0015:00 p.m. to access translation. Oops. Is that me? Okay. To access translation in Zoom, please click on the globe icon at the bottom of the screen. If you are here in this auditorium and need translation, you may pick up a headset in the back corner of the auditorium. The board is about to go into close session, but before we do, we're here to listen to public comment on closed session items. individuals wishing to speak on close session items listed. If you're here in the auditorium and you haven't already done so, you can pick up a WCCUSD public comment card, which you can find in the entryway table or if you're participating via Zoom, individuals will need to raise their hand in the Zoom app. And if you're accessing the meeting by phone, press star 9.
002The time allotted to each speaker is 2 minutes and the total time allotted is 1 hour. Speaking time shall not be transferred from one person to another and there is no substitution of speakers. We alternate between a Zoom comment and an in-person comment. 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 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 public comment. The items listed on the close session agenda tonight are uh conference with legal counsel, existing litigation, government code 54956.9D1, three
003cases, Kent Walman versus WCCCUSD. Case number 322-CV090 95 clear at al West Contraosta Unified School District Adal Contraosta County Superior Court conference with legal council anticipated litigation significant exposure to litigation pursuant to government code for 54956.9D2 cases public employee discipline Dismissal release complaint. Public employee appointment superintendent. Elementary school principal. Secondary principal conference with labor negotiators. Is there any public comment on any of these items? We have no public comment. Great. With that, we will see you at 6:30. Thank you everyone. and then welcome to the open session of the regularly scheduled May 30th, 2025 meeting of the West Contraosta Unified School District School Board. The board is close session and I'm calling open session to order at 6:48 p.m. Thank you all for your patience. To access translation and Zoom, please click on click on
004the globe icon at the bottom of the screen. And if you're here in the auditorium and need translation, you may pick up a headset in the back corner of the auditorium. In a few minutes, we're going to 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 with with but is within the subject matter jurisdiction of the West Contraosta Unified School District. Please prepare now for public comment. And if you're here in the auditorium and you'd like to make public comment, please fill out a WCCUSD public comment card, you can find them on the table in the entryway. And if you're participating via Zoom, please raise your hand in the Zoom app prior to the beginning of the item
005on the agenda. And if you're participating by phone, press star 9. After your comment card has been turned in, the cards are placed in the order received and we will call on speakers one at a time alternating between public comment here in Dejon and one on Zoom. Public comment generally lasts for 1 hour and the time allotted to each speaker is 2 minutes. In the meantime, we are moving on to the rest of our opening procedures. B2 Pledge of Allegiance. If you're 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 Chacheno
006Mikma Karkin Aloney peoples and acknowledge them as the first inhabitants of the land we currently occupy. labor and body recognition acknowledgement. I acknowledge that the burden of environmental exploitation and systemic and systemic injustice falls upon the labor of black and brown bodies in the building of this country and its institutions. I remember that black and brown people were born and died working on this land against their will for generations. I acknowledge the continued contribution of the labor of survivors over the centuries to today of all immigrant labor, including voluntary and voluntary traffic, forced, and undocumented peoples in the building of what we refer to as the United States. Author Dr. Michelle Rogers Ard West Contraosta Unified School District anti-racism statement. The West Contraosta School District Board of Education is committed to the work of anti-racism,
007the conscious and active e effort to identify, challenge, and correct racial inequities in the systems and institutions within our schools and community. 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 have produced 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 to develop a strong understanding of how our personal experiences and feelings fit into
008a larger picture of continual oppression. Each member of our school board individually and collectively is responsible for creating and nurturing an anti-racist learning environment 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 the district. Therefore, we commit to supporting anti-racist policies, programs, and practices for our children's education and well-being. While 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 also commit to holding West Contraosta Unified District staff, students, and community to living these standards of anti-racism in our schools. Board approved March 2024. B5 roll call. Dr. Moses, would
009you please take role? Yes. Good evening. Clerk Inana. Good evening everyone. Present. Trustee Hernandez. Good evening. Present. Student trustee Baron. Good evening. Present. Student Trustee Espinosa Jr. Good evening. President President Reckler. Good evening. I'm present. Trusty Gonzalez Hoy. Mic is not working. Trusty Gonzalez Hoy is present. Trusty Smiths. Good evening everyone present. That completes the roll call. Thank you. Everybody is present tonight. Number six, report ratification of close session. Dr. Moses, is there a report out of close session? Yes, there is. Agenda item A21. In close session, the board took action to authorize the offer of the settlement proposal in case Kent Walman versus WCCCUSD Contraosta County Superior Court case number C18-01 895. The vote was as follows. Clerk Inana, yes. Trusty Gonzalez Hoy, yes. Trustee Hernandez, absent. President Reckler, yes. And Trustee Smith Folds,
010yes. Also in close session, the board took action to accept the settlement agreement in case number 3 col22-CV-09095. The vote was as follows. Clerk Inana, yes. Trusty Gonzalez Hoy, yes. Trusty Hernandez, yes. President Reckler, yes. Trusty G Trusty Smith Folds, yes. Item number A2.3 in close session the board took action to approve the suspension without pay of a permanent classified custodial employee. The vote was as follows. Clerk Inana yes. Trusty Gonzalez Hoy yes. Trustee Hernandez yes. President Reckler yes. Trustee Smith Folds yes. Vote was unanimous. Agenda item 24. The vote the board voted to approve the appointment of Denita Robbins as principal of Collins Elementary School. The vote was unanimous. Also in close session, the board voted to approve the appointment of Alberto Solarizano as the principal of Coronado Elementary School. The vote was also
011unanimous. And finally, the board the board voted to approve the appointment of Nicholas Ray as principal of Murphy Elementary Schools. The vote was unanimous. That concludes the report out from close session. Great. Thank you so much. We're moving on to item number seven, student performance to John Middle School. Yes. Good evening, President Reckler, um, Clerk Anyana, members of the board, and our community. This evening, we are very excited to have our students from Dejon Middle School Concert Band. And to welcome and introduce our students, we welcome Miss Rebecca Delesio um, who is going to be introducing them. And board members are welcome to go down on the floor to listen. Thanks for Thank you so much. It's a privilege to perform for you today. Um this is my eighth year teaching at Don Middle School
012and it's my second year teaching at Kennedy High School. And thanks and the students that you see uh that will perform for you today. Some of them have been playing since elementary school in the Kennedy family. Some of them started with me last year as um beginners and some of them started with me this year as beginners. So, we're going to play for you today um Anastasia by John Edmonson and follow that with The Dragon Lord by Randall Standridge. And I want to thank um the board for all that you do for the Kennedy family. And here we go. [Music] Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Heat. Heat. I Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] [Applause] Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] I am coming. We're just going
013to take a two-minut break until this clears out and we'll move on to our science award winners. Okay, thank you everybody for your patience. We we are up to item eight, science fair recognition. Yes. So, we're incredibly excited um to recognize our West Contraosta Unified School District Science Fair recipients. And I'd love to invite up John Ewoki, our coordinator of science and engineering to introduce our winners. Good evening board, uh, Dr. Moses, cabinet, friends, um, community. Um, it's really exciting to be here tonight. My name is John Wawwalki. I'm the coordinator of science and engineering for West Contraostus uh, Unified School District. And I have some friends with me today. Friends, um, we're really excited for the opportunity to celebrate academic excellence and science in particular. And if you've heard me speak before, you know
014that in West Contraosta, we don't just want to know what scientists know. We also want to think how scientists think and do what scientists do. And so my friends here behind me have really made um a big statement because they've been doing what scientists do. Anytime you go to a university, right, and you walk through the science hallways, you'll see these posters about what scientists have been doing. And these folks right here, they came up with a testable question and they collected some data and they made a claim and they backed it up with excellence and we're recognizing that tonight. So there were 40 students from West Contraosta who um moved on from our own fair uh to the county fair um and that was held out in Pittsburgh and that was a tough tough
015fair. So, these folks that all placed at the at the county fair were really the cream of the cream um in the district. So, I'm really appreciative of this opportunity to recognize them today. So, there was a slide um that's included that has all of their names. There were 40 of them. I've got a few of them here. Um do you want to hear about one of the projects really quick? Maybe. So this is um Shria and she was here last year also because she also killed it last year at the Golden Gate Fair. Can you just tell us what your projects was about? She got first place. First place every time you uh Thank you. Uh my project this year was measuring elasticity in hyperbolic crochet structures and I tried to see um how
016what kind of curve how the curvature impacts the elasticity. I ended up finding that the structures with more curvature had more elasticity. Thank you. They want to tell them real quick. Quick. Yeah. Uh, so this was a science fair, but your name is Oh, okay. Hello. Uh, hello all. Uh, my name is Cali Stewart. I'm in 11th grade. I go to Richmond High School. And this was a science fair, but it was also an engineering fair. and me and my partner Montat um we put together a quick uh programming project where we created a game that was based off of the F FRC first robotics competitions uh game Reefcape and it was a way to solve a problem within our community our robotics community and outreach to all students everywhere kids of all ages that
017are on Roblox so that they would be exposed to STEM and uh intrigued about the engineering ing worlds instead of just playing random games. And we found it to be a very captivating experience. Thank you. Anyway, so super proud of these students um and the representation from across the district. We had nine secondary schools um participating in this county fair, which is a new record for our district. So super excited about that. So, thanks folks from uh Koramatsu and Elserto are here. Vista High is here. Richmond High is here. Um lots of folks from across the district. So, super proud. Would you be willing to come take a photo with us, too? We absolutely do. Thanks, everybody. Everybody big smile. One, two, three. One more time. Last one. Next camera. All right, here we go.
018One more time. Last one. One, two, three. Thank you so much. Okay. Again, congratulations to our science fair winners. We're up to number nine, public comment. Members of the public are invited to speak to the board on any matter that is not otherwise in the agenda but is within the subject matter jurisdiction of the West Controposity 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 WCC public comment card or if participating by Zoom, individuals who need to raise their hand in the Zoom app prior to the beginning of the item
019on the agenda. If you're calling in by phone, press star 9. Speaking time shall not be transferred from one person to another and 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 different points 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
020items presented in public comment. Is there any public comment? Our first public comment is Kim Chamberlain. Good evening. I am Kimberly Chamberlain Local 21 SSA chapter president. Tonight, I am going to quickly say thank you to all of the administrative assistants, clerical staff, everyone out there that is supporting me and our students to be successful. I could not do my job the way I do it without their support. I would like to thank them wholeheartedly for doing everything they can to make sure students are successful every day in encouraging them to come to school, be successful in their attendance as well as in their academics. I also want to thank them for making sure that the staff is welcomed every day. Also we have to take into consideration that they listen to parents us they
021listen to students and they go home and have a successful life at home also. Thank you. And tomorrow morning, I will get the privilege to thank them all on the office manager and secretary clerical meeting at 9:00 a.m. And if you would like to join us, please stop by a school site and jump on with them. They are very successful. And thank you very much. Our next public comment is Jean Kinster. Please unmute yourself. Good evening board. Lord, asking for asking Lyn Mackey for and receiving waiverss for the Sorry, someone's trying to call me. Um, asking Len Mackey for and receiving waivers for the penalties imposed upon WCCCUSD because you, the district, chose not to use the full 55% of the total outgo to classroom compensation. Listen up teachers. This is you. RSP teachers, you
022paras you, aids, you, RSP aids, you, all of you. This means that the superintendent of past, future, and the acting interim superintendent now along with the board is literally keeping money out of our pockets. The penalty says that the money not spent gets divided and given to the classroom teachers, the paras, the RSP teachers, the RSP aids, and the aids. with this waiver. They don't have to do that. They can keep that money that's owed to us. The law says they pay it to us and then the penalty says they pay it to us, but they get waivers not to pay it to us. Your waiverss literally take legally mandated money that should be paid to us out of and keeps it from our pockets. Please stop doing this. If you are unaware, I understand.
023I just became aware last week. Our next public comment is Sky Nelson. Good evening board. My name is Sky Nelson, teacher and parent at Elsto High School. I wanted to speak about transparency and the Brown Act. Over a month ago, Elserto High School submitted anou because it wasn't submitted properly in some sense. The interim superintendent didn't acknowledge it. I don't know how that's possible, but not even to say it was submitted incorrectly. Just silence of the deadline kept being emphasized. That silence caused unnecessary stress. There's also a dispute over the cost of the schedule, but the district hasn't shared those costs how they're calculated. Without that, teachers and families are left guessing. The confusion and division from the withheld information are causing harm to our community. When I raised this with President Reckler, I was
024told to bring it to the union, but the union has been shut out of some meetings and they have been canceled and delayed. President Reckler has cited the Brown Act to justify not withh with withholding details. But the Brown Act exists to protect public access, not to limit it. It doesn't prevent staff from sharing facts. The Brown Act says the people in delegating authority do not give the public servants the right to decide what is good for the people to know and what is good for the people not to know. You have the right to make budgetary decisions. You may or may not have the right to keep certain details private, but you don't have the right to ignore the impact of silence and withheld information. That silence is doing real damage to our community.
