Board of Education Meeting | August 6, 2025

001Welcome to the August 6, 2025 regularly scheduled meeting of the West Contraosta Unified School District School Board. Please hold for just a second. I'm getting some feedback. We'll see if that's better. Okay, I think it is. To access translation and Zoom, please click on the globe icon at the bottom of the screen. And if you're here in Dejon, you can pick up a headset for translation in the back corner of the auditorium. The board is about to go into close session. But before we do, we are here to listen to public comment on close session items. Individuals wishing to speak on the close session items listed. If you're here in the auditorium and you haven't done so already, please submit a WCCUSD public comment card, which you can find in the entryway table or if

002you're participating via Zoom. Individuals will need to raise their Zoom hand in the Zoom app. If you're accessing the meeting by phone, press star 9. The time allotted to each speaker is 2 minutes. Total time allotted is 1 hour. Speaking time shall not be transferred from one person to another. There is no substitution of speakers. We alternate between a Zoom comment and an in-person comment. The public comment period is a safe space where diverse viewpoints may be expressed civily without interruption or intimidation. Please l listen attentively to each speaker's comment and respect the time as if it were your own. Be open to a different point of view if one of one is offered. Due to the Brown Act, board members cannot discuss items that are not on the agenda and do not usually respond

003to items presented in public comment. The items listed on the close session agenda tonight are conference with legal counsel existing litigation government code 54956.9D1 liability claims uh claimment number conference with labor negotiators negotiator Dr. Camille Johnson, public employee appointment, K8 principal, secondary principal, public employee performance evaluation, superintendent. >> Is there any public comment on these items? >> There's no public comment. >> Thank you very much. We are now adjourning to close session. We'll be back at 6:30. Thank you. Good evening everyone. Welcome to the open session of the regularly scheduled August 6, 2025 meeting. The time is 6:32. The board has returned from close session. To access translation in Zoom, please click on the globe icon at the bottom of the screen. And if you're here in the auditorium and you need translation, you may

004pick up a headset in the back corner of the auditorium. In a few minutes, we'll begin public comment. Members of the public are invited to speak to the board on any matter that is not otherwise on the agenda, but is within the subject matter jurisdiction of the West Contracasta Unified School District. Please prepare now for public comment. If you're here in the auditorium and you'd like to make public comment, please fill out and submit a WCCUSD public comment card, you'll find them on the table in the entryway. If you are participating via Zoom, please raise your hand in the Zoom app prior to the beginning of the item on the agenda. If you're participating by phone, press star 9. After the comment card has been turned in, the cards are placed in the order received

005and we will call on speakers one at a time, alternating between a public comment here in Dejon and one in Zoom. Public comment generally lasts for one hour and the time allotted to each speaker is 2 minutes. In the meantime, we're going to move on with the rest of our opening procedures. Okay, we are up to B2. Pledge of Allegiance. If you are willing or able, please rise. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. B3, land, labor, and body acknowledgement. We recognize that we are presently on the lands of the Chuchcheno Mouekma Karkin Aloney peoples and acknowledge them as the first inhabitants of the land we currently occupy. Labor and body

006recognition of acknowledgement. I acknowledge that the burden of environmental exploitation and systemic injustice falls upon the labor of black and brown bodies in the building of the this country and its institutions. I remember that black and brown people were born and died working this land against their will for generations. I also acknowledge the continued contribution of the labor of survivors over the centuries to today of all immigrant labor including voluntary, involuntary, trafficked, forced, and undocumented peoples in the building of what we refer to as the United States author Dr. Michelle Rogers. Before West Contraosta Unified School District Board anti-racism statement, the West Contraosta District Board of Education is committed to the work of anti-racism, the conscious and active expert to identify, challenge, and correct racial inequities in the systems and institutions within our schools and

007community. Racism, explicit or implicit, stands in direct conflict to the fundamental principles of WCCUSD education. to carry WCC education into the future. We recognize that we must continually renew and reflect on the roots of racism and develop new ideas to meet the times. Unjust ideas and policies and the racial inequity they produce have shaped us, our schools, and our society. We strive to uncover unconscious biases and practice anti-racism as individuals and as board members. We challenge ourselves to persist through the discomfort necessary for growth and learning, to deepen our listening and our examination of racism and oppression, and develop a strong understanding of how our personal experiences and feelings fit into a larger picture of continual oppression. Each member of our school board individually and collectively is responsible for creating and nurturing an anti-racism learning

008environment where each student, staff member, and community partner is a respected and valued member of the WCCUSD community. We are uniquely positioned and it is our responsibility to identify and dismantle racist ideas and inequitable policies in ourselves and across district. Therefore, we commit to supporting anti-racist policies, programs, and practices for our children's education and well-being while bu building strong and inclusive school communities. We commit to holding each board member accountable towards these goals and moving the work of anti-racism forward. We commit to holding West Contraosta Unified School District, staff, students, and community to living these standards of anti-racism in our schools. Board approved March 20th, 2024. B5 roll call. Superintendent Cotton, would you please take role? >> Yes. >> Trusty Hernandez. >> Good evening, President. >> Trustee Smith Vo. >> Good evening everyone present. >>

009Trustee Gonzalez Hoy. >> Good evening. President. >> Clerk Inella. >> Good evening everyone present. for President Reckler. >> Good evening. I'm present. Thank you. Moving on now to B6, report ratification of close session. Superintendent Cotton, is there anything to report out from close session? Thank you. Regarding agenda item A21, the board voted unan unanimously to approve settlement existing litig litigation government code 54956.4 D1. Name of the case L. Telles versus West Contraosta Unified School District Contraosta Superior Court. Case number C24 00126. Regarding agenda item A22, the board voted to reject claim number 657560 related to alleged personal injury. The board voted to approve the appointment of Stacy Wayne as principal of Elsto High School. The vote was as follows. Clerk Angela, yes. Trustee Gonzalez Hoy, yes. Trustee Hernandez, yes. Trustee Reckler, yes. Board President Reckler,

010yes. Trustee Smith Foss, no. That concludes our close session report. >> Thank you. We are now moving on to B7 WCCCUSD public comment. Members of the public are invited to speak to the board on any matter that is not otherwise on the agenda but is within the subject matter jurisdiction of the West Contraosta Unified School District. Public comment will last approximately 1 hour. The time allotted to each speaker is 2 minutes. Should additional speakers remain at the conclusion of one hour, public comment may be extended. The time allotted per speaker beyond the first hour is generally one minute. Individuals wishing to speak, please submit a WCCUSD public comment card or if participating via Zoom, individuals need to raise their hand in the Zoom app prior to the beginning of this item on the agenda. If

011you are calling in by phone, press star 9. Speaking time shall not be transferred from one person to another. There is no substitution of speakers. Speakers can also make public comment again for each discussion and action item on the agenda after staff presentations. The public will have 10 minutes per item and one minute per speaker. The same protocols recited above apply. The public comment period is a safe space where diverse viewpoints may be expressed civily without interruption or intimidation. Please listen attentively to each speaker's comment and respect their time at the podium as if it were your own. Be open to a different point of view if one is offered. Due to the Brown Act, board members cannot discuss items that are not on the agenda and do not usually respond to items presented in

012public comment. Is there any public comment tonight? Yes. Our first public speaker is Mr. Don Gosney. Good evening. You know, a couple of months back I mentioned about how the CVOC had taken to recording our meetings in Spanish so we can archive the video for those of our neighbors that might want to avail themselves of this option. We had some technical glitches in the beginning, but thanks to Elmahia pooper, we overcame those obstacles. In partnership, I have the tools and the time to replace the English audio with a Spanish version. So, with extremely little effort, we're good to go. The CBOC has very few listeners and even fewer that need Spanish translation, but this is still something we need to do. With your board meetings, though, I think we can all agree how important the

013translations are. So, it begs the question why the board has not taken action to provide Spanish language videos on their YouTube channel. This is the third time I've brought it up. You have some wicked smart tech people that can easily replicate what I did. And if they need some help, I can show them which two buttons to push. As overworked as they are right now with the website transition, manpower and time are their biggest problems. But that shouldn't stop you, our elected representatives, from taking a proactive stance to make this happen. I have every confidence that you can make this happen. But it won't happen without your buyin. On another note, I appreciated seeing trustees Hernandez and Elana at last night's national night out parties. When the district desperately needs to win over the people

014before they put the measure teach extension ballot measure on the ballot, going out into the community where the voters can see you and speak candidly with you is a huge plus. Got to win over their hearts and minds. And so, you know, you never have to stick to your own little kingdoms. You were elected to represent all 550,000 residents in West County. So, you're allowed and invited to acknowledge that the rest of us exist and matter. And lastly, while the website is being revamped over the next couple of months, can you really afford to be dead online? Thanks so much to Tasha Nesbbit yesterday for working with me to find an access to the numerous sites I need like tonight's agenda page. But what about the rest of the world that won't be able to

015she won't be able to meet with? Maybe we ought to find a fix and share it with everyone. Thank you. Our next public comment is Jen Kiddner. Please unmute yourself. Good evening board. Good evening superintendent and good evening everybody else. Welcome to hopefully an amazing and awesome school year. I wanted to advocate for my site. Please, please, please, if we can get our um Head Start TKK um play structure installed, that would be amazing. We went seven, eight months last year with nothing. And technically, we cannot go to the big playground because that's rated for six-year-olds and up. And as you well know, we have three through six and TKK now and Head Start's even younger. So, I'm hoping that we'll get a speedy installation of our playground equipment. I also wanted to advocate for

016all of our Spanish community now that we have our new amazing math curriculum. Can we please have the student workbooks in Spanish, even if we're not a DI school? The reasoning behind this is because when those pages go home for the parents to look at, if they're in Spanish, even though we're teaching in English, the parents can read them and understand what their children are doing and they can help them with the math. So, please consider allowing us to do this. As one of the pilot schools for the Eureka, when the Chamberlain helped pay for our things, we were able to get them in Spanish and send them home to the families that needed them in Spanish. So, like I said, they could read what the children were supposed to be doing, see what they

017did, and help guide their learning at home as well. Thank you. Thank you. And hopefully we're off to an amazing year. Our next public comment is Kim Chamberlain. Good evening. I'm Kimberly Chamberlain, IFG Local 21 SSA chapter president. Who is IP Local 21 SSA? We are strong supporters. We are the backbone of working diligently, continuously to support our community, students, and staff. We continuously work over what we should nine times out of 10. Not asking for extra just to make sure. We smile. We do community outreach. We are out there supporting you. We're supporting our students because nine times out of 10, our kids are in those classrooms, too. And we appreciate that. We want them to have the best education, clean schools, good nutritious meals, be safe. Those are all areas that we're in.

018Healthy. Also, we're in the health department. So, we also want to support our special education areas, our LVNs, our custodial supervisors, our assistants that support our cabinet members and our other departments. So, we would love to make sure that they also input and teamsters have proper training. So, this is my goal again this year. I'm pushing to make sure that we get proper training as classified staff. We need to have those days in October where we are thought of as first responders, people that need to know how to respond to calls, talking to parents that are angry. I can't just tell them to smile, take it. We need them to understand and have good community outreach techniques and skills. So, please on October 13th, make sure they have that. That's our classified training day. I'd

019appreciate it. Our next public comment is Joyce Sot. Please unmute yourself. Hi, my name is Joyce. I'm a community school me man manager with Bay Area Community Resources. We are now staffing coordinators in 20 of West Contracasta school sites. I would like to make a pitch again for the district to hold the community school grant and the work as a priority. It is a strategy that if implemented to Fidelity can help to transform our schools. We as an agency, a lead agency are working with West County side by side with admin um and all members of staff, families, and students. We share responsibility and accountability with you. Um ways that we can work better and have a stronger partnership and uh implement with more fidelity is currently the processes around community school work in the

020district are confusing and slow. Second, um, one of the a enabling conditions that is foundational for community school success is shared understanding. We invite board members and and district cabinet to meet with us or this the support collaborative, learn more so that we can um implement this together and with fidelity. Thank you. Our next public comment is Sky Nelson. Good evening, board members. The WCC Community Building Group continues to expand its efforts to connect families, educators, students, and community members around the most important issues facing our schools. Our primary focus this fall is organizing a broad coalition to ensure the community is informed and involved on many issues, including the teacher contract negotiations in the upcoming countywide vote on Measure T renewal. We're currently designing a series of structured town halls across the district for

021this fall. These events will serve as opportunities for open conversation, questions, and mutual learning about school funding, community priorities, and how Measure T impacts our students. Importantly, our group remains nonpartisan and focused on trust building and information sharing, not campaigning. Through grassroots outreach and deep listening, deep listening, we aim to support an informed elector electorate and ensure that decision makers have a clear sense of what matters most to families. We want to make sure we know what what matters most to families. We've already begun identifying key community partners and locations and we look forward to working with board members and staff to ensure these town halls are inclusive and impactful. We want to reach all the corners of the of the district equally with with spots in in the different um zones and um make

022sure that we are listening carefully to the needs of the community rather than telling them what what we think they should do. Thank you for your continued support in fostering open dialogue and strengthening the connection between the district and the wider community. That concludes public comment. Okay. Thank you so much. We are moving now to B8 standing reports. Are there any standing reports this evening? >> Yes. Mr. Don Gossny for CBOC. It's deja vu all over again. I'm back. If you've driven by the STE can or elementary or Kennedy high schools, you might notice something's changed. At STEG, the nearly the 15 nearly new portables have been smashed to smitherines and hauled off to a landfill in Vakavville. And at Kennedy High, the 450 foot long two-story front building has vanished as well. And then

023there's the old arts building, the 500 building, which has also vanished. There's nothing left of both except some a little bit of dirt. By the way, that arts building was not part of the original JFK campus. It was a hold over from Granada Junior High. Surprisingly, Granada was opened in 1959, so it was only 7 years old when it was mostly demolished for the newer Kennedy High. Go figure. At STE, they've begun the abatement of the leadbased paint and the asbestous. Abating these toxic parts of the campus in advance is a smart move. There would be virtually no way to demolish the existing buildings without the leadbased paint and asbestous that was still is still there. The entire campus would have to be encapsulated in a big ziplockc bag and every worker would have to

024wear the Tyveck suits, rubber gloves, booties, and a face mask from start to finish. Plus, dumping all that contaminated debris in a hazardous waste repository like in Kettleman City or Utah would bankrupt the district. I can go on, but suffices to say that this this plan is a smart plan. I've tried taking photos and videos of the demolition, but not only for the tens of thousands of alums that are really interested, but also for the archives. Of course, they're doing everything they can to keep me away, but I'm on public streets and sidewalks, so I should be good to go. As I've mentioned many times, the primary focus of the CBOC is to review the financial reports of the bond program. We can only do that though when these reports are actually made available to

025the CBOC and the public. It's not that as if the the facilities team is purposely keeping these from us. But the end result is that we hold our meetings and that part of the agenda packet where those reports should be. It's empty without divulging the details explaining the lack of these reports. Verifiably accurate financial reports are not available to us before the agenda packet is submitted. And I appreciate Melissa Payne from ensuring that we only get accurate reports. At our last meeting, Melissa Payne handed out the reports for the past two months. But because neither the CBOC nor the public were able to review them with a scrutiny they deserve before they would come up in the meeting as CBOC chair I would not allow a formal discussion on the record. We did allow Miss

026Payne to present the data and if questions arose well she responded. I amended the agenda packet just a couple of days ago to include these reports plus an explanation so if anyone looks for them later they will at least be available. I appreciate the efforts Miss Payne put in to provide these to us with the two new CBOCers. It'll be will be approved tonight. God hoping. We are the only one shy member to fill our full compliment. We have an excellent applicant in the queue, but there seems to be a problem at the district end clarifying her employment. Also, we're not allowed to develop into into personnel matters, but I hope the district can work this out quickly because we need her. Because we have so many new CBOCers, training is key. I'm trying to

027set up presentations, training, and discussions so we can all be better informed about several key issues, which include an explanation about the $77 million 2005 Measure J bond and what it will take to allow the district to actually sell those bonds. An explanation about the bond program's bidding process with an emphasis on understanding the differences between design bid, design bid, build, and lease lease back. So we can we can weigh in if necessary on the value to the taxpayers about whichever designed model the board has employed a tutorial about the abatement and of the leadbased paint and asbestous process. What is required? How does this impact the bond projects? We'll also initiate training on work on basic workplace safety uh expectations. When this has been brought up in the past, it's been ignored with the

028comment that the contractors are insured. What non- construction PE types seem to be ignorant about is that an employee cannot sue their employee employer when they get injured. There's workman's comp insurance, but that was never designed to protect the worker. It was designed to protect the employer. And where and there's a set schedule for compensation. Lose a finger, get X dollars. Lose an eye, get Y dollars. Get killed on the job, get pocket lit. What happens in is that the injured employee sues the client, the deep pockets. And in this case, it's the district. Having spent 55 years in very heavy construction, the courts have deemed me an expert on industrial safety. I've witnessed scores of safety violations on our bond projects as well as in our classrooms. And the district wants to ignore these

