001you call the meeting to order. We have a quorum. The meeting is being webcast live and recorded. The recording or webcast may capture images and sounds of those attending the meeting. Uh I'll now announce the close session topics of discussion. They are recommended expulsions, recommended suspended expulsions, [clears throat] public employee assignment reassignment and appointment. Public employee discipline dismissal release and complaints conference with labor negotiator. conference with real property negotiators. Anticipated litigation with two cases. These two matters involve facts and circumstances that might result in litigation against the district, but which facts and circumstances are not yet known to the potential plaintiff or plaintiffs. And finally, public employee evaluation for superintendent. Um, let's see. Public comment on any closed session item will be heard at this time. Pursuant to board policy, the board may limit individual
002comments to no more than three minutes and individual topics to 20 minutes. It is recommended you begin by you begin your comments by stating your name. Is there any public comment at this time? Seeing no, uh we anticipate that close session will take approximately 1 hour. However, if additional time is required, the regular session may be called to order after 5:30 p.m. The board will now adjourn to close session. We will now convene the regular session. I apologize for our late arrival here. We had a very full closed session as you'll see in just a minute. Uh Alando Moran will now serve as the will serve as the Spanish interpreter for this meeting. Meeting attendees who would like to listen to the Spanish interpretation of proceedings, please pick up headphones from the table located in
003the back of the room. This announcement will now be shared in Spanish. This meeting is being webcast live and recorded. The recording or webcast may capture images and sounds of those attending the meeting. Members of the public who would like to provide public comment on items listed on tonight's agenda. We recommend you fill out the public comment form, the green form located on the table in the northeast entrance to the room. Please hand the completed form to executive assistant Licia Weatherford before the item comes up on the agenda. She's in the back of the meeting room with her hand raised. We recommend you complete a separate form for each agenda item on which you which you would like to comment. Members of the public providing public comment, please use the microphone on the stand located
004in the front of the room. Not right now. We'll let you know when. 3.4. Uh board member Jackie Gabby will now lead us in the pledge of allegiance. Please stand. Okay. Now, I will read out the items uh or the actions taken in closed session. The board is excited to announce that Jessica Paredo has been appointed to the position of principal of Annie R. Mitchell Elementary School for the 2627 school year. [applause] Miss Parto currently serves as the principal of Highland Elementary School. She began her career in education at Lamore Union Elementary School District where she taught elementary students for seven years. She later joined Vice Unified as an intervention teacher serving in that role for two years. She then transitioned into administration serving as an assistant principal for three years and has served as
005a principal for a total of 10 years. Miss Jessica Para earned a bachelor of arts in psychology from California State University Fresno and a master's degree in curriculum and instruction from CSU Bakersville. She holds a multiple subject teaching credential and an administrative services credential. On behalf of the board of trustees, congratulations to Miss Jessica Paro. [applause] The board is also excited to announce that Britney Guerrero has been appointed to the position of principal of Highland Elementary School for the 202627 school year. [applause] Miss Guerrero currently serves as the principal of Washington Elementary School. Prior to her appointment, Miss Guerrero served as the assistant principal at Conor Elementary School for two years. Before moving into administration, she taught elementary students with Vicil Unified for five years and previously taught at Exter Unified for six years. Miss
006Britney Guerrero earned a bachelor of arts in liberal studies, pardon me, liberal arts and a master's degree in educational leadership and administration from California State University, Fresno. She holds a multiple subject teaching credential and an administrative services credential. On behalf of the board of trustees, congratulations to Miss Britney Guerrero. [applause] Okay. In closed session, on a motion by board member Viegas and a second by board member Gamoyan, the board agreed by a vote unanimously by a vote of six yeses and no nos with one absent to appoint Dr. Jesus Gonzalez to the position of principal of Mount Whitney High School for the 2026 2027 school year. [applause] Dr. Dr. Gonzalez currently serves as the principal at Farmersville High School where he has served for the last two years. He began his career in education in
007Fresno Unified School District where he taught bilingual primary and intermediate students for six years. Prior to his current position, Dr. Gonzalez worked for Vicil Unified for a total of 14 years including two years as the principal of Ivanhill Elementary School, one year as the principal of Ridgeview Middle School and a total of seven years as an assistant principal at Redwood High School and to Visitero Middle School. During his time with VUSD, he also taught history and AVID for four years. Before joining VUSD, Dr. Gonzalez worked at the Tallery County Office of Education where he served as an area administrator for one year and as migrant resource coordinator for three years. Dr. Gonzalez earned a bachelor of arts and liberal studies, a master of arts and education administration and supervision, and a doctorate of education from
008California State University, Fresno. He holds a multiple subject teaching credential and an administrative services credential. On behalf of the board of trustees, congratulations to Dr. Jesus Gonzalez. [applause] In close session, on a motion by board member Belt and a second by board member Goyan, the board agreed unanimously by a vote of six yes, no nays, and one absent uh to approve resolution of release and reassignment of certificated administrators as follows. Employee ID number 21328. I think that's it. During close session, on a motion by board member Gabby and a second by board member D. Young, the board voted to order the dismissal of a classified employee number 17925 in the position of cafeteria worker 2 by a vote of six yeses, no nos, and one absent. Finally, in closed session, on a motion by board
009member Gamoyan and a second by board member D. Young. Young, the board agreed unanimously by a vote of six yeses and no nos with one absent to approve a settlement agreement with employee number 21438. Okay. Revisions to the enclosure items and adoption of the board meeting agenda tonight. There are revised item enclosures as follows. 4.1, 4.2, 6.14, 6.16, 6.31, 11.1, 11.3, 11.5, and 11.6. The following items have been removed from the consent agenda. 6.9 Memorandum of understanding between VUSD and California School Employees Association. New class. I need to read all of that out. Megan Do I need to read all that out? >> If it's clear from the uh from the item numbers, no. Or you could abbreviate it. >> Okay, got it. So 6.9U between VUSD and CSEA, new classified position, sub services technician.
0106.10ou between VUSD and California School Employees Association, New Classified Position Student Welfare and Attendance Technician, Spanish. 6.11U between VUSD and California School Employees Association. New classified position after school program specialist andou 6.12 between VUSD and CSEA layoff processes. So sorry went all the way there. Do I have a motion to adopt the board meeting agenda? >> I'll move. >> Motion by Mr. Belt. >> I'll second. >> Second by Miss Gabby. Call for the vote. >> Motion carries. Student board member voting yes, six yes, one absent. >> All right, that leads us into a more entertaining portion of the agenda for sure. Student performance uh Redwood High School Jazz Band. I introduce to you folks executive director of student services, Natalie Garza. >> Good evening, board superintendent Shrim. We are really excited to welcome our Redwood
011High School jazz combo. So, this is a small group of five students that go above and beyond by meeting outside of traditional class time to prepare for community concerts and competitive music festivals. Highlights from the year include earning a superior rating at the Fresno State Jazz Festival. Board members, we invite you to leave your seats and step in front so that you may have a better view. [music] Heat. Heat. [music] >> [music] [bell] [music] >> I'm [music] a [music] heat. >> [music] >> I am [music] heat. [music] Oh, [applause] [music] [music] Heat. Heat. [music] >> [music] [music] >> Heat. Heat. >> [music] [music] >> Heat. [music] Heat. >> [music] [music] >> Heat. [music] Heat. [music] >> [music] [applause] >> Item 4.1, spotlight on good things happening in the district. Presenter is Superintendent Kirk Trump. >>
012Good evening, uh, President Odo and board members and our community. Thank you for being here and again, congratulations to our Redwood students. Uh, always enjoy, uh, beginning our board meetings with our student uh, entertainment. great way to remind us why we're here. And as we get into the spotlight, I just want to begin real quick with uh just appreciation for uh especially our bus drivers here recently. Uh you know, we've had a lot of um foggy days, which I think we've had more this past month or so than in my first three years combined. Um and so I know that's uh you know uh creates a lot of challenges not only for our drivers, but our families and staff and others. And so I just want to thank everyone for being safe and doing what
013they can to get to school safely and and hopefully our weather pattern will shift. Uh but shout out to our bus drivers who uh work in those conditions and and working to make sure our students get to school. So thank you for that. And again, we'll hope the weather shifts and and uh we can move out of that. Uh starting with spotlight on some of our sites, our adult school midyear graduate, excuse me, graduation happened last month. Uh we had 25 students graduate with their equivalency. 48 high school diplomas were distributed and 257 students were se celebrated for completing a short-term career CTE program for the fall semester. We're proud of our adult school offering a wide range of programs for our community and these individuals for their accomplishments. Obviously, this is kindness and love
014week for for some reason. Um, several elementaryaries are celebrating kindness week and all four comprehensive high schools are celebrating love week this week. To the left you see Riverway students celebrated by writing positive notes to one another as well as photos from the high schools focused on spreading kindness, compassion, and unity across our campuses. It's always great to see our schools keeping students engaged during the semester. Our future farmers of America to the left, three Golden West students showed some hard work pays at the Great Westerner livestock show. Congratulations to Brenda for winning fifth overall market heer, Carly for winning second place AOC market and Kaye for fifth place in the black beef market. To the right over the weekend, LD Amante FFA team attended the citrus judging B team high third high team in
015the entire state of California. We have incredible FFA teams across our district and always love to see what they're doing. Congratulations to these students, their teams, and their teachers. A few weeks back, LDante made an impressive climb from eighth place to third overall in our mock trial, advancing to the semi-finals, which took place this weekend. Ultimately, congratulations to Redwood, who won the 2026 Toary County Mock Trial Championship. Redwood will represent Tallery County at the state finals in March and we look forward to getting an update then. Also proud of Redwood High School's uh Win who and Isabella Woo for winning the courtroom artist competition and Diane Damos and Lily Ruiz of Eldiamonte for winning courtroom journal journalist competition each advancing to the state finals. Future Business Light, [clears throat] excuse me, Future Business Leaders of
016America sectional title. For the 41st time in school history and 13th year in a row, Redwood FBA brought home the Doris Low sweep stakes title at the FBLA Central Section Leadership Conference. 28 schools from the Central Valley traveled to Redwood to participate in this event. 119 Rangers participated, appeared, and they appeared 95 times in the top 10. had 20 students who placed in the top 10 twice and more than 80 of them will be attending the state this April. Congratulations to Redwood. Continuing here are distributive education clubs of America also known as DECA. Continuing this year, NorCal DECA had over,200 students competing and 35 students representing Golden West High School Business and Finance Academy. Several students won in the top 10 for a variety of categories including marketing, entrepreneurialship, management. Congratulations to all these students,
017especially Ashley Zela, Destiny Romero for winning third place in roleplay and entrepreneurship and uh Gracie Luis for winning first place in roleplay hotel and lodging management. Continuing some of our students shining here. LDonte High School and our academ and the county academic decathlon team six in Vicelia. They took second place with nearly 33,000 points. The students on the screen received top scores in economics interview speech and including a $300 scholarship for Brilan Rquo. Several other students took silver in similar categories. Congratulations to these students on their incredible accomplishments. Spotlight on our visual performing arts. Always an exciting time of year when our schools come together and put on their uh spring plays, musicals. A few have taken place since we met last, including Willy Wonka Jr. at Oak Grove Elementary School, supported by the PTA.
