001i will now call this meeting to order board member megan casper selena is unable to join us this evening we do have a quorum and i will identify the closed session topics recommended explosions recommended reinstatements public employee assignment reassignment appointment public employee discipline dismissal release complaints conference with labor negotiator and conference with neighbor negotiator unrepresented employees conference with legal counsel existing litigation and anticipated litigation is there any public comment there is no public so there's no comment we'll adjourn to closed session the interpreter linguist interpreter and translation will serve as the spanish interpreter for for this meeting meeting attendees who would like to listen to the spanish interpretation of the meeting please pick up headphones from the table located in the back of the meeting room this announcement will now be shared in spanish linguistica
002interpreting and translation servira como interpreta el espanol para esta rona tomos los assistes in escuchar la interpretation el espanol elir porodifono salamesa this meeting is being webcast live and recorded excuse me the recording or webcast may capture images and sounds of those attending the meeting any member of the public wanting to provide public comment learnings listed on tonight tonight's agenda please fill out the public con comment form it's a green form it's located on the table in the back of the room please hand your form to the administrative assistant dalia smart before the item comes up on the agenda please complete a separate form for each item that you'd like to comment on ms smart is sitting at the table in the back of the room members of the public providing public comment please use
003the microphone on the stand located in front of the room the pledge of allegiance tonight will be led by board member jacqueline gaby stands i will now report action taken in closed session in closed session on a motion by board member naylor and a second by board member gamonian the board agreed unanimously 6-0 with one absent to appoint jose franco gonzalez to the position of principal at valley oak middle school jose franco gonzalez has been employed by silly unified scholarship for four years where he served as an assistant principal at ridgeview middle school prior to come to coming to visalia unified school district mr franco gonzalez was the migrant coordinator for tulare joint union high school for three years taught english at tulare high school for two years and taught english for three years at
004animo ralph bunch charter school mr franco gonzalez are the bachelor of arts in english education and a bachelor of arts in spanish linguistis and language acquisition from california state university long beach he also earned a master of education degree from university of california los angeles mr franco gonzalez holds a cynical subject teaching credential and an administrative services credential on behalf of the board of trustees congratulations to mr frankl revisions to the agenda and or enclosure items there are revised meeting handouts for this evening's agenda the enclosure numbers are 1 2 11 12 16 34 35 and 41. our next item on the agenda will be spotlight on good things happening in the district intern superintendent doug cardosa and guest presenters good evening board president guerrero board members and community doug cardoza interim superintendent tonight i
005want to again spotlight some of the great things that are happening within our district so we wanted to congratulate vicelia's our very own bryce melgar so bryce is a seventh grade student at ridgeview middle school and he is our current tulare county spelling bee champion bryce became the first vusd student to advance to the semi-final round in the scripps national spelling bee in washington dc just wanted to let him know we're very proud of him so great job bryce another group to celebrate this is the shannon ranch odyssey of the mind team excuse me i went too far okay you got me okay um congratulations to the shannon ranch odyssey of the mind team placing 19th in the world finals rosalind uh caceres spencer cook candace combs madeline shaffer and scarlett tepete competed against over
00660 teams including teams from south korea poland switzerland and teams from all over the united states a big thank you also goes out to their coaches carl shaffer and jennifer peck for coaching tim coaching them to this level congratulations to our shannon ranch odyssey the mine team [Applause] we also had a team from linwood linwood odyssey the mine team congratulations to the state champion team from linwood elementary school who competed at the odyssey of the mine world finals placing 13th overall we're very proud of you representing our school and district this is gabby uh pat papchitsky brock white aura abdel fattah sophie defty cameron chapman julia villegas they all competed against 60 teams again in the world finals again against teams from south korea poland switzerland and teams from all over the u.s so congratulations
007to these kids our next thing on the on our spotlight is information about civic engagement i'm going to turn this over to mr brandon gridiron thank you mr cardoza so tonight we'd like to acknowledge a few of our students and local community partners who have worked diligently uh to bring awareness of the impact of vaping on our young people these students efforts and contributions helped drive the city's decision to establish an ordinance prohibiting new smoked tobacco shops from being located within a thousand feet of our schools libraries daycare facilities parks and recreational facilities and this is just one excellent example of the importance of elevating youth voice and the power of promoting civic engagement and so if the following students would please just join me up here really quickly because i do want everyone to
008see who you are um maria hernandez emily luna jasmine luna enriquez martinez uh mystique green jacqueline ramirez jasmine osborne kelsey curtis lucio ponce escabel camera ortiz yesenia gomez ync hidalgo and the reason really i want these students to be recognized is because they've been putting in this work for the last two to three years in our partnership with the california health collaborative and they've worked closely with the city and our uh city officials to make actually policy change and i talked to some city officials and they acknowledged that they would have not made this decision had it not be for these students sharing their voice so thank you so much for your contributions thank you students thank you so much and thank you for being here and letting us recognize you and more importantly thank
009you for the work that you did and and getting student voice out there and helping others understand the power of the voice and getting out and making change so thank you all went too far i'm sorry okay another spotlight that we want to do tonight is if i say a high school performance art showcase we want to recognize the event that they had just recently this is the vusd theater teachers and students from redwood mount whitney golden west and el diamonte performed at the fourth annual vaisay high school performing arts showcase awards on sunday may 19th it was at the l j williams theater the night included performances from all four traditional high school drama programs as well as musical theater programs awards were presented to each of the high schools outstanding performers and rookie
010and scene so congratulations to them on their fourth annual showcase did i skip a slide there again oh i did here excuse me so and again another spotlight tonight is our cycon annual leaf awards out of 810 counselors serving cycon this year we had three students awarded top honors as counselors the friends of cycon ray burbank leaf award was given to these students so we're proud of uh and celebrate nizoni kiers and david romo from redwood high school and miguel cortez from sequoia high school thank you for being great leaders at cycon and good role models for our young students attending cycon so great job to those students our next piece is on the newcomers program i'm going to ask miss claudia or don diaz to come up and talk about this one good evening
011tonight we would like to acknowledge our high school newcomer program the teacher of the program is required and the paraprofessional that's also part of the program is maria pelagio i would also like to recognize the newcomer committee we have been working really diligently in creating clear entry and exit criteria guiding principles for a high school newcomer program i had the opportunity i was invited to participate in newcomer exit interviews and i don't know what i was expecting but i was expecting greatness but i was stunned the students are just fantastic so we thought that we would spotlight this program and the hard work of the team this program is meant to open doors for the usd secondary newcomers it also is there to provide rigorous instruction aligned with the research-based practices and create foundational coherent
012and systematic support so that the committee has been doing a great job meeting together this is also part of cni miss julie white has been part of this also the staff there has been very integral so we really appreciate them but tonight i just wanted to quickly highlight the students that were there i promised that i was going to say their names tonight so they're not able to be here but i wanted to recognize denise alfaro rasima alcavelli obed alvarado yurizi alvarado jorge bottello angel cardenas castellon lopez jocelyn escobar axo garcia gomez ariana gutierrez aeron erin herrera kim ho alejandro izoria alberto martinez crystal maneta josue moreno mai nujen naoun ortiz orlen pacheco anna romero and abraham vargas their interviews were excellent they made me cry it was just a great moment it was one
013of the highlights of my years we wanted to share that with you and hopefully you will be able to join us for exit interviews next year thank you thank you for that all right our next part of the spotlight is spotlighting on our safe schools and some of the work and things we have in place to help make our schools safe places and so we're focused on a continuous improvement of systems and implementation of protocols to create safe secure campuses and facilities in vaisay unified so how do we create safe secure campuses one of the things that we've done over the past several years is provide single point of entries with secure fencing at all school sites so that anyone entering our campus has to come through the office we have staff being required to
014wear id badges that is something that we will be implementing next year to ensure that all staff does have id badges when they're on campus so that if anyone's on our campus without one we can walk up and ask if we can help them but again to identify who this should be there and who should not all sites implement schedule training and drills including fire evacuation drills lockdown drills shelter and place drills active shooter drills we also have i say police department youth office services officers taking a proactive engagement approach with students staff in our community other things that are current and ongoing we've established a safety action team that meets on a regular basis for direct input to help us make adjustments at sites coordination of communication and systems development with visalia pd these
015are all things that that we work on are continuing ongoing we continue with upgrades on security gates we're looking at security camera systems um unique site and building numbering system we're working with tcue on this piece of it as well as if i say pd this is to support our first responders to be more effective if they have to come onto our campuses we'll refine communication systems to be effectively to effectively communicate with our parents and community partners we'll upgrade and check our check-in and check out systems for those entering and leaving campuses so that we have a better accountability of who's on campus and who is not whether it's students staff or volunteers in addition to those things we are providing a proactive support in our schools with additional social workers this is to
016identify students in need and give them a place to go so additional social workers to support students and families at all levels additional psychologists support at all school sites additional counselors provide proactive support for our students additional academic supports to increase student success monitoring to be sure that we connect all students with extra and co-curricular opportunities and so there's a lot of work moving forward to implement these things but they're very important pieces um that we feel will help make our sites much more you know a safe place for our kids to be with that i also want to introduce um sergeant mona whaley she's with the visalia police department and she oversees the youth services officers in our district so i've asked her to come up and just talk a little bit about what
017does it look like with the youth service officer on campus what do they do how do they interact and so i'd like to invite mona up here right now thank you so much for having us here for those of you that don't know my name is mona whaley i work for vaisay police department as a sergeant and i oversee the youth service department most of you know that we have 10 different officers five of which are at our high schools five of which are at our middle schools each of those officers are responsible for the feeder schools which is their elementary schools and grade schools these officers when they first come into the unit they receive a basic youth service officer training course that they attend and then there's an advanced one as well throughout
018their time in there they go to additional training for child abuse and other stuff that they might investigate obviously our number one priority alongside vice univers school district staff is to ensure the safety of our students which is what their primary goal is i don't know who knows this but last week we did one of our trainings that we do annually which is an active shooter training where we were able to go out to sequoia assess the building run through different kind of scenarios that we may encounter at some point so and this just keeps them familiar and fresh on some of the stuff that they need to know so we don't just do that we're also responsible for mentoring and counseling and building relationships with the children that our ladies and gentlemen meet we
019do this through the school dances through the football games the miscellaneous award programs and i know that last week one of my officers went out and did a paintball water square gun thing at one of the elementary schools and was able to interact and build those relationships so we appreciate that the staff allows us to have those relationships and we want the kids to see us in a positive light not necessarily just because you know we're there as a police officer but we're there as a as a friend and somebody that they can trust and work that relationship later in the year so that is what we do we're looking forward to we had a rough year this last year just getting back into the swing of things but we've been working with the new
020admin and staff and that's been going very well and continue to talk about some of the things that mr cardoza talked about and work on those throughout the next year thank you sergeant really so with that any questions any questions from any board member i did have one question for mona um sorry if i didn't catch it but did you say that there were youth service officers at every elementary school or no or just some days they go certain days got it come on up to the mic sorry no we have 10 officers okay one for each high school one for each middle school so they just go certain times i was just wondering if you know when assemblies are if there could be officers at those assemblies when there are is more of a
021presence on campus is that is even a possibility absolutely so what we have been doing recently because we didn't have them for the longest time and this is my first year in there a lot of my yso's first year in there so as we've built the relationships with the staff the staff will call and in fact the one last week he the principal called and said hey can you come to this event when we know that there's going to be award ceremonies or that there's going to be something um we're asking them to at least let us know so that we can make a presence last week or i believe it was the week before middle school graduation happened and we can only be at you know a certain amount of places at a time
022and i know a lot of the grade schools had them as well so we try and get in there as long as they're not all on one day because that's a lot of schools for 10 officers but we also have the assistance of our patrol officers i mean they've been on your campus our motors officers came to your graduations it's not just us that do this we can't do it by ourselves there's 10 of us in a very large community so as a police department as a whole you know i believe that our kids are our number one responsibility so yes at any time if somebody wants to ask to have there's each of the schools uh should know which officer that they're assigned to there should be a spreadsheet and the yso should go
023meet with them at the beginning of the year and explain that to them that's great thank you so much any other questions or comments i just wanted to make a quick comment regarding the responsiveness my experience as a as a site principal and jackie maybe i'll vouch for this i think we may have shared the ysos but they are very responsive anytime that we needed a yso on campus they were there quickly or they would send a regular officer so like she said they coordinate with pd and they're very responsive we're going to have a situation where there's going to be lots of traffic they'll send traffic officers out and so pd's been very good and they listen and they support us quite well so thank you for being here thank you thank you our