029warnings just as they ignored the warnings I gave it about STE for seven years. If the district gets sued from an employee on one of our projects, it affects us all, but in particular the bond program. And that's yet another reason why there's an independent oversight of the bond program. As always, I close my report inviting everyone to attend our next CBO seating c meeting next Monday, August 11th, at 6:15 p.m. The meetings are held at 1400 Marina Way South here in Richmond. And just a reminder that effective with our October meeting, our meetings will transition from the second Monday to the third Monday of the month. Thank you. >> Our next standing report is Francis Gortiz for UTR. Good evening. Can you hear me? >> Yes, we can hear you. >> Thank you. Good

030evening, President Breckler, trustees, and Superintendent Cotton. Tonight, I come to share what should alarm all of us who care about public education in West Contraosta. Our educators will be starting the school year without a contract. After seven months of bargaining, seven months of presenting clear student centered proposals, past WCCUSD leadership failed to meet this moment with urgency, respect, or any credible vision. Educators will begin this year on 2023 2024 wages while paying some of the highest health care costs in the region. And they are doing this in a district that currently has over a 100 vacancies. This is the failed crisis of leadership, not a crisis of capacity. While our educators are stretched thin, district budget shows no hesitation in overspending on consultants and contractor budget by 42 million. Yet, when we propose raising wages

031or improving class sizes, we're told the cupboard is bare. That's not a plan. That's a political choice. And our students are paying the price. This isn't just about numbers. It's about what kind of district we want to be. When our counselors don't have safe workspaces, when our classes are overloaded, and when our special education students go without the supports they are legally entitled to. That's not stability. That is failure by design. We are bargaining with the district on the first day of school to highlight the urgency to settle a just contract. That is not normal. It's also not healthy. But the professionals who show up every day to educate, inspire, and stabilize our school communities are prepared to advocate for the schools our students deserve on day one. Families and community organizations have signed on

032to support our campaign, standing with us for fully staffed schools, for closing the educator wage gap, and for creating schools where students, especially our most vulnerable, can thrive. The campaign isn't just about UTR. It includes the voices of parents, students, and community leaders across West County who are saying enough delay, enough disrespect. We are not asking for the moon. We are asking for the basic conditions to attract and retain the educators that our students deserve. We invite you once again to take action. Bring forward proposals that solve problems, not extend them. Show the community you're ready to lead and not stall. Thank you. That concludes um standing reports. >> Thank you. We're now up to B9, agenda review and adoption. Do any board members have anything they want to move? Nothing. Okay. So, we'll accept

033the agenda as printed. Great. Okay. Moving on to C. Consent items. I do have a public comment on C13. Do you want to call Mr. Gazny up to make his public comment on C13? >> Mr. Don Gosny, >> thank you very much. Yeah, I'm not really challenging what's on the agenda so much is just pointing out that even people like myself has been with a bond program now since 1998. And I like to think of myself as a pretty reasonably smart kind of guy. I can't for the life of me figure out what lease lease back actually is. I read it read it read read it and I still can't figure out exactly why we would turn over our property to somebody else and then lease it back to them to turn over our control

034of the project to somebody else. We get as taxpayers get to pay for this for the next 40 years. You as elected officials get to oversee it. Well, at least that's on paper. you do, but not really because it doesn't really belong to us anymore. I said, it just doesn't make any sense and I can't get anybody to really explain it to me. And I'm betting a bunch of you up there can't really explain it to me either. I put this I'm trying to put this on our agenda packet for Monday night CBOC meeting so that we can get a better explanation than we're going to get right here. But it's just you got to do a better job of explaining all this to us. I didn't even like the the previous transition from design

035build Okay, we're back to consent. Does anybody want to pull anything from consent? >> President, could we pull C13 just so we can get an explanation from staff at that point? >> Great. Hold on one second. C13. Okay. Okay. Anything else? Okay. So, we'll um move consent with C13 pulled for a discussion at the end. Okay. We're up to D. Superintendent communication. Superintendent Cotton. All you. >> Thank you. >> And waiting for it to come up. maybe to start from the first page. Thank you. Uh hello. This is my second uh superintendent report. very excited to um speak with you and share what we've been up to for the last month since our last uh superintendent, I'm sorry, our last board meeting. Uh I do want to say, and I didn't include a slide here,

036that I thoroughly enjoyed National Night Out in my city of San Pablo. Uh had a chance to um I was not successful, but I tried really hard to dunk our police chief in the dunk tape. So I tried uh Chief Babar, he was he said, "You don't have to do this, Miss Cotton. I said, "I do. I do." And so had a good time there. Um had a chance to talk with one of our city council officials as well, uh Patricia Pon. Next slide. Let's see if this works. As we heard Mr. Gazny talking about uh the demolition, you can see it. Look at that. new beginnings at Kennedy, at STE, and soon to be Richmond High. So, just excited about the work that we're doing. Thank you to um uh Miss Payne and and

037her team for seeing this work through. Thank you very much. Next slide, please. I do want to say I continued uh visiting our summer school sites and got to be at our last day of Freedom School at Nstrom Elementary School. Uh we had a visitor there that day. Our state superintendent of public instruction came by to see and learn more about what was happening uh at the school. And so we had a wonderful visit. Um glad that he was there. appreciate the support from our ed fund um to build both those program to continue to build up those programs both at Nestrom as well as a cohort at Easter Hill Methodist Church in Richmond near Kennedy. Excellent job. Next slide, please. I want to say congratulations and can can I get everybody in this room

038to clap your hands for our graduates, our summer graduates? It was a small but mighty group. I'm so proud of those young people who have persevered. They have seen their their path through and they are getting ready for life and career and college and all the things. So just so excited for those students and glad to be able to be in that space with our board members, with our staff, just to cheer on uh our students. It was a beautiful celebration of students across the district who graduated this summer. Next slide, please. I don't know if you can see it. It was boots on the ground. 200 of us uh were at leadership advance on Monday and Tuesday. And while it looks like we're having fun, and we did, we also were working really hard.

039Um what I reminded folks is that there is joy in the hard work that we do every day. Um so we all while we uh danced and laughed and talked and shared, we also learned and and um considered new ideas. We were um very fortunate to have our elementary principles to have a presentation from um our co-iteracy directors for the California Department of Education. Um they came to talk to us about the newly adopted literacy content blocks. amazing work that's happening, researchbased work that we want to see brought here into West Contraosta and had a chance to really engage our elementary principles about those foundational skills that we need to to build um for our young people around literacy. Um but excellent day, excellent time together. We also talked about conditions of learning both with

040our elementary and our secondary uh leaders and it was a day actually not just for our site principles but also for uh managers and leaders across the district. And so all of us got a chance to come together and really talk about what does it mean when I say that we are one or when we say we are one um across this district. And so it was a beautiful, beautiful two days. Looking forward to continued work. On that uh slide, I do want to share just a quote from one of our our um leaders. A person said, "Today was by far the best example I've seen of a leader redirecting the conversation to focus on equity, on the equity priority and the urgency and not let the conversation derail or go off center. Keeping the

041focus on student need rather than satisfying adults. Thank you for modeling a bold, focused, and informed leadership that is stepping in with both feet to the deep work we need. I appreciate that. That was a beautiful statement um and a reflection from that day and I I really appreciate that. But it's not just my work. It's our leadership together. It's our work together for our students. Next slide, please. Staffing updates. There's a few updates to share. Now, in in June, at the end of June, June 30th, we talked about having 123 vacancies. Our vacancies are down to 71. Still not still not where they need to be, but we are closing that gap and we are ensuring that we have educators, our classrooms are filled on day one and that is the work that we

042continue to do. We have reduced our vacancy numbers and we will continue to do that. Um some of the ways that we plan to do that is continuing we're continuously holding interviews, not continuing to but it is a continuous process. Um, we're increasing our social media campaigns. We are informing our universities of open positions and looking for um candidates who are are ready to come in and serve in our classrooms. Um, we're coordinating with um our substitutes. Again, uh years ago, I found that our our one of our biggest pools of folks coming into the profession were coming from our subpools. those folks who were kind of dipping a toe into teaching um that were trying to decide is that something that we that they want to do started to learn how to do that

043and we were so so excited for to find that pathway. Um also supporting and focusing on visiting local communities, faith based fa faithbased organizations. Um, if you know of a young person, a recent college graduate who is looking and trying to figure out what do I do next? Come teach. Come work in the classroom. For many um, and many of our young people are very focused around social justice. For me, education has been my my activism my whole life. And so that is how I make a difference in my community. That's how I serve. And I encourage other young people to consider that. Not other, I'm not young person anymore, but young people to consider that. Thank you. Next slide, please. Next slide. Oh, thank you. Oh, I'm looking at my my Sorry, I'll keep

044up. Going back one. Um we are on the road to success and just want to let you know that um we are transitioning to a website a new website. Um uh Mr. Gausnney kind of raised that point. There are some hiccups through this process and we want to acknowledge that but our new design is userfriendly. Uh we are aligning with Google right now. So oftentimes folks don't hop on to our website to look for something. they hop on to Google and search for something on West Contraosta's site. We are still dealing with some of those hiccups as we move through the process. Work with us. I encourage folks started our page. We have a very navigable page um that you can really access. So please um engage that that website. We also have new school

045websites which are really exciting as well. Um, every one of our schools has a new site, a new platform to share information with their families. Okay, now next site. And one more. One more. Excellent. Thank you. Oh, wait. Back. Sorry, we're delayed. I'm I'm watching Rosa over there and Rosa's trying to like, what do you want me to do, Cheryl? So, let's keep keep it going. So, one more blue screen. That one. School resumes on Tuesday, August 19th. Please remember that the first day of school is a minimum day. So, make your arrangements um for pickup drop off. But we are excited that school is beginning on August 19th. We are kicking off our back to school campaign encouraging families to come come to school, be ready for school, feel safe at school, and we

046want our children there. We are working to make sure that our families and our children are safe on our school campuses. Um, next slide, please. Thank you. Our back to school attendance campaign. And I cannot see that. And that's not on my screen. I don't know what happened, but it's not there. Um. Oh, thank you. These eyes aren't working the same. Thank you. Thank you. here. Do you move this? >> Yeah, let me do this one. I'll touch the screen. >> I apologize everyone. For our back to school attendance campaign, please know when schools when students miss school, they're not just impacting their learning, which is huge, they're also impacting the resources that they receive from our attendance, uh our average daily attendance. So, please make sure that students are coming to school every day.

047Please share. Our campaign is already in motion. We have our student services team. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Nelson. I appreciate that. She knows her. She knows him. Yes. And I know Elserto is doing great. We've got things to talk about. um our campaign is already in motion and so we're very excited to be proactive around um outreach for student engagement. We're reaching out to families of students who maybe were not having the best time getting to school last year, reaching out right now through the summer to make sure they're ready to come on back to school on August 19th. And then also we are doing um help us reach at least at least at minimum 95% attendance across our state. We were going to start our year with attendance month in action in September.

048Thank you. Next slide. And so how to prepare for the start of the school the new school year? Remember to complete your emergency cards. We already know that. Take care of your tablets. We already know that. Don't forget your lanyards. We know those things as well. Um, we're also looking to access the annual forms in the parent portal for Powers School. That is very important for us. That is how we communicate. That's where all of our resources will lie. Um, download Parent Square on your desktop or via the app. um download your powers school on your desktop or via the app and then remember visitors must sign in in the front office. We are being very mindful, very diligent about how we are ma keeping our our our campuses safe. >> It's it's off on

049this one on here. Okay, I'm good. Thank you, Louise. I appreciate you. Um, again, we need one point of entry for all of our school sites. I see Mr. Booker, our our safety person, is nodding his head, looking proud, cuz I said it. We have one point of I was listening. We did a a fullon uh presentation and training for our administrators around both our immigration policy and our safety policy. And so making sure that our camp our campuses are safe places for our children, safe places for families to be. Next slide, please. And I just sent a message to Mr. Gazny. Now I I had it on my calendar August 11th for our next CBOC meeting, but has something changed? I heard third Monday of the month in October. Excellent. So, August 11th, we

050are still uh moving forward. Please consider joining our citizens bond um oversight committee. Understand where your tax taxpaying dollars go and be part of creating those spaces where children can learn and grow. Next slide. I want to take a moment to welcome our elementary principles. Um, we have a number of new principles. My slides are a little bit different. Okay, I do want to welcome our new principles. You have the screen that says everyone, all of our elementary folks, but welcoming our new principles. Welcoming Denita Robbins to Collins Elementary School, Alberto Solo Soloano to Coronado, Nicholas Ray to Murphy. We have Dr. Deshawn Given at Verie Elementary School. Jason Laauo is our new principal at Betty Reed Saskkins Middle School. Amomar Nalik is our new principal at Penol Middle School. Candace Koffield is our new

051principal at Deansza High School. And we have just uh approved a new principal, Stacy Wayne, for Elserto High School. So, just want to welcome our new principles. Thank you. Next slide, please. And I what I'm thinking is we are not aligned right now. >> I think we're going to switch the presentation real quick. >> Thank you. >> You could hold on just one minute. >> Thank you. You know those moments when you realize that you're not crazy? I'm not crazy. I'm so excited. I was looking at these going, they're not the same. Thank you. Almost there. There we go. That's the screen I've been looking at this whole time. Can you go back or forward? Let's see. Go forward one. We just talked about our new principles. Forward one more. Thank you. And we also

052have new vice principles, assistant principles and IS's and so excited that instructional specialists so excited that they are joining the team as well. We have Katherine Davis at Mirror Vista. We have Sarah Napoleon at Betty Reed Saskins Middle School. Emily Evans at King Elementary School. Richard Sber at Helms Middle School. Kenneth Cohen at Hercules High School. Endura Kumar at Kennedy High School. Kiara Scott at Lincoln Elementary School, Adrienne Jean-Pierre at Penol Valley High School, Ronald Little and Karina Seraniano Pon at Deansza High School, Amber Lee and Alicia Oscaraga at Greenwood Academy. So, please hand clap to welcome our new assistant principles, vice principles, and instructional specialists. Next slide. We've talked about our back to school attendance campaign. Next slide. One more. We did not talk about back to school night. Mark your calendars. Elementary back

053to school night is September 11th. Middle school back to school night is September 25th. And our high school back to school night is October 2nd. Please mark your calendars. We expect all parents to be out to understand and know what's happening in our schools. Next slide, please. We also want to encourage families to enroll in preschool today. You don't have to wait until the 19th. You can enroll right now. Come on and enroll our little learners, our penos apprenises. Um we have they have great futures for our three, four, and five year olds. Please enroll in preschool today and get involved. Join a committee. Be part of this conver this conversation. be part of this district. We have our African-American parent advisory committee, our African-American site advisory committee, our district local control accountability plan, the

054DLCAP committee, our multilingual district advisory committee or MDAC, the community advisory committee for special education, our CAC, our dual language parent advisory committee, our DLI pack, as well as our citizen bonds oversight committee, our CBOC, and our 7-Eleven committee. There are lots of ways to get involved and engaged here in West Contraosta and we encourage you to do so. Next slide. I want to take a moment to go over my 100 day plan. Um, so excited to be here and want to talk through where we're going over the next 100 days. I've had a number of people say, "What's your plan, Miss Cotton? Superintendent Cotton, what are you doing? What's your vision?" Well, how would I have a vision if I haven't been in this classroom yet? I need to get into my schools. I

055need to talk to educators and parents and students and principles. I need to be in this space and understand what our needs are. Thank you. Next slide. So over the next 100 days, days 1 through day 30, and I'm just going to take some liberties. I hope the board is okay with that. I'm going to claim my first day was July 28th. We had a rolling start of through the summer. I had some commitments, but a rolling start starting July 28th. So starting at the beginning of this month, we are rolling. Day 1 through 30 is really about establishing transparency, centering our our interest holder voice. Um, just so that you're aware, I don't use the term stakeholder. Um, as I was my last position in working with um, our indigenous communities, a stakeholder carries

056a connotation that is not appreciated in some communities. And so I I tend to say interest holder. So as you hear that, you understand what I'm saying and why. Um, day 31 through 100, we're focusing on building internal coherence and collective ownership. and day 100 and beyond uh focusing on our systemic equity and student centered transformation. Next slide please. So phase one starting with launching a listening and learning tour. I I you know I did do some listening in since I've I've been in and around the district since June, but really engaging with teachers and classified staff, students, our site leaders, families, our union leaders, as well as our community leaders. Um so really engaging there, holding listening town halls in every trustee area is my goal this first 30 days. And when I get

