Board of Education Meeting | April 10, 2024

001good afternoon everyone I would like to welcome you all to the board meeting this afternoon to access translation please click on the globe icon below or at dejon you can go to the corner of the room to get translation we are heading into our close session for tonight before we do we are here to listen to any public comment there might be about our Clos session items the public gets two minutes for public comment per speaker the close session close session items that we're discussing tonight or today are Public Employee discipline dismissal release and complaint conference with legal counsel existing litigation conference with labor negoti negotiators and Public Employee appointment and uh public employee performance evaluation and that's it staff do we have any public comment thank you so much everyone we will Recon for

002open session at 6:30 tonight thank you very much e see if we can turn the volume up just a [Music] little Dr H if you'll read it for us and then we'll get the video ready for next time thank you ma'am we recognize that we are presently on the lands of the jeno MMA kin aloney peoples and acknowledge them as the first inhabitants of the land we currently occupy thank you so very much Dr HSE now we're going to do the labor and body recognition I acknowledge that the burden of environmental exploitation 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 this land against their will for Generations also acknowledge the

003continued contribution of the labor of survivors over this I also acknowledge the continued contribution of lab the labor of survivors over the centuries to today of all immigrant labor including voluntary involuntary traffic force and undocumented peoples in the building of what we refer to as the United States board we're now going to go to roll call Dr H if you would do roll call please absolutely thank you ma'am president Smith folds good evening everyone present clerk Gonzalez Hoy good evening president trusty reckler good evening pres trusty Christian good evening present trusty Phillips trusty Phillips is absent truste palar good evening president trusty Abdu gapar good evening president thank you thank you very much we're now moving to agenda item B5 report and ratification of closed session Dr Hurst is there anything to report out yes

004ma'am there is regarding item a 2.4 the board voted to approve the appointment of Shirley Priestley as an interim coordinator at Cameron by unanimous vote with one member absent the vote was as follows trusty Christian yes clerk Gonzalez Hoy yes trusty reckler yes president Smith folds yes trusty Phillips absent regarding item number a 2.4 the board voted to appoint the appointment of Chang s as an interim Elementary principal at Highland by unanimous vote with one member absent the vote was as follows trusty Christian yes clerk Gonzalez Hoy yes trusty reckler yes president Smith FS yes trusty Phillips absent regarding item number a 2.4 the board voted to appoint the appointment of Michael Hatcher as an interim High School principal at Richmond High School by a unanimous vote with one member absent the vote was as

005follows trusty Christian yes clerk Gonzalez Hoy yes trusty reckler yes president Smith folds yes and truste Phillips absent thank you very much concludes my report thank you very much we're now moving to agenda item B6 uh West Contra Costa Unified School District public comment again I'm going to read how to address the board members of the public are invited to speak to the board about any matter that is not otherwise on the agenda and is related to the issues affecting public education and wccusd public comment will last approximately 60 Minutes the time allotted for each speaker is two minutes individuals wishing to speak must submit a wccusd public comment form or if participating via Zoom individuals will need to raise their hand in the Zoom app due to the brown act board members due to

006the brown act board members cannot discuss items that are not on the agenda and do not usually respond to items presented in public comment staff do we have any public comment yes we do our first public comment is Jason Minon hello hello again thank you very much um I this is really we've spoken earlier today this is more of an announcement for the everyone else um but I met earlier with the board about reassignment of uh principal kiby kimman from penol Valley High School from Principal to teacher which was a uh that reassignment was made here in close session month two months a month and a half I don't know time flies a little while ago um since that time penol Valley uh high school students and the parent Community has been uh discussing and

007trying to bring attention to this issue I met in close session with the board today they very generously gave me uh five minutes to speak um to present information that was uh kind of going over uh Mr kibby's uh 11 years as principal providing positive feedback for his performance and the 19 years he worked in this District prior to becoming principal and um his importance to the students his ties to the community particularly in pursuit of opportunities for the district's kids you know there are a lot of kids at penol Valley are not from penol who come in from the other areas of the district it's a it's a highly valued school and largely due to uh Mr kibby's hard work uh bonding the community and the the teachers and the student body together um

008so I in the end I asked uh the board to resend the devote to reassign him from Principal to teacher and um I believe they are making some decision and discussion and I appreciate your time earlier today for making that presentation and I just wanted to raise this issue in the public ey so that um if there's anybody else who wanted to speak they would feel supported that there were a few of us all right thank you very much have a good night I know it's a long job that you guys do here but thank you very much for doing it our next public comment is Amanda Foster please unmute yourself hello I'm speaking on behalf of two parents who could not be here with us tonight from Lisha Dunn parent of one Vista student

009my child has faced many difficulties with learning and I was presented the opportunity to have her in independent studies while I was very reluctant I couldn't take my child coming home from school crying and wanting to harm herself because she didn't feel heard or understood by the teachers or counselors at the school she was attending since my child has been with Vista she has excelled Beyond any expectations of hers or myself my daughter is excited to get up and learn new things and lean on her teachers who have the time and ability to hear her and help her work through her problems I appreciate her teacher who reaches out to me and keeps me updated on her progress before my child joined Vista I wasn't sure that teachers who care about their students overall mental

010health as well as education even existed we must keep our teachers at Vista because they are pushing our kids to Excel and be better not just in school but in life if it were not for the teachers and counselors of Vista my child would not be here today she would have possibly given up and quit school leading her to quit at life Miss Mali is an amazing Soul who my child has been working with every person I've spoken with has proven to me that I made the best decision bringing my child here now my question to you is why would we take away these beautiful people when there are so many children that could benefit from learning with them they're more than just teacher these rare people are a huge part of our children's success

011we need our teachers from Maria Eis parent of two Vista students and one student at katsu I'm appalled at the news my 11th grade son's Virtual Academy teacher might be replaced with a less qualified teacher next year this is our sixth year in the district with three kids and year after year wccusd continues to make poor decisions for my son in particular to cut a teacher who supports understands inspires and holds him accountable each day to his success in a program that is thriving and has a wait list would be another glaring example of WCC usd's long-standing inability to serve its students properly meanwhile you have 10e teachers and administrators with very unsatisfactory reputations at in-person schools and nothing is done about it in order to attract more families to our district you must support

012the program of teachers that are successful not cut them I'm honored to speak on behalf of these two parents thank you our next public speaker is Tamara Shiloh hello hi tomorrow Shiloh I would just like to thank you all for considering allowing us to open a Swahili school and I'd like to assure you I'm also in um approval of a school but I'd like to assure you that we will have data showing that our children have improved as a result of attending the Swahili dual immersion school thank you our next public speaker it's Simo please unmute yourself um hi I'm Sim I'm in fourth grade at Vista virtual and I don't want to lose any of the teachers in high school because that might mean my teacher has to spend time teaching them and that

013will take time away from me and technically taking away their jobs next public comment from Salon Harrison good evening board and superintendent can y'all hear me can y'all hear me there okay um I would like to say I'm here today to talk about our black and africanamerican students if you guys didn't know and I would like to say I I want to appreciate um trusty um FES and Demetrio for having that community meeting that was very good and I would encourage other trustees to do the same because we get to talk to you all not just at a board meeting so that was really good to b a lot of things and I want to thank Dr her for having his staff support us and getting some of our answers our questions answered regarding some

014concerns we had so thank you we um did get some of those still a lot of work to do but thank you for um getting that process started and we also want to um ensure that we want to know what's going to be happening next year regarding the budget and what resources and services that will African-American and black children have when it comes to the lcap like what are you guys going to ensure that it's going to be there for our children to change data around suspension and around um what's that truancy so we want to make sure that you guys have a plan going into next year to support our children and make sure that there is resources going towards those towards the plan because if it isn't written it's not going to happen

015and if the resources are not there it's likely not to happen so can you please make sure that all communicate with us as you guys are developing our next year's budget making time to meet with ASAT on how that plan is going to happen to include and change the data in our district and take our children out of red and put them in orange or yellow or green even so thank you I'm complete our next public speaker is jasarat Carr please unmute yourself hi I am a student of virtual WIA High School I don't agree with this cup because my teacher Mrs S has to leave that actually cares helps and checks in on me with my work and how I am doing Mrs S also helped me with any subject and gave me the

016understanding that I can reach out to her whenever knowing I can get help on my work my teacher always helps no matter what time or day virtual Vista is a good place for me because since I came to the school I seen growth in my education knowledge and grades virtual Vista is the best place for me because I feel safe and I can concentrate more better it will break my heart to lose a great teacher like Mrs S lastly to the board please reconsider thank you our next public speaker is hilberto Cooper hello I'm Gilberto Cooper good evening Board of Trustees I'm just here to support the development and the implementation of the Dual emersion wah school I think it's an Innovative way to bring some educational Justice to our kids that have been consistently

017mised ated thank you our next public speaker is s deep surum banzi please unmute yourself evening bo uh I'm a parent at Visa virtual um I just wanted to speak today to speak about our teachers in the high school if you go through with removing these three teachers that only leaves two that are certified in overseeing high school studies two teachers teaching the entire School the school has a waiting list and instead of taking precious resources away the board should be making decisions and adding new high school teachers to allow additional students in supervising teachers of independent studies don't just oversee work and Mak sure students are completing their hours no they create assignments for our students they help them one onone more importantly they understand the grade level assignments being given to our students

018their subject matter experts for high school level studies and I want to express that their subject matter experts for high school level studies if you decide to remove these positions and go through with this the virtual schools will be forced to go through a reorg this means that unqualified teachers would be teaching our children subjects they may not specialize in going to a second grade teacher or even a sixth grade teacher and asking them to teach 11th grade science courses you have to understand that this teacher is not qualified to supervise this course this would be a major disservice to our children and to our community and other grade levels in the virtual schools you would now be taking time away from younger students that would require additional support in their studies because their dedicated

019teachers would now have to shift their focus over to the high schools this puts a strain on current teachers that may end up leading their positions because of the stress these teachers are already doing so much and spend so much time with our children in their current grade levels that it would be a disservice to your employees I hope the board makes the right decision and keeps these teachers on staff thank you very much for listening our next public speaker is Taylor P hello I apologize I'm not a public comment it's for later under contracts apologies never mind uh trusty reckler is pulling the contract so you would be able to speak okay we usually don't do public comment under contracts because contracts are under consent unless a board member pulls the contracts and once

020they pull the contract then we do have public comment so trusty Rey just said she is pulling contracts so this is just information you're good you will still be able to speak hold on uh clar Gonzalez thank you president if you would mind clarifying that contracts will be at the end of our agenda so maybe if she does have a comment maybe she'd prefer to do it now in public comment then waiting till the end of the night um if she really wants to make a comment on on an item thank you so that's totally like super smart once it gets pulled it goes to the very bottom of the agenda and the very bottom of the agenda hovers around 10 o' so if you want to go ahead and comment now then we can

021hear the comment now does that make sense we're good okay trusty reckler did you have anything else to say are you good no okay Miss Taylor go ahead okay uh thank you I have a 18-month-old and a four-year-old so I really appreciate that thank you so much um well I am the very proud principal of Lincoln Elementary and we submitted a contract for bacr for our restorative justice coordinator um and I was told to be here tonight that I would I was required to be here tonight in case there were any questions about our contract thank you for that yeah that's a pickle because I don't know if they're going to have any questions because we haven't pickled it yet so Miss Taylor we're going to let you get home to your 18-month-old and if

022we have a question we GNA shoot it in the email okay that's what I would think I don't know Fran we're kind of just doing the best we can so we'll figure it out but we'll let you know if we have a question that only you can answer okay can I just stay tuned and when we get to contracts you can do whatever you want to do it's completely up to you but thank you thank you very much you're welcome our next public speaker it's sunny sing please unmute yourself good evening everyone uh my name is sunny Singh and I like to preface this by saying that I am directly not a parent of any student that attends this school but I an uncle of three who uh attend this school and um when I

023heard about everything that was happening I had to make it a point to myself to come out and speak because it just breaks my heart right to see that these teachers that are making such a difference in these kids' lives are now facing their jobs being lost um you know I could see a direct impact on how my nieces and my nephew have all kind of changed as their personalities and as they got older um and I see that it's a direct reflection of not only their home leadership which is with their parents but also the leadership that they're taking at school which is from their teachers and um having the right teacher especially growing up in the inner cities of San Francisco and um you know going to public high school out here I