018Something Rotten at Greens at Green Acres Middle School. Mount Whitney performed Beetlejuice and Redwood performed Anastasia this past weekend. Great job to these talented students on their incredible performances. Uh, our students are not the only ones shining bright on stage, but also on the field. LDE earned the CIF Central Section Division 3 Traditional Competitive Cheer Championship. Redwood Boys Wrestling won the EIL Championship for the fourth year in a row. Golden West Girls Wrestling won the EIL Championship with 13 of 13 girls advancing to the finals. Eight finished first place. That's amazing. and Golden West boys earned the EIL championship and their eighth straight league championship. Being a student athlete is not easy. It takes grit, determination, organization, and focus to maintain good standing and GPA and excel on the field. Congratulations to these teams for
019their incredible season. It also takes great adults and great support around our students. And so, we're pleased to share a spotlight on staff success. Coach Allen, and I believe he is here this evening. If uh if he's here, stay. YES, [applause] Coach Allen, and you may have seen this recently uh locally uh in our paper, wins Vicelia Times Delta Coach of the Year for the 2526 school year. Um this award is given to Tallery County's most outstanding high school football coach. And coach Allen, of course, is here tonight. A couple of highlights from the season. Coach Allen and his team orchestrated an offense that set a new school record for the most points scored in a single season with 470, an average of 39.1 points per game. However, even greater are the life skills he
020works in incorporating into his coaching to help his student athletes focus on community service like planning, mental health, and financial literacy. Congratulations, Coach Allen. Thank you for the work you did with our group of students. Let's give them another ROUND OF APPLAUSE. [applause] ON TO THE NEXT SEASON. YES. Continuing success of our staff. We're so proud. We have multiple honores from our association of California school administrators straighters region. Our staff listed on the screen are exceptional and have made incredible contributions to the systems and programs that help students become future ready. We see Drew Lady and Yolanda will be moving on to represent our region at the ASA conference later this year. Congratulations to all four of these individuals for winning different administrator uh career tech uh type leaders uh of the year. So congratulations
021and I know all of them are here tonight in the audience as well. [applause] Moving on to our PTA lunchon which was just held last week. Our district PTA hosted its annual lunchon for site presidents and principles. One of our strategic plan goals is to ensure every school has an active parent association, and we're making progress, including the addition of three new sitebased PTA chapters in recent months. This event celebrates partnership, collaboration, and the vital role plant families play in schools. We're grateful to our district PTA and the parent leaders for their continued commitment to our schools and school communities. Also in in board, this is one when we uh expanded this programming recently at a meeting, uh I was asked, you know, how can we continue to share updates on this? And so I'm
022pleased tonight to talk about some of the impact of our winter math inter session. As we shared, Mount Whitney High School launched an integrated math one winter inter session, combining excellent teacher instruction with our paper grow tutoring to support students entering the second semester. Now, while we started with a small group, 12 students uh participated, every student showed growth and all passed math 1, which means they're on the road to recovery and not going to have to retake a course. This is essential because it keeps students on the A throughG pathway required for UC, CSU, and private university eligibility. Also in a couple of other uh notes, our grow program is now in its second year at Four Creeks Elementary where we continue and of course they led a lot of our district last year
023in math. We're continuing to see that growth from beginning of the year to the middle of the year. Fifth grade students showed accelerated progress toward grade level with fifth grade doubling the number of students at or near grade level from 14 to 28%. and grade six reducing the number of students two or more grade levels below by nearly half from 52% to 28%. So, we're continuing to accelerate learning, closing opportunity gaps, and shifting students into stronger academic pathways and we'll continue to provide updates uh on the return on our investment in this uh impactful program as we go through the year. Also spotlighting on the district our afterchool uh expansion and programming. I'd like to take a few minutes tonight to spotlight something that's become one of the most engaging parts of a child's day
024in VUSD, our afterchool program. Just a few weeks ago, years ago, excuse me, after school looked really different. Programs were smaller, seats were limited, and options were often one-sizefits-all. Families appreciated what was available, but the need was much greater. Then the state stepped in with extended learning opportunity programming and funding uh to districts all across the state of California, opening the door to expanded learning that supports academics, belonging, enrichment, and what followed just wasn't growth. It was a deeper commitment to meeting students needs. Today, after school meets students where they are. A student may go to tutoring, join a STEM club, find confidence through art, recreation, athletics, or enrichment. And we hear from families that after school is where their child feels successful. And for many working families, it's what makes stability and school success
025possible. Because of this, our participation has grown from 2,484 students just two years ago to more than 5,100 this year. Our investment has grown gone from 5 million to 30 million. That growth reflects trust from our families and engagement. And so our programming really now has grown from an afterchool model to now a true extension of the school day. To reflect this vision and align with our strategic plan, our shift to an extended day model will provide a seamless connection to the school day. So academic and behavioral supports align and students are fully supported from morning through dismissal and beyond to continue academic enrichment, support, attendance recovery along with all of the activities our students and families select. This also creates more opportunities for our staff, bringing oversight into district roles, improving communication with families
026in schools, and with many of these positions possibly being filled by individuals our communities already know. I'm truly excited about the future of now our extended day programming. Looking forward to that continuing. Speaking of the programming that supports our students before and after school, we have the Ascend Morning program this year. VUSD partnered with Ascend, a before school program that helps students start the day, reducing stress uh to be focused and ready to learn. I I I'm going need to check to see if they're open to adults joining that. Through ascend, students also build strong relationships and sense of belonging, ensuring students are seen, welcome, and supported. These things have led to a more positive student climate, improved attendance, and reduced disruptions during the school day. And also continuing with some of our work uh
027at Mount Whitney, the the administration asked the students, "What are you interested in? What would you like to see?" And an overwhelming response was boxing. And so we're excited to have partnered with Kano boxing this year, a highinterest afterchool program, again through ELOP, where our students have a positive structured outlet for physical activity, discipline, and self-expression. Beyond fitness, this boxing build life skills that support student success during the day and give students an opportunity for strong mentoring relationships. They're averaging over 25 students every day. Every day together, these programs reflect our commitment to supporting students beyond the instructional day. And then finally, spotlight on social media. We share out some of the uh district ongoings, including foggy days. We've we probably couldn't put all of them on the screen because we've had a lot of
028them there. Uh and then also Martin Luther King Day as we celebrate and recognize Black History Month this month of February and outreach such as our long range facilities master plan uh multilingual events, High Five Fridays and ongoing recruitment uh for our sites and our uh schools as well. and you continue to see our spotlight on social media in addition to programs and other activities that many of our school sites held to support and to re honor and recognize Black History Month and then also uh our amazing employees in including National School Counseling Week. Uh so I believe having said that that concludes my report. >> Thank you Mr. Shum. >> Thank you. Moves us to item 4.2 strategic plan theme one update. Our presenter is executive director of teaching and learning Brienne Phillips. Well,
029good evening board president Odto board superintendent Drummond and community. Tonight I will be updating you on our strategic plan, specifically theme one. Oh, I'm like jumping ahead and we don't have our presentation up. [laughter] We're good. Okay. So tonight you'll see that all three of our core beliefs come to life in the work of theme one and our commitments are held in the core design and development of our actions. As we know this is the blueprint for our future board. You set for us our v mission and vision and to bring that to life through our core beliefs and commitments. We've designed our strategic plan and how we are held accountable and being transparent to our community is through our progress indicator metrics as well as our priority student outcomes. This is an overview of
030our strategic plan. As you can see, it thoroughly addresses the needs of our students and community to move us forward to 2030. Tonight, we will be focusing on theme one, high expectations and high achievement. Theme one takes a comprehensive approach to enhancing existing and designing new systems to ensure students in Vicelia are challenged and prepared for the future. The focus area we'll be updating tonight is academic achievement and preparedness. Zooming in further, the initiative Oh, I moved too fast. I'm sorry. Zooming in further, the initiative is increased access to opportunities for advanced content, coursework, and experience. We are going to specifically talk about two actions tonight. And uniquely, we're going to talk about these two actions together because a lot of our work has done been done in tandem. So tonight we'll be looking at
031designing and implementing an advanced placement plan as well as designing and implementing implementing an elementary and middle school advanced learning plan. So before we jump into our research design actions, I just want to take a moment to talk about why advanced learning is important. If we look around our room, our administrators, our teachers, our parents here tonight, many of them have graduated from a VUSD high school. Our students return to our community and become our doctors, our teachers, our lawyers, and our business owners. Advanced learning is important because an investment in our students is an investment in our future. Vicelia education is a promise that every diploma serves as a key that opens doors for our graduates. This work is an investment in the future of Vicelia. This aligns with our vision to empower our
032student to empower every student to leave with a diploma and a clear actionable career trajectory. So now jumping into um the indicators for our strategic plan. So to de to inform and develop our advanced learning framework, we interviewed students, teachers, administrators across elementary, middle, and high schools. This research also included a thorough evaluation of our master schedule as well as analysis of student persistence. What the findings found were two key insights. We need to empower our families and students to make informed, confident choices that unlock advanced learning opportunities as well as the importance of aligning highquality supports and program expectations across every campus to ensure district-wide excellence. So, as we look to Oh, yes. Sorry, I'm jumping too fast. So as we look into um where we're heading in 2030, we will be designing a
033K12 framework and we to develop this K12 framework, we began with the end in mind. So by 2030, VUSD will be a leader in advanced learning where every student navigates a clear, transparent roadmap to success with well-communicated entry points that allow students and families to access advanced learning opportunities at any stage of their learning journey. Additionally, diverse learners will thrive in rigorous college level coursework supported by aligned instruction, intentional supports, and multiple pathways that expand access while maintaining high expectations. Our graduates will leave with more than a diploma. They will exit with college credit, career aligned skills, and clarity about their post-secary pathway. building on the strong advance on the strong advanced learning and career opportunities that are already available across our district. So that might bring the question, what does this look like in
034elementary, middle, and high school? So I want to take you through our elementary, middle, and high school and where we're at. So at our elementary level, our focus is on exposure. To expose means to intent means intentionally providing students with multiple and varied opportunities to gauge and advance learning experiences that extend thinking, spark curiosity, and introduce them to areas of study and skills that they may not otherwise encounter during the regular instructional day. through our expanded learning opportunities program and purposeful ex um extension within the instructional day. Currently, our students have an average of 37 advanced learning opportunities within their school site. These opportunities include um experiences such as leadership, Lego robotics, poetry, and pros and many others. As our advanced learning has expanded, we have created schoolsp specific elementary web pages um to transparently
035highlight each site's unique opportunities and strengthen family engagement in how advanced learning um is accessed and offered. Looking ahead, we will continue to explore ways to accelerate learning within the instructional day. And while this is already occurring in pockets across BUSD, we are intentionally systematizing these practices to ensure equitable access for all students. As we move into our middle years, um our focus is on exploration. So exploring means to provide our students with structured opportunities to try advanced coursework. um also academic pathways and career connected learning while beginning to make their informed choices about interest, strengths, and future goals. Exploring is brought to life in our CTE middle school course where students engage in hands-on learning that sparks their career interest. We plan to expand the breadth of this program and its impact. Additionally, our