057back to sometime in September sharing out what we've learned, I intend to be visible in schools and in classrooms. And that's really the place that brings me the most joy anyway. So I don't know if I'm cheating or not, but I'll be in the place that I love in classrooms, in schools. Um I plan to visit at least three to five schools per week. Um hosting coffee with the I don't drink coffee, I drink tea, but you know, tea with the superintendent. Not everybody will come. Coffee with the superintendent. I think I get more folks. So, coffee with the superintendent as well as attending our student centered events, focusing on attendance advocacy. And you've talked I've shared with you a little bit about our attendance campaign. Um, but also lifting up a attendance task force

058and working with community folks to figure out what is working, what are our root cause analysis for why we have our chronic absenteeism issue and what can we do to address it. um also focusing on our fiscal transparency and stabilization and so beginning an immediate review um through FickMat. Fickmat has a self assessment that we will be starting immediately as well as connecting with the county office of education's business office um Daniela Paradesis who actually was um actually worked here in our fiscal services probably eight or nine years ago before I left. Um but being able to connect with the county office who does provide resources and support and approves our budget um and our LCAP, those are the folks that we want to connect with immediately. And again, working on being more transparent um

059and coming with a 90-day stabilization roadmap or plan for the board and for the community. And then finally, focusing on our union and workforce relations. My focus has been around getting to know our board members. my board members that I'm working with, uh, getting to know my cabinet, our leaders within our district, but then also getting to to know and have conversations with our union leaders. And I have appreciated every one of those conversations just to help guide where we're going. So, we've started those conversations, but we'll continue that work. And also looking forward to bringing back our solutions team and our joint union management group, which is really exciting for me. Next slide, please. Phase two going into day 31 and to 100. Uh looking at a community communication plan, a staffing um strategic

060staffing and retention plan as well as building our data for continuous improvement and by then we also will have our data that has been released from the state. So looking forward to really engaging in that conversation with our community. Also building some instruction, some curriculum instruction coherence. We have lots of things, lots of good things going on, lots of maybe not as effective things going on. And so figuring out what's working and what's not and getting us working on the same page. Remember we are one. And then finally our leadership development. So conducting principal onetoone listening um series and really working with our leaders. We've had conversations with uh WCCA around how do we support our leaders and so continuing that work and that conversation. Next slide. Thank you. And then phase three day 101

061and beyond. There's no easy way to get through this 100 plan 100 day plan but to take it one day at a time right so we get to 101 and we're looking at revising revisiting and revising our strategic plan at that point we'll have enough information all those conversations all those that data gathering then we can really engage in conversations about where are we going and what is our vision and that's our direction and then also just lifting up central office we are a service hub we are here to support and serve everything that happens in our classrooms, what happens with students. We each and every one of us and we talked about that over the last two days with our district leaders. It's been quite exciting. But from fiscal services to M, what is

062how does the work that I do impact our young people? So that is the work that we are moving towards. Next slide, please. Any questions? Thank you, President Reckler. Thank you, uh, Superintendent Cotton. Uh, great report. Um, I have a couple questions about your 100 day plan. >> Hopefully, can you hear me fine? >> Kind of, but I'm listening. I'm just kidding. >> Sorry, I'll talk. I lost my voice, but I'll talk louder. Um, and the second slide of your 100 day plan, the blue, uh, the second phase. >> Yes. Um, you talk about curriculum instruction coherence. What is the what does standardized and vertically aligned core curriculum look like? A standardized vertically aligned core curriculum look like. We talked about that actually um particularly focusing around literacy. Let me give you that as an

063example. It looks like understanding what our standards are. It looks like taking those standards, aligning them to best practices and solid pedigogy to support students in their learning. And then it looks like assessing and understanding how students are engaging in that information that they're getting and those experiences that they're getting. And then making sure that we're making smart choices about our next step. Is this is this work? Is this working? Is this not working? How are we aligning our work to uh resource-based um evidence-based strategies and making sure that our students are getting the very best that they can starting at preK, starting with our learning foundation, starting at TK, uh with our literacy content blocks and really looking at what is what's making sense here and making some some honest assessments of what we

064think we're doing. often times educators will do what we do because we've always done it that way and that doesn't work. It doesn't work. We have um we are smarter than we were 30 years ago. We have more tools and more resources than we did 20 years ago. We are different educators and we need to understand that. It doesn't mean that the basics aren't the basics, but it means that we should be using the best pedigogy and the best tools that we possibly can. Did that answer your question? >> Yes, thank you. Um, and then the listening town halls, >> I'm sorry. >> You're fine. Uh, thank you. The listening town halls, do we have dates for those already? >> We have got dates on the calendar for our principal one to ones. We are

065working on the listening town halls and I do want to work with each of the trustees around finding an appropriate date um and building those those connections. Who should we how do we reach out within your district and within your areas and who should we be talking to? >> Okay, thank you. Uh and then the phase one slide when it comes to the union relations, you talk about acknowledging wage wage concerns. Uh what would that look like? acknowledging wage concerns. >> It's an honest conversation about our budget. I think that there are some disconnects when we talk about what we have available for salaries, what we have available for uh benefits, what we have available to support our educators, our classified staff. Um, and really being honest about what's there. I think that there are

066some misconceptions that with some conversation I think we can address that. I know that we are in a we're in a trying time right now and I acknowledge that there's a lot of uncertainty at this moment around our long-term um federal funding. Um there, you know, from the governor's budget, there's some concerns about our short-term state funding. Um, and so making sure that what we have and really understanding our budget, understanding what is restricted and unrestricted, what we can use for salaries and what can't be used for salaries. Um, and really everyone in the community really understanding what we've got and no secrets, no there's there never have been, but really being clear about what we have and being understanding the challenges that it faces that that families face. We understand that as well. Um

067but also understanding that there are lots of things that I think about uh recruitment and retention of of educators, those teachers who stay in the profession. It's wages. It's also working conditions. It's also leadership. It's it's a a number of things that go into why people stay in the profession and why people uh grow in the profession. and being sure that we're offering opportunities for growth both, you know, through salary and we're trying to figure that out, but also through um, you know, national board certification, becoming a better educator, having opportunities for leadership, for teacher leadership, having opportunities for growth, for classified employees to become certificated employees, to finish their BAS and get teaching credentials and be able to earn to to earn more Those opportunities I think are are really important. >> Thank you.

068That was my last question. >> Anybody else? >> Yes. >> What do you need from us? So, what would be the two or three things that you would need from the board to ensure that your vision of the first 100 days and beyond is successful? I I need your vision. I need collectively what you see. Those not five, not 10, not 20, but those three things that are core, three things. The three requires some compromise across five people, right? But it also requires us to really get focused on what matters and what we believe can move kids. So that's what I mean. >> My second question is your coffee or tea with the superintendent. Are those going to be hybrid or are those going to be all Zoom? What does that look like or have

069we thought about what that's going to look like? So I'm talking about all these new things that we can do and 20 years ago, 30 years. I'm I'm old school. So, yeah, I hadn't I had really hadn't considered it. Um I think those conversations I would like to have with our um our site leaders and our educators and our our staff at our schools what they believe would work best and hearing from our parents what works best. I would like to say that for a higher parent engagement and attendance, having something hybrid always works and having something after work hours. So maybe not, you know, coffee and tea in the morning, but something in the afternoon or evening. >> Thank you very much. I appreciate that. Thank you. Any other questions? So maybe coffee, tea,

070water, candy bars, something that doesn't have to happen just in the morning. Got it. Any other questions or any other thoughts? Thank you for that. Thank you. I I see I see the parents in the room. Thank you. Yes. >> Okay. And with that, I think item D is done. Thank you very much. Thank you. >> Okay, moving on now to our action items. E, we are starting now E1, which is the voices material revision to charter to add an additional site. This is a decision hearing. So, we need to open up a public hearing. Hold on just one second. Okay. So, uh this will be a public decision hearing for a petition for material revision for voices collegebound languagemies to add an additional site to the charter school. I am opening the public hearing

071at 7:37. The initial public hearing took place on July 16th, 2025. The purpose of the initial public hearing was to consider the level of support for the petition by teachers and other employees of the district and parents. The purpose of this decision hearing is for the board to take action to either approve or deny the material resision. On May 27, 2025, Voices submitted a request for a material revision to its charter petition currently authorized by the West Contraosta Unified School District Board of Education. The proposed revision seeks to add an additional site to the charter school at 2354 Andrade Avenue, Richmond, California 94804, consistent with it code 47605A4. The charter school would also continue to operate its site at 201128th Street, Richmond, California. Under education code 47605A4, a charter school has received approval of its

072petition and proposes to expand operations to one or more additional sites or grade levels must request a material revision to its charter petition. The chartering authority must consider such revisions and open public meeting. If the additional locations or grade levels are approved pursuant to the standards described in section 47605 subdivision C, they constitute a material revision to the charter. Any material revision to a charter petition may only be made with the approval of the chartering authority and must be evaluated using the standards and criteria set forth in 47605. Under ED code 47605C, a chartering petition, including a material revision shall be granted if it meets all required elements, including being consistent with sound educational practice and demonstration demonstrating a likelihood of successful implementation. District staff has reviewed the proposed revision in accordance with ED code

07347605 and determined the request meets the legal standards for approval. So tonight we will have presentations. Uh the West Contra Costa Unified School District, do you have a presentation? Yes. Okay. And then Voices will make a presentation. Each presentation voices has no presentation. No. Okay. Then we will take questions. We will take public comment and then we will close the public hearing. So beginning uh Dr. Moses, would you like to take us through? Thank you. >> Thank you. Good evening, President Reckler, board of trustees, and superintendent Cotton. I'm proud to bring up to the podium Margarita Romo, a coordinator in the business services department. Margarita has a brief presentation to review the application and decision process for the material revision application. Um, Margarita, go ahead. Thank you, Dr. Moses. Good evening, President Reclar, Superintendent Cotton,

074board members, and members of the WCCCUSD community. My name is Margarita Romo, and I serve as a business services coordinator here in the district. Tonight, I'll be presenting the staff recommendation regarding the material revision request submitted by Voices to add a second school site. Oh, I apologize. It looks like the presentation's not up. Next slide, please. Thank you. As shared during the July 16th public hearing, this is a request for a material revision to add a new campus located on Andrade Avenue in Richmond. Voices submitted the request on May 27th and tonight's item is within the 90-day timeline for board action. Next slide, please. Okay, just as a reminder, education code outlines the requirements and criteria for a material revision. The board may approve or deny the request based on specific factors, including educational soundness,

075implementation capacity, and whether the petition serves the interests of the community. Only the board has the authority to approve or deny this request. District staff along with Lozano Smith and Edmetrics reviewed the proposed revision. Based on this review, we found the petition meets legal and procedural standards, the educational program is not unsound and demonstrates a strong likelihood of successful implementation. While there is a potential fiscal impact due to TKK enrollment, that concern alone does not warrant denial under EDC code. Additionally, we anticipate that Voices will return this school year with their charter renewal petition, which will provide another opportunity for the board to review the school's overall performance and long-term plans. Therefore, staff recommends approval of this material revision request based on ED code standards. This concludes my presentation. Thank you for your time. I'll

076now turn it over to the board for any questions. >> Thank you. Are there any questions from board members? Okay, I have I have a few, but I have them for voices. if that's if that's okay. Okay. So, good evening. Thank you for being here. Um, I was wondering if I could ask you, I had some time in the last presentation. you presented um a chart of your enrollment from the last meeting, which I'm sure you remember, and I'm wondering if you could go over some of the assumptions that went into um tracking out your enrollment. >> Hi. Hi. Good evening. >> So, >> yes. So the question was the LA at the last time you were here you gave us an enrollment graph of your enrollment and would you walk through some of the

077assumption of how you figured out what you think your enrollment is going to be? >> Yes. So what we did is we uh rolled over our enrollment year-over-year. That's how we came up with those projections. going to add >> and then how do you treat cohort stability? I don't know what else to call it. I call it cohort stability and it's when people start in kindergarten and they go through all the grades, you know, you end up with a, you know, if they start in K and you started with 50 kids and you ended up in in sixth grade with 25 kids, you've lost half of your kids in that cohort. How do you treat or what's your thoughts? How do you work with cohort stability? >> Do you want to help? >> Good evening.

078Yes. So in that particular projection, we just assumed a rollover of uh existing students um which is conservative for voices right now. uh what we've been experiencing the past couple of years is actually a little bit of growth from one year to the next in each of the grade levels. So conservatively speaking, what we did was a a a rollover of uh equivalent to the previous year. But when I look back at your historical data from the California Department of Education, I don't see you holding your students. So in 2019 2020, you had 57 grade 1 students, but as you tracked all the way through to 24 25, that same cohort group is now 39. So it seems to me like you're not retaining your students that enter. Is that correct? >> That that was

079true a couple years ago. As of um as of the last two years, we are retaining the grade level cohorts and increasing a little bit in some of them. So yes, historically um uh right around COVID and postcoid we did decline in enrollment uh like many other places. Um but for the last couple of years that's actually started to shift and that and th that decrease that was historical is actually in the the rollover right now. So those smaller class sizes are just being rolled over as smaller class sizes. So I do see a slight improvement in your cohort retention. So in your out years in some years you were at 55% you lost 55% of your students. In the last few years, I do see minus 80. Last year, it's just on a very

080small base. It's just your TK to to K. Looks like 233% increase. You went from 19 students to 42 students. Um, what is your projection looking for like for 2526? How many students do you have enrolled as of today for 2526? >> 427. Okay. So you're ahead of your projection that you submitted. >> Yes. >> It was supposed to be 421. So you're at 427. Okay. Okay. Next is I want to talk about your expenses. So on this sheet material revision that you gave us, you say that you have rent of $170,000. Is it rent or is it a mortgage payment? >> That's a lease. It's a rent. >> It's a lease. >> Yes. >> But do you own the building? >> Uh the LLC, which is a part of our CMO, owns the building.

081>> So the CMO, the voices, the the the voices that has the different voices. There's one here. There's one South Bay. The So, your your your home office bought the building. Is that >> Yeah. Yes, that's correct. >> Okay. And so, and they're charging you rent of 170,000. >> Correct. >> Okay. And what's the difference between the rent now in these out years and the rent that you're paying now? Because I can't see it in your multi-year projection. the >> I don't have it in front of me, but um the rent for the outy years, >> well, the rent that you're paying now, so you bought a building or somebody bought a building for you. Did your rent increase, decrease? Uh >> well, what you'll see on the overall multi-year projection, you'll see a rent

082increase of $170,000. That's accounting for the new lease. >> Well, what was it before? So, what is it? What was it? 23 to 24. What was your occupancy cost? >> So, the only in uh the only rent that you would see was from the from our current building right now. Um and so from that cost, you would see the 170,000 increase um starting this coming school year or this school year and in in the out years. What did you pay last year? >> Was it less than 170,000? >> Can you please repeat that? >> What did you pay last year? Was it less than $170,000? >> It was 170,000 less. Correct. >> So is zero. Our >> current lease is around 74,000 a month. >> About 74. >> Yeah, I think about >> our current

083lease is about $74,000 per month. >> So it went up $100,000. correct with the new site, but the new site is going to be refunded because we're taking advantage of the AB740. And so that's going to refund back about this year will refund back about 70% of that of the um of the $170,000. >> Okay. Um, so this school district, are they financially is does their MP does their multi-year projection roll in a way that's uh acceptable to the WCCUSD, Miss Romo or Dr. Moses? >> Hello. Um, we reviewed uh their multi-year projection as part of uh their adopted budget that was due to our office on July 1st. Um, and we passed it along to the county. Um, we didn't know anything uh major of concern. >> And do we normally do you get

084enrollment with that too? I mean, do you I mean, it's just not possible to retain all your students like this. I mean, this is like a perfect grid that doesn't work this way anywhere. >> The the grid that you're looking at, is that from the presentation from the initial public hearing? >> Yeah. >> And the multi-year projection that you're looking at, is that also from the presentation? >> Yeah, I'm looking at both. I asked for the my but then I got the updated budget and financial. So, are your I just want to make sure I answer the question correctly. Um, are your questions regarding the MYP on the on the slide from the public hearing? >> Uh, well, yeah, it's actually for both because if this enrollment projection is inaccurate, then it'll eventually roll into,

085>> you know, the the even though you get paid on attendance, the more kids you have, you know, it's helpful for your overhead. then you know I don't have to tell you right >> um you know it's good so if this is incorrect >> then this is incorrect and are they is it are they fiscally sound to take on a bigger lease agreement >> so um I had similar questions >> and um I spoke with uh COO MTA about this Um the my on their presentation from the public hearing was a simple projection that was not part of um the packet that we reviewed as the district. It was used simply to evaluate uh the investment of a new building. So it had very simple enrollment projections in that estimate. Um, we did review their

086total enrollment which lines up to the total enrollment on their initial public hearing slide. And that enrollment um was used to um prepare the adopted 2526 budget. So that's going to feed into the LCFF calculator and the revenue that's reported in their MYP. >> Okay. And so both UWCCUSD and Contraosta County Office of Education found that to be acceptable. I cannot speak for the county, but in my review, the my submitted to us as part of the packet, not the one in this presentation, that was reviewed and deemed to be acceptable. >> Okay. Thank you. Um, finally, back I think to Miss Romo, the charter comes back when, uh, for a renewal. It expires? Is it June 30th, 2026? >> Correct. >> Okay. So then in this coming year sometime the petition will come back.

