001I'd like to call this public session to order we have a quorum this meeting is being webcast live and recorded the recording or webcast May capture images and sounds of those attending the meeting I will now identify close session topics recommended expulsions recommended reinstatements recommended reviews continued expulsion Public Employee assignment reassignment appointment Public Employee discipline dismissal release complaints conference with labor negotiator conference with legal counsil existing lit conference with real property negotiators anticipated L and Public Employee mid midyear evaluation superintendent public comment on close session items general public comment and any close session item will be heard at this time pursuant the board policy the board May limit individual comments to no more than three minutes and indidual topics to 20 minutes it is recommended you begin your comments by stating your name there is
002no public comment we'll now adjourn to close session evening i' like to convene this regular session um I'd like to welcome our student board representative uh Maui Lise okay you're gonna have to clarify what high school Golden West gold oh Golden West okay don't say that 3.2 I'm going to introduce The Interpreter gas Mora will speak as the Spanish interpreter for this meeting meeting attendees who would like to listen to Spanish interpretation of the meeting please pick up the headphones from the table located in the back of this meeting room this announcement will now be shared in Spanish thank you this meeting is being webcast live and recorded the recordings or webcast May capture images and sounds of those attending the meeting members of the public wanting to provide public comment on items listed on
003tonight's agenda we recommend you fill out the public comment form located in the table in the back of the room please hand the completed form to Delia Smart Board manager before the item comes up for the on the agenda we recommend you compete complete a separate form for each agenda item you'd like to comment on Miss smart is sitting at the table in the back of the room members of the public providing public comment please use the microphone on the stand located in the front of the room um I will lead the Pledge of Allegiance please stand 3.5 I'm going to report action taken in Clos session during closed session on a motion by board member Vias a second by board member oo the board voted voted to order the dismissal of classified employee number
00421446 in the position of bus driver that was unanimous and then the board took the following action in close session on a motion by board member Naylor the second by board member case b saleno the there was a unanimous vote to approve the settlement agreement between the district and the parties representing oah case 3.8 the following are revisions to the agenda uh numbers 4.1 4.2 4.3 6.12 11.1 may I have a motion to adopt the board's meeting agenda I'll make a motion to approve I'll second on a motion by uh board member Vias second by case Bear soleno all in favor student board representative votes yes and motion passes unanimously T tonight we have a student performance with Greenacres middle school jazz ban um assistant superintendent U Mark Thompson I'm sure they're in the other
005room but I'm not sure if they can uh hear me Mrs Phillips are they ready Perfect all right The Green Green Acres jazz band under the direction of David Morris has had a wonderful start to the school year the band participated in the return of the A&W cruise nights on Mooney Boulevard on October 7th and I've had a wonderful fall concert last Thursday August 10th the jazz band is proud to be tonight's entertainment and hope you enjoy their musical selections so at this time let's give them a hand as they walk [Applause] in board at this time would you guys move yourselves out front Mr Morris give us just a moment they'll step out and so they can see them from the front side and thank you for being here [Music] tonight evening everyone name
006is David Morris this is my jazz we have two tunes for you tonight our first one is called bles machine and it features a few Sol we have London onler help you our first selection Los [Music] oh [Music] la [Music] pap [Music] [Applause] [Music] la one more section for you tonight it's called the chicken featur our and guitar guar playing for primarily improvised we hope you enjoy our last selection which is the [Music] chicken [Music] you [Music] f [Music] [Applause] [Music] la all right well thank you to Green Acres jazzband and to uh Mr Morris and as they begin to exit out parents you're welcome to stay with us for the next couple hours um and enjoy our meeting but if you did not and you would like to uh exit out with your students
007you may do so at the this time thank you so much and well done that's an amazing sounding chicken whatever that was at the end I thought so thank you guys so much and have a great [Applause] evening thank you Green Acres that was wonderful we're going to move on in our agenda 4.1 Spotlight on good things happening in the district uh superintendent Shrum all right well good evening board president Gyan and our board and our community also again great job to Green Acres love beginning our board meetings grounding Us in what we're here about which is our students and so great to see that Talent very excited about where we are as a district of course October is a long month and I want to acknowledge that uh it's kind of as you get
008through October okay well is November coming will there be a break so I know typically as we get toward the end of October people are a little tired and uh but we have a lot of exciting things happening in our district so excited to Spotlight those this evening always of course beginning with our Compass slot our foundation our vision and Mission core beliefs and commitments uh as we talk about the great things happening within our district and so here we go obviously we've got quite a few things that we want to spot to begin with literacy a lot of work happening in our schools around literacy several schools this P past month hosted literacy nights uh special themes we have some photos from viva blunt and Annie R Mitchell literacy nights uh Riverway Elementary had
009a special Q&A with one of the actors from the book Holes that was later turned into a movie and I remember uh using that book when I was a teacher so what a great opportunity for the sixth grade class read the book and then got to take turns asking the actor questions so what a great opportunity to bring literacy to life had the opportunity to see some of our Loft events of these are Leaders of Tomorrow these are held at our schools these are about students that are in our different Pathways and so they get to learn and interact with individuals who are in the field that do the work that they might be interested in and so they get to learn about you know what it takes to be uh a district attorney or
010an attorney or what it takes to be a fire officer a medical examiner or what it might be and so we work with local industry Partners who provide our high school students with that experience and insight into the work they do every day uh always impressive because the students come prepared with questions to really learn more about what does it take to get to where these individuals are who volunteer their time to come and speak to our kids so thank you for doing that and our very own board member uh Megan celeno was also there representing the public defenders office so we appreciate that as well so a great opportunity Spotlight also continuing on stem nights at Pinkham Elementary our teaching and learning team in partnership with Southern California Edison hosted the first of several
011science technology engineering and math nights we had over a hundred families attend the event that included 12 Hands-On activities and take-home materials so we encourage our community to take advantage of these upcoming opportunities and thank you to our teams here at the district office for working to put that together and then the school sites uh putting that in place for families and students to come and get to participate Visual and Performing Arts huge shout out to our Educational Foundation every year they hold a showcase uh held at Golden West High School where all of our bands our dance teams our cheer squads come and perform and it's a great night a great evening uh food lots of families and and it's also fun for the kids because they get to see oftentimes they're performing right
012so they don't necessarily get to see everyone else's shows and routines and so it's a great opportunity to do do that as well and just highlight the amazing vapa programs that we that we have in our district so congratulations thank you to our Ed foundation for that also want to congratulate Golden West band they receive first place in the Bakersfield driller showcase so congratulations to them expanded learning opportunities we we talk a lot about elop and we talk a lot about it because it's doing such amazing things for our students our Extended Learning opportunity program and this is where we're able to provide opportunity for students after school with our partners from the community and others to engage in Arts Sports uh academic support whatever it might be and so recently uh and we've not
013had drama in elementary and so this is just another way to bring experiences for our students so uh you see some pictures here from uh students at Ann AR Mitchell perform The Lion King also recently had our first ever football tournament kicked off on Highland of course our new Turf there uh winter session signups are happening so families parents look into this this is amazing opportunity for your students after school uh great things are happening they don't have to go home at three o'clock we have a lot of great activities happening after and we next weekend or weekend after this one is our very first soccer tournament so all elementary schools are going to be participating in the tournament on a Saturday so it's going to be exciting and looking forward to that again thanks
014to our elop and and all the support and partners that are helping to put that together community outreach again very important community events that took place this month we have several that were uh highlighting here uh over 1500 Spectators viewed 125 cars at the Golden West High School car show thank you to Mr Rah heib for that VTEC several of us had the chance to go there hosted their annual Harvest Festival culminating event of their homecoming week over 400 community members were in attendance and Crowley Elementary help its first ever fall har or first fall Harvest Carnival in seven years over 10 Community groups donors and parent volunteers made this happen thank you to our staff and community that go above and beyond to coordinate these events and immerse themselves into our school community so
015one of the fun parts of October are a lot of these events that happen in our schools College and Career Readiness uh recently this is new this year so at the rawy stadium this past week every eighth grader got to go on a field trip who doesn't love a field trip and to the Rawhide stadium and all around the stadium were all of our College and Career Pathways showcasing what they do and so this was the chance for the eighth graders to go and see oh here are some things maybe I'm interested in a medical pathway maybe I'm interested in film maybe I'm interested in I mean it was just it it actually blew me away the number of things that we offer in our schools that were showcased for our Middle School students but
016was what was even more spectacular was listening to our high school students articulate why these students should come into that pathway and so they were able just to talk about what they're learning how it's going to benefit them when they go into college or career it was absolutely amazing and look forward to making this event even bigger and better uh in the upcoming year so just a huge shout out to all of our teachers our sponsors our students especially that helped put that event together uh and of course our colle and career Readiness team here at the district big undertaking our transportation team as well to put something like this together uh and they did a phenomenal absolutely phenomenal job I was sold I was ready to join VTEC uh right there and enter one
017of their Pathways the kids the kids did such a good job convincing me uh and assistant superintendent Thompson was there at the same time we're like okay we're ready to go back to school sign us up Spotlight also our homecoming also in October a lot of our Homecoming school of our schools held their homecoming games great night for our community Alma moders to come back and and talk about the memories that they've made also speaking of those memories and our students showcasing their talents at the toer county fair our FFA teams congratulations to our future farmers of America they all achieve great marks at the fair our students work hard all summer and even throughout the year uh on raising an animal or learning these things or whatever it is that they're going to Showcase
018a lot of work dedication and passion on the weekend go into uh showcasing uh what they're able to do and so congratulations to all of those students and we just have the best FFA instructors and advisers uh and they're always such just a just a awesome opportunity to hear them and see them interact with our students very proud of what they do every day also wrapping up our Hispanic Heritage Month over 20% or excuse me 20,000 71% of our students come from a Hispanic background and so it's very important that we take time time to recognize the different contributions from cultures that help make us a great community and so many of our schools celebrated National Hispanic Heritage Month in many different ways highlighting Customs having different events doing different education opportunities lesson plannings facts
019and engaging so students can learn about the different cultures that make up our great Community also last month we held our very first state of our district we were excited to showcase the many great things happening our district we had students performing we were able to show off some of the results of our Renovations or modernizations Mount Whitney Jim and others and uh anytime you get to hear kids sing and speak it just you know again is about why we're here and so looking forward to this in some shape form or fashion becoming a yearly opportunity for us to share with our business Community our uh public our businesses our politicians and others that we have great things happening in viol unified and as proud as we are of our city we should also be
020proud of of our school district so a great opportunity to highlight the great things happening in our district and speaking of that one of the things that we knew that we heard from the community was how we need to focus on Phonics and coming in we recognized a year and a half ago two years ago we didn't have a coordinated approach across the district to teaching something as fundamental as phonics and we were really leaving it just up to happen stance right or what individual schools may do and so we realized as part of a foundation of of literacy we needed to make sure we had an explicit literacy program phonics program in our kindergarten through second grade classrooms and so thanks to our board we uh brought our teachers together went through an adoption
021process and came out with a program called fundations which has now been implemented in every single classroom kindergarten through second grade all across our district and what we wanted to focus on this year was not just here's the program go and do but how we all work together and show that this really isn't just something we expect our teachers to do alone we're we expect and I expect our district team to partner with teachers to make this successful and we're just a few months in right so it's brand new we're still learning it uh but one of the things that we did as a Cabinet team was to go out and teach a phonics lesson so that we could experience what it was like to have to study a little bit look at the teachers
022guide prepare a lesson and go in and deliver and so you see some images there and I want to point out this wasn't just those members of cabinet who maybe lead a department that's connected to academics this was the entire cabinet including the superintendent chief operations officer business officer Human Resources all going into classrooms and delivering a lesson and it's a little humbling when you do that because you realize just what goes into being prepared to deliver effective instruction every day and coming out of this as a Cabinet team we came back and debriefed well what did we see in here what could we do to further support our teachers and we heard some things we heard about how long it was taking to do lessons we heard about how do I fit this into
023an already tight timeline and we realized there were some things we needed to back up and help clarify for our teachers to be successful and so that's the benefit of when you get to go into the classroom you see and hear those things and then the district team came back and began to work on well what now that we know this and have heard this and experienced it what now can we do to continue to support the teachers in the classroom so we have a short little video we want to show about this experience when I first heard that District leadership was interested in coming into my classroom I was excited I was I felt recognized I felt like they wanted to actually be in the room where learning happens and it was motivating for
024both me and my students to know someone special someone who makes decisions for us is interested in coming in and experiencing what we experience every day this was something new to us I've been in the district for um 11 years and this is the first time that I've heard this happening and I was excited and happy to be picked for this I was especially nervous but excited when I heard Mr would be coming to my class I thought it was a great opportunity just for them to come in and make those connections with us so that we feel that we're supported in this new phonics program I thought they did a great job my students enjoyed having somebody else come in and it was a seamless transition from me to the cabinet members and it
025made me realize that it's important that we follow the curriculum with Fidelity and that way anybody can come in and do our lessons I felt that we were validated that having you know board members Mr Trum come out that they're hearing us that they're here to support us that they recognize that this foundation's program is valuable it's a great asset for us to be helping our kids learn phonics we felt stronger we felt recognized my students still ask to this day how is Mr Thompson doing is he teaching is he a teacher yet because they fully believe that he was working hard just like us every single day and so they don't forget about you they are going to remember you when you make those big decisions and so we hope that you remember us
026as well thank you so and again you know you learn a lot and we're working on becoming teachers I think that was important and uh and you know the kindergarten first and second grade teachers will will understand what I mean when I say upon reflection I still am not sure despite all of that practice that I got the dictation sentences correct uh so I've reflected on that and I know if I go back out and deliver I'll be better prepared uh the next time but I do want to thank our teachers uh for opening their doors to let us come in to let us experience thank you for partnering with us and I also just want to give a shout out to uh those teachers as well for working to implement a new program it's
027not easy um and we certainly know there are things we need to improve on but at the end of the day our kids are going to be stronger readers because of this foundation and the emphasis on Phonics that we're providing in our primary grades so thank you uh to our teachers and and also good job cabinet team uh on instruction there were some nervous adults I can tell you about going in but the teachers and the students made us feel very welcome and so I appreciate that uh continuing the theme with our with our students here uh student participation let me see if that clicked oh there we go uh recently held our student advisories and so uh as the board and Community aware we have a superintendent student advisory made up of elementary middle