024next item on the agenda is superintendent entry plan incoming superintendent kirk shrum you know i said this is the first time well maybe not the first time come to the podium definitely for a presentation so make sure i get the clicker and the microphone and all that stuff correct so well good evening mr president board members and interim superintendent cardozo i am pleased to share with you tonight my entry plan is your superintendent before i share the details of this plan i want to thank you the board the trustees the visalia community for your trust in me and the warm welcome that i've received i sought this opportunity with this board because i believe in what is possible for visalia unified i believe in this board that said we want more for our students and
025i believe in this community that values and takes pride in its educational system and i believe in each of our students and staff so throughout this plan you're going to see themes of engaging examining and envisioning our path forward together and it all begins with each of you our community listening to the collective hopes and dreams that we have for our students in our schools and then examining our systems and working to align them to produce the results we expect there's a quote i frequently use our system our organization is designed to get the results it's getting and this community and this board has made clear that we want better results for our kids and everyone in our community and this with this entry plan we will build for that excellence so the first phase
026really is underway right now this is all about engaging with the community this is about talking to stakeholders this is about being out in the community you know i'm not from here right so i need to make sure i take time to engage learn what makes this community unique learn what makes this community special learn what we value because that will help inform the decisions that we make later on and some of the folks here have been fortunate to be at some of our engagement sessions and so i encourage everyone every voice matters and so please be sure to check online we have future engagement forums coming up but we also recognize that sometimes people can't get out can't get out in person for various reasons and their your voice matters too and so online
027there's also a way to capture your feedback in our online survey all of this information will help refine our plans as we go forward so please if you if you cannot attend an engagement form in person we hope that you're able to send an email or complete the online questions as well the second phase is really about examining all aspects of this district again already underway identify successes of which there are many opportunities and also challenges and as we begin this work there's much to be proud of think about the impact this pandemic has had on all of us and i just want to take a moment to acknowledge that despite all of the hardships faced our teachers our staff and our students continue to show up and learn our families persevered and our community
028supported there is much we should be proud of but there is also much to do so consider the following data points when we think about examining our systems and getting the results that we want i often say we're pleased as we should be but never satisfied we'll use data like the following to really help us form a new baseline from which we can improve so for this year's students about 30 plus percent are a through g completers 54 college and career ready about 15 percent of our students participated in an ap class 17 percent in dual enrollment 7 in avid 199 internships were completed and we served 215 of our special students in workability and i can work programs and our student voice survey indicated that while about 50 percent of our seniors plan to
029attend a four-year college far too many of them did not see that as an option 56 percent of our middle school students and 55 percent of our high school students participated in a visual and performing arts class this spring alone while 39 of our high school students participated in at least one sport again very pleased but not satisfied more to do and when it comes to services to support this learning we served an average of 14 275 lunches a day and with summer meals included we're on track to have served over two million five hundred thousand meals remarkable over 5 500 work orders were completed in just the last six months 3.9 million square feet of facilities including classrooms are cleaned daily this year our buses drove over 1 million miles large numbers for sure
030but take into account we are the 32nd largest district in california and one of the largest 250 in the nation board none of this would be possible without the tireless efforts of our amazing employees and the systems to make it happen efficiently and effectively i believe that by developing systems and clarity we can and we will do even better for our students i believe it's possible to engage every student in academics and activities i believe it's possible that every student graduates college and career ready this is just the start so to accomplish this we have to develop and chart a path forward right we have to envision what we want our future state to be and that's what this third phase is about it's about taking all of the aspirational hopes and dreams that our
031community expresses to us looking at our current data and comparing that to where we want to be and identifying that gap that gap in the middle is the plan and the work that we do that's how we begin to design the path forward so as we begin to think about that as we engage as we examine and envision we also have you know in what just a few short days it will seem like our doors will open again and almost 30 000 students plus teachers will walk through those doors and so while we build and envision for the future we also have to start school so we've got some work that we have to do immediately to be ready how we move forward with clarity so while the information gathered through this entry plan will
032only will also contribute to further shaping and refining this these goals so now moving forward we'll work to create the condition so that every student and staff member is ready present successful and connected so to be ready we'll focus on ramping up for the school year so that every teacher and staff member student and parent is prepared to start school with the information and tools necessary but this focus is not confined to just the start of the year but throughout so for example we know that trauma-informed practices are vital to being ready to being successful what do we have in place what do we need to prepare for day one and throughout the year what do we do when a student falls behind or is ahead in class have we clearly communicated with families how
033we respond to potential safety issues there is much planning and preparation that goes into being ready every day being present is vital we know that students learn best when they're in the classroom and the teacher is there in front of them so we'll look at strategies to support attendance be successful we want everyone to be successful this means we have to have clarity we have to know what success success looks like the tools training and the support to accomplish this does each teacher understand and have the tools necessary to teach to the rigor of the standard does every student receive the best first instruction do we support the restorative practices necessary to keep students in the classroom do we have systems in place to accelerate students who are academically behind or ahead there is a
034reason systems with consistency and fidelity of practice are important without it we leave to chance that every student and staff member will be successful but i want to be clear this does not mean everything has to be exactly the same this is not about creating cookie-cutter scenarios right we know that every student is unique and that circumstances vary between classrooms and between schools but there should always be a consistent standard that we hold ourselves to as an individual as an employee and as a district so in addition to the data i previously shared and why this is so important a impactful study was released several years ago it was called the opportunity myth and what it did is it followed a thousand lessons and observed a thousand listens and noticed that 88 of the students
035were doing what they were supposed to do right like majority of our kids they were sitting in class they were doing what they were supposed to do and this was a national study but when they took a look at the assignments the students were working on they noticed that the assignments didn't reach the level of the rigor of the standard so in other words even though the kids were working only 17 of them met the benchmark at the end of the year the system did not create the opportunity for the student to be successful not the teacher not the student not the parent the system did not create the opportunity for the student to be successful that's why this work is so critical and lastly be connected tonight i announce the formation of our one
036visalia connected initiative i believe it's possible to connect with every student to know every student by name and to greet each student with a smile that doesn't cost any money that part right there we know that students who are connected feel better about themselves have better attendance and grades through this initiative we'll work to connect each student in a meaningful activity from sports to arts to internships build partnerships with our community organizations businesses civic and faith-based partnerships organizations to create additional opportunities for students to be connected you know so often we spend valuable time and resources reacting to problems low grades attendance discipline but what if we think ahead what if we're proactive how do we create a system that minimizes and even eliminates these challenges that's the goal of this initiative for visalia unified
037school district to be known throughout this region state and nation as the district that connects every student so with all of these things what is essential is defining what success looks like identifying our current state as i mentioned and then build systems to address the gap that's the work ahead that's the work we're engaged in right now board we've faced and community many challenges these past few years our world each of us is forever changed but one thing remains constant and that's our why that's our students and for them i am both hopeful and optimistic about moving forward together and so with that i'd like to introduce you to our slogan for the year i believe in i belong in i am visalia unified school district and so throughout the year we're going to be
038recognizing employees staff members who exemplify this statement and so throughout the year um i'll be in schools and and certain people will be receiving a very coveted i believe in i belong in i am by cellu unified t-shirt that recognizes their belief and commitment in our kids and in our system and so tonight i thought it was only fitting that i recognized the very first recipient of the i believe in i belong in i am by so unified school district our interim superintendent no you know you have to put that on tonight [Laughter] and so board um you know again it truly is an honor to be able to present this entry plan this plan will be posted to our website we'll also be sending copies to our community partners i'm excited about the work
039we've done this is a system that i am proud to be part of i am proud that that you called me and provided this opportunity to be here i look forward to the great wonderful work that we're going to do and that baseline is just that it is where we're starting from not where we're going we're going to be relentless and tireless in our efforts to connect every kid and to make sure that when i attend the next graduations in the future that when they say you know college and career ready students please rise that that's every kid and that takes though building systems starting from before our kids even walk into that door all the way to when they cross the stage and it takes not just this school system we alone cannot solve
040all of the problems and challenges that are exist in our community it takes everybody working together with this purpose so board i believe in i belong in i am by so unified school district thank you and that concludes my presentation mr president thank you are there [Applause] any questions or comments from the board i have a comment right now i could just about cry i just wanna i'm so excited you're here mr shrum um i we heard this board heard the community that um communication was something we needed to work on and we want you to be heard so please come to those uh community engagements and those staff engagements um and if you can't there's a link you can express your thoughts um on online so please please come be involved with us and
041we want to hear you any other questions or comments miss blair um i'm just so excited about this one vice-connected initiative i mean i love the whole plan but um our new slogan is wonderful and i just getting our kids connected they there's just so much hope for how much more they're going to do so and how much just how much better they're going to feel in school the culture is going to be better and i believe that um their scores will be higher it's just it's going to be a great year so thank you just real quickly we do we have amazing students and amazing staff and they have so been wanting to come together under a vision and leadership so thank you we i think we all believe i was going to say
042the same thing i know that our staff will rise to the occasion because they they really truly do embrace our students and when we have our systems in place to support that the sky's the limit mr viegas yes dr viegas i think especially uh not only our staff but our students so i i just want to say i appreciate you referencing that study because when we do set high expectations for students and not only set high expectations but provide a high amount of resources to meet those expectations i know that they too will rise to the occasion and i appreciate your ambition and drive to say this is a starting point but absolutely 100 of our kids should be college and career ready and prepared for whatever their goals are beyond high school so thank
043you are there any questions or comments from the public okay since there aren't any i'd like to give you my my thing here i thank you thank you for being here at our district and thank you for the recognition of our interim superintendent it's been a while and it's been a breath of fresh air i've worked with the last four superintendents and i know what that feels like and i know what it's going to feel like welcome and thank you and let's get to work our next item on the agenda is memorandum of understanding between the city of iceland by city unified school district for the visalia police department youth services officers for secondary schools enclosure number three mr brandon gridiron good evening board president guerrero members of the board superintendent interim superintendent cardoza and
044new superintendent mr schrum so tonight we are just bringing forward our memorandum to continue our partnership with uh visalia unified police department our excuse me visalia police department and our partnership to continue what officer whaley mentioned tonight to continue to provide services to our 10 sites 10 5 of those being our middle schools and five of those being our high schools as we continue to strengthen our partnership with vusd one our one of our mentionings over the last few weeks is really how do we obviously focus and increase on safety and so that's one of the strategic plans or focuses for this year with our partnership with vusd visalia police department excuse me and as we continue to move forward with our partnership with the police department we're going to continue with our safety action
045committee and have them be a part of obviously that partnership and looking outside with our other partner partners and organizations in relation to the uh the local law enforcement agencies and so tonight that memorandum is just to continue that partnership moving forward thank you i noticed that that the the partnership is really that financially also what is the split here it's not 50 50. it looks more like it's 55.45 that is correct okay percentage yes that's correct okay are there any questions from the board questions or comments yes mistake um i just um in working at the sites i just appreciate the partnership with by cypd they are very quick to respond there's been instances where you know we have a situation where our yso may not be there but they will always call someone
046to assist but not do they help with the you know the ins and outs every day but that positive relationship that they build with students and the students see them in a different light than that police officer going down the street and so to me that just helps our community when they see the police they know that hey you know what they're human beings they build that that connection with us and so therefore it helps everybody all around and i just think this is such a great partnership and i hope that we renew this every single year so um i'd like to make a motion to approve there is a motion is there a second all in favor oh yeah i think uh uh board member gamoyan had a comment or no no i was
047gonna do the roll call okay thank you okay you can go ahead with the role okay um word member blair yes board member gavey yes i vote yes president guerrero yes board member naylor yes board member dr viegas yes okay and so motion carries uh six one absent thank you our next item on the agenda is general public comment general public comment on any school related topic maybe heard at this time the board asked 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 pursuant to board policy the board may limit individual comments to no more than three minutes and individual topics to 20 minutes it is recommended you begin your comments by stating your name i have two in