087Great. >> Okay. To voices, do you intend on submitting a petition with more than 54 students? >> No, we do not. >> Okay. Thank you. Right. That's all the questions I have. Anybody else? >> Go ahead. Trusty Smiths. Last time I asked you about the demographics of invoices and then you sent a um you sent the demographics. Is it are they current numbers that I'm looking at or are they were they not current numbers? I know school has are getting ready to start. So maybe your enrollment has increased but the numbers that you sent me for were those accurate numbers of 343 students. >> Those are the official numbers from data quest. They're one year behind. >> They're one year behind. Right. So, if I'm just looking at the 2425 school year and the 343

088students that you had, you had a total of three black students. You had a total of two Asian students and two Filipino students, one white student, and two students who did not respond. Is that accurate? >> That is accurate for for the previous year. Yes. And then this current year that you know your enrollment, you know your demographics for the 25 26 years. Are those numbers around the same? Are they increasing? What is the demographics going to be basically the same? What what is your 25 26 demographic numbers looking at? >> I do not have the exact number. Good evening. Sorry. Good evening. I do not have the exact number but but the projections are that they are increasing due to additional enrollment and additional recruitment that we have done outside >> increasing to hitting

089double digits in these groups or increasing by one student two students what's the increase look like do you have a an estimate of what the increase will look like >> would you know >> a small increase I mean we we are hoping about um I did. Are you asking about a specific demographic because you you label >> demographics? Every demographic that I just spoke about except for our Hispanic or Latino is singledigit numbers. The Hispanic and Latino population at Voices is 333 according to last year, the 2425 school year. So, if we're looking at the 2526 school year and you're saying that there's slight increases, I'm wondering are those slight increases going to be in these subgroups of African-American, Asian, Filipino, white, and even I don't the non-respondents, but African-American, Asian, and Filipino and white.

090>> Yes, they are those those are the numbers and the targeted groups that we are trying to enroll and increase. So, yes, we do have a demographic that shows an increase. >> Could you send those numbers to the board, please? >> Absolutely. Absolutely. >> Thank you. I'm complete. >> Anybody else have any questions? >> Okay, we'll go to public comment. Is there any public comment on this item? >> Yes, we have public comment. And can I ask you how many? Is there like a bunch of them? We have nine. Okay. Okay. So, when we get nine people to line up and have um Nyla Rodriguez, Anna Suo, Dvagani Deleon, I Rodriguez, Cecilia Casada, Claudia Gil, Tatiana Cafaro, Lena Carlson, Patricia, Miss L. So if you if your name was called, would you please line up

091in the middle there for public comment? President Reckler, some of them will need translation. >> Yeah, it's our first person. >> You got it. [Music] and voices. Hello, my name is Sophia. I am representing the school Voices WCC from the fourth grade class. Uh I want to say that our school is very good. We they have taught all of our students a lot and they are very supportive. Um and I am very proud of how far they have gone and they have taught a lot to us how and they have taught us our values activism scholarship in catch and cep. So I am here to say that I think it would be a good idea to open another building for our school. Kindergarten. Voices. Fundamental. H good evening board good evening board members and everyone

092here and thank you for the opportunity to speak. My name is Tatiana Cafaro and I'm part of the special education department at Voices West Contraosta. At our school we believe in soaring into excellence not just for some students but for all. Excellence thrives in environments of possibility and with the recent acquisition of our second building this last summer, we see tremend that we see tremendous potential to expand what's already working. If I may begin personally, for me, had had a school like this existed when I was a child, I know I would have soared into excellence sooner. a space where language, culture, and identity are not just accepted, but celebrated. We are one of the very few bilingual schools in the area, and it's what makes us essential. The demand we're [Applause] Hola. Voices. Gracias.

093This is Claudia Hill. person. Good evening, honorable members of the school board. Thank you for the opportunity to speak today. I am here to express my strong support for the proposal to allow our school to operate in a second building. Um, with our growing student population and increase demand, increasing demand for classroom space, the initiative would significantly ease overcrowding and enhance the learning environment. This is not just about physical space. is about creating an environment where our students can fully engage and grow without the limitations of overcrowded classrooms. Our students deserve a learning environment that f fosters collaboration, creativity, and focused academic work. The additional space would allow us to provide this while also ensuring the safety and well-being of everyone. I strongly urge you the board to consider the long-term benefits of this expansion

094and approve this vital step toward improving our school's capacity to serve its students. My name is Yel Rodriguez. I'm a proud teacher at Voices. I'm here tonight not just as an educator, but as a voice for our entire school community, for students, families, staff, asking you to approve the additional site for our school. Our school is more than just a building. It's a community, a place where children feel safe, seen, and supported. But right now, we are out of room. Still, we continue to show up each day with love, creativity, and commitment because that's what our students deserve. We're proud to be solutionoriented. When space ran out, we found a building that could serve our youngest learners, our TKers, in a way that meets their developmental needs. We've done our part to find a path

095forward. Now, we're asking for your support to take the next step. The district, the district agrees this is the right move. I hope you will, too. Board members, please vote yes for our students, our teachers, and the future, our future of our school community. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Patricia, but to my students, I am Miss L. I'm here to urge your support of Voices. I've taught at Voices for 5 years. I continue to choose Voices because we truly believe that all students are capable of the highest academic achievement. It's what guides every decision we make. It guides every lesson we do. It guides every relationship we build, including the relationship we are building with you now. Last year, our second graders, many of whom are here today, achieved 1.75 years of academic

096reading growth in just one academic year. And the reason we did it is because of this community. There are parents, grandparents here tonight who volunteered every single day. And thank you guys for doing that. Monday through Friday, four to six parents were in my classroom every single day. Not Tuesdays and Thursdays, not every other Monday, Monday through Friday. That's the community we have here. Our principal, our leadership committee has found a site. Please conclude your comments. Thank you. Okay. So, we're up to motion. >> President, I move that we approve the material revision and for excuse me for the voic's petition to add the site. >> Is there a second? >> I'll second that. >> Okay. Okay. So, it's been moved and second. Is there any comments? >> Thank you. Um, I want to thank

097all the voices, families, and staff, students for being here. Um, I also want to thank our staff for your work to bring us this bring this forward. Um, I did want to talk a little bit about some of the issues that I do have concerns about. I'm trying to separate tonight from the issues that I'm seeing at the site, which the petition is going to come to us very soon. So, I want to talk about them because you guys need to address them in the next few months. Otherwise, my decision then might be different. So, I'm trying to be as transparent and clear as possible. Now, tonight we're voting on the expansion of the site. You're not expanding numbers, but just the site so you can house TK in first, which I agree needs to

098happen. which is why I'm supporting this. But I want to talk about what Trustee Smith Fos brought up. I have a lot of concerns about your demographics. Having three African-American students does not cut it for me. You need to grow your demographics. Um, and I know that saying this now when your petition's coming in 7, 8 months, it's going to be hard, but I think that you have done an amazing job of talking to community. I think if you guys can expand that to other communities, I think that'd be great because I don't like some of the numbers, not just black students, but homeless youth, um, foster youth, uh, immigrant students. They're really low, especially compared to any of our elementary schools. Um, also, I do think that there are potentially some Brown Act violations

099from your board. Uh, your agendas, uh, are not posted. your meetings for your board meetings are not recorded or found on the website from the CM CMO or from Voices Richmond or West Costa, excuse me. Uh so that's a huge concern for me when it comes to governance. Uh your board meetings also are really far away. So the only way for for community members from this area to log in is by doing it online. Uh so doing in person is almost impossible unless you travel pretty far where the meetings happen. Um, so also finding them on your website. I know that someone talked about an issue for us tonight, but our website's brand new. Uh, so a few weeks ago, yours is not. Uh, it was incredibly hard for me to find that information. Um,

100so I really question those pieces, which makes me then question more, right, and want to dig more. I couldn't find a single recording of single board meeting, which to me was concerned because I wanted to review some of the items that were presented. So, uh, your enrollment, what Trusty Reckler brought up, uh, matching what's presented. Um, I actually didn't get what Trusty Reckler got. So, I was going by what in your, uh, what was provided to us from the agenda. Uh, and your numbers were just exactly what your petition said. So, to me, that didn't make sense either. Uh, because then I also couldn't see the full picture of your finances. So now to me those are not particularly concerns for tonight because we're talking about this added site. But when it comes to your

101petition I am going to be bringing those issues up again with a closer look. So I hope that in the next few months you're able to work on those things and give us additional data and hopefully new enrollment so that we can make a good decision for you in a few months. At this point if we were voting tonight I would probably deny you from what I'm seeing. So I'm putting it out there so that you convince me otherwise. uh in a few months. Okay. Thank you. >> Anybody else have comments? >> I just want to second everything that uh Trusty Gonzalez Hoy has just said. I'm complete. >> Thank you. Anybody on this side? So, I would also like to say that I agree with everything that Trustee Gonzalez Hoy said in terms of

102my concerns. I also think that you have to have a meeting site here or a location site here for your board meetings in this county. So, if that's not happening, I think you have to go back and read the law very carefully and and get on that immediately. Um, my concern is about your numbers and especially around enrollment. This just is not accurate. This just it's not accurate. This is not how enrollment works. it just isn't. So, I don't know what your cohort I don't know what a regular cohort retention rate is. I can certainly I went back through your data and it's not awesome. Um, it does look like it's getting better. Maybe it is getting better, but for you to think that you're going to hold students in this pattern and never lose

103anyone, this is just false. So when you come back, you have to really think deeply about how your h what your enrollment is really going to be like and be accurate with it because it affects your money and that you you know you're it's really important. You have to be fiscally solvent. We can't save you if you go down. We cannot save you. We are in no position to bail you out in any way, shape, or form or absorb any of your losses. So when you come back, all of what they said and all of this money, especially your enrollment and being laser focused on it, has to be right. And for the district, you need to be asking for their enrollment and checking their cohort rate very carefully. Um because this this math ain't

104math. Okay, those are my comments and um I'm complete. We'll go to the vote. Trusty Hernandez, >> yes. >> Clerkana, >> yes. >> Trusty Gonzalez, >> yes. >> Trusty Smith, >> Smith Falls, yes. >> And I'm a yes. Motion passes. We're going to take five minutes to clear the room. We'll be back at What time is that? 8 8:21. Thank you. board members. Three minute warning. Okay, we're going to get started again. We have three trustees on the dis will join us shortly. We're moving on now to E2. Approve the sight specific educational specification for the Kennedy Richmond High School modernization projects and stage rebuild project. Miss Payne, I believe this is your item. >> Thank you. Good evening everyone. Um it's my pleasure to introduce Miss Mahia Hooper which uh she'll be walking us

105through the presentation this evening. >> Good evening everyone. and thank you for having me. Uh tonight we're going to cover the educational specifications. So this is a specific document that really describes how our educational program gets transformed into the physical space. So everybody's probably familiar with the terminology form follows function. This really describes the function so that the architect is able to create the form. And so it doesn't do a lot of the architectural styling of the building. It doesn't comment on that. It really comments on what kind of functions and activities we're trying to host within our buildings so that the designers can create the uh form around those functions. Maybe maybe next slide please. >> Where is your clicker? it. I was clicking but it didn't seem to click. All right. So, general

106information. So, at the beginning of this document, we describe uh the overall district visions and goals as well as some of the uh general site information uh as well as our approach to uh the different systems within the building to be able to support our educational program. And the next um slide talks about uh the individual spaces. So there's two portions of the document. The first part does those general overviews uh that are applicable to every space. And then the individual space types is really where we go into describing each type of room and what's needed um within that room to support that educational program. So we'll talk about the use, the size and quantity. Uh the building system requirements, if there's anything specific for that, and the interior finishes and storage ah power, it's

107amazing. Hey, look at that. Um, and so this is an example of one of those pages, the general classroom page. So you'll see at the top it describes the different f functions that we anticipate within the space. And then we have a handy checklist to make sure that the architect uh knows all the specifics of what that space wants to entail as well as some example photos. Now the photos aren't really meant to dictate exactly what the design will look like. It really is to try to show uh examples of what um the types of components we are looking for within the space. So how did we create these documents? Um we do have district-wide educational specifications that were created after the 2016 master plan uh facilities master plan and those documents were the basis

108of how we started. Uh we also looked at historic examples of different rebuilds that we did at both the uh high school as well as the elementary levels. So we had uh Michelle Obama and Lake that helped inform STE. Uh we had our other high school um examples that informed uh our Richmond and Kennedy. We also looked at the school specific site programs. Now this was particularly applicable to Richmond and Kennedy with the CTE programs and those kind of special offerings. Uh we had a extensive facility master planning process that helped prioritize how we could um utilize the bond money available uh to create uh the different um buildings as far as modernization versus new construction. And those fed into uh the existing um building constraints also uh because knowing we were going into some

109spaces and modernizing meant that we didn't necessarily have as the same level of flexibility that we did in our new construction components. Uh but the feedback and the goals and visions that came out of the individual communities for the facility master plan process uh was a key component to being able to um incorporate it into some of the components of the facility master plan. And you'll see those goals expressed uh at the beginning of each of the uh Kennedy and Richmond documents. And so these following slides are a uh snapshot of the space checklist. The space checklist really we like to think about it as the recipe for the um for the school. So it has all of the ingredients and the quantities of those ingredients. So uh this is a a summary. So, it

110doesn't show all the square footage associated, but the space checklist is at the end of all the educational specification documents and lists all those space types out and the quantities in which they exist. Um, and this is a document that's meant to be done at the beginning of the design. So, this is that communication tool to the architect of what the district is looking for as a successful project. it does vary uh once we get into the design and the budget comes into play. So there is some flexibility of how the final design will result out of this. But the important part is understanding and communicating our priorities so that the um architects are able to take those forward and help use them as they create uh the design and make those design decisions. Thank

111you for having me tonight. That completes my presentation. >> Thank you. So, >> oh, I'm sorry. I forgot the last one. Uh, restroom typology. So, one of the things that we introduced at Michelle or at Lake uh was a multi-user all accessess toilet room. These are individual toilet stalls uh or individual toilet rooms. Uh they're full-fledged rooms with real walls and a real door. Um they can be used by any gender um and any gender identification. And there's a shared sink area that's open that allows for supervision of the overall space. Uh we also do have multi-user gender toilets which are your traditional girls and boys or men's and women's. Um these are available. We have both types in all of our buildings. Uh where we have more public spaces like the multi-purpose room, the

112playground, uh the theater, um those the gyms, uh we would utilize the multi-user gendered toilets. And in the classroom hallways, we have the multi-user all access toilet rooms. And that's the application that is being uh um put into the designs for all three of the schools. That completes my presentation. Thank you. >> Thank you very much. Are there any questions from board members? Go right ahead. Trusty Smith Vault. I just have a question about the bathroom. So, if it's in where you have the door that closes and then it locks from the inside, my assumption, right? If something happens, let's say a kid passes out in that bathroom, right? How do we get in from the outside? Would it be a break the door down type of situation or >> No, there is a key

113override. So, you would need a physical key to be able to unlock that door. Um, some of the safety uh precautions that we have for the all access restrooms are that all the doors swing out so somebody can't tra trap you within the space uh and you need to be able to swing the door in. We are also at our high schools looking at providing um frosted windows above so you can tell if the uh light within the the door is or within the room is on which gives you some additional indication beyond the lock itself of whether it's occupied. >> Thank you so very much. I'm complete. We also had a really awesome uh student uh toilet room symposium uh where we invited uh all the high schools to bring representation to uh Lake

114Elementary School so they could see the ones we've installed there and gain feedback from the high school students about what would make them feel uh good about these restrooms. And that was a really positive experience. Are there any other questions? Can Can I ask about the restrooms as well? Can you bring that slide back? So is that so is there no wall there? Like is it an open concept? Am I seeing Am I seeing that correctly? Like it's a very open concept. >> Where the sinks are, there's only a half wall. >> Half wall. Okay. >> Um so you can look directly to where the doors exist. So uh the middle picture uh shows the sink area with that half wall with the hallway beyond or the circulation space. The top picture um shows kind