024could tell you that I didn't grow up with these resources I didn't grow up having all this catered knowledge um that my nieces and my nephew are having and I could see a direct difference that it makes uh when I personally didn't have that versus now them having it in front of them and seeing how their characters are now developing and how much they they love and care for their teachers just because they feel that love and respect is reciprocated to them through their teachers so I strongly suggest and I strongly encourage the board to go ahead and look at other ways of approaching this matter rather than you know just rather than cutting off these teachers especially the ones that make a difference especially the ones that are doing extra overtime to go ahead

025and make sure that the child understands that what their assignment is and how it actually impacts their life long term um these types of teachers don't come along very often and I I strongly suggest reallocating ways on making sure that they stay with the people that love them all thank you our next public speaker is Daisy s please unmute yourself um good evening I'm a student from Vista virtual High School I can't explain how frustrated I am about this whole situation we need these teachers our teachers don't just supervise the students here at Vista they give their students one onone help they are experts in the subjects that we learn and when we need help on an assignment they are there right a away to break it down for us by making this decision you

026are only thinking about the money being spent but you're doing no favor for the families in this community I'm sure you can take other unnecessary resources away instead of our teachers just as I said last time please rethink your decision thank you our next public speaker is Jean can please unmute yourself good evening board I would like for the board to consider and create a way for staff to give feedback to principles and other groups that interact with the staff and the students for example the after school programs senica art dance garden and other such programs the feedback should be a minimum of twice a year mid year and again at the end of the year but each trimester would be even better having a survey monkey run by a neutral party maybe theica coach

027um and it does fall under their job duties to meet with the principal and give feedback and talk about things that happen on campus weekly of course this wouldn't be a weekly topic this allows for needed communication to strengthen our schools and it follows our UTI contract where teachers get to have input in decisionmaking it will also help teacher retention and help make teachers heard and feel heard and possibly even more appreciated if teachers have weekly observations and feedback it's it's very reasonable to have a trimester feedback system for others on our School site we talk about Equity please help us have Equity of voice I would also like to ask that the district consider making a rule that the PTA SE elac and AAPAC meetings are held after school so that teachers and people

028who work can actually attend having these meetings during the school hours in the early morning does not allow for people who need to be at these meetings or people who might want to be at these meetings to attend these meetings it kind of makes it a elst specialist group of certain people and that's really not what these are for thank you for hearing my concerns and have a good evening our next public speaker it's Maisha Harris gash please unmute yourself please unmute yourself hello can you hear me you can hear me yes I have some computer issues all right so good evening everyone one I want to say I love the student advocacy I I teach it practice it with my students so I love the student advocacy um also I am a Lincoln Elementary

029student and so I love Lincoln and um my name is swah so hearing the speaker talk about Swahili and it was Miss Beck our classroom Aid a black woman who told me what my name meant which means Full of Life full of joy and she created like a circular medallion for me I will never ever forget that um the main reason I called in tonight because I see Dr Hurst in your superintendent report we're g um there's gonna be a presentation around anti-racism um during covid we had some anti-racism work and um it's kind of personal um I'm going to be optimistic um that this I know it's going to be good work but I'm going to be optimistic at the outcomes even though I have some concerns um because of what I've experienced in

030my een years here in the district um there's a quote in the slide about anti-racism is the commitment to fight racism wherever you find it including in yourself and that's the part that kind of gets me because too many people in this District do not want to look at themselves and they want to point the fingers at other people and I'm the type of person like if you know me you know I say I own my stuff all day because I am not perfect what I'm hoping is that people are going to see the humanity in the adults or the colleagues as well as in our students because if this if the adults ain't right the kids not gonna be right how's it going to trickle down to the kids if the adults cannot handle

031their bias their discrimination I don't believe that I've worked with anybody who's just an outright racist I don't believe that in this District but what I do believe there is a lot of bias and discrimination and people want to point the fingers at others so I'm looking forward to moving forward with this process and I just hope everyone is all in and looks at themselves first next public comment is Rose please unmute yourself good evening everyone good evening Board of Trustees my daughter is a sophomore at Vista High School do you guys have kids how about kids with mental health problems how about kids with academic problems for years my daughter went through that you know as a parent the most painful thing to see is to see your kids struggle and there's nothing you

032could do about it then the light at the end of the tunnel we found Vista High Vista High changed my daughter's life in a significant way her teacher Miss Mel Mahi helped my daughter to be where she's at now from a student with severe anxiety and imperfect grades to an excelling straight A student and currently enrolled at a concurrent student at Contra Costa College all that because of Miss mahi's guidance she is the best at what she does no teachers ever been as attentive considerate and patient her years of experience teaching high school was able to help enhance my daughter's abilities teachers like Miss Mel Mahi are a gift they should be protected and they should be supported taking away what these teachers do best would not only be hurtful but would also be harsh

033to all the kids that look up to them for help and encouragement I hope you all reconsider the impact that these teachers hold on to their student teachers working at V Vista Virtual Academy not only know their student best but also adjust to each student's learning style that best enhance their success the relationship that these students have with their teachers and and the trust they have in them is something that cannot be replaced I hope you guys really consider what the outcome of this eventually to all the student that's even coming in and staying so thank you for your time and I hope you guys have a wonderful evening next public speaker is Regina Bates please unmute yourself um hello my name is arria and my home room te teacher is Miss Mali and I

034just want to say that she has been the best teacher to me and she has really helped me a lot and made me feel comfortable as a student every time I've had a question or had an issue she was always right there to help me and if it wasn't for her I would not have as much motivation doing my school work now and I would not have as much uh better grades as I do now because I am a straight age student because of her and I would like to really thank her a lot for helping me out and in my opinion there's other things that this District needs to look into besides trying to cut teachers because there's actual issues going on in this district and who are the who are the students going

035to rely on if you take away the only good teachers and I also want to add to that I am arria's Mom Regina Bates and um I graduated from deanza and back then in I'm the class of 85 and we had oneone consultations with our teachers our our teachers really cared about us now to be able to get that for my daughter nowadays one on-one it's like a private school and for you guys to have the audacity to take it away that's that's really crazy especially when kids need it the most and I've seen the change in my daughter tremendously she was going here when Co first started and she's continued and I kept her in it and because of that she's a brand new person she's doing kickboxing she's been came out of um

036not really depression but she was had anxiety and Miss Mali and all the other teachers but really miss Mahi brought her true self out so I think you guys are doing the service to the teachers to the district and please reconsider because they are diamonds and I'm sure that you guys can find somewhere else where you guys can cut because teachers should not be the first person on the chopping block so thank you our next public speaker is Jose De Leon that concludes her public comment thank you so much staff we are now moving on and thank you to the public who um called in or who came to speak we're now moving on to agenda item B7 standing reports we have two standing reports from our packs um we have mdac and we have

037asset I don't see mdac in the room am I missing mdac I don't see them okay so um asset if you want to come up and do your standing report thank you so very much hello can y'all hear me okay thank you so tonight we um we're gonna have one of our we're part of the black educational task force which is a group built up of community residents parents and also leadership parent leadership in our community so tonight they're GNA show you all some of the work that the ASAT team executive team and the community members have been working on I think Rosa sent you all the slide presentation and um jam so we're not going to be able to show it so we're gonna speak to it but you all should have it and

038so um oh thank you I didn't see it right there so um Anita is going to be speaking um from the task force um sharing with you all some of the work we've done so far thank you thank you very much um good evening um I am speaking today on behalf of the task force and the task force members um uh Miss Denise Van Hook um Gilberto Cooper um Stephanie Houston sham Shamar Shamara Shiloh mailon Harrison Wanita towns and Yolanda Allen and some of the work that the Swahili dual immersion task force has been working on I want to share with you today uh so far we have worked diligently and met and discussed using some um research on dual immersion practices as well as on Swahili dual immersion and so far we have worked

039on uh Mission and I want to share that with you today on the mission of the school the vision of the school and some of the beliefs surround surrounding why a swah dual emersion School uh the mission of the school is to enable opportunities for our most marginalized students by focusing on the cultural academic and developmental needs through a Swahili dual emersion School Model A Swahili dual emerging schools vision is to make this West Contra Casta Unified School District and this school and the school district a District School of Choice particularly for our students um that centers around agency self-determination interdependence self-awareness and Community our students will achieve Mastery through an Innovative dual immersion and steam curriculum centered in cultural responsiveness and culturally relevant pedagogy beliefs around the Swahili demer uh dual emergence School are

040that we will provide Equitable instruction and promote critical problem solving skills and creativity through uh project-based learning which allows students to explore and apply their knowledge of History culture and language and real world situations the task force meets regularly um the meetings are held at 5:30 on Mondays and every other Wednesday at the black parent Resource Center at 260 Broadway Richmond and the meetings are also hybrid so families uh interested community members can attend virtually or they can attend in person um as an educator I have been an educator in West country Costa County as well as in um other counties in uh the California area I've been in education for 22 years I joined the work of the task force because I also have a child in westc Costa County schools and he's with

041me today this meeting and I deeply believe in our students I believe that um West KRA Costa will be the school of choice for our students we need to stop losing students we need to stop losing students and we need to be a school of choice in which our students gravitate to Quality schools and our district is a quality school district and we want to be a part of making that for all of our students particularly our black and brown students um and uh thank you um thank you very much thank you so very much staff is INB back in the room and are they on Zoom no okay thank you board we're now moving to agenda item B8 agenda review and adoption board are there any changes to the agenda seeing none the agenda

042is adopted we're now moving to agenda item B9 approval of minutes March 6 and March 20th 2024 are there any corrections trusty reckler go ahead yes thank you okay on March 6 it's just to point out that on C8 which was the assistive technology clerk it was supposed to come back on the March 20th meeting and it did not um with an with an approved funding source um it it hasn't been posted because in the motion it can't be posted until the funding source is identified but do we have an idea when that is coming back can you speak to that um Miss Moses yes we provided information regarding um how the position was going to be added to the special education Staffing Matrix however we were asked to dig deeper to find out it

043seemed like the ask is how are we going to afford it meaning what reductions will we make to uh be able to add that position and we're still at the discussion point of trying to figure that out since we do believe that is the ask so there is no date at this time no ma'am not at this time okay then moving on to action item E5 resolution 2324 d56 classified reduction of Grant funded positions it says that I have a vote not recorded I believe I voted yes on that and then on G comments from the board uh my statement there is a link in this statement and the the permissions on this statement need to be adjusted so it could be accessed um by someone who does not have a wccusd email okay then

044moving on to March 20th I have one small correction on C3 which was the literacy discussion and it says balance to remove the word balance it's actually balanced with a d on the end it's a little nitpicky key buug important and that is it thank you I'll just hand these over um if they are approved thank you so much Bor is there a motion to approve the minutes with the corrections that trusty breckler has pointed out I'll go ahead and move them with the changes noted is there a second say thank you board we are headed to the vote let's start with trusty um park car yes thank you trusty ABD trusty abuga Parov yeah oh yeah yeah I got it yes thank you trusty reckler reer yes thank you truste Christian thank you Clark

045Gonzalez Hoy yes thank you and I'm a yes we are now moving on to the consent items we are on agenda item C board are there any changes to the consent calendar where the consent items trusty re yes I'd like to pull C5 report Creator plugin for power school C6 approval of fundraising activities and C8 contracts all of C8 yes thank you any other any other consent items being pulled tonight no thank you we need a vote on consent items yeah we do thanks all right we're gonna go to the vote um truste now I'm having the hardest time remembering um hot Miss p p car thank you yes thank you trusty ABD parro obain thank you trusty reckler reckler yes I'm sorry presos I don't think there was a motion there probably wasn't sir

046let's do that I apologize that's okay no I'll just I'll make a motion to approve the rest of the consent C thank you apart from what was is there a second to approve the consent calendar with items five six and eight PLL I second thank you very much now we're going to go back to the vote truste Paul car your vote please ma'am yes thank you trusty Abdu gapar Ro obain thank you trusty trusty reckler reckler yes thank you trusty Christian yes thank you CLK Gonzalez Hoy yes thank you and I'm a yes thank you everyone we are now moving to agenda item D superintendent communication Dr H this is your item thank you so much ma'am if we could bring up the presentation please if we can go to we first want to thank