028and high school students from every school across our district and last year we began this and we met a few times and we met via zoom and one of the things that we heard from the students uh was that they wanted more opportunity to meet frequently more frequently and in person and so we started the year on zoom and we had the students think about what are some concerns you have about school what's happening uh and so with students you know all the way you heard everything from uh what we eat at lunch to recess to uh to fights or other things that may be happening on campus and so they identified things that they want to talk about so this week we brought all of the students here to the district office and spent
029a few hours working through what they identified and one of the great things about being here was it wasn't just me working with the student so they identified safety as something they wanted to talk about and so we had our coordinator of Safety and Security come in and answer questions from the team uh from the students about what's going on and what can we do and as we go through the year what's going to happen is the students are going to engage in problem solving so they're going to go back they're going to interview other students they're going to come back we're going to meet virtually and in Zoom uh and in person again and they're going to work through what can we do to address some of the things that they identified working with
030the district office Personnel who lead those divisions or those departments and then the students are going to help generate Solutions and then in in the spring they're actually going to come and present to the board some of the concepts that they identified and some of the potential solutions for us to consider so I'm excited about the process I think it's going to be fun uh and and it turn out to be something worthwhile right they're not just talking about problems they're actually going to have to help us figure out what do we do about it and uh so I look forward to uh continuing to engage with our student advisories throughout the year and bringing them here in the spring going to be fun district attendance has been a focus proud to say as you'll
031see in the quarterly report we're making progress here our family and community resource center recently held an attendance competition with all elementary schools and the chance to have an A&W truck come to their school had celebratory events all throughout the district uh these photos are from Golden o Oak Hurley who celebrated i v USD theme and also Houston want to give a shout out to Houston Elementary in their partner Neighborhood Church who put together the best day ever and several of us had a chance to go uh they had a tablecloth red carpet lunch for students they had rallies it it was just a true Community a lot of fun snacks games competitions decorations a great great day at Houston hurly Elementary though took first place overall with 96% attendance on that day Houston took
032second place and Elbow Creek took third all schools saw a drastic increase in attendance for last year so thank you to our students staff and families for focusing on being present every day we continue to work on our safety campaigns here in the district everyone's aware this is something we've been working on whether it's our active shooter training uh to making sure we have a centralized way along with other school systems within toer County for students to be able to report something uh the say something campaign and so as we continue to advance this there's a parent night this week we now are moving into our student education phase so last year last spring we trained all of our adults on active shooter this year age appropriate lessons will be delivered for our students concerning
033that topic and although it's not something uh we want to have to do we know it's a reality of our world and we have to do it right and so uh we're having parent nights that information is being sent out if parents are curious about what we're going to teach students and so if they have a concern with that they're certainly welcome to reach out uh to their administrator they can choose to opt out however I would just encourage families to think about that because should there be an emergency you can't really opt out of that happening so uh we do have age appropriate lessons we're um looking forward to those being delivered and also uh in the coming weeks you're going to be hearing more about our say something uh see something say something
034campaign uh almost every school district in tary county is part of this uh and so we're we're excited about this and it will give all of our schools and all of our students one number that they can contact and it's a national you know they contact us all that stuff goes on behind the scenes but the point being if someone needs help or sees something it's yet another way for that to be reported and so more information their tips are monitored 247 by the crisis center and they notify law enforcement and school offici when needed and so we're looking forward to that added layer of consistency when it comes to how to report things uh not only in velia but all the way across to Larry County as well uh this is just an FYI
035last month we shared with the board our data what it was looking like for Casp and elpac data tomorrow is the official state release so if you're curious where we were you can go back and watch last month's board presentation uh there are no significant changes to what we estimated our reports to be uh I think we were within 1% or less than 1% difference and so great work to Rick Hamilton hkia and that team for working on getting that information this is just a FYI to our board that that does become public on the state websites tomorrow looking forward to this one of the things that we heard from our community and our board is an opportunity to really have better engagement because as we know when you're at a board meeting it's it's
036the board it's it's a meeting of the board it's business in public right it's not really an opportunity to have that authentic engagement that back and forth conversation this is a meeting of the board in public right the board's business so we wanted to create an Avenue where that could happen and so I'm excited announcing our first ever conversation with board member and so starting in I believe it's next week they kick off um all across the District board members either singularly or in teams are going to be uh meeting with members of the community and so this information has been shared we're share it again uh those that are interested in coming are welcome to submit a question ahead of time uh our board members and District staff will be prepared to talk about
037that and then of course there'll be questions uh taken from uh the floor as well I believe there are going to be some snacks there's child care and some other things that are going to be provided you see a schedule up there uh and we're looking forward to this and we're going to learn from this first experience we'll adjust modify and see what goes well and what we might need to improve on but I think it's a great opportunity for our community to come and have authentic dialogue and conversation with our board this is something that's been very much on the board's mind and the desire to do this and so looking forward to this opportunity so you can find information about this on our district website and of course our high-f five Friday continued
038uh once a month our district team goes out and gives a high five to our kids and our staff uh we were at Conor in Washington at the end of the last month and obious viously October has been a busy month uh for a lot of different recognitions and so uh these are just some of the things that as a district are teachers engaged in our school sites engaged in uh either education about or lessons about or just different things uh that went on at school sites and so National custodian Appreciation Day October's principal appreciation month and so uh obviously we appreciate our our district team our staff our custodians our principes national bullying prevention month there a lot of kindness and other activities that continue National voter education week and so educating our students
039about the importance of the civic duty of voting uh also on social media and I can't read that up there so I'm gonna look right here our attendance campaign Hispanic Heritage Month again we mentioned uh Suicide Prevention awareness week and we had some great heart activities occurring at every campus where students were putting positive thoughts up uh state of the District of course uh Native American uh Loft highlights we talked about that also some of our uh social media you'll see our Washington and Conor high five we also released a series of data videos and so everything from reclassification to how we did on Casp we launched a website excited about the the potential for the uh website sorry a a podcast excited about the opportunity to just another way to connect with our community
040and families we mentioned voter education week and so we had a student video that was put together and then I mentioned the data wrapup as well uh conversation with the board we've shared about that our CTE program and our Hispanic Heritage Month are also some of the things that we highlighted at schools and on social media so it has been an amazing but busy month uh and we look forward to finishing October strong and moving into November so Madame President that concludes my report thank you any questions or comments from the board all right thank you super attendant shum um 4.2 K2 literacy and math One update um uh director of teaching and learning Brienne Phillips all right waiting on our presentation just a moment all right good evening board president gaboyan superintendent shum board
041members vusd staff and Community I'm Brienne Phillips administrator of teaching and learning and today I'm here to provide you with an overview of two Focus areas for viel unified these two Focus areas are K2 literacy and math one knowing that all students can achieve at high levels and demonstrate continuous growth our focus on K2 literacy and math 1 ensures is a strong foundation for all Learners you will see tonight that we engage in cycles of continuous Improvement to empower our teachers and staff to ensure the success of each and every student we will begin with K2 literacy specifically focusing on Phonics and then move on to an overview of math one in our theory of action the board directs us to ensure a strong foundation for all Learners through consistency in the following areas balanced
042models of instruction and assessment gr appropriate standards-based instruction focused on authentic student engagement aligned high quality board approved resources and research-based systems of support you will see tonight that we are relentlessly intentional in our focus on K2 literacy and math 1 to take conditions set by this board to align our arrows to positively impact student learning through the previously mentioned actions K2 literacy is made up of multiple components through balanced instruction our students demonstrate core knowledge and skills in engaging in Daily phonics instruction and decoding words with a variety of strategies students use their learning and core knowledge and skills to demonstrate critical thinking through Reading and comprehending grade level text expressing opinions about reading and making connections across text our intentional F focus on Phonics instruction is aligned to our balanced instruction models to
043build our students core Knowledge and Skills vusd has a milestone of all students reading on grade level by the end of second grade in the fall of 2022 through an evaluation of our program we recognized that there was a need for a robust phonics program to support our teachers in achieving this Milestone our focus on developing our foundational skills through phonics led to the adoption of Foundations phonic supports our students in decoding and encoding skills word recognition spelling proficiency reading fluency comprehension phonemic awareness preventing reading difficulties and building foundational literacy skills in the spring of let me switch my deck sorry in the spring of 2023 v v usd's phonic adoption committee recommended the Wilson's foundations Wilson's language foundations for board adoption in May of 2023 the program was adopted this adoption allowed teaching and
044learning to focus on program implementation the needs that are for our sites as as well as our teachers and students implementation to Fidelity provides all students the same learning opportunities by September 1st of this year 238 K2 teachers had been trained in foundations in addition we had 22 principes engage in training and 29 assistant principles engage in training at one a one-time training does not meet the ongoing need of support with new programs or even existing programs knowing this all K2 teachers are engaging in six additional professional learning sessions throughout this Academic School year as a district you heard earlier we are all in on Phonics our cabinet team engaged in um our own phonics instruction each of us if you called us up we can share the word of the day which was quite
045challenging but also quite fun it reminded us of why we got into education beginning this Academic Year each velia unified school has an instructional coach our elementary instructional coaches are pivotal in supporting our teachers as they learn alongside our teachers our instructional coaches help our teachers Implement through modeling parts of lessons providing feedback to teachers but most importantly being a a sounding board for the teachers to bounce ideas off of to collaborate best practices to bring challenges to and work through them our instructional coaches are partners for our teachers with the ultimate goal of positively impacting student learning and achieving our Milestone of all students reading on grade level by the end of second grade in January we will be launching our phonics assessment this will allow teachers to not have to wait for our
046next bass assessment which is Benchmark assessment system in order to determine if students are on grade level or if they've Fallen just below grade level and need some additional support teachers will be able to intervene and be able to provide students support Just in Time We additionally have a phonic advisory committee this is composed of teachers instructional coaches and content Specialists as well as Student Success teachers their role is to bring feedback to the team based on Trends and patterns they will then share their concerns and the teams will make proactive decisions to support implementation of strong fics instruction districtwide with all initiatives we know that there is a cycle of continuous Improvement noting this in collaboration with the instructional coaches and regular feedback from teachers we are developing ongoing tips to support our teachers
047with in effective implementation the these tips are referred to as Foundation tips our real time support we value our teachers time and strive to provide support timely so that they can focus on instruction and student learning we have multiple measures of monitoring student progress however each assessment provides crucial information about each student and teachers are able to make instructional adjustments to ensure every student is learning and progressing on grade level as as well as intervene when students need support our focus on K2 literacy is essential to supporting students reaching our vusd literacy Milestone we are seeing gains in our students and out of the many positive Reflections I will leave you with this quote from a K2 teacher students are recognizing letters and sounds independently many students are spelling words on their own or attempting
048to spell words by tapping out the sounds they hear students are becoming comfortable with building sentences and remembering what every sentence needs we'll now shift our focus on to mathlin oh go back one oh I did jump too thank you we'll now shift our Focus to math One V usd's graduating class of 2028 will meet our graduation requirements M of three years or 30 units of mathematics knowing that math one is a gateway course to mathematics science and graduation V USD is committed to a district alignment of math one to build a solid math foundation for our students the alignment of math one begins with our balanced instructional models where students demonstrate their learning through core knowledge and skills and procedural skills and fluency that balanced with critical thinking the focus of math 1 will
049result in high quality consistent instruction across our stud across our district every student will engage in learning the same priority standards through the same scope and sequence every student will be able to monitor their learning through common benchmarks and show continuous growth over time through a common grading scale students grades mean the same thing across R the district our focus in math one helped vusd to examine our past professional learning practices and develop systems for every math one teacher in vusd to engage in unit studies learning progressions data analysis and reflective practices I'd like to take you now on a journey to the alignment in math one in the spring of 2023 our math one lead teachers which is one teacher from every Middle School and High School engaged in identifying V USD priority standards
050they additionally developed our scope and sequence and a blueprint which is the standards depth of knowledge and number of questions for our first Benchmark assessment in May of 2023 for the first time ever every math one teacher in vusd alongside with Administration came together for a math one launch day on this day teachers engaged in discussion of course alignment between middle and high school this alignment is critical as our middle school students taking math one will have this course on their high school transcripts on this day teachers engaged in unit one discussions collaborating on instructional practices Additionally the teachers came to consensus on a common grading scale for all of our bath one class classes this grading scale assures a student that a letter grade at one school is the same at another school in
051September of this year vusd students engaged in the first of six benchmark assessments this assessment was focused on our priority standards learned in unit one our Benchmark assessment is both summative and informative as it provides students and teachers a SN snapshot of where students are at in their learning as well as identifying Concepts to re-engage students in their learning as mentioned in our em as mentioned in our embedded practices in our balanced instructional models students develop and embrace a growth mindset through reflection opportunities to show growth in a supportive learning environment our benchmark assessments provide our students the opportunities to reflect on their learning through multiple opportunities they will show growth over time shortly after the closing of the Benchmark window math one teachers instructional coaches and site Administration engaged in a day of data
052analysis reflection collaboration and forward planning this data analysis allows our teachers to discover where students have areas of misconceptions and informs their next instructional moves most recently in fact earlier today our math one teachers lead teachers came together to work through our spring semester scope and sequence assessment Blueprints and learning progressions this cycle of learning will continue for our six benchmark assessments it affords our teachers the opportunity to drill down into the standards develop lessons that support our students in learning the rigor of the standards as as well as to analyze student performance and reflect on our teaching and determine how to re-engage students in learning on standards they are not demonstrating proficiency on yet we are relentlessly intentional with our focus on math one the alignment of the course studying standards and understanding the