025I hear the discussion may be made, decision may be made this Friday, but the union didn't even know about that in my school. So, are they really part of the process? My concern is this. The unintended cost of changing a 30-year-old schedule could far exceed the the supposed cost of of keeping it. This is the danger. This is why we need clarity now. President Reckler, I urge you to direct Director Mo and Superintendent Moses to sign the MUS and the schedules. Thank you very much. Our next public comment is Maisha Harris Gash. Please unmute yourself. Hey. Hey everybody. Good evening. So, some of you may be aware we had a situation at Kennedy High School today. So, I want to give praise and thanks and grace to my principal, Miss McGee, because I know she
026was on the phone, she was calling people. I want to give love also to our um support staff like Lance, our custodian, Junior. I think he's the maintenance person now. And then the district people um that were sent out. I do not know their names. Um but just want to thank all of those involved. So, and I will say about Miss McGee, y'all know those of you who know know when she got the position, she inherited some stuff that was left over from before and it seemed like time and time again, there are things that are popping up. So, I believe in giving praise and thanks where it is due. So, I want to say thank you to her for dealing with this situation today and hopefully when we get back to work tomorrow, cuz
027this situation is over by my room, that uh me and my kids will will be able to go back to my room tomorrow. So, you know, I'm always talking about my kids and my babies are graduating. My co babies are graduating. So, recently, like this week and last week, they're starting to reminisce and like, "Miss Gash, remember when we came back and we were wearing masks? Miss Gash, remember when we came back and we had to sit, you know, two desks apart? Remember we had to get COVID tested and all that kind of stuff." So just that they survived and that also they are thriving in the midst of or in the aftermath of the intensity of COVID. So I'm starting to get a little bit sad. I don't do countdown to the end of
028the year. But I just want to just going to miss my babies cuz this is a special group of young people who came out of co. So with that being said, be nice, be kind, be loving to people because one, you never know what your last conversation is going to be with somebody. And I say that because I have experienced four deaths in the last four months and it is a whole lot. Peace everybody. Our next public comment is Abdullah Ali. Abdullah Alseli. Next public comment is Don Gazny. Good evening to you all. You know, for a great many years, the district has offered simultaneous Spanish language translation at board meetings. Once the board started using Zoom for hybrid meetings, translation was available there, too. The citizens bond oversight committee has recently started offering Spanish
029translation for in-house participants as well as on Zoom. Considering the large number of our neighbors who need or want these services, this is a good thing. It shows that the district sees and is responding to the needs of the community. CBOC Vice Vice Chair Bernardon Havar Dotton asked a legitimate question wondering whether the district archives these translated videos and shares them with the community. As it turns out, these translated records are not archived. The facilities team has investigated what it it might take to archive these translated videos. We're optimistic. There are alternatives to translated Zoom recordings, but if we can make this work, this would be yet another means of engaging the greater WCCUSD community. What I just shared was merely for your edification, but now perhaps the board could consider archiving their own Spanish
030language translated Zoom meeting, Zoom recordings of their meetings. This might be a great way to demonstrate to the community that their needs were also your needs. When that that when they spoke, you listened. If more of our community had access to our meetings and the information included in them, perhaps even more of our neighbors might become engaged in our educational programs. Thank you. Next public comment is a grace one. Please unmute yourself. Please unmute yourself. Okay, thanks. Um, thank you board members for the opportunity to speak. I want to share why Vista Virtual Academy is an incredible option that more families in our district need to know about, especially at a time when we're facing double-digit enrollment every 5 years and families are leaving for charter schools left and right, causing budget crisis and painful
031teacher layoffs. Promoting Vista is a real opportunity to reverse this trend and keep families in our district. Vista offers a focused learning environment free from typical classroom distractions, allowing advanced learner to accelerate at their own pace. For example, 30% of Vista's third graders are reading two to three grade levels ahead. My own third grader writes persuasive essays as well as many middle schoolers. Vista's exceptional teachers, many of them with 20, 25, 30 years of experience teaching in the district, provide personalized support. Even students who started below grade level, have made a full year's progress in just 6 months. The flexible approach means students can use resources tailored to their needs. My mathloving child was frustrated by the outdated one-sizefits-all material, CERN, and my math. And with FISA's support, she's able to use better adaptive alternatives,
032and she's now working a full grade ahead and loving it. This is the kind of highquality, flexible alternative that families want, but often don't know exists. Just today, I spoke with a family from a wealthier district, Albany, who said their children are getting a much better education at Vista. And at today's park meetup, the turnout was huge, proving virtual learning doesn't mean missing out on social connections. If you want your child to thrive academically and socially, parents, Vista Virtual Academy is the best choice. Let's spread the word and support this program so every family can benefit and so we can keep our students and teachers right here in our best district. Let's do it. Thank you. Our next public comment is Jose. Good evening board trustees and Dr. Moses. My name is Josea Nam Morado
033and I'm a sophomore at John F. Kennedy High School. I'm also the class president of the class of 27 ASB co-president and LSU secretary. Tonight I'm here to talk to the board about not signing the contract for a eighth period schedule here at Kennedy. The eighth period schedule allows students to take classes they are interested in and help them retake classes they have failed. If you move forward with the sixth period schedules, our current freshman will be will only be able to take one elective class next year. From our knowledge, they will have to take English, geometry, world history, biology, and PE. Many of them haven't even taken a world language class and they will have to drop a class that they are interested in to be able to take a world his a world
034language class. I believe that the sixth period schedule will limit students who need a free period for work outside of school and students who want to stay in their pathway classes, take additional classes, and students who need to recover classes. The eighth period schedule helps a lot of students and their needs to graduate as well. The music class has gone through a lot of a lot of stuff this past week. We're not able to use our instruments or have enough stands. Instead of enjoying our music class, we have to worry about what we don't or do have. Give Miss Dlesio more support. Don't forget why you're board members to help us the students. Our next public comment is Christina Werta. Okay. Hello. My name is Christina Werta and I'm a Spanish teacher at Kennedy High
035School and I'm also here tonight to talk about ourou and how it was uh denied basically. So I am here to ask the board to check in with Dr. Moses and help Kennedy figure out why alternate alternate schedule is being denied. We have had an eight period schedule at Kennedy for the last 12 years and during distance learning advisory was added to our schedule and as a site we realize how beneficial advisory can be to help us build stronger relationships with our students. So we decided to keep advisory as part of our schedule moving forward. But now we are being told that ourou which includes advisory cannot be approved. We are not asking for much. We want a chance to give our students the best high school experience with opportunities to feel connected at school
036and take classes that will help them plan out their future. At Kennedy, we know our students deserve this and so much more. But somehow those rejecting ourou are more concerned with dollar signs than ensuring that all students in this district are receiving a well-rounded education. Part of ourou asks that Spanish- speaking newcomers be placed in an advisory with a Spanish-sp speakaking certificated teacher who can help make the transition to US schools just a little easier. As part of the five teachers who work with newcomers, we are honored to support our Spanish-sp speaking community and we want to show them how rewarding it is to be multilingual. But that does not mean that we are willing to work extra without compensation. Multilingual employees should be compensated for their skills. And in ourou, we ask that the
037Spanish-sp speaking staff working with newcomer advisories be compensated for an hour of collaboration a week. That's it. 42 extra dollars is what we're asking to cover the extra work that we do to help our newcomer students feel connected to our school community. Do not put Kennedy last. Dr. Moses, if you claim to be a Kennedy alum, we hope you're going to support us. Our next public comment is Zach Porter. Hello, my name is Zach Porter. I'm an English and theater teacher at Kennedy High, and I'm here to discuss the district's unwillingness to adopt our alternative schedule um for the coming school year. Um the district has attempted to justify not supporting our alternative schedule by citing a discre decrease in projected student enrollment a projection which reduces our staff a lotment for the coming year
038by two FTE. The district contracted demographers to estimate how many students might enroll in Kennedy next year. Despite our multiple requests to know how much this projection was h how this projection was calculated, the demographers math is a black box. The district projection for the next for next year's enrollment is 661 students, which is a decrease of 65 students from the current school year. We have already logged more than 661 course requests from p prospective Kennedy students in P school. Kennedy's enrollment also consistently increases throughout the year every year as we receive newcomer students. If the number of course requests in P school is larger than our projected enrollment and we historically take on more students throughout the school year, what this suggests to me is that the district is shortch changing us. In a
039survey we sent out to Kennedy students on Monday, 76% of the 233 students who participated expressed interest in continuing with our current 8 period schedule. As far as we know, no other high school is losing FTE due to their student aotment. We request the district accept the overwhelming consensus of Kennedy students and teachers by supporting the schedule presented in our 2025 2026 memorandum of understanding. Thank you very much. Our next public comment is Kumi Yanagihara. Good evening board. My name is Kumana Yihar and I'm a science teacher in the Internationals Academy at Kennedy High School. I'm here to request that the board reconsider its decision not to approve Kennedy's alternative 8 period schedule for the 2025 2026 school year. Kennedy High School has one of the largest multilingual and newcomer student populations in the district.
040These multilingual and newcomer students are required by law to enroll in multiple sections of English language instruction. Under a sixth period schedule, there wouldn't be enough periods in the day for these students to have a well-rounded education. We would risk denying a significant portion of our student population access to our information technology academy, health academy, construction, and welding pathways, as well as a variety of other electives. The district's lack of support on this issue is part of a larger effort to divest from electives in our schools. We've already lost psychology, French, creative writing, and other electives. The district should remember that each time we lose an elective, we lose more of our public school students to charter schools. And with the lowered enrollment allocation, we lose FTE, which means we lose offered electives, and the
041vicious cycle continues. Speaking of electives, you just heard from our wonderful Dejon band. I was a band kid myself and was so lucky to be able to be in band for both middle and high school. These students deserve to have that opportunity too. But if we don't have an eighth period schedule, Miss Delesio, who teaches at both Dejon and Kennedy, may not be able to offer three band classes at Kennedy like she does now. She helped bring Kennedy's band program back and it's being threatened again. Our community does not deserve this instability. Our memorandum of understanding takes into account all of the budgetary restrictions laid out by the district while also taking seriously the needs of our students. It is not too late to reconsider your position on Kennedy's alternative 8 period schedule. Thank you.