048front of me janelle murphy good evening my name is john l murphy dada doug isn't going to be here to listen to me since it's mostly about him um i'd like to share my concern about the school website and also or more in particular the covid policies i was finally able to see my son's classroom two weeks before school was out which was amazing and i'm happy i finally got to see his classroom however i volunteered to help out with his school play day a couple days later and was told i would need to provide my vax card or negative test in order to volunteer which as always is ridiculous considering myself and most other parents were just there inside the classroom just days before i went to the vusd website to try to find
049what the current policies were just to find out that it hasn't been updated since october of 2021 and still states masks are required indoors as a parent it is extremely frustrating trying to keep up with these never-ending changes and the school district isn't helping with that considering the current policies are not available for us to read i reached out to both mr cardoza and mr schrum um i was sorry i get so upset when i speak to you guys mr schrum never even replied and mr cardoza replied in a very unacceptable rude way i asked a simple question to clarify what the current policies are since the website has not been updated and i asked why those are the current policies his reply no masking thanks for asking which i then sent another email asking
050why vax card or negative tests are still required for parents and he replied we don't want volunteers who are positive to infect our students in classrooms now here we are over two years later and you are still feeding us this bs and yet another email not answering my questions how does showing my vax card prove i'm not currently sick or unable to infect the students i'm not a doctor but i'd like to know the answer to this question so then i sent a third email asking the same question and yet another way why are parents still having to jump through these hoops to be involved on campuses to which he replied it's about the kids now let me give you my opinion those are the responses of someone who doesn't care about their job anymore
051and quite frankly it makes me sick knowing how much money you make and you don't belong here or working with children if you don't want parents emailing you asking simple questions um maybe start by updating the website also fyi making it more difficult for parents to volunteer is the opposite of what's best for our kids thank you okay the next person on the list is janie romero good evening board members my name is janie pass romero i am serving my last year as an assistant principal at la jolla middle school i have been in this position for the past five years during this time i have worked with the principals and four assistant principals on monday february 14th of 2022 my current supervisor who had been at the site for seven months met with me
052to discuss a concern about my choice of attire during this conversation i also expressed a desire to apply for other positions at other vusc sites as i felt my input was no longer valued and that i was being targeted and harassed the following day february 15th i received a letter of warning i was told that i had the right to submit a rebuttal which i did on february 16th i spoke to district personnel regarding this process and submitted my letter on february 17th i was again called into the office where i was given a letter of non-re-elect as an administrator and was offered a position as a teacher for the next school year the gentleman who spoke to me stated that this was a no-cause dismissal i again reached out to district personnel for support
053and was told i'd receive a call from the assistant superintendent of human resources and this didn't happen i reached out to the board and um the current superintendent and the interim about discriminatory practices by my current supervisor and unfortunately received minimal to no support in addition human resources took two weeks to let me know that i had no evaluations on file which being at my position for five years i find that pretty astonishing i additionally i additionally have filed a uniform complaint against my direct supervisor as i believe that i was targeted and released of my position due to prejudice and discrimination as a district we have been trained on the importance of systems and procedures yet we do not have a clear and fair system to retain and or dismiss administrators in a fair
054and equitable manner board members tonight i am here to speak up for other administrators who may find themselves in a similar situation vusd goal number four states that that you are committed to recruit hire and retain highly qualified and productive staff my question is how is this goal attainable without a system in place when anyone can be dismissed for personal bias and prejudice and not for their work ethic i ask that you take time to establish a system that is fair and equitable for administrators i am also here to let you know that i will continue to be an advocate for what is right i am a member of the community and a parent um it's sad that i don't believe in busd anymore because you refuse to address discriminatory practices within your leaders i
055do appreciate your time and i wish you the best thank you okay i have no one else for public comment unless there's anybody else that wants to comment good evening my name is miranda garcia and i'm here as a parent of a uh i'm a proud mother of a very outspoken bsd student i am here regarding the push for lgbtq it's very upsetting knowing that the schools are pushing what the government wants them to push obviously all the left-wing stuff i see it as a violation of our beliefs religious beliefs lgbtq kids are not being forced to wear crosses that you know show or respect our faith and beliefs everything is just one-sided it's very frustrating especially when the teachers or the teacher teaching this is a lesbian talking about how she can't get married
056in a church and blah blah that shouldn't be pushed onto our kids uh aside from that the fact that a teacher is telling kids that they need to get vaccinated that it'll save their lives she's not a doctor common sense and now all this proof shows that that's not even true that is up to each parent whether they vaccinate their children or not it's just very frustrating i had written this whole thing out but then i think i'll just attend the community events uh i'm not alone in this there's a lot of parents that just we're just hanging on by your thread here it's almost like the schools have become the enemy we have to worry about what's going to be taught at school because i never got that form to opt out uh it's
057just very concerning upsetting and we're there's a there's a whole bunch of us that are just ready to homeschool now and i hope that something changes them by cell unified because my son was attending tulare schools before and we never had these issues this is just so left-wing it's crazy the fact that there's boys going into the girls restrooms is insane i am not okay with that thank you okay okay our next item on the agenda is consent agenda would any board member like to pull an item yes i would like to pull enclosure number four the warrant list okay is there a motion for the balance of the consent agenda i move second there is a motion about ammonia second by nader to uh for the approval of the balance of the consent agenda
058all in favor board member gavey yes i vote yes president guerrero yes board member naylor yes board member viegas yes board member blair yes motion carries six one absent okay now we go to enclosure number four business services warrantless uh yes as made clear before uh i have a sibling who is employed by somebody who does business with the district and therefore uh at a full transparency disclosure i will be abstaining from any items in which uh this employer appears okay i moved to approve item four okay there's been a motion for approval mistake second by miss naylor all in favor catalina blair mr sorry i was looking over here um president guerrero yes board member kneeler yes board member viegas epstein oh that's right abstain um board member blair yes board member gavey yes
059i vote yes motion carries five one abstention one absent okay our next item on the agenda is seven point one resolution of the vicilia unified school district regarding lgbq plus pride month and closure number 30. so i'm going to hand this over to mrs gawayn okay for this resolution to talk about this okay read it yes yes okay whereas the visalia unified school district has a vibrant and diverse community including students teachers administrators school personnel and family members who are or have friends or family members who are lgbtq plus whereas the district goals include ensuring a safe secure healthy positive environment that promotes a sense of significance and belonging where all students staff parents guardians and committee members are treated with respect dignity compassion and kindness whereas the belief of the vicela unified school district
060as outlined in the district's student conduct code states that every person in our school community has value and the students and staff who attend our schools and their families are diverse in many ways which is an asset whereas an institution of learning the district must educate students on working together to listen learn from comprehend the experiences of others and their families history heritage in order to form a more perfect united states whereas the california department of education's history social science framework for grade 11 students includes examination of the emergence of a movement for equal rights for lgbt individuals resulting in pride events often held in the month of june whereas the district adopted curriculum materials that comply with the fair education act ensuring all groups including the lgbtq plus community are represented fairly and accurately
061whereas the members of the lgbtq plus community still face discrimination simply for being who they are and a recognition of increased fear and anxiety of not belonging generally experienced nationwide by lgbtq plus students whereas education code section is it is the policy of california to afford all persons in public schools regardless of their disability disability gender gender identity gender expression nationality race or ethnicity religion sexual orientation or any other protected characteristic equal rights and opportunities and in the educational institutions of california whereas in the district was identified as the only district in the central valley to receive a top-tier designation in equality california institute's 2019 safe and supportive schools report card based on a survey criteria analyzing school climate school cultural com competency training inclusive curriculum suicide prevention and the district hereby considers this resolution
062now there it be resolved the board of education of visalia unified's district that the district staff and administrators are advised to review update history social science and anti-bullying curriculum as outlined in existing state law fall follow board policy and the proved process to provide supplemental instructional materials and or activities regarding the lgbtq plus movement for equal rights and the history and meaning behind the month of june being declared as lgbtq pride month i'm sorry lgbtq plus prime month address the health and safety of lgbtq plus individuals by continuing to offer and provide cultural profession proficiency training to staff educators administrators and school board members protect all youth by continuing to comply with all existing laws regarding safe access to clubs programs and district facilities be it further resolved that the district administration shall work to
063fulfill the intent of this resolution while working to maintain a safe positive inclusive environment for all students okay any comments or questions for the board um okay all right go ahead i just want to say uh how important this is uh for our students and i want to take a moment to thank all of our partners and in particular students who are involved in providing language and feedback on this resolution to really affirm our district as being safe and inclusive in providing a safe environment for students there are multiple studies and research which demonstrates how these affirming policies can be life-changing and in many cases life-saving for these individuals who are often bullied discriminated against or contemplating suicide i myself am always reminded of a young man from tachebe california when i was in high
064school a young man by the name of seth walsh was 13 years old and uh who identified as gay and was bullied by his peers up to the point where he eventually committed suicide and i think about how important this is for our students how important this is for our staff how important this is for our community members and i really want to thank everybody who was involved throughout this process and i really want to affirm that the slogan that our incoming superintendent was talking about today i hope when students read this resolution i hope when community sees this resolution they know that they can believe in that they belong and that they are a part of the usd thank any other you or comments misgazing no i think that was very well said thank
065you dr village vegas um also thank you to brandon i know he mr gridiron went um and really served as a fabulous liaison between the students and the source and worked with us um over many meetings to craft this so thank you ms camonia yes um it's really important to me that all our kids are connected to the school and i want to make sure all kids feel safe and belong to the school community there are people who have lgbtq values on gender and sexuality but there are also people who have religious values on gender and sexual values and right now in this climate both sides are being bullied and it needs to stop every person in our school has value and dignity and let's treat all people that way it is not about um
066any kind of promotion it's that there's value and dignity in all human beings and that is why i'm voting for this miss nader yeah i think you know again it's very controversial but you know again respect for all i think that's what comes out of this for me every student should be respected every student should feel safe when they go to school and and that's why i'm going to vote for it because i just it's not just this group it's all students all students should feel safe all students should feel that they're not going to be harmed when they go to the bathroom or they're not going to be forced into something but they should feel safe and comfortable talking to teachers to staff to administrators and that's what this is all about and and
067again this resolution kind of spells it out but again it's all of our students and i just want to make sure that all students i mean all feel safe secure and supported i have a couple of public comments here one is erica hello my name is erica hackyard and i am the youth program manager for the source lgbt plus center and i'm here to speak on behalf of the queer youth who didn't feel safe enough to come tonight i'm sorry it's so crucial i ask you on their behalf to acknowledge pride month a study in in the journal of adolescent health conducted in 2018 reported that gender diverse students who were supported by lgbtq plus affirming policies like pride proclamations had a 56 drop in suicide ideation and completion that's huge additionally the glsn data
068estimated that 15 hundred thousand trans youth nationwide between the ages of 13 and 17 that's more than half of all trans and gender expansive youth reported they had no access sorry half those numbers reported they had no access to a school restroom that matched their gender identity and only one in three were always called their true name while at school also as a community partner partner who was visited this semester alone six gsas in your district this year that were jam-packed with queer kids there is a need to acknowledge these kids pride proclamations are a small step towards creating a safe environment for lgbt youth and make no mistake policies and proclamations save lives today you're voting on suicide prevention on pathways to acceptance and belonging i also want for you to consider that other
069districts in talarian kings counties look to you vusd to model school policies and campus cultures um and your pride proclamation has the potential to improve the outlook of youth beyond vusd thank you for your time happy pride month excuse the tears ben cummings um i'm ben cummings um and i just wanted to give a little history about why pride month is so important so on june 28 1969 the stonewall inn was a meeting place for queer people from across new york city it was raided that night by the new york police department that night the new york police department destroyed the space there was a place of safety and security for so many who had been cast out by society and their outrage turned into action although the person who threw the first brick may
070never be identified the heroes of that night sparked a national protest against the mistreatment of queer people from 1970 until now the celebration of pride has been an annual event held in june where members of the queer community protest the idea that we should be ashamed of who we are and instead speak out for the right to exist without the demonization and cruelty that we are afforded every day that we exist indeed from anita bryant in the 1970s who fought against laws designed to protect queer people against discrimination to the murder of harvey milk who worked hard to pass those laws the scales of history have always tipped in favor of those who seek to make queer people feel ashamed about what they do anita bryant's bigoted message of quote save the children is to
071this day used by anti-queer groups to suggest that queerness is synonymous with heinous crimes so that they can try to banish queer teachers and queer people from society fast forward to when don't ask don't tell was codified into law and the belief it was okay to be queer was only allowed if you hid it away and didn't expose others to it the fight for pride is not a fight for rainbows and corporate sponsorships pride is about the right to embrace who we are and celebrate the fact that we exist while it often accompanies parties and parades it is fundamentally a protest of the treatment of queer people by the people we live our days surrounded with this year we are tasked with battling a growing anti-queer sentiment two days ago we honored the six year
