoes what we saw in question number one and the breakdown for this is similar we're seeing groups across the Spectrum uh breaking two weeks in general as their as their Top Choice with that um so

313along with that uh I I think that and I do appreciate all the survey responses we had so as I was saying earlier um uh I'm we're very interested in hearing the board's Direction on this um if if the board is is saying we should move ahead with this idea of starting the year earlier we'll get to work and work with our employee groups because it does impact employee schedules and we have to make sure we work with them on that gather more data if necessary and come back to you when we're ready with that information I am all for moving it two weeks I agree I concur I I'm fine with it as well my my issue is that we're like I feel like to appease because obviously like I have kids in Fall

314Sports so we get the CIF break and then we're back like so there's no difference and there's a lot of people in this room and who deal with that as well in high school but my thing is is to make up the two weeks for the elementary and the Middle School who aren't you know parents that just are used to having to hang out around the summertime is there like an extra week at like remember if we pull it back that first two weeks and they lose the two weeks of summer is it possible to make it up to them during that year can you have an additional week at Thanksgiving can you have an additional week at Spring break can we do something to make it up so we just don't just lose two

315weeks that would be my thing if the scheduling gurus can make something like that happen so you know you lost your two weeks at summer but maybe you have an additional vacation time throughout the year um to make up that time and I think that would be a good thing so as a one as a one-time suggestion because we're pulling it back for those two weeks so that one year let's make it up to our family somewhere in there and then we're all caught up the following year but isn't it the two weeks is it one week the first year and then it's a two-year process no it's you know it would be two weeks or one week one year and then one week the next so we're saying a two-week we're saying we're going

316to pull it back two weeks so the only thing about that idea is if we pull it back two weeks and then we give them extra time that means they have two summers that are shortened the first one's more shortened the second one was less shortened but if we don't give any extra time then they get a norm they just have one bad summer and then it's back to normal summer I like I see what you're saying but then we have to have that on the back end yeah right on the survey it says over two years two two weeks over two years so one week the first year you move it um forward one week and then the second year it's the second week can we do a survey another one to ask that

317question yes we can and I did get some Community feedback on that too why didn't we have that option are we and the the reason was just to keep the choices simple so if we think of two weeks of the direction we can certainly uh do you know get more information about that or start working with our employee groups on on on that process as well if we totally rip off the Band-Aid and do two weeks in one year which I don't know if our employees would appreciate that or not that would be a question for them we could add like a third week during the Christmas break yeah because that's what orange does that's why their date they don't get out as early as you would think and we could add that that extra

318week so that it's at the beginning of the break so it doesn't end up bumping out at the end does that make their summer shorter than us by a week though I think it's just that first year because you're pulling the two weeks back and so you're like losing two weeks your Advocate you know you're losing two weeks because you're going back early so if you can and then having a third year holidays and then you just start and then you just start again and then you're just normal it'd just be that first year if I'm thinking but you're still but you're still lengthening the actual days of the school year if you've inserted breaks in the middle correct forever no just for them for one year okay but you said orange does it orange

319does it every year and they they start school according to this um August 17th and they take a three week Christmas break do they end at the same time we do and then I don't we don't have that information but I believe they end that doesn't seems that doesn't help yeah I think it might be in our other yeah does it say when they end on that one Orange Unified ends um June 8th okay so it's still longer yeah you move it up two weeks and you only move it back one week I think our elementary school kids and people who aren't at The District 24 7 you know with high school athletes and students and stuff I think if we could just give some people a break that first year they won't fail like

320the people who are in the 40 who feel like they're like really upset that we're doing this if we can just give something to them on the back end but that's the same as just doing one week a year another thing just to throw out there too is uh the shorter the summer is the harder it is for our maintenance department to get the schools ready so that's a good point that's always a challenge too so we'll look at all those factors talk start talking with our employee groups do some additional survey work and come back to you with some ideas okay absolutely yeah it sounds like that's the the idea get to work it's all it's all working that's okay that's okay excellent okay uh since we already did number two we're gonna we're

321gonna move on his idea was that somebody's smart um we're gonna go into our consent calendar so the actions proposed for the consent calendar items are consistent with approved practices of the district and are deemed routine in nature the trustees were received board agenda backup information in advance of the scheduled meeting and are prepared to vote with the knowledge on the Block vote items so at this time let's see it looks like there's 51 of them are there any items to be pulled I was there an email okay I didn't see the what the 103 was what was the 103 about was it tavernady well what what was page 103 about because it just said approve the professional development service proposal okay got it all right then all I all I have is 20 seconds