036students explore in advanced pathways through math 1 and Spanish one where they earn high school credits. We also have honors as well as AVID and after school en enrichment. Our next step is to create placement guidelines for students. Sites will have clear steps on on the placement of students in courses based on their strengths and interest. Additionally, our DLI community has spoken and we are listening. Their desire to continue their language journey through their middle years will be conceptualized through a middle school pathway. Through um students exploring in middle school, they will enter high school empowered to pursue rigorous academic pathways and career focused programs aligned to their interests and passions. And now on to high school. At the high school level, our focus is specialization. When we're talking about specializing, this means our students
037are intentionally deepening their learning as in identified areas of interest, strength, and future aspirations academically, creatively, and career focused. Every high school student in the district currently has access to a wide range of advanced learning and career reading opport readiness opportunities including advanced placement and dual enrollment courses where they are earning college credit. These opportunities are strengthened throughout our strategic college partnerships and specialized CTEM and pathways many of which lead to industry recognized certifications. Students are further supported through programs such as AVID and visual performing arts, ensuring graduates leave our system well-rounded individuals, academically prepared, career ready, and equipped for future success. Board, I shared with you at the beginning of this pres presentation. We heard clearly from our parents, community, and staff the need to build a more cohesive K12 framework, one that intentionally
038strengthens specialization at the high school level. This work is critical to ensuring our students graduate college and career ready with clear meaningful pathways that prepare them to succeed beyond high school. Here is what that looks like in practice. As we design and implement this framework, we are be being intentional about exploring and leveraging programs that directly support this action. That is why we are pursuing the international balora program as a strategic way to strengthen high school specialization aligning our K12 vi align align to our K12 vision and expand rigorous globally recognized opportunities for our students. So wondering how did IB how did we come to land on IB and it is the data that led us here in IB 21.4 4 uh I'm sorry, IB graduates are 21.4% more likely to be admitted into prestigious
039universities such as Harvard, Yale, and Stanford. And 82% of diploma recipients enroll directly into university, which outperforms the national norm of 66%. Additionally, students may earn up to 30 credit un university credits. By integrating IB into our advanced learning pathway, we are building on what already exists and opening more doors for students. The BUSD international bal laora pathways will be developed as a magnet program at Mount Whitney High School designed to expand access to rigorous globally recognized learning while attracting students through clearly defined highinterest pathways. As we engage in this multi-year process to become an accredited IB IB school, we are intentionally building our I three IB pathways informed by student interest, family voice, and community partnership. Our first pathway will be our STEM diploma. This will build upon our strong foundation at Mount Whitney
040with the health academy as well as the computer science academy. Through partnering with our community, local businesses, and Kawia Hospital, we will prepare our next generation of doctors and nurses, engineers, computer scientists, and innovators through their rigorous coursework in science, mathematics, and technology. The dual language IB diploma builds on our dual language immersion foundation and reflects the interest of continued language development towards biiteracy as well as the glo as well as students global competence all the way through graduation. And our IB aligned CTE certification pathway builds on rigorous academic learning by deepening IB inquiry and real world application enabling students to earn industry recognized certifications while strengthening transferable skills for post-secary success and workforce success. This work brings our mission, every student learning every day to life by pairing high expectations and clear accessible pathways
041so every student can engage in rigorous learning and graduate prepared for college and career. >> Okay. Is there any public comment on this item? >> Board member comment. [clears throat] Well, first of all, I want to say thank you. Um, I [clears throat] love that. Um, and I was trying to figure out what DLI is, but I figured it out. But just in case someone was like me, that means our dual language immersion goes all the way through high school and ending with an exceptional diploma. >> Um, so that I I love that. I love the STEM being a biology teacher. Um, and you know what? Um, I love that we're starting to really pay more attention to um our uh kids that want rigor and want high academics. So, thank you. Thank you. Thank
042you. >> Any other comment, >> Mr. Belt? >> One thing and Dr. Thank you so much. We we now have a pathway. It's been something we've been talking about for a bit, but had no idea how how to get there. Thank you so much for putting it into a presentation that makes some sense, but also has real teeth to it so that we can see it. It has continuity. It's not just a a dream that we'll have an international balora. This is how I get there. Um and I think the whole public can actually get a good feel for it. As uh board member Gamoyan said, this is this is exciting to see us raise the expectations. That's what we've been trying to do uh in all of our classrooms, but this now would even
043be focus even higher. Thank you. >> Okay. Any further comment? Okay. Thank you, Miss Phillips. Moving on. Uh section five, general public comment. General public comment on any topic not on the agenda may be heard at this time. If you have public comment on an item listed on tonight's agenda, there'll be an opportunity for you to share your comments at the time the item comes up for discussion by the board. Pursuant to board policy, the board will limit individual comments for general public comment to no more than 3 minutes and individual topics to 20 minutes. To comply with the Brown Act, California's open public meeting law, board discussion is limited to items on the agenda. Therefore, when receiving public comment for items not on the agenda, the board's role is limited to receiving such comments,
044and the board may not engage in dialogue with the public. The board thanks the public for its participation in public comment and understanding of the board's responsibilities. It is recommended you begin your comments by stating your name. I do have three um requests to speak here in front of me. First off, Christina Pimementel. Good evening. My name is Christina Pimementel Sparza. Uh good evening board members, administrators, colleagues, and community members. We are members of the technology service services and we are here to speak collectively about the staffing decisions that have directly impacted teachers staff who rely on technology every day to educate our students and keep our schools running. Over the past three years, our IT department has lost three site technicians. At our highest staffing level, there were 16 technicians supporting schools and district
045sites. Today, we're operating with only 13. While administrator While administration has stated that there's only one vacant position and two additional positions must be eliminated, publicly available board reports indicate that there's only one technician position that has been formally eliminated. Based on those records, there should still be two vacant positions. What this means in practice is not simply fewer employees. It means fewer technicians available to respond. when teachers lose access to instructional technology, when testing systems fail, when classroom devices stop working, or when staff is unable to perform their daily responsibilities. When a technician position is cut or left unfilled, the workload does not just disappear. It's just redistributed among the fewer people, resulting resulting in longer response times and reduce on-site support. For teachers, this means instructional time, delay in lessons, dis disrupted assessments
046and increased frustration when the technology failures continue cannot be resolved quickly. For classified administrative staff, this means delay in your communications reporting essential operational tasks. Technology is just not supplemental. It is now fund a foundational to our curriculum delivery, student testing, attendance, special education services, communications with our families. As these demands continue to grow, reducing on-site technician directly undermines the district's ability to meet them. We are also concerned that site technician positions are being reduced. The district has continued hiring help desk positions that appear to perform substantial similar duties at lower pay rates. This suggests that the work itself remains necessary and ongoing. From the perspective of teachers and staff, the need for support has not decreased. Only access to timely experience and on-site assistant has. Additionally, there has been no final finalized mandarantou with
047the union authorizing the elimination of the information technology technician position. Proceeding with staffing reduction without completed a agreement raises concerns about transparency whether decisions are being made in a way that fully considers the impact of our school sites, our employees, and our students. Okay. >> I complet we completely continue to work with our students review our union to review issues and ensure proper procedures are followed. I re we respectfully ask the board to closely examine staffing data vacancy rec vacancy records records workload distribution and hiring practice within the IT department. >> And I'll ask you to close right there. Thank you. Uh, next up, Britney Bates. Hi there. My name is Britney Bates. I'm a parent to a physically disabled daughter in the general education setting here with VOD. My name may ring a bell
048to a few of you here, as I was the parent this last spring that requested the playground substrate to be accommodated for wheelchairs and walkers. I wanted to finally put a face to my name in a positive manner. As my child's advocate, it it is my job to not just wall on the negatives, but also highlight the positives. Moving forward with remodeling the K through6 playground at Pinka is such a huge thing for our community, and I'm not sure everyone truly realizes how big of a deal it is. The first school in our district to be completely accessible to students of all kinds. These are the small steps that we take as a community to promote inclusion. The district has some really superb employees that have impacted my family and I wanted to take the
049time to highlight them. Ra Curtis. Ra has mentored me uh since my daughter was 2 months old while working for the county and is seriously a blessing that has impacted my life tremendously. Such a sweet person with impactful knowledge and guidance that has changed my life completely in a way I view disability. Tina Shirley, an individual who spent countless conversations speaking to me when I was in tears and distraught over the playground situation. She was the buffer between a parent and the district and unfortunately took a lot of my blows. Natalie Garza, an individual that went above and beyond for me in the first week of her new position. I can't imagine her situation having to deal with such a huge and confusing issue during her first week, but she went above and beyond for
050me. She truly got all the answers to my questions and concerns when literally no one else in the district was able to do that at that time. Amanda Willis, another kind and understanding person. Um, I am neurode divergent and IEPs can be a lot of oral information my brain is consuming and processing. And Amanda took the time out of her own time to explain to me things and emails and phone calls in a way I was unable to understand. Amy Soiland, my child's one-on-one, such a perfect fit for my daughter. Honestly, she goes above and beyond for my daughter and has amazing communication and advocates for my daughter when I can't. And finally, Mr. Taylor. Man, what a principal. He leads his team with such grace and his campus is a perfect example of what
051inclusion could look like. I've observed handfuls of instances where I observe such great positive actions of the staff to help promote the culture of inclusion on that campus. Mr. Taylor and his support team are also amazing and my family are proud Eagles. As a member of the district leadership team, I hope to continue sharing my family's lived experiences of what inclusion looks like and doesn't look like with the district so we as a team can be the change that we want to see. I know we are making a difference for our community by making inclusion part of our culture and promoting that mindset shift within the district and the community. Thank you, [applause] Patrick Hampill. Good evening board, Superintendent Trump. I'm My name is Patrick Kempo. I'm the VUTA president. Uh I've now spoken to
052you before you multiple times about the impending uh end of COVID onetime monies and the implications for our schools. I would be remiss as you have now reviewed the sort of finalization of this process if I did not reiterate the important points I made during my last two visits. Expectations for our school site staff continue to climb. Their workload continues to increase with the demands placed upon them perhaps unsustainably. In this time, in a time like this where many are already stretched to their limits, the additional staff hired after COVID have in many places been the ones standing in the spaces where teachers and admin no longer have the time to tread. Learning loss continues to be an issue. Outlier behaviors have not evaporated, and we still continue to face many of the same challenges
053we've encountered over the last few years. If these supports are diminished, the answer absolutely cannot be to add more to our teachers plates. There is no space or time left. Many are past their limits. There must be critical examination of our existing support systems and efficiencies must be boosted to compensate. There will have to be new norms and expectations established for if all the resulting burden falls on the shoulders of our classroom teachers, we will have done our students a huge disservice. Our district has lofty goals that can be achieved by the amazing site and support staffs that have been assembled. But if we are to do more with less, we cannot settle for the status quo of the past. Thank you. Thank you. Is there any other public comment? Okay, seeing none, we will
054move forward. Item six, consent agenda. Would any board member like to pull an item from the consent agenda? >> Uh, yes. I'd like to pull item 6.26. 6.26. Okay. Any others? Okay. May I have a motion to approve the consent agenda accepting item 6.26? >> A motion to approve. >> Okay. By Mr. Gabby, second by >> Belt. Seconded. >> Second by Mr. Belt. Call for the vote. >> Motion [clears throat] carries. Um, student board member voting yes. 61 absent. >> Okay. So returning to item 6.26, Mr. Gas. >> Uh thank you, President Oto. I I just want to take a moment to highlight this item uh as another expansion of opportunities for our students. Uh really excited about the expansion of IB and the opportunities our students will have. Uh but looking at this partnership