115of the side view where you can see the toilet room doors as well as the countertop. Um that's an example from uh St. Paul um school district which was one of the first districts that uh implemented this design and uh has quite a few different case studies about how uh that design has worked for that school district. So, if I were walking down that hallway, that would that would be my view. I could see right in and see all those stalls there. >> Correct. >> And is that what that's what you're looking at for elementary and high? >> That is correct. It's very similar to that. >> Okay. >> Uh at the Kennedy example, we uh have a frosted semi-transucent panel. uh at at uh Richmond it is an open space. >> Okay. Um so

116I don't hear from other schools but I certainly hear from Elto High School about bathrooms being locked up. That's done for safety reasons because there's not enough staff to monitor those areas. If you have um formations like this and you don't have staff, can this still operate or what what would be the So the the benefit of this design is that the uh sink area which is the most open square footage um has good visibility from the hallway so that any passing by adults uh has the ability to see what's going on and it makes it less likely for um misbehavior to occur in the open space. Obviously, restrooms will always be a very difficult space uh because we are interfacing between the difference between a public and private area. The way you supervise and

117ensure safety is always with supervision. The problem is privacy is a bigger concern at the toilet areas obviously than um that safety component. So you're always balancing between those two objectives uh when it comes to restrooms. So one of the things that came out of St. Paul was did this solve all of their restroom safety issues? No it didn't. Of course it didn't. But did they have um less instances and when those instances occurred were they less severe because they couldn't include a larger group of people? Yes, that's what occurred. So um we also have to keep in mind what this is achieving for our students who are um choose not to have a a girl or boy gender, right? And so um restrooms are a very um concerned space for the students. The bottom

118picture is from the restroom symposium where we had the students come together and there were many concerns about feeling unsafe no matter what your what you identified as um just from activities that happen especially in that sink area because it is the largest space within a restroom. So, what this does is it eliminates that sink area um from being as inviting for misbehavior. And did they see a picture of this top? Did they what did they did the at the restroom symposium was a picture was this top picture shown? >> It was uh and what was the feedback? Well, we also hosted it at lake, so they were able to see the constructed ones that we had already done for the district. So besides just interacting with the picture, they were able to see what

119it looked like in physical form. There was concerns when we originally introduced the idea, but after we toured Lakes's um restroom area, the uh the students overwhelmingly were supportive of this change. >> Okay. Thank you. Those are all my questions. Does anybody else have any questions? Okay, good. All right. Restroom symposium. You should have seen the icebreaker. Stop right there. And with that, I'll entertain a motion for to approve this item. Uh, we have a public comment. President, >> I'm sorry. You're right. Public comment. Thank you. That's I got carried the seat >> Michelle Jackson. Good evening, Superintendent Cotton and the trustees and the staff here. I rise with somewhat of excitement because we have journeyied this rebuild project from nothing to something. And I would like for the board members and the staff and

120particularly Melissa Payne and her staff. They have done a wonderful job. We have created this community project. We're doing this together because people are passing by STE giving us phone calls, keeping us updated, and when we have those hiccups, we straighten it out. And I am happy to report that the school's demolition will start tomorrow. But we are equally excited about the displacement site here at Marie. Please unmute yourself. Hello. Can you hear me? >> Yes. Okay. Oh, good afternoon board. Evening board. Uh my name's Marie. I actually have two children in the district and I'm also a speech therapist in the district. Um I'm really excited to learn that speech is moving forward with getting a new site. Thank you very much. My daughter will be attending there in the fall. I do have

121some concerns. Um, I just want to make sure that the special ed staff there at the new site, they do have adequate space to work, meaning the speech, OT, psych, and the RS. Um, I'm also concerned currently at STE, the sub site, about the bathroom situation for TK. My daughter is going to have to leave the building and go outside to go to the bathroom. She's only four. She turned four last month. Um, I'm also concerned about these multi-gender bathrooms. I just want to make sure they're monitored by a staff person. Thank you. >> That concludes public comment. >> Thank you very much. Okay. At this time, I'll accept a motion on this item. >> President, I move that we approve the site specification, educational specification for the Kennedy Richmond High modernization projects and the

122STE elementary school rebuild project. Thank you. Is there a second on the item? >> I second. >> Okay, that's Hernandez on the second. And are there any comments? Okay, none. We'll go to the vote. >> Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead, clerk. >> I just want to say thank you for the presentation. I want to echo some of the concerns. Um I think um safety should be first priority for us. You know, finding out solutions. Um, I think this is a positive move, but I think that there's also things that we can learn and how to continue to make things better for future sites. So, hopefully we're looking at concerns or kinks that we're finding along the way at other sites to ensure that we are moving forward and and progression so we avoid some of

123those things and um the building of others. Thank you. >> Anyone else? Okay, we'll go to the vote. Uh, Trusty Hernandez, >> yes. >> Clerko, >> yes. >> Trusty Gonzalez, >> yes. >> Trusty Smith faults. >> Smith Falls, yes. >> And I'm a yes. Motion passes unanimously. Okay, we are up to E3. Provisional Internship Permit, otherwise known as the PIP. Dr. Johnson. >> Hi, good evening. Thank you. Forgive me. I need my glasses on today. Um, just one second. Okay. Provisional intern. Good evening um President Smith Bolt, I'm sorry, President and Reckler and um board members. It is recommended that the governing board approve the employment of the listed teachers under a provisional internship permit as authorized by California code of regulations title 5 section 80021.1. This permit may be in the areas of multiple

124subject, single subject or educational specialists. This approval authorizes submission of the permit applications to the California Commission on Teacher Credentiing. Thank you. >> Thank you. Are there any board member questions on the item? >> Is there any public comments on the item? >> No comments. >> Okay. I will accept a motion on this item. >> President, I move uh approval of the PIPS >> Smithville second. >> Okay. Any comments? >> I have a comment. >> Thank you. I know it's rare for us to come on this item, but I did want to point out one specific name and I think she's actually present here. Um, we uh have a a old student trustee who's coming back to teach in our district. And uh Stephanie, who's over there in the audience, I just saw her. Uh

125I just She went she went through our schools, served as trustee, and now she's coming back as a teacher. I mean, how incredible is that? Um, I'm just so, first of all, I think we can speak for all of you. We're so proud of you uh for coming back, but I'm just so thankful that to see people like you coming back to our community uh to serve our students and teach. Who knows better our students than someone like yourself? So, good luck this year. I want to I wanted to wish you the best. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> I do want to mention that she is responsible for our land acknowledgement. Steph uh Stephanie's responsible for our land acknowledgement. The reason we say it at a board meeting, the reason that we want students

126to say it at the board meeting is because she championed that when she was a student trustee. Wait. Okay. Anybody else? Okay. With that, we'll go to a um Do we do public comment? I'm confused. Public is there public comment? No. Okay. We'll go to a motion. We already did that. Okay. All right. So, we're good. All right. So, my comment is welcome back. It's nice to see you. I saw your name. Good to see you. I'm come. Invite me to your classroom. I'd love to come. Okay. And with that we will go to the vote. Trustee Hernandez. >> Yes. >> Clerk out. >> Yes. >> Trustee Gonzalez. >> Yes. >> Trusty Smith votes. >> Smith votes. Yes. >> And on a yes. Motion passes unanimously. Okay. We're now up to E4 recommended for variable

127term waiverss. Dr. Johnson, this is your item. >> Thank you, President Reckler. Again, it is recommended that the governing board authorize the assignment of the listed credential teachers to teach departmentalized classes outside their authorized subject areas in accordance with education code 44258.3. Each teacher has consented to the assignment and has demonstrated adequate knowledge of the subject matter. >> Thank you. Are there any board questions on the item? >> Is there public comment? Yes. >> Jean Kinchner, please unmute yourself. >> Can you hear me? >> Yes. >> My hand was up both times when she asked for public comment before and you said no. Um, I'm wondering about, for example, a co-orker of mine. The clock started running. The clock runs on teachers before they even enroll in the program because they don't get in until

128after December. So now this co-orker has done with their credential and they need to pass the math cet but they have to take it again but their time has run out. So we're going to be without an eighth grade teacher because of this. What can we do to help those people who want to teach who are here who are rooted in our community but six months were wasted on their you know limited time clock. Is there some way we can bring those types of people back instead of having openings? I know you can't answer now, but just something to think about because there is a situation at Birdie where we do have an eighth grade teacher wants to return, finished everything but that one assessment, but now may not be able to come back because

129their time has run out. That concludes public comment. I'll accept a motion on the item. >> President, I move that we approve the variable term waiverss. >> Is there a second? >> I second. >> Okay, clerk now seconds. And any comments from the board. Okay, we'll go to the vote. Trusty Hernandez. >> Yes. >> Clerkana, >> yes. >> Trusty Gonzalez, >> yes. >> Trusty Smith Falls. >> Smith Falls. Yes. >> And I'm a yes. The motion passes unanimously. Now we are up to the second reading of board policies 1250, 5131, 5145.13, and 6116. These are all second readings. Uh let's see, who do we have here? U Miss Aosta Heroscus, looks like your item. >> That's right. Good evening, President Reckler, Clerk Anyana, Trustees, Superintendent Cotton, and members of the public. The following board policies

130are being brought forward this evening for a second reading. Each policy has been reviewed by the governance committee, cabinet, and was presented at the July 16th board meeting for a first reading. We're bringing forward board policy 1250 visitors and outsiders, board policy 5131, conduct policy, board policy 5145.13, response to immigration enforcement, and board policy 6116 classroom interruptions. These policies reflect our continued commitment to maintaining a safe, respectful, and supportive learning environment across all of our schools, and we are recommending their approval. Thank you very much. Are there any board questions on the items? Is there public comment on the items? >> No public comment. >> Okay, I'll accept a motion on the board policies. >> For president, I move that we approve the four policies on the agenda. >> Thank you. Is there a second?

131>> I second. Hernandez will second. Great. Are there any comments? >> Thank you. Um, I brought this up in our agenda review. Uh, but the more that we can communicate to the public why, uh, we are reinforcing these policies, I think, the better. Uh, a lot of communication has been going out nationwide right now around families being scared to send their students to school because of the possible ICE rates that are not potentially happening at actually at schools but outside of schools around schools and events, graduations, whatever, whatever, right? Um, and I'm just really thankful that we have taken an initiative to ensure our procedures are strong. Um, I want to thank, you know, uh, of course, uh, the board and Superintendent Khan, but also, you know, cabinet because you've been on on top of

132this. Um, uh, Mr. Booker specifically, thank you. Uh, I know that you're working on the signs for the for the doors, uh, ensuring that this communicated and Miss Forest, I know that you've been talking about communication to families and, um, uh, Dr. for Moses and Masa Represque. I know that you've been about also about uh principles communicating with families and the rest of county. Thank you for also communicating with staff. I know there's so many layers to this. Uh but it's so important and I um I really uh hope that our students come and feel safe, they feel seen, they feel heard. Um and that what's happening, you know, around the nation is not something that's happening here. Um, and we just, you know, keep communication open if anyone sees or hears anything. But here,

133I know I've seen staff uh working incredibly hard to make sure everybody's safe. So, I just want to thank you all um and just push that we continue to communicate as much as we can. >> Thank you. Anybody else? >> I have a comment or slash question. Um, will the board get a copy or will be able to see a copy of the signage that will be posted um at the school site? >> Go ahead, Mr. Booker. >> Thank you for that question. Uh, yes, we will, uh, show you that signage. We basically have it done. We just need some final approval from the superintendent, but once we do that, uh we will share that. >> We were waiting for this evening for an approval of our our policy to be able to finalize those

134forms or those signs. >> Okay. And then another question, are the signage being based on from other districts? Uh did you get the example from there or is it just something that we're that we came up with? Um I don't know if my question >> probably a little bit of both. A little bit of both. We've we were looking at different examples and samples and building from there. >> Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. >> Yeah. Uh we were looking at San Francisco. Thank you, President. We were looking at San Francisco sample which is what we gave Mr. Booker and I think from there as Dr. uh Dr. Khan that's just going to happen moving forward. Dr. Khan mentioned um uh I think that they looked at other samples from other districts, but it really was

135coming from San Francisco. Um and I think the president has a copy if you want to see it. >> I do, but I do not have it with me because believe it or not, I spent some time today and I cleaned out my schoolboard bag and I took out that folder, but I can send you a picture. >> We'll get that to you tomorrow morning. We'll send it out to the board. >> Thank you. And have we thought about signage in multiple languages? Okay, great. Okay, I think we're up to the vote at this point. Public comment. I can't even remember now. All right, we have the vote. Trusty Hernandez, >> yes. >> Clerkyana, >> yes. >> Trusty Gonzalez, >> yes. >> Trusty Smith folds. >> Smith votes. Yes. And I'm a yes. Motion passes

136unanimously. Okay. Up to F1, annual facilities maintenance and operations presentation. Good evening, uh, board, superintendent, community. Um, really, really excited to be standing here tonight. We are officially 1,76,567 seconds away from the first day of school and we absolutely cannot wait to welcome everybody back. And so I do have it in minutes and hours just for fun. 17,942 minutes, 299 hours away. And so I stand here tonight on behalf of our operations team, our custodians, our trades people, our groundskeepers, our facilities team to let you know we are so excited to welcome you back and we have been incredibly busy and we can't wait to show you what we've done over the summer. So, this is our first official and we'd like to make this an annual facilities maintenance and operations uh presentation. Typically, when

137we come forward, we're talking about our bond program. And while that is an incredibly important program and doing incredibly important projects, there are thousands of projects that we do every year and we really want to help to highlight those here. So this is a quote that really grounds our department. We know that a school is a building which has four walls and tomorrow inside. And we think of ourselves as the guardians of the walls. So it's our job to keep it safe and keep it clean, to make sure that it's functional and to make sure that the learning environments are there to support the incredible staff, students, and community. But we are huge. So just to give you an idea of how big we are, we are responsible for 5.65 million building square feet in

138the five cities and unincorporated areas that we serve. And to try to give that number some meaning, we tried to pull some local known things to compare it to. So, if there are any In-N-Out fans in the house, because that seemed to be the favorite among our leadership, we are responsible for about 1462 In-N-Out Burgers. We are responsible for a lot of spaces and we cover we cover um incredible diversity in terms of the geography, the temperature, the site conditions and challenges that we face and we do it using our facilities funds. And so most of our facilities funds they are restricted and we can use them for different things. And one of the challenges that we face as a district that we know all districts face is we will always have more facilities needs

139than we will have available dollars. But we are committed to doing everything we can to do as much as we can. And one of the ways that we do that is through strategic partnerships and different types of opportunities to leverage additional dollars. Uh oh, I might have lost my clicker. Next slide. So, here's an example of some of the partnerships and strategies that we've employed just this year to try to make every single dollar that we have here locally go further and try to leverage every additional dollar that we can. So, one of them is through Cal Fire where we are working together with uh growing together and using more than $2 million to create green spaces um in what are traditionally blacktop uh areas and we're doing that at 11 sites in the district.