053progressions of student learning today I had a discussion with a teacher and she stated to me the work we have put into math one has provided a roadmap for student learning this alignment has focused student learning and targeted our instruction our assessment provides clear guidance to keep students on the road to learning success I know where we are heading and how to get our students there with confidence we are relentlessly intentional with our focus on math one the alignment of this course and the standards this alignment will lead to high quality consistent instruction across vusd in math one resulting in all students achieving at high levels and demonstrating continuous growth questions questions or comments from the board um I just want to say thank you to all of our teachers and administrators working hard I
054know that change isn't always easy and it took us um as a board and in previous boards a lot of discussion on even just a third year of math and so looking at uh and really seeing all the productiveness that's going on to achieve better results with respect to math and phonics I think we're going to see that payoff in the next couple of years so thank you thanks Brien 4.3 by cell Unified School District 20 23 24 school year one report superintendent Shrum good evening president Gyan board members and our public we're pleased to present our first quarter for the 23 24 school year uh on some of our key metrics that we're monitoring and using as a tool as a guide to see how we're doing and how we're performing as a school
055system uh as you will recall this is a new report that we started last year in response to questions not only from Community but board as to how do we know the Investments we're making are working how do we know if our students are growing and how are we being transparent about where we are as a district and so out of that grew or out of that conversation uh grew I guess or was born our quarter a report that we give four times a year and so we're pleased tonight to present our first quarter report again you're going to hear from each of our divisions of how we're working to make sure our foundations uh come to life and that we live out our mission of every student learning every day and so we'll go
056through how we're creating the conditions within each report and so let me without further Ado get us started with our business services good evening board president members of the board and superintendent shum I'm here to present the quarter one report for business services the first area we wanted to go over was budget and finance our year-to dat general fund budget versus actuals our revenues are just under 177% for quarter 1 which is in line with our three-year historical average of uh just a little over 18% our under expenditures we are at just over 20% Which is also um pretty close to our three-year historical average so overall we are on track and then this next slide is our expenditures by function this is showing how we're spending our money so we are um a people
057business so as you can see in our instruction and instruction related Services the top two that is where the majority of our expenditures are and then in attendance we are um on track this year to show an increase from last year 1.2% so far we are at overall districtwide 94.64% and then also for the district and Charters we are showing an increase and that is for our unofficial calpads month too it's an overall increase but it is pretty flat and then in our purchasing and print shop as you can see we issued just over 12,200 print um requests and about 8600 apparel jobs this quarter and then also for purchase orders which um our total expenditures about 85% of our district expenditures is salary and benefits and the remaining 15% are things we buy like
058services and supp so for the first quarter just under uh 5,000 posos were issued totaling $16.2 million and then in technology Services we had 6,869 tickets that were issued which is about 109 that is a daily average and then our printer and printing related tickets accounted for approximately 23% of those and then we also had a 99% Plus uptime for all three of our systems for um Power School our general internet and and then Tyler munis and then these are some of our key continuous Improvement steps for quarter uh two just to highlight a couple one of them is going to be our com uh getting our projections for enrollment and Staffing completed in December this is something we typically do in February so we are working on getting that provided sooner and then also
059completing the district network security evaluation and also implementing those enhancements to our policies and procedures now I'm going to turn it over to Mr Deo thank you Mrs Johnson all right well it is my pleasure to talk to you tonight about Educational Services and as Kyla suggested just a few moments ago we're really working hard this year on being data driven and considering where we are and where we want to go in the future so the data you're going to be seeing tonight will represent that so let's start with our expanded learning opportunities program Mr Shrum mentioned some of this earlier some of the great things we're seeing but what I wanted to draw your attention to are just some hard numbers that first number you're going to see up there mentions 11,605 enrollments that's
060thus far for the school year super exciting for us to be able to see that and also to consider that that means we've got 3,300 children who are involved so far so that means each child is taking multiple sessions you'll see some of the choices we have up there that talk about the different opportunities and the different areas we're trying to provide those opportunities for our students next up family and Community Resources this one chart right here talks specifically about attendance because we know that is such an important topic we know that research tells us one of the most important things we can do to ensure Student Success is to make sure our kids are here every day I'm very excited to show these numbers here and what you're going to see is a three-year
061pattern so the first year was that year right after on the left is the year right after we came out of the pandemic and you'll notice our overall chronic absenteeism rate was 36.8 and as a reminder chronic absenteeism is any child that has missed more than 10% of the school year whether it's we've been in school 10 days or 180 it's at the moment in time so we're comparing where we are currently with where we looked at the end of each of those years so two years ago we were at 36.8 last year we dropped that to 20% and I'm very happy to say that right now we're trending down at about 15% and while I'm pleased with that number that still represents almost 5,000 students in our district that are still struggling with maintaining
062a positive attendance so those are the things we need to work on I also wanted to make sure I put down here the subgroups because again we know in our district we care about all students and it's important for us to recognize which of our student groups seem to be struggling the most so that'll help us know what to do next for them also from our family and Community Resources is the connections that are taking place we heard loud and clear last year when we were doing Mr shrum's events that our families have some specific needs I just wanted to list for you some of those needs that were created from what we heard so you'll see that we've got 30 different social worker student groups that have been created and seven different parent support
063groups and more growing every day again this is important for us to know what the need is so that we can make sure we're tackling the right issues in our community now we're talking about equity and student services you know how are we taking care of our students once they're here interesting numbers we're looking at um they're not always in the positive direction but regardless data is data and it's very educational for us to know what to do and what I mean by that is you'll see that right now we are trending higher at our suspensions than we were last year and let me tell you what why at the beginning of the year we really really really were very focused about threats because we know that there's no place in our school sites for
064making kids feel like they're not safe so we made sure we took that very seriously this year and that represents a good chunk of what those numbers are also but a positive thing to say is our expulsions right now our expulsions are at a much lower rate than what we saw last year and we attribute a great deal of that to that campaign we did over the summer remember Bard we talked to you about those connections we worked on with our students who were eighth graders moving into ninth grade our wonderful High School principles and the eqss team worked closely together to make sure those students felt a sense of connection and as a result we saw much better instan of of behaviors and the needs that led us to that point last year so
065that was super encouraging and I also wanted to make sure you saw that a continued Focus for us is the work we're doing with our School site counselors new data that's off to the side that we didn't have last year is what we call our individual learning plan remember we made a commitment to ensure that every one of our students at the secondary level has a very specific plan that talks to them about their Pathway to the Future and that's something that we're going to be working with them on continuously so I want to be able to show you next time How have those connections continued to grow and finally let's just talk a little bit about special education again you know these numbers probably aren't coming as a surprise we know across the state
066um the identification level for students with special education needs are growing so our district again is recognizing that same pattern we're working hard on what that looks like and how we can interpret that but a piece of data I did add for you this year that we weren't necessarily looking at last year is that one at the bottom and what that data piece suggests is how many of our students that are currently in special education and right now it's about 4,000 how many of those students have a home spend their time in our general education setting for more than 80% of the day right now about 72% of those students spend 80% or more of their time in that general education setting we obviously want that number to go up and what we're hoping to
067see is all of our students needs can be met in those different opportunities as long as they have the right type of support so again we'll be coming back to those numbers in the future now what's coming again I suggest that it's our job now to take a look at where we are to know where we want to go in the future so what you're going to see is the focus areas we're going to be putting forth for that second quarter um one of the things we recognize in our expanding learning opportunity program is utilization is not um equal nor Equitable at our school sites so we need to do a better job making sure that all of our students are aware of what's available to them and have those opportunities to join family and
068Community Resources again they their job is really recognizing our students by face and by name and making sure our social workers are providing the supports necessary and in equity and student services and special education our goal continues to be making sure all of our students get what they need to be successful whether those are academic needs behavioral needs whatever they are we want to make sure we're working with the student and the school sites to be able to provide the appropriate supports and with that I'm going to ask uh Mr Ben Dylan good evening so I am pleased to share with you a little bit about our quarter one data in Human Resources Development Division uh I'll start with uh what I think most people think of when they think of human resources which is
069uh hiring recruitment um that's just one of our departments in our division so what you're looking at are similar metrics to what we shared previously uh specifically looking at the number of new employees hired as well as the number of vacan ancies uh throughout this quarter compared to the previous quarter uh some similarities in terms of looking at uh vacancies however what I will point out is that uh we we hired a lot of new staff we did have fewer new classified employees hired this year but sign a number of more new certificated employees the other thing that I'll point out is that you'll see there um in the parenthesis under 2023 quarter 1 um we do have have a large number of special education paraprofessional vacancies this is very common across the state I've
070talked with my colleagues in many other parts of the valley as well as other parts of the state and everyone is searching for uh the golden ticket to find a way to reduce that that type of vacancy um as well as a few other of our hardto fill positions um we are I'll talk more about this when we get to our hrd report tonight about some of the things we're doing to to hopefully improve and and be a little more creative about doing that but that we are fortunate in that we've worked closely with our partners in CA and we currently right now have some good Partnerships with an outside agency is that is helping us staff some of those positions so although you see 183 vacancies that actually includes 80 vacancies that we are
071filling uh through a contracted partnership the other one thing I'm really excited to point out is our has to do with our fill rate and so our our staff who help support uh recruiting and then placing our substitute uh employees uh you can see right there our classified sub fill rate is has improved by almost double uh we are looking at an overall 52 59 excuse me per fill rate compared with around 37 38% last year and our uh certificated sub fill rate continues to to be in a very very healthy position still overall above eight 98% um and you can see that kind of variance between the vacancies and the absence rates and then shifting to our our other departments here in educator support uh as you know we are really fortunate to have
072such an amazing team who helps lead that work in our district uh they as as many of you know we we received uh full accreditation last year for another seven years for both of our teacher and administrative programs and so we continue to move forward with a lot of positive work in that area still a large number of teachers actually one of the things that's was really interesting to me when we started ping datas we really they're different people but they're some of them are different some of them are the same right year one moved to year two and so on but uh still a pretty similar number of folks who are participating and taking advantage of those programs just as a reminder those are programs that if we didn't have this opportunity people would
073be paying for this many of them out of pocket having to go back to school to go through other programs to actually clear and obtain those credentials and then finally with our Personnel support department um this is really the work that we've put in place and we'll talk more about that later tonight with Kevin Mays but working on our return to work program how we're helping support employees safety and wellbeing uh we are down a bit this year compared to last year um you can see the data there little bit of shift and and a positive trend in the number of injuries but the big shift there is the number of days lost from work and so we're able to continue to better return folks back to work looking at accommodations um opportunities for folks
074to continue to be at work to earn a living to have access to resources and benefits and ultimately be able to use those resources to provide support to our kids because that's what it's all about um so couple things that we're looking forward to as we continue to go forward um and I'll just kind of look at the high level pieces here but our overall goal is to continue to reduce vacancies ultimately our board you have tasked us uh through a number of different ways um I think our commitment to Student Learning um the the goals and commitments that you've set for us um our beliefs are you know really our mission and our vision all center around making sure that we are doing what we need to be doing to serve students and as
075Miss Johnson just mentioned mentioned a minute ago much of our resources goes to people because we know people make the biggest lives in the lives of little people and so our goal is to ensure we have the right people in the right position the right time and so we continue to really focus all of these efforts around ensuring that that's what we are doing um so a lot of it is technical pieces right some of it strengthening processes procedures other pieces talk about recruitment um a big piece that we've looked at is really um bringing our practices and our procedures forward into the into the 21st century um and really making sure that we are keeping things up to dat that we're being Innovative that we're utilizing technology but still keeping people at the heart
076of the work that we do so at this time I will turn things over to assistant superintendent Mark Thompson thank you Mr Dylan good evening so I'll be focusing in our learning and Leadership area and first I want to start off is we we're trying to be very intentional on our Focus this year mind you we have many things here and I just want to give a shout out to our CTE team our early childhood our vapa teams our sports team or Athletics library media and instructional technology they integral Parts in our district for this specific metrics for this year we're really focusing in on our milestones and so I just want to give a shout out to them as you will not see them um in our metrics for tonight and the learning and
077Leadership our first uh one that we want to Target in on is on leadership development we believe that the principal on the School site is instrument in making sure that students have access to Quality education and with that we believe coaching is vital for them to be successful our asls or administrators of school leadership um go out consistently out to school sites so I'll give you an example we had 252 site visits or coaching visits which last between an hour to two hours during those times last year during the same range we had 100 um 106 so we really have ramped them up to make it where it's almost weekly that they out there providing support and partnering with our principles so one of our big Milestones as Mrs Phillips shared tonight was K2 literacy
078and really focusing in on finance so this year we will be targeting in on some of that data on quarter one this is on the I ready diagnostic phonics and a high frequency words that we looked at there we're looking at this compared to last year to start out this year we're about 1 and a half% higher than last year but we just got started with our implement ation of Foundations and the work that we're doing so I'm really excited to show this as the year continues and as we fully Implement and keep working out the Kinks of working into a new system and working on that just to really see our numbers continue to move forward and really seeing our students proficient um and again high frequency words and phonics next as we're still
079targeting in on K2 literacy um what will be bringing back it's still early in the school year so I don't have the data yet but I just want to set the frame that we will be bringing back information from bass which is a benchmark assessment system and Foundations bass if you're familiar with Running Records that's that where you're actually explicitly students are reading to you so we'll be giving that data back as well along with our foundations which is our phonics assessments uh during our next quarter next this uh slide here is our k6 I ready diagnostic number one so in this this is an assessment that shows end of the year growth for students so we take it three times of the year but again if you're already on grade level that means you've