055with the current community college district, I'm excited about uh the opportunities for the expansion of dual enrollment possibilities. So I think uh the current community college district has led the way um in establishing a dual enrollment program where you know students enter their freshman year and then graduate high school with both their associates degree and their high school diploma. Um so just really excited about this opportunity. Wanted to uh take this time to also thank staff uh and everyone involved in these efforts. Um and looking forward to hopefully being bringing that kind of program here to VUSD as we continue to expand opportunities for our students. So just wanted to highlight it. >> Got it. So may I have a motion to approve item 6.26? 26 motion. >> Okay. Motion by Mr. Viegas. Second by
056>> I'll second. >> Miss Gabby. Call for the vote. >> Motion carries. Student board member voting yes. Six yes. One absent. >> Okay. Which brings us to reports. Uh item seven, student representative report. Miss Sophia Diaz, Redwood High School. >> Good evening board members. My name is Sophia Diaz. I'm the current ASB president at Redwood High School. Um, at our most recent USAV meeting, team members from teaching and learning facilitated the session and led student engagement activities centered on three key institutional focus areas: district benchmarks, classroom environment, and the block bell schedule. The structure of the meeting was intentionally designed to maximize student voice and interaction. Each of each of the three presenters spent approximately 12 minutes uh with rotating groups of students. Each rotation, students participated in various hands-on activities um which included feedback
057activities, dotting exercises, and sticky note responses. Um these these strategies allowed students to share both areas of excitement and areas of concern related to each topic a meaningful and acceptable way. Throughout these rotations, students provided thoughtful and thoughtful feedback on how instructional systems impact their daily learning experiences in the format encouraged honest dialogue and allowed students to engage directly with district leaders responsible for these in following the meeting. All three teaching and learning presenters shared positive feedback with Mr. Edmonson regarding their experience. They had noted high levels of student engagement. The quality of feedback collected and the value of hearing student perspectives firsthand. Several student insights gathered during the session will directly inform the presenters action items um connected to the VSD strate strategic plan participating in areas of instructional practices and learning environments. This
058USAV meeting served as a strong example of how structured student voice opportunities can support district making decision or district decision-making and strengthening collaboration between student and instructional leadership. Thank you for your time and continued support of the student voice and opportunities in VSD. And now we will move on to our site reports. At LD High School, their inmotion dance team earned second place at the USA NorCal regionals, reflecting strong preparation in teamwork as well as their mock trial as they advanced from eighth to third overall, reaching the semifinals with judge judges noting the students command of demanding case packet. Next, at Golden West High School, their ASB students supported their winter athletics and their senior nights. They helped create a positive and energetic game night atmosphere. The ASB also and link crews led a successful
059eighth grade visit day, welcoming incoming students and creating a strong first impression of campus culture. Next up, Mount Winnia High School ASB organized senior nights for all winter sports, creating customizable posters and balloon arches to recognize student athletes. Students also preparing for their love week um this year. Um they focused on school spirit, connection, and community. Next, at Redwood High School, we hosted the 2026 FBLA Central Section Leadership Conference, earning the Dolores Low Sweep Stakes title for the 13th consecutive year. We also achieved outstanding college readiness results, including 100% of our seniors receiving at least one college acceptance and 1.4 million in scholarship offers. Next, at Sequoia High School, students are participating in the annual football challenge week, building class spirit and engaging across campus. Next, they also had their first mountaineers day of 2026
060that will highlight CTE pathways throughout speakers from Vicelia adult high school or adult school. Uh VCIS VCIS has student activities classes celebrating their kindness and love week. Um they have dress up days for staff and student and lunchtime with other fun-filled connections throughout the week. On Monday this week, VCIS traveled over to Charter Homeschool Academy where they met their current eighth grade students and families who are registering for high school. As many of the charter home students in VSD will start their high school career at VCIS, it was a great time to connect with students, families, and get prepared and prepare the students for high school transition. And lastly, at VTEC, they launched their open enrollment on February 1st with strong interests across partner schools. They also promoted their denim and diamonds fundraiser that supports
061student scholarships and essential course materials. And that that completes my report for this evening. Thank you so much. >> Thank you. appreciate the insight into the student world at the high school level. Uh number eight, board member reports and we'll use our traditional pattern here. We'll start off with Mr. Belt. Thank you, President Odo. Uh first of all, I'd like to uh thank our communications team headed by Andy Deo and Christina Gutierrez. If you haven't noticed that if you wake up one morning and you wonder, is it a foggy day schedule or not? Uh we don't use flags, we don't use strobe lights, we don't use uh even text messages necessarily. We have a popup on the website and you can't do anything else on the website until you acknowledge ah it's a foggy day
062schedule. Thank you for doing that. It's an easy way to alert everyone. Um, and when I need to figure out if my wife uh is going to have a difficult time driving to school, um, I can see it right there and I can know if the buses are going to be running on time or not. So, good move that, um, I wanted to highlight. The ongoing excellence that we are looking for throughout our district was put on display by Golden West National Honor Society induction that I attended. And thank you so much, Alex Gluckman, who's the adviser there, and of course, Principal Lambert. Uh they had the largest group inducted into the National Honor Society that they've ever had. And and actually, we were able to hold it at VCIS, uh multi-use building, uh some
063call it the Hershey Kiss. Um it's it's useful, versatile, and another venue that we can make use of throughout our district. the um Ed Foundation, I want to remind everyone their roundup, that's their annual fundraiser, is coming March 21st. So, if you want to get tickets or at least mark it on your calendar because it's going to be here very, very shortly. Friday night was one of the most outstanding nights I've ever seen at Golden West High School. And I actually have a not as long as some of our board members, but a 28y year history with Golden West. and the naming of the gym for the Drew Hall family court. It's absolutely amazing night. Well done. [applause] And John Dong and Principal Lambert and the team did a great job of uh honoring the
064Hall family. Uh I saw cousins like of course principal I I I'm going to get [clears throat] choked up. Schnelling. Um the scorekeeper who's always there [laughter] uh was also part of that family. One of the most uh poignant parts of the evening was the dance team Illusions from Golden West. And if you haven't seen it, it's on my Facebook. It's had uh over 3,000 views thus far in just a few days. It said it all. It said it all about honoring uh a life and [clears throat and snorts] love for a family and Golden West community is stronger for uh that activity. Uh it's good to see uh Dr. Vieas was also able to attend. The Ivanho community school advisory meeting that I attended also showed me another insight as to where those monies
065are going. I don't know if you're familiar with the community schools grants, but the Ivanho Advisory Committee is very very active. They are building or not building, they're taking a a a room and turning it into a family resource center. um a center that actually already has been given $5,000 worth of jackets, clothing, uh personal items, uh from a very unusual source, uh a group called the medical billing trades. It's an association who were looking to invest and give back to the community and they've adopted Ivanho Elementary School. Um, but with the community schools grants, they are going to turn this small room into a family resource center. They're in the midst of naming it. So, it's not just called the family resource center, but this committee of local community members and volunteers uh are
066pulling their thoughts together, their energies together to make something pretty special for the Ivanho community. And I was uh very thrilled to see that moving forward. I have to say that Friday, no, Saturday night attending Anastasia at Redwood High School was probably the finest musical I've seen Redwood do. Uh I'm I'm I'm not trying to, you know, what's the word? Brown. No, I'm not trying to get kudos with Dr. Grid Iron or any It just was an excellent musical. If you didn't see it, I am sorry you missed it. I did post a video and then was reminded that there was copyright issues. So that song is no longer to be found except you want to come and look at it on my computer or my phone. The last thing that I wanted to um
067to mention is as much as we can, we want you to know that our community, our administrators, our principles, our teachers endeavor to make every student safe every day. And in the last few days, I have fielded a lot of questions about what's going on. Am I so unified? And I I want to make it very very clear. I'm going to go out on a limb. My colleagues are are all [clears throat] getting nervous because sometimes Paul says too much. But I want it to be very very understood that what might be viewed as not coming forth with all the information that you may need about rumors of this or that uh nature of former staff people or incidences that happened at school are for a reason. None of us should ever face public scrutiny
068uh if we've not done anything. And so there are laws, there are personnel issues, confidentiality that we follow and we we do that as a community. We say we're not going to just post it on social media so that the trial, the judge and the executioner can all be uh just vetted out by whoever wants to type faster than somebody else. No, Vicel Unifi will always and has always acted swiftly to make sure every one of your students, every one of our students are safe every day. And so know that when there's an investigation or there are steps, there are hoops to be jumped through. It's not to do anything, but to make it very clear that we want to get to truth and we want to make sure people are held accountable, but it's
069always going to be done because our students are going to be safe. And so, just know that [clears throat] we will always fault at making every students as safe as possible. Uh, and it's always going to be done quickly, but it's going to be done correctly. So, thank you to our human relations department who endeavors to do that. Ben Dylan who's carrying with his son tonight uh Dr. Burgess and staff who do an astounding job of making sure that uh when things are happening when bad decisions are made. Uh the follow-up is very clear and concise and thoroughly done. And so you can rest assured there's nothing being covered up as social media likes to to partend. No, it's going to be done correctly. So, thank you so much staff for making sure our kids
070are safe. >> Okay, Mr. D. Young. >> Thank you, President Oto. Uh, I have to ditto uh Trusty uh Paul Belt's uh report because there's a lot of good things in there that I was going to touch on and I think you did a great job on that. Um, so with that, uh, I'll kind of focus more on some site visits that I'm a little behind on reporting out on. So I want to make sure I sure I do my due diligence on that. Uh, some being old, some being new, but um, just like to say I was able to visit Riverway Elementary and uh, was able to uh, walk around with Principal Heather Jorgensson and uh, it was my first time visiting the school. It was great to see the very small class sizes
071and uh it's always good to talk with students and you know of all people giving feedback on the curriculum like letters um and of course seeing lots of foundations in action and if you're a parent of the district and you have a little kiddo you probably know what the worm line and skyline and grass line is and all that kind of stuff. U if if you don't uh ask your kiddo or ask somebody else's kiddo and they'll tell you. Um, my next visit I'm uh behind on reporting out on is uh Royal Oaks Elementary with uh going with Principal Amanda Cooper uh for a former uh Denton alum. Um we got to see some great use of math and PE which is always great to incorporate uh those aspects into physical education. Someone like myself
072who is more a physical learner, visual learner, um those were great things to see. And then of course we got to see the library that was remodeled um which is always a special place to be and it looked great wide and open happy to come back visit again. Um uh one of more my more recent visits was Willow Glenn Elementary with principal Sandra Ooa and to touch on what uh trustee uh Randy Vegas talked about with the dual language emerion program. So they have one there that's seems like it's blowing up. I was able to visit while they had an open house with parents and we walked around to the different classrooms and went through the program and there was a huge interest in that. Um and there was a lot of great feedback from
073parents talking which we just kind of like to sit by and listen. Um but also into hopefully we can expand that program. So I for one will be happy to hear u how that progresses uh in the future. Uh next visit was uh Washington Elementary with principal Britney Guerrero. Um we talked a lot about datadriven instruction. um which you think and maybe this is just my cognitive bias here but you you would think that would be something that is focused on in education but uh it's not always um but her team over there they're using their PLC's which is their professional uh development time for teachers uh to dig into that data and really understand it um because like we've heard before our teachers uh from what I'm being told have a lot on their
074plate. And so giving them the time to do what they need to do so that they can help these kiddos read and then do math uh is what we always need to be doing. And so it's great to hear those things because on top of that, we're hearing really good things about their math and and um uh sorry, reading and math scores going up, which is probably contributed to that. So, who would have thought? Um, last on the list is, uh, VTEC, our Vicelia Technical Early College with Principal Scott Ron. Um, which I was able to attend today. Um, you know, going back, um, talking about dual enrollment, you know, I think I got that mixed up, right, Randy? You were talking about dual enrollment. I always get those mixed up. Okay, so dual enrollment.