042Next public comment is Katherine Co. Good evening, school board and everyone else. Hi, my name is Catherine and I'm a sophomore at John F. Kennedy High. I'm here today because I really hope you'll keep the eighth period schedule and not continue with the six period schedule. Next year I'll be a junior, so I'm zoning in through to my A through G's. I had to switch from French to Spanish after the French program was cut. And now I have to continue Spanish to repeat to meet college requirements. But with only six periods, I'll have to drop something some extracurriculars that I love, like band or leadership, just to stay on track to graduate. And those classes aren't just extras for me. I've been playing music for eight years, and the band has helped shape my identity
043and given me access to a community that I of my own. While I'm talking about band, I'd also like to add that we were moved into a completely different room this week on very short notice, and it's made things really hard and taxing to our band, and especially our band director, um, Miss Delesio. We don't have our instruments or the space we need to prepare for performances, competitions, and events. I'd also like to add that the reason why we've been moved is very frustrating. The room that has a bestos isn't even the band's room. It's a whole different room in the building that's already been sealed off. Um, our bandroom is something that's really important to us and it has been taken away from us. In closing, I'm asking you to please keep the eight
044periods, not just for me, but for all the students, so we don't have to choose between our passions and college credits. Thank you. Our next public comment is Jalisa Blandon. Julisa Blandon, Ash Abbot. My name is Abbott. I am so delighted to bother you all today. I teach at Kennedy High School. It's here at Eagles. All right, all the other students, I need you to yell as loud as you can. Ready? One, two. All right. So, when you are experiencing a stressful day and you need to make an really important phone call, when you get on the phone, do you want a robot to answer? Please press one for yes. Please press two for no. When students are coming to Kennedy in January, we want them to get excited about ingenuity classes. They are valuable,
045precious humans and we are asking them to zone out and sit in front of a computer like they are nothing. These children are amazing. By lowering our FTE, you are telling them, um, we just don't really see you as being like a teacher student situation. We see you as a computer situation. It is disgusting that we would give humans a computer and expect them to want to care about math. It is disgusting that we would ask students to stop playing music. How do you expect people to fall in love with mathematics if they never get to feel the rhythm? How do you expect people to fall in love with English and writing and arguing if we ask them to shut up, sit at a computer? This is our community. This is our school then you
046have to listen. Thank you. And our last public comment is Alisa Floy. Hello and good evening to everybody present. My name is Eliza Floyd. I am a sophomore at Kennedy and an active member in band. My goal is to keep it short, meaningful, and hopefully impactful. Tonight, I am here to speak on the loss of our eight period schedule. One thing that's always baffled me was the thought of our schedule being reduced to six periods. It was almost laughable because I never thought it'd get this far. I never fathomed I'd have to choose between band and my core classes or electives I simply need to move forward and succeed in life. Our eighth period schedule has always been a failafe for students who may not be able to pass their core classes. they have the
047comfort of knowing they have other credits to fall onto. Why would anybody strip students who are already set at a disadvantage due to simple things like the area they live in or the reputation of their school? Why would you set them further back? Along with this, you'd also strip children of their creative freedom. A sixth period schedule would make it beyond difficult for a band teacher to be at both Djon and Kennedy. Whether you believe it or not, our education matters. If you believe it, please show us. That concludes public comment. Okay, thank you to everyone who came and gave public comment. We are moving now to item 10, agenda review and adoption. Do any of the board members have anything on the agenda? I believe Dr. Moses, we're pulling discussion item F1, the community
048schools support collaborative update. Is that correct? Yes, that is correct. That item, that item will be tabled. Okay. Okay. So, F1 is being removed. Anybody have anything else? President Regler, sorry, we're having a really hard time understanding you on this side of the uh of the panel. Das, thank you. Okay. Could we take a second? Is this better? Uh, can you repeat it? Is this better? Okay. I'm just ill, which is why I'm wearing a mask. All right, everybody, just move away. [Laughter] Okay. All right. Thank you very much. Okay. So, if there's nothing else on the agenda, we will we're pulling the discussion item and we will move on. Okay. Moving now to 11, approval of minutes March 26 and April 16th. Does anybody have anything on the minutes? Hold for just a second.
049Okay. So, for the minutes, for the April 16th minutes, I would like the motion included in its entirety for the leadership public schools decision. And that motion is E2 LPS Richmond decision hearing motion. I approve the renewal of the petition for the five years as requested but as part of an operationalou we include requirement that LPS provides us a yearly progress report towards increas I can't understand anything you're saying. I'm so sorry. can't hear. He can't hear me over here. I don't know if it's my English language learner or Okay. Okay. Yeah, it's a lot muffled. It's the echo or Is this better? Okay, great. Okay. So, where I left off is I want to include the entire motion uh that we voted on for the LPS Richmond decision hearing. I approve the renewal of
050the petition for the five years as requested, but as part of an operationalou, we include a requirement that LPS provides us a yearly progress report towards increasing their enrollment of students with special needs, foster youth, African-American, and newcomer students, as well as suspensions, and the type of special education student that spend a portion of their day full or less than full day in the classroom. And that would be my addition to the minutes. Sorry. When you say like one or two words, we can understand you. When you talk like a sentence or a paragraph, we just hear like Charlie Brown's teacher. test. One, two. Test. Test. Test. test. Okay. Okay. With that, I would like to include the full motion in the minutes of April 16th, and if it's approved, I'll email it in to
051staff so they can include it. Are there any other changes to the minutes? Okay, we'll include that and move on. Moving on to number 12, resolution number 2425-73, school lunch hero day, Miss Forest, I believe this is your item, Director Forest, this is your item. Yes, thank you. Uh good evening uh board uh president, trustees, uh interim superintendent Moses, staff and community. Now therefore be it resolved that the West Contraosta Unified School District expresses its deep appreciation to these valuable employees and comp and commends their good work on behalf of children. Thank you so much. Any questions on the resolution? I'll accept a motion. President, I'll move resolution number 2425-73, school lunch hero day. Do we have any public comments on the item? Second. We have no public comments. Thank you. Uh any any comments?
052Not seeing none. Go to a vote. Student trustee Espinosa Jr. Yes. Trusty Bur. Yes. Clerkyana. Yes. Trusty Smith volts. Smiths. Yes. Trusty Gonzalezy. Yes. And I'm Yes. Motion passes unanimously. Moving now to 13. Resolution number 2425-71, Earth Day 2025. Miss Forest, I believe this is your item. Yes, thank you. Now, therefore, be it resolved that the West Contraosta Unified School District Board of Education hereby recognizes Earth Day and supports the important work and services provided by district staff, schools, and partners to educate on climate change and mitigate its effects. Thank you. Is there any public comment on this item? No public comment, questions from the board at all. I'll entertain a motion. Personnel, I'll move resolution number 2425-71, Earth Day, 2025. Thank you. Is there a second on the item? I'll second it. Okay. Gonzalez
053moves. Trusty Smith says second it. Comment comments from anyone? Seeing none, we'll go to the vote. Student Trusty Espinosa Jr. Yes. Student Trusty Baron. Yes. Clerkyana. Yes. Trusty Gonzalezy. Yes. Trusty Smith Bolts. Smith FS. Yes. And I'm Yes. Motion passes unanimously. Okay. Moving on to number 14. Superintendent Search Update. We just have a couple of changes in the dates which I will read aloud for your information only. The candidate interview schedule has changed. The candidate the updated dates are Tuesday, May 13th, Sunday, May 18th, and Monday, May 19th. Uh, an updated search timeline is also included in the agenda packet and is posted to the district's website. Thank you. Now, we're moving on to I to C business items. Is there anything on the consent calendar that board members may wish to pull? President Reckler,
054I'd like to pull C3 from the consent agenda for discussion. And you're pulling that off the agenda in its entirety. Or would you like to discuss it at the end? I think a discussion is sufficient discussion at the end. Okay. So, does anybody else have anything else that they'd like to pull? No. Then we'll accept the uh the consent items with uh C3 pulled for discussion at the end. Okay. Moving on to D. Superintendent Communication. Dr. Moses, your item. Thank you. We'll get the presentation pulled up. We have lots of exciting information to share with you in tonight's superintendent report. I would like to appreciate the communications team and the members of cabinet for ensuring that we're sharing the information um with our community. All right, this week's superintendence rep report is going to celebrate
055Earth Day. Next slide. Prior to beginning with that, we'd like to recognize the contributions of a member of our school community who has passed away. John Hunter. We regret to inform you of the passing of John Hunter, a Hercules High School CTE computer science and ingenuity teacher. Mr. Hunter began teaching in WCCUSD in Hercules High School in the fall of 2022. Before joining the WCCUSD family, he was an educator for over 16 years. He was responsible for the recent growth and success of the Hercules High School computer scienceformational technology pathway. He also served as the adviser of the robotics club and the chess club. Mr. Hunter's impact and memory will be appreciated and remembered for years to come by the entire Hercules High School and the college and career departments. He is survived by his
056wife Shauna Cobble, a teacher at Steuart Elementary School. his son Ryan Hunter, stepson William Cobble, stepdaughter Jamie Cobble, and his mom Tina Hunter, brother Tony Hunter, and sister Kristen Jagger. The memorial service for Mr. Hunter will be on May 10th at 11:00 a.m. in the Hercules High School cafeteria. Instead of flowers, please donate to the Hercules High School Robotics or Chess Club or the Diabetes Foundation. Please join us in a moment of silence for Mr. John Hunter. Thank you. Next slide. We'd like to recognize that this month uh is autis autism acceptance month. Uh ASD or autism spectrum disorder um is a complex lifelong developmental condition that typically appears during early childhood and can impact a person's social skills, communication, relationships, and self-regulation. The autism experience is different for everyone. It is defined by a
057certain set of behaviors and is often referred to as a spectrum condition that affects people differently to varying degrees. We want to encourage everyone to learn more about autism and support our community members and acceptance of this um monthly recognition. Next slide. We'd also like to recognize that this is Earth Month. Um actions can make a difference and we'd like to share some information with you from the National Environment Education Foundation. Just some reminders to unplug your used electronics, fix water leaks, eat less meat, reduce and reuse, and volunteer in your community. These actions will support a healthy environment for all of us and promote healthy choices for the earth that we share. Next slide. Student art show and recognition. The Richmond Art Center hosted its 59th annual student art show on April 15th. The
058artwork from over 300 WCCUSD Middle and High School students was curated by art teachers and is up for display. You can visit this art show now and between now and May 17th, Wednesday through Saturday from 10 to 4 at the Richmond Art Center um located in the Richmond Civic Center. Next slide. Tara Hills Art Show and Science Fair. We'd like to celebrate our community at Tara Hills. They held this combined fair for students to have an opportunity to showcase their art and science projects. It was an amazing event and we're so proud of the creativity and hard work shown by our students. Next slide. Greenwood Academy. Like to extend congratulations again to the entire staff and student community at Dr. Greenwood Academy. Uh they've achieved an incredible honor of becoming a model California Continuation School
059and that is a recognition welld deserved. Congratulations Greenwood. Next slide. The all district Jazz Festival. All right. The 2025 All District Jazz Festival is a vibrant celebration of student talent, musical passion, and educational excellence, showcasing jazz in all of its forms. We are very proud of our music program across our district and are excited uh for the sharing that was that took place at this event. So, congratulations to all of our musicians and your hard work. Next slide. Nestrom will host the Richmond Outdoors Coalition. Um they there's a vibrant morning of wellness and outdoor learning. This happened this past Thursday. Students participated in mindful dance and movement. Sixth grade classes engaged in gardening and planting cherry uh tomato trees. This event was enriching for our student community. So great job Nestrom. Next slide. transition to
060Helms Middle School. On on April 2nd, Helm Middle School hosted 76th graders from neighboring schools uh to include a warm welcome from staff, campus tours, and a glimpse of what's to come in middle school. This was a great event for all. Next slide. Science comes alive. The Dansza students inspire future scientists at Berry Betty Reed Saskin. Um, our high school students hosted 20 interactive science stations for our middle school students. A large range of activities and hands-on experience is a part of the year-long collaboration between the science departments at both schools. Great job, Deansza and Saskins. Next slide. Kennedy High shines at Dejon Middle School's college and career fair. On April 4th, there was a career fair held at Dejon Middle School and we want to appreciate Kennedy High School for supporting that event and
061the staff for putting it together. It was an amazing event for our middle school students. A big thank you to the Kennedy Eagles for setting a a great example for their Alpha Wolves brothers and sisters. Next slide. We'd like to invite you to our next town hall meeting. The West Contraosta Unified School District is hosting town hall meetings to share information and have questions of and concerns and input from our community members. The next town hall meeting will be Monday, May 12th at 6:30 p.m. in the Elserto High School cafeteria. Please join us. Next slide. Adult education registration is has started. We encourage you to review the um uh course offerings from our adult education school and sign up for a course with us this summer or beyond. Next slide. Ah we have an exciting
062video for you. Microgravity contest. One of our teachers is sponsoring a great opportunity that we'd like to share with you. If we could cue the video. Ever dream of sending your ideas to space? Now's your chance with the WCCUSD microgravity contest to send it to the closest environment we have to space. There are two amazing ways to launch your creative idea into the same environment that astronauts experience, weightlessness. In the experiment contest, design an experiment for microgravity. The winning proposal gets a mentorship from real space scientists, and your experiment will be tested in microgravity this fall. and or you can enter the mission patch contest. Design a logo that captures the spirit of exploration. The winning artwork becomes the contest official logo and will even fly in microgravity. Submit your entries by May 15, 2025.