080already mastered the standards for that year what we're seeing up here is um you know in Reading we're looking at a 14% of our students that are already there in their classes um and what I'm excited is about 42% of our students are one year behind or they're basically On Target to get there for this school year um and in math we're looking at 11% of students that are already there and 51% of students that are just behind there again we have work to do as we still have 37% in reading and we have 49 uh 39% in math uh but these numbers are indicators we're about two to three% up on all of these moving forward again with us being very intentional in our teaching and really our commitment focusing in the great work
081that teachers are doing with plc's right now or professional learning communities they're working together to Target in on what students are mastering with essential standards and what they're not and then actually explicitly teaching um those specific standards to ensuring that our students have academic success so now let's move over to uh math one Benchmark which is the other one that we've been talking about tonight um and on this one so uh Mrs Phillips shared tonight that we have created benchmarks six week benchmarks that students will be taking throughout the year there will be six of them this is done for all math one students in entire dist in our entire District this data here shows uh student counts we have about 2400 students in math one the percentage is how many where students fail that's
082the percentage of students in each category and the performance band is that far right hand side which is a percentage to get into that band as we I will say it again we have work to do here um this was our first test that we took this year a first model of how we're doing this and so there's a lot of learning and growth that's happening um and also a realization that it's happening um and so I'm really excited about that work and as uh Dr V mentioned earlier anything new takes a little bit of time to kind of get that traction but been very excited with the work that the teachers are doing with students and the collaboration that we're working together to identify needs gaps and to build that out so this is
083some data here on that this is the same data but it's broken down by middle school so our middle schools do take math one um they if the students are accelerating they can take math one they do get math one credit um which is a high school credit they'll be getting an academic grade these are students that are showing High aptitude and are ready to take this so if you will see here the numbers are a little bit higher they're averaging about 75% uh p in The Benchmark pass rate uh average that they're doing so they're showing they're fairing a little bit better than our high school students as we recognize all high school students are put in they're not accelerated group coming through so our high school here um is the same data again
084we show on each School site and where students are fairing on that first minute Mark assessment um again percentages are based off of the C test as well and so they're looking in that range right now is nearly meeting for many students there's a lot of work there that we need to do and continue to focus on those priority standards um but wanted to share that information with you as well next math one grades distribution we wanted to show that and why we wanted to show that is this is not something that's been a practice in our district um in the sense of getting consistency in how we grade grade when I say that there's still some autonomy within the grade weights but what the Benchmark stands for and the weight of that Benchmark is
085consistent across the district the weight of the test are consistent the weight of the classwork is consistent across the board why is this important because it is it's vital that a c at one school is also a c at another school or if it's an a at one school and that we have consistency it's hard to have real clear conversations and really show growth and change if we don't have consistency in our assessments but also consistency in our grading we want to communicate to parents Student Success and acknowledge when they're doing well and if there's areas of improvements parents need to know that so that they have that time to work with their student and we can be working with their student to improve so we are continuing to monitor monitor this we will keep
086bringing this to to the board each uh quarter again just to be transparent and have keep having that conversation I will tell you this our teachers are doing a lot of lot of great work in this area it's a huge shift um to really standardize and really focus as a district very proud of them and the work that they're doing last but not least which is not one of our main issues but something we have invested in which is paper tutoring and I want to just share with you guys that uh for this first quarter in 23 we had about 3900 engagements uh last year we had about 3600 during this time it's about a 6% growth one thing that we are seeing is about 300% more students are utilizing the writing portion where they're
087writing and then they are actually getting some feedback from paper so really excited about that we've got a lot of Buzz going with paper coming up um they've come out and they're working with principles on getting more clarity on what that looks like and how to get that out onto their campuses so I'm excited to see that work improve last but not least in the tutoring sessions about 65% of the students questions are math so just just a food for thought of things that that we do see in this so just some continuous Improvement steps I'm not go length on this as um Mrs Phillips shared a lot with math one we are constantly doing a continuous uh Improvement cycle there we're going continue that every six weeks bringing teams in looking at that data
088as a whole math one team uh something that was amazing today is they looked at learning progressions they went all the way from kindergarten all the way up to math one to see how those progressions came up that's exciting and great work because I it's important to see what are the students learning down at the younger ages so there's consistency and you're not teaching separate things in different places so just powerful work in Reading with the focus on Phonics as she shared just getting a lot of feedback as getting out into the field having conversations and really seeing students thrive in that having a sub Committee of teachers um from sites talking to us sharing with us what's working what's not working so we can continue to adjust finally as I shared we're committed to
089coaching and training um between departments and with site leaders um you know and so that's why we will continue to have our asls going out doing site visits while we've invested in Uva um and we're committed to the leadership development and growth of our teach of our principles um and our leadership staff um last but not least and I just wanted to menion it mention this is our commitment to professional learning communities all this is glued together by teachers getting the ability every week to come together to look at student data to really Target in on best practices and then being able to come up what they plan to execute um and that really to me is the engine that drives a lot of our work and is going to continue to improve our practices
090and just really proud of the work that teachers are doing and side admin are doing in that to move that forward and also with our Union partnering our unions our Union partnering with us to do that work so thank you now I'm going to hand it over to Eric carer C good evening um a couple of things for operations uh division but I did want to share one thing so uh this picture up here I wanted to highlight our transportation team so it might not look like a lot right there but I will tell you that is some bus evacuation training that uh the department did a couple of weeks ago um the neat thing about that is is this is the first year that they have actually done it just not in the classroom
091this time they did it actually out on the bus and if you see the one there's there is a employee standing on the the roof of the bus right there he actually went out the top PCH um and over here they're actually they've actually got a person in the cover that covers up the wheelchair lift and they're actually going to take them down and they manually lower them down so that was some really really good training that they did that was Hands-On and I think our team really loved it so just wanted to highlight that a little bit um next here on facilities just three um really uh really great projects that we're proud of Mount Whitney Jim you were all there for for the state of the district that gym really looks good I
092you know and I'm really proud to say that we have four High School gyms that we can be really really proud of they all have air conditioning now which they didn't have previously you know they're all we can be proud of all four of our gyms so we're that's a really great accomplishment I think for our team Washington uh Washington modernization has been completed we we saw a lot of that when we went to first five Friday uh high-i Friday a couple weeks ago and then La Hoya science uh is modernization is uh is well way it's just actually wrapping up right now um in terms of some of our metrics um you know we've got projects I think the the big message there is the facilities we've got projects we're really not slowing down
093we've got projects we've completed we've got projects in progress we've got nine projects um in design and that really is not going to slow down we've still got some measure a projects Safety and Security as well as some other projects and then we are also working on our longrange facility master plan so lots of lots of work in facilities uh in the over the next couple of years for sure nutritional Services the big message there is is we continue to increase the number of students that are taking advantage of the no cost breakfast and lunch that we offer every day and another shout out to our nutritional Services team they they've they've kind of come alongside the superintendent advisory committee and so we're now participating in that with students to get their their kind of
094their thoughts on what we can do better in nutritional services and and uh kind of helping them to explain the uh the USD da requirement that we have in why they can't just have Domino's Pizza and Big Macs so um we're working on that with them so that's been really cool um in term oops went too far Transportation a big message there is uh on time continues to improve but really um we're in the middle of our transfinder implementation special ed all of the special ed routes will go live on November 1st um I actually rode the bus the other day and tested it it's really cool the bus pulls up to the stop and the kids picture pops pops up on the tablet and they the bus driver Taps the kid and says the
095kids on the bus they sit down when they get off the bus at their school there's a whole there's a whole picture of them on the tablet they just they send them all off the bus and so we've got that and that is working with the stop finder app for the parents and so uh special ed will be 100% live um on November 1 and we are also uh working on the Gen Ed we'll bring those on school by School in the next few weeks um maintenance again uh you can see their work order the number of open work orders is really decreasing so maintenance is starting to get caught up as is casti and grounds um their work will slow down a little bit and they will transition to kind of field maintenance for
096the winter as the turf kind of dies back so their work will change but it will not stop for sure um and then again our continuous Improvement Operations Division we we follow a continuous Improvement model as well and so you see their transfinder uh implementation that is really kind of all-encompassing our transportation departments work uh nutritional Services uh Regina is doing some work with her team on kind of realigning her management team getting some more efficiencies there doing some leadership training and some professional development um and then and just like many of the other divisions my my counterparts recruiting and retaining uh professionally trained staff is is really a highlight for us and then our longrange facility master plan which continues to go on in the in the background uh we had a nice meeting
097the other day with executive cabinet and our and our team kind of going over some next steps and so we'll be bringing some of that information forward in coming meetings so that's my report there I think I turn it over to Mr pacina right thank you Mr car uh good evening board president good members of the board superintendent shum uh we're going to give you just some quick updates on the superintendent's office and so um this uh data is really for the first quarter which is up to September 30th and so um our superintendent has visited all 42 sites with the in the first quarter actually was 42 sites and five days so I think he maxed out all of his walking steps for the first half of the Year probably within that uh and
098then of course he went back to visit sites again and so um you know that's always a priority there and then there's always visits with you and and other members of executive cabinet or himself so um the this number again does not um also total into it uh evening events uh weekend events those aren't a part of that which definitely would increase uh in Communications the team continues to work on improving and so we've done 57 posts within the first quarter a lot of that was at the beginning of the year trying to educate parents and inform them about having the best first day ever uh in addition to a lot of information around um strategic plan Etc uh from that we've we've uh received an additional 727 new followers and all of our platforms
099so that's cumulative across all platforms so whether it's Instagram uh Tik Tok Facebook you know that that's that's from there um we still have 80% of our families getting Blackboard messages which we are definitely continuing to work on um you know and so we we want to make sure that uh we also know that Blackboard is not the only way that we communicate with parents so we've really been leveraging our principles and our sites and wanted just take a moment to thank them because they've been great Partners especially with some of the messages we've been getting out as a district like best first day ever um they really did a phenomenal job of of pushing that out within their own platforms and and having give that out to their teacher so thank you teachers as
100well for doing that um we've had 145 requests for translation within our um translation department so guest MOA over here has been spiting a lot of that so he's he's been definitely busy and uh just again to reiterate know the superintendent um mentioned this but I want to uh just highlight it again we started a new Venture which is our podcast by sell unified voices so if you haven't uh subscribed to it please do it's on every single uh major podcast uh streaming service I guess you would call it and so we had 247 for the first time so just give you some uh just what that looks like in the industry uh we're currently sitting about on the top 25% tier for listeners right so uh but of course you know the way that
101that we do things in the communication Department uh we want to make sure that we're in the top 5% at least minimum so that's 9,000 listeners right so encourage everybody here and everybody's listening on uh online that we want to get to that threshold of 9,000 listeners because it's really about celebrating student voices and so the first one was about uh the college application process and we had a student uh counselor and a parent talk about what that experience is like and so it's really to educate uh our families but through their own perspective and through students perspective so the next uh episode actually will be out I believe on Thursday and so look for that uh we're going to be doing an episode on um bullying and uh depression right because that's kind of
102like the the theme for this uh this month and so we had a conversation with students on really helping to educate parents about what are some signs that they might see in bullying and depression with students and you know um being a a father of a teenager myself sometimes it's how do we make sure that we connect with them when even though they might show that they don't want to be connected with but in reality they do and so the students were really just sharing from their heart how that can be so that's really the purpose of that podcast so make sure that uh you go ah And subscribe to that not just for us to get to the top 5% but it's really to educate our families right and we want to make sure
103that we do that and last but not least we have our Outreach uh and so superintendent talked about the advisories that we had and so we've had those with students uh and then we'll continue to have those with staff and so those those will be coming up in the next uh in the next quarter so you'll see that that number Rise um and so our really our our key takeaways for continuous improvements really refining our advisories the superintendent mentioned that with the students um implementing our conversation with the board member so that's again he's he touched on that on Spotlight uh we we're finding our social media calendar you're not seeing posts every month every day but you're seeing intentional post throughout the month right and then um our VI unified voices podcast and then
104our strategic plan which you'll hear from the superintendent and with that uh that concludes the presentation if there's any questions okay so how do I find the podcast I'm searching for yeah so you can go on Spotify and you can just search up uh VI unified voices uh I believe it's uh even on iHeart radio uh as well so it's pretty much on everything other than I think Apple uh that one's taking a few uh weeks to to uh get done but please share it out with your with all of your friends and family and it's just a great way to um get information any other questions or comments yes uh first of all definitely check out the podcast I listened to the first episode was amazing it was great uh especially for any of
105you who have seniors in your family or folks who are graduating or applying to csu's uc's great conversation um one uh question and and request I had uh to Mr Deo and education services um I I love seeing the the vast Improvement that we've made in terms of reducing our expulsions which is amazing to see um obviously I appreciate highlighting the suspensions I'm wondering if we can get disaggregated data for those suspensions uh around you know whether students or special education around race Foster students Etc just so we can be more intentional about how to reduce those suspensions for the rest of the school year and in the future um so I think that would help us as a board and as a district set of direction thank you any other questions or comments okay
106thank you um 4.4 focus on human resource development assistant superintendant of Human Resources Ben Dylan back for more good evening board president Gyan members of the board superintendent Shum and our wonderful Community uh I am really excited and honored to be sharing with you and and having some members of our team sharing with you about our focus on human resources development and the work that we are doing on behalf of our staff and our students um our families and community members here in B unified what I I want to start with uh let me make sure this is on there you go one of you guys always sabotage just me so there we go I'm going to blame Mark uh so as we as we've endeavored to create intentional efforts towards improving the work that
107we do on behalf of the district it's been a really good opportunity for us to learn from really the process the board has been going through this past year and to glean from what you've not only been a part of and what I've been fortunate to be a part of with you but to pull from what you've established for us and so we've started right most of the the work that we do and the most of the reports that come to you we start with these slides and that's not just for consistency and you know formatting that really is because this drives the work that we do and so the work that you've done the resources and and the artifacts that you've created through that work the direction you've established has then helped provide Clarity