140Also really happy to share the news about the award from the Bay Area Quality Management District through partnership with uh Supervisor Joya's office awarding $1.3 million for school air filtration in Richmond and San Pablo elementary schools. through our bond program. We've also shared that while we have successfully um been able to receive over 227 million, we are currently standing in line for another 16 million and we'll continue to aggressively pursue those state facility dollars. And just a quick recap, um, from the bond refunding that we did just in May, um, it was incredibly successful and generated over 8.36 million in taxpayer savings. We are one of the few districts in the state that has a board policy that ensures that we're looking at that annually and always trying to continue to look at opportunities to

141save dollars. Next slide. So, how does it all work? Um, how does maintenance and facilities, how does it all come together? And how do the improvements that are seen and some that are hidden in the ground and maybe unseen, how do they happen? So, this is just a quick snapshot. We have an incredible maintenance team. We have 32 trades people supporting our district and our repairs fall into kind of three different buckets. So the first one's preventative. There are a number of things that we do to keep things in good repair that we've planned for. And we have some incredible trades people putting together those plans that are experts in their craft. We also have our reactive repairs. So that's what you would think of as like our work orders. And so our work orders

142come from a number of different places. They come from our school sites, but they also come from third-party inspections that we have that are done that provide kind of that continuous objective view um that is consistent across our site and helps identify ways that we can continue to do different types of repairs in our spaces to maintain that good repair standard. The last type are the emergencies and we have a lot of emergencies. There are a lot of things that happen that aren't planned and there are a lot of things that continue to change over time and what we're really trying to do is continue to adapt and respond as those different types of challenges present themselves. And while they may show up at one site, when they do, we're really looking at what was

143the issue and how is that something that we can address more globally across our district. And so those are kind of the three big buckets. Um, some fold into a small repair, some fold into a project, and then we have kind of our more general facilities projects. And so, a lot of times we say, think of an architect. And so, um, we're going to look at a couple of projects here in a minute where we knew that we needed approval from the division of the state architect. And so we had to hire an architect, go through the design and then the uh approvals process before we could do those improvements. And so there are a number of things that we'd like to do, but it takes more time to do because we have to follow

144the prescribed process. Those are typically managed directly by facilities. And then we have our bond program. And for those that wanted to learn more about the bond program, we did our annual report at the last board meeting. We also welcome you to join us at our CBOC meetings where we're talking about it monthly. Next slide. One of the things that we really want to focus on this year is partnering with our sites and partnering with our school leaders to share tips on how we can use our space and continue to partner on having clean and safe spaces. And so these are some of the tips that we received from the inspector over the summer as we went out and looked at every single site so that we could continue to make those repairs to get

145ready to welcome all of you back. One of the things we're really going to focus on this year is trying to take that information and communicate it more effectively so that we can share these resources with our site leaders so that they can also share those resources and we can continue to work together to come up with a library of resources so that we're all working together uh to maintain our spaces. And so now for the big reveal. So, we're going to jump into the next couple of slides and we have some pictures to share with you and I'll kind of navigate and guide you through some of the improvements that we've done this summer. Next slide. And so here's a couple of pictures of some of the grantfunded Cal Fire projects happening across our

146district at different sites, taking blacktop areas and turning them into garden spaces. We've also done some roofing improvements. We have replaced flooring in a number of our restrooms which will not only make the spaces cleaner. Um but it will improve the operations with our custodial staff. Um we were able to do that at four schools this summer. Um the pilot went really well and so expect to see this at a number of additional sites. Next slide. So, we've also done a lot of painting. And so, here are a couple of pictures from Grant Elementary School that show what a little bit of paint can do. It can really open up the spaces, make them more vibrant. We've done painting in the restrooms, and the classrooms. That's a classroom at Grant. And you can see how

147the painting um changing the window dressing. We also, this is the Grant Kinder Playyard where there used to be a masonry wall that separated the space. We took out the masonry wall. We improved the fencing because there were some concerns about um privacy and security. And then we did some striping to make it a vibrant space for our students. Next slide. So, at Collins Elementary School, we've completed some paving work, um, reinforced our fire road, and you can see the striping is in a beautiful space for our kids to play. And you can also see here at the STEM campus, we've done a number of the improvements that we talked about a year ago, but required the DSA, uh, division of state architect approval. So, the new play structures in, the safety surface is ready

148to go. We have additional restrooms in place. The restroom for our TK and kinder students is also brand new, ready to go. We have put in some turf as you can see here. This is the space where the students line up um to catch the bus. And one of the things that we knew is when you know you stand in the dirt um shoes get dirty. Um, and so what we did is, you know, as we use a space, we're really listening and learning to see what are some of the themes that we're hearing and what are some of the things that we can do to improve. So there's turf in that space now where they line up and then there's also a paved area. So this is going to serve as a a gathering

149space, an outdoor learning space, a space where they can eat. Um the leadership has incredible ideas on how they can use the space for PE and other activities. So we can't wait to welcome the stars back and show them um that we were able to complete our promise and deliver the things that we talked about just a year ago. Next slide. So every summer we try to do a couple gymnasiums too. And so we were able to do complete the projects at both Penol Middle School and Hercules Middle School to do the gym refinishing and to put down the new lines. We partner with our maintenance department to better understand and prioritize the needs across our sites as we look for our summer work. Next slide. Also some flooring replacement. Uh there's some jobs that

150are meant for the summer because we don't want to disrupt operations. And so here you can see some more pictures. One of the things that I love to do is watch a progress a project as it progresses. And so we included a couple of extra slides here courtesy of our incredible custodial team at Hercules that was documenting the progress to kind of show all the different layers as we move along. Next slide. So, at Kennedy, we all know about the big demo and we know about the portable campus. Um, but there was also a space that we had to close last year and that did disrupt operations because they had to move to a temporary location. We have moved into those spaces to safely abate and restore those spaces. So, in the cafeteria there is

151new ceiling tile and new paint. Those were all preventative measures. And then in the music room, we went in, we replaced the flooring, paint. We had the opportunity to also replace the wall paneling. And so those are going to feel like bigger, brighter spaces as we welcome our um students back. And so we can't wait to welcome our Eagles back to a um improved 800 building, cafeteria, and music space. Next slide. And so one of the things that we know is that every time we touch a building, we have an opportunity to improve learning. And so in my closing, I just want to say thank you to all of our custodians and all of our supervisors, all of our trades people, all of our grounds workers for their incredible hard work over the summer. um

152for their problem solving, for their resilience, um and truly for their care and pride in what they do. It's an absolute pleasure to work with and learn from them. And all of this is possible because of them. And so I just want to send a huge appreciation and thank you to all of them. And that concludes our presentation. >> Thank you. So thank you so much. Do any board members have questions? Go ahead. On one of the slides, did I see something about a front entrance camera? I It was going so fast and we I don't think we had the whole slide deck on our presentation. I tried to go back and find it, but didn't see it. And I thought I caught something. >> Excellent question. Um, and we can definitely modify the slides

153to make sure that you're able to see all of the pictures. We'd be happy to do that. Um, we are installing what is called an AI phone at a number of our entrances to improve security and that's something that we've done at a number of sites throughout the district and something that we're continuing to partner with the sites to do. So there was an example in there and in that particular example sometimes when we do that work in addition to installing a system we're also making some of the physical improvements that help make that site more secure. >> What site was that allocated at? um that was Chavez, but we've done it at a number of sites through the district and I'd be happy to maybe in the Friday memo identify all of the schools

154where we've done that work. >> Thank you. Does anybody else have questions? >> Can I ask a question about Evict Invictus? So, I see that they ripped out the play structure. Did that move to stage? It did. Okay. It look familiar. >> Yeah. So, as part of kind of that partnership strategy, um, as part of our facilities use agreement with Invictus, there were some improvements. They didn't use the play structure. So, what we did was we kept the components, but all of the structural components installed here at the Temp campus are brand new. Um and we have done the inspection but the components of the play structure did come from that campus. Yes. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Thank you. Thank you for the presentation. Um so what happens to those play structures once siege

155is rebuilt? Um are we able to use those place structures and move them somewhere else? By the way, in Vix, that's our property, so partnership, but you know, I'm glad they're giving us our stuff. Uh, but uh I know it's that's shady, but um it is ours. Uh but anyways, what happens to that place structure once the is moved? >> It's a great question. Um our maintenance team is incredible. So, we use parts and pieces across all of our trades. So, as we determine what the next use for that space would be, should we not need the play structure anymore, those are parts and components that then the maintenance team would come in and use. This is work that they also did um at Kennedy um where they're able to go in and take different

156parts and pieces and components and salvage them so that we can use them at our at our other sites. And so this is a very common practice and I think it just really speaks to the commitment and the expertise um and the pride that our trades people put into all of their work to make sure that we use everything for its full life cycle um wherever we can in service of students. >> Thank you. Could it be a benefit to keep it on this campus because of events like community events that are like if you have a I know at some schools you have a PTA meeting then one of the parents volunteers will go out there and watch the kids while the meeting's being conducted or something like that. So it is could it

157do you see a value in keeping the play structure here even after siege is rebuilt? Um, I remember when my daughter was um in her early elementary years and she may not have known what day it was, but she knew what day she played on the play structure. So, on behalf of our students um and our community, play structures are absolute gold. I think they provide incredible value wherever they are. Um, and we are working on the play structure for Verie. It will be going through our DSA process. So, it does take a little bit more time and those will be some of the important conversations that we'll have down the line to make sure that we're using things um truly in support of, you know, students and community. >> Thank you. I'm complete. >>

158Anybody else comment? Yes. Uh Marie, please unmute yourself. Oh, hello board. Um, oh, can you hear me? >> Yes, we can hear you. >> Okay, perfect. Um, I am very happy to hear about all the improvements at STE. I was actually up there a couple days ago to register my daughter and I saw the improvements. I'm so happy to hear about uh play structure there. Um, I'm assuming there's two, a kinder one and then a upper grade one. Thank you very much. um stage has really been neglected, but I see the district is stepping up to the plate to make sure those kids are served and have facilities that meet their needs. Um I also wanted to just bring up that I work at Cameron and as far as like um you're talking about ICE

159stuff, it's a open school site. You know, there's no locks on the doors. Anyone can walk in and out. Over the summer, I could not get a family to come in. they were Spanish- speakaking. I really think the mother was afraid and it's like I want to make sure families feel secure and safe when they come on campus. If staff could get keys to the front door, that would be great. Thank you. >> That concludes public comment. >> Great. Anything else from the board on the item? All right, we'll move now to F2, board policy 61. Thank you very much for the presentation. Looks great. Everything's shiny. I love those gym floors. And moving on now to F2, board policy 6173, education for homeless children, first reading. Yes, thank you. And good evening again. We're

160bringing forward policy 6173, education for homeless ch children, for the first reading this evening. This update addresses a recent federal program monitoring finding and ensures full compliance with current state and federal law. This revised policy strengthens our district's commitment to educational equity and outlines clear procedures to identify and support students who are experiencing homelessness. The updates include required use of the state housing questionnaire registration, annual staff training and data reporting to the California Department of Education, proactive removal of barriers related to enrollment, attendance, and access of services, and a designation of a trained district liaison to support students and coordinate services. The policy also reinforces privacy protections and affirms that students experiencing homelessness must be provided equal access to a full range of educational opportunities and supports. These revisions to the policy have been reviewed

161by the governance committee and um meet our compliance obligations to continue building a system that supports every student regarding uh regardless of their housing status. We're open to any feedback to this revision. >> Thank you. Do board members have questions on it? >> Thank you. I just had one question. Um, who is our designated liaison? Is it or who is it? Sorry, I don't want to make an assumption. >> Let me open that up. Thank you for asking that question. Our designated liaison is Julie Luetta from the families and transition department. >> Got it. Thank you. That was my only question for >> any other questions. >> So I'm I'm super excited that we have hit the compliance part of this. My next question is what are we doing with the climate and culture part,

162right? So we discussed in um the governance meeting about what does it look like walking through a day in the life of a child who does not have housing in our school district and when we walk through that day, what are the barriers that we're finding in the ones that we are actively working to dismantle. For example, we as a district want to make sure that our families are engaged. So what we do is we send letters home. We send um we send packages home like with and still in our Manila envelopes and every time we send it home there's the assumption that there is an address to send it to. So what are we doing to let our families know that we also have that information at the school site? What are we doing?

163Have we had conversations around not only one-way mail retrieval, but two-way, right? How are our families able to then have a return address if they're sending something to us? We send things home like the um the before they get the report card. They get the pink slip with all their grades on it. We send it now progress report. Thank you. We send that now home with them. So these are the kind of things that I think that we're doing great with compliance, but then walking with our climate and our culture to make sure that we're also putting in those administrative regulations or those practices and procedures and training our principles. How they then talk to our parents to create that system to create a positive system around making sure that you're not missing anything when

164it comes to your child's education because of your living situation. I am complete. I don't even know if that was a question, Miss Katherine, but I'm complete. >> Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for bringing that up. And we definitely took account all of the comments that you had at governance to um implement changes into our administrative regulations. So, not only the timing of events being really close to the dismissal of school to take into account that transportation um but also how can we provide different opportunities to be able to potentially email right those um reports instead of mailing them home or to print them and give them a physical copy at school. And one um piece that we really need to improve on and plan to do so is that training that you talked about. It's

165how do we train our site leaders? How do we train our families and students who are impacted? But also, how do we leverage our scouts to be able to do this? Because we want to make sure that our families aware are aware of the supports that are available to students. >> Thank you so very much for that. I'm complete. >> I lied. I do have a question. Thank you so much for answering the questions that I sent over on Sunday. Um I just have a followup. I know that you uh you answered the question about building community trust and uh CBOS's um and you said that the McKenna Vento team partners with local CBOS face to face um are you able to provide me a list of those community organizations that the district's working with?

166>> Absolutely. Yes. So I can include that in the next Friday board memo. Yeah. But there's definitely different um types of partnerships like Catholic Charities and then our local um shelters that families tend to find resources at. But I can include that in our next one. Thank you. Um do you know if SOS Richmond is part of those CBOS listed? It's Safe Organized Spaces. It's a local uh organization that works with unhoused families. Um, I think that would be a great idea to try to connect with them because they do have a lot of students in this district. Great. Thank you for elevating that. I will find out and if not, I will make that connection. >> Thank you. >> Hernandez, I'm sorry I didn't catch the name of the organization. >> SOS Richmond. So,

167Safe Organized Spaces. >> Thank you. Anybody else have questions? >> Is there public comment on the item? There's no public comment. >> Any further comments from the board? >> Okay, then we'll put on the next agenda for approval. Thank you. Okay. And the moment we have all been waiting for. Now I've lost my agenda. Okay. We're moving on now to F3, summer school programs update. Yay, that's us again. Thank you so much. Tonight, we are very excited to be able to share an update on our summer programs that just wrapped up um and served thousands of students across the district. Next slide. So tonight we're going to walk through an overview of the programs that we offered for our elementary students, for our secondary students, for our special education extended learning programs, expanded learning programs,

168and we're going to close by highlighting three impactful programs that were available to students next this summer. Next slide. So to kick us off, I'd love to introduce and welcome up to the podium director of curriculum and instruction Sanji Bell. She is coming. I apologize for that. Next slide. Give her one minute. Okay. Now, let's welcome to the podium director Sanji Ba. Okay, now let's give it up. Well, now it's really build up. So, uh, this presentation better be great. I'm just kidding. This >> I knew as soon as I stepped away, as soon I was like, I can make it. I can make it. Good evening. Okay, I can see now. Um, good evening to our superintendent Cotton and to our board members. My name is Sanji Bell and I have some information about

169our summer school offerings from elementary school. Um this year curriculum and instruction provided targeted support to approximately 700 students within West Contraosta in ELA, math, and in science. This instruction was delivered through Springboard Collaborative, which I'll go into in a little more detail, centered mostly around Dibbles, Zern for our math curriculum, and Twig for from our science adoption. And we served about 700 students. Two sites both K3 and one site uh K5th at Coronado. The other two sites were Montalvin and Riverside. Next slide please. And we used several different ways to evaluate students with this particular criteria. We looked at our English language learners, our foster youth, our students under socially socially economically disadvantaged students. We looked at students with disabilities, families in transition. Uh we looked at student performance in ELA and math. And

170we also focused on chronic absenteeism or inconsistent attendance. Next slide. And so one of our primary goals um for our summer program was to prevent learning loss in academic regression um in particular in literacy. And to that end, the district partnered with Springboard Collaborative, which is a literacy focused model that delivers li literacy intensive instruction during the day and is designed to build fluency, comprehension, and reading stamina during our summer months. Next slide. And how they do this or how they did this on a daily basis is that they performed pre and post assessments on students. Um each student was given an individualized reading goal and there was also a lot of um emphasis on home literacy logs. Those good old reading logs and making sure the students are reading at home. Next slide. So,

171this is how we fared. Um, and I just wanted to give a little background because I'm always I don't know about you, but I'm always trying to make sure that I understand the distinction between a growth goal and a stretch goal because we hear this we'll be hearing this with Dibbles. We hear it with um I our I Ready scores. So each student um is given an assessment in dibbles and then based on that data students were assigned personal reading goals. So these are measured in words correctly per minute or comprehension benchmarks. So, for example, if there's a student that's reading on average like 40 words per minute, um they may be given uh an expected goal of like 10 words per minute and this growth goal of 50 words per minute would be considered

172the growth goal for that student. Um and then we look at students more ambitiously um with our stretch goal. So, um we're looking at our summer school program was around 19 days. We look at how often students are attending. Um, and the program is highly incentivized to try and keep students there because that's also a really big issue is that we're competing with everything during the summer. Um, so the goal with the stretch is that that same student um may be reading 40 words per minute, but they're also looking at what is achievable if they were to um reach like end of the year expectations. And so the stretch goal um would take that child from um maybe 40 words to 65 words per minute if that was an example. Um so for our particular

173data shown here um 82% of our students reached their growth goal and 62% of our students attending reached the stretch goal. Um, so we're pretty that's pretty we feel very enthusiastic. Um, uh, students were pretty enthusiastic and we feel pretty good about that goal. Um, so to achieve this on a daily basis, students receive um, daily instruction, sometimes in small groups, sometimes one-on-one to focus specifically on foundational reading skills. And in this we're looking at again phmic awareness, phonics, fluency and comprehension. Um and instruction is aligned to each student's current reading level or goal. Next slide please. So within the proficiency bands, this slide depicts how our students can close or reach their overall expected growth. Next slide, please. And so our site leaders and program managers, program manager sort of like an instructional lead.