075uh talking about that uh there was uh I remember last year there were several students uh one having three associates degrees uh and multiple having two and a lot having just one and I just imagined to myself like what's a better you know getting ahead on your future uh uh college dreams by you know starting off with associates degree right out of uh high school that's you know phenomenal just get in it. Um that is something that I never even imagined myself as a student and these kids are just like you know I ask him like how hard was it? It's like it wasn't very hard. Well it's like well wow that's pretty amazing. Those are the types of opportunities that we should have available because uh uh something like that as a student for
076myself I could have taken advantage of that and who knows where I would be. Maybe I want to be a board member. Um but uh yeah, so dual enrollment, don't get those mixed up. Great. Uh we we went around we the one of the first places we went to uh they were doing math and they were plotting numbers on the number line and uh solving equations. Uh and students were working on the whiteboards and we probably spent 20 25 minutes in there at least uh actually helping the kids solve the equations. There's a couple having a little difficulties and uh it was really interesting because the students were uh they were really excited to try to figure it out even though uh a couple of them were struggling. Um which is great to see cuz
077I never had that type of mentality. I would just be like well why why do I need to do this? I don't understand it. Um but these kids had the motivation to figure it out and they weren't getting frustrated or upset or anything. they were genuinely wanting to know how to do it. And you know, ultimately that's why we stuck around so long because it was really uh great to watch and see that kind of commitment from our our youth. And so um that was most of the visit, [laughter] but we were also able to go to the shop and see uh a really cool uh robotic uh welding arm that they have in there. Uh that is also something that you don't see every day that students have to work their way up to
078uh to be able to use. Uh we weren't able to see it in action, but uh that is a phenomenal thing to have available. Um because uh those sort of things uh is what, you know, we're going to be doing with in the future. You know, every all this talk about robotics and AI um you know, get on it and get on it soon. And I can't believe I missed my visit to Redwood. I skipped that. I apologize Dr. Grid Iron if you're in the room. Um we uh we had that visit with um uh Redwood High School with Dr. Todd Odoto as well. And uh you know speaking of which about uh future technologies. We had a great conversation about modern-day technology as it relates to crop sciences and monitoring which is huge because
079nowadays uh especially crops you know we're the central valley we literally feed the world which I think a lot of people forget like we literally are feeding a third of the world and we're right in the middle of it like that's how important what we what we do here is um you know the sciences and monitoring is literally down to the individual crop um and using AI drones uh to monitor crops and be able to tell by minor differences whether one plant or tree is struggling versus the other and how to look at data and all that sort of thing. And so we kind of got into the aspects of how students have to know more than just hands-on learning. They have to wear multiple hats. they have to have a IT background and electrical
080background and uh they have to also have again the crop sciences and so it's multiaceted and uh it was a great talk about how do we get to that point do you have any suggestions where should we look sort of thing and being someone with a IT background who used to be an automotive mechanic uh it was a simple switch to me because uh not in automotive technology as they call it uh cars nowadays can have upwards of 150 uh modules in them that are essentially small computers. And so you have this massive network in your car that's miniaturaturized that you have to diagnose. Uh and so that was an easy thing for me to go into it because it was work I was already doing. And with my construction background, having that background in
081electricity, understanding the principles of it and then applying that to electronics uh made it simple. And so I think of those types of things for uh our students now which would be uh phenomenal if they could get because all those things like for myself I researched and learned on my my own for the most part. So again it's all about giving opportunities and making u the most availability for these kiddos to figure out what they want to do and what they love. Um, but I'll end lastly on this because u, uh, Trusty Belt did a great job uh, touching on a couple other subjects which I won't go over, but uh, last year Redwood had Little Mermaid and that was pretty phenomenal performance. I unfortunately missed uh, Anastasia which I was really upset about. My
082girls were upset about. But, uh, I'll just have to take your word for it because I was the Little Mermaid performance last year blew me away. So, um, but yeah, with that, uh, I conclude my report. So, thank you. >> Okay. Board member Gaby. >> Thank you. Um, just real quick, I want to just go back, um, to Superintendent Shum's report and, um, Mrs. Phillips report and just kind of again just say how much, um, you know, our students, us, the board, all of us appreciate all of the enrichment activities that are being planned for our students. And really um I think what Mrs. Phillips said there about it's not just like random acts of opportunity. It's this systematic that if I start in something in elementary and I get hooked I can continue and
083um see that through and um you know and that these experiences are right after school for you know parents that can't always transport their kid you know pick them up and transport them somewhere else. Um and just how much that also impacts our just general education program. We know that we build language through like these experiences and interactions with our peers and colleagues. I mean, there's just not enough um good things I can say about that. So, thank you very much for all of our work on that. And um if you don't aren't familiar with IB IB pathways, that's a really big darn deal to use one of Todd's lines and um it's a difficult process. So, um appreciate in advance all the work that's going to go into that. Um, so just thank you
084for that. And I don't know, I do miss the days where you watched channel 18 for the foggy day and you waited for Vicelia and if it had just gone through, you had to wait for the end of the alphabet. So, I don't know. It's kind of the good old days. >> We're member of Jieas. >> Thank you, President Oto. Uh, just another, you know, deep sign of appreciation for all of our bus drivers, uh, but also all of our parents and staff as we've navigated the fog these past few weeks. Um, also want to give a huge thank you to our staff. I know several uh of our students at several of our sites last week expressed their first amendment rights and expressing their concerns over immigration, you know, raids going on across the
085country. Uh, so I want to thank all of our staff for making sure that our students were able to do so safely. Um, and with that being said, I also wanted to, you know, raise concerns that I've been hearing in the community about whether our district is doing enough to provide know your rights information to all of our students and all of our families. I know that we have partnered in the past with several organizations like the UFW Foundation to provide uh workshops at our community resource center. Uh and I would ask to see, you know, if we have moved forward with potentially offering these workshops directly at our sites where our families feel most connected. Um but I think especially in this moment, it's important to do anything and everything we can uh to
086inform our students, our family, and our community members about their rights. Um and so would love to have a report back from staff uh next meeting about where we are and what potential steps we could take to support our families during this time. Thank you. >> Okay, board member Gamyan. [clears throat] >> I just want to kind of follow up on board member D. Young. Everywhere I go, I see good teaching, high rigor, raise standards. Um and that's why I'm also very excited about this IB pathway. um all of our kids can succeed and I know it's going to be a lot of work to get that off the ground and I thank you for that. Um I this last week I think I went to a VPI meeting at El Diamonte and as VPI
087is at each high school they are showing uh the pathways at that high school and then the kids gave us tours of the classes in that in those pathways and I really appreciate um that I saw so many community partners in there. I haven't seen that in a while. So, that was really good. Uh, Friday I was in Sacramento. I'm on the legislative committee for CSBA and one of the hot topics. So, I I'm kind of informing the board here too, was um getting our money. Right now, we get our money through average daily attendance. Um, there's a push to change that to enrollment. So, however many kids enroll, whether they come to school or not doesn't matter. You get money for them. Um, the problem with that is, um, schools that are very, very
088large and don't have an incentive to get their kids to school cuz kids have to be at school to learn. Um, they will suck most of the money. So, um, I look I looked at our attendance. Our attendance is going up. or ADA. Um, in order to do enrollment, they would have to add, the state would have to add $6 billion to the LCAP. I don't know where they're going to get that money. So, that's an ongoing conversation. I found being at the state level, there are many schools that are not in favor of receiving money through ADA. So, I'll just keep you informed on that. So to piggyback on Missoyan's comments there, historically in Vice Unified, we've had exceptionally strong attendance, like 96 97%. Co, you know, goofed that a bit, but we've always
089had super super attendance in part because the school does a good schools do a good job getting kids to come to school, but because the community values kids going to school, those two things work together. So I hope we were able to to do whatever needs to be done to maintain our advantage there. Uh on a more mundane note but a but a great note. I visited a couple schools over the last month. Finally got a chance to go to Golden West. Thank you Mr. Lambert for the visit there. I got a chance to look in depth at English one and math one and saw some of the focused work being done at that level. That was good work. I had a chance to go to Redwood kind of coming home again there and got
090a chance to go a little deeper to CTE, career technical education at that school and saw some good interesting things going on there and we've heard evidence of that through the the FBLA and through some of the other things that are happening there. So, thank you to Mr. Dr. Grid Iron for that. Um, saw two musicals and two different kinds of musicals. Both really excellent in their own way. Mount Whitney High School's musical was um Beetlejuice. Um, and Mount Whitney's not had a musical for long. They don't have a super deep culture with that. This was a musical that involved the middle school and high school kids together. And the talent that was visible there was really super. The two strongest uh voices were two middle school girls. The high school kids did a great
091job with their performances, too. The program is building and going places. I look forward to to what will come there. And then to piggyback on Mr. Belt's comment, Anastasia was a fantastic show at Redwood. Uh, it looked good, sounded good, it was fun and interesting and different. Uh, sometimes we do the same plays over and over again or musicals over and over again, but this was different. And it may not have been the best, but it was the very, very good. The best probably was Westside Story or maybe Thoroughly Modern Millie. Putting my two votes in there, Mr. B. Um, and on a final note, a thank you to the board at our last study session for engaging in the board self evaluation survey. Thanks guys. It came out late. We had to push hard
092to get it done. Had a small conversation around it at that work session and I look forward to mining that document for possible topics for conversation among the seven board members here for the future. The survey really showed that there are lots of things that we agree on. We're a pretty high functioning board. We are a very high functioning board in lots of good ways, Sarah, but there's always stuff you can work on and I look forward to continuing the work on that as well. Thank you, Mr. Shum. >> Uh, thank you. No additional report tonight. >> So, moving forward into item 10, administrative panel recommendations. Do I have a motion to approve the recommended expulsions? >> A motion. >> Motion by board member Gabby. >> I'll second. Second by board member D. Young. Call
093for the vote. >> Um, student board member abstains. Motion passes. 61 absent. >> Okay. 10.2 recommended suspended expulsions. May I have a motion to approve the recommended suspended expulsions. >> A motion. >> Okay. Motion by board member Gabby. I will second. Call for the vote. What's that? Motion carries. Student board member abstains. Six yes. One abs. >> Okay. And moving on into the general agenda. 11.1 adoption of instruction materials for high school civics first read. Executive director of teaching and learning. Brienne Phillips is our presenter. >> All right. Good evening again. Um tonight I am bringing to you our instructional materials. Adoption first read first civics. Um, as always, uh, we believe that all of our students can achieve at high levels and demonstrate continuous growth. The materials I present this evening are grounded in
094our mission. Um, every student learning every day and our vision, every student empowered to achieve future success. So, as we know within our blueprint, we need highquality instructional materials to bring our actions to life within our instructional um within the um within our strategic plan. So tonight we only have one new curriculum to bring to you which is our civics um curriculum which we engaged with an adoption committee throughout the summer and the fall in order to land us here with a decision and recommendation. We show this slide every time to ground us in our pilot process um which is very thorough taking us all the way from a request for um from for quote or product from our uh from companies through a rigorous paper screen all the way through a pilot um with
095each of our programs that we're looking at. This is specific to our civics adoption. So you can see that our civics adoption began in June when we developed our diff district lens and we sent out for submissions of different u programs to look at. We moved on in August to our pre-screening process where our commiti our committee developed the guiding statements and rubrics um to look through the um different programs that came our way which then went to our paper screening process. Um and in our paper screening process, the committee used their rubric and researched um and reached consensus to only pilot one program. Um and that pilot ran from October through November. Um and tonight and that brings us to tonight um for our recommendation. The program that our teachers piloted and have brought
096towards recommendations is um Savas McGre McGrder's American government interactive. Um this actually is the current um print edition of the text that was formally adopted. Um our teachers uh felt that this new program will keep us current with election cycles, headlines and within each passing year. Uh the key features within this um include connections to to today listen wise current events project image which is a digital resource that uses immersive experiences and diverse primary sources to tell stories of ordinary people from the past as well as quest inquiries where um there is inquiry in every topic through project-based learning civic discussion and document-based questions. Within any adoption, we like to engage our students as well. So, here you can see in our student uh survey data that was obtained at the end of the pilot,
097over 90% of our students responded that the articles, visuals, videos, and primary sources within SAS McGre McGrder's American Government Interactive 2023 materials add to their understanding. And approximately 80% of our students surveyed agree that the questions, prompts, and discussions challenge them and help them form their own opinions and views of civic related content from our teachers. Um, they shared that the materials covered the standards well and the content aligns with the California history social science framework. The guiding questions and infographics are good. the organization organizational tools and display complex relationships as well. The accompanying resources provide for critical thinking opportunities and the materials include our 2024 election cycle and the online platform integrates with our our current learning management system of schooly. So, we are moving forward with a recommendation of a seven-year adoption of