108and really has set paths for us to know here's what is important here's what the priorities are and here's where we need to go and so as as a human resource development team we've grappled with that and we spent considerable time over this past year evaluating the status of our division how that impacts our school district at large and then drawing from those specific things that you've outlined for us to help guide the steps that we're taking and the decisions that we're making what what's a priority what may be less of a priority even so in doing so you know this board has as has been mentioned a couple times tonight really set conditions right for us then as as the district leaders to begin creating the right conditions so that our school and department
109leaders are better equipped with the resource the information the processes the practices to help lead things for the classroom so that our classroom folks are leading things for students and so on ultimately and I think that's something we continue to come back with as as a human resources Development Division is we're here for kids too right like just because it's our focus a lot of times people think about like our focus on staff and it is but our focus is on staff on behalf of students right it's always about the result that happens in the classroom so our student outcome data is still a measure of our success and we take that very seriously that said what we've been able to do is really glean information and some specific areas of focus based on the
110work that the board has done in the commitment to student learning and the beliefs in commitments and in the ongoing work you're doing even kind of drawing from some of those initial parts of strategic planning that the boards have been a part of so you can see on the left of the screen here these are specific statements or or references to information that the board has called out that speak to the direct work and responsibility of Human Resources development on the right side what you see is some other feedback that that I pulled to to represent information we receive from doing 360 evaluation and and feedback input circles at the end of last year so this is something new we were kind of introducing um actually a number of folks some of the folks in
111this room were a part of that um but we wanted to get input from those who are directly impacted by our practices by our procedures by our systems and so we worked with I've been working with a leadership coach who's served in my role in in a previous life um in a very large district and has helped me learn and and grow as a as a hrd leader and so she independently facilitated multiple different uh review circles got input had some structured questions kind of open-ended folks had really great things that they shared um part of it was based on my own evaluation and so I wanted to get 360 feedback about me as a leader um but also a big part of it was about HR and what we're doing as a as a
112division and how we're impacting the greater good ultimately good B and different right and we got the good Bad and the Ugly and it was great and it was great to learn from and grow from so what you see here is that so as a result of the feedback both the direction you've set as a board and then the feedback we re we've received from staff um and individuals across our organization what we've committed to do is to ensure that we make commitments as a division to to live out the beliefs and the commitments and the direction that you've set for us specifically in the frame that we have responsibility over so as an hrd division we have committed to living out our commitment to our students and our staff by practicing a Distributive leadership
113approach to the work that we do meaning that we provide the resources and the tools necessary so that those closest to the work are best equipped to make decisions about that work um that means taking a close examination at our practices um are we enabling or empowering right are we equipping or are we hindering um and and looking at the role of our hiring managers and how we better position them how do we help Empower those who are closer to evaluation practices other resources for our staff to have access to things so they don't have to wonder do I have this is this available to me the same thing goes with being committed to living out Clarity and transparency in how we communicate in the work that we do with others um there shouldn't be
114this feeling that there's this you know Veil between what happens in HR and what's going on outside and you know it's The Wizard of Oz kind of thing we're just pulling levers and pulley back here um we want people to understand there's a reason for the work that happens sometimes there are policies sometimes there's law and things that guide the work but that shouldn't be mysterious and it shouldn't be frustrating it should be clear and we're continuing to work on improving that and then finally and I think most importantly that we we take a human centered approach to the work that we do meaning that we evaluate we work the work we do not by how it impacts us as a division but how it impacts those who are closest to the results of that
115work so how does our process feel to the hiring manager how does our process feel to the employee how does our process feel to the candidate or the applicant that's what should matter most and guide the work that we do so in doing that then we've ensured that we're really focusing on what matters most that we are committed to ensuring our positions are fully staffed by highly qualified employees so it's kind of a dual nature there right it's not just fully Staffing but it also means that we are ensuring that we're finding the highest quality candidates and then that we are working with our other leaders and and colleagues to ensure that our staff once we do have them have the skills and the resources NE necessary to be successful and that we continue to
116evaluate our practice and our processes as a division to ensure that they are effective efficient and Equitable in all that we do so I give you kind of that highle overview because that really is what is guiding the work that we're doing and we are truly trying to be in alignment with this board in the direction that you've given us I'm going to ask Dr Judy Burgess our administrator of Human Resources development to come up and share a little bit with you about the journey that we're on in improving these things thank you so yes we are on this journey I'm G to go I have to do it so here we go so um you know as as you all know in our division we have operations and systems as the behind the-scenes processes
117of our work and so we have multiple systems in which um we have those processes so absence reporting and management um sta staff database and Records um Performance Management all of these things are processes and multiple systems that we have um that aren't always fully utilized and so you know one of our thing one of our um our journey as we move towards that is um we're really working towards efficient Equitable streamlined and modern systems that are integrated so some of you may be familiar with Tyler munus Frontline sportset you know laser fish I can name many many more systems that we utilize and we want to make sure those are integrated and really work towards what we've been talking about right to make sure that we have um positive student outcomes so I I
118have this photo up here because it is an example of something that we're working towards when we think about focusing on people versus process in support and providing support and service to others so um if some of you remember our volunteer management system you'll remember paper applications that were scanned and sent via email maybe personally delivered to the district office um they came maybe individually or in groups um they came with clearance documents or maybe not we we kind of had them and we organized them and so you all probably remember schools were calling and emailing finding out if volunteers were cleared or not as you know everyone's getting ready for the pumpkin patch field trip and we want to make sure we're cleared right so you know we went to wapor volunteer management which
119now online application that is easy to use we've got a step-by-step video it's available in English and in Spanish it has the clearance documents already in the application process process as it goes through it's clearing automatically with support and review so so Safety and Security is always uh you know we want to make sure that that's still happening and now schools can see their list of volunteers from the school without calling without emailing with their clearance levels so imagine at the school sites not having to call not having to try to find out they know exactly who their volunteers are they can contact them via email phone and so it's a much more streamlined um you know system and so parents are also really really appreciative of that and as a note we currently have
120over 2,000 current Volunteers in our system so it's just a it just shows we want to make sure we're engaging involving parents we want to encourage that and this is just one more way in which we're doing that with this system so I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to my esteemed colleague Robin marer Coria good evening um I'm here to talk about educator support and really to talk about that Improvement journey and as I thought about the Improvement Journey for educator support in the induction programs I feel like we are always on an improvement Journey um because we are supporting the new Educators the new teachers and administrators in our district and to do that we like you saw in the board report the quarter report we have a large amount of
121new teachers and administrators that are participating in the induction program so every year we have to really meet the needs of the Educators and the administrators that are in our program and from year to year that can change their needs can change um so this year we're really focused on really listening to the voices of the new teachers and um administrators and also the mentors and coaches and really focusing on the induction meetings to really listen to the needs and providing focused professional learning during our induction meetings so we've kind of shifted that to during that induction meeting really looking at not only helping support them um to improve their practices as teachers and as administrators but really also to focus on the whole educator so this month in the induction meetings for Teacher induction
122we really focused on educator Wellness that was a big piece of data that we saw last year that our new teachers were asking for support and help with mental um health and just the wellness of an educator and like Mr shum said earlier it is October and it is the longest month of the school year so this is the time we do really take that time to talk to mentors and the new teachers about um that support and that educator Wellness um for the administrator induction program we I really shifted the way that I was um running the program um and having some focused support and time with just the candidates as well as the coaches and really f focusing on the goals that they've created for themselves um to improve as instructional leaders at
123their site um and so I have time with them individually to work on the candidates but also in both induction programs really having focused time with the mentors and the coaches to really help them improve as coaches um in our district the teacher induction uh mentors are really focused on a book study this year to improve their coaching um and mentoring and really for administrators and the coaches in the administrator induction program just really focusing on their time to network and how to support new administrators in our district and as you can see it's the largest um of the induction candidates that we have for administrators this year so really giving them that time to network on how do you support a new administrator and what are those things that they need um and then
124last but not least um I was tasked with coordinating um the professional development calendar for the district and for certificated staff this year so that was in coordination with all of the divisions we have been working really collaboratively to provide a professional learning calend calendar for certificated staff um it's ongoing and being updated as you know um trainings gets cancelled and we were really working on not overlapping and making sure that our certificated staff were able to attend all trainings that they needed to attend um and so that will be continuous as the the school year goes on um it's on the website and it's updated so that um certificated staff and administrators have access to that and it's live and um they can get to it by going to the website thank you and
125now Kevin Mays oh no Save The Best For Last um but I I am actually uh reporting on behalf of one of our other directors Dr Serena Aras she is home with her new little baby spending important quality time as she should so at uh what I want to do is share a little bit on behalf of our hiring recruitment department so one of the things that we are really trying to be mindful of is recognizing that the workforce of today is looking for opportunities in different ways than they did in the past um they're using different tools they're looking for different things they're interested in different things that we may advertise or offer and so it's it's really forced us to reimagine recruitment and think about how do we do things in 2023 that
126we didn't do before and use platforms and resources and and venues that we we weren't aware of before we didn't have access to there's you know there's a lot of tradition in education as an institution and so this has been a really good practice in Innovation for us to identify okay what should we do differently and what do we need to do differently so just for some simple examples um in terms of reimagining recruitment one of the things that we've really been mindful of is recognizing that for I mentioned to you earlier classified staff recruitment is a challenge Statewide we hear about teacher shortage pieces as well which we know n nationally is a huge issue we are very fortunate in that we we are doing better than most in our in our teacher and
127certificated staff recruitment it's still challenging and there's always you know things that are presented to us uh but we're fortunate that we're not necessarily experiencing what some other areas are ever we are experiencing similar challenges in recruiting in specific hardto fill classified positions and so some of the things we've been doing have been looking at what are other Pathways and resources where and how we can market and recruit in order to better meet folks where they're at and not force them to step into our system to get access into organization meaning that most folks who are looking for some type of uh position maybe in you know Mr car's uh division or um in our in our business services division edjoin is not a common job platform that they're familiar with that's not a normal
128thing out there to most inst to most organizations most areas of Industry outside of Educators so if you're not a career educator you're not maybe even aware of edjoin so we've been recognizing okay we have to Market differently we have to get into other areas and and get online in different spaces the other thing though we've acknowledged is that we need to start getting out more into the community and meeting people where they are and where they go so we've had some great Partnerships with Workforce investment board and others um working with our Community Partners um who help guide you know labor across our County and leveraging those Partnerships to go and be a part of what they're doing and not just have folks come and have to meet us where we're at um so
129doing some things differently has has forced us to to you know take risks and and chances but I think it's all really been exciting and we continue to see some steps going forward in that direction the other thing that we're work working on is reducing inefficiency in hiring so Dr Burgess talked about some of those technical system pieces um one of the other things that we've been doing is really taking a close look and analyzing the current workflow and process that our division staff or or the department staff and hiring recruitment um how they're organized and who's responsible for what and so we've learned from other organizations we've reached out we've saw input there's been a lot of self reflection and Analysis so actually I'm excited to sure that this week we are piloting a
130new reorganization of workflow within our technicians for hiring and recruitment um to help give them greater focus in areas try to give them an opportunity to go deeper and not have to be managing multiple things that they're bouncing back and forth from which often is where things fall flat or mistakes are made so we're continuing to improve that and then finally by redesigning our processes and our practices as a whole and continuing as Dr bur just mentioned uh to bring ourselves forward into a current modern technologically more Innovative place where we are still keeping people as the focus but we're doing so far more efficiently and that's the goal so at this time I'd like to ask up Mr Kevin Mays who is the director of our personal support services department thank you Ben so
131the first uh topic I kind of want to touch on and looking back to some of the data that was reported on earlier tonight by Mr Dylan was that we have some success in our substitute fill rates which we are certainly excited about but along with that we want to ensure that we are providing our subs with the most uh beneficial support and understanding what it is that they need as they kind of enter these classrooms and provide a pivotal role in the student outcomes so um we've challenged ourselves to Conn get out of the office get in the spaces and kind of look at these folks in action to really understand how we do our onboarding how we provide Clarity and expectation around the work that they do um risk management um in its
132best form is done in a proactive manner so as we kind of consider how that impacts us as an employer it's important to understand that if we can be proactive rather than reactive we are limiting our exposure and downtime across the district for both our students and staff members so as we kind of take the next few weeks um we are going to start our relief inspections which is an emphasis on property and live inspections and this will be done throughout the district with a focus on hazard assessment identifying where we might have potential exposures and how we can mitigate those exposures um in Our Workers Compensation Program again kind of piggybacking on the data that you seen earlier while we see a trend downward in our um claims at this time and kind of
133the the days lost if you would um it's important to continue building our return to work program with our existing um employees at are on injuries with our site leaders to be creative in a manner that gets them back in a limit limited capacity it's important to do that for the employees uh facilitation of their injury stability about monetary and fiscal um concerns so anytime that we can get them back in an expedited manner it's very very important to do that and it limits the exposure on the compensation side for us as an employer as a whole and then lastly um and and perhaps most importantly um anytime that we can have an emphasis on employee benefits or a benefit program it promotes a healthy and safe workplace for our employees they feel confident coming
134to work they feel that they can be successful and they feel taken care of so uh one thing I would be uh behooving of if I didn't mention this is that we are actually getting back to a sense of normal uh normaly uh following our pandemic and we're excited to announce that we have our first health and wellness clinic since prior to um on October 30th so I'd encourage everybody to come out this is for all employees all insured dependents and retirees um so again please promote this we would love to see you out there and we expect it to be a good turnout so thank you thank you so at this time uh we'd be happy to take any questions or filled any comments that you may have board questions or comments thank you