063Start your journey one step at a time. Thank you. Exciting opportunity for our students to participate in the microgravity contest. We encourage your participation. Uh next, we'd like to share our assessment calendar. We are winding down the school year. We're entering into our last phase of testing. We want families to be aware of the tests that are coming up as you plan uh your doctor's appointments and other things that may also happen during the school day for students. Uh we want to ensure that all of our students are in class for their testing so that uh we can continue to measure their success and plan for future growth. Next slide. Summer school is coming. We'd just like to share with you our summer school opportunities. Uh this first slide shares our elementary opportunities. We'll have
064special education and general education summer school at Riverside, Coronado, and Montelvin this summer. We'll also have a special ed summer school program at Ellerhurst and Piries this summer. In addition, we are hosting some extended learning programs uh from our expanded learning department at Chavez, Nestrom, Riverside, and Sheldon. We encourage you to look into these programs. We especially want to encourage the summer school program if your student needs additional instruction in order to ensure that we are mitigating the summer slide. Let's continue studying every day, even when it's summer. Next slide. The secondary summer schools are listed here. We'll have a program at Helms, Dejon, and Saskins. Uh we are not using our high school sites this summer due to various construction projects. However, these sites will serve high school students. We'd also like to share
065that we have an enrichment program at Deon and Helms as well. Next slide. So, there is a prioritization for summer learning. So, we want you all, we want to encourage everyone to look into it and to apply. Um, but to ensure that we're focusing on the students who need the most support, uh, summer school applications are going out based on the prioritization using testing data. Teachers and administrators can also make recommendations for students to be added. If you are a family or a student interested in a summer opportunity and you have not received an application, please reach out to your school administrator to discuss the opportunity. Next slide. We have a few upcoming dates we want you to be aware of. On May 3rd, there's the Cinco de Mayo parade hosted by the 23rd Street
066Merchants Association. Exciting event uh celebration. Please con consider joining that community event. On May 8th, we'll have an elementary special Olympics um event track and field. Uh on May 9th, a secondary special Olympics for basketball will be held. May 8th through 10th, there is a play at Elserto High School. Their theater department is putting on a play, Arsenic and the Old Lace. So we invite you out to those activities. Next slide. Graduation season is here. This slide represents all of our commencement exercises that uh will take place as we wind down this school year starting May 17th and culminating in July with our extended learning summer school graduation. Uh we look forward to seeing our families and celebrating with our students as they complete their education with us. Next slide. This is our slide reminding
067our parents and community members of opportunities to engage in our district. Uh we have many packs and opportunities to share your ideas, thoughts, and concerns in order to have your voice heard and be continually engaged in our decisions as a district. Uh we encourage you to join one or all of these meetings should you choose. Next slide. Thank you so much for your attention to this superintendent's report and that concludes this evening's superintendent report up. So Dr. Moses, a clarification for our Cinco de Mayo parade here with the city of Richmond. This year there won't be a parade on the 3. There will be a festival on Sunday the 4th. Um the parade has actually moved till September for the fiestas patrias. Thank you, clerk. Yana for that clarification. We'll make that adjustment on our
068uh advertisements as well. Does anybody else have any questions? So, I want to thank you again for a fabulous report. There are so many amazing things going on. And I also want to add that Elsita High School Jazz Ensemble state champions second year in a row is a highly highly competitive competition. So, yeah, give it up for Elserto. Yes, trusty Smiths. Go ahead. Um, I would be remiss if I didn't take a moment to talk about Mr. Hunter. He was an amazing teacher at Hercules High School. He impacted kids that were in his class and kids that were not in his class. He did everything with such passion and such humor and such heart and he will absolutely missed in our district and especially at Hercules High School. Also want to take a moment and
069the gentleman that you saw on the screen, his name is Mr. Thomas. Mr. Thomas used to work at Hercules Middle School. Mr. Thomas now works at Vista um virtual school. And Mr. Thomas is probably the smartest person that I've ever had the pleasure of meeting. He did the astronaut program where he literally went through the program to become an astronaut. So he is a great example of what perseverance and just loving what you do looks like and he just loves science and um a couple of years ago he sent up the weather balloon on the field and then they tracked it. So Mr. Thomas is all about science and he's just an amazing human being. I am complete. Thank you for that remembrance. and Mr. Thomas is amazing. Okay, great. So much good news and
070unfortunately some bad news. Okay, we're moving now to E1, which is the decision hearing for Richmond Charter Academy renewal. And um I am going to open a public hearing for this charter renewal petition. that has been submitted by a method public schools for proposing the renewal of Richmond Charter Academy, which is currently authorized by the West Contracasta Unified School District. The time is 8:16 p.m. The petitioners are asking the district's board to approve the charter renewal petition for Richmond Charter Academy for a 5-year term ending on June 30th, 2030. Amethod Public Schools submitted its position to renew the charter of Richmond Charter Academy on January 30th, 2025. The board held an initial public hearing regarding public support for renewal on March 26, 2025. District staff reviewed the petition and published a report outlining proposed findings
071and a recommendation on April 15, 2025. Amethod schools provided responses to this report received by the district on April 17th and April 28th, 2025. The education code requires the board to take action to either grant or deny a charter renewal pet petition within 90 days of receiving the petition. The format for the public hearing today is as follows. District staff will present the staff report including their recommendations and findings to the board. Then representatives from a Method public schools shall be given equivalent time to present in response to the staff report. We estimate that both presentations will be 10 minutes each. After a method public schools presentation, we will take comments from the public. Public comment for this matter will be limited to 10 minutes with one minute per person. It may public comment may
072be extended by the board with a majority vote. The board will then have an opportunity to ask clarifying questions of district staff and the petitioners regarding charter renewal petitions. The board will then deliberate and take action to grant or deny the Richmond Charter Academy renewal petition. And after the vote, I will close the public hearing. And with that, district staff will now present to the board. And I believe this is Mr. Hart's item. Good evening, Superintendent Moses Board of Education and Student Trustees. Um, my name is Margarita Romo and I'm a coordinator in the business office. And I'm joined this evening by Douglas Pelton of Edrics who does consulting work for our district, mainly focusing on charter oversight. Thank you, Miss Romo. Uh, good evening, trustees, interim superintendent Moses, cabinet, and public at large. I'm
073going to be doing a brief review of the staff report for the AMPs RCA charter renewal petition. First of all, a refresher. um that AB1505 introduced a new three- tiered system for charter renewal and that went into effect in 2020. The state identified the three tiers based on state dashboard indicators as performance levels, low, middle, and high. Richmond Charter Academy in the 23 24 school year met the middle tier criteria and they have uh recently been identified as the middle criteria in uh the current year this March of 2425. Under AB1505, middle tier charter schools are provided with a five-year renewal term as a default. Staff review has considered the submitted materials, the petition, including the corrective action plan that was submitted in response to a notice of concern in March. uh staff reviewed that
074correct eviction plan uh when we received it April 12th and issued our responses as part of our report uh on the 15th of April. staff reviewed that cap and were not clear on what was provided when what was requested was simple and clear explanations and backup financial information based upon the requirements outlined in AB50 West Contraosta charter oversight staff recommend denial of the charter renewal petition to be a little bit more clear up to clarify the basis of the recommendation. The charter is demonstratively unlikely to implement the program set forth in the petition due to substantial fiscal factors. Going to take a minute to reflect on strengths and challenges identified as part of the renewal petition and our overall staff report. We did identify that the school appears to have an effective educational program that
075in the site visit we were able to identify that the school has a well understood and clear mission and vision. We saw that in response uh from parents, students, teachers, staff etc. um they appear to have a strong program program implementation and a high degree of parent and student satisfaction. Going back to the challenges we identified those include uh plans for addressing school finances and uh we we those appeared incomplete in the response. uh submission of the multi-year uh plan blended restricted and unrestricted fund balance is leaving staff unclear as to the overall position and the cap does not really address the misspent community schools resources funds in terms of its impact on overall financial plan. If we could move to the next slide very briefly. This is just a a highlighting of the effectiveness
076of the program and the successes that the school has seen in the particularly last year and apparently with uh with I ready data local data uh continuing on to this year. And in the next slide, we just highlight a a few components of their the trends in subgroup enrollment. I won't read through all of this. We don't have enough time tonight. Um a quick comparison on the second set of the slide uh shows uh that even though the ELLL enrollment is quite high at the school, it is uh significantly lower than comparative middle schools. Um as well as having much lower African-American demographic enrollment as well as students with disabilities. I'm going to turn this podium over to Miss Romo uh for further discussion of the challenges identified. Thank you. Next slide, please. Moving on
077to some of the financial issues we noted in our review. Um, the corrective action plan appendix submitted combines restricted and unrestricted amounts. The district has continued to ask for detailed information and infers that the school will have a large negative unrestricted fund balance at the end of 2425. Next slide, please. The corrective action plan information supplied also does not address a misspending of community schools restricted resources which will have a corresponding negative impact on the unrestricted fund balance. Next slide please. Other questions were raised following our review of the corrective action plan. The responses to the staff report of concerns over the financial issues raised in the Marchuh 2025 notice to the school were partial and did not assure the district staff that the school was able to implement the corrective action plan presented to
078us on April 12th. If the board were to renew the school, we would look for performance to remain high and not have the large swings we saw in the last 5 years. Additionally, staff would be reviewing regular financial information submitted with the expectation that information provided would be clear and complete, unambiguously demonstrating the financial position of the school and actions taken to meet the financial goals. identified but by the amps organization. The school will also need to identify additional recruitment strategies as well as measurements to monitor actions taken and impact of those actions. This concludes our presentation. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you very much. And now we'll invite a Method Public Schools or Richmond Charter Academy to the podium to give their presentation. Good evening, Superintendent Moses board president Reckler and
079West Contraosta trustees. I'm Adrienne Barnes, CEO of a method public schools. We want to begin our presentation by thanking you for your service as well as the West Contra staff team for their work. We know your jobs are hard and that you ch you all choose to do this because you care deeply about all students. As noted our in our response, we found the staff report findings to be inadequate to meet the applicable legal standard and therefore cannot lawfully be relied upon for denial of RCA charter renewal petition. My personal goal is to be able to report to you this fall that AMS has one of the most effective, transparent, rigorous financial accountability systems of all West Contra authorized charters. Should you authorize our renewal? Next slide. Good evening. My name is Jasmine Landers. I'm
080the site director at Richmond Charter Academy. I appreciate the West Contraosta Unified School District Charter School staff who came to visit RCA and all who noticed the great work that's happening at our school. Next slide, please. As you can see on this slide, RCA outperforms both the district and the state in English language arts and exceeds the district performance in math. This growth in academic outcomes is a result of intentional work. We've built strong instructional improvement systems and have prioritized leadership's time to both support, coach, and monitor instructional practices. These systems are designed to ensure that highquality instruction is happening in every single classroom in all subject areas whether there's a substitute in the classroom, a novice teacher or a veteran. Next slide, please. We've also maintained a strong focus on our priority subgroups and
081those students continue to make substantial academic gains as shown on this slide. Next slide, please. We are particularly proud of the progress that our English language learners have made. Um, I first want to just take a moment um to clarify our enrollment data and strategies in response to the staff comment. First, in terms of our special education in 2023 2024, 8.2% of our students were identified as students with disabilities. However, we've made focused efforts around child fines this year and our percent has increased to 12%. In terms of our English language learners concern, as shown on the slide, we are deeply focused on supporting our English language learners with targeted interventions to help make progress to reclassify fluent English proficient before high school. In fact, last year's data show that we successfully reclassified 23 students.