098this um textbook. So, what this includes is 2,200 student digital licenses, 840 student print editions, which equates to 40 copies per teacher. Also, 840 consumable primary source reading guides, which equates to 40 um 40 per teacher, 21 print and digital editions, as well as professional learning and ongoing support for the full eight term or I'm sorry, for full seven years. The total cost is $415,0002415,227.33. This is not an action item. This is a first read only. >> Okay. Is there any public comment on this item? >> Nope. Any board member discussion? Mr. Belt, I >> have one question. Mrs. Phillips the so it's apparently this is designed even though it was published in 23 to continually be updated that's why they included the 24 cycle and will again subsequently over the next >> they're digital
099resources now they're able to update and so that's why we have digital licenses while we do get hard copies for class sets um through the through the digital age now we're able to get ongoing >> updates so it's tremendous it it gets updated as we go that's pretty cool thank Any other board discussion? >> Okay, this is a non-action item. So, thank you much, Miss Phillips. 11.2 Modification of ISA Unified School District salary schedules effective July 1, 2025. Our presenter is Chief Business Officer Nathan Hernandez. >> Good evening, President Oto, members of the board, and Superintendent Shrum. So this item is an action item tonight to approve the modification of salary schedules uh retroactive to July 1st 2025. Uh this is for our classified uh salary schedules, our certificated management and our classified management. Uh
100this is a routine mid-year update update to these schedules positions uh to ensure that our positions are accurately reflected and the district remains in compliance with retirement system requirements of publicly available salary schedules. The updates align the certificated management, classified management and classified salary schedules with current district positions and do not result in any financial impact and there is no change to the salaries on any of the schedules. Okay. Is there any public comment on this item? Board member discussion. >> Okie dokie. May I have a motion to approve the modification of SA Unified School District salary schedules effective July 1, 2025. >> A motion. >> Okay. Motion by Miss Gabby. Second by >> I'll second. >> Miss Kamoy seconds. Please call for the vote. Motion carries. Student board member votes yes. Six yes, one
101absent. >> Thank you. 11.3 California School Employees Association, CSEA, Chapter 83, Interest and Initial Proposal for Classified Negotiations. First read. Our presenter to start off with is Administrative Human Resources Resource Development, Judy Burgess, who we'll hand it off to. and I will hand it off off to our president, Chelsea Chavis Gonzalez. >> Good evening, President Odo, Superintendent Shrum, and members of the board and members of our school community. Many of you know me, and for those who do not, my name is Chelsea Chavez Gonzalez, and I proudly serve as a chapter president for CACA chapter 83, representing the classified professionals of this district. tonight on behalf of our members and those who are present. May you please stand up. Any CASA classified support staff. >> Thank you very much. You may be seated. I am
102formally presenting CACA's sunshine proposal to open negotiations for two 2026 2027 contract. Our classified staff are the backbone of the district. From keeping our campuses safe and clean to transporting students, preparing meals, supporting instruction, maintaining facilities, care and aid of our nurses on our campuses, and providing essential clerical and technical services. Our members ensure that our schools operate efficiently and that students have the support they need to succeed every single day. The purpose of this proposal is to ensure that our contract reflects the value of the work our members perform, supports recruitment and retention, and promote stability within our workforce. We are committed to engaging in good faith negotiations that are collaborative, respectful, and focused on in and focus on solutions that benefit both our employees and the students we serve. We look forward to
103a productive bargaining process and to working together toward an agreement that recognizes the vital contributions of our classified staff to this district. The initial proposal, the California School Employees Association and its Viselia Chapter 83 present their initial proposals for the 2627 reopener negotiations under the provisions of the current bargaining agreement. It is CSEA's intent to alter or amend the following articles as indicated and present our proposals for public discussion in accordance with government code 3547. Article 8, promotions. CACA proposes modifications to enhance the promotion selection process. Article 10, employee benefits. CACA proposes increasing the district's contribution to employee benefits to cover any increases and maintain the current benefit standard for all our unit members. Article 13, salary. CACA proposes to enhance the salary schedule to provide an equitable wage increase to help maintain the integrity
104of the salary schedule and an acceptable standard of living for all employees. Article 15 leaves CACA proposes to update modify language for duty jury duty and personal necessity. All our provisions of the collective bargaining agreement are in force for two June 30th, 2027 shall remain in full force in effect. CEA reserves a right to make any additional proposals at any time during the bargaining process, including but not limited to the response to proposals made by the district. Thank you. Okay. Thank you, Miss Chavez. Is there any public comment on this item? Board member discussion. Okay. This is an information item only. No action required. Now it's bookcase piece 11.4. Vice Unified School District interest initial proposal for classified negotiations. First read. Dr. Burgess. >> Good evening, Board President Odo, members of the board, Superintendent Trump.
105Um, the district approaches the coming negotiations with California School of Employees Association Chapter 83 with the intent to negotiate a mutually agreeable contract through collaborative and objective bargaining in order to address common interest in alignment with the district's vision, mission, and goals. Uh the district's interests are ensuring all students achieve at high levels and demonstrate continuous growth. Providing learning environments that are safe, supportive, and innovative, supporting employee success, and equipping them with the tools necessary for achievement and growth, maintaining district reserves to preserve the instructional program for all students during economic cycles, and again, engaging in an open and honest exchange of information through collaborative and objective bargaining with California School of Employees Association Chapter 83. The district has an interest in opening the following articles for 2627 contract negotiations. Article 7 transfers uh to
106review update transfer procedures to ensure optimal staffing levels and operational efficiency across all district sites. Article 17 which is safety safety conditions and to ensure language reflects current safety protocols, environmental standards and the shared commitment to a secure working and learning environment. Both parties do agree with mutually agreed upon articles. Article 10, employee benefits and article 13, which is salary. And the district looks forward to good faith negotiations with the California School Employees Association, Chapter 83, in which both parties acknowledge their commitment to provide an exemplary educational program to the students and community we serve. >> Okay. Thank you, Dr. Burgess. Any public comment on this item? Board discussion? Seeing none, thank you much. This is a non- action item. Okay. 11.5 202425 annual district financial audit. A presenter is chief business officer Nathan Hernandez
107and senior manager with Crow LLP, Charles Raley, CPA. >> I'm going to be up here for the rest of the night. So, I just brought my stuff. >> We excuse you. [laughter] >> So, we do have a presentation uh that Mr. Ra will share and I'm going to invite him to to present uh the item tonight. But this is for our district's uh annual financial audit through June 30th, 2025. Um we also will have a presentation for our measure A uh financial and performance audits. I'm going to turn it over to Mr. Rayley and then we'll be here for questions. >> Y thanks Nathan. Uh I appreciate everyone's time this evening to talk about the annual external financial audit. I've got a little presentation that we'll go through and I'm happy to address any questions
108if you may have those. Um there we go. So, uh the state uh requires that you have an annual financial and compliance audit uh every year on on in respect of your fiscal year uh ended. And in this case, we are auditing or did audit the June 30, 2025 year. So I'll go through a little bit of what that entails and uh the results of that audit and then address like I said any questions you might have. Um so uh in this case uh some of the required communications that we have in respect to the audit um are first our responsibilities as your auditor. Uh we are um aiming to express an opinion over the financial statements as to whether they are fairly stated in all material respects. In addition to that, because you have
109received and expended federal dollars in excess of $750,000, you are required to undergo what's called a uniform guidance audit uh commonly referred to as a federal compliance audit. And also, because you're in the state of California, you have a lot of ED code requirements. We also have a state compliance requirement uh that you have to follow, state compliance audit that we follow, which has uh for the 2025 year 37 different areas that could be potentially applicable. So how do we go about conducting our audit and and our responsibilities? Uh we have to consider what's called risks of material misstatement in your financial statements. So those areas of the financials that might have more susceptibility to having an error in them. And we have what that means is we focus our audit procedures on those areas
110of greater risk. We have more audit work that we do over those of higher risk. We also are required to understand and evaluate the internal control structure that you have that produces the financial statements that you have before you in the audit report. Um and so um we evaluate those areas and if we have deficiencies that or significant deficiencies in internal controls we are required under the auditing standards to communicate those. And so those two things come together to be what's called a risk based audit approach. As I mentioned, the more risk areas that you have in your financial statements, uh, the more work we have to do. Um, the table at the bottom of this slide talks about sort of the timeline of our audit for this year. We have a planning phase that
111we start out in the um, first part of the spring that produces that uh, entails our testing initially of your federal compliance requirements and state. a lot of the state work also do working uh to test work to test your attendance uh records and making sure that those are all up to speed. We also then move into the phase two component which is continuing that testing through the end of the uh towards the end of the fiscal year. We come back in the fall to audit the actual full completed fiscal year numbers your unodudited actuals and then we complete uh the compile compilation of your audit report which is required again by the state. they give us a prescribed format to conclude the audit report and all the components of it. U in this year
112we um uh completed that at the end of January of 2026. Um some um there were some delays at the federal level uh in the guide that we were required to follow for the federal compliance audit and caused some delays throughout the country in completing the uh federal audit. So that pushed that timeline out a little bit for Vicel Unified this year. uh we did file that um audit report with the state controllers's office by that extended timeline uh in compliance with uh state controllers's office requirements. So and we'll go through that a little more. So I talked about our responsibilities as your auditor management is also responsible for the financial statements and you all as those charged with governance are responsible for the financial statements. You're also responsible for the compliance with those state
113requirements and federal requirements that I mentioned. Um and then also you're required to establish and maintain control structural control control structures that produce these financial statements and demonstrate your compliance and also uh you are required to comply with and understand whether uh your government your government uh vice unified is going to continue as what's called a going concern. No issues there from our perspective, but that's one of those requirements that you have to understand and evaluate whether you're going to continue operating. Um there were two new accounting standards. The government accounting standards board likes to keep us on our toes. Every year or two they get us a new um standard or uh component that we have to consider. One related to compensated absences. It was expanding the definition of what is compensated absences. And
114in this case, sick leave was not previously recorded as a um liability in your full acral financial statements. Now what's pulled under that umbrella and an additional liability was recorded for that. The other standard is called um certain risk disclosures and um there were no impacts to your financial statements from that new standard being implemented. If there were risks as to the um ability for your funding to continue, there would be a disclosure required for that. We don't have any ex uh immediate concerns that would require such a disclosure. So, um this is also a required communication if we had any audit adjustments. I know you like to know if we have any um material audit adjustments. I'm thankful and and proud to say that we had no adjustments that needed to be recorded in
115your financial statements in order to give our opinion over them. We do have two what are called uncorrected misstatements. These are just differences in the audit that we identified which were not large enough to require uh us require management to change the financials but large enough for us to highlight it for you all. The first one is related to accounts payable. There were some expenses that were paid out after fiscal year end which when the invoice came in it should have been acred back at the end of June as a payable. Uh the total value was 2.7 million which um is a larger amount but not large enough to require a um an adjustment and that's an extrapolated amount uh as well meaning that we estimated based on our sampling what could be wrong in
116the amounts that were not tested. The other item is what's called a um self- insurance allocation of your of your pension liability. So your self- insurance fund in the unodudited actuals that you report to the state. Technically a portion of the the pers and stirs pension liability should be allocated to that fund. It was not. The total portion however that the district represents in the audit report as a whole is appropriately stated. So your portion is is um accurately stated in the district-wide report. Um and so there's no um again recorded required adjustment for that. Some other required communications to you all. If we had any different differences of opinion with management about how to account something account for something or report something we would let you know that at this time I would formally
117I think if we had a disagreement or a difference then we would have let you know before this meeting. Um I'm thankful also to say there's no other adverse events or significant items that we have to elevate for your attention. So uh I mentioned the federal compliance audit u just to quickly highlight there were three programs that we rotated in for testing this year for 25 the child nutrition cluster title two part A and title four part B. Those u were um required to be tested under the uniform guidance the federal requirements. So the federal government says if it hasn't been tested in the last 2 years, if uh it's a new program, if you've had other diff, you know, um issues identified in the program in the past, we're required to test it. These
118three were identified uh just because they hadn't been tested in a while, so more than two years. Um and so how did everything shake out? Um for the financial statements we gave what's called an unmodified opinion as well as for um our we call it a gagus compliance audit opinion uh which relates to that government the fact that you're a government we also have a government opinion that we give but that relates to your financial statements uh and then the uniform guidance that federal compliance audit all three of those were unmodified or a clean opinion and that is the highest level of assurance that you can achieve and are looking to achieve out of an external audit. The last item was state compliance and that you'll see is uh noted as qualified. We had um
119one finding which I'll go over in just a minute uh related to classroom teacher salaries. There's a form in your unodudited actuals that you file uh which re identifies whether you've expended a specific percentage of your uh total expenditures uh related to teachers salaries that was under that threshold. Because that's under that threshold, I'm required to include that audit. um finding in the report. There's no direct fiscal impact um related to that deficiency, but it does result in that qualified opinion for state compliance. Um this page has some highlights as far as comparative between their last 2024 fiscal year and this year. Um and so you can see u sort of the difference in how things shook out for 24 fiscal year and 25. um pretty comparable overall uh in the grand scheme of things.