047um our director of communications for getting information out to all of our Learning Community regarding the solar eclipse uh she also got information about how to construct their own pinhole projector as well as giving information about the solar eclipse um if we go to the next slide we want to share some pictures as well thank you president Smith folds for supplying the pictures you can see the students either with their eclipse glasses appropriate glass one or making those pinhole projectors as well going to the next slide and another slide showing our students making uh pinhole projectors as well and next slide this picture actually came from um ELO high school and we had um a staff member who was filming this appropriately and sent this in to me as well next slide so we wanted

048to pause and just um share for a minute and just talk about the training that has been happening across the district with anti-racism and you heard one of our employees come on and talk about the anti-racism work but we want to just share that um the work has been extensive we wanted to take this opportunity not just to share with the board because most of our board members are aware of the level of work that's been happening in this area but also the public so the work that's been happening has been extensive we've been meeting with all of our principles or 54 principles uh talking about anti-racism we also have been meeting with executive cabinet that's those who work closely with me and doing this work as well our executive directors have been involved in

049this work we've had one student Summit thus far and we have another student Summit coming up involved in this work a Board of Trustees have been involved in this work and they've really been looking at this work from a policy level they've been engaged in the book by patina love called punished for dreaming and looking at policy and then uh next steps is looking at Affinity groups and then what I will share as well is we have some immersive principles and these are principles that we're doing a deeper dive with going into this work of anti-racism I want to call out those schools and those principles thanking them for engaging in the work authentically and also bringing their teachers as well we have principal Jordan from Kensington principal Matt Sloan from Chavez principal David Ranch

050from madira Principal Kibby kimman from Peno Valley High Principal Charlotte Betson from Mir Vista and then also we have principal air Bale from Harding and those are immersive schools so when you look at this uh first slide you heard um one of our employees share the beauty of anti-racism is that you don't have to pretend to be free of racism to being an anti-racist anti-racism is the commitment to fight racism wherever you find it including in yourself next slide in this training with the immersive principles uh we had Dr Rogers Ard who's been working with us over this past year and she shared a little bit about herself how she worked in Oakland Unified School District 22 years as a teacher and administ ministrator and really been developing anti-racist Educators she also has worked with

051Alam County Office of Education senior leadership development and then also you can see that she's been leading her own consultant company and really growing anti-racist leaders and organizations and she's the one that's working with us next slide so at our training yesterday with the teachers and the immersive schools and the principles there were some Frameworks and some outcomes um and she calls it the 5Ds so we were looking at some Core Concepts to define those Concepts also we were looking to increase our skills to disrupt racist beliefs and behaviors we also focused on dismantling the ways in which white supremist beliefs and behaviors are embedded in our schools in classrooms and also we discuss dreaming dreaming about shifting to personal and professional anti-racist practices and then designing strategies and this is where we ended and

052I'll talk a little bit a little bit more about the action plan piece as well next slide so one of the terms we discuss is this what is racism the marginalization and or oppression of people of color based on a socially constructed racial hierarchy that privileges white people and another term that we discussed and defined on the next slide is defining antiblackness um and anti-blackness refers to as systemic racism in discrimination against black people perpetuated through social cultural and economic institutions and then the next slide one of the first activities that she uh Dr Rogers are engaged in with us is asking the question for us to think of one word and how do I experience racism and she asked everyone to participate and you could hear the one words coming from each member some

053were saying they experience racism often some Shar daily or even some said they've never experienced racism and some even use the term backhanded next slide I thought this was interesting as well and Dr Rogers art shared that she has had this conversation many times with organizations looking at this pyramid and she asked everyone the teachers and the principles um to rank the races according to the US cast system and she looked at African-American black Asian latinx and white and she just asked the question openly to the entire group which race would go to the top the consensus was white at the top the next level consensus was Asian at that next level at the top tier and then latinx and then African-American black at the bottom again she shared that this has been consistent in

054every training Workshop that she has completed next slide and she talked a lot about this also this slide really deals with the focus on anti-racism and uh this was eye openening for me as well I focus on equity in other districts and what she has been clear about is that Equity is not enough and that anti-racism really includes all of these pieces in the gear it includes inclusion includes Equity Justice diversity and belonging which is why she's focusing with us on anti-racism next slide and there was a lot of individual work there's a lot of whole group work and there was a lot of small group work as well what I really appreciate it is that the principes were able to meet with their teams get into small groups open up a Google Document and

055then start working on a plan to really address and put in concrete steps that they're going to implement to address racism on a campus and they have to do this by the end of the school year our next steps is to make sure that we meet with principles of all of the schools but ALS Alo these immersive schools meet with the executive directors and really identify what are the next steps around clear expectations for accountability in other words how we're going to hold those schools accountable for their action plans and then next slide so we're going to transition list to National Library week so this is National Library week and we do have um a proclamation from our governor and I want to read just portions of it um I thought this was appropriate just

056to share from Governor Nome he says during National Library week we celebrate the essential Services resources and opportunities that libraries and Library workers provide for all Californians it goes on to say that California library workers play an essential role Civic role helping people of all ages and all backgrounds access to resources programs and services they need and serving as a key source for trusted information goes on to say all too often libraries and Librarians face censorship and attacks amid Rising school and library book challenges many targeting lgbtq plus authors and writers of color it's more important than ever that we recognize the significance of books and materials that reflect the bread of our Rich diversity and defend the essential role of public libraries in protecting intellectual freedom and he concludes by saying in California we

057know libraries hold more than books they are the heart of our communities during National Library week we honor our libraries and Library workers and Endless Possibilities they offer to enrich the lives of Californians across the state you can see a picture of some of our Librarians um and I will just share with you the theme of our national library week is ready set Library the purpose of National Library week is to promote information services and resources as well as reading and the benefits of literacy what can we do we can visit our school libraries all of us we can meet our school librarians we can thank our Librarians we can go in person and thank them we could send cards to them we can send a thank you through email as well we can also

058investigate the many resources available in our La libraries for our students and staff in fact we have um School visits myself and the board president and I will be visiting libraries throughout the district this Friday just to share a word of thank you so we like to thank all of our Librarians across our district and thank you for the amazing work you do for our students and our staff next slide and then we want to share with you some events that's happening in our district um you can see first bullet 2024 parents as partners conference at on the 13th 9:00 am to 1M plant sell and Seed giveaway Betty Reed saskin on the 13th 9:00 am. to 6: PM West contracosta Unified School District 58th annual Student Art Show reception and student awards at Richmond

059Art Center on the 16th from 5:00 P pm to 6:30 p.m. we have an elementary open house minimum day on the 18th 6:00 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. there's going to be a talent show at El horse Elementary on the 19th 6:45 p.m. we have the third quarter honor roll ceremony Peno Middle School 19th at 1:30 p.m. literacy lesson celebrations at Downer Elementary on the 23rd from 400 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. have a special education Fair V high 27th 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. and the Richmond we just wanted everyone to be aware there's the Richmond San Pablo Cinco de Mayo braid on May the 4th at 10 a.m. next slide and then we wanted to share with you that um we do have a governance Committee in force and we are looking at uh these

060policies we have already reviewed the anti-racism policy it went to board approval it was board approved on March the 20th we uh also viewed the governance handbook but that's going to go back to the governance committee on the 29th at elor from 5:00 P pm to 7M um for some additional work we have a new policy for paying student trustees and giving them High School Credit uh we'll be looking at that in the governance committee meeting review of board policy 5127 graduation ceremony and activities also considering a new policy on period poverty or menual equity for all will'll be reviewing a new policy on book review and book Banning uh bullying policies as well harassment policies we'll be looking at a new policy on Cola received from our CDE California Department of UC ation new

061policy for preservation of school-based Art and other installations which is really our M policy and we do have a draft of that so the governance committee will be looking at a draft of that policy a new policy for cell phone use at schools we'll be reviewing a policy for Charter collocations curriculum adoption review process policy we'll be reviewing or updated or look look at our cboc policy as well our Recruitment and selection policy process and then also we have a draft of our anti-racism policy you heard the board already approved the anti-racism statement we already have a workup of the policy and a workup of the administration regul administrative regulation that will go to the governance committee and then it will come back to this body of board next slide and that concludes my presentation

062thank you very I'll turn it back over to the board president thank you so much for the superintendent report board do we have any questions on the report seeing no questions we'll move to the next item thank you Dr Hurst we are now on agenda item E1 these are our action items the first one is Promethean active panels purchase Miss Logan I believe this is your item good evening Bor thank you um excuse my movie star status I am uh recovering from pink eye in both eyes and so my are sensitive but I am excited and honored to be here this evening um I am joined by The Fabulous lri Roberts our edtech coordinator and this evening we are going to give you an update on our prometheum panel implementation in our schools and ask

063for your approval for the final purchase of Prometheans 357 for the remainder of our TK through 12 uh grade 12 classrooms so again I want to start Lai I want to thank you for your leadership for your vision uh for your coordination and your incredible organization this has been a project that's been two years in the making it's involved lots of people lots of moving Parts um and I am so proud and grateful for your incredible work so thank you first of all H secondly ttls our technology teacher leaders these are the folks who are our Champions are the on the ground they are our lead Learners they are the people who are trying out new technology and uh supporting colleagues to learn those Technologies to Tinker to fail forward and so ttls thank you

064I I thank you thank you to our site leaders I thank you for the space Grace and support that you've provided to our teachers as we've embarked on this journey over the last two years to Grace Kelly our coach who supported our teachers and all of our teachers who have taken steps to learn something new for your openness and for the partnership along the way so as I mentioned this has been a journey we started two years ago when we conducted a survey of all of our teachers on possible classroom technology replacement about 70% of our classroom technology projection technology was becoming end of life by next year that will be closer to 90% so we knew we needed to do something we had an opportunity to use one-time Esser funds to do it and

065we provide uh various opportunities for folks to try out different Technologies for teachers and students to give feedback on that best technology so I'm going to pass it on to lri now who will talk more about what our journey has been and where we are today good evening I'm back so I wanted to start off by saying thank you to Tracy because without Tracy without her vision we wouldn't we wouldn't be here at all today uh so so I'd like to start with where we've been so we started this process actually back in 2021 so time really flies we started with a survey as Tracy said um and this data informed our decision to Pilot the active panels so teachers at 13 schools piloted the active panels during the 2223 school year and feedback was

066collected from students teachers and administrators we use this information to propose a continuation of the program which was approved in June of 2023 last summer was very busy our pilot sites received full compliments of active panels while the rest of our sites received set numbers of active panels to rotate among their teachers and we put a process in place to determine which sites would receive their full complement of active panels in December which included teacher feedback from 75% of the site staff and a plan for professional learning nine schools received full compliments of active panels in December and since then sites have continued to work toward full deployment Readiness so let me just bring you up to speed so you don't have to read all of the words on this slide so far we have

067deployed 604 active panels to sites we've increased the number of a 100% schools to 26 we've supported our teachers through professional learning providing proved by Grace Kelly our Promethean active our Promethean active panel education consultant and through targeted technical support provided by Richard bobus who is our very own AV technician and I would be remiss if I didn't mention the integral part of our technology teacher leaders they played a huge part of this process they are the people who've made all of this happen keeping the active panels front of mind for their staff through regular reminders staff professional learning one-on-one support and generally just being the best Promethean cheerleaders and mascots so how do we know that they're being used well we do have a management cons console right now and we are working on

068a process to get usable data from it but what's most important is that we see that the active panels are being used in meaningful ways and the way that we know that they are being used in meaningful ways are through these three ways surprise class visits I've walked through tons of classrooms I have heard from other teachers I have heard from administrators about the use of the active panels there's a lot of teacher enthusiasm showing that they there's so many teachers who have tried them out who are very sad to see them go I think that the very first time I was here and reported to you I said that there were teachers who were ready to chain themselves to the Promethean active panels because they did not want to see them go and we've