082And in terms of our African-American student population, I first want to start and say as a black school leader and also a parent of a school-aged child, I fully understand what's happening here and I want to provide some context. We are committed to increasing our enrollment for black students throughout um our intentional outreach. Our strategies focus on engaging the current black families that we have in leadership roles and helping them to shape um our programs with their input, ensuring that RCA remains attractive and responsive to their needs. We know that word of mouth is one of the most effective strategies to recruit and gain black families and we're actively working on this. Another important thing I want to note is that demographics have shifted and led to fewer black families in the neighborhood even in
083nearby West Contracasta schools enrolling less than 15% of black students. In many cities, we're seeing this experience of the decline of black population. And oftent times when this happens, most black families will choose to concentrate themselves in a single school to ensure that there's community amongst the masses in the neighborhood. currently where there's three schools operating, we see this dynamic playing out where one school has a high population of enrollment of black students while the other two schools um do not. With that being said, we are continuing to partner with our black families to increase the enrollment and foster a strong supportive community. Next slide. Per AB505, we are asking you as the board to look at the weight of the academic outcomes across all priority subgroups and the remarkable gains the school is making
084under Mrs. Landers's leadership and approve our renewal. Give us the ability to continue to provide this exceptional education to students in Richmond. Next slide, please. to make sure we continue to make accelerated progress on our improvement plan. Next slide, please. We've built a robust and experienced finance team and are growing that team to ensure there are multiple staff members with charter finance experience on top of having a back office firm. Before I came to AMPs, there had been a practice of having a finance lead. And when that finance lead would step down, new finance leads were hard to find and the leads would often leave with institutional knowledge. Moving forward, we will have multiple experts on staff to ensure redundancy, a back office provider, and we've been working diligently to clean and rebuild processes, systems,
085and policies so institutional knowledge sits in our systems. We've built new financial controls, set up technical systems, and trained staff to ensure accurate and timely reporting and accounting. I'm proud to say we are already already more than 90% done in implementing our financial management improvement plan. Next slide. As a result, our financial reports for the 2425 fiscal year will be accurate and up-to-date, and our audit will be on time. Next slide. The staff presentation highlighted a concern about the fund balance potentially including restricted funds. To clarify, the completed and approved 2324 audit shows no restricted ending fund balance. There is $12,000 shown in deferred revenue. Deferred revenues are typically restricted funds resulting in cash on hand that is also restricted. There is no current evidence of a high restricted fund balance. Next slide. The staff
086report also indicates that our cap did not address misspent community schools dollars. To clarify, there was a total of $36,875, not $75,000, specific to RCA that was classified to the community schools grant. We acknowledged that error from 2023, immediately reported it to both the CDE and our auditor, and we're given authorization by the CDE to resubmit our expense report. and we will work with our auditors after your end to complete the correction in our 2425 audit. This will not impact our ending fund balance. Next slide. And next slide. As you can see, our plan is thorough and rigorous. Next slide. I want to close by again asking humbly to give me and my team a chance to continue to make the improvements needed to ensure AMPs is a strong and effective school management organization. AMS
087has been around for over 30 years and I joined this organization because I was inspired by the outcomes they achieve for kids who come from backgrounds just like I did. Because of our schools like RCA, they have better opportunities than I did. Next slide. Again, I want to assure you that we have made substantial progress in addressing the concerns with financial management. I close on uh next slide. I close on this slide because I believe this is why we are all here late into the night working. We are here because we believe Richmond youth deserve an education that prepares them for success in life. I know AMS has made mistakes, but my team and I are absolutely correcting those. So, please take both our response to the staff report and this data into consideration as
088you make your decision and keep RCA open. Thank you for your time. Thank you. We're going to move now. We're going to move now to public comment. How many public comments do we have? Okay, why don't we just call call up those 11 behind the mic to line up and we'll just fire them off quickly. Thank you. If we could have everyone line up. Zory Briggs, Jose Gonzalez, Ephren Panol, Jessica Bats, Marawn Demons, please line up at the podium. Junita Morales, Joelle Champagne, Veronica Romo, Janelle Roelly, and Sylvia Masaros. And we have one on Zoom. Ready. Thank you. You may begin when you're ready. Good evening. My name is Zory Griggs. I'm a proud parent of RCA. My son has attended RCA sixth grade and now seventh grade. I'm so grateful I have the opportunity
089to have a choice in which school my son attends. I looked for a school which performed well academically, whom has diversity and teachers and staff that has involvement. You would think those three things most schools would have, but a lot of them didn't. RCA had two of the things I was looking for. I was worried about the diversity because of the numbers I saw, but I was so impressed with my other two concerns with my other two concerns. So we took the chance on RCA. My son not only has excelled academically but also showed leadership and resiliency through his daily interactions and participation in classroom discussions. He has learned and offered insight on different cultural backgrounds. RCA has had several cultural programs during the year involving students and parents. My son has learned that student
090Uh, good evening. My name is Jose and I'm a eighth grade student at Richmond Charter Academy. The reason I want RCA to stay open is because this school has done so much for me. Last year, I was retained and felt angry and unmotivated. But in November, RCA staff met with me and my parents. We made a plan and they kept their promise. They gave me a second chance and even set me up to take high school credits early to earn credit. They knew I was interested in entrepreneurship and making money. So, they offered me a business economics class to learn about finances. That meant a lot because mo most people most people in the past made empty promises, but Miss Lopez and Mrs. Landers didn't and they believed in me. Now, I'm doing better than
091ever. I'm on grade level for reading and for math. I'm on 10th grade level, which is first in the whole school. I found new friends who care about school like I do and I learned that middle school is just a trailer to the real world. RCA helped me grow in many ways and I hope you know how much RCA means to a person like me. So please keep RCA open. Good good evening. My name is Sephron. I came to RCA because my cousin told me about it and it changed everything. At my old school, I didn't I did not always feel safe. I was bullied for being a good student and for what I were. One time, someone even tried to pressure me into smoking a babe. To avoid being bullied, I used to eat
092lunch in the office just to be alone. But at RCA, I feel comfortable. I eat in the cafeteria with my friends. We all dress the same and I feel like I belong. In my community, immigrants are being targeted. Many live in fear of deportations. But school is where I feel safe. Why take that away from us? I want others, especially my little brothers, to have the same chance I had. RCA gave me hope. Keep RCA open. God bless. Since we joined RCA last year, my child has been challenged academically, but he has also developed the confidence as a student that he never had before coming from private school. The teachers and administrators care for all students and provide consistent support academically and emotion emotionally. They allow the students the opportunity to reflect on their choices
093and behaviors if they make mistakes versus just focusing on discipline of the student. The teachers are readily available for questions from parents and are open to meetings at times that are convenient for working parents. I'm glad my child has had the opportunity to experience this school and take advantage of the resources that they are able to provide. From tutoring services after school and 3D printing club to field trips to the Exploratorium, just to name a few. In these troubling times, closing this school would be a detriment to these students and parents emotionally and logistically, forcing them to find a new school when this school is the best environment for those that attend. Good evening everyone. My name is Joel Champagne and I'm the father of two current Richmond Charter Academy students, Tristan and Zella. We
094live in the Marina Bay neighborhood and my ch uh scholars have attended AMP schools for several years years now, including some time at Bonita Wararez which is colllocated with RCA and is within walking distance of our house. Zela is about to graduate the high school and has RCA prepared her for that? Yes. She's an excellent student who will do well elsewhere next year. Tristan would very much like to continue at RCA. I sincerely hope that any decision being made is not a case of being pennywise and pound foolish. If it is, it will be remembered by a lot of families and voters. The inconvenience for us parents and the distress over change by our kids is something that uh is yet to be justified to me in an unresolvable way. And judging by the bright
095shirts in the audience, many others agree. I encourage everyone to support RCA and address any concerns through constructive means. Good evening board members and superintendent Moses. My name is Janelle Roelly. I'm an attorney with the law offices of Young Minian Corps. Super proud to be here tonight on behalf of RCA and its students. and we urge you to renew the charter of this exceptional school. Under the renewal criteria, a middle performing school like RCA has earned a default renewal of its charter. The charter can only be denied in one of two ways. Either with a finding that closures in the best interest of students, that's not true based on the academics. It's not true based on the people who are here. or by a finding um that there are substantial fiscal factors and that a
096corrective action plan has been unsuccessful or that the violations are sufficiently severe and pervasive so as to render that that plan unviable. You've heard again tonight that that is not the case. We've we told you in writing, we've told you tonight the staff report falls well short of the legal requirement for any kind of finding. And if you rely on that, I fear that you will abuse your discretion and open up this district to be overturned by the state board of education. Good evening everyone. My name is Veronica Romo. My daughter is currently attending seventh grade at RCA. Honorable West Contra Costa School District Board. Members, I stand before you today to ask for your support to keep RCA open and to tell you how badly the closing of the school will affect our community.
097It will be devastating for the students as it will disrupt their learning and will also change their routine, their social emotional environment. It will alter in a very negative way their everyday life because we all know starting in a new school is really difficult for every kid. Having to deal with people they don't know at all, new classmates, different teachers is a very frustrating and stressful situation for them. That means a setback on their education and their academic education as a consequence. For this I respectfully ask Good evening. My name is Sylvia and I'm a proud parent of RCA sixth grade student. I am here today to let you know that my son was attending at Nestrom from kinder to fifth grade. My son was suffered a lack of respect, attention, dedication, care, love, support
098from his teachers and classmates at this school which is RC RCA has demonstrated that my son has all the abilities of the word help. They have dedicated time, love and education as such as EIP program taken him to a next level. He now wants to go to school. He now wants to be in in a group, an environment with where he feels loved and dedicated. That is all because of the support that RCA staff has provided. Please, I ask for you today, please don't close down our school and prevent not only my son, but everyone else's child the opportunity to succeed the best that they can. Thanks to all the RCA staff. Thank you. is Henry High School, RCA. Fore! Foreign! Foreign! All right. Our next public comment is Mike Harris. No more public comment.
099Go ahead. Thank you. Maisha Harris Gash, please unmute yourself. Good evening. Uh I just looked at the slides that were the response of um RCA and my first question was is like where are the black students? I looked at the California dashboard and I know you're a small school um but I still say where are the black students? I ask a question like, "What is your selection process?" On the surface, it seemed like there's a lack of equity um and who's chosen. There's this waiting list that I saw in your presentation. I would be interested like who's on the waiting list? Um and then there is the the concern about the money. I heard um you know, somebody from the school talk about how they've put this person in that place and this person in
100that place. Well, then my I asked the question, why wasn't this important from the beginning? and that money is so tight. Um, nobody has time to like mismanage um, funds or misappropriate funds, whatever the correct terminology is. But I still go back to where are the black students? Thank you. Thank you. And now we're totally done. Okay. At this point, we'll take uh questions from board members of either our staff or RCA's staff. Does anybody have any questions? Okay, I do. I have a question for Oh, go ahead. I think I have um two questions for the RCA staff. The first question would be, what is your anti-racist policy, procedures, and practices? I'm sorry. What are your anti-racist policy, procedures, and practices? Um, RCA is an anti-racist school and when there are situations that arise
101where concerning around race, creed, religion, whatever it is, um, we as a staff directly address it the same way we address all behavior concerns. And my second question is, what do you currently do to support your black families? So, currently, the first thing that we did was um when we first initiated our um FST, um we were intentional about reaching out to specific families to get them to be a part of that governing process. um we were able to manage we have a team we have a um a body of four and one of our parents that's actually elected a person is one of those members. Um also in terms of our FS um our coffees with admin those things we're very intentional about making sure that we're reaching out and actively bringing those parents
102into the table. Um we've also hosted um back in November a Ruby Bridges walk um one to just um share our eye with our students um some of the legacies of black um people and leaders um and what they've done to kind of move the path forward in terms of education. Um and when we think about different months of cultural programming, I think one of our parents spoke about that. Um, we're very intentional about all our programming, but even when it's time for Black History Month, making sure that that is also celebrated and uplifted so that our families and our students feel seen and heard. My final question, I just want to make sure that I have the numbers right. You have a total of 292 students and 3% are African-American or black. That's 8.79
103students. Is that accurate? You have about nine black students. No. Um, you said I'm I'm sorry. Can you repeat the enrollment number again? So, I looks like enrollment is 292. Is that accurate? No, it's 286. 286. And what percentage of black students are at your school with 286 students? [Music] Do we have it? Why don't we grab that for you right now? And I just want to add something on the anti-racist policy and then we'll circle back to that. I just want to confirm that we did uh pass an anti-racism resolution. It is on our website and we'd be more than happy to send it to you. But to confirm, we are a school of choice. Our we have a lottery and that's how our students end up on our waiting list. by lottery and
104our anti-racism resolution does confirm that every student belongs and is welcome at a method public schools and racism and hate have no place in our schools and our community and there's more but we'll send it to you 4% 12% is 12 students that make 12 students that identify as black or African-American. Yes, that's correct. Thank you. Thank you. Any other questions down there? Any questions over here? Student Trissy Espinosa Jr., go right ahead. I just have one question and this is more to the staff. Um on the staff report there was mentions of in summary uncredential teachers of staff along with the vacancies and then the one intern. What is what is the consequence of that if that were to be maintained if this school were to be renewed? Um so I just want to
105make sure I'm understanding the question. So the question is around credentiing teachers and what would be the impact if that were to continue. Yes. Okay. Um I'm not sure if we could actually pull up our slide um to 16, but if not I can just answer the question. So um staffing crisis is a thing that is happening across the country. Um but specifically in terms of AMS at RCA, we're actively working um to address the credentiing um situation. Um, we've already thought started thinking about our strategy for this upcoming school year and who we're going to be partnering with to ensure that happens. But in our slide deck on slide 16, we actually give you guys a preview of the data this year. And while yes, credentiing was a concern this year, we also see
106that according to our I Ready data, we are decreasing our red for all categories both in ELA and in math for all grade levels. And that is the same for mathematics. So going back to what we've also addressed, the systems that we're putting in place instructionally support whether the teacher is a substitute, a novice teacher, or veteran. Thank you. No further questions. Thank you. Go ahead. So I have a question. um what has the school implemented around curriculum and support to have the significant increases in ELA and math? That's a great question. Um so the first thing is um we've been very intentional about one the development of the teachers. Um starting from just making sure that the teachers over understand what strong instruction looks like from the beginning of the day to the end.