135Mr Dylan no those are the best questions five general public comment general public comment on any school related topic may be heard at this time the board asks that any public comment on an item listed on tonight's agenda be addressed at the time the item comes up for discussion by the board to comply with the brown act Californians open meeting law board discussion is limited to items on the agenda agenda therefore receive receiving public comment for items not on the agenda the board's role is limited to receiving such comments and the board may not engage in dialogue with the public the board thanks the public for its participation in public comment and the understanding of the board's responsibility pursuant to board policy the board will limit individual comments to no more than three minutes individual
136topics to 20 minutes it is recommended you begin your comments by stating your name so our first public comment is Jacqueline Hera good evening Madame President superintendent Shum and members of the board my name is Jaclyn wtha I am here today on behalf of the students who are currently enrolled in our ethnic studies program offered at the College of seas I am a former graduate from Redwood High School that is part of the VI Unified School District the ethnic studies program includes black American studies American Indian studies Cho and Chana studies Asian-American studies an introduction to ethnic and social justice studies as the words of my professor Octavio baras these courses are intended to study different ethnic communities and cultures in US Society the study they study the contribution and conflicts in the US Society
137by using an inter disciplinary approach such as public health history sociology literature art and music it provides an introductory survey of major past and current topics that are integral to ethnic Comm to the ethnic Community it brings the voices and experiences of these cultural groups to the center of attention to better understand and appreciate triumphs and resiliency over adversity from the ethnic perspective as a student enrolled in this class specifically Cho and Chana studies I have learned to understand and appreciate the history of my culture and its related issues prior to this curriculum I was unaware of the importance of ethnic studies and the roots of where many people including myself came from I hope the future generations to come can have the exposure to ethnic studies at an early age rather than later in
138their life because learning many cultural backgrounds is vital to one's education and critical understanding in saying this I want to thank the board for the implementation of ethnic studies in the viel Unified School District thank you thank you Roberto Reyes Minos good evening board good evening board of directors my name is Roberto Rees I'm here with my peers representing the support for ethnic studies in the vas Unified School District as well as Lindsay Unified School District to which I am an alumni while taking ethnic studies course for my college's kya's business path my course exposed me to the hard work and challenges of mexican-americans it showed me the sacrifices that came with my education and the people who are behind it such as Caesar Chavez r ruio corki Gonzalez and Dolores wera I believe that
139these courses of African-American Asian-American Native American and Mexican-American studies should be implemented and taught in all counties not only because it'll teach students about the struggles of minorities these courses can also give students another reason to be proud of their culture by explaining in detail how these minorities help build this country with the implementation of ethnic studies requirements in the vas Unified School District starting 2023 I am grateful to the board for the hard workor and commitment it gives me another reason to be grateful in our American educational system thank you thank you Diego San Louis Ortega okay good evening everybody sorry if uh little nervous haven't us in a while I'm used to it but not too much so I'll just go ahead and start um as we heard from the two previous students
140who went before me their experiences are the reason why ethnic studies is important to the educational journey of VD students as someone who is a former VD student this matters to me immensely why does this matter as someone who aspires to be a future future educator for VD and as well as an ethnic studies major I want to make sure all students have access to these classes to help them find their calling and help them along with their educational Journey just as these courses have helped me find my calling and that calling has to be be the first ethnic studies BD um educator hopefully uh right here in the same district that educated me as well so thank you to the board members who have worked to help grow ethnic studies your work your worked
141to help students grow and develop has made an impact every student who has had the opportunity to take the ethnic studies courses thank you thank you um Crystal Reynolds good evening on October 2nd I received confirmation that 13 out of 19 books originally submitted for review and challenge during our July 25th meeting have all been voted in favor of retainment in our school libraries this decision is disappointing to many in the community many in the community that are very concerned with the sexually explicit content in these books books that continue to be freely accessible to minors in both V USD middle schools and high schools I'd like to take a moment to discuss some of the concerns I had about the current challenge policies policy 61 63.1 a andb number five in particular states that
142committee proceedings shall remain confidential only recommendations are to be reported to the superintendent or designate as Challenger thus far and from my view your current policy allows only for that of a very internal and a non-transparent process there's been absolutely no ability for myself or the public to view or witness any processes recordings and or minutes to be assured that a fair process was in fact conducted how do we know that seven member committees were actually set up for all 13 books how do we know that 13 books and excerpts were fully examined if at all how do we know what instructions were given to said committee members as far as how to review and how to determine a final vote how does that information if given at all potentially influence voting outcome how do
143we really know that the majority vote for each committee was that to retain all 13 books the Design's ability to appoint committee members in general does not allow for public input or participation of Greater concern in regards to committee selection is policy 616 3.1 section c number three which requires the design to include the following members District Library Personnel District administrative staff School site administrators and faculty members this policy Stacks your seven member committees with a majority of four vusd staff members per committee from the very start how is the community supposed to be assured that a fair process was in fact conducted when the policy calls for a majority of US USD staff from the very beginning policy 616 3.1b letter G states that when challenge material is reviewed by the district it shall
144not be subject to further reconsideration for 12 months so should an appeal take place and a decision is made to remove these books to be fair there is nothing indicative on the challenge of of a challenge or appeal process for anyone that may dis disagree with the decision it's concerning that the policy does not include any participation from that of our elected school board members the policy leaves Challengers and concerned citizens without the ability to participate without representation and with a tremendous lack of transparency as far as the sun gazet report this that VD spent 14,000 on this review I would suggest that the board amend your policy which requires an abundance of V USD staff participation this likely resulted in an excess of overtime pay when money could have been saved salary staff could
145have participated volunteer community members all books are free and readily available on Sora ebooks YouTube and public in school libraries Zoom meetings could have been conducted for free and with Community with transparency it's unreasonable to place blame at the cost of the district anywhere else but the policy itself thank you thank you um Matthew War warthin I hope I said that right hi Bor uh thank you for this opportunity I want to read one of those excerpts from the book that Crystal was talking about to see what our children are exposed to I'm sorry I'm sorry is that better don't do this Henry Naomi's lip trembled as she spoke down he ordered she dropped to her knees the clouds cleared the tears Shone on her face Bo wanted to run to her but he couldn't
146lie back open your legs and stop crying don't tell me this is the first time you've done this Henry she protested I haven't I never you lied enough already and then he pushed her back until her head was on the ground B you come here and watch but don't try anything I've got the gun right here B look long enough to see with the revolver his father held in his near his sister's face the shotgun lay on the far side of Naomi Out Of Reach B did not want to watch but he heard watch his shouts the sound of him pulling at the ropes and Henry's fist slamming into his sister's face once twice three times Henry shouting you like that keep it up boy every time you holl her I'm going to punch her
147again was a side silence the rustle of the dry leaves his father's rapid breathing and agonizing of waiting his sister crying out in pain and in the end of it Henry's shudder Grunt and grasp Naomi sobbing Bo Henry was standing up zipping his pants in one hand and said I'll be damned girl pushing his hair back out of his face you were telling the truth this is what's in the libraries at the high school and I would like to read you know there's been other states that have done studies and have determined that allowing kids to this pornography and this this filth and this explicit content is put students at a higher risk of anxiety depression isolation sexual assault and suicide I've heard many things from all the presenters today that uh you're here as
148advocates for the children and it seems like that you're doing a good job with that I would ask that you would do as Crystal asks and and change your policy and get rid of these books we're not asking you to ban books just take them from the school libraries they can they be available in public libraries but they shouldn't be in the schools and our children shouldn't have access to this thank you Cassie Peterson hello my name is Cassie Peterson and I'm a concerned parent and Resident I'm here today asking that sexually explicit and vulgar books not be available in our Public Schools where parents are diminished control of what our children can access and read books are good tools for parents to help teach their children how to behave sadly the shift in books
149in schools these days have gotten very sexual graphic and vulgar content the majority of parents in this community have no idea how bad it is gotten when students receive exposure to graphic materials then there will be adverse psychological effects that occur afterwards the American Academy of Patric supports that children who receive exposure to violence in books at an early age can encourage them to AG act aggressively and sensitizing them to violence numerous studies on the use of graphic material by students indicate negative psychological effects including more casual sex partners and beginning to have sex at a younger age this is not a matter of Sheltering our children it's a matter of guiding them towards what is best we are the adults and it's our job to protect them no matter how unpopular that may seem
150removing certain books from the library is about showing discretion and respecting our community's values as parents we must be vigilant about what our children are exposed to and their education and it's our responsibility to ensure that they have age appropriate reading material protecting their hearts their minds and their innocence in this book The Late Night at the telegraph Club written by Linda low there are two inappropriate inserts on page 42 287 this book is in seven schools here in the district and one being a Middle School reading these inappropriate books the inappropriate inserts are in printed in your mind you might not remember the plot or the story but these images are not easily forgotten and I'll just read a short one real fast so she went to bed imagining Maxine's hand on the buttons
151of her Patricia blouse unbuttoning it she slid her own hand beneath her packet her in her night gown she felt her own warm skin beneath her fingertips in the quiet darkness of her bedroom she felt the faint but insisting beating of her heart and she felt it quickening she imagined the blouse sliding off Patricia's shoulders and the pale swell of her breast Lily's whole body went hot and she felt the need to cross her legs against the hungry ache at the center of her body she imagined them kissing the way Marlon and BAU had kissed Mary Murphy in the wild one which she and Shirley had snuck into last February don't be such a square surely had said when Lily had worried about getting caught but now it's Lily's imagination Marlin Brando became Max crushing
152Patricia's bonelessly in her arms and then their lips pressed together and Lily tugged up in the Hem of her night gown thank you Mrs Peterson um Bruce Kinder bro did I say that correctly say again kindberg thank you oh Kingsburg okay yeah and so uh I'm a grandfather of eight grandchildren in the area and so I consider this a very um important subject to discuss about the reading materials available for the children this particular book is called uh John by John Green Looking for Alaska and it's it's recommended for age 14 and older some of the and some of the questions that I have about this book is at what age is is pornography pornography legal and acceptable in today's age today's time is there an age appropriate rating for books as there used to
153be for video movies is there an appropriate age age and if 14 is an age that that this kind of reading can be taken um I'm going to read a couple of excerpts from from the book I spent the afternoon with Laura we were uh very uh cuty even though we didn't know the first thing about each other and barely um barely talked this is a foreign girl who didn't know English very well we walked to the TV room where I I locked the door we were uh watching The Brady Bunch an All-American movie but while they watching that that movie um Laura randomly asked me have you ever gotten a and I'm G to skip the next partc for interest of time what made you think of that he asked I've just never um
154given one she answered her little voice dripping with seductiveness sexy all of a sudden but to hear her sweet little Romanian voice go no I said I never have thank uh I I think it would be fun and going on to the next uh on page 127 my pants are pulled down boxes down a little uh low unbutton my pants pull them down and P pulled out my penis um skip the next section um and there she wrapped her hand around it and put it in her mouth um and this is for 14 year olds and older uh with my penis in her mouth I sat there waiting what comes next should I do something I'm G to skip to the last one here which is a different setting and where the these two teenagers
155were watching a uh a video movie and I sat already look okay I'm not even going to read this one because I don't have time but you got the idea what this book is about and uh I think we should all be considering what's in these books thank you thank you um David Richardson hello can you hear me I'm David Richardson I'm a a Gideon from the Gideon Gideon International and nationville Tennesse and uh we passed out about 3,500 Bibles uh this this school year so far so we're we're getting about 1,300 Bibles a month so and then this Bible here has uh God's help in crisis there's about 120 uh verses that they can look up the kids and they've been pretty receptive I say 40 40% to about 55% of the kids are
156receptive at all these schools around here some more some less the vistad dero not so much I don't know why but they didn't want any Bible hardly but I don't knowy anyway I've been in Bible clubs at Crowley long time ago Crowley at Pinkham with my son he was a drug baby and he was uh he wasn't abused but he was picked on and he was you know he had problems and uh I was at about six round taes with Andy here he was the principal at the time and uh the psychologist would oh the psychologist I'm sorry I don't know can you guys hear me okay the psychologist uh would always say how how's he doing and they would well he's not medicated well I didn't medicate him I just let him do karate
157and I let him do uh salmon pills we went and got the pills up in the by the mountain some doctor it was a natural medication so um those schools were fine but then he got into a little bit of a trouble he had KN a knife and he got in some trouble so he we got him into the military school and uh he was doing pretty good and then they they got me I was doing going to the meetings and they let me be the uh the school rep so then we got started and we started a Bible club and we were passing out a whole bunch bunch of them in the school and so we had a Bible club like 91 kids were going there before the co so it was two years
158ago but um he did uh real good he became a naval seal and he uh was the president of the Bible Club so there is you know there's good stuff going on too but I don't know if you guys have a uh a military school that maybe you could you know think about that that would be nice and get Bible clubs for kids the parents need to know how to do it so say thank you okay I got his little ver I got to read him his little little verse his life verse time I'm sorry we have to we're running out of time I can't read it no sorry thank you Terry [Music] hopia did I say that right if it's Armenian I should know how to say it uh listening to us this evening
159my name is t ovian um I have some reading material that uh obviously you've seen a lot of people going through and going toart uh going bringing to your attention I got a third way through this book and I ran out of posy notes it was very very bad this was geared for fourth grade classroom I'm sure that that's not where it stops but there's a whole lot of issues in here that I have in regards to s for for instance um I was hot mad I was was very mad I wanted to P punch my dad in the face I wanted to punch him in the nose and make him bleed I wanted to punch him in the eye make him blind and I wanted to kick him in the wos and make him
160pass out I this is what this kid is saying here and he's all throughout here he's he's a troubled individual and he's talking about different things and being a picked on kid and the things that he wants to do to other people he's talking about spending uh time with drunken buddies and and going through and watching them get so drunk that they can't even stand up he's he's talking about being on this reservation and and doing the gambling thing with everyone I mean this this the name of it is an an absolutely true Diary of a part-time Christian uh Indian sorry then he goes on to talk about um he's got lwd speech all through here he's saying filthy words the FW he's saying all kinds of things uh talking about people that he would
161like to uh just you annihilate and it says here one of the excerpts of this page it said I was 14 it was my first day of high school I was happy about that and I was almost especially happy about my first geometry class I have to admit that Isles or whatever those triangles they make me feel hormonal most guys no matter what age get excited about curves and circles but not me but don't get me wrong I like girls in their curves but I really like women and their curvier curves I spent hours in the bathroom with a magazine that has 1,000 pictures of naked movie stars naked women right hand Happy Happy Joy Joy yep that's right I admit it I masturbate I'm proud of it and I'm good at it and I'm