072anniversary of the murder of 49 queer people at this pulse nightclub as they were celebrating pride month this last weekend disaster was thankfully avoided when police arrested 31 white supremacists at an idaho pride event where they planned to riot and had brought knives and weapons and riot gear in order to attack the pride members and every year queer kids across our country have to question whether or not they're going to commit suicide because they feel like they're not accepted in their communities this year those who seek to stifle queerness have always always existed in our country from the kkk to the people in visalia who after i spoke last year asking for a pride month proclamation emailed me and threatened me when the day comes that i can say i'm queer without that fear of
073that type of reprisal only then will the need for pride end i hope that for all of our sakes this work continues without queer people like myself having to demand action in the face of bigotry and i hope that this work results in an understanding that we can be proud of someone for what they have overcome even if who they are doesn't always align with what we believe two weeks ago i attended the fresno rainbow bride parade and i was brought to tears when i saw the fresno unified float with over 200 members of the school community riding and walking in the parade carrying a banner that said by fresno unified school district creating safe supportive and inclusive spaces for all mr shroom i'm super excited to have you here and i do believe in
074vusd it's time for us to show that our queer students belong in the usd thank you thank you all entertaining in motion i'll motion by dr villegas second by muscaby all in favor board member naylor yes board member viegas yes board member blair yes board member gabey yes i vote yes president guerrero yes motion carries six one one absent our next item on the agenda is public hearing and it'll be a first hearing on local control accountability plan i will open the public hearing mr jim sullivan administrator of family and community services is the presenter good evening born president guerrero mr cardoza interim superintendent and our new superintendent am i not there we go there you go good evening bourbon mr cardoza and mr schrum my name is jim sullivan i'm the administrator of family
075and community services i'm here to share with you our three-year plan and we are going to really focus on year two and how we are creating systems and structures to help support our students i also want to remind you that we based on input from our district advisory committee they ask that we add our federal funds and uh grants into our lcap so you will see that as part of our lcap this year in addition to the supplemental concentration funds which are the required funds that we that are in the local control accountability plan our cabinet met with administrators one-on-one to discuss the needs of each school and in addition to that i had the opportunity to meet many students i went to different schools and our comprehensive high schools and went to classrooms and
076heard student input our district advisory committee is made up of parents and teachers attend and as well as administrators we meet about five times a year during those meetings we share district data we share um what is current actions that are in our lcap we share the structure of our lcap and then we also share proposals of what we are thinking of moving forward we also share what all the input was from other educational partners so that they can provide us the input that we need for our plan in addition to that i meet with our bargaining units and their leadership and they provide us opportunities as well our input as well so from all that input if you remember on may 10th i shared with you all of the input from our different partners
077and there was three themes that came out of it support to students support to sites and support to families for our supporting to sites um it was evident in many of our meetings with parents every one of the student groups when i was asking about how do we support our elementary kids better how could we have supported you better in elementary school and middle school it was um more extracurricular activities that was very evident in with parents as well um so that is one of the reasons you can see that we are asking for the funding for our director of athletics another one was part in this was is our visual and performing arts you have heard from many of our constituents of our partners as well um that additional support for our visual performing
078arts so in there we have added transportation the destiny met with each of our with the vapor group they provided a list of different um competitions and different activities that they wanted to go to that was part of their curriculum so we are fully funding every one of those in there i'm in addition to that we are also providing an additional director of oppa so that they can better enhance our programs also part of that was um we wanted um i'm sorry i'm not thinking very well they also wanted expanded um other opportunities for our students so at the elementary level we expanding our library time so that students can access the library before and after school we're providing additional support for our avid as you know avid is really focused on students whose families
079did not attend college and that's what supplemental concentration funds are for is to really increase college and career readiness avid is a major part of that in addition to that we have um providing additional a seven hour aid for all of our transitional kindergarten classrooms and also for our middle schools we are creating a program for our newcomers for students who are newly um into the united states so they can have different additional support for success for support for sites when we met with our principals one-on-one one of the requests that many of them had was that we provide support in the area of site-based professional development so we're providing funds for substitutes because that was one of the requests so that they can have teachers go visit other teachers they can look at data
080another support that we're offering in is the instructional materials our instructional printing that will provide fifteen thousand for each site for instructional printing that provides fifteen thousand dollars that they can then use at their sites to better their programs in addition to that um again we're supporting our libraries we found many of our libraries need some additional shelving additional restructuring to make them more welcoming for our students so we're providing funds for that as well and in addition to that um it was evident by many of our administrators for additional support for um how to access data how to use the data um all of that um based around data so that's one of the other opportunities is that we're having a an administrator an administrator for the instructional technology that isn't funded through lcap
081but the infrastructure is all funded through our local control accountability plan for our families and one of the things our students really requested was that we help parents understand that transitioning to seventh grade and ninth grade are difficult um so that will be one of our major workshops that we'll be working with in addition to that um the families when we met with parents i mean you heard it earlier tonight was transparency communication how we communicate what we communicate so in our world for our district advisory committee we're kind of restructuring it a little bit really making more of a focus on transparency and helping share more information out as they request it so those are parts of our support for families so as we go forward you can see that all of our additional
082funds are really in the themes of supporting our families our students and our sites you can see that we are adding all of these different services that are directly affect our students services for our vapa group services for our academically for avid for our english learners services for our families and one of the concerns that came out during our meetings was many of our positions are funded out of one-time funds so what we've done is is for the counselors and for the additional eight social workers we do have one of the questions was is how many social workers we have we have 20. eight of them are currently funded out of one-time funds so with these additional funds we're moving the elementary counselors as well as the social workers into supplemental concentration funds because those
083are all funds that are ongoing so that's in our budget as well and that is my presentation okay are there any questions or comments by the board uh just on that last note you mentioned that uh those eight would now be ongoing funds is that correct yes okay so all of them all of them will be wonderful thank you okay no questions or comments this is information only right yes okay then i will close the public hearing thank you thank you our next item on the agenda is a public hearing for the 2223 visa unified school district proposed budget and i will open the public hearing at this time good evening president guerrero members of the board mr cardoza and mr shrum welcome um tonight we do have the first reading and uh public hearing
084for the vusd 2223 budget we'll talk a little bit about where the state is with their budget and then i'm joined by ms jessica villarreal who is going our budget director who's going to go through some highlights of the of the district budget and then i'll come back and and talk about where we think we're going next so we start our budget process in january we start with the governor's initial proposal for the state budget um and then that gets revised in may and that's what we use then to to develop the rest of our budget um and so in that state budget there were some pretty substantial changes between january and may in the governor's proposal um what we're showing here is that you know a lot of that change happened in the current
085fiscal year so from the current fiscal year's adopted budget to what actually happened in the current fiscal year with state revenues revenues were much higher and so when we see the state budget you'll see a lot of one-time monies in the state budget and that's because a lot of those monies are from the current year they're not providing them as ongoing augmentations to the budget so if it is ongoing but most of it is in one time dollars and so 16.5 billion of that is from the current fiscal year um the state does it over looks at our prop 98 budget over three years so it's 19.1 over three years uh i might do this by myself but it's it's 16.5 in the current year so we do know that yesterday the legislature did adopt
086a state budget they voted on and approved a state budget unfortunately they did not do that in agreement with the governor and so there wasn't that negotiation that typically happens where they come to agreement the state adopts a budget and the governor signs so there's still work to be done it's kind of a shell budget we a lot of what the legislature had in their initial proposal didn't even make it into the budget that they approved so there's still a lot of work to be done there we don't have a final state budget yet there's differences between how the governor wants to spend one time and ongoing money versus what the legislature has so the governor has um i believe it's the next 12 days or so to work with them um and to either
087sign or veto that budget um and then the state has to have a budget by july one going forward so in in the budget that you'll see that's being presented tonight many of the proposals for the from the governor from the may revise are not in the district's budget because of those differences and because of the negotiations when the state does adopt the budget then we will come back to the board probably that first meeting in august to bring a 45-day revision to the budget and and and the impact of those changes and so this just highlights um the governor's january proposal and where they were in may the big change in what's in our budget is the cost of living adjustment from 5.33 in january to 6.56 in may other proposals like the three-year
088averaging of ada we've also included that in this budget but some of the additional additional investments for lcff are not included in the budget submit so most of this in fact everything but is is not in our budget but this is what's in the governor's proposal and so we will bring that back once there's a final adopted budget so i'm going to go ahead and turn this over good so in the governor's may revision there's a list of assumptions that we use to build the 2223 budget i don't know what's happening [Music] also as part of that so that as mr hernandez mentioned it includes a 6.56 cola thank you just make it worse okay let's try this again so um when the governor releases the may revision as part of that we build our
0892223 budget um with the assumptions that are included such as the 6.56 cola for lcff the increase in stirs and pers um both respectively over a two percent increase which is significant for our budget it's approximately a five million dollar increase for us um our state categorical programs also receive the 6.56 percent cola such as special ed and cte um for 2223 the cap on reserves is now so we're um showing an 8.75 reserve so we're still beneath that but that cap is imposed for 22.23 the budget also includes step and column for salaries and benefits for our employees but no other negotiations are projected salary increases are included just a step in column one-time costs for 21-22 are excluded and carryover is calculated as part of the year-end closing process which is in august
090so in sometime in september those carryover amounts are finalized and budgeted and that will reflect in our first interim report in january and then for federal funds there were no significant changes to our federal programs so looking at our revenues for general fund it's at 414.19 million of that 327 million is for our lcff of that for supplemental and conscience concentration dollars that's 58.97 million dollars of that we received a 15 increase for our concentration funds and that's approximately five million dollars that amount is specific to any increased number of staff for um that provide direct services to students so we have earmarked and are tracking those dollars to be able to report on that for our federal dollars is 36.62 million dollars and again it does not include carryover will budget that as part
091of first interim and then for our excuse me um for federal we also include that includes our special ed uh dollars at five million title one at approximately 10 and our esr dollars at approximately 16 million dollars so that's what encompasses the federal reserve revenue amount for state um revenue we're at 31.61 million dollars almost or more than half of that is for our state our stirs on behalf payments and for our local revenue is um 18.7 million dollars and of that is 12 million dollars for our special ed revenue and so our average daily attendance um for 2223 is funded on a three-year average so that gives us a 27 475.8488 so to give you an idea last year we had twenty eight thousand two hundred and sixty five so even with that three
092year average that we're um given for 22 23 that is still a reduction of 790 so we are still definitely impacted by the decrease in enrollment so our district reserves as i mentioned is 8.75 um the dollar figure for that is 35.69 million dollars so looking at our expenditures for um general fund it's 407.97 million dollars a huge portion of our budget salary and benefits which is 86 at 351.66 million dollars again that includes step and column that includes our pension increases that i mentioned earlier and no change to health and welfare so for other funds our total expenditures come to 110.52 million dollars and i have a separate side that will outline what that looks like so total across general fund and all our other funds we have a total of 518.49 million dollars
093so again that's half a billion dollars that we're looking at in expenditures across our our full budget so looking at our multi-year projection that looks at 2223 and the two out years specifically for unrestricted dollars so our revenue for lcff does include substantial colas in the outliers so for 2223 we like we mentioned earlier is six point fifty six percent and twenty three twenty four it's a five point thirty eight percent and twenty four twenty five is four point zero two percent cola so those are pretty uh hefty colas that we're looking at in the out years so our revenue so our revenue reflects that we didn't uh incorporate an increase or consider the increase in special ed services so our contribution there did increase for the next couple years for expenditures the salaries and
094benefits like i mentioned before we just include the step and column and then the increases in stirs and purrs and then in the out years we did take into consideration an increase in health law firm so our surplus for 2223 is projected at 2 million and 23 24 is approximately 6.87 million and then in 2425 it kind of jumps up at 20.92 million dollars so looking specifically at the other funds again this is not our general fund these funds are pretty self-sufficient they are usually in balance the couple that i'll point out is our post employment benefit reserve that one you'll see revenue and no expenditures that is more of a trust account that we save for our retirees um health care for the future and then and then in uh fund 210 um there
095are some budgeted projects that are in there that are expected expected to come out of our fund balance for that other than that everyone is sell pretty much our expenditures and revenues are within so okay i made it i'll pass it over to mr hernandez so one one of the things that we like to to remind about the the multi-year projection is it changes every month we bring budget adjustments back to the board and so it is approximately correct but absolutely wrong um the out years again as it said on the slide it doesn't include the impact of any negotiated settlement agreements and so it does look good in that third out year but again once we have those final budget and the settlement agreements will bring back a multi-year projection that will show what