107um thinking about like aligning standards and making sure that our staff understand what the standards are are able to unpack those standards and making sure that what they're saying the objective is all the way down to the exit ticket is true. The other thing is assessments. So those formative assessments are really key for us to like really monitor the data and make sure that we're not just teaching and students aren't getting it, but are we being able to check and see like are students mastering the standards and if not are we spiraling and reteing. We have a huge like professional development program at our school um where teachers are MPD literally about four days a week with one of those days um is like our longer PD day and in that time our dean of
108instruction after we do like a lot of the walkthroughs and see what are the major um areas uh or tren trends we offer like what we call clinics to then teach model and practice what are best practices um to actually move student outcomes and this something that you currently have implemented throughout the last year? Yes. So, this is something we did last year and this is something we're current we're still doing. And since you have the testing data, what is the percentage of students that actually tested? Oh, I believe um so this year, are you talking about for last school year? The percent of people the completion rate the percentage of the actuals you have 286 current enrolled students. How many of those students actually tested to get the data on that this last for
109this last school year? Oh, it was a 98% completion rate. It was what? 98. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Anything else on this side? Okay. Um I have a question please and I am going to page 29 in the staff's pet uh staff's recommendation or the staff's uh petition and at the bottom of page 29 point number two um the multi-year projection which is appendix D of the corrective action plan this is a fiscal cor uh correction active action plan combines unrestricted and restricted amount balances. And what the school district is concerned about is that it may be covering up an unrestricted fund balance where you might have money and restricted but nothing and unrestricted and as you know restricted money is only for restricted purposes. It is not able to be spent generally
110on whatever you want. So if it's restricted funds and you need to pay a garbage bill and the restricted funds is for teacher training, you can't use it to pay the garbage bill. So this is what they're very concerned about. Um the report says that you just have not addressed this significant issue of the unrestricted fund balance. And on 414 there was a meeting um did not receive a response. district followed up with an email on 415 and did not receive a response. District staff noted that adding RCA's second interim restricted fund balance of 374 to the corrective action plan multi-year fund projection and blend the two together, it could be inferred that the year-end net positive fund balance of 38 is masking the negative unrestricted fund balance. Uh it also bears noting that the
111fund balance inference does not include the 75k from the community schools which looks like it all if not some of it was not spent properly. So for the multi-year projection independent in appendix D of the corrective action plan for all of the for each of those years what is your unrestricted and your restricted fund balance for each of those years? Are you able to read those out? for each of the projected years. I'm I'm sorry. I'm asking a clarifying question. That's okay. Are you Are you asking for each of the projected years or future? It's zero. Whatever is in this appendix D, it's zero restricted. It's zero restricted and everything is unrestricted. Say that again. So for year year one what is the unrestricted balance? unrestricted would be the full fund balance and that number
112is me. If we are going off of the version that is based on the original petition with updated depreciation expense and fund balance, then our ending fund balance for year 1 would be 770,698 and that is fully unrestricted. And I just want to remind you according to both my response and my presentation tonight, we did clarify both in an email to West Contra staff and this evening and in our um response to you that the completed and approved 2324 audit shows no restricted ending fund balance. There is approximately $12,000 shown in deferred revenue which may be restricted. However, there is no current evidence of a high restricted fund balance. So, if I'm understanding correctly, in year one, unrestricted is 770K, restricted is zero. What does it roll forward to with your projections for year 2
113and year 3. Year 2, which is 2627, is 1.1 million completely unrestricted. Year three, which is 2728, is 1.3 million completely unrestricted. So you're not going to have any restricted funds in years 1, two, or three? We are fully spending them. Okay. Can the WCCUSD clarify? Did you get the information that you needed on that, Mr. Hart? All right. Okay. Um, so I, uh, we did receive the appendixes that were referenced, um, in the, in the conversation just a moment ago between President Reckler and, um, Miss Barnes. I um was trying to follow the numbers to see them on the multi-year projections. I haven't quite looked through all of that yet. Um we leading up to this board meeting. Thank you. Leading up to this board meeting, we did not get that clarification. We weren't
114we did not receive a breakdown of restricted and unrestricted. The the question wasn't answered. We didn't hear from the school that the unrestricted balance was zero because they were spending it down. So that information was not provided to us up until this moment. I also want to point out that um the school mentioned that the audit report from 2023 24 does not break it break down the fund balance between restricted and unrestricted. Um, and I I just want to point out that that financial information is from June 30th, 2024. And um, as we are evaluating if we want to renew the school, we do, you know, that does matter, but we also want to look forward and make sure that the projections are going to um, ensure that the school is fiscally sound. Thank you,
115Miss Barnes. What is the reason that you weren't able to provide this on the deadlines that the school district asked? We were reaching out to our auditor to confirm, but the auditor did confirm that they did not show any restricted funds. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. And then can I ask about the community schools grant? Would you be able to explain how this misappropriation of funds happened? Yes, it was a mclassification of an expense that in my opinion should not have been classified to community schools funds. However, it was and this was back in 2023. We have since rectified it and anything under my administration in 2425 has not coded that particular contract to community schools uh funding and we are correcting that error both with the CDE and with our auditor. And can you
116explain why it wasn't in any of your financial statements at the bottom of t page 29? My assumption is that the 75k is supposed to be that community schools money, but it's not in fund balance. I'm not sure I understand the question. Can you repeat it again? I I'm having a hard time hearing. Yeah, I'm so sorry. It's so bad tonight and I'm sick on top of it. So, at the bottom of page 29, it says, "It bears noting that this fund balance inference does not include the 75K issue in item three below, which is the community schools money. So, it looks like it wasn't accounted for at all." No, it was because it was in our financials. However, I do want to be very clear, it was not 75,000. It was approximately 36,000. Did
117you receive 75,000? We received more than that. However, we're talking strictly for RCA. The amount that was coded to the community schools grant for RCA was $36,875 and we are correcting that mistake. Okay. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. Okay. to go right ahead. Um, I just want to make sure that I heard correctly that your anti-racist policy is on your website. Is that accurate? Yes, it is. Uh, it was approved by our board February and it's posted. It should be posted with those documents. Can you guide me to where you would find that? I'm on the website now and I am unable to find it. Is it under a specific tab? Give me a moment, please. I've looked through most of the tabs and I can't find it. Okay, it should be under board meetings.
118And then when you click on the meetings, and I apologize, I'm looking on my phone, so I'm not sure if it's quite the same for you, but when you click on meetings, it should show all of our meetings. And this was the February 12th meeting, the February 12th, 2025. And then when I click on documents on my phone, it's the second document. Okay. So when I'm on the website, I need to go to board meetings and then under board meetings, it would be on the board meeting documents. Yes, under the February meeting. Okay, I'll look for that. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Okay, anything else? Okay, I'll entertain the motion on the item. Trusty Consoloy. Thank you, President President Regler. I make a motion that we deny the renewal petition. Smith F seconds. Thank you.
119Is there discussion from board members? I have discussion. Thank you. Um I would like to first acknowledge the passion of the new leadership from uh RCA and Amps. Um I think that they demonstrated that they do have a lot of passion, expertise um but they are new in their positions. I also want to thank the community that came showing their support for their school. I know it's not easy at all. I have voted for every charter school that has come to us to renew them. Every charter school that has come to us. Every charter school has had issues and we have asked them to fix them withus or erasing concerns. Unfortunately, those charter schools have had one two major issues but one or two. What I see with this school, I see a lot of
120concerns. I see diversity concerns, lack of subgroups like what we heard tonight. Financial concerns like even what we heard tonight, misinformation, lack of information to our staff, the numbers don't even make sense from what we're getting from our staff and what we're getting from amps and from the school. We can't do our work if we're not getting the right information. And on top of that, there are real concerns about governance from the umbrella family of schools that families need to know from amps. This year, Oakland Unifi denied Oakland High School charter because of governance issues. Some of the issues that they raised was uh audit reports identify material weaknesses in financial reporting maintain accurate information. Uh recent audit reports for past several years have been filed months late and inconsistently. Oakland Unifi's own investigation covering
121recent school years found uh lacks financial oversight by AMPs. Specifically, the district concluded that former and current officials and leadership positions at AMPs likely violated conflict of interest laws. In light of these violations, Oakland Unified noted serious concerns regarding ARMS AMP's board of directors failure to provide adequate oversight of the organizational leadership. Their investigation also revealed a troubling pattern of inconsistency bookkeeping bookkeeping, poor fiscal uh quadrills and ineffective oversight which has led to an environment of fra fragulent activities which we have heard and we've seen in the news. AMP's governing board had also low scores in many core competencies. AMP's staff leadership had significant high turnover with five CEOs or inter intern CEOs in fewer than four years. Then recently in the last few weeks, the Alama County Board of Education denied the appeal because
122even though the board and staff made some fixes through their investigation, they saw that some of the concerns were still occurring even with current passionate leadership. I cannot make a decision through new passionate leadership, especially by looking at the turnover of staff. For all we know, this wonderful CEO and principal could leave this year if they follow the pattern that they followed the last few years at the school or this umbrella chatter. So, I can't just agree to an MOU to fix a couple things. There are many concerns. As parents, even if you appeal, let's say that county or state or whatever agrees to continue the school to be open, parents, you need to ask leadership and your board for better and more. You might feel there are good outcomes. There are good academic outcomes.