120Um and so I will note that the last point in this table is that you were in compliance with the reserve requirement that the state um has listed out for you um as a unified school district of your size. Uh and then you had received a positive certification from the superintendent of schools. And I mentioned the classroom teacher salaries finding. This is sort of laying that out a little more specifically. you had to hit 50.83% 83% of your total expense of education whereas it u for a unified school district the state ed code says it needs to be at least 55 um and so we have to include that report um finding in your report the county office of ed I will note also provided a waiver for you all in respect of that all
121right so in conclusion um the district's financial statements were fairly stated in all material respects we had no adjustments that we required of management to post to give our opinion and there were no audit findings as respect to internal controls or federal compliance, just the one for state compliance this year. And the real reason that we got all that um got to that point of having those unmodified opinions is that management was able to provide us the information that we needed was on time and we were able to ultimately complete the audit report by that extended timeline uh for this fiscal year. Um so I just want to express my appreciation for management um for doing that. So um if you have any questions um our contact information is on this slide. This is um
122mine on the right. The on the left is Jen Ris and she is the audit partner with Crow who signed the opinion uh for the financial statements and and state and federal compliance. So I know I went through a lot in a short period of time. It's all dry stuff perhaps uh for those that aren't in the accounting and auditing group, but I'm happy to address any questions or expand on anything. >> Okay. Thank you, Mr. Rayley. Any public comment on this item? Board member comment or questions? You bowled us over. >> Okay. We always look at the last page first. It's a good report. We appreciate your work. We appreciate the work of staff to get us to that point. We have a long history of that. Thank you. >> This is a uh
123action item. We have to approve this. So, may I have a motion to approve the district financial audit? >> I move that. >> Mr. Belt moves. >> I'll second. >> Seconded by Miss Koyan. Call for the vote. >> Motion carries. Student board member voting yes. Six yes, one absent. >> Okay. Takes us to 11.6 202425. Measure A financial and performance audits. Our same two gentlemen back again. >> Yes. And so, as I mentioned, the measure A bond does require both a financial and a performance audit, which is looking at how we spent uh those funds and the projects that were completed. Um, again, Mr. Raley is going to share a presentation. This has also been shared with the bond oversight committee uh prior to coming to the board. >> All right. Thank you again. It's
124been a while. Um I'll talk through a few of the uh highlights for the financial and performance audits of measure A and again if you have questions I'm happy to expand on anything or address those. Um so this again covered the fiscal year June 30, 2025. Um and again we gave unmodified opinions. So this is what we when we look at measure A we are carving out uh on the financial statements and looking at measure A as a standalone financial picture financial entity. And so we're um in our financial audit we're saying um are the financial statements fairly stated in all material respects. Um the scope is different than a performance audit because in a financial audit we're looking to see um for example on your balance sheet is cash does cash exist based on
125the supporting documentation is um accounts payable complete for example in that general fund item that I mentioned on the district audit. um in your income statement, we're looking to see that the expenditures were categorized in the correct u classifications based on the um California school accounting manual and did they exist? Were those appropriately uh reported? The performance audit, which again, as I mentioned, was also an unmodified opinion, is looking more for compliance. were the funds that were expended out of out of out of measure A uh used for the intended purpose under the project list and under Prop 39 where the bond measure was approved through. So we had no issues with that but just to clarify the difference in the nature of those two audits and why those are separate documents that um the
126state has asked us to issue our report over. So um and I did have the as Nathan mentioned I had the opportunity to meet with the citizens bond oversight committee and discuss this last week with them as well. Um so in conclusion for measure A this fiscal year you had about 11.9 almost 12 million of expenditures. We tested 7.6 million of those expenditures um which uh resulted at about 64% coverage of the total value. Um and then we also had the um last issuance of measure A which we also tested to make sure that was again counted for correctly and that that was uh presented properly in the financial statements uh for that final 70 million. Um and so there was no findings or question cost to report to you this evening and again we're
127able to issue that unmodified opinion because of management's efforts to get us what we need. So I'm happy to uh address any other questions that you may have. Uh but that is the end of that presentation. >> Okay. Thank you again, Mr. Rayley. Any public comment on this item, >> Mrs. Lambert. >> Good evening, Dr. Otto and board and uh Mr. Shum and nice to see you. I am serving uh in for all of us for the district and on the b bond oversight committee and on the property and uh advisory committee. Um I would just like to commend staff for the work they do for these committees. They are organized. Uh they are transparent. Um any questions that we have they answer and that goes with Nathan and for Steve Pena and for the
128whole group. It it's a pleasure to be on that board and I would recommend anyone else to be part of this bond oversight and they always provide us with a great packet of how the money is being spent, where it's being spent, how it affects our students. And I know that with all of you, our our goal used to be that the schools, all of our schools need to be the jewels of their community. and through this bond money and the way that it's being multifunded and the way that they're uh applying it to the school sites, that's exactly what what's happening. If you are able to go to Houston School for the State of the Union and see the all of the classrooms and see the before and after, you can see the great
129work that your staff's doing. So, that's all I have to say. Thank you. >> Thank you. Any other public comment? Board member comment. I guess we're there. Some of us worked really hard to make measure A happen. It's good to hear we have support from community and technical proficiency with making sure that it works right. Thank you. This is an action item. Do I have a motion to approve the 2425 measure a financial and performance audit? >> I'll motion to approve. >> Okay. Motion by Miss Gabby. >> I'll second. >> Second by Miss Goyan. Call for the vote. Motion carries. Student board member votes yes, six yes, one absent. >> Moving on. 11.7 public hearing for site suitability for Lowry Ranch site. Okay, CBO Hernandez. Back to you. >> Me. Good evening again. And uh
130this item is a public hearing for site suitability for Lowry Ranch. Um so in November the board um received the preliminary environmental assessment and since then we've received approval from the department of toxic substance control DTSC as well as CDE for to move forward with this site as a suitable site for an elementary school. And so we have an item following this a resolution that would adopt or approve uh that site for an elementary school. And the first step is a public hearing tonight. >> Got it. So to confirm, we have opened a public hearing to allow for public comment on this item. To that end, is there any public comment on this item? Ward member discussion. Okay. Hearing none, we will close the public hearing and reconvene the regular session. So back to you,
131Mr. Hernandez. Or is it action time? >> It's now we would move on to >> Okay. So do I have a motion to approve the public hearing for site suitability for Lowry Ranch site? >> Also move. >> Mr. belt first, second by >> Oh, I'm excuse me. I'm sorry. So, that item was the public hearing. The next item is the is the resolution. >> Okay. Got it. >> Okay. So, now we're now we're there. >> Now you can if we move on to the next item. Got it. Yes. >> So, can I second the um adoption of resolution to purchase Lowry Ranch? >> I guess you can. You know, it's a different item, right? >> We're on 11. >> 8. >> We're on 11.8. So, we've moved there. Got it. >> That was really weirdly
132set up. Okay, we're on 11.8. Okay. Um, so now we have a motion to >> maybe take a new motion on 11.8. >> There we go. May I have a new motion because I fumbled the last one to approve the adoption of the resolution to to purchase Lowry Ranch. Correct. >> New motion to purchase the property Lowry Ranch. >> Mr. Belt. >> And I will second that motion to purchase Lowry Ranch. Miss >> Gabby, call for the vote. Motion carries. Um, student board member voting yes. Six yes. One. >> Got it. So, just to confirm, legal counsel, there was no need to approve the public hearing. The public hearing was a public hearing. >> That's correct. >> And I just want to clarify the motion was to adopt the resolution, right? >> To adopt the
133resolution. >> Yeah. Okay. >> Yes. >> Okay. Drawing a line. 11.9 approval for long range facilities master plan long-term planning. Back to you, Mr. Hernandez. >> Okay. This time I have a PowerPoint for you. >> Okay. We good? All right. Good evening, President Oto, members of the board, Superintendent Sh. So tonight we're requesting approval of the next phase of our long long-term facilities planning. So we've over the last two plus years we've been on a journey of assessing our facilities having community meetings, community workshops, and uh really getting input on our planning for both short-term and long-term. And in last December, the board December 2024, the board approved the short-term plan, which included uh building an elementary school, some boundary adjustments, and some changes at elementary school. The long-term planning of this next phase is
134really around our secondary and our our board beliefs and commitments is that our learning environments should be safe, supportive, and innovative. And that's what our facilities planning uh helps us to achieve. So we started with our guiding principles and really it was about balancing enrollment across schools and aligning that enrollment to the capacity. So making sure we're fully utilizing our schools. Um addressing growth that we still have in the community particularly in the northwest and the southeast. Um and then you know my favorite being fiscally responsible ensuring that where we are investing our funds including our measure A funds that aligns to what the true needs are of the district as we move forward. So we've gone out to community conducted workshops. Uh we've had over 29,000 visits to our web page over 11,000 ratings
135over 200 2,000 survey contributors. And so we've received feedback and I think over 200 uh folks attended community workshops over the last two years as part of this process. And as I mentioned, the long-term phase really addresses secondary when we look at the concerns that we're trying to address. We addressed some of the elementary concerns with that first phase of of uh approvals and now [snorts] we're looking at middle school and high school. So, middle school, we're seeing in the Northwest with development um some disparity between enrollments between Ridgeview and La Hoya, which we'll share uh in a couple of slides. And then the obvious issue that we know at high school with our balancing of enrollment between our two schools that are in downtown Vicelia, Redwood, and and Mount Whitney. As we've gone out
136to the community, we've shared the enrollment projections and our tenure projection. And what we see here in this chart, the blue at the top is our high school enrollment. And the middle green is middle school and the bottom orange is our elementary school enrollment. And if we go out to 10 years, we can see our enrollment in high school is projected to decline by about 900 students. Overall, the district com uh declines by about 900 students as well. for our elementary schools. Um even though we do have some decline in our enrollment, we've had programs that have been been added. When we think about TK, a full grade level has been added to our elementary schools. And through Proposition 28, additional programming for visual and performing arts as well as expanded learning. And in our
137short-term plan, we're addressing elementary schools by building a new elementary school. when in the long-term planning, our recommendation is to continue to watch the development that's happening in the northwest and the southeast. And as uh as we see that development happening, address growth through either boundary adjustments or potentially another school. Um likely the southeast is where we will need to to make those adjustments. So in this phase of planning, we don't have a recommendation that we're bringing forward for elementary school other than we're continuing to monitor For middle schools, when we look uh there towards the middle to the 203132 enrollment projections, we see a disparity between La Hoya and Ridge View. Uh with Ridge View continuing with their uh growth in the Northwest to grow to over 900 students. And what we're recommending for
138our middle schools is that we construct uh classrooms at La Hoya and adjust boundaries so that the uh La Hoya [snorts] boundary would would increase and we would remove students from the Rididge View boundary and make that shift from between Rididge and La Hoya. The cost for that is about $8 million to do construction at La Hoya so that we have the capacity at that site for high school. Um, we know that our measure A bonds included a significant investment for high school. And when we look at the enrollment projections for high school, the blue bars there on the left of of each of those years show what the high school enrollment projection was from 2018. And the orange bar show the actual high school enrollment and the projection going out to 203435. I can't