096we think that those out years will look like um so we we do expect that there will be some additional relief in that ada we don't know what that's going to look like in the final state budget but we do need to carefully monitor enrollment was down slightly it's the attendance that was really you know horrible this year and that's that's really impacting us and it will impact us even if there's a three year average because it was it was lower this year than it has been in the past and the governor didn't provide any specific pension relief but does mention that in the additional lcf funding that that is being provided and so we do have to take that into consideration as well we're trying to address the minimum wage uh through negotiations um
097and again that cap on our on our reserves as long as the state is continuing to build their reserve then that that shouldn't be an issue for us but we just want to be mindful that we need to to maintain a reserve to have decent cash flow and funds on hand if the state does deferrals or there's any downturns in the economy so that we can address that over multiple years and not have to make reductions all in one year so i mentioned kind of where the state's at and when we come back on the 28th we should have an answer for where we're going on the state budget i hope with that are there any questions or comments from the board members none thank you i will close this public hearing our next item
098on the agenda is a through g completion improvement grant plan for vacated charter independence study vcis and vicente technical early college high school vtip and this is the second read in closure 33 principal bill davis and principal michelle reed good evening board my name is michelle reed i'm principal vicelly charter independent study um tonight i know we're doing the second read of our a to g grant we do not have a new presentation this still is the same presentation from the previous um we could go through it again or if you have any questions for us we are here to answer those as well does any board member have any questions or comments on the presentation it's already been made i have a comment um when you look at slide three you have the completion
099rate in 2021 for vcis 5.9 and vtech 11.1 so i i asked mr thompson you know what does it look like and it's improved drastically so um i think let's see uh vtec is 46.4 and uh vcis is uh 18 so i just want to commend you on that work and we're gonna get even better thank you yes and um adding on to that i think i i appreciate you both highlighting some of the root causes um and recommendations like increasing dual enrollment opportunities and aligning our policies better to meet a through g standards and so i hope that's something we can tackle and keep continuing to look forward to as a board so thank you okay since if there's none there's uh this is an action item motion to approve motion by ms nader
100is there a second oh second second by dr villegas all in favor um board member viegas yes board member blair yes board member gabey yes i vote yes president guerrero yes board member naylor yes motion carries 6-1 absent our next item on the agenda is the k-8 i ready report english language arts and math third diagnostic enclosure number 34 mr pecina and claudia ardon diaz brianne phillips oh it's on ready good evening board president guerrero members of the board interim superintendent cardoza and incoming superintendent trump my name is andre piscina i'm the administrator of curriculum and instruction and tonight we'll be presenting to you the i ready data for diagnostic three and we'll also be doing a comparison of what we did last year and spring and then what we did this year in spring
101so this is kind of like the temperature gauge or the health of the academics based on our interim not necessarily our summative assessment that we'll talk about at a later date so this is our why for curriculum instruction and it's really just us being committed to a continuous improvement process as we lead the district in high quality align instructional systems to ensure all sites are equipped to provide achievement access and equity for all students and today we're going to be really focused on these three areas which is being vulnerable and honest being problem solvers and thinking outside the box and leading and owning our areas of responsibility our site uh our focus for the size for were this these two areas that we're really going to focus on and and both the english learner students
102focus and also that we really focus on our college and career ready readiness for our students and we're excited because these will change uh based on on the work that incoming superintendent trump's doing and so we're very we're very excited about that you know it's beginning to create that clarity what you all commented on so we're very excited about that um one of the things here as we look at the assessment process i already lands in the middle it's an interim benchmark so it's really taking that kind of temperature gauge at this that point in time that it's tested and so remember that that's what it's for um it is a lagging data source uh because at that point in time when when the students take it and when we use that data there's a
103lot of stuff that happens right even though it's it's very much in real time the data um it should be more of us looking at just a temperature gauge right we're looking at really this formative assessment time here where teachers are using that data on a day in day out basis to change their instruction and then the large scale summit of this at the end this annual that's the casp that's what gets uh what students did right before the school year was done and they do it in grades three through eight and grade 11. and so some things i just want to mention right off the top for this year is that the test was uh the caps test was actually shortened number one so that's going to change uh things a little bit and
104then um and so we're waiting on the data for that because of that the state designed it a little bit different this year so with that i'm going to go ahead and pass it over to mrs phillips who's our director of stem good evening president guerrero interim superintendent mr cardoza and incoming superintendent mr schrum i'm brianne phillips oh as well as members of the board sorry and the community i am brianne phillips the director of stem as mr piscina stated we're here tonight to present our i-rated i-ready data from our spring diagnostic assessment on i didn't advance i apologize on this slide um as mr pistina stated we're comparing um our data from last year's spring assessment to this year's spring assessment what is important to note was last year busd was on an av
105block schedule meaning our students were in school half the time in home half the time the which meant there was a variability in the testing environment some of our students tested in school some of our students tested at home what this led to was an inflation and scores in 2021 this was noted by ireti nationwide when they compared their data um across the nation and so you will see especially in our lower grades and we do have a little bit inflation in our scores in the 2021. so but this year academic year our students took the assessment in school with the exception of our royal oaks distance learning they did take the assessment um at home as that is their choice in their learning environment um so our data from this year truly will set
106our baseline moving forward digging into this data here that you see on this slide we see a growth looking at our grades three through five we see a growth from 2021 and 2022 and both are mid and above grade level students as well as a decrease from year to year in our students who are two and three grade levels below here we have our sixth seventh and eighth grade scores our percentages and here we see an increase in a number of our number of students assessed however that we see a similarity in percentages from 2021 to 2022. this slide is a little bit familiar we presented we throughout each of our presentations a similar slide so this breaks down our growth from diagnostic one to diagnostic three as well as it breaks down each of
107our domains and the growth within each of our domains when you dig into this data you see that within each domain we did show growth and we should have shown growth because that is representative of an entire academic school year we do have some domains that are showing a bit more growth than others and that can be attributed to the length of time that some of our teachers and our grade levels spent um front loading our students at the beginning of the year often times we do see our geometry at the end of our academic year and that is our domain that we did score the lowest in or have the lowest growth in as we move through we can see our data broken down by our student groups each of our student groups did
108improve over the course of the academic year however we still have work ahead of us we have spent the entire year working in collaboration do through el rise with tulare county office of ed and we need to continue that work additionally aligning ourselves with our special ed department to align our resources and supports to um for our special education students here we see all of our um all of our schools um and their growth over the course of the year so what is important to remember is that this slide is showing the percent of students that are improving if a student is already in and i know it's really small at the bottom already performing at during diagnostic one in the dark green area they can't show that they're going to improve past that so
109this shows our students moving a performance band throughout the year um within each of our school sites and here we have our middle schools which is our similar data representing our growth throughout each of our comprehensive middle schools and i'm going to pass this over to miss our don diaz thank you miss phillips uh good evening board president guerrero board members community incoming incoming superintendent shrum and uh superintendent interim superintendent cardoza my name is claudia aldon diaz and i'm the director of literacy and tonight just like miss phillips mentioned we are here to provide you that ira data for k-8 looking at the third diagnostic as we look at this first slide that we have here i know it looks um kind of small but i hope you can see it on your screens as
110we examine this data it's really important for us to again just like mr shrum mention to identify the strengths and the areas of improvement as we look at this slide 11 it provides us a comparison of data for k-6 from 2021 to 2022. so the data that we're seeing today just like ms phillips mentioned really is our true baseline last year students some of them were at home as they were assessing so now that we have that baseline it helps us to plan forward to move forward and see what we can improve on again it reminds us of the importance of quality first instruction it reminds us on how we can think about next year as uh we are you know entering that school year what interventions are we going to put in place what
111students need the support as we look at the next slide here slide 12 it shows that students in sixth to eighth grade had similar growth in 2021 to 2022 and as we reflect on this data and look at it a little deeper it really reminds us as we speak with students the importance of really educating students educating teachers also having those opportunities of speaking with administrators and team on how i ready really impacts decisions that we make at the classroom level at the site level and even at the district level as we um have an opportunity to speak with our uh middle school students uh we had a chance to provide them with some information in regards to data and how i ready for example impacts reclassification it was we are really excited to share
112that as we have now end of the year conversations with students many students are starting to see that connection between iready and how it impacts like i mentioned reclassification so again really showing students that students and teachers how data is really empowering and as we even speak with parents at dlac they are also requesting the same that students are educated that students are informed on how i ready really has an impact as we look at that next slide this slide provides an overview of how students are doing and from k through 8 and again provides an overall view as well as a domain specific information we would like to highlight areas for example if you look at third grade and as we look at the vocabulary there was definitely an increase from 24 in vocabulary
113to 47 percent and that's not the only pattern we see we see that pattern also continuing in third grade again we're seeing and again in in fourth grade in vocabulary going from 17 to i believe 35 percent i need classes uh but definitely we're seeing that there's um that there is growth but again we also notice that there's still area for an opportunity for growth as well right so our students still uh would benefit and still continue to benefit from some intentional instruction in vocabulary and that's where those interactive read alouds really come into play that comprehension in literature so it's really aligns with the work that we're doing in curriculum and this also helps us plan for future professional learning uh really ensuring that our students have a viable curriculum to support all sites
114as we look at that next slide here we're excited to note again the students just like ms phillips mentioned students are making progress in ela we have been focusing on english language learners as part of our goal and we know that if we provide targeted instruction that will support english learners it's going to also support other subgroups as well and we're seeing that right we're seeing that there was a growth percentage a percentage and els of 14 percent um we also see that when we compare english language learners just like mr schrum mentioned as we look at that data we're pleased but we're not satisfied yet there's still an area for growth as we look at other subgroups there's still an area for for growth as we look at the social economic disadvantage english learners
115are still below and and as again as we look at other data there's still areas that we need to improve on as well as we look at uh improved placement with english language again we would like to highlight that this really is improved placement which means the students that grew a banjos like ms phillips mentioned and this information is important and it's a different perspective because normally as a district we have focus on what percentage of our students are on grade level but what this is really focusing on is improved placements which students grew a band so as we look at the schools here it's very important that this is a different view of data it also offers a great perspective and as we look at that last slide here for middle school again that
116same piece right that it shows the amount of students that have improved placement in ela and middle school again this don't this shows which students moved a band in diagnostic three again a lot of great work we're aspirational we want to continue to grow we want to continue to provide a coherent viable curriculum and we're excited for the future thank you so we're going to be wrapping this up and one of the things i did want to stress is that as we look at the data right if we just test just a test and do nothing with it then why do we even do that so one of the things that that we did uh just this past week last week was actually meet with all with most of our elementary principals and middle schools
117and we met to dig into the data that we showed you and even more so so they could begin to understand what next steps do they need to do for this upcoming year they were also looking at data by their plc level so they could see which grade levels were doing well and which ones weren't uh where did they need help and supporting so that was another piece so we really truly are digging into the data to make sure that we're making uh sound judgments and not just moving to solution right we would call solution ideas right just making any any solution claim and so we'd leave you with these kind of last two quotes uh number one is that every student deserves a great teacher not by chance but by design and so that's
118why we ex we're excited as we hear uh incoming superintendent shrum talk about systems and processes because the conditions need to be there in order to have that that design and so we're so grateful as he's coming in and doing that work and then we were also very excited for him to really share with us the opportunity with and so he mentioned a lot of that research today and one of the points as he was talking was that what that research showed was that students spent almost 50 percent of the school year in below grade level work and so what happens is as teachers by design sometimes we're focused on remediating kids because we need to get them ready for their current grade level in reality we never really get them there because they're spending
119half the year on other non-appropriate you know work so this this uh this this uh research basically said that there's four key resources that a student needs to have in order to move a grade level and so that's great appropriate assignments that's a strong instruction deep engagement and high expectations and those are not things that cost money either it's really the systems it's the processes it's conditions that set those things and it says when students who started the year behind grade level had access to stronger instruction they closed the gaps with their peers by six months and so the research is there it's recent and so we're very excited for the future and so with that we yield and any questions you might have any questions or comments from the board okay well thank you