322okay so we will pull number 26 and I'm gonna go ahead and need a motion for the remainder oh my God I'll second excellent all right folks Miss Anderson okay so let's go back to uh number 26 with let's take a vote I'm sorry I'm sorry um all those in favor aye aye any opposed all right motion passes oh and uh now back to number 26 Miss blades I'll make a motion to approve a ratify the independent contractor agreements ed services as listed in accordance with board policy number four one two four retention consult sentence a second okay the one that I was going to pull is the happiness is now um several years ago we had the issue and then last year the owner of the company he came and there was a bit

323of a dispute with the parents and him he wasn't working for happinesses now but he was actually here for Kata but some of the Catholic I thought it was Kata okay Castle or cattle whichever one it was and so um a lot of our parents were very upset about it and so I just think we might be able to find give a little bit of a break and uh because it just seems like there's just been you know some issues the last few years that we've had this come not saying that it's not a good program but I just feel like maybe there's something better for now did you did you say that he um was on he came for Canada but he wasn't working for happiness is now at this point but he came

324you know it was the owner or the director of happiness is now and it caused a huge issue if do you recall the emails last year I recalled that but only when it prior to it being handled right yeah I heard yeah so I just I'm just bringing it for forward I think that maybe we should just continue to take a little break from that the issues that occurred in the first uh presentation that they had has that been re it was resolved then is it still currently resolved and any comments on that from what I understand regarding the happiness is now assembly there was yes one situation that the concerns about which concerns were raised and that was addressed since then you know for all assemblies our principles when they do contract with an

325outside company they do request a full agenda which is what we have been doing with happinesses now and we have been successfully using them for I believe about the past maybe 16 months and I believe some some of you I think you as well trusty blades actually attended one one of the assemblies to view it but you know as far as I know we haven't had any concerns in the last 16 months so the stipulation that's in place is the principle of saying we see this ahead of time and that's been they requested a copy of the agenda on all material that will be presented at the assembly since it's been revolved resolved I don't have any issues with it well that issue is resolved but then we had the one last year involving him

326personally in the Middle School remember the Middle School what was it ASB with all the parents that were so upset and so that's my that that's my is that that's my issue is like I don't you know if we continue to bring somebody back who's caused issues now twice is that a good thing oh do we know if he is coming back or a different employee who doesn't I would I would want to I we could absolutely verify that I could get more information for you on that I I believe there are other individuals and and I have been told as well that that particular individual has has been out um yeah it's the other one the the head person if the if the board would allow us to you know just get a little

327bit more information to present to you if that if that was if that is a concern that's being expressed about a specific individual that's a whole nother matter versus the the happiness is now assembly and and the program that they offer but I I was under the impression that they were you know either individuals who presented but we I can absolutely clarify that so should we table this until we get more information is this set to be assembly tomorrow no okay no you're fine no good that's great I believe that one of the assemblies actually is going to be uh postponed to a later date in May for one of the schools uh so that I believe we have some time how many assemblies in the last 16 months have been successfully executed through happinesses

328now I don't have an exact number but I've never get that number for you I would say you know at least three but I I don't want to be quoted on that okay it sounds like uh did we want to table this one until we get more information if we can bring back the happiness now but I think you just want to strike that from this item and approve the rest of them correct and and and directors to bring that back to you at a later date yeah yeah that's great that's perfect okay so we'll strike happiness is now for the next meeting we'll talk about that but the rest will be yeah correct okay okay that sounds like a plan okay number 26 has been struck moving on no just the buttons but we

329still have to vote number one on 26th so it's an amended motion on number 26. amended motion on number 26. okay all those in favor aye any opposed all right question passes what's that this I see a German yes it is Sir okay um at this point um see I make a motion on adjournment uh tonight we're going to be a journeying in memory of Nicole robecki who passed away Friday February 24th she was a developed mother wife and bright light to so many Nicole was a child care teacher with the Brookhaven expanded learning program for five and a half years her Gentle Spirit and kind heart were contributing factors to how beloved she was by students parents staff and the pylusd community she will be deeply missed in addition we'd also like to close

330the memory of ninth grade Esperanza student satosha Stacia thank you Hera Norris I can't say the last name levero thank you to know stasha was to love her she had an infectious personality her intellect sweetheart and Sly sense of humor made her a campus favorite she overcame so many challenges in her short life with perseverance and spunk her heart silly smile and kindness touched so many lives she will be missed district-wide I'll second your motion okay all those invoke all those in favor aye all right motion carry we adjourn in their memory at 10 56.