162urious and if there's a professional masturbator League I'd get drafted number one and make millions of dollars maybe you're thinking well you really shouldn't be talking about masturbating in public well tough I'm going to talk about it because everybody does it and everybody likes it present company excluded I'm sorry I'm not one of those then he goes on to talk about his thumbs and he's really glad that God gave him thumbs then you get over here at this other Tail End of This Book here and this book talks about um the FW and he attaches it to the nword now if I have family members that are African-American this is absolutely appalling it was about this guy asking him hey did you know that Indians are living proof that ends F buffalos if that's not
163enough to remove this filth from the school I don't know what it is everybody's running around saying I claim this I claim that that's got to go thank you hon your positions um first I just want to say thank you because you your 20 minutes is actually up so I appreciate the fact that you're allowing me to speak um good evening board and administrators um my name is Marilyn Malloy back in July when Crystal Reynolds first brought this issue to the board my husband and I encouraged her that it was actually a good thing that vusd had a policy and process for removing inappropriate books and that she should engage the process and trust that it would produce the correct result the proc has now run its course and I am now questioning whether or
164not that was good advice you've heard excerpts from some of these books here tonight and I hope you'd agree that there is no context in which these type of explicit sexual language is appropriate for children however after 13 independent book reviews the district has curiously come to the exact same conclusion for each that there is n nothing inappropriate about these books and they should remain available to children in vusd libraries I say curiously because it seems odd that not even one of them would end up with a different recommendation and although the district has a clear process re for review the lack of transparency leaves concerned parents and community members with several questions first were the Committees made up made up of only District employees or or was there diverse representation from the community second
165we know that the program director from the source was on at least two of these committees was the faith community properly represented as well third how do we know that the community actually read the books and actually debated them is it possible that they just looked at a thirdparty recommendation and took a vote we don't know because per District policy committee proceedings shall remain confidential only the recommendations are du are to be reported to the superintendent or design there are serious problems with this policy there is no mechanism for our elected officials to get involved the board actually has no ability to step into the process if a book actually is removed there is no opportunity for that decision to be challenged there is no transparency to the process the public as well as the
166person challenging the book or books has to blindly trust that the right thing is being done I would ask tonight that the board reconsider how this policy is written and make changes that allow for board member intervention increased transparency and greater diversity within the Committees thank you thank [Applause] you we'll move on to our our consent agenda um would anybody like to pull a consent agenda agenda item okay may I have a motion to approve the consent agenda I'll motion all second on a motion by board member caser soleno second by uh board member Vias all in favor student board representative votes yes and motion passes unanimously okay so we have uh Miss Maui Louise from Golden West it's time for your report thank you um starting with LD Monte LD Monte hosted their Candy
167Land homecoming week which consisted of a rally a lunch Carnival a parade dress up days lunch activities and a football game LD Monte held their monthly minor Senate where they received student feedback on potential battle for the saddle dress up days LD andte sent their SE ASB sophomore class to the area sea conference in Hanford at this conference the students learned about a variety of ways to improve their home ASB schools lastly LD Monte ASB is preparing for their battle for the saddle week to maintain their ownership over the saddle against Golden West Golden West had an extremely successful homecoming week filled with lots of activities dress up days and a movie night showing the movie Rio Golden West got to celebrate Breast Cancer Awareness Month with pink out KN against Mount Whitney for football
168and for volleyball Golden West is slowly beginning to prepare lots of exciting dress up days and decorations for battle for the saddle and battle for the paddle where both football and girls water polo will fight for two wins against L Monte Golden West just hosted their car show it was a huge success with over 200 cars involved there were lots of small businesses and local food vendors in attendance along with a great crowd of people Mount Whitney High School held their homecoming game against Porterville and won 35-28 all of the Mount Whitney student body and staff wore gold to this game to support Childhood Cancer Awareness Mount Whitney drama is preparing for their annual fall play the Grim spectacular which will be held this weekend October 19th through the 21st Mount Whitney band had a
169competition at Fresno State and placed third and lastly Mount Whitney is currently working on their trunk or treat in a haunted house that will be held on October 30th Redwood had their pink out game and future Ranger night Thursday October 12th that night included the performance of Middle School band and color guard as well as Redwood Cheer Camp Littles Redwood also had Middle School ASB members that were flag Runners and DJs for that night Redwood has been in preparation for cowhide which is coming up next week where Redwood ASB and Ranger TV have been creating digital advertisements and videos to post throughout the week Redwood volleyball had their best cancer awareness game versus Portville during this game the volleyball team recognized Kathleen coni who is a cancer survivor she has two granddaughters on the team
170Redwood link crew is hosting their annual Terror on Vista haunted house on October 19th from 7: to 9:00 p.m. there will be food and carnival games for everyone to enjoy seoa graduated 30 students for quarter 1 along with a food vendor and noon time activities on Friday the 13th all of seoa celebrated breast cancer awareness where students and staff wore pink for the day the day was super successful because we saw students dress up who never dressed up before seoa sent six students to Kata area sea conference in which 2600 students from the valley attended this was their first time to attend a leadership conference for seoa our ethnic studies classes led by Mrs Cervantes has students had students read on the intercom various Hispanic History topics to recogn iiz Hispanic Heritage Month bcis sent
171their ASB leaders to the Kata leadership conference on October 16th students were able to attend a variety of workshops about ways to improve school spirit and culture followed by a rally and a keynote speaker bcis ASB recognized suicide Awareness Month October 2nd through the 6th by having students write inspirational messages on large yellow ribbons and displaying them throughout both campuses hundreds of yellow ribbons were given out to all VC Eagles October 16th through 20th VC is recognizing Breast Cancer Awareness Month staff is wearing matching custom pink shirts and students are wearing pink throughout the week bcis hosted a booth to showcase our medical pathway opportunities at the middle school College and Career Fair on October 12th at rawhyde Stadium lastly VTEC celebrated the Harvest Festival on Saturday October 14th and V VTech would like to
172thank all who came to support this event the VTEC Harvest Festival King Diego Cruz and queen Carmen Ortiz were awarded by a close margin over the week-long activities that took place our ASB team did an amazing job planning engaging activities bch is working to ensure all college applications are complete and we are hosting a college application workshop on Wednesday October 18th bch would also like to thank the College and Career Readiness department for their Showcase Event where students were talking to potential future Wolverines thank you thank you great job uh Mr Bel thank you president Gan um I am on track to try to visit all the school sites although not in five days but over the course of this year and one of the things that was quite striking at Golden West is I
173went to an oci Club class and had a a conversation with a student who um had been in trouble and so trying to get him back on track by having him in class and he liked my shoes and it started a conversation about how much do they cost and where did I get them and he asked me what do you do on the school board said well I have two tasks mainly I want to make sure that you have everything you need to learn and that your teacher gets paid he goes oh okay how much do you get paid said well we're not talking about how much I get paid though it's far less than probably your dad and he goes well he makes 700 a month a week said that's what I get a
174month that's because it's not doing this for a salary do this to serve do this to make sure that our children continue to learn well and have an environment where that can happen so I want to thank all the principles that are here you continually are coming out all well almost all 40 of you and I'm getting more and more of a glimpse of what your task is like every day uh I wouldn't want to be a principal so I applaud that you are but I also am amazed at how much investment we are making in giving you the resources you need to learn and do your task every day and to make sure you get paid that's our job I enjoyed being able to flip burgers with two phds at the vapa Showcase Dr
175Vegas and Dr Odo because that's what we do to help support the foundation and all that they're doing uh I was a quasi faux mimic Auctioneer for the Redwood football boosters for the second year running I don't know if I help them make a lot of money I just kept the evening moving because that's what we do we want to serve all of our students and organizations of US USD and then last but not least the amazing event and we went to I went to a lot of events but the event at the Rawhide Stadium the career in college tracks uh I had a student teach me what I was doing wrong with ressa Annie I I didn't know how to press hard enough I thought I knew the Rhythm and the strength but they
176now have a new recesso Annie that it clicks when you push hard enough and it lights up if you're doing the right rhythm with a green light and that Medical Academy student schooled me and it was one of many that were able to teach and encourage our eighth graders who were walking through thousands of them to walk through that day so thank you for all you do Vicky thanks for making that happen there's more I'd like to say but I'll keep it short because we've had a long evening but thank you Mr Thompson that you've taught us the three questions to ask whenever we're with students what are you doing why you're doing it and how do you know if you're learning it or doing it right and that's changed my whole approach to engaging
177students thanks thank you um remember viegas thank you president Gan uh again another shout out to the College and Career um department just seen all the photos from that raw height event just amazing and seeing all the happy faces from all of our students across all of our schools um and of course shout out to our facilities our principles and all of our staff for getting our students there and back safely um and you know without incident um I wanted to wish everybody a happy Hispanic Heritage Month which just concluded you know this past weekend and also a Filipino American History Month which is the month of October and I think that's appropriate given the fact that we are here in the Central Valley and the epicenter for the farm worker labor movement um in
178the 60s and the 30s where Filipino Farm Workers went on strike with leaders like uh Philip Cruz and Larry itong later joined by Dolores haa and cess Chavez and so I think it's so important that we teach that history to our students that we teach the history of social movements of civil rights and that struggles for better wages better dignity better working conditions for all of our farm Working Families and our students who continue uh many of them Farm Workers themselves either in the Summers or sometimes before after school and so I want to recognize that and and take a moment to honor that history and I also want to welcome and thank our school board member uh Maui and I'm really glad you're here tonight you did an excellent job on your report and
179and with that being said I want to also segue into that a recent assembly bill that was passed this is assembly Bill 275 uh it was just signed into law by the governor which is a a bill all about student board member reps and what this allows school districts to do is moving forward allow for um college or sorry excuse me uh elective credit Andor compensation for student board members and so I really think we have an opportunity to lead in this regard uh to really show our student board members that we value the time the efforts that they take into preparing their student board member reports preparing for meetings being here at the meetings listening and participating the same way that all of us do uh and so I'm looking forward to those conversations
180and hopefully seeing how we might potentially be able to lead as a district other than that I'm looking forward to next week reading at Highlands literacy nights and hopefully attending some other uh events as well really encouraging literacy really inspired and encouraged by all the work we're doing in terms of phonics and language development and so I'm looking forward to that really happy that we we highlighted some of our students in the work they're doing on voter education and participation uh we also have voter registration week in the state of California in April so I'm looking forward to seeing you know what we could potentially do to increase that engagement and participation in the future as well and that concludes my report thank you thank you uh board member Caspar Selena it's late and so
181I'll keep it very brief um I don't I I even forgot that I did that event Mr shum until I saw the picture of me there so it's been a long month uh one thing about doing these meetings once a month is there's so much jam-packed in those four weeks um that I even forget so um on that note I just always enjoy uh getting out in this community even when it's not of the USD events and so um one of the things my family and I have really been enjoying lately is going to the Farmers Market Market that has moved um to the courthouse on Saturday mornings and if you haven't been I really suggest you go and check it out they do accept um EVT cards um for those um who are are
182are get their funding for their groceries through that and uh it's just it's just a great time there's there's vendors out there the farmers that are there are great and um kids love it so if you're around on a Saturday morning check it out thank you uh board member oo thank you I'll try to be brief uh just thank you to principals and staffs at the three School sites that had the opportunity to visit in the last month great visits all the way around Riverway Elementary Hurley Elementary and Green Acres Middle School Green Acres added the um additional entertainment and informational value of a lockdown while we were there and I think board president G might comment on that but great visits and good to see kids and teachers working hard on getting smarter uh
183attended uh board policy uh meetings and also stated the District event way back uh last month uh and also as Mr belt noted uh cooked hamburgers at the Ed Foundation band showcase great event there well attended and my favorite thing of the year has always been to be the head barbecuer for that um it's been said a couple times tonight and it's very very true we're in the middle of the long month in the middle of a long semester and that underscores the fact that the middle part of any Endeavor is always the toughest you're past the the the hubis of the opening of of anything and you get to the part where you know what to do or kids know what to do teachers know what to do and you're doing it so you're
184comfortable things are in a routine and that's when fatigue kind of sets in so this is a hard time to maintain what I used to call the even strain of making sure that you get through what you need to get through so thanks to everyone involved in making sure that kids are focused on learning throughout this time here it's also important to note that in the reports that we saw tonight we're also in the middle of a lot of initiatives that are going on and again the middle is the hard part once you've established where you want to go it's the doing of it that leads to the Celebration at the end that is the most honorous part of any Endeavor so thanks again to everyone for undertaking the middle part of the very very
185long reaching strategic and operational and even the Tactical things that are going on in the school district so thanks to all for that thank you thank you board member nayor try to keep mine short also um I want to just give a thanks to the principes and staff also at several schools I have every other Friday off so I try to fill that up with visits and visited Conor uh Golden Oak and four creeks and it was great to see them and on my Fridays I love the fact that when I do go in there you see students engaged focused and on reading and it's not their fun activities and um it's just nice to see that we're really focusing on the reading and the math um I did want to give a shout out
186to Viva blunt they had a family literacy night that um Gyan and I attended it was amazing there was so many parents students involved activity Learning Centers the whole theme was Pirates all the teachers were dressed up they did a read aloud uh from a book the kids were amazing and I just I love literacy nights so um thank you so much and then one more thing the elop I did go uh actually gy and I also went to that one the dent and performance of Aladdin and that was through our elop and I am am amazed at how many students were participating which tells me that we have a lot of that are signing up for that program and it is an amazing program so thank you um for bringing that to our students
187because it's after school and it keeps our students connected thank you board member Gabby so yes definitely um Echo all of the thanks to our staff and welcoming us onto their sites um and into their classrooms to see student learning also on the College and Career ready just want to also kind of shout out to like Paige loveren and her team te I have a student that's a senior right now we're applying to colleges and I say we because it's a group process and it is no joke and to the high schools um you know they're constantly putting on different workshops for how you know UC applications CSU applications and um our high school teachers I know you're being asked to write in addition to everything else you're writing letters of recommendations and and our
188um learning directors are and counselors so thank you those are all those little extra things that our staff puts in um to our students that just make such a huge difference um and as a as a Schoolboard member but as a parent too very appreciative and uh lastly next Wednesday um we have the Excellence in education Awards and I know we um have some employees that are being honored and I'm suddenly unsure if they know yet so I'm going to stop there and say congratulations and I'm sure we'll talk about it next time I want to um thank principles also for being so welcoming on on you know inviting us well we kind of invite ourselves to your campus and you let us come and see and it's just fun to see all that uh