120that was information only so we'll move on to our next item on the agenda the next item on the agenda is 9.3 by city unified school district revision of board policy and ar 5132 dress and grooming first street and closure number 33 brandon gridiron equity and student services good evening again board president guerrero members of the board interim superintendent cardoza and incoming superintendent trum my name is brandon gordaran administrator of equity and student services for our district and tonight i'm just providing the board an update on our dress code pilot policy um this was part of our pilot process last year and so i'll go through this just to kind of share with you kind of some of the findings and recommendations we have based on the pilot um so this starts off with our
121why just as a department of equity and student services our wise to shape the conditions really that foster an equitable inclusive positive and safe culture and climate for our students staff and families and so as we move forward our collective commitment to this work is to be accountable be available transparent and communicate clearly and effectively the work that we do we're really focused on supporting goal 3 of our district for our site so in 2021 and creating a caring encouraging inclusive environment for our students and adults and really looking at three areas safe secure health positive environments environments that promote a sense of significance and belonging and assets uh focusing on students assets and strengths and and really developing systematic and reliable access to services and supports for students i'm not sure if this clicker's
122working all right there we go um and so tonight's presentation is really to provide a summary and context to key elements for our policy kind of what brought us here the feedback that we got throughout the year some of the challenges that we identified and recommendations and next steps and so as we talked about the context really we created three task force and these task force were created as a result of students feedback to our our dress code policy as we know our dress code policy prior to this policy hadn't been updated since 1999 and students have brought attention to that um they seen that there were inconsistencies so as a result there are three task force that were created a student inclusivity task force a community common ground task force and these task force
123were then combined to and also i'll say our staff inclusivity task force but these task force were combined in a joint inclusivity task force which really met throughout the 2019-2020 school year and 20 20 21 school year to provide input and feedback in relation to what should be included in our dress code pilot policy and so the task force review current policy which was at the time from 1999 they plan for policy and practice crosswalks to kind of look at uh other districts and kind of where things were happening they reviewed model policies from different districts throughout the state and then they drafted proposed revisions on model language and then we shared this with stakeholders so this was a three to four year process it wasn't just something that was thrown together it was actually
124a lot of feedback and obviously you can imagine between parents and students and staff there was difference of opinions around what should be in the language and then what we did is we revised the propos the length of the policy the existing policy and created proposed language around the new policy the goal was to revise the student dress code and and to make sure that it was consistently enforced there was clear communication in the policy and it didn't really it didn't humiliate and shame students for what they were wearing this was what was consistently brought up and so we wanted to make sure that the policy was equitable for all students and free of pres prejudice in relation to race ethnicity religion sexual orientation and those things were brought up specifically by the students um
125so the pilot policy the introduction and the highlights um all students should be able to address appropriately and comfortably with you know clothing that they're they're interested in dressing are wearing excuse me and individual clothing should not be regulated based on our perceived our perceptions about clothing and so those are the things that were brought up in the discussion um students must wear appropriate bottoms and tops and shoes at all times so that was included in the language and tops must reach the waistband of bottoms regardless of arm position so if i had a shirt on and my top and bottom of my shirt must reach the top of my waistband basically saying that your stomach should not be showing regardless of your arm position and so that was the language that was added and
126then that shoulders must be covered with at least non-undergarment strap of clothing and so as you look at the old policy there was a lot of practices that were occurring in our district um that weren't actually in the policy it was just things that were added like two inch strap and put your hands to the side and all those different things those things weren't actually in the policy but people were doing that and so that was what some of the concerns were that there was inconsistency enforcement around the policy and so another thing that was added is that students may choose to wear hats caps beanies do rags these types of things and fitted jeans and leggings and ripped jeans and shorts um an athletic attire but these things weren't uh actually in the previous
127dress code either so it wasn't restricted from students being able to wear these things this is just was just added to practice in the district so we wanted to make sure the language was clear there and so what students cannot wear was the same it was consistent anything that promoted violent language images depicting you know drugs or hate speech or profanity pornography anything that created a hostile and intimidating environment that those things were restricted and have always been restricted from wearing being worn in our schools and so one of the biggest things that was really focused was enforcement how do we make sure that these things are enforced consistently and as anything with the implementation of something that's always the challenge is making sure that there's consistency in implementation there's difference of interpretation differences in
128approach and so that's where training of the enforcement is really really important and we'll talk a little bit about that in a minute and here it is and that's how do we make sure that we should be that our staff is trained and what does that process look like and how do we make sure that if there are questions around how we should go about enforcing the dress code that we have opportunities to support our staff throughout the process um and then that it is happening consistently across our district and so the pilot process for us was really to um revise the the well create a pilot policy that was implemented this past year um and then gather input from our stakeholders our students staff and families and so we did that throughout the year
129um and then provide the results and recommendations to the board throughout the year so we did that once i believe it was in this fall and here we are again in the spring or towards the end of the year to provide that second update based on the feedback and so the pilot policy timeline was that we will provide the proposed revisions in august which we did that and then in fall we would provide gather or input share get surveys and share the data and get feedback from our stakeholders in regards to the implementation and established focus groups and so i had an opportunity to go out to most of our secondary sites to what do what we would call dress code chats and i sat in front of a lot of teachers and staff who
130had questions around the dress code and was very interesting conversation but good conversation because it was necessary feedback on what we should do to make it more clear and more effective in relation to the implementation and then we continue to revise and shift what the language was based on that feedback and that's why we're here tonight is to provide you an update on what some of that uh data said and so here on the first slide for data and this was at the request of the board during the last presentation is to break up the demographic of who completed the survey so i did that by grade level so that way we can see how many students and staff and parents and administrators have completed the survey by grade level and so that's this slide
131and you can see the numbers forgive me that it's small in there but you can see the numbers of the representation most of our k-6 administrators completed the survey and then a lot of our it's split between our parents as far as secondary high school and then k-6 completion there and then the same thing you'll see our students at the 9th or 12th grade level overwhelmed when we had feedback that they want to provide to us which is great and so the survey results there are a few questions that were asked and one of the questions that was asked was the dress code policy reviewed by teachers administrators at the beginning of the year and you'll see the data um you know 50 51 of our students said yes 55 of our staff which our
132teachers said yes and 100 of our admin say yes and then parents around 27 percent and so with that it's really kind of these and just to be clear these are the respondents who completed the survey right and so we have over 30 000 students roughly the the secondary students were given the survey that would complete it um and then our parents obviously uh you can see the number there as far as how many complete the survey i believe as well 300 and some odd parents let me look at that correctly yeah 566 excuse me and so this is just representative of the participants who completed the survey was there any training or guidance on dress code enforcement so for staff 35 for admin 79 and so there's some obviously focus area there how do
133we make sure that the staff on site is trained on the dress code policy who's responsible for that right and how does that make how do we make sure that is happening across our district and then you'll see uh do you enforce the dress code and so you can kind of see how the breakup is there um it's kind of 50 50 split between from our staff and then our administration um says you know heavily that they're doing that and there's a dress code policy enforced at your school based on students and parents and so you can kind of see the breakup there based on what they're saying and so we also split this question up the question last time was do you believe that it's clear and fair we're asked to to separate the
134two and so this is the first do you feel that the dress code policy is clear and you can kind of see the uh the blue is where people would say yes and so what we're looking at is to make sure that if there is lack of clarity specifically in what areas is it unclear and how do we make sure that it's more clear so that way people can effectively enforce the policy or follow the policy and here's the responses for as is it fair and so again there's the breakup there as far as students staff parents and administration and then i just provided a few excerpts from the open responses as far as feedback in relation to um you know what what students and community were saying so you know there are some comments
135um with uniforms um which at times i would like to wear uniforms so i don't have to iron everything but anyways but there are other comments in relation to just making sure that it's enforced and i've seen that a lot in every place from student staffing and administration is that if we have a policy then we have to enforce it right and so that was the consistent theme across the across the board and so that just let us know kind of where we um have work to do and making sure that there's enforcement some of the challenges that we've seen is reviewing the expectations we've seen based on data that that may have not been reviewed as we would have liked across the sites for various different reasons obviously we started the year off in
136a pandemic and when our students came back that really wasn't the focus it was getting kids back onto campus making sure that we had mass mandates and all those different things in order and so in any traditional year we would have opportunities to have a rally and go over expectations with kids and have a fun you know experience there but this was not like that year like any other year so that was one of the challenges and then teacher training obviously having opportunities to bring our staff together and do training with staff in a you know room rather than a zoom screen and so that was a challenge as well and then obviously you know we said with enforcement it was inconsistent in some cases non-existent there was concerns from staff and administrators with removing
137students from the classroom for dress code violations and what that may cause concerns with embarrassing or singling students out because of their dress code and concerns with parents and students response to being dress coded and then there were challenges and feedback in relation to student attire specifically the short length because the dress code policy states that it just needs to cover certain parts of your body that there was no short length so it put people in a peculiar spot to determine whether it was covering sports certain spots of your parts of your body and then low cut necklines that was often brought up and then hats there were things brought up in relation to should there be hats that are school logos versus any type of hat the dress code does not allow hats in
138the classroom so that's already in the policy and then clothing brands specifically there are brands of clothing as you all know that may promote some of those things that students are not allowed to wear in school and so those were the things that were brought up based on the survey data and based on the focus groups when we went out to sites to have those conversations and so some of the recommendations that were made were creating visuals um some type of dress code poster some type of brochure putting something on the website which that's what we're working on reviewing expectations with student staff and parents and so we'll continue to review expectations with administration and work with our administration to review expectations with the staff and their parents and then staff training on enforcement in
139our current pilot policy there's actually enforcement guidelines and any other policy that we've had there has been no enforcement guidelines it's kind of been whatever however you want to enforce it and so we have clear guidelines it's now training our staff to make sure that they understand what that is and how to go about doing that and then there was a recommendation to add length requirements to shorts and what that means and what that looks like and so that's some of the the trickiness in that making sure that we have the appropriate language and discuss altering language uh to short's requirements which i just mentioned and then things about hats clothing brands and then continuing to seek student staff and parent feedback and so these are the last three questions recommendations for proposed language to
140tops and this was the top response for tops strapless tops backless tops and mid-drifts would be not prohibited and you can kind of see the responses there from admin staff parents and then students the second one was in relation to shorts for short lengths and this is what the responses were um admin 38 staff 49 54 21. um and so you can kind of see you know what the comments were there the actual language around the shorts that were recommended here is that it would be self-monitored and that students would just have to know that their shorts have to be longer than their clinch fist if their arm would decide right it's not something that administrator would go and say put your arms to the side and you need to clench your fist and doing
141that this is something that students would monitor on their own at home and then they would make the determination that was one of the proposed languages um and then recommendation for hats that hats would be prohibited um but the actual language your recommendation for that you can see that's pretty low not very many people don't want to say that the kids can't wear hats but that it has school logos so all hats would have school logos rather than any hat um at school and so that those were the recommended changes based on the feedback is that strapless tops backless tops mid-drifts and low-cut necklines are prohibited shorts should be below longer than the student's extended arm with the clinch fists which would be monitored by the student not by the school and students may wear
142sun protective clothing including hats with school logos caps with school logos beanies with school logos do rags and other head covering outdoors and students cannot have clothing or personal items on campus that promote any of the things that they should not wear pornography drugs gangs violence and some of those brands that were listed just as examples would be brands like cookies and backwood and playboy those types of things not being allowed on campus and so our next steps would be we'll you know communicate with a team to develop accurate visuals based on that feedback you know one of the things that was brought up is christmas in july where we have community partners help provide clothing for kids who may need clothing and then all sites to review expectations with students and staff and parents
143at the start of the year as is expected and then based on the feedback from the board and and the final approval on our second read is update the dress code policy within the new language and then provide ongoing monitoring and revisions as needed one of the other recommendations is to continue with existing pilot policy and pilot it again for another year that just wasn't up here are there any questions any questions or comments miss blair yeah good job brandon that's a lot um but i do have a question just had an idea you can tell me no but on slide 24 when it talks about the recommendations and it says create a visual address code poster is there any way we could we could have a contest for like a graphics art so that