123I agree maybe for your child but as an organization it is not being handled correctly and us as the people in charge of renewing you. I simply cannot do that. So I am sorry for that because I know how painful this is and as the first charter that I have to deny I feel the pain. I conclude my comments. Thank you. Are there any other comments? Thank you. Um as as a student representative, it's always important, not only important, but a must to present the students voices as first. And unfortunately I although I agree with Trusty Gonzalez soy in all the deep concerns that occur within this charter academy one thing that does stand out to me is the credentialization of the staff along with the vacancies. Because of that, it puts this charter academy
124in legal jeopardy and for the students that would be detrimental alongside the transparency be because we can place anou for this. We can place anou for this but then that has to also come with the finance management with governance oversight leadership and so much more. But I know one thing is that these students have a great love for whoever is in charge. Whether that's staff, leadership, the principal, and oversight. But it would also be detrimental, heartbreaking for all these students, all the sixth graders, seventh graders, and eighth graders to put them even into that kind of risk to begin with. So unfortunately, I would have to agree with Trusty Gonzalez. This would have to be my first charter academy to deny renewal. Thank you. Good evening everyone. I am not going to go through what
125my colleagues have already stated. Um I echo a lot of what has been said already and I also want to reiterate that as an elected member of this board I take seriously the trust community has placed on us. Our foremost responsibility is to act in the best interest of for all students in West Contraosta Unified. You have asked me to use my best judgment grounded in the evidence and findings presented to make decisions that will truly benefit our students and ensure equity, access, and quality in education. After careful review and reflection on the concerns outlined in the staff report and based on we heard tonight, I cannot in good conscience support the approval of this charter position. Findings raise serious questions that we cannot ignore and it would be irresponsible to move forward without addressing
126them fully. The decision is not made lightly but is made with students at the center because that is who we are here to serve. And that is the end of my comments tonight. Thank you. Go ahead. I think that having literally one handful of African-American students at a school is unacceptable. I think that having a very low percentage of students with disabilities at a school is unacceptable. I think that making it so difficult to find the anti-racist statement is unacceptable. I think not being able to articulate what the policies and procedures are to protect students with an anti-racist uh outline is unacceptable. So, um I just it's just unacceptable. So, I'm complete. Thank you. And I'll finish it up with continued financial concerns. And for all of you in the audience, parents and staff, really
127go to the school district's report and read pages 29 and 30 about the fiscal uncertainty about RCA there. After repeated attempts to get clear information, it did not come. There were requests in September. There were requests in November. Letter went out in late winter. There was a meeting in April. There were two meetings in April. There have been multiple emails going back and forth. then the district has not been able to get what they need to verify the financials of the organization to ensure that there is enough money and projections that show there is enough money to keep the organization going. So, I mentioned all these other things about not being able to determine unrestricted and restricted funds, but on page 30, it keeps going, which is even putting all of that aside. They may
128be shifting some of the expenses to Bonito Fuarez or to the home office. Um, is one. They also are showing a net increase in in revenue of 88,000, but it's based on receiving a settlement of 292,000. They don't know if they're going to get this settlement. So, without a settlement, the revenue would have been 204,000. [Music] Um, the staffing actions to demonstrate appropriate handling of school finances show the hiring of reportedly qualified professionals. However, the charter management organization staff plan isn't shown. Staff also wonders if the professional financial adviser is still on retainer or supporting the school in the current year or was that in 23 or 24 school year support investment. Other concerns are about whether there is an intent to downsize the overall CMO staff and if so from what current plan level
129to what future level and it just goes on and on. So the bottom line is that they are not able to figure out based on the four areas of the notice to cure and correct that you're that they're going to do it or that you're going to do it. Miss Barnes, you made a herculean leap forward. I appreciate your efforts, but we need 100% transparency and we need it all on the table. And staff is telling us that they didn't get that. So, this is a first for me, too. This is not something I take lightly or want to do, but I have deep concerns over whether you're going to be here in a year or even or even less than that. And that concludes my comments. We will go to the vote. Student trustee
130Espinosa Jr. No, sorry. Wait, wait. President, we're voting. Fire. The motion is to deny the renewals. And yes, trusty Baron. Yes. Clerko, yes. Trusty Gonzalez. Yes. Trusty Smith Folds. Smith Falls. Yes. And I am a yes to deny. And the motion carries. Can we have a a three minute five minutes? Five minutes until the room clears to next item is E2 WCCUSD 2025 refunding district resolution 2425-74. Four. Whose item is the refunding? Mr. Hart, I believe this is your item. Yes. Uh, we will be joined by our municipal adviser from KN&N. I'm just double checking that he's Do you do you have Blake available? Rosa, can you promote Blake Bowen as a panelist? Can everybody hear me? Okay. Yes, we can. Thank you, Blake. Great. David, uh, would you like me to just jump into
131it or Yes, sir. Please begin. Okay. Uh, well, good evening. Um, I've heard uh uh multiple comments about trying to stay on course with a 10:00 um time frame. So, I will do my best. Uh, it is great to see um a number of you that uh have known me over the years and I have served as the district's municipal adviser for the general obligation bond program um for uh the past decade or more. Um uh the focus of this resolution this evening is uh yet another opportunity to refund some of the older general obligation bonds that have been sold for purposes of uh taxpayer savings. Um the bonds currently carry a higher interest rate than what could be realized in the current market. uh by refinancing or refunding those bonds. Um you would be
132replacing the existing debt service that is currently levied by the county um with a uh new debt service that carries a lower interest cost and then those savings are passed along to taxpayers. There's a a brief presentation that I have just for purposes to facilitate the conversation. Um, if we can have that pulled up or I can share my screen if that's helpful, they're going to pull it up for you. Hold on just one second. Okay, Mr. Blake, you can go ahead and share your screen. Okay. Can everybody see that? Okay. Yes, we can. Okay, perfect. I will, um, proceed then. Um so as mentioned uh the district uh has I I I generally said some older series of bonds uh more specifically um five series of bonds uh two of which uh tie back
133to the measure D the election of 2010 uh bonds that were um sold in 2016. Mr. Blake, can you expand the screen please? Uh yes, thank you. Okay, no problem. [Music] Um two additional series that tie back to the 2012 measure E authorization bond uh series B and C and then actually a series of bonds that have already been refunded once already. Uh each of these five series of bonds are approaching their optional call date which is a provision that's offered to investors when they're first um when the bonds are first sold. Uh there is a call protection period which prevents an issuer from refinancing. Uh usually that protection period for investors is uh 10 years um most typically. So for each of these five series of bonds, they are approaching their call date on
134August 1st uh 2025. Uh making them refundable um on a current basis. Uh based on current market rates, we are anticipating taxpayer savings uh in excess of $5 million. refunding a bond uh general obligation bond for a school district is not too dissimilar to an individual refinancing their home mortgage. Um when you refinance, you're actually issuing new debt at a lower interest cost, the proceeds of which are used to pay off the old debt, leaving in place the new bonds or loan uh which will then be used for uh future repayment. um based on the types of refundings, uh this is a current refunding, meaning it's within 90 days of the call date of August 1, 2025, versus an advanced refunding, which would require a taxable uh nature for the bonds themselves. Uh that would
135not apply to this situation here. This would be um continuing to take advantage of the tax exempt status uh which the current bonds hold. Uh the district does have a uh a detailed refunding and restructuring policy uh BP7214.3 that was adopted back um in April of 2013. Uh this policy lays out very specific guidelines and parameters for which uh district leadership and board uh looks at annually um uh opportunities to refinance uh existing debt um for fiscal stewardship and to generate taxpayer savings. Some of the main uh uh guidelines that are outlined within that policy include uh present value savings of at least 4%. Um total present value savings in excess of $1 million uh and $100,000 annually. Um usually that $100,000 is looked at on an aggregate basis. There's some additional parameters that are
136outlined in this table below which are focused on uh tax rate management um in order to stay consistent with um commitments made to taxpayers. This refunding uh that's being presented is is uh primarily on an economic basis. It's to bring taxpayers savings to taxpayers. It's it's not necessarily a a tax rate management um focus. So based on current market rates, uh our current analysis, um which is outlined on slide three here, uh looks at both the annual savings that can be realized, uh the table to the far right, um and then also the cumulative savings that can be realized through this refunding effort. Uh again, over $5 million of savings uh or on a present value basis, uh or we're currently estimating over $4.5 million of savings. Um and then as a percentage of bonds
137refunded, uh over 4.8% 8% uh all of which clears the district's um policy guidelines. Um and shows a consistent focus for the board and district leadership of fiscal stewardship to maintain um its commitments from a tax rate perspective and also minimizing the cost of borrowing for its taxpayers that have been so generous with the district's uh outstanding bonds. Uh to that to that point, uh I just wanted to show a summary of the district's efforts over the years uh to seize opportunities to lower interest costs and save taxpayer dollars. You can see going back to 2009, the district has refinanced outstanding debt uh 13 separate times, saving taxpayers cumulatively over $147 million of interest. Um that interest um had any of these refinancings uh been pursued um would ultimately fall on property tax bills and
138be collected annually. Um, so this is this is quite a story and so the 2025 refunding resolution uh really um is a continuation of a long-standing effort uh that this district has made. And then on the last slide, it looks at what our timeline is moving forward. Uh should the board approve the proposed refunding resolution this evening? Um we would move forward with posting the preliminary official statement later this week. The preliminary official statement is is similar to like a a prospectus. Uh it's a document that is made available to investors and provides uh appropriate disclosure as it relates to the district's current financial um status, reserves, local economy, so on and so forth and gives uh investors an opportunity to evaluate whether uh they would like to purchase the district's refunding bonds. Uh in
139addition um to that milestone uh this week we did uh hear back from standard and pores a longtime partner uh to the district as it relates to bond ratings. It's one of the three ma major rating agencies and uh S&P did affirm the district's current rating of A+. Uh albeit it does currently have a negative outlook. Um, a lot of that is associated with the um I would say financial pressures that are um uh currently being viewed by the rating agency uh as the district is underway with implementing the fiscal solveny plan. Uh and so I think that their position to affirm the rating yet uh have a negative outlook uh really coincides with um I think a story that they'd like to see unfold in terms of the board continuing to implement and make
140some of those big decisions um to keep uh the district fiscally solvent and um execute uh the fiscal solveny plan that has been laid out over the next couple years recognizing the district is just in I believe year one of that plan. Uh beyond that um once the POSOS our preliminary official statement is posted we are targeting to price or lock in interest rates uh in the middle of this month currently targeting Tuesday May 13th and closing the transaction by the end of the month currently targeting May 28th at which time uh proceeds from the new refunding bonds would be available. It would be deposited into an escrow account to defease or pay off the old bonds at which time the county for the upcoming 2526 property tax year will levy the lower debt service
141from the new refunding bonds. So, it's a lot of detail. I tried to keep it short and sweet, but I'm happy to answer questions uh should uh the board have any. Thank you so much. Does anybody have questions? Go ahead. Trusty Gonzalez side. We have no public comment. Thank you for that. Go ahead. Thank you. Um, good evening, Mr. Bone. Thank you for your presentation. Um, it is really late, so I'm just going to summarize what you said. You're also talking about bonds which most of the time is really complicated and when it's late I I've you've also come in front of us a few times. So what I understood you to say correct me if I'm wrong. If we pass the refunding resolution we may save taxpayers up to about a million dollars this
142time around. And we're also accepting the um escro agreement, the bond purchase agreement, and the pre preliminary official statement, which you mentioned as well. Correct. Uh with one correction, um the current savings estimate is over $5 million that would be realized through this refunding. Not the million dollars that was referenced is coincides with the district's existing uh uh refunding and restructuring policy, board policy. That's the minimum. So, we're nearly five times over the minimum uh threshold that is outlined in the policy. Got it. Okay. Thank you so much. Okay. Great. Any other questions up here? Okay. Seeing none, I'll entertain the motion. President, I move that the board approves the resolution including the form of escro agreement, bond purchase agreement, and preliminary official statement with the attached continuing disclosure certificate. Thank you. Is there a
143second on this item? I'll go ahead. I'll second the motion. Smith F seconds. Smith FS removes her second. Okay, good. Any uh comments on the item? We'll go straight to the vote then. Trust Jr. Yes. Trusty Yes. Clerk and yes. Trusty Gonzalez. Yes. Trusty Smith folds. Smith folds. Yes. And a yes as well. Motion carries unanimously. Thank you very much. Have and if I could just ask in the Friday memo once that's sold off, will somebody put a note in there and how much we uh what what the what what it ended up being? Thanks. Great. Thank you. Okay, moving on to bond 2010 number item three. bond 2010 measure D 2012 measure E 2020 measure R performance and financial audit for year ended June 30th 2024. Miss Payne, I believe this is your item.
144Good evening. Um, tonight I am joined by uh two of our auditing firms and I ask that they be promoted at this time. Um, Mr. Luna from Christy White and Mr. Edelman from ID Bailey. Um, tonight we're going to be sharing with you the bond financial and bond performance audits. Um, so I have a quick presentation here to give you the introduction and then we'll turn it over to them. Next slide. So, as required by Proposition 39, we do an annual bond program financial and performance audit. And so, the audits that we're bringing forward tonight are for fiscal year 2024. So, we travel back in a time machine. And we're talking about July of 2023 through June of 2024. In alignment with our board policy, these draft audits were presented at the joint board CDOCC
145meeting and the auditors were there to present them. Um we did not receive any written questions and so they were then made final um in time for the deadline and so tonight the auditors will be presenting them to you. Um each audit has a slightly different scope which is identified here on the slides. Next slide. Also here for everyone's reference you can see there's a link to all of the historical financial and performance audits that are available on our website. Next slide. And just for reference we have listed here the ED codes which help identify the different requirements of the audits. And with that, I will ask Mr. Edelman to go ahead and share his screen so he can share with you quickly an overview of the bond performance audit for fiscal year 2024. Mr.
146Edelman, are you there? Yeah. Okay. Good afternoon everyone. Um, let me share actually is if it's okay, I am going to take over your screen. All right. Okay, it's getting late. Um, I will be as brief as possible. This this was presented to the SEO as last month, I guess towards the end of end of March. Happy to go into as much detail as as the trustees would like, but I'll just start with the executive overview. My name is Nathan Edelman with IDE Bailey. I am the independent external auditor and we're going to talk about the the bond performance audit. I'm going to skip over a few slides. Like I said, this is the same presentation that I I use for the Sabbach, but I'll try and give you a little more of an overview.