189teaching and learning um I will elaborate a little bit on the Raptor uh lockdown uh that was amazing so we're in the office and it went off and then what I loved the best the best part for me was uh principal corus said okay I'm going out the rest of the staff you don't have to go out I have to make sure all kids are in and the whole staff is no we're going out we got to make sure our kids are safe I mean that almost made me cry um this morning um superintendent Shrum and I got to visit U our uh Mount uh Mountain View School our dual dual immersion with our assemblyman uh Vince Fong and we got to show that off and principal s mes uh if you need someone else
190on your PR team that's the lady she really uh showed him all the wonderful things that are happening I also got to see uh board member casir Ceno's daughter singing in Spanish and English that's an amazing program um we I also uh something that wasn't mentioned was I went to the there was a 40 year I don't know why 40 maybe we maybe I'll dead by 50 I don't know but a 40-year water polo celebration about bringing water polo Frank Bell bringing water polo to our district and so we I got to watch um Redwood and Golden West so that was good and it kind of went back and forth who won um I also want to um thank um Jim Bingley and Claudia Ardon those videos you made about our data were amazing and
191I hope all parents watch it because it tells you what you can do as a parent parents need to be involved in their kids education they need to know what their kids are learning um and they need to support the teachers in their learning so I just want to thank you those two videos were amazing so that's my report superintendent Shrum thank you board president Gyan uh just want to give a shout out again uh as Dr Odo talked about October and so one of the things we wanted to do as a district team uh is just give a little token of appreciation to our teachers our our teachers and our PA professionals are school-based staff that work directly with students every day and so starting this week and c and continuing to next week
192uh each Cabinet member myself included uh and their teams have uh signed up and taken a school or two to and over the course of the mornings are going to be bringing coffee and donuts uh to that staff we get there about 30 minutes before school starts uh the day before the principal lets the staff know hey we're going to be there uh and we're just doing you know handing out donuts and and uh coffee and just simply saying uh to our teachers and our staff that work directly with students every day thank you for what you do and I hope that puts a smile on our staff's face and let them know how much we appreciate the work that they do uh and and and we're going to get through October and end of
193November and as you heard from the reports tonight and I know we had a lot to share but that's because there's a lot of important work going on at the end of the day uh as you see our vision and Mission our job is to make sure every student is learning every day and we know that our data doesn't support right now that that's happening for every student every day and that's why we are engaged in this work uh it's the right work uh and it's important and it is uh something that's going to help make sure that vision and Mission become a reality it is a journey to get there um and I appreciate our leaders and our teachers and our staff for embracing this new work and and going on this journey together
194because again we're here to make sure every kid learns every day and our data will indicate whether or not we're being successful and until that's 100% we have work to do and so I'm excited about that work and that's why I'm here and that concludes my report thank you we'll have to show up at the donuts board board members um okay 10.1 recommended expulsions do I have a a motion on motion second no on a motion by Cas bear soleno and um board member case veleno and board member oo all in favor student board representative abstains and motion passes unanimously 10.2 recommended reinstatements do I have a motion on motion second on a on a motion by Board memb caser seleno second by board member Naylor all in favor uh oh I vote Yes how
195come that's not working there goes student board representative abstains and motion passes unanimously okay and 10.3 recommended review continued expulsions I'll make a motion second on a board on a motion by board member Cas here soleno second by board member oo oo all in favor student board representative abstains and motion passes unanimously okay here comes the best part of our board meeting 11.1 viel Unified District strategic plan first read superintendent Shrum all right well thank you president Gyan board members community staff for that buildup we are excited uh to share the first first read of our strategic plan and we know going back to uh two years ago we heard our community we heard our district talk about the need for a developing a strategic Vision uh and so we didn't engage in this work
196right away we were very deliberate about taking some time with the board and with our community and staff to First identify our foundation because how can you build a strategic plan if you don't know your base right where you're building from where you're starting what your goals and aspirations are and so I'll just reorient our team back to this Foundation slide and over the Journey of almost two years now our board engaging in developing what we believe and we're committed to doing our commitment for student learning also known as our theory of action developing our mission our mission I've just created a new word there our mission and vision maybe that's maybe I'm on to something there and then how that will lead to a strategic plan which why actually be the working plan to
197make those things become reality and so as we share tonight we're going to share our first read of our strategic plan overview the themes and focus areas because again our job is to create the conditions for our school sites and our students to be successful you've seen this slide before we talked about this is why we needed a strategic plan to unify all of the great work that was happening in our district but often times in isolation or maybe even in competition with one another and so how do we scale that to make sure it's impacting all 30,000 students and so we began this work back in February we engaged in stakeholder workshops data reviews we had focus groups surveys and then going through the summer board workshops working to really develop what it is
198we want to see out of a strategic plan and now here we are in October presenting this to the board and I want to take a moment to highlight this slide this is really important our listening sessions covered every school our team went out and engaged in thought exchange with all staff who chose to attend the session back in the spring we went to the community we had both online surveys and inperson opportunities we captured over 1,700 participants over 10,000 thoughts in our thought exchange all that 138,000 ratings that means people took the time to go through and indicate what they thought about the different comments over 1,800 teachers classified students completed surveys well uh participated in the listening sessions workshops over 50 participants you can see there some of the different workshops that was
199our strategic plan work working team surveys over 27,000 survey responses from 11,000 11,000 students staff families and community members now I have it on good account that our strategic plan Outreach generated more Community participation than that of another District named La unified down the road just just saying with largest in the nation so that just shows how much our community our teachers and our staff were involved in making sure their feedback Was Heard and so through with our partners through we engaged uh the experts in using Gathering all this information applying artificial intelligence all those things to generate what we want our strategic plan to be focused on and so the structure of our plan that you're going to see tonight begins with themes these are the overarching areas the intentions for the future the
200focus areas then are how we're going to realize that intention the initiatives are actions that we're going to take or steps that we're going to take and the actions are the specific items right and so it kind of goes from broad all the way down to very narrow and so how does that look so here we go and our Board of course you're aware of this we shared this at at our last board workshop and you had a chance to provide feedback back as well as our district team our three themes are the first one high expectations and high achievement we set clear consistent and ambitious expectations for learning that allow us to reach our Highest Potential creating opportunities for all students and staff empowering students the second theme create and maintain learning environments that
201are set for every student set every student up for success by supporting their well-being and ensuring they thrive and third engaging the community we trust and partner with our parents families and Community to create meaningful lasting relationships to further our mission from each Focus from each theme then there are Focus areas and I'm not going to read all of the detail but under high under high expectations high achievement academic achievement collaboration faculty and staff development technology and Innovative approaches those are the areas we're going to focus on to make that theme happen in other words right to make that theme become a reality and that Focus area will then have actions and initiatives under them right to get it even more narrow you can see here in empowering students obviously equable access and resources we
202have to have that we have to support learning and growth how we provide reliable services to support academic you see behavioral and social emotional because it's not one in isolation extra curricular development facilities and safety right we have to have the facilities and safety process to support learning happening and third engaging the community effective communication you see that empowers and engages diverse audiences Community involvement Foster Community Family engagement to inform decision- making and initiatives right families have to be part of the decision-making process and then strengthen our recruitment systems to cultivate Partnerships enhanced programs for students family and community so this is the action that the board will be taking next month will be to approve the outline of the Strategic plan to approve the themes and the focus areas that's the role of the
203board right to set the goals to set the vision now how we make that happen through our initiatives that becomes the work of the working team that becomes the work of the district to determine how we're going to make that happen what are the programs what are the strategies what are the things that we're going to put in place and how we implement it through the actions you're going to see in just a minute whatever we end up doing connected to this strategic plan we're going to study we're going to take time to design it and then we're going to implement it and then we're going to monitor it right and adjust and continuously improve and so let me take you now a little bit more narrow into what this will actually look like and
204so if you will for a minute think about the First theme that we talked about high expectations and high achievement that's still very broad right that's our ideal that's the go board setting the vision our Focus area and remember there are four so I'm giving an example of one Focus area under that first theme so I just pulled out academic achievement and preparedness now each Focus area is going to have initiatives there may be one there may be multiple initiatives an example here I I just we just created for the purpose of demonstration was increase Advanced learning opportunities if we increase Advanced learning opportunities for students that's going to help them achieve academically and therefore that will meet high expectations and high achievement expectations but well how do we increase Advanced learning opportunities here's where
205the actions come in so each initiative will have action that are aligned to it to make that happen there will be more than one action right so let me just make sure everybody knows right like that's not the only thing we're going to do to increase Advanced learning opportunities this is just an example right so you can see how it works so an example here might be maybe we need to develop a gifted and talented program for elementary school students well that just doesn't happen overnight we have to study so year one may just simply be we study effective program s across the state we study and canvas our parents here what do you want our our program to look like we talk to teachers what should it look like year two might be design
206so the district team and and others that are working design what this might look like year three may be implement but it may be a pilot or maybe it's full scale implementation right and some of the phases may work together right you're going to see a different one in a minute year four implement and monitor it and then year five and Beyond Monitor and continuously improve why is it important that we have a strategic approach for implementing a strategic plan well these things may have budget implications they may have human resources staffing implications they may have operations impact building space right and so this gives time for the district to align all of those resources to make sure when it does go live whatever the action might be that it is successful and so I'll
207just do one more example just for the sake of kind of seeing how it works right engaging the community was our third pillar Community involvement and collaboration is the focus area so in an example initiative might be we want to increase parent and family involvement in school now again there'll be lots of things that we do to make that happen right this is just an example of one sample action so it might be simply that one action might be we decide we want to make sure every school has an active PTA or PTO right so in the case of that almost half of our schools already have that so that's an example of an action that may go through a study design and Implement all in one year and that is one that doesn't necessarily
208have a budget impact or human resource impact or an operation's impact right so not every action will have all of those categories and not every action will take five years or more to make happen right but what I think is important that people hear Too is as we work on developing the initiatives and the actions that will go with them for the focus areas it will be also done in a collaborative approach every Focus area will have a team of individuals that serve as advisers teachers parents community members and others will be part of that advisory they will support the district working team who's working to create the actual initiatives and the actions in a feedback loop so we'll have a group of people who are engaged in uh let's say um going back to
209engageing the community centered around effective communication so we'll have an advisory of parents of teachers of others and they're going to advise us on what are some initiatives or things that we could do to help make effective communication happen right they won't be the decision group but they'll be the ones that we run ideas by and they help generate ideas for us and so for our community and parents and others that wonder how are and teachers how are we going to be involved in what the initiatives and actions we ultimately create that's the process that's going to happen this fall and into of the spring and so you can see there the working team the district team the experts the knowledge individuals that are actually going to be doing and building the work the budget
210the operations teams and then the advisory to provide impact feed input feedback right teachers classified students parents families students as well I want to make a point of saying students will also be part of that especially around initiatives that impact them and so you can see here our work is beginning presenting this first draft to the board uh it'll come final draft in November but before that already in process is developing what these advisories will look like and then we will keep the board updated each month on the development of initiatives and actions that align to this ultimately in the spring then coming back with the complete a package of those things as well so the first step tonight was again first read no action and then in November we'll come back with the board
211to basically approve or hopefully approve the themes and the focus areas uh for our strategic plan so very excited about this work I think it captures the the the the thoughts behind our beliefs and commitments in our theory of action I think it captures the voice of our community the voice of our teachers our staff um and then also demonstrates how we're going to keep that involved as we go through the development of the specifics of the plan so Madame President excited about this work thank you to everybody that contributed and looking forward to how this is going to help guide our district for years to come regardless of who's standing up here in front of you hopefully it's me but that will be guiding our district from now on and when you think about
212budget and operations hrd doesn't have to guess one two years what am I going to need budget doesn't have to think about one three years are we going to have the resources to do something right are we going to have the space available um and so it's really going to bring a new strategic approach to how we do business in visol unified that concludes my report that's awesome any board questions or comments thank you so much and I will be alive the next 10 years to see all the fruition all right 11.2 notice of intenna employees certificated personnel and approval of variable term waiver requests for CCSD C certification Mr Dylan thank you so I am uh requesting that the board approve uh these waivers these are for some unique specific uh kind of hard
213to fill positions they're unique in the scope of the work and therefore we are requesting credential uh to add on to the base credential of these existing employees may I have a motion to approve the variable term waiver requests CCSD certification motion to approve second uh everybody votes before we make a motion well it there was a motion by Casp soleno second by Oh by board member Naylor and second by Cas bear Selena I guess it passed okay student board representative votes yes and motion passes unanimously okay all right um 11.3 notice of intent employees certificated personnel and approval of provisional intern permit requests assistant superintendent Dylan yes thank you board president Bard and superintendent shum my request is that the board approve uh this pip provisional internship permit um to uh allow us to
214move forward with the the teacher indicated and provide them the opportunity needed to move forward with becoming intern eligible may I have a motion to approve the PIP request move to approve second okay um get out of here okay on a motion by Dr Odo on a second byar salano all in favor okay come on I vote Yes there we go student board representative votes yes and motion passes unanimously thank you very much 11.4 board policy revision adoptions deletions first read superintendent Shram yes as the board knows we've engaged in our policy uh subcommittees and board members have had a chance to review policies with any additions or deletions uh and then those will be brought back uh for consent on the next board meeting in November any questions comments all right ready then 11.5
215warrant list August 25th 2023 through September 29th 2023 good evening this is our routine item for the warrant list for August 25th through September 29th 2023 for your approval I'll make a motion second there you go all right on a motion by uh board member viegas second by wasn't gab oh Caspar saleno all in favor see now you have them scared to vote they're waiting oh uh student board representative votes yes and motion passes unanimously and thank you for hanging with us the meeting is adjourned