174Um, which really I think added to what was robust about the program because the site leader could actually manage the site and this instructional lead could focus specifically on helping monitor with student attendance and monitor um with student growth. Um, and they had a chance to really talk with teachers and these are some of the comments. Um, some of our teachers uh were really excited about it and wanted to do this during the school year. Um, some of them like the fact that it was or well organized and standardsbased. It was pretty easy to follow. Um, and um, it seems like our students really liked the fact that they could, especially our younger students, you know, the older ones not so much, but the younger ones really enjoyed that they had their families there. Um

175they offer weekly workshops um where parents, it's actually very sweet because you see parents and grandparents and extended family come and get training on just how to um be a support to what we offer during school time. And you know, we talk a lot about, you know, that bridge between school and community. Um but they did a lovely job of just opening their doors and welcoming families and talking to them about ways that are feasible to support literacy um while at home. And so some of the I think one of the parents said that they now had like a clearer picture on how to give that type of support. And there's a lot of conversation around consistency. Um because those of you who know if you have babies, if you're reading to them every night,

176um you know, babies expect you to read every night and then you get that one particular book and you skip a page and they're like, "Mm- you skipped a page. That's not what it said the last time." But all those wonderful things that um we know help us build capacity with students around literacy. Um I think that's the final slide. Yes. Um, and if there's not any questions, I guess I will pass it along. >> Thank you so much, Sanji. We'll go ahead and present secondary programs now. And I welcome my colleague, >> Dr. Chilcott. >> Thank you very much for the opportunity to talk about our secondary credit recovery programs for this past summer. Next slide, please. Um, we also use a student prioritization uh matrix. Uh this is set up in powers school.

177Um and it's based on the factors that you can see before you which are the LCAP indicators, academic indicators, uh historically underserved students, uh also using attendance, social emotional and IEP and 504 um in order to prioritize the students of greatest need. Um so it is an academic uh the academic indicators are the core um selection criteria, but we uh highlight those others as well. So back a few one more forward. Yeah. And then once we have that uh prioritization of the students, um we then start our site in family communication getting those lists out to counselors and administrators as well as using parent square to send invitations directly to the parents and the students um that have qualified using the prioritization u matrix. Secondary counselors then use the pri prioritization list to encourage students

178to attend. Um, and they can go beyond just the ones that are initially prioritized on that sheet because they know their students best. We want to make sure that we're filling in the open spaces that we have for summer school. And then following the initial recruitment process that's centrally led, meaning we're sending out through parent square and we're getting those applications back and building out our list from that. There's ongoing recruitment of prioritized families um by the site counselors and admin and that continues um until we're able to uh fill the uh available seats. Next slide, please. So, the Helms was our high school in-person hub. Um, basically the way that we build uh the structures, we have one in-person hub for students that um will not are uh are having a harder time with

179Egeneuity or the online platform and in-person instruction is deemed to be more appropriate for them. Also, we tend to have the younger students in person and the older students um on the egeneuity program um because the nth graders, we really want them to have more of that in-person um uh experience. So, we have the one uh in-person hub and then we also have a northern egeneuity hub which was at Saskin this year. We were planning on using Dansza but we could not so we shipped it to Saskin which worked out well and we have the southern egeneuity hub which is one's aligned with um the inperson which is at Helms and then a third was at Kennedy. And so that way we have a spread across the district of um of summer school options for

180credit recovery. And so we had 250 students attending in week two. This is a market drop from last year and where we had I think just under 400 in week two. Um we're not actually quite sure why the drop was quite as precipitous as it was. I will say that the indications from the our prioritization sheets um four years ago we had to prioritize at a point of 14 and that has come down to nine indicating that we have far fewer students in dire need of credit recovery. So, our credit recovery systems have definitely improved um the number of students that are not credit deficient in our well, let me reframe that in the positive has improved by having more students that are on track for graduation and fewer that are that need to attend

181summer school. But this drop is a little bit higher than I would have expected. We've definitely had that downward trend and it's something that we need to interrogate moving forward um and review our communication uh processes to see if there's something that maybe we missed in there. Um, and I'm not indicating that we think that that's the case, but whenever you see something like this, you want to dig into it. So, there were 424 individual passing grades, 2100 credits were earned, and there were 30 graduates for our summer graduation. So, that's really exciting. Summer school really enables us to have that summer graduation for students that didn't quite meet that mark um in the uh spring and then were able to get them to graduation. Next slide, please. for our egeneuity hybrid programs. Um I

182just uh outlined that we had Kennedy, Saskin, and Helms. The way that it's structured is it is a hybrid where we ask students or we tell students that they need to attend two days per week and they need to take their unit tests in person. This is enables us to track the uh the assessments for mastery. We had 477 students receiving credit this year um and 200 or 2,894 credits recovered. That's the equivalent of 575 full semesters recovered. So, a really successful year with Egeneuity getting students um the credits that they need. Next slide, please. Uh we also have subject. So, subject is another online program and one that um for some students that are having trouble with egeneuity, subject can sometimes um be more supportive of their needs. Um and it is more expensive.

183And uh this was for RSP students in need of credit recovery run through our special education department and 51 students were active on subject and we had 165 RSP credits recovered through the subject program. Um there are also some RSP students in eenuity and the inperson again as deemed appropriate but this gives us another um way to ensure that students are getting the supports they need with their credit recovery. Next slide please. And that is it for me. Thank you so much. >> Thank you so much, Dr. Chilcott. And I'd love to invite up Dr. Christine Hatcher, our Cece coordinator, to speak about our special education programs extended school year. >> Good evening. Thank you. I was prepared to see Guthri's name there so I could say that um he wasn't able to be here

184this evening. His oldest son is turning 14 and we like to celebrate those milestones as parents. And I would like to tell you that I volunteered to come this evening. Um I was kind of volunttoled but here I am and I'm glad to be here. Good evening again. So I'm just going to talk a little bit about the extended school year which is the program that is offered through special education. Please forgive my looking down. I'm just looking at my notes. Um the general purpose of the ESY program of course is to provide our special education students um uh student I'm sorry provide our special education and related services to eligible students beyond the regular school year. The intention of our programs are to monitor skills. We want to make sure we prevent any sort

185of significant regression in terms of critical skills uh i.e. communication, self-care and any academic needs um of the student. We want to support recovery of skills and we want to ensure that if regression has occurred that the student can recover these skills in a reasonable time. It's also to ensure FAPE. Um ESY is a part of a student's free and appropriate public education under the individuals with disabilities education act. It is not intended to teach new skills, but to maintain progress made during the regular school year. Next slide, please. These numbers actually reflect the number of students whose IEPs specify ESY services. So this these numbers are by no means the total number of students that we are currently serving in West Contraosta in our ES in our special education programs, but the ones whose

186IEP specifically designate. Um and as previously noted from the uh as pre as the previous slide stated that the purpose of ESY is to help students stay on track to meet their IEP goals. You can see the programs are at Riverside Montal. Oh, that's okay. I don't need to read it for you. You guys are more than capable. So, thank you for the next slide. These are the curriculums that were used during our summer programs during the ESY program. There is the VTEC math lab which was used primarily in our mild to moderate programs and unique which was used in our ESN classes. I'm getting my notes again please forgive. Unique is a system. It's online. It's standard aligned curriculum designed to support students with mild to severe disabilities including those in self-contained or specialized

187classroom settings. The Math Live, also an online math intervention program designed to help students primarily grades 3 through 8, build foundational skills uh through interactive game-based learning. It is a supplemental program designed to reinforce math instruction, close gaps, and support um in response. It's a RTI program in response tier 2 and tier three intervention e efforts. The purpose of both of these curriculums, of course, is to ensure that all students, regardless of disability, have meaningful success and access to high quality uh instruction that teaches academic growth, independence, and lifelong learning. Next and final slide for me. Here are the links to the various curriculums that were used. The purpose of course again is targeted intervention designed to address skill caps and reinforce core concepts. It is designed to fit into the very specific time frame.

188We have four to five week window that we're working with students and so this curriculum more than more than adequately meets the needs of the students in that. It is aligned with their student IEP goals. It allows students to retain and apply critical skills. Again, time efficient, focused and it is engaging. The interactive component of these programs allows um students to engage with curriculum in meaningful way providing scaffolds and does progress monitoring to keep students on track towards maintaining their IEP goals. Thank you. >> Thank you so much, Dr. Hatcher. So now I'd like to talk a little bit about our expanded learning programs. Um I next slide. So here are the four models that made up our expanded learning programs this summer. We had an AB model that paired academics in the morning and

189enrichment in the afternoon. We had full day programs where students explored STEM, the arts, and physical education. We had career exploration and work-based learning that gave our high school students realorld exposure through internships. And then we had a summer bridge and academic intervention program. And each one of these programs was designed to make sure that our students were connected, that they were learning, and that they were really getting ready for the year ahead. Next slide. And so here are some of the programming that was offered to our secondary students. And this evening in a little bit you'll get to learn a little bit more about AIM High who's here with us tonight. Next slide. And here are the offerings that we had for our elementary age students. And tonight you'll also get to hear from

190our Richmond Freedom Schools who will be talking about their program. Next slide. So before um we move on to those program highlights, I just want to ground our presentation in the data that we use to really understand impact for our expanded learning programs. This slide outlines those key measures that we studied to evaluate how our summer programs are actually meeting our student needs and family needs. And that includes not only enrollment data, but attendance data, demographic data of our programs. And we also do youth and family surveys. And all of those data points together really guide us on what it is that our families are interested in, what's impactful for our students, and how we need to expand for the future. Next slide. And one of the standout partnerships is actually with UCSF because for

191the past three summers, we've been able to collaborate on hosting an annual summer Mesa Day competition. It's a hands-on STEM focused event that really brings together students from across the district. And this year, 216 students from six different summer programs participated in a series of exciting engineer challenges, including making bridges, gliders, and moonbased design competitions. And it's a really powerful example of how we're making STEM really engaging and collaborative for our students this summer. So, next slide. Okay, so here it is one more slide. Please help me welcome Jesus Galindo, executive director of AIM High to share a little bit more about the impact of their summer programs and the experience they have created for our students this summer. >> Thank you, Superintendent Cotton, President Reckler, Trustees, and Central Office. It's so good to be

192here. Uh for those who don't know me, I have my name is Jesus Alu Alindo. I have the immense privilege of being the CEO of AIM High. Um I'm also a teacher of nine years. I had the privilege of teaching at Lincoln Elementary. I work for Utr. And now I get to work with all of you to create transformational summer learning opportunities for our youth. Before I tell you about AIM high, before I tell you what we do, how we do it, and why we do it, I want to take a step back and just let you know how proud I am of this district's strategy when it comes to expanded learning programs, both summer and after school. The research is clear. Summer programs, after school programs, they help with academics. Summer school programs specifically

193help combat the summer slide. Many of our kids after school ends, they go home, they pay they play Minecraft, they play Ro uh Roblox, they eat a big bag of Takis, maybe sip on their favorite carbonated drink. And although that sounds like a lot of fun, the research is clear it's not good for their educational outcomes. And so by having these programs, we help combat that summer slide, which we know predominantly impacts kids of color, kids who don't have the means to h go to great programs. The research also shows that summer programs after school programs actually also combat um average or drop in average daily attendance. Kids that attend summer programs like AIM high, they actually end up attending the regular ski school more often and they actually get suspended significantly less. At high,

194we've been studied extensively by uh Stanford's Gardner Center and the students that go through our program, their ADA during the regular year increases by 2 to 4% and their suspension rates decrease by 30%. The last thing, and I'm thinking about you, Superintendent Cotton, um after school programs and summer school programs are actually a really good way to recruit those teachers. And I'm specifically thinking about one of the teachers that works at AIM High. Seven summers ago, we started right here. Uh we started at Montabin. We started with 80 students about 20 staff and among that staff there was uh this educator who I love and admire. Her name is Leslie Haredui and she was a paraprofessional at Lincoln Elementary and she was really interested with becoming a teacher but it was kind of scary. She

195didn't know where to start. So she actually worked at Mntavin. She was a central office coordinator and then she started becoming an instructional assistant and now Leslie Hadui is one of the site directors of our Helm site which serves about 140 students and she is now a special ed teacher at Highland. So she went from being an aspiring educator to now working for this district. And by the way Leslie's story is not unique. You know we have Nasia who's also a site director Jake who's actually a teacher right here at Levania Deon. We have so many examples of people who want to be educators. They started AIM high and now they have the privilege of working in Wisconsin. So I just want to say I'm really excited about the strategy that I'm seeing. Specifically about

196AIM high, we are a summer program only. We don't do after school. We specialize in middle school students. We serve 9 to 14 year olds because we believe that in order for those students to be successful, not only do they need academics, but they also need social emotional learning. uh we create opportunities for them to really develop their self-efficacy and the other skills that are going to help them navigate that really uh that moment in our life middle school I don't know if you remember it but it's full of change there's a lot going on uh the students are starting to see a different world and so we are designed to make sure to meet those needs not just academically high is an accelerated academic program so that means that students get pre-exposed to the

197academics they're going to see next here. So imagine you're walking into a name high class, the student is learning about the first amendment right and then they walk into the next year and they there's they see that and they approach it with confidence. I already saw that. I learned that at high and so our goal is not just to help them accelerate their academic growth but to walk into classes confident. The other thing that you should know about is we are academics in the morning and we're afternoon activities in the e uh in the afternoon and they do all types of stuff from what is the uh um like the Brazilian dance. What's it called? Uh help me out. What was that? >> Capoa. They did capoa and a couple other thing. It was really

198cool. Um they also um every single student in our issues and choices class gets to learn about what are A throughG requirements. How do I become successful in high school? They do their life maps. So they start where they're at now, where they want to go, and we try to surround them with the resources in order to figure out how to achieve their goals. They go visit uh schools like UC Berkeley. They um actually a couple of them went to visit um um like a different companies like Deote and so we pre-expos them to careers. The last thing I want to say about aim high is our presence here really started with a dream. We started at Mntavin seven summers ago. We served 80 students and now we've served over a thousand students. And I

199want to leave you with one story that makes my just really makes me really proud of this work. Uh Rioberto Ria was a graduate of Lincoln Elementary. Um I got I had the privilege of teaching Rioberto's sister Adriana. And Rioberto was one of our very first Montavan AMH High students. And not only did he graduate from the program, but he came back as a high school instructional assistant. 30% of our staff members are AIMH High graduates. So the students come back, they get the job, and Rioberto is now not only graduated, but he's on his way to attend Stanford. Um, and he's an aspiring educator. And so I'm really, really grateful to do this work with you and to create powerful counter in this community that I love and I live in. Thank you. >>

200Do I stay for questions or >> Thank you so much. Before we go any further, we're gonna we need to extend I think. So, how much time do you think you have left on the presentation? I >> would say about 10 to 15 minutes. >> Okay. So, it sounds like 10:30 because we have this and then we have the consent item. So, extend to 10:30. Does somebody want to put a motion on the floor? >> Uh, yes. I move that we extend until 10:30. >> Second on that. >> All right, I'll second it. Okay, so it's been moved and second extend to 10:30. Trusty Hernandez. Yes. >> Clerkyana. >> Yes. >> Trusty Gonzalez. >> Yes. >> Trusty Smith WS. >> 10:30. >> Yeah. >> Yes. >> And I'm a Yes. Motion carries unanimously. Okay. So,

201I'd like to thank you very much. I think we cut you short so that we could extend the meeting. Thank you for your work and Nick's presentation. >> Excellent. And thank you so much for the partnership. I've seen the impact of NHI and we're so excited to continue our partnership. We're also excited to be able to highlight another impactful program and we have Freedom School and joining us virtually we have Shakira Reynolds our senior director of strategic partnership from the ad fund. Are you with us Shakira? >> I am and we also have Kyra Brown who is our business success manager and many of you should recognize her. Um, and we are super pleased to have one of our student mentors, a Johnny Reid, who will also be talking about our program tonight. Um, so

202we are part of the Richmond Freedom School team and I we just wanted you all to see our slides because our kids are the cutest. And so you guys can go to the next slide, please. So the freedom school program is based on the freedom schools of the freedom summer project of 1964. And the early freedom schools were aimed at keeping black children and youth safe during the civil rights movement and giving them rich educational um experiences that they were not being offered in public schools. So Children's Defense Fund started these programs in 1995. But the first Freedom School in WCCUSD was called West County Freedom School and it was held at Nestrom in 2019. Richmond Freedom School was first held at King in 2020 and became a fiscal project of the ED fund in

2032021. Now we are in our fifth year and we have served over 450 TK through 8th grade students. And using the CDF Freedom School model, it is proven to help curb summer learning loss, boost reading motivation, and foster cultural pride. Next slide, please. Kyra. >> Yes. So, Freedom School's program theme was I can make a difference. So, that program theme had six sub themes. They were represented across I can make a difference in myself, my family, in my community as well as in my country and my world as well as hope, education and action. Each day students experienced Harambe which was their daily assembly. Harambe is Swahili for community and emphasizing the collective effort of coming together and supporting each other. After they experienced their daily morning routines, they went into integrated reading curriculum where

204they worked with their teachers. They had themes centered around academic enrichment, parent and family development, civic engagement, as well as social action. And then they emphasized nutrition, health, and mental health. So across the summer, we received several books for our scholars. They got to take those books home and they got to read them with their teachers as well. So those books were very diverse. It was very important for those reading material to represent the scholars history and culture and all that the students represented. And then next slide please. In addition to our reading materials, we also had students go on field trips. There were weekly parent meetings where we kept up family engagement and we also had afternoon activities. Some of those activities included chess, gardening, dance, poetry, music, and more. And we got to

205highlight our scholars in an end of program showcase. It was a fun, cute, and very wonderful way to end the summer in our community with our families. And we are very happy that the scholars experience growth and self-confidence and were able to better express themselves at the end of the summer. So, I'll pass it on to Shakira to talk more about our program highlights. Um, and we also wanted to just highlight that all of our enrichment providers were local agencies and part of our WCCUSD community and that is really intentional so that families and students can continue to participate in these activities either through the afterchool programs at their job at their schools or by going to the organization's headquarters. Next slide please. Um, so the first highlight is one that is near and dear

206to my heart. Over 35% of our freedom school scholars were sped students. I am the mother of two sped students in WCCUSD and we have been very intentional to fully integrate students with special needs into our program and to also openly discuss neurodeiversity with all scholars and all families. And so it's really a unique place where our program truly reflects our community. Um, a great big thank you for the instructional aids that were provided to support us with our sped students and we were also able to to host five high school mentors and one of them is with us this evening and I do want to give Ajani an opportunity to share his experience. Ajani, >> hello. Can you hear me? >> Yes, dear. >> Okay. Um, do I talk now? >> Yes, you may.