147So, the really the objectives of the audit that we did here was to look at those bond funds. the state list out certain procedures which really says go make sure that these school districts have complied with proposition 39 which really I guess furthermore really funds are used for construction of schools, renovation of schools for facilities as opposed to running the district. you know, bond funds have to be separately accounted for. And really, the point of the audit is to make sure that all of these requirements, all of these things that the district is limited to with what they can do really make sure that the district has actually in fact done that. It's picking samples, picking samples and asking questions, looking at looking at source documents. We are talking about fiscal year ending June 30,
1482024. scope of the work really it's the three bond measures. So the really anything any dollar that was charged to any one of those general obligation bonds during that 2024 fiscal year. It's really make make sure that the funds were used for things that are allowable. If there is what's called internal control deficiencies, that could be errors, that could be non-compliance that's identified, that could be that, hey, maybe a transaction is okay, but it missed the review process, something broke down. If those things are identified through the audit, we are required to report those and and those will be part of the audit as audit findings. So without going into too much detail on the highest level here, it's it's look at the accounting records, pick samples, look at invoices, HR documents, payroll documents, bidding
149documents, but look at source documents, ask questions, and it's verified that the funds were were used for construction, renovation, um to the extent that there salaries that are charged to the bond program, we want to know who are these people, what are they doing? What is that direct nexus to the bond program? I guess a lot more details um are within the actual report. Like I said, I'm happy to go into those if if you would like, but the conclusions from from doing all this really three big takeaways. One district properly accounted for the expenditures held in the bond funds as in you know all the dollars all the things that we looked at were made for authorized bond projects and and salaries were for for activities for things having direct access to the bond
150program. So really the the three things here on the screen that is the expected outcome of the audit that is what you what you want to hear. auditors don't have anything that's too exciting, but that is the most exciting thing that that the auditor can be can be reporting out. So really, I would just that yeah, that concludes the presentation. Let me get this off my screen. Um I I just thank staff uh Miss Pay and everyone who's really responsible for supporting the audit for the for the outcome of of the audit. So with that, I'll turn it over if there are any questions. I am happy to take those as best I can. Thank you. Thank you. We have one more. So, we have Mr. Luna who's going to present the financial audit really,
151really quickly. Okay, we could do both at the same time. Thank you, Mr. Luna. Are you there? Hello. Yes, I am. And I'm ready to go. U I'll keep it very brief. Um so let's see let me share my screen. Okay I should be good to go. Okay so um I'll be presenting the results of the um West Cond Unified School District of financial um portion of the audit for the year ended June 30th 2024. Uh part of our responsibility uh the main thing we're trying to um to do here is as a third party auditor is issue an opinion to ensure that the financial statements are um materially stated and that they're in compliance. Uh we issued an unmodified opinion which is the best opinion possible. Um I just want to read it the
152opinion direct directly how it's on the report on page three on the second paragraph. Um, in our opinion, the financial statements referred to above present fairly in all material respects the respective financial position of the 2010 measure D, 2012 measure E and 2020 measure R bond building fund of the West Contra Costa Unified School District as of June 30th, 2024 and the respective changes in financial position thereof for the year that ended in accordance with accounting principles generally accepted in United States of America. So um in order to issue that opinion um there were a series of uh procedures that we went that we performed um including cash ensuring that uh cash in the county treasury matched what was on the district financial and what was reported um accounts receivable and accounts payable uh transactions
153that are really close to the fiscal year making sure that they were um acred if they um so transactions that happen like right after the fiscal year ends like July August ensuring that they for recruiting the correct fiscal year. Um the accounts payable transactions are very common because most school districts like to have construction done over the summer. Um and when it comes to revenue, we typically only see interest revenue unless there was a new insurance in a year. So, uh measure D had a beginning fund balance of $37.3 million with revenue of 2.9 and expenditures of 17 million. uh resulting in ending fund balance of 23.3. Measure E had a beginning fund balance of 53.4 with revenues of 2.6 million and expenditures of 26.2 million resulting in an ending fund balance of 29.9 million.
154Measure R had a beginning fund balance of 69.7 million with revenues of 2.2 million and expenditures of 3.4 million resulting in ending fund balance of 68.4 4 million. Uh when it comes to construction commitments, that's uh con construction projects that the district was committed to as of June 30th, 2024. Uh measure D had unfinished capital projects of uh $7 million value. Measure E unfinished capital projects of $147,000 and measure R had unfinished capital projects of $41 million. There is a portion of the building of the uh building fund that is not part of measures DE or R. So we reconcile that and identify it um kind of break it down. Um there was $51.2 million that of fund balance uh that of fund balance that was not part of DE or R measures. Um it
155was state funding balances of 47.5 pulled earnings of 3.1. um categorized as other revenue under 790,000 um and then uh fair value adjustment uh for cash county treasury of uh 338 resulting in that 51.2 too. And something I like to point out because it's a common question that comes up with that fair value adjustment. People will ask, "Hey, does that mean that we have less money to um have you know to complete our projects?" And the answer is no. You have the same amount, but for the purpose of the audit, we have to report that in case the district ever chose to withdraw cash from the county treasury, then that's what the value would be. But no, you don't have less with that fair value adjustment. Um summary of the audit results. We again we
156issued the unmodified opinion which is the best opinion possible. No material weaknesses identified. Um no non-compliance and there were no financial statement findings for the year end of June 30th 2024. And part of our audit procedures um require us to follow up on corrective action plans for the prior fiscal year the prior year audits. There was one uh finding last year related to accounts payable. It was uh mainly due to a a check that took a little while to be voided. Um which resulted in an overstatement of accounts payable. Um that did not happen this year during this audit. Um and the corrective action plan appeared to be um uh implemented. So that's how that's what we that's what we reported. Current status implemented. And that concludes my presentation. Thank you very much for um
157allowing me to be here with you virtually. Thank you so much for the presentation. Is there any public comment on this item? We do have one public comment. Done. Gas. One minute on the clock, please. Although I am the chair of the citizens bond oversight committee, I'm not speaking for them tonight. I'm speaking just as a private citizen. You know, the financial and performance audits are a critical part of the oversight of the district's $2.4 billion bond program. The integrity of these audits is supposed to be guaranteed by using independent auditors. The problem that the CBOC has with these audits, in particular, the performance audit is the scope of the audit voted on by the board. To save a few bucks, this audit was downscoped. So, it is little more than just a Walmart version.
158It may meet the government standards, but it falls short of what the CBOC needs. For more than six years, the CBOC has been asking for a discussion about this scope, but we've been told it just isn't important enough to discuss. How can we have a real audit when the only information the auditors can consider comes from the very people that are being audited? Do you think believe you think the board or staff brought up the many dozens of missing financial reports the board supplied parliamentarian who hijacked our meetings about the poor poor outreach or of or the CBOC applications that were never forwarded to the board? Also, the CBOC was only provided with these audits a couple of days before the joint meeting. We were not provided the time to review them and discuss them
159prior to the meeting. Because this was a board meeting where the meeting and the agenda was controlled by the board, we weren't even permitted to a proper discussion. Thank you. Do board members have questions? No. Okay. Uh uh comments. Okay. Would somebody like to make a motion on this item? Yeah, I'm sorry. President, may can you repeat what you just said? Would you like to make a motion on the item? I'll make a motion that we accept the bond report uh bond performance and financial audit for the year ended June 30th, 2024. Thank you. Is there a second on the items? I'll second it. Uh comments? None. Go the vote. Student Trusty Espinosa Jr. Yes. Trusty Baron. Yes. Clerkyana. Yes. Trusty Gonzalez. Yes. Trusty Smith Foltz. Yes. Thank you. Anami. Yes. Um, can we extend
160for 15 minutes to do the last item and have Dr. Moses address the grant? Anybody have a problem with that? Okay, we'll extend to 10:15. Moving now to item four. approve the need for continued emergency action pursuant to board education resolution 425-68. Miss Payne, I believe this is your item. Yes. Good evening. Thank you. And so tonight, we're asking the the board to approve a continuence of the resolution that was approved at the April 16th meeting. We do still have an emergency at Elserto High School in that we are working with PG&E very closely on the permanent power solution as required by public contract code. We will be bringing this item to every board meeting. um to be transparent and to be really honest and upfront. We will bring a resolution to the board once
161the permanent power is in place to ask the board to then end the emergency. And so tonight, we ask that you approve this continuance. Thank you so much. Is there any public comment on this item? Any board questions on it? Okay, I'll go ahead and entertain a motion on this item. Okay, I'll make a motion to approve the need for continued emergency action pursuant to the board education resolution number 2425-68. Second. Okay. And is there are there any comments on the item? Seeing none, we'll go to the vote. Student trustee Espinosa Jr. Yes. Student trustee Baron. Yes. Clerkyana, yes. Trusty Gonzalez. Yes. Trusty Smith folds. Smith folds. Yes. And I'm a yes as well. Motion. Motion passes. Okay. So now we're coming back to the pulled consent item which is number C3 grants awards and
162agree agreements. Dr. Moses, would you like to address this item? Yes. Thank you, President Reckler. Um board, I've asked to pull this item because new information has become available and I wanted to ensure that we shared the information on public record as we work through um moving forward with this grant. Um this grant is uh a US department of education grant called the mental health school professionals development grant. The purpose of the grant is to promote building additional mental health professionals in the education profession. Um, I would like to report that on yesterday, August 29th, 2025, we received a letter from the US Department of Education, the letter was a notice of non-ontinuation of this grant. Um, this is a grant that in its totality is being discontinued by the federal government. This is not
163action that's being taken against West Contraosta Unified School District. However, what it does is in effect, it turns this from a 5-year grant worth 4.2 2 million to a one-year grant worth $68,000. Uh we are going to ask the board to go move forward with the approval of this grant so that we can take advantage of the funds that are secured for our use. This grant will place interns, three interns in one of our uh secondary schools uh interns in training to be um secondary counselors. and we would like to move forward with that. Um we are also looking into the opportunity to perhaps appeal this decision to the federal government. However, uh we are consulting with legal counsel uh with county officials, with state officials. Um unfortunately the non-continuation of this grant is um
164due to the uh claim that this grant is not um aligned with the current goals of the uh federal administration. So I just thought it would be important that we lift that up uh and explain exactly what's going on with this grant. Um as attached here it does show as a five-year grant, but in this moment it's been reduced to a one-year grant. uh theou that's attached to the award. We are working to get thatou completed um by the University of I'm sorry San Francisco San Jose State University and St. Mary's College of California so that we can work to get the interns placed in our schools uh for this one-year period or this halfyear period. Um, with that I just want to share that we're working with the college and career team to number
165one get thisou completed and secondly establish um a budget for this the amount that we are awarded and also to explore appeal options. Uh I want to name that there's also a position um on the consent agenda related to this grant and at this time it is uncertain whether we'll be able to move forward with that position. However, we are hopeful and we are going to try and do everything we can to retain uh the funds for these grants. And so, we're asking that the board approve, but that we all be aware of this new information that's been brought forward. And I will address questions if you have any. Go right ahead. Thank you, President. Thank you, Dr. Mos, for sharing these um horrible news. Uh uh not they're not your news, but you know
166what I mean. Um could I was wondering if you could talk about the impact this grant was going to have for our schools and for our students. Um and the negative impact it will have now due to the Trump administration taking this funding away. Thank you for the question. Um so as we work to provide um welcoming environments for our schools, we realize that a part of that is ensuring that we have services in place for them in the areas of mental health support. This grant um was targeted to help us to build those services across our schools and also build the workforce of mental health professionals within our schools. Um so the impact that this non-ontinuation of this grant will have is that instead of having five years of an opportunity to build the
167workforce and increase the mental health services in our counseling department um that time has been reduced just this this current calendar year. Um we hope to continue that work in another way if we aren't able to return retain these funds. However, the impact is great in that um the work that had planned to move forward um will be limited. And my understanding is that every district in the nation who applied for mental health grants is now being denied this funding. Is that correct? So, this is a specific grant that um only qualified districts could apply for. I I it is not a large grant uh across the the nation. I believe if I read correctly, there's about 23 districts receiving these funds, but all 23 districts are impacted by this decision. Thank you. Does anybody
168have anything else? I just I just want to say this is a total bummer. This is a total bummer. So, all right, that's all I have. President Reclar say one thing. I mean, I think that this is just the beginning of what we're going to see from this administration, right? I mean, I'm thankful that, you know, the National Education Association just won two lawsuits stopping the federal government from denying Title One funding to states like California, right? because that would have had huge impact in our budgets and our students. But that was just one of the larger pieces, right? This is another way that they're going to start hurting our kids, our staff, our school districts specifically because of what we stand for, because of who we are, because of what we look like, right?
169And um I mean, I just want to call it out for it is atrocious. Um, and uh, I'm just really ashamed that this is the kind of work that they're putting forward. Um, and I think that we just got to continue push with what we stand for, our values, and if this continues that we just continue to reassure our students that even if we have less resources, that we're here to support them, protect them, and that we will give them what we can with what we have. Thank you. Thank you for that. Any other comments? Okay, seeing none, does somebody want to move C3? I I'm move C3 grants, words, and achievement uh achieve grants, awards, and agreements to accept C3. Is there a second? Second. Okay. Um and we'll go to the vote on
170this. Student trustee Espinosa Jr. Yes. Trusty Baron. Yes. Clerk Inana. Yes. Trusty Gonzalezy. Yes. Trusty Smith Falls. Smith Falls. Yes. And I'm a yes as well. Okay. Up to G. Any comments from the board tonight? Seeing none, I will move to item H. Uh the next regularly scheduled meeting is May 14th, 2025. here at Leavana Jon Middle School and there's also a special meeting of the board May 13th. The location is to be be determined. We don't have a location yet, but we'll figure that out very shortly. And with that, at 10:10, I call our meeting to close. Thank you very much, everybody. Have a good evening.