144the kids can have buy-in and their things are usually better to look at than any adults yes great idea any other questions yes yes um thank you i think that's a wonderful idea as well my question was in regards to hats what is the logic or rationale behind not allowing them in the classroom uh or or only allowing them outdoors i'm just thinking about scenarios in which you know i mean i've gotten a few bad haircuts and i'm like man i'm just going to keep this beanie or hat on all day um what is the logic for not allowing hats indoors great question i think some of the logic initially is when the conversation came about students with hoods right you can't see whether they're engaged you can't really get their eye contact right same
145thing with hats now we have students who wear a hat and their mask and cover up pretty much all of their face and you really can't really see whether they're engaging you know for teachers engagement checking for understanding those types of things are critically important but those things have been brought up by staff and by students it's like why can't we wear hats in class what does it do right and so some instances based on feedback from the stakeholder groups it was a personal preference preference in other instances it was a matter of student engagement and being able to connect with students that way so those were the two feedbacks that we have thank you anyone miss clemonia um i'd like to address the hat inside thing you know kids need to understand that going
146they're going to work that's their job doing school and if you work i know when i worked in high school and college at godchalks probably people don't even know that store i couldn't wear a hat okay and i had to dress a certain way and i think it's important that we do have a dress code so kids understand you know and start to learn you know you got to dress a certain way at your job um the the other concern that i have or i don't know if it's a concern i think it's something that we can work on um when i see that um admin 100 admin says they reviewed uh policy with teachers and administrators but yet only 51 of the students and 55 of the staff say that happened and so i
147think there's a gap between um implementation you know what and commun i don't i don't know if it's communication implementation there's a gap there and i think if we had consistency and clarity then i don't think this would be a problem if i could add on one oh please i was just gonna say i wanted to highlight one of the comments from page 22 which was around possibly providing funds to purchase um and wash and dry clothing that's lent to students i'm wondering was this an issue or a comment that was brought up consistently is that widespread of an issue i know i'm sure each site has to deal with you know storage of you know extra clothes for students who need to change but is this a sort of reoccurring issue i mean i
148could i could potentially see this being an issue for some of our homeless students for students who don't have access to maybe a washer and dryer at home but how prevalent of an issue um did you see this brought up it wasn't brought up consistently but it was brought up enough to uh want to have to do something about it right and so to make sure that that access to clean clothing for students is important um you know a few years ago at the site level we actually used to have washers and dryers and those types of things for pe clothes and other things that we used to do that then we had some challenges with outbreaks of different things as a result of that and so you know i know there are certain sites
149that actually um provide these opportunities for kids in different ways we've worked with our outside agencies to look at how do we offer clothing so one of the things that we talked about is christmas in july and having an abundance amount of clothing available to students that need them but then now the next step is to also look at those other options right how do we have these public washer and dryers that are available to students maybe at our community resource center our family resource center to provide that opportunity or even on site so we can definitely explore those options as well yeah i certainly think that would be a great investment looking forward so what um i'm gonna like try to kind of ask the other side of it without looking completely crazy um
150but it seems as though we spend a you know you only have so much energy in a day as a staff member as a teacher and we spend a lot of energy on this dress code thing that could go into student learning we put students and staff kind of at an adversarial relationship and so i'm wondering is there like a csba guideline state law something that could guide us because it's almost like we're daring the kids to stay ahead of us and they're really good at that you know we can say no shirts that say cookies today and they'll come up with a new word tomorrow and we'll have another meeting for you know they can't wear this shirts and it's it's like instead of educating um we're like chasing these you know kind of
151like this energy um that's kind of you know in a sense unrelated to learning um the hats you know i mean without sounding horrible like be more engaging like we should be more concerned that our students aren't engaged in instruction then we should um that they're wearing a hat um and short length i mean i'm i'm sorry i have a high school daughter that i drop off and you know she's going to hate me now when i get home well she's not watching but um you know let's be serious um but i drop her off and i watch the kids walk across the um parking lot to the pool deck and we have boys and speedos and girls in swimsuits and at the volleyball games we've got girls i mean in basically the swimsuit bottoms
152so it's just like i don't know i guess my question is is there a way we can educate and say how this distracts from learning but not focus so much energy on what you can't do and like these adversarial relationships is there like a state like law or some guidance that's kind of like you know this is the minimum um that you could like send to us or we can start there or like with just for a conversation i don't know and i'm probably the only one but it just seems like we're putting people in this constant conflict over something um you know that maybe we can avoid i i would agree um and and what i would say to that is that this is why we piloted the policy this year um and one
153of the recommendations that were made was to continue to pilot the policy because the challenge was enforcement mostly with rather than what was in the dress code as you can as mrs des moines pointed out there was one statement that this was shared and then and overwhelmingly this is what we did and then there was another you know sentiment that we we didn't get it and so there was some breakdown there and so rather than re-changing the entire policy uh we could pilot the policy again and make sure that clarity and communication and enforcement is is is there um but as you mentioned and i think mr schrum mentioned this tonight student connectedness and relationships are critical in education and how we have a conversation with the student about the dress code expectations and support
154them through that is probably the most important thing rather than just putting things in a policy and saying this is what you don't do because as we've all experienced and those of us have been on site and worked in education for a long time is the dress code policy has been an issue across the state and across the country forever so we can keep adding and changing and adjusting the dress code policy versus educating and supporting and working with kids and talking them through the actual policy and then enforcing it in a respectful non-shaming way that may serve the same outcome that we're looking to to meet with the the change in language or the proposed changes in language you know basically this is the dress code dress cover yourself up don't show your underwear
155and that's basically the dress code you know and i think it's simple but again if there's not clarity and consistency like you know it's fifth period and i'm dress coding a kit which should have been dress coded first period and i think there needs to be training and i don't know what that is on how how do we enforce it because we don't want to shame people we don't want to pull them out like jackie's saying we don't want to pull them out from learning you know so how exactly do we do this and you know and i i don't know what the procedure is but um yeah so i you know i i think we have to have a dress code and it's simple but um i think the consistency in enforcement and how
156you enforce it because teachers are like i'm just yeah they're you know i'm not there's no dress code that's they tell me and basically what they're saying is i don't know what it is and i'm not gonna and i don't know how to enforce it so just having clarity and simplifying it would be you know like cover yourself up don't show your underwear any other comments go ahead the the hat when i come back it says for hat prohibited it was only 25 and i i i've i've been at the school site and hats was an issue as far as man you're fighting that and is that really where we want to put the fight i don't want to fight for hats i want kids in class i want them to learn and nowadays the
157hat is everybody wears hats and so is that something that we really even need in here um and because i'm gonna be honest teachers they're getting ready for their class they want the kids there i want my my students in my classroom i don't want to have to deal with susie and johnny who wear a hat every day because the dress code says that so i think that there's got to be some kind of where we get a mutual point and i like what um trustee des moines said just cover up the bare minimums you know just so that we don't have you know don't show just cover up that's it that's simple it can be that simple and and teachers don't i as an administrator i didn't want to ch i would we used
158to say we're the fashion police okay i don't want to be a fashion police i want to i want to direct my energies into academics and getting kids connected and those kinds of things instead of breaking it down i wholeheartedly agree and then thank you for bringing up the hat and in thinking of finding this happy medium because i i agree we should be engaging that shouldn't be an issue i i teach students who wear hats all the time yes it is a different setting but um i think it's up to us as educators to engage our students maybe finding some happy medium though in between like your hat cannot be covering your eyes or must be worn above your brim of your forehead or something maybe finding some sort of compromise in that and
159would be helpful for both students staff mr others yes no thank you i think this is great feedback and i think as a team we'll take this back and revamp a little bit along with the feedback and then come back with something that you know can ensure we have a dress code because there are some standards we need to apply across the the district for learning to occur but also be respectful and mindful of the time we're in and i wholeheartedly agree you know we want kids in classrooms we don't need teachers and others going around worrying about these things they need to be teaching and so i think we can take the feedback that's been shared tonight and come up with a simplified version that that still gets at what we need but also
160allows our students to be students thank you that was the first read and it's information only we'll move on to our next agenda item the next agenda item is board member reports requests mr dr viegas thank you president guerrero um i was sad to miss our prior board meeting when i fell ill to covet but prior to that i had the opportunity to shadow some of our amazing district employees including rihanna sanchez at creekside and joshua sequoia two of our behavioral intervention team supports and really looking at what they're doing on a daily basis to provide a positive environment for our students guiding them to make positive choices and really be role models for one another so i want to thank them for allowing me to spend some time with them i also spent some
161time with one of our librarians at divisidero wendy anderson and i just want to say i really appreciated how just walking into that library there was artwork from students featured across the room students walking in you know really excited to check out a new book and really instilling this love of learning and one of the things i really deeply appreciated was that she had a collection at the very front highlighting api authors characters protagonists uh in honor of asian and pacific islander heritage month and so i really want to take a moment to thank all of our classified employees all of our teachers for the work that they do um was able to participate in many of our commencement ceremonies alongside my fellow board members a very exciting time of the year and then finally
162on a smaller note as you mentioned today i successfully defended my dissertation and earned my phd from uc santa cruz [Applause] i do have one request that i want to follow up on and that is for a report or a list of all of our dual enrollment classes that we offered this past academic school year across the district and i asked for that to be shared with the board as we look to potentially expand these opportunities for our students we want to make sure that we're informed about where we currently stand and what we're offering and how we can expand those opportunities hopefully in the future and as i stated previously i look forward to working with our board uh and hopefully better aligning our policies um to increase the number of our graduates that
163are college and career ready and that are a through g ready so thank you all thank you miss blair thank you congratulations randy um i just also wanted to say the graduations were so wonderful after not having graduations for so long it feels like so so long it was um wonderful to be at those and just felt really special to shake all those hands and see those kids um it was awesome um i got to attend um the first well it was the second but the first one that i got to go to community engagement session last night at ridgeview it was um pretty well attended and um that is just such an important important time for us and i just want to um encourage every community member and i really want to encourage students
164to come if you can't come maybe you can drop off a student i'll take them home well i mean i i will if you know me um anyway i um it was just great to see parents um and um community members write write things down grandparents there were also posters up um around the room that were written in spanish as well as in english so and to see people writing down their comments in spanish was amazing um i wanted to um to bring up one or one request i've i've heard um from a few different parents and also staff members that there's questions about whether or not parents need to get fingerprinted in order to volunteer at school or to chaperone at school and i looked through some of the paperwork and they were conflicting
165things and um that is an expensive thing to get done it's 80 to get fingerprinted so if we are expecting our parents to do that um i would like for this to see if our school district can pay for it that feels like the right thing to do so i would like to get clarity on on that and what what is supposed to happen there thank you miss gaby no report okay snailer i'm gonna try to make mine brief but i just wanted to um i was just so excited about all the graduations i went to every graduation except for adult school um i had a conflict but it was just such a great um just such a great honor to be there and see our kids um walk across and shake hands and we
166haven't done that for so long it's like yes we have a real graduation um i did um attend one of the things i wanted to talk about though is i did attend the eighth grade promotion at ivanhoe um and what a wonderful eighth grade promotion um the principal there jesus gonzalez first year very organized the kids were get went up and gave speeches um their eighth grade teacher um ocl garcia um gave a speech brought tears to my eyes it's what we are looking for in teachers um when i when he gave his speech it was so sincere and from the heart he embraces those students and one of the students asked him you know mr garcia why do you do this you know why do you why do you teach when you can get
167another job pain so much more and he looked at them and and in his speech he said the reason i do this is for you to see you transition from eighth grade and be successful in life and it just gave me goosebumps and i started to cry i just thought oh my goodness that's the kind of teachers we want for all our kids um just just amazing i did attend the community engagement uh forum also last night and i just you know we we had a good show but i really want our parents and our community to please attend those and take the survey it is critical to the success of our district because we want that input we and our new superintendent is putting these on to get the input from our from our
168parents from our students from our from our community you don't even have to have a student in our district from our community to to give us information so that we can incorporate that in moving forward with our district so please continue to do that um one more thing i did tour um four creeks elementary and the principal there miss montoya i just want to give a shout out because she's doing a wonderful job at four creeks and the kids it shows in the kids eyes they were just all excited they would run up to her and they'd you know hey look at me this is what i've done and she she is just so amazing with those kids so thank you to the staff you know it shows that they care it's comonian i have