069also seen you use of the active panels everywhere so very recently we've had two CDE events and they actually used the active panels so that we had greater um access to students at multiple sites we also used it for the student Summit that we had in November so on this next slide there's a lot here I know so I'm only going to read two of the comments that highlight accessibility and teacher efficiency so the first one is in the upper right hand corner and it says this board is an amazing versatile learning vehicle that gives universal access in many ways in the classroom and then the one in the bottom right hand corner I absolutely loved how it simplified my prep I didn't need to constantly print out materials laminate them Etc I could use

070Google slides with photos and students could and students could write on and manif at them as needed and it encompassed all my tech needs no need to constantly turn on a sound system a project projector Etc so as we deploy active plan panels we are also pulling back the projectors that were in the classroom currently we've been moving things around right because we have teachers who have projectors that are dying and on their last legs so we move working projectors to their rooms but once that all of the active panels are installed Our intention is to pull out all those projectors and those that are in good shape will be sold and we will maximize trying to get every penny we can to bring back into this District so tonight we are asking that you

071approve the purchase of 357 Promethean active panels using one-time Esser funds again which will complete this project this is the final deployment for TK to 12th grade classrooms representing the schools that you see in front of you these 22 schools I will say there is one Omission apologies lake Lake Elementary should also be on this list they are included in the 357 so they are part of this final deployment so that concludes our presentation and we're happy to take any questions thank you so very much for the presentation we are going to go to public comment do we have any public comment yes we have one oh two our public speaker is Denise please unmute yourself can you hear me okay so we were one of the pilot schools and we now have 100% Promethean

072boards and they are used every day all day in our classrooms the kids come to the board they do math problems uh we actually watched the eclipse yes uh Monday from the board so I just feel like this is such an amazing tool for our classrooms and I really um ex I I really would like you guys to uh promote this for the the rest of the schools thank you our next public speaker is Kimberly D Santini please unmute yourself hello I'm also one of the ones who's had a Promethean since August and I also like the board and I feel um that all the schools should have them um for the sake of equity in our district I like that all the students can see them I can raise it up for them to

073view which could not happen on my old projector and I can lower it so they can actually touch when we're doing an activity because most of my students are little they're kindergarten so they're able to actually reach it and touch when we're doing an activity I had a student came back from Korea and wanted to talk about what he saw there and I was able to actually pull things up on the Promethean so that as he's talking he can say yeah this is where I went same thing as the previous speaker we watched the eclipse on there we're raising um caterpillars right now to butterflies we were able to look to see what to expect when we're using the Chromebooks I'm able to demo on the bigger screen so that they can see what to

074do on their screen so I feel it's been a really useful tool thank you next public speaker is Susan Gonzalez please unmute yourself hello good evening Dr Hurst Schoolboard trustees and community members my name is Susan Gonzalez I work as an elementary prep teacher in the district and I'm the technology teacher leader at at Kensington I've had the opportunity to have a Promethean active panel 9 in my classroom at Kensington since August the other three panels have been rotated several times among the remaining classrooms since the beginning of the school year at the end of the first rotation in August the teachers who were partying ways with it were unhappy in a matter of two weeks they and their students had bonded with the panels students in one of our fifth grade classes had the

075following two relay in summary of their experience Caroline shared I think that the prometheum board is very helpful I think that being able to have a spinner timer and stopwatch is very useful the promethium board is also much easier for students to see than a projector another Advantage is that you can open a PDF and put the board on whiteboard mode so that you can mark up the PDF overall I really love prometheum boards and I would be delighted if the district got a permanent one for every classroom Mara relayed the prometheum makes it easy to see from the back of the room and it is more clear finally Kaden summed up his thoughts in three words I love it thank you so much for your time and attention have a nice evening next public

076speaker is Kate Burkhart please unmute [Music] yourself yes it sounds like a good program I hope you're getting good support from the vendor and the manufacturer so that as things as the bugs come out you'll have good support from the from the vendor I know that the district is working hard with their support people and I think it's great thank you our next speaker is Jean kinner please immute yourself hello board I'm actually asking for help I think verie was like the original school that piloted this and so for two years now I've been trying to get a movable um mount for my board first I was told I couldn't have it because it was too expensive even though I was told I could have it and then Jeff at D and D donate said

077he would donate it but the problem is is we can't get the people down into my room when I'm there to work with them either to move my whiteboards so that it can be mounted properly it's been two years when my room was broken into this year and things were stolen including prometheum board pieces again I couldn't get the pieces I couldn't get the pieces Jeff donated them to my class so I'd have what I needed so thank you thank you so much to the vendor Jeff and I'm hoping maybe you can help move along this two-year request to finish Mo fixing my board because I have TK and K kids they need the board to be lowered so they can reach it and then of course I need to raise it so that they

078can see it thank you so much we love our board our next public speaker is Caitlyn maresi please unmute yourself hello I am a special education teacher and I'm lucky enough to be a TTL and also have a board with me um I love that the boards create accessible environments for all students and being a Vista teacher it's been great to be able to use the board in a lot of flexible ways whether we're doing hybrid instruction or having opportunities for students to come on campus and play our kindergarten teacher our kindergarten students first grade second grade and third grade students who have been on campus have easily been able to figure out how to use the board and use it effectively for really diverse different types of needs that they have within their classroom

079learning space thank you so much that concludes public comment thank you so much staff we are now board we are on to questions does anyone have questions go ahead ma'am um so I just wanted I just wanted to clarify that the funding used for this is a grant right or what is it so this is a it's onetime funding it's called Esser funding it's part of the covid relief funding sorry that we got as a district and it expires in September okay and I know that some funding has like outlines of like what the goal is for the funding so I don't know if you mentioned it could you please tell me like what the funding um hopes to achieve sure um part of one of the goals of the covid relief funding is for

080students was around learning loss uh and engagement so technology is actually one of the allowable expenses in that it is um designed to be a tool to help students better engage with their learning and to support teachers to better support students to engage okay thank you um also I just wanted to ask um if we'll have time for comments okay then I'm done thank you board any more questions seeing none is there a motion presid M I'll move to approve the purchase and setup of the 357 promethian active display panels on mobile carts to complete the deployment at a cost of 1,984 57 in it 48 cents I don't know if there's much detail here to be on the motion but I'm reading up the recommendations so I just move for approval thank you so

081much is there a second thank thank you so much board we are now on to comments does anyone have a comment go ahead ma'am um well it sounds like it's being used very well which I'm happy for but I do recall during an ASC meeting we were talking about like funding um for our student trusty report we wanted to hear what the members had to say and I do vividly recall a lot of the students expressing their distaste for the promium boards because um a lot of their teachers actually didn't use it and they felt like it was a waste of money especially since you know they're struggling in other areas um I'm glad to hear that a lot of teachers do um use it but I did want to put that out there because

082I'm wondering where this difference comes from like how come the students in ESC are saying that it's not used but then I hear a bunch of teachers saying that it is thank you so much any other comments CLK Gonzalez Hoy go ahead please thank you um yeah first I wanted to respond to uh the comment from our justy I think that um there that is the case because some teachers are still choosing to use the projectors uh but as mentioned in the presentation that's going to go away eventually so every teacher is going to have to use this resource which we hope that they do because from what I've it's been my observation and and the feedback from the people using it it is a great resource um that I am incredibly jealous I didn't

083have when I was teaching um so uh I I think that every time I speak to a teacher about it um they say that it's changed the way that they approach their teaching which I think to me it's a really positive thing um so I'm really thankful that we're making this investment I think it's actually a very smart investment long term because of the expense of of Prometheans versus projectors um so so I think that's one piece and two the the funding uh I mean it is onetime funds So eventually we're going to have to really have a deep conversation about how do we ex uh buy new ones for the old ones eventually um which I'm not looking forward to when that happens but uh as of right now thankfully because we have some

084of this onetime money left this is how we're able to do it otherwise I think that we'd have a much harder job of actually being able to purchase them um but in my opinion this is money well spent uh because what I hear is that it's truly uh having an effect on teaching and learning so uh maybe not for everyone and we need to have a discussion about that except this feedback that our student Jes are hearing we definitely need to figure out how to continue to increase that engagement um so thank you for for sharing that perspective thank you so much both to Lori for been saying a name wrong for a decade uh and uh uh Tracy of course in your department thank you so very much I think that one of the

085things that I was resistant because I was also resistant when they took chalkboards out and they put whiteboards in so I just I have this kind of like thing about like this is how I learned how to teach but then I got to see it in the classroom now granted it was an elementary school classroom so I got to see it in elementary school classroom the amount of Engagement that the kids had to this board and the amount of Engagement that the teacher had to using the boards in her lesson plan was absolutely amazing so it did change me it changed my mind and then I got to play on it and I was like oh okay now I get it like I see it um I would like to look at how we're using

086it in middle school and high school and see if we're getting that same level of Engagement and that same level of excitement and if we're not how do we um encourage our high school teachers to to stop being so resistant like I was right to give them that opportunity to say okay let's play Let's really look at how we can use this board and just really expand our teaching practices so I thank you so much for the report I'm looking forward to seeing this everywhere in the district and for us to have a different outcome so we can say yo we're using it everywhere High School Middle School elementary school everybody's using it I'm complete thank you ladies I appreciate it oh never mind we got to take a vote so you can stand there

087and see if we can do the vote okay here we go we are up to the vote any more comments before we take a vote Yes ma'am um well I just wanted to like I don't know if it's too late to ask but I wanted to confirm like I know you said that you did like teachings about um like how to you use promethium because I also recall like students said like oh a lot of their older teachers were resistant to like learn new technology so I wanted to confirm like once this is approved like there's going to be continuation of like teachings for how to use it can I respond absolutely um yes so part of um this the way we've been rolling it out is to go slow to make sure that teachers

088really have that time to learn so we first started with just having a couple of the boards in each school to rotate a and people kind of try it out but with the roll out we also get a consultant from promethian we heard a PE a couple of people call in and talk about the importance of vendor support and they're they're totally right so we have a woman Grace Kelly who's actually a former teacher from our district who works now for Promethean and she is a coach so she comes she works one-on-one with teachers she works with grade level teams um kind of whatever makes sense for that school environment and I'll I'll also say that our strategy has been to leave the existing projectors for about a month to give teachers time to get

089used to the new the new technology but not too much time right where you get just comfortable um and you don't try something new so we're trying to find that right balance but with lots of support you want to add anything yeah um so we do have ongoing professional learning sessions we have those about every two weeks actually it's twice a month um Grace Kelly gives those those are actually teachers are actually paid to attend those so um they do have plenty of opportunities she also holds weekly office hours thank you so very much that's good all right board to the vote trusty pal car uh yes thank you so much trusty Abdu gapar Ro yes thank you so very much trusty reckler reckler yes thank you trusty Christian yes thank you clerk Gonzalez Hoy

090yes thank you and I'm a yes thank you very much ladies we are now moving on to action item E2 Award of contract Hercules Middle High middle school high school library HVAC refrigerate line replacement project Mr Freeze this is yours uh thank you very much good evening president bolds uh superintendent H and the board on March 1st 2024 the district publicly advertis and solicited bids pursuing to the requirements of public contract code for the Hercules Middle High School hbac refrigerat line replacement project as described in invitation for bid sealed bids were receive were to be received no later than 2m on March 12 20124 one mandatory pre-bid conference and site visit were held on March 5th and one contractor attended the district held the public bid opening on March 12th no bids were received because

091no bids were received the District staff contacted the firm and requested that they submitted a bid for the project the district adopted the California uniform public contract code of costing procedures and is authorized to negotiate a contract for the project because no bids were received despite the District staff formerly bidding the project that we are asking tonight that you award the project for Hercules Middle High School library hbac refrigerant lines in the sum of $126 to City mechanical thank you so much Mr Freeze uh staff are there public comments yes our public speaker is Kate Bard please unmute yourself one I'm sorry I'm having trouble with my raised hand I pass I pass okay I'm Sor that concludes public comment thank you so very much staff we are now moving on to questions board do

092we have any questions seeing none is there a motion I will move that we Award of contract for Hercules middle school high school library HVAC refrigerant line replacement project is there a second second thank you so much Bard are there comments president I just want to dou check do we have to say two City mechanics as part of the motion no okay never mind we're good thank you Bard are there comments seeing none we'll move straight to the vote trusty p park car pal car pal car pal car yeah um yes some yes thank you so very much trusty Abdu parro yes thank you trusty reckler reckler yes thank you trusty Christian yes thank you clerk Gonzalez Hoy yes thank you and I'm a yes thank you so very much we're now moving on to