139see that far. Um there on the far right. Um and so when we see what that projection was back in 2018 and we um had included in that potential bond project list a new high school. the difference between the peak of enrollment in 2018 versus what we're seeing in 10 year in the 10-year projection is about 1500 students. And so we're not going to show in this uh long range plan uh a high a new high school as part of that recommendation. But we do still need to address uh overcrowding at our high schools. We do still have lots of portable classrooms at our high schools. Uh and we still have the funds from measure measure A available to address that. So the recommendation is to build uh new classrooms at our high schools and
140pull off the portable the temporary classrooms. 26 classrooms would be built. Adjust boundaries to balance enrollment between the four schools. And then uh advance uh advanced academic programming and facility improvements at Mount Whitney High School. So we have an item after this item to approve uh an agreement for an architect that would start some of that process and planning. Um once this item is uh uh set to be approved or voted on by the board, the total cost of the high school solutions about 46 million. We'll have additional cost for the facility enhancements at Mount Whitney once we start that design process and work with the school site and the community on what that um facility would look like. So this is our plan in a page for this phase of planning. Um you see
141the middle school uh uh construction there for at La Hoya, the high school classrooms that would be built and then um an unknown cost yet for the Mount Whitney improvement projects. the current funds that we have on hand um as of June 30th about 140 million from developer fees from our state matching funds that we've received from projects that have been completed and then our measure A fund our largest funding source um makes up about 140 million with projects that we have in line from previously approved as well as measure A modernizations. We've got about 113 million remaining. And then with these projects that we're bringing tonight, we have about $59 million remaining. Once we put in the cost of the Mount Whitney um enhancements and other modernization projects that we have moving forward, we
142anticipate that within the next 12 to 18 months, all of these funds will be encumbered for those projects. So, our next steps, um, if we get approval tonight, we will bring architect agreements over the next couple of months. Uh, in the summer, late fall, we'll be starting to look at potential boundaries, uh, for the the schools, the high school and middle schools. And then we'll start community outreach late in the fall this year. And then we'll turn to our next phase of long range planning and what we expect to see and want to see out of our schools for the future. Again, knowing that um these projects will um will will pretty much use the funding that we have available. We'll be continuing that process of looking at the funding sources moving forward. And with
143that here for questions. >> Okay. Is there any public comment on this item? Board member comment. Wow. None. Okay. So, here's what I think I took away from this, Nathan. The stuff that you talked about here for elementary, middle, and high school can be covered under funds that are available currently to the district through measure A, developer fees, things like that. >> Correct. >> Right. That's correct. uh when you did the road show with this uh in the community uh over the past couple months, there was an additional page that showed over the next 15, this is like a 3 to 5 year kind of thing. Over the next 15 years or so beyond that, we need money to maintain and modernize the 40 plus facilities, school facilities, not just facilities, uh here in the
144district to keep them useful at a level that we need for the kids in the community. That number was I think in the hundred million. >> 182 million. >> Yeah. So 82. By the time Steve leaves here tonight, it's going to be 100 million. By the time I get to my car, it's 110. It's going to go up a ton. So what you're going to bring to us in the near future is a sense for how we will get to that level of investment by the community in the school district to maintain what we have deeper longer term. Okay? Because the story that we need to walk away from isn't the district has enough money to do what's needed. I can stop thinking about this. It's we have the money to do what we need
145to do in the very shortest of terms to make sure that kids in the near future have what they need to be successful in school, but we need to immediately because we're late doing it and we've been late for years and years and years in the district to plan for the future in a significant long-term way in a strategic way moneywise to get schools where they need to be. That we need to find lots of money and it can't come from the state through regular pipelines. It's above and beyond the money we get to run schools on an annual basis. >> Absolutely. >> Okay. So, that's the takeaway. All right. So, you need an approval here. >> Yes, sir. >> Okay. >> Dr. >> Yes. >> If I can make one more comment, too. We
146we discussed this pretty well at our work session, but it it bears to be um explained again. As the community looks at, wow, you have all this money sitting there. Um they also need to realize it is earmarked only for facilities. You cannot put it in salaries. You cannot uh build another um library. Well, you I guess you could um facility, but you you can't buy more books. Uh you can't put it into retirement funds or u medical benefits or anything like that. It's not like we have this enormous wallet. It's reserved monies that can or restricted I can get the CPA terms right. restricted monies that can only be used for what we're looking at buildings and facilities. >> That's correct. The gentleman that just left before if we did any of those things
147would not have the same opinion us. >> Okay. Any further board member comment? Okay. May I have a motion to approve the long range facilities master plan long-term planning? >> Yes. I so move that we up. >> Mr. Belt first, second by I'll second >> by Miss Gabby. Call for the vote. Motion carries. Student board member votes yes, six yes. Um, one absent. >> Okay. Moves it to 11.10. Mount Whitney High School pre-esigned services agreement. Mr. Hernandez. >> Good evening again. Yes, as I shared, this pre-design services agreement is with Vanian Associates, and it would be to provide pre-esign services, architectural services for Mount Whitney High School. It would involve meeting with the staff in that community to determine the needs of the site and would uh then result in bringing forward an architectural agreement
148once those plans are um in motion. So we are requesting approval of this item. Public comment on this item board member comment on this item. Okay, seeing none, I'll entertain a motion to approve the Mount Whitney High School preesign services agreement. >> I'll motion. >> Okay, Mr. D Young first seconded by I'll do it. Second call for the motion. [snorts] >> Motion carries. Student board member votes yes. Six yes. One absent. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Did I do something wrong? >> Five. >> Yeah. One absent. One out of one out of room. Yep. >> Oh, okay. Sorry about that. So, it was five. Yes. two absent. >> Sorry. >> You can join me in the penalty box later. Okay. [laughter] 11.11 Local Control Accountability Plan LCAP midyear update. Mr. Hernandez, >> something completely different.
149So, tonight uh we're presenting our LCAP midyear review for the 2526 school year. And so this required update gives the board visibility into how LCAP goals, actions, and services are being implemented, how funds are being expended, and where we see progress and challenges at this point in the year. We'll walk through each of our LCAP goals, uh share the midyear spending progress, highlight implementation and reflections, and then close with the next steps in the LCAP process. So I just wanted to remind the board that the LCAP the LCAP is not a separate plan. It is aligned and as we go through and look at the different goals and actions within the LCAP, it's aligned to both our strategic plan as well as our board's beliefs and commitments. So, our LCAP goals and um these are
150our ABCs because we figured ABC would be easier to remember uh but it is academic achievement, belonging and safety and then communication and family engagement. These areas anchor how we allocate our resources, design supports and measure our progress. So for goal one, academic achievement, it focuses on ensuring students advance towards proficiency across subjects and grade levels through instruction, professional development, collaboration, and technology integration. And so what you'll see on each of these slides is the total amount of our LCAP that's allocated to this goal, as well as the progress of spending at this point in in the year. So, we should expect to see somewhere between 40 and 60% at this time in the year. Some uh range a little bit lower and that's because they might have activities that they're conducting at the end
151of the year um to to finish out the school year. So the reflection and next steps here is uh we have several focus areas. Um increasing reclassification rates uh and supports for English learners, decreasing the number of students below grade level in reading and math and then common assessments at all grade levels to monitor student progress. And that's been a highlight for our uh district office teams is working on some of those common assessments and working with our schools. For goal two, belonging and safety. A goal two centers on on ensuring students are engaged and prepared for learning through daily academic behavior and social emotional supports. This goal area includes attendance supports, behavior services, mental health resources, and school climate investments. And again, let's see the total allocation and the percentage spent uh in line
152with what we would expect at this point of the year. So the reflection on uh belonging and safety attendance and engagement strategies are being reforced at sites with targeted outreach and intervention supports continuing through the remainder of the year. So we have here the our chronic absenteeism rate is currently at 19.2%. that has come down uh over the last several years um a high of somewhere in the 30% range but still above what our precoid uh chronic absenteeism rate which was about 9%. Um so still work to do there and then of course reducing number of expense ex suspensions and providing emotional supports for students for goal three communication and family engagement. Our community and families will actively support students in schools through empowerment, effective two-way communication and collaboration. And you can see a little
153bit lower there at the 40% um but also um fewer expenditures under our goal three communication and family engagement. So reflection here is our district advisory committee. This is actually a celebration increased to over 107 participants. um it was uh not as well attended in in previous years and so that was something that we've celebrated. All sites have monthly collaboration with our family community resource center staff and then increasing the number of parents completing online registration which is going to open up here very soon um for both our kindergarten as well as students who are coming back to school. uh for our charter schools highlighting again we we heard about VTEC and the class receiving uh AA or the Calgy ETC certifications decreasing in suspension rates for VCIS um highlighting English learner progress and then
154for charter homeschool increasing that parent involvement in their classrooms. So for our next steps, um we're continuing to analyze the input that we're receiving in the LCAP process, uh effectiveness of their goals and actions. And we'll come back to the board in June with our first read and our second read for adoption of our LCAP plan. And with that, answer any questions. >> Okay. Any public comment on this item? Board member comment on this item. Seeing none, this is information only item. No action is required. >> Ready. Boss 11.12 2026 CSBA delegate assembly election. Mr. Shrum. >> Thank you. Uh President Odoto. So this is uh for our board to ratify the ballot for uh two nominees to be representatives to the CSBA delegate assembly sub region 12A to Larry County. uh one of those
155being our very own Walter Gamoyan and the other being uh Pete Lowry from um >> Porterville. So those are the two that have been nominated and so now that just has to be ratified by all of the relevant uh boards of education. >> Okay. Any public comment on this item? Board member comment on this item. Okay. Okay. May I have a motion to vote for the two nominees to be representative representatives to the CSBA delegate assembly subreion 12-y county? >> I'll motion that um can we motion we put both of our votes towards Walta or do we have to give one to each? >> I don't think we want to make Pete an enemy. So there we go. >> All right. We'll play nice and I'll motion to nominate Pete and Walter. >> I'll second
156that. Yes. >> Seconded by Mr. Belt. Call for the vote. I want to say thank you. Um motion carries. Um student board member voting yes, six yes, one absent. >> Great. Thank you. And thank you, Miss Gone, for your willingness to do that. We are on the one yard line. Warrant list December 20, 2025, January 30, 2026. I'm going to make a motion to approve the warrant list from December 2025 to January 30, 2026. May I have a second? >> I'll second. >> Okay, Miss KB seconds. Call for the vote. >> Oops. >> Motion carries. Um, the student board member votes yes, five yes, one abstension, and one absent. >> Thank you for your patience. This meeting is closed.