169no report tonight i have a long report but i'm not going to go over all the graduations what i will do is highlight a few few things on may 25th we had the medical completion ceremony at ridgeview it was a very nice these are things that are not part of the graduation thing but they're they're special on may 22nd we had a special school board meeting student recognition at golden west high school on june 1st i was able to tour mountain view vestibule immersion with miss camonia and miss blair which a wonderful program they have over there on june 3rd i also went to the valley of promotion and we all split up they're all on the same day so we can't be everywhere so we're at different places and then on june 8th the
170stat i went to the staff engagement at golden west high school so that was one of the engagements that was going on at that at that high school that you're talking about miss nader and then on june 8th i attended the bond oversight and yes i attended all the high school graduations that occurred in the last two weeks mr shrum well thank you i uh interim superintendent cardoza would definitely want to express his appreciation for all of the people that uh have just showered him with appreciation you know for his retirement so definitely want to thank staff and everyone for attending also to everything we've heard tonight a lot of work and effort goes into all of these end of the year ceremonies and recognitions from elementary to middle to high pathway completers graduations and
171it takes lots and lots of people lots and lots of time to put that together and i know our community appreciated that being able to have these events again after so long so huge shout out to the staff and schools and everyone that that took time to put those those things together and i just again want to echo uh just thank you for our partnership uh with our visalia police department uh you know as we move forward together we know that safety security clarifying our policies on on what it takes to be a volunteer and visitor are all important we've got to be clear about that we've got to communicate that and make sure that our community feels welcome back in our schools again in the right way and the safe way and looking forward
172to beginning to continue uh our entry plan and and that work and gather the voices as we put this together into what it will be looking like as we move forward together and so thank you for the opportunity to present that tonight and that will conclude the report staff dismissal our next item on the agenda is administrative panel recommendations this is enclosure number 36 is there a motion a motion to approve oh second motion by miss uh gabey and second by miss nader all in favor miss blair sorry i keep doing i'm doing that tonight okay all right so um remember blair you mean naylor we're both by foot yes um board member gavey yes i vote yes president guerrero yes board member naylor yes board member viegas yes motion carries five uh six one
173absent our next item is recommended reinstatements enclosure 37 is there a motion a motion motion by dr villegas second second by miss nader all in favor board member gabey yes i vote yes board member guerrero yes board member naylor yes board member viegas yes board member blair yes motion carries six one absent our next item on the agenda is a transfinder software adoption proposal first read mr hamilton and mr kirk chief operations officer there we go good evening board president guerrero incoming superintendent trump board members my name is rick hamilton we'll just leave it as administrator right now and you guys can fill in the rest later um so tonight we're going to bring forward a project that we started about six months ago looking to um i would say upgrade but upgrade is a
174very strong term for where we're going we're moving from paper pencil tracking our students on buses to electronically tracking our students on buses so take that as an upgrade because we know we needed to be able to not just route our students effectively but track who was on our buses and where they are on our buses so that's that's the point of the transfinder system um transfinder is the largest transportation service company in the united states they have submitted that basically they try they transport one out of every five students that are transported in the united states right now so they they are the company to work with um and after reviewing and working with with our all the vendors that we looked at and our transportation company our transportation company kind of they reached
175out and looked over you know who who everybody else was using and this this is what we came back to um not just the needs of our transportation department but the community they are also the largest presence in california roughly one-third of all students transported in california are done so using the transform their routing process and then security um talking with chuck and his team um you know after our previous experience this last year we wanted to make sure that the data that we're tracking our students and moving our students about was very secure um transfinder uses aws which is the the amazon security um and they guarantee their uptime um within the contract there there are stipulations if if they have any downtime then we get a reduction in rate but they do guarantee
176their uptime at better than 99 percent so that that was one of them one of the nice features for them um a big feature of their company over others if you've ever used a map google maps apple maps whatever they all use image base mapping so you get about where somebody is so with the address you ask to go someplace and it gives you about where it's at sometimes it's accurate sometimes not so much we can't be not so much when we're transporting our students um so transformer is the only company that uses gis gps coordinates on every household and so not only is that important to know where the house is but which side of the road it is because if we're transporting students we have to know if they're having to cross the
177street if we need to provide that service or if they're right or left-sided so that's very important feature of our of our routing process the other big thing for us um having come from a site and those of you that have worked on a site um for the sites to know where kids what bus they're supposed to be on where they're going what what when they get off the bus um so staff have a view-only access so from the sites they can log into transfinder and see what route what bus you know who's supposed to be where which is kind of a nice feature they can do it on mobile devices it's not just on the computer there's apps you know so they have all that feature that's nice for the staff um nice for
178for the rest of us it also integrates with powerschool and that's one of the things you'll see as we bring more software features forward um in the future is everything's really got to talk to our student information system we've got to get away from the days of we have all these different systems and they don't talk to each other so it's really important for us that this works with powerschool not just to share that information so you can look up the routing information but as we enroll a new student and put their address in overnight they are routed on the bus if they deserve to be on a bus and that morning the bus driver gets the new pickup information and it's automatically routed to that to that bus driver so the students don't delay
179and mom and dad don't have to drive them for a week while we try to figure out if they belong on a bus or don't belong on a bus so that's all done on an overnight basis and then parents parents get the amazon app because we we've kind of jokingly referred to it so they get an app that tells them how many stops away their their students are if there's a delay the parents automatically get a delay you know if it's a foggy day schedule we don't have to try to figure out do we do blackboard do we do this how do we message all the parents through transfiner we just send the parents out that says you know what we have a two hour delay we have an hour delay we have or this
180specific bus is delayed because of traffic problems you know the the city tore up a street and so we're having to reroute it's going to take us a little longer so we can send that to those parents very specifically and very targeted and we don't have to worry about the communication problem and then parents that are that are a little more sophisticated and very time constrained um they can set up i'm in that same app for them if they need a warning like i'm i'm walking it takes me five minutes i want a five minute warning before the bus arrives they can set that up on the app and so they need you know one to leave the house or when to make sure they're at the bus stop to meet their student rather than
181hoping that they're going to be there at the right time to make it all work and for our bus drivers some of the most important people for the app they get turn-by-turn directions that are updated so hot live so if there's traffic issues if there's construction that needs to reroute they automatically get rerouted like i said before if we add new students as we enroll students throughout the year they automatically get rerouted the bus driver doesn't have to you know figure out where they're going if we have subs and replacement bus drivers they get in turn on the tablet it tells them where to go they don't have to try to figure it out with different paper maps so it's it's it's all right there for them on the fly and then this also not
182only does it work with powerschool but you know a few years ago you approved a purchase of zonar um with the the z-pass system that that does the rfid scanning for attendance um we didn't quite get to roll it out because it didn't work with the other system that we tried this one does integrate with transfinder so we can use those same id cards reprint redistribute the id cards as students walk on the bus they're automatically registered and attendance is taken when they get off the bus it tells us when they get off the bus so if they're older students and they just jump off the bus someplace we can tell the parents hey they got off two stops ago so we we will actually know one will be nice to know who's on the
183buses but we'll know when they get on when they get off as well and with that i'm going to turn it over to my good friend mr carroll good evening well i do want to thank mr hamilton and you know i think um we found our right guy to do this work yeah right thank you rick so we'll finish up with this really quick um you see where's the button there it is okay so we can get ridership reports so along with all the other tech that we have with this there are all kinds of reports there's the report builder application in there so we can get ridership reports it will as rick said earlier tie right into powerschool so whatever we get from powerschool we can create these reports and and we'll have them
184we'll be able to kind of tailor them to our needs um another big piece of this is field trips and trips for school sites and so this is part of the app that we're uh getting with this with this package um school staff can request the trips sports trips and then we can set up the approval process for who's ever going to approve those based at this either at the site level or the district level again there's a mobile app for that so coaches athletic directors teachers can do it right on their phone so that will be really cool and then here's some of the summaries oh i turned it off there we go um so we've got route planning with accurate maps as rick mentioned internal communication that's very robust that was a big
185piece that we said we needed to have be able to communicate to the parents without going through an awkward third party or another third application parent communication goes right along with that and then communications with drivers the driver app with turn by turn and then zonar's rfid z-pass we'll be able to roll that out we do plan on piloting this starting at the beginning of the school year we're thinking we're not quite sure we're still working out those plans but we're thinking we will have a special ed component to that because that is that is a population that does present some additional challenges for us and then we do plan an implementation in january uh transfinder has already uh is already building those plans out for us and we will backwards plan that and then
186communicate that as we go forward should you choose to approve this in two weeks so um here are the costs initial cost is 82 390 dollars that's the first initial cost as long as well as the first year fee and then ongoing fees of thirty four thousand two hundred and seventy it shows you right there that is literally everything on on transfinder's menu uh it with the exception of the real time um the real time app for the parents which we felt was a little bit uh too intrusive i guess way to put it that's the one that kind of shows where the bus is moving around we didn't think that that was something that we would be interested in and that's it questions or comments from the board mr schneider so the the initial
187setup who puts all this information in do they do that transfinder does it we will send them our we will send them our powerschool files powerschooler we'll send them the data files and then they will build it and they they provide they're providing on-site training for whomever we need training and then follow-up training um it's it's unlimited for that for as long as we have trans finder we have training from them available this is great yeah thank you we're really excited about it any other questions or comments so um this is the first read the first truth is going to come back to us at that time we'll take a vote okay thank you it was more for just a comment i was just going to say should we approve this in the next meeting
188i think it would just be wonderful to find a way to communicate the app and all these features to parents because oftentimes it's like we have all this amazing things but then parents don't know that they can download this to their app and they can connect it so i just i would just request that we find some way to inform parents about these features etc that is all part of transfinder's implementation plan which is pretty extensive we've we've seen a couple of presentations on it now so perfect thank you our next item on the agenda is board member attendance at california school board association annual conference and closing number 39 mr strum all right thank you mr president board this is uh to consider taking action to approve the district covering our csba conference registration
189fees travel related costs for board members superintendent cabinet members this is annual training uh occurring this year december first through the third in san diego uh and um that is for the board to consider approving thank you um the this conference is annual and there are elections this time of year this time in november and what i want to mention is this is that the board makes decisions for the board this board or any future boards and so whatever decision we make here and i would hope that the decision would be that we would vote to register the full board all seven members whoever it is and uh i'll just if we could do that tonight thank you that's my comments any other comments by the board oh just motion motion by miss blair all
190second second by miss gaby all in favor president guerrero yes board member naylor yes board member viegas yes board member blair yes board member gaby yes i vote yes motion carries five one absent okay the declaration i need for fully qualified education educators and closing number 40 dd summa video assistant superintendent good evening board members um president aguero and superintendent trump i'm here for the declaration for the need of fully um qualified educators each year we're required by the teacher california commission on teacher credentialing to declare needs in our district and if we intend to hire anyone that is not on a full credential and so we have to do estimates if you will we have to do one for the school district and then each of our charter schools so you'll see a couple
191different um items within this one if you will and again these are estimates and we're just going off of um how many we've done in the past in each of these areas so we do need approval to be able to submit this in order to continue hiring for the year this is an action item is there are there any comments or questions okay there's an action item is there a motion i would motion to approve motion by ms gaby all second second by dr rodriguez all in favor board member naylor yes board member viegas yes board member blair yes board member gavey yes i vote yes president guerrero yes motion carries six one absent our next item on the agenda is classified school employee teacher credentialing program and closure number forty one dd summary assistant
192superintendent i'm excited to bring this um item to you this evening our educator support um group within hr that does all of our admin induction and our teacher induction has also um already completed two classified grants this is classified staff members that we help in the way of mentoring in the way of tools and in money to help them become teachers and so we're looking at any of our classified members that want to go into the teaching field they are assigned a mentor they have to apply for this grant um but it really does help them to get them into the classroom we have lots of amazing staff members that serve as peer professionals and other um areas that really would be great teachers so this helps them so we're applying for this grant this
193is the third one we've done one has sunseted two years ago one since it's this year um so in a couple days and we're playing for another one so we can continue to help our classified staff any questions or comments from board members okay is there a motion no i wish it's a great program so motion go ahead all second motion by miss gave me second by ms snader all in favor board member viegas yes board member blair yes board member gabey yes i vote yes president guerrero yes board member naylor yes motion carries six one absent there are no more items on the agenda this meeting is adjourned