093action item E3 increase the project budget and award the contract for the Shannon Elementary School critical needs project Mr Freeze this is your item yes tonight we're excited to bring forward the Shannon Elementary School multi-purpose room project uh the project consists of 6,200 foot multi-purpose room building covered walkways trash enclosure canopy related site U ility improvements as well as the demolition of the existing multi-purpose room portable the district initially conducted a public bid process for the project on November 13 2023 four contractors had submitted bids CWS Construction Group at a total of 9,685 th000 strong construction $1,100,000 Wickman Development and Construction at 12, 325,000 and bills Martin Associates at 7,666 $ 6,571 and they were withdrawn from the bid after reviewing the bids and determining that we exceeded the board approved budget the district recommended

094rejecting the bids and rebidding the project on December 6th the board approved and authorized the rejection of all bids and rebid the project the district conducted conducted a public bid process for the rebid of the project bids were open on March 12th 2024 four contractors submitted bid strong construction a total of$ 7,852 th000 CWS construction $ 7,875 th000 C FC Inc at 9,928 300 and SNH construction at 10,668 600 the rebidding process results in the contract award award Savings of over $1.8 Million by going back out to bid strong construction straw Construction Inc is the lowest responsible bidder uh contract completion is anticipated for August 1st 2025 the current board approved Bond funded project budget for the Shannon Elementary credit commes project is $9.3 million District staff recommends increasing the project budget by $700,000 staff

095recommends increasing the project budget with non-bond funds from our Capital facilities fund we're asking tonight that we increase the project budget from $9,300 th000 by adding 700,000 to $10 million thank you so much Mr je staff forther public comments yes our next public speaker is Kate Burkhart please unmute yourself oh I'm still having trouble with my raised hand I pass watch it watch it that concludes public comment thank you so much board are there any questions seeing none is there a motion pres I'll move that we increase the project budget for Shannon uh critical needs project and award the contract to the lowest responsible excuse me responsive and responsible better thank you thank you so much is there a second second thank you so much board are there comments seeing no comments we'll go straight

096to the vote trusty pal car yes thank you so very much trusty Abdu gapar yes thank you so very much trusty reckler reckler yes thank you very much trusty Christian yes thank you very much clerk Gonzalez Hoy yes thank you very much and I'm a yes thank you Mr Freeze I appreciate the presentation we are now moving on to E4 Williams lawsuit complaints quarterly report okay yes good evening tonight we bring for the Williams complaints quarterly report the Williams lawsuit requires that a courtly report be brought before the Board of Education reflecting the number of complaints filed with any school in the district during the particular quarter this report reflects the period from January 1st 2024 through March 31st 2024 there were five complaints there were four teacher vacancy and Miss assignments and four unresolved

097there was one facility complaint that was resolved we asked the board to receive the Williams quarterly report thank you Mr F Bo are there any questions oh no excuse me I'm sorry are there is there any public comment no public comment thank you uh Bor now there questions uh trusty parar poar I'm sorry it's all right um I was just wondering if we could get a little more information on what exactly this action item consists of so this is not an action item it's just for the board to receive it but what we're bringing forward are the five complaints that we received so the one complaint for facilities was was received from Elso High School it was a complaint that bathrooms were not accessible uh during the school period uh the principal had responded back

098to the complaintant saying that restrooms are open during passing periods they're only shut down when restrooms are need for repair the further complaints U Miss Johnson will address yes hi the four other complaints are regarding teacher misassignments based on their credential and I did have some information if you'd like to hear it um I wanted to start out by just saying since covid California has had more than 10,000 teacher vacancies there is a Statewide systematic problem problem of a severe educational Workforce shortage we are experiencing a significant increase in teacher vacancies and a decline in newly issued teacher credentials as a district we have implemented recruitment processes and hiring measures in response to the ongoing teacher shortage and we continue to review and revise our recruitment our recruitment strategies to increase um Recruitment and Retention

099of our teachers I'd like to share some things that our district is doing towards Recruitment and what we have been doing all school year in the midst of this teacher shortage from August to March we have had 29 job fairs since the month of April we have had multiple job fairs each week that our staff has been attending we currently have three staff members at attending job fairs this um excuse me five staff members attending job fairs just this week we have various job boards which I can um spell out for you if you would like we also participate on University job boards where we have Partnerships with 36 universities in the state of California and with outside the state of California we have um an international recruitment with the Philippines and Mexico we have

100um a teacher residency programs where we offer grants for teachers in these programs to receive money to go towards their living expenses and for their tuition we have grants for our classified employees to obtain a teacher credential we even have education Pathways at Richmond and Hercules high school these are just some of the efforts that we have done this school year to in order to fill these positions how however it is a challenge that West Contra Costa and other surrounding districts including districts throughout this nation are facing but specifically in our area we have done research regarding other districts who also have vacancies that are similar to ours for our siiz district it's a challenge that we're aware of and that we are constantly looking to how we can make a difference and I have

101additional reports that we have shared regarding the California Department of education and how it is a struggle for them to keep up with these vacancies and they are struggling as well to find the support to help our school districts deal with this problem thank you I can take any questions if you thank you and before I pass back to president Smith uh trusty poar you can look on the agenda the actual complaints are attached if you would like to read more in detail president F I'll pass back to you thank you so very much Bard are there any other questions I have a question over here trusty rler and then we'll go to trusty parro thank you thank you for the statement um generally and I'm talking about the teacher vacancies so generally for all

102the schools mentioned and all of the vacancies you know it's it's pretty much the same what public Advocates um is recommending um how do you respond or what is how do you respond to uh they don't have page numbers on this but they're talking about um you know lack of a comprehensive recruitment development hiring and assignment plan across District they're talking about internal Pro you know uh lack of uh adequate internal processes to hire and assign teachers in a timely manner um and training and and institutional support generally and I'm not passing judgment because I know that there's a lot of work that has been going on but how does the district respond to that yes we have actually provided a written response that was just prepared um today and was sent to them and

103in our written response we outlin the recruitment efforts we have um that I have mentioned we outline the teacher support that we currently have in place and we also explained what we are doing for those vacancies that we have such as teachers doing period sub in such as having long-term Subs who are not fully credentialed but they are do have a temporary credential to be in classrooms such as working with teach start fellows who are working on their internship credentials which I'm happy to say we have will'll have four that will be fully credentialed and ready to be hired at the end of the school year um those are the things that we have outlined in our response to them and so then well I mean the only thing I didn't hear you talk about

104was the sens which they do talk about by law um that that I I remember reading something in the Ed code about being able to offer stiens um do you have any comment on perhaps a a you know their suggestion of stens and then what happens they file the complaint you respond and then you know like what what happens after that they um so in with the stiping we do offer um we we currently offer for teachers who period sub they get additional pay for that what they are suggesting and recommending if I recall are stiens for incoming teachers unfortunately with our current financial situation it's something that we have discussed and are looking into but I cannot confirm right now that we could offer additional stiens for incoming teachers the second part of your

105question was in reference to to forgive me yeah so just to repeat they filed a complaint you're responding and then like what H like what what happens next yes so they have received our response they can file a response back um what we would call an appeal to our response what that that is the option that they have and basically the ask is for us to have credential teachers in those classrooms unfortunately in our current circumstances at is very challenging request to accommodate thank you trusty reckler that's three we're going to move to trusty Abdu gapar go ahead ma'am um well sounds like you are there are a lot of resources to try to gain like to fill those vacancies for teachers and I'm just kind of wondering like if we have like all this

106money like to provide stiens and Pay Teachers forend attending like these um like work fairs um like why are we also letting go like a lot of good teachers like and a lot of people have called in for like example like Vista saying like why are we Letting Go these very crucial teachers but we also have these vacancies and we have money to like pay people to attend fairs and this and that so I would like it if you would enlighten me yeah very good question first I want to make the correction the job fairs that people are attending are are um our staff and Human Resources so all of the people who work in our department to meet the needs of our district are taking turns and attending job fairs so it's not an

107additional pay they're doing it as part of the work of Human Resources as far as um why are we letting teachers go there are several different factors when we talk about losing a teacher it doesn't necessarily mean when when people are speaking that they are referring to a teacher being let go they could be referring to the elimination of a teacher at their School site I excuse me an elimination of a position at their School site and that's really due to the enrollment projections so if you are enrolled if you are projected to have 11 teachers this year and then 10 teachers next year because student enrollment has gone down that's one way where someone may be losing a teacher that doesn't mean we're releasing that teacher from having a position the second part of

108your question anyone from our district who is being released is someone who has not met the credential qualifications and by law they cannot be continue their employment at in our district and in many other districts because of this crisis we offer teachers a waiver so they have a year extension to meet their qualifications and once that year is up another waver cannot be issued and that is by law so teachers who are in that position may be losing theirs and then we have one other category called a non reelection and that is a decision that is based on recommendation from supervisors schools side administrators so for those I can't disclosed because those are confidential reasons but those are the categories that we have I will tell you that because of our shortage the only teachers

109we are releasing are teachers who are not meeting that qualification meaning their waiver has expired or for various reasons there is a non reelection and that is during the probationary years of teaching within those first two years that they begin teaching okay that was very insightful um sorry can you just repeat the probation years like the thing about that yes so if you were to start your teaching career and you are you you enter the field with a probationary time frame and with a probationary time frame you are working and within that time frame you are considered non-tenured which means you do not get to you may not get to return the next year and so there are a group that have received a notice of not not being tenured okay [Music] um so this

110is kind of more General but when you say that some teachers haven't met their qualification on like in other jobs at schools like for example like a principal can they also be hired without meeting their qualifications and does the same like like a waiver apply to them like the same rules no the waiver is in place because the state of California has had a teacher shortage so that is what the state has done to allow you to hire more teachers in terms of Administrators there is not a shortage we can find administrators so they are required to have an admin credential prior to this teacher shortage all teachers are required to have their teaching credential and there was a time when we would have 200 applicants for positions right now there are there are times

111this year and we have ran POS we have ran postings and we've had two applicants perhaps five applicants and they at least half of them are not qualified you see the difference in the the workforce yeah okay okay thank you that answered a lot of my questions you're welcome thank you very much Bard any other questions no Bor can I get a motion I move that we accept the Williams losted complaint corly report thank you is there a second second thank you board any comments trusty reckler go ahead thank you may the May the board see the response letter to public Advocates thank you yes it was just that today um we did have a 45 day window and we um were able to respond prior to that window the reason why it's on the

112board agenda without the response is because our quarterly report is due but the response has been completed and was just sent today so we can give that to you okay so maybe you could just go in the Friday memo thank you board any other comments okay let's go to the vote we are at uh trusty pal yes thank you truste Abdu gapar AB thank you trusty reckler reckler yes thank you trusty Christian yes thank you clerk Galis Hoy yes thank you and I'm a yes thank you very much we are now moving on to our discussion items we're going to start with f F1 English learner reclassification criteria for 202 for revision so thank you um we have today um director ISO Orosco and coordinator marann lafas who is going to do a presentation on

113the new criteria for English Learners and reclassification they are also next their next item is also on the agenda with an update about new the newcomer um Academy thank you very much good evening everyone board president jila FZ superintendent Hurst cabinet members and Dear Community today's goal is to really review the updates the refreshed version of our District's reclassification criteria for this year and for next year this slide shows the comparison between the past reclassification criteria in Blue and Gray and the updated refreshed reclassification criteria in a rainbow color in the middle you'll see the big differences and a bit of these big differences are not so much what the Criterion is but rather how we communicate what that criteria is to families notice that the first big difference is a rainbow so we want

114to be able to tell a story when we're talking about reclassification and we've aligned ourselves with the county and the state with this story of a reclassification rainbow and that all the colors are needed for reclassification you don't need one before the other but we're working for all those colors so we're following that rainbow to reclassification other areas is we we want color coordination because back to that slide almost done thank you so much uh in terms of communicating to families it's just a lot easier to reference colors verses one two and three the language will also align to the revised language of the state all of our families go to the State website and look at the reclassification criteria designed by the state and notice that our past criteria used slightly different language which

115we'll kind of discuss today uh we also believe it's a lot easier so we merged a lot of spaces so there's less writing and then we've included updates from the state now there is no vote and I want to make that clear unless School Board decides everything on this page has been already voted either by the school board for example I ready or by the state for example the opto observation protocol both been have both have been cleared already so there's technically nothing new on this document it's just been a refresh of items uh to be done next slide please now this is where we get into the details of what each criteria is and for the first two criteria uh Miss Marian Laos our coordinator will review thank you good evening everyone um the

116first criteria in red is the English language proficiency assessment for California or elpac this is really the gateway to reclassification from all the criteria the students need to achieve a score an overall score of four to be eligible to reclassify we have also included in Criterion one the alternate elpac and this requires for the students who qualify for the alternate elpac an overall proficiency level or a score of three then we have Criterion number two the teacher evaluations and this teacher evaluation is not the teachers's opinion but it's based on the metric different metrics that we use for the students who are eligible to reclassify one of them is elpac summative elpac 4 or alternate elpac three the teacher evaluations for K K2 uh grade fifth it shows in the um the report cards how

117are they doing in class they need to have a minimum score of two in the different areas language arts math and for grades six and 12 the students need a c minus a grade C minus or above in English classes or in the ELD class either one alternatively the state have put out a new um another option which is called the optel observation protocol for the teacher of English Learners and this is that it's like um uh two pages descriptor of the different um uh features that the student this the student shows in the receptive language listening and reading and in the expressive language speaking or writing and it this requires is the same uh protocol K to 12 but for the students to uh be eligible to reclassify they need a score of three

118or four these scores corresponds to the levels of English English language proficiency outline in the elpac so this the state department has just uh presented this year and it is one more option that we could have for Criterion number two I'm going to pass it on TOA for Criterion three and four thank you so much yeah I just want to note for that optel it is very very new the state showed that in November believe so training will be coming for teachers it's really an Ideal tool specifically when the grade does not demonstrate accurately the proficiency of the student which we do see sometimes especially when we have substitutes in classrooms it's difficult to get a matching grade I'm going to move to next criteria criteria three is parent consultation and this is really an

119alignment of language it used to be recommendation now the goal is to have a consistent consultation on a yearly basis what our district has done to ensure that that occurs is in the Elementary report cards there is now an e grade to have that specific consultation every single year and then lastly Criterion four and this is what really took us data gathering in comparison you might ask well why are we so late with I ready well we didn't have the data yet this is our first year with I ready and our department wanted to guarantee that no student English learner suffered based off the switch of using a different assessment and now we can say with the data that every student who was proficient using the star who was on their path to reclassify is

120also proficient in I ready so every student who was eligible for will be eligible this year to assure equity in this process that's why we're presenting at this moment versus at the beginning of the year and that's really really good news in terms of assuring that are students get a fair shake at reclassification then lastly we've shared components of the reclassification criteria with many me many members of our community including MD the sped team uh within Elma and our Edge Services cabinet team as well um yes believe that is the end of our reclassification review and we're open for discussion thank you so very much thank you for the presentation board do we have any questions trusty bre I'm so sorry trusty bre I need to call for public comment first thank you CL Gonzalez

121are there any public comments yes um Jean ker please unmute yourself can please unmute yourself I'm just wondering if we missed a public comment on the Williams item that's all that concludes public comment thank you very much board did we have any board comments I saw trusty reckler saying and then Clark gonzale Hoy trusty re go ahead if we could get the timer up please thank you thank you thank you for the presentation um so if I heard correctly there there are minimal changes to the actual Form and Function except for this optel is that now required by the state or is that just no it is not a requirement it is another option uh so I believe it says or we do want to promote this we believe that it will be a useful

122tool for teachers making a consultation for recommendation and we do plan to train teachers using this observation protocol as well but it is another option to meet that criteria okay thank you point of order we have a timer on questions you're absolutely right I just realized that so it's just three questions Miss um Miss Rosa I'm sorry I meant the timer for comments not for questions trusty reckler do you have more questions I do thank you go ahead uh so next is on the template how did you decide on this template or what resources did you access to create it the resources through of federal process monitoring uh we were reviewing our reclassification criteria as certain recommendations were made the one that stood out the most within this recommendation was the inclusion of the alt

123elpac in Criterion one which in our old form we did include it just wasn't together for example and when that review there's a window that we can update our forms and we said you know what why only change two letters let's improve communication with families share with the MD and invite their recommendations to improve communication and with the hopes that it also enhances reclassification because we believe that improving communication and conversations about reclassification will also lead to a higher increase in reclassification okay and then finally what you've showed to us is in English uh is this going to be Avail available in the home language at this moment it is available in Spanish uh we will have to follow up with other languages uh and quick plug in it will be also presented at the

124parents conference this Saturday okay thank you thank you very much clerk Gonzalez Hoy you had questions thank you uh first of all thank you for the presentation uh could you speak about what is the professional development opportunities that going to be developed for criteria too can you repeat the question that yeah sorry what are gonna what's gonna be the professional development opportunities for criteria two specifically for criteria three and four no sorry for criteria 2 the new the new uh the opof yes so currently we do have some resources offered by the state so if you clicked on the state venue there are some resources what we'd like to do is next year we'd invite teachers to begin to use that observation protocol um especially when they're indecisive about a student grade so we have

125a good percentage of students who are very close to reclassification we're uncertain and this tool would really help that process so we only don't want to use it as a reclassification tool everything really is in highsight to to increase and enhance instruction for English Learners so yes it's mentioned here and it's a tool that we really see using as an instructional tool to enhance supports and needs um so next year is the first year that this is our first year using the official tool will be when we roll out that process officially we might begin sooner with smaller Pockets but we're not there yet for districtwide but you'll see that roll out next year thank you and are we offering um a lot of ELD professional development opportunities still Yes uh there's uh the monitoring

126eeld is coming three are coming I don't know the dates off the top of my head I believe one is tomorrow Thursday there's one tomorrow for E monitoring on elevation and two more are coming within elevation as well those monitoring forms are used also as a way to gauge student reclassification goals for examp example um we are third semester to so there's a little bit less professional development towards the end of the year it gets really busy but we provided a steady amount of reclassification opportunities um consistently thank you thank you so much shab thank you so much clerk Gonzalez soy I have two questions well I'm sorry there's questions on this side go ahead uh trusty pal car um so I was just I just wanted to clarify something so the lpac the proficiency

127level is being moved from level four to level three right or no so for English Learners the expectation is that they meet an overall lpac level four uh the criteria for level three is when a student with an English learner specific with an IEP who has severe needs uh is Tak an alternate lpac assessment so the test in in itself is different for that particular student based on the IEP and for that particular student the requirement is an lpac overall level three and we wanted to make sure that families knew that there was a distinction that's why we wanted to make sure that it was aligned with everyone else's expectations from the get-go versus that like the old one it was at the bottom of the page so this time it's right at the top

128with everybody else okay thank you thank you are there any other questions you actually asked one of my questions and it got answered so thank you for that so now I just have one question and and let me know if this is still how it works when I first enrolled my oldest daughter into kindergarten we had they didn't have TK back then so in kindergarten I had to fill out this form and it said what language do you primarily speak at home and then it said do you speak another language at home there were two questions right so at the time we spoke French at home it was not our primary language that we spoke at home but we spoke French at home if I would have put down that we spoke a primary language

129at home as French would she then have been enrolled in e or would she then had been able to take a test to see if she needed e is that how it works still yeah it's not one question and the one question can lead to a phone call potentially to for further clarification it's three questions and if it's two of those three questions if the student speaks if you speak if it's spoken at home then we do an initial elpac now a good portion of our families are initially fluent and if they pass the initial lpac with a score of three only on the initial then they're considered IEP initial fluent English proficient and are not supposed to be in any type of eel services does ELD is not required and integrated ELD is not

130required it's like an uh super reclassification in the moment okay so if I have a kindergartener or let's say I have a TK a tker when I'm testing that TK student their proficiency is it at a TK level cuz I know ters that my TK wouldn't have been able to pass if I would have said read this right so or say this or so how is the test what does the test look like does that make sense yeah there's four domains uh for TK you won't see very much writing for example or reading but it will be mostly listening and speaking a lot of pointing in the test for example when you're asking questions it's a lot of pointing for TK in particular though uh let's say student is not considered fluent proficient at TK

131the St does require us to give that student another opportunity at kindergarten if the student tests in kindergarten that's really the official state report that we turn in TK is really more to prepare our district to what number of English Learners might be coming in as kindergarteners so kindergarten is really the main grade where if you're not considered initial fluent uh English proficient then you start becoming an English learner and if if you want to review any of that conversation we do send out three parent notification letters parents have the right to ask for a retest for example before the summit of elpac test which occurs later the year which is February and that Summit of elpac test is when it becomes super official right so you can't retract that now you've had three par

132notification letters beness if you started at TK at least twice and this would be your third time uh demonstrating that you are not fluent English proficient and at that time it becomes very difficult uh to inform the state that there's been some type of mistake or error I think the evidence will now demonstrate the student needs language proficiency support or success and that's where we come in in terms of how does that support look like in our district it looks in the easiest possible way during designate ELD time which is 30 minutes at bare minimum k12 and bare minimum but very often it can be more than that thank you so very much board we are now moving to comments are there any comments we're going to go trusty reckler and work our way around

133trusty reckler go ahead thank you so first as a comment on I um the board never has never received a presentation on I ready uh ASAP received a presentation on I ready but the board never did um I just happened to be in ASAP meeting and they had a presentation um I have some concerns about I from what I understand about it and also I feel like we need a presentation on this I feel like we're tying a lot of systems to it we're tying a lot of dollars to it in a potentially intractable way and when they raise costs we're stuck so I've got some concerns about that um next thing is that you know of course uh coming back to this discussion here um it is important that home all home languages somehow

134be able to be populated into this form and that I sure hope that uh mdac and the Dual language parents uh it wasn't only reviewed with them but that they were allowed to give input it wasn't really I didn't really feel that from what I saw on the slide so I hope that they were allowed to give input and then finally the the coloring is great but I'm curious about the sites and whether if these are going to be printed on site if everybody has a printer that can print in color and that it needs to be available electronically as well um and those are my comments thank you thank you very much Clark Gonzalez Hoy thank you president Smiths thank you both for your presentation um I want to start just by um agreeing

135with what you both said about the uptail I think that it's going to be a really great Tool uh that is going to support our students because I think what you both said about how a test is not a good reflection of a student's English proficiency it's so true and I never reclassified because my writing wasn't strong yet I was fluent in English um so I completely appreciate I think the CD changed there and I think our implementation of that is going to be uh a game Cher I would just uh um I definitely also agree and recognize what you both said though that we want to be careful on the roll out of that because we also don't want it to be like Miss laas said coordinator lafas said an opinion by an educator

136right because it could also lead to hurting us if the opinion is on someone's observation of English which might not be correct right so I appreciate the uh recognition of professional development um and I would love to see that uh so that I learn myself um I actually was going to talk about I at at the beginning when we adopted I I had a lot of concerns about it because it was yet another tool that we were putting on Educators uh it was a big tool but I've actually now that I've seen it in practice um it actually provides really great things for teachers um and I think that I've heard now feedback from teachers that is the opposite at first there was a lot of concern about it um and now actually hearing that

137it's really helpful once you dig into the tools that it provides um and it also adds a new level of rigor that AR did not have right which has had national uh complaints about right so I actually I'm glad we're moving that direction I would love to see a presentation as well um and and thank you both again uh for the presentation thank you president smold thank you so much any comments on this side I do want to say thank you very much for the presentation I as an English teacher English is the hardest language to learn it is it's hard to learn for everyone but it's hard because of all the rules and it's hard because we do crazy things like two two and two right spelled different same thing so it is one

138of the hardest languages to learn so the students who are bilingual and are able to capture English and another language their home language they really are amazingly brilliant to kids right so I appreciate this um Resurgence and reclassification and making it so user friendly because that's the point we don't want to turn kids or families away from having this dual language right to be able to really capture the English language and capture and keep and retain and use their home language so I appreciate it um Dr I agree that we should have a presentation with I ready so that would be good thank you and come back anytime because I really love to learn more about our English language Learners and what we're doing in our sites um all right board we are now ready

139to move on to our second discussion item uh you two uh lovely people are going to stay and do the second presentation too so we're moving to item F2 which is the international newcomer program update please go ahead thank you once again we're presenting work at West cost Unified School District we'll review how long it's been here what it is and the biggest the why first it definitely aligns with our district Vision talking about big Brave and Bold programs the newcomers internet National model is one of those particular programs it focuses on equity and access and quality for all with rigor and college career as one of their goals as well next slide it's Innovative in the way El is done in terms of well what's the difference between el1 and the International's newcomer program

140well really the international newcomer program does e all the time it's not just el1 and two and then you go to the rest of your courses there's a key component here where teachers collaborate during the school day with focused themed eeld standards aligned newcomer focused curriculum S created of course using District resources that's the special ingredient of course they're supported by the international newcomers coach and program and have a bunch of fantastic coaching in alignment with with resources from Oakland San Francisco all the way to New York City you'll see a little bit more of those models here in terms of our next slide number three well once again the why well we've noticed that the traditional system even though there's portions that works sometimes is not as strong as we desire it to be

141now that does take a lot of commitment from teachers students families our district to make these bold Brave practices occur planning collaborating thematic lessons meeting on a daily basis from attendance to legal matters to learning how to read and write in English and presenting in person at the very end of the year and I believe some of our school board members have attended those endof year presentations or you have a newcomer present in English in their first year in the country so we invite you again for the end of the year here it is also particularly Secondary School model so we are the first district to do a middle school model in fact we're the first district in the country to do a middle school model but it really focused as a high school model

142and you'll see you'll see that transition in our next slide slide four which kind of talks about how this newcomer model began it started at Richmond High School in 2018 with a seat of how can we improve services and education and instruction for newcomers as a team creating an identity where teachers felt they were newcomer teachers a time focused time that aligned to ELD standards and with a particular goal of increasing the graduation rate for newcomers often time dropping out because they were working hard working at nighttime inconsistency of moving schools that was our biggest goal at that time now almost more than five years later we've grown after the Richmond High opening we opened at Helms creating a pathway of instruction and then this year in particular we have a soft launch at John

143F Kennedy and we're always inviting all schools and any teachers to join the newcomer Network's PD that also occurs almost on a monthly basis so any teacher can join in that collaboration time to align those resources at this time now that we've grown from that first Cort of 50 students now we serve over 300 newcomer students that means students who've been in the country two years or less and are English Learners over 300 students that's over 62% of our newcomer population in our district which is super impactful and this is in grade seven through 12 um you'll notice a little bit of our success with this specific group of students in our district in our following slide you'll notice there's a lot of successes now the a3g eligibility rate quickly took a Skyrocket leap because

144a3g courses specifically were created for newcomer Ela courses of course the contingent is that it has to be paired with strong ELD throughout their other content areas and that's why that collaboration period is so vital to assure that that English class or ELD class counts as an A through G English course we also noticed after that first year that students still needed a specific ELD course specifically students who did not know how to read and to write in their own home language so you'll notice the quick increase in the dropped for that particular reason but the big success story here is the graduation rate the first graduating class was 100% in 2122 that's a quick quick contrast to the one previously when it comes to newcomers which is 48% now we're in the 90% range

145you'll notice last year we're in the 90 this year we're on that pace as well in comparison to those graduation rates in California which is 86.4 that is an amazing feat for folks who have been in the country less than six years learning a a language to graduate on time is incredible uh when it comes to language proficiency there's also a slight increase so the there is an over increase of 23% of English Learners increased in terms of the lpac level uh that does not correlate to reclassification reclassification is very difficult to do within four years but we do see language proficiency growth but don't take my word for it in terms of success we had many students write comments about how important how gamechanging the international newcomer program is in their life and in

146their education uh Miss Maran Laos will reach some of those comments these comments are from um 12 Traders at Richmond Height from various countries Guatemala Mexico Philippines El Salvador Egypt being in the academy is like being in a family it's a small program so the teachers can easily check in with students to see how they're feeling academically teachers give us a lot of resources to succeed in the classes emotionally teachers are always concerned with how I'm doing also the teachers collaborate and talk so that all teachers in the program know what kind of support I need one more comment I'm shy and I was afraid on my first day at Richmond High the people around me were all new people most of them spoke Spanish but I speak Tagalog Tagalog and I didn't have anyone

147to speak it with now I have learned some Spanish words and have made friends and I'm specially improved learning English in my history and English classes particularly the teachers make me practice without using Google translate thank you it's not the same when you other the students but Maran fantastic you you voiced the students very eloquently Educators feel the same way and I'll just read one educator comment this is a teacher a history teacher at Richmond High School one of the biggest impacts of the Internationals Academy has been a sense of community that I see students building in the school students arrive in our Academy at different times throughout the year depending on when they arrive to the country when we receive new students I see our current students making sure that they know how to

148find their classes they encourage other students to participate in class and find common interests within each other having an academy where newcomers feel seen is important and humanizing for our students that are navigating life in a new country a next slides I believe the next one after that as well fantastic faces lastly uh we've received National recognition for having this program um a uh the newcomer education in California Journal actually gave us a shout out in terms of incredible newcomer schools and cited our schools here at West Contra Costa Unified School District and encourage everyone to to read the article it definitely highlights not only students but also teachers and our district in terms of being topnotch in the nation and lastly when it comes to budget I know that's one of the top items

149is that we've definitely paired lcap funds alongside with our c new uh grants and which has made it very important to make this program sustainable so with partnering elcap and canu funding we do see this program as a sustainable model in our district thank you thank you so much for the presentation board do we have any questions oh public comment first sorry about that yes we have what our next public speaker is Guadalupe and Lanna please unmute yourself hello hello hear you okay well my name is w lupana and I think I just had a question so my question is how we prioritizing our newcomers for the Academy at Richmond High um as they registering new into our district I think that's been my concern knowing that we have an abundance of newcomers um coming

150into our district and knowing that Richmond High has a lot of resources for them through their Academy but seeing how you know the Kennedy might not how are we um prioritizing how are students able to come in and get priority to actually um register into Richmond High and be part of that Academy if that's where they'll best be served um that was my only comment thank you that concludes public comment thank you so very much board do we have any questions okay we're going to start with trusty reckler go ahead great great thank you very much for the presentation so uh a little bit of a followup on on the caller um so [Music] how I think you said that 62% of the newcomers are in the 62% of the newcomers in the district are

151in an academy how did they find it and then how do we get more newcomers into the program so we strategically went to schools where there were a lot of newcomers so Richmond High School and John F Kennedy and Helms and now dejan have a significant number of newcomers in fact most of the newcomers are at these four particular schools so that's one easy way to recruit they're already at the particular school now it it is also an option for any student to ask for a transfer based on program need and our office helps with that communication when folks receive the eel notification letter it's one of those particular options um we also recruit when the the program is running low in numbers uh we do notice that folks who live closer to those programs

152are the ones attending but we do have a couple of students more than a couple that are making that trip because they do want to be part of a newcomer particular program and lastly uh even students within the school it is an option so is super important that this is an one of the many options at that particular school to receive services so there's no automatic uh enrollment process students have the choice to enter a newcomer program or join a traditional EOD model which we used to have that's another option as well and some students do choose that other option and then are there programs at the elementary level I could have sworn the GR had a program yeah all the programs at the ele Elementary level are not connected or associated with the Internationals

153model so think about it as yes they serve newcomers but the way the program works is completely different so at this time we are trying to align ourselves with a variety of schools that have a self-proclaim newcomer program to create alignment and see how they're supporting newcomers this year in particular we were able to uh give every specific newcomer a specific newcomer curriculum imagine language and learning so they have specific curriculum for them just for them it's not the El uh component a grant did used to have and I believe this is what you're thinking of is assigned newcomer teacher in which newcomers went into her class on a rotating basis uh so it was a newcomer teacher teacher who served only newcomer students in particular at Grant and I believe that's the one you're

154thinking of so is there an Internationals model for elementary or I would say that uh there are variety of newcomer models none of which are Internationals so International is really the partnership of PD at the secondary level which leads to how to create courses that are a through G how to collaborate it when you have a variety of content areas at the elementary you have one teacher that can teach a variety of subjects and now it's really planning on blocking newcomers and placing newcomers in small group instruction to give them an enhanced support uh and instruction and then lastly if you're using that small group instruction now you can use a specific designed curriculum for newcomers as well so that's a little bit of the how the programming works at elementary versus how it works

155at secondary okay okay thank you thank you so very much Clark Gonzalez Hoy go ahead please thank you um are we providing training to our office staff and administrators when a student enrolls in the school that they will give the option to that that family outside of Richmond High and Kennedy and Helms we do meet with counselors and have several counselors training that connect with recommendations and consultations um some of which is do we have this offering of a newcomer program at JFK at Richmond High School it can also be of other services such as the ab 2121 which is the option to stay a fifth gear uh and state law so we do have conversations with counselors our Enrollment Office shares a brochure um we can do more definitely to to reach out uh

156but our programs are on the good side full especially at the high school level a little bit of where we struggle is at the middle school considering that there's a a lot of elementary students who were losing to other particular School sites and it's hard to uh identify students within that segue family who are coming in as newcomers as well but we do go to elementary sites that have the most newcomers to give that like you know what you really should go to Helms there's a newcomer program and we do that kind of imp person and we visit classrooms thank you just uh following up a little bit on that so if a family let's say enrolls goes to DEA high school and enrolls their student at DEA will they get in that moment information

157of like just so you know we offer this program as well or is that something that Waits until they meet with the counselor um or like do they get it as soon as they're enrolling we suggest and highly recommend that it is something that is given by The Counselor uh once enrolled so the difficulty part is uh we have we don't have a central enrollment system so students do enroll first at let's say deanza the sooner technically the better and often times that information occurs once you're already enrolled into a school especially when you're creating classes so a little bit of our struggle is that we don't have a central enrollment system for newcomers we do have an office which much of newcomers family come to get services to support for enrollment and that's where

158you for sure get that messaging at the school site uh they can we re highly recommend it I can't personally say that everyone gets that messaging what I can say is that every English learner does receive it at bare minimum through a notification upon being identified as an English learner thank you uh and then following up on the questions trusty reckler was asking about case six could you talk about the Department's vision for the expansion of the creation of an actual newcomer program K through six just because I think what we're trying trying to dig on is that there isn't one and one that exists right so uh what is the vision for the district in the future so important to obviously many of us here for the expansion down uh to k6 well we're

159working on on on a concrete Vision the vision really is for that every newcomer wherever you're at in any particular school with a specific newcomer program or not has the resources and a trained teacher to deliver appropriate enhanced Focus design yeld instruction for newcomers that's why we really vetted a newcomer curriculum so even if you couldn't drive all the way across town your teacher at your school site your home school has those particular resources and those families can use those resources also at home so that was step one of that Vision now schools have different populations so for example you might have two newcomer students in second grade five in fifth and four in sixth you're just not going to lump everyone so each school really needs to be creative thoughtful and how they provide

160those plans we've kind of developed the plan and recommendations with those schools in mind of how you should block or small group or strategically prepare to support your newcomers at the beginning or a certain part of the day depending on how your demographic of students changes every particular year uh for schools so it's it's not like everyone's joining one Academy Elementary that's what I really want to make clear it doesn't look like that we don't have the numbers uh to do that at any school besides Grant um and then Grant would have a kind of their old model would be that's if you were thinking of any Academy right now we're looking at Grant for those particular reasons but no other school is able to sustain any type of major newcomer Academy at that level

161it would be a strategic newcomer Focus program on how to deliver those supports thank you president I definitely have comments after thank you very much any more questions I have a question um and it's about elementary so if I enroll as a newcomer in third grade right I come into the country and I'm in third grade but if I'm not considered a new I'm not considered a newcomer after two years right but what if I haven't acquired everything that I needed to acquire because I'm in a school that doesn't have a program that focuses on newcomers right so I'm sitting in a classroom for from third grade until fifth grade to where I matriculate out into middle school but I'm sitting there just picking up 10% % 5% 3% of whatever is being spoken and

162what lessons are being given what do what's the safety net there where how do we how do we deliver high quality education if we don't have anything at the elementary school level particularly talking to this kid who enrolled in third grade but in two years they're not considered a newcomer but we haven't given them everything that we say newcomers deserve to have can you reconcile that for me what do we do I'm complete this is the vision for that response uh and it doesn't only include newcomers what you hit on point is to ensure that every student including English Learners and newcomers has a very strong instructional support and focused uh eel eel d uh instruction that's the goal now next year I know that's maybe a different conversation a little bit of that vision

163is the Incorporation of the new intrum elpac which allows us to use that metric as a support for instruction and a way to communicate to parents their growth using the lpac metric that identified them as an English learner as in the first place um now that we do have a newcummer curriculum that's a little bit of additional PD we can do next year this is the first year I want to say this is the first year we've had a specific newcomer curriculum so we have seen major growth within schools who have are early adopters with that system as well we do see that expanding for next year now that it's a little bit more common and we have teacher leaders who reporting great things about it with that expansion um our goal is to keep

164doing the walkthroughs collect schedules assure every student is has a response on their monitoring form if they don't have growth and we do have those documents through the eel and rfet monitoring forms if a student is not growing every student has a teacher response to how that student will be support supported or has been supported to show growth [Music] um thank you very much have you seen situations at elementary school sites where other students are the teachers the helpers the AIDS the translators the have you seen that on Elementary School sites because I know I have so I'm I'm assuming that you have too and if you've seen that what's the impact to those students who are now carry the burden of being the newcomers only way of communicating like literally only way of communicating

165what's that impact well we believe uh it's we have to be very careful that it is not a burden so we believe multilingualism is an asset uh teachers can are supposed to use students as Assets in their classrooms it does not mean that that particular student will be doing all the translations or reading right next to them every day but it's super important to build multilingual relationships within the classroom it ties a little bit to that Internationals philosophy of how to use students as the biggest assets and in fact it's one of our DLI philosophies of using students as the biggest way to grow language in both English and Spanish and Mandarin but we also need to be very careful so if they're being used for other ways besides those relational pieces we do not

166recommend that um and that needs to be clarified the best possible way and that's a little bit of the PD when it comes to around of how to do small group instruction how to do paired up groups all that PD that's what that PD is for is that you're not sticking someone a student with all that responsibility no that's not the student's responsibility it's the responsibility of the teacher to create an environment where students every single student has something to give so the Spanish speaker or another speaker is giving as much to the other student as other student is giving to the Spanish speaker or another speaker as well thank you for that Bard are there any comments okay we're going to go to trusty reckler first and then clerk Gonzalez Hoy go ahead trusty

167reckler once again thank you for the presentation um you know at least at the high school level from the data that you've presented this is working and it's working quite well and there are some really natural things about why it's working it's a cohort they're seen they're supported there's daily professional development and planning time together I mean there's all these things that naturally work and having these students together in one place sharing the same experience I think is very powerful so I've always been a fan of this program and I would like to see more kids in it because it's working it's obviously working I think that there is an opportunity to look at the elementary and maybe Grant is the homebased school and schools that surround Grant maybe if you're in if you're less

168than two years in the country or you're a new arrival you automatically come to Grant you don't go to your home school and that becomes the magnet or you know like a newcomer magnet for elementary I mean if you're having this success at the high school level I think that if it starts earlier you you can even have more success because you'll have so many years of um working with students very directly and in a very intentional way so I think there's opportunity for some really interesting planning and thoughts to come forward and I thank you for the work and I look forward to seeing what you come up with thank you Clark Gonzalez Hoy go ahead please thank you president Smith folds I also want to thank you both for yet another great presentation

169um and I want to just appreciate the work that the Internationals program is doing and the expansion that you're both leading uh I mean I think that's wonderful and I think that expanding it to Kennedy where we heard there was so many newcomer students um is the right thing to do so I'm really appreciative of that and I agree the data I think shows that we are a model um that I think Nationwide they should look at for newcomer students um so I wanted to start with that um also know you both know I hold a lot of respect for both of you because I share a similar story to both of you uh so what I about to say please don't take it as towards you both um I think it speaks about our

170district in general Dr HSE I think that us not having a newcomer program in the elementary school is failing a lot of students um a lot of people I think see my body language I think I get uncomfortable with the idea of not starting Elementary because I think we have data where we're failing hundreds of kids and I think that maybe there's not a single school that has the numbers to start a program but I think that there are so many students out there I think we could start a program um if we ask students to move to those schools because they'll be served differently right so I want to be able to hopefully focus our resources to support the department to create that because I think otherwise high schools can sometimes be too late

171um if by the time they get to middle school or High School that's when they're getting the resources um I also think that the idea of giving teachers the resource to do that work for newcomer students is to be honest not a good solution and I'll just say it very frankly I think it's a waste of resources because teachers don't know how to support a newcomer that comes to this country in you unless you are a Spanish speaker or a speaker that speaks that language and has been trained on how to do it as a bilingual teacher then it really makes it actually almost harder because then you have to learn new tool then honestly teachers don't have the time to do now so I almost feel like let's take those resources and let's put

172it into a newcomer program in elementary school and I apologize presid Smith was G over the time um you'll know this is like the one issue that actually got me into the advocacy World um because and I text Dr her for the last 14 years I've seen the failure of Elementary program for newcomer program for new for newcomer students I know our two wonderful speakers relate to that and empathize and know that but I think that it's a crisis that we hear every single year from teachers that hey I have yet another student that I don't know how to support and they sit in my room day after day and a curriculum is honestly not going to help me move the needle for them so we have to just figure out how to invest the

173resources correctly to be able to support them uh moving forward uh but all that thank you again um sorry I like said it towards you guys but it's not towards you both please know it's obviously a systemic problem that we have to fix though because I don't want to go a 15th year with this problem still in existence and I apologize to the board for going over thank you president Smith folds it's okay thank you so much clerk Gonzalez Hoy any other comments on this side thank you for your presentation I think that what you're hearing from the board the majority of the board is our heart lies in that ele element part right because if we can catch the kids and give them the support and the families the support that they need and

174everyone rallies around these kids then when they're brand new into the country they feel the love of the community and the support and to your point Mr Rosco it changes the dynamic and the culture of the classroom right but but that comes with resources that comes with being able to look at a teacher and say this is how we're going to help because the teacher feels helpless too so now you got a kid who feels helpless you have a teacher who feels helpless because they can't help them and then you have a classro who's like well I want to include soand so but I don't know how to do it so now you have other kids that feel helpless and then it's just that's the cycle that we have to stop right so if we

175put someone in the classroom or if we take the kids and move them to whatever the answer is it has to be an answer that's cultivated in value love respect and the idea that I see you but I also see you and know your value in the classroom so and this is coming from a personal experience I met a newcomer in elementary school this year for the first time for the first time for me for the first time this kid's amazing this kid has taught me more Spanish than I've ever learned before because we're having we're it's forced communication but it's done in love because I want to be a to talk to this kid and this kid wants to be able to talk to me right but seeing other fit graders taking out and

176trying to use Google Translate right and then having to go through another student to be able to ask this student something and it it's to your point it may not be burdensome but it is a lot of work on the other kid the other kid in the room who may speak the language of our newcomer and they have to shoulder that responsibility because they don't want to see their friend fail they don't don't want to see their friend not feel comfortable inside the classroom so it's I think this is one of those topics that weighs heavy on everyone because I think everyone feels a level of helplessness and we have to think outside of the box and we have to get really creative really quickly because to clerk Gonzalez hoy's point we cannot wait to

177middle school we cannot wait to high school and we have to be able to say we support you we see you we value you and this is what we can provide for you so thank you so much for your presentation this is the start of a good conversation that we need to De dive deeper into and have more discussion and action behind it because to clerk Gonzalez point we can't go year 15 right so what are we going to do not to hit year 15 to really have some resources behind it thank you so very much again I really appreciate it um we are now moving board to consent item but we are going to flip it because we're going to take consent item number eight first because um we want to make sure that

178if there are any questions that we can get those questions answered but we can also let people go home and have their time reclaim their time so thank you so much thank you for waiting and uh trusty reckler you pulled consent item C8 would you like to speak to that please yes thank you very much I'll go straight to the bacr contract with Lincoln Elementary School and my comment is as follows the dates of service began August 10th 2023 through June 7th 2024 yet the contract is coming to us on April 10th so um first has this you know we have a obvious um disconnect between the of service and when it's coming to the board and then on the dollars for 539 is that prated or is that for the whole period and is

179the contract prated um if it begins later thank you for the question truste reckler um we've been looking into these contracts that are coming late and uh this is the entire amount of the contract according to how it's written for the full year of services uh we had confirmed so we went through thoroughly these lists the reason why principes are here to talk to you today is because we reached out to every principal that had a predated contract uh we dug into the reasons why we explained to them that um they needed to come to the board to potentially answer questions because this protocol hadn't been followed uh this particular contract is using Community Schools Grant monies I'm not exactly sure why it's so late coming to to the board uh but we have not

180released any funds related to this contract so uh We've also reached out to our vendors who are allowing their staff to work without approved contracts um because it's mindboggling that vendors are sending staff to schools every day even though they aren't receiving any payment from us so we're trying to work it from both sides educate our principles and um also examine and refine our processes but you are right this contract did start at the beginning of the year it is over $50,000 and it should not have started with prior to board approval but we have not allocated a penny towards this contract because it is not approved okay thank you so I don't have any more questions on that um do you want me to go through the rest of the contract packet okay Bay

181Area Community Resources doar Elementary same thing November 2023 once again I don't care about $6,000 but you know this began in November and now we're in April and then for bacr okay so that one begins tomorrow Lincoln we talked [Music] about uh Riverside is the same thing it began in August August um okay then Contra Casta Interfaith transitional hope Solutions which begins tomorrow and goes through 9:30 I don't I can't recall contracts going past the fiscal year the end of the fiscal year so does this in fact go past the end of the fiscal year and then I have some questions on the math on this if you go deep into the back packet on this um it they give you a pra they don't give you a page number but they give you a

182proforma on how this adds up to $220,000 and it does add up to $220,000 but it doesn't add up the same way that you guys have it so they say that there's $150,000 in the ARP homeless children and youth versus what you're going to pay staff to run it so it adds up to 200 but I'd like to understand like what the difference is there um and the reason is because um this this amount that you're going to send out for um gift cards and rent and all of those things that's great but I want to make sure that we have the right number so that we don't get dinged federally somewhere down the line someone's going to come back and go hey you said it was 75 but it was really 150 or you

183know I just am not really quite sure how the how the math is working on that the other thing is that the US Department of Education strongly encourages leas to have strong internal controls on these gift card Ren subsidies you know they're looking for like a re receipt system or something like that so I'm wondering if you are confident that you have the system or the vendor has the system to track these payments um you know I think it's a great thing I'm psyched to see this but what I'm concerned about and I don't 100% know how this works but somebody comes back in and asks to see you know they want the receipts and you know we we just don't have it so that's my comment on that one [Music] um same thing on

184mindful life I mean once again that's not the dollar amount it's $8,500 um so that's all of that and the reason why I'm I'm concerned about it is because once again we don't know where the dollars are you're in a fiscally fragile place and good accounting is really important and then if we have people working in schools that are not not being paid that is deeply deeply concerning to me um can we get in trouble for that I mean the state of California is very Pro worker and I think if they knew this they would not be terribly happy about it I also don't know about if there's Insurance liability because of that or a whole other did they go through fingerprinting I mean like how you know like it seems to me like there's

185a series of steps and part of the step aren't being um you know there it's just not um aligned properly so those are my concerns about those and then I want to talk about the legal contracts which are being extended first are you are you uh is U as of today can you tell me is legal expenses more or less than last year and are you on budget he would you like me to answer um just for clarity I I could provide you with some context with the contracts if you would like but if you'd like to leave it at comments that's fine too I can reply by email in terms of the legal contracts um we are keeping track I don't have a figure here for you but I'm happy to provide that after

186uh pulling our current expenditures to date um the one contract that you have on here um is not a new contract we needed a different object code but we are asking to increase um orbox so I understand your concern and I'm happy to bring more detailed information forward okay