207>> Okay. Sorry. Hi, my name is Johnny Reid. Uh, I'm a 12th grade student at Hercules High School. And this was my first ever, you know, summer program, summer job really. And, you know, it taught me to be patient, like be uh be more patient with the students. and um you know because I have two little brothers at home and sometimes you know it's a it's a barrier there because they're my family members but you know with the students it it was a different learning aspect and you know it it I say it it really did help me and um something that I could something that I really liked about freedom was just like um seeing how you So you would you would help say a student need help uh needed help with something like

208uh reading or something like that, they would come back to me days or a week later and be excited to show uh the new skill that they learned and I just felt that I was making a difference in um in Freedom School and that's what really stuck with me. >> So yeah, >> thank you Ajani. So, um, as as our program highlights indicate, um, we're super proud that all five board members were able to visit Freedom School this summer along with Superintendent Cotton and the CEO, the director of FACE, and a number of other WCCUSD staff came as readaloud guests and volunteers. Tony Thurman came and spent almost two hours with us and visited every classroom. Um, we were featured in an Ed Source article, um, all about summer program in WCCUSD and the benefits

209of ELOP funding. Um, and this year's National Day of Social Action theme was public education is a public good. Our Darius McDonald was our guest speaker. Guthrie came and then we went on a march around the neighborhood around Nestrom um in favor of public education with our enrichment providers, scholars, staff, parents, community members. It was an amazing opportunity. The kids made signs, they did speeches, we sang songs. Um, and also because we all need to also have data as a backup, we did reading assessments throughout the summer to capture students growth um for both the uh Richmond Fund for Children and Youth as well as the ELOP um parent and youth surveys. Next slide, please. So, finally, you all can read the testimonials for yourselves. Um, one of the things that I loved is parents

210talked about the positive shift in their child's behavior that they looked forward to supporting both Freedom School and community or organizations for a lifetime. Um, our kids love to come every day and Freedom School was a true community effort and achievement and demonstrates what we can accomplish together when we see here and center the needs of children. So, I just want to thank the staff and the scholars and families. Um, the city of Richmond, expanded learning, m Maria Recendez who did all the things. Um, Barbara Jellison and food services principal Allerdise, the custodial staff at Nestrom, and of course the board and cabinet. We couldn't have done this without you all. So, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And I hope to see you same same place, same time next summer. >> Amazing. Thank you

211so much and thank you for the partnership that's creating powerful experiences for our students. And to close us out, we're very proud to welcome our very own coordinator, our Darius McDonald, who's going to share about the summer program led by the Office of African-American Student Achievement and the impact that they had for students and the community. >> Thank you. And good evening, Superintendent Cotton, board of trustees, West Contracasta leadership, our listening public. My name is our Darius Macdonald, coordinator of the Office of African-American Student Achievement. I am coming with great joy to share with you the first ever summerbridge program that the office of African-American student achievement offered. I do have a video on the um deck. I don't know if we can if we can play that while I speak through the slides. If

212not, um, is that it it does have sound. You can mute the sound. I just thought that it it would be nice that you can see. Um, yes, thank you. It's only three minutes and if you need to cut it short, I have four slides so I can this will be uh brief and concise but you can really get a feel or if you can turn it up. So maybe that's not working. Let's I'll just go ahead. So, in uh January, just a little background, Office of African-American Student Achievement, for those that don't know, uh 2020, WCCCUSD Board of Education passed a resolution uh submitted by the African-American site advisory team to established Office of African-American Student Achievement. Since its existence, the OAS supported thousands of African-American students through academic programming, parent engagement, and student

213recognition ceremonies. As I stated, this was the first year we offered a summerbridge program. Uh, and students and parents have been very vocal about continuing this next summer. The OASA will monitor this cohort through our grades, assessments, discipline, etc. throughout the school year, and we already have plans for future study trips and parent engagement opportunities. The video is is playing spotty. That's the award ceremony that's showing right now. At the end, every student received certificates. There was different categories. We made sure that every single student was recognized that every single student in this program was um was seen, valued, supported, and they spoke to that in this. But we don't have the sound. Um but we can cut this and I'll just go to the next slide. Okay, that is um actually the financial literacy.

214Okay, that was the financial literacy course. This slide right here represents uh that we had 73 rising 7th, 8th, and 9th grade students that applied and were accepted to the program. Now, think about this for the elementary school. those kids. Parents are it's it's it's it's easier to recruit a 8-year-old to a summer school. You going that's just it. You're going to summer school. High school. It's also if you need credit recovery, you need to graduate. You're going middle school, you're 12, you're 13 years old, I'm going to the mall. No, you're going to this Oasisa summer school. And they came. And when they came, they stayed. And when they stayed, they learned. And when they learned, they smiled. And they had joy. And they had passion. And our our staff was amazing. We had

215a staff of nine. We had uh certificated teachers. Our curriculum included African-American history taught by Mr. McConico, U Polo Valley High School teacher, algebra, Miss Ortiz, a Hamm um math teacher, and our financial literacy was offered through calculus roundt. They have a money works financial um literacy program. All students took all classes. um 25% of our participants were students with special needs because the OASA believes strongly that special ed students are general ed students first. I my background is as a special education teacher and that that that holds true with um our programming. So it was very good to see that we had a full-time MMS teacher on site as well as three academic support teachers. So our studenttoteer ratio was approximately 15 to one. So there was small group you know um instruction that

216occurred which was really important to um student engagement. Next sl next slide please. And that's the schedule over there as well. This right here um if you just take a moment that is the picture is the community circle. We had community circles at the beginning and end and closing of each day. Each day was um 9 to 12 and we closed each day. That's Principal Evans in the middle. She led each community circle and in that students gave shout outs to teachers for something they learned that day. Teachers gave shout outs to students. I saw what you did. I heard you this morning. I heard and there was a raffle every day. So students had their raffle tickets. It was just a great way to bring community and close each day out as students were

217all engaged and they felt this this community coming because we were only there 16 days and many of the students didn't know each other because they came from different schools. So the the the beginning and closing circles were were super important. the slides you can read on your own, but you can see things that pop out as far as, you know, um 55% of our students uh felt that they were more ready for school and felt more confident. That's a that was one of our goals. We wanted to be intentional about providing um instruction that will give them the confidence day one when they got to their next grade. And they expressed that through our post surveys as well. Next slide please. So we also um even though we had accepted 73 students our numbers

218did drop after say the first week or so. So we were averaging say 46 students per day throughout the 16 days. Again, this was our first um our first program and although the um we only had three classes, it still worked with having about 4650 students each day. So that was um very uh important for the student and teacher relationships to build in that little amount of time. And on this slide, right, oh, I'm sorry. On that that last slide, if you go back, that was a a parent, we did parent surveys as well. So, our parents responded how how they were interested in future OASA programs. 100% of the parents survey said that yes, but there was a couple quotes down there, and I just want to read this real quick. My daughter felt

219that she finally understood math. I enjoyed the spark in her eyes. She is looking forward to starting her school year. The motivation to do well in school is incredible. And this last one, I enjoyed that he came home every day with something new to tell us. My son is more confident when going over his multiplication facts. And when he came home and explained us what pim dies meant, I almost fainted. These are these are just a couple of our parent con uh comments. We have post um surveys as well. Uh for instance, in math, Miss Ortiz gave a um a pre and post survey, and I'll let you um look at this last slay, but the it was amazing what happened in 16 days. I saw it. I was there every day. the first day

220that preassessment students mostly didn't answer questions or they wrote I don't know this I've never seen this and we're talking about graphing equations uh mean median they were doing coordinates and they were doing um solving um yeah solving for equations 16 days later July 17th the same what same material was given and there was I want to make sure I get the numbers right here, but I it was it was amazing. She We sat down and talked. She She showed me their um scores and we had, excuse me, I know I had it in here, but I know we had some 100%. Here it is. uh um 18 students that scored 100% on the math post test. We used Desmos. Um and we also used and 84% of the students received passing grades on that

221same assessment. 84% of the students passed. And we're talking about the students with special needs as well. This is this is all students. All right. Um great job to our teaching staff, the uh principal Evans and and just it it was an amazing experience. If you see here with the student voices, things that they learned kids were u making business plans. They learned about sales tax investing in stocks. They were actually, you know, have doing mock investments in 16 days. they uh our students were learning about black history and of course our algebra. And there's a reason for this and I want to read this right quick in my notes. I'm all off the notes, Miss Bell. But my notes here, I wanted to say that all African-American families with with students of sixth, seventh,

222and eighth grade were sent parents well. This is how we recruited parents square and emails in May encouraging them to apply to the program. We also promoted the summer bridge at our African-American students of honor ceremony. The total number of students in all three grades district-wide is approximately 950, right? Of which 13% submitted applications. Subjects were chosen based upon demonstrated need and alignment to the goals in the WCCUSD strategic plan. algebra was offered because the 2024 California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress indicates that only 9% of WCCUSD African-American students tested, grades 3rd through 8th and 11th, of course, met or exceeded proficiency. African-American history was offered because there's decades of research that demonstrate the correlation between a positive self-identity and success in school. Financial literacy was offered because wealth is a driver of inequality.

223And WCCCUSD is an anti-racist district. All courses supported the strategic plan, specifically goal three, relentless attention to achievement, agency, and access. Oasisa strongly believes that students with special needs are general education students first. And we provided ample staff to support learning as I said with a certificated MMS and teachers and academic support providers. Okay, >> try to interrupt. >> Thank you. >> Yes. Thank you so much, our >> good night. >> Thank you so much. Let's give it up for our Darius. We're so excited to be able to have started this program for our students and we will be sure to share the link of the video in our Friday memo. >> Okay, board. What would you like to do? We're at 10:20. Does somebody have one question or do we want this to come

224back next board meeting and we can ask questions or comments or >> could we send questions in and maybe they can be answered in the Friday memo? >> Absolutely. >> You can and I also submitted a number of questions and the answers I'd like you to see. So maybe those could go in the Friday memo too. So I just want to tell you so thoughtful the programs were excellent. the amount of work that was that was put into summer school, I didn't know until I read those answers. Really, thank you, is amazing. Um, and I I have some comments just about like how do we get word out earlier? How do we get more families? Um, so there there's some little things about that, but really thank you very much. It was great summer. Okay,

225let's go to C13 and can we get a brief description of the approval of lease lease back contract documents or just what can you briefly explain what lease lease back is? >> Absolutely. Thank you very much. In the interest of time, I'll keep it really quick. Lease lease back is one of the alternative delivery methods. We still have the contract with the architect, but then we hire a lease lease back contractor. This is the delivery method approved by the board back in April when we did the presentation of the delivery method for both Kennedy and Richmond. Specifically to the question that was asked earlier, I just want to say very clearly that even within lease lease back, the district always owns the property. There is no mortgage and the property is never at risk. And

226um we do look forward to going into this at much greater detail at the CBOC meeting on Monday um and answering any other questions that you might have tonight. >> Thank you. Okay, I guess that's it. Uh we'll go to the vote. Uh Trusty Hernandez, >> I'll move the item. Sorry, did you need us to move the item? >> Um we can't we usually don't on consent. We just >> like When we pull them though, we usually do. >> We do. Okay. >> Yeah. I'll just I'll move. Yeah. The item. Yeah. >> And a second on it. >> I'll second it. >> Uh and uh any further comments on No. Okay. We go to vote. Trusty Hernandez. >> Yes. >> Clerkana. >> No. Okay. Um Trusty Gonzalez. >> Yes. >> Trusty Smith votes. >> Smith

227votes. Yes. >> And on Yes. Motion carries with one no. Okay. So, we're all done with that. You know, I did not take public comment on summer school. Is there any one? Okay. >> Marie, please unmute yourself. Thank you. Can you hear me? >> Yes. >> Thank you. Um I just wanted to say that presentation was phenomenal. I was so excited to hear everything that the district did with the students over the summer. Me being uh this is going to be my 18th year working as a educationalbased speech therapist. I have worked ESY many many times. Um it just warmed my heart. I want to say my son, he did ESY for her third year in a row. Miss Santos at Mirror Vista is a phenomenal teacher. Shout out to her. She should be teacher

228of the year. He has grown so much with her and he also got to be in her summer school class this year. I'm very proud of him. I just wanted to bring up one small thing. Um, I did apply to work ESY. I did not get a letter of confirmation till 2 days before summer school started. So, I couldn't work it cuz I didn't get child care for my child. Just make sure you send out the confirmation letters earlier. Thank you. Okay, great. And I apologize for skipping you. Okay, we're up to G comments from the board of education. Does anybody have anything quick? Seeing none. Oh, go ahead. I just want to say thank you um for the presentations tonight. Um give a quick update. So last night was National Night Out. Um we

229visited a couple of the of the neighborhood councils. So I had the privilege of visiting the Coronado neighborhood council. Um the Santa Fe neighborhood council, Nevin Community Center, and the closing at the 23rd Street Merchants. So, it was a great event where community came out to all the events. I mean, we had full house, I think, in all of the events. So, shout out to all the neighborhood councils who did their thing in their neighborhoods. I also wanted to give a shout out to our media teacher here at Dejon, Mr. Mario Bambino. He actually did an extension of his media class. Um he partnered with PAL this year um to take some of his top students um around 30 students and did an extension of his media class and they actually um spent about four

230weeks this summer. They just concluded this week. Um and they produced, they directed, they did everything that had to do with media and production. um a whole video around vaping. Um so that was exciting to see the clips um at the a at the presentation the other day that I got invited to. So shout out to Mr. Bambino and I hope to see some more of that work being done here at Dejon throughout the year. So I just wanted to shout him out. I you know we see you and yeah that's it for tonight. >> Thank you. Anyone else? Go ahead. We are starting a new year and as a board it is imperative that we are clear about who we are and what we believe. We must stand 10 toes down around our expectations.

231So before we have the retreat, this is what I believe and what I think we should be as a district. I believe we should be and we are a place where students deserve to be assaulted with slurs as they attend our schools. Students deserve to be educated under the umbrella of anti-racism. Our students deserve to feel safe and be safe physically, mentally, and socially. Our students deserve a non-zip coded education where a student can attend any one of our schools and have a high quality education. Our students deserve the absolute best that we can give them. If anyone believes any of what I believe, then we both you and the aligned believers need to get comfortable with fighting. We have to fight an entrenched system. We have to fight our own biases. We have to

232fight to protect our superintendent and her leadership and fighting the And we have to fight the urge to center adults over student needs. This work is not easy. If it was, the work would be done. This work is created to tear us apart and to tear us down. But if we all stand by what But if we all stand by what we are, the saying that we are one, then we have to agree that all have to be successful for one of us to be successful. Education is a civil right, and I look forward to the leadership under our superintendent. I am complete. Moving now to item H. The next regularly scheduled meeting is August 27, 2025 right here. By then, school will be back in session. Hard to believe this summer just whiz by.

233Incredible. So, thank you to all of you who are getting us ready and for all the work over the summer. And have a great opening and we'll see you back here August 27th. Have a nice evening everybody. Uh we are adjourned at 10:29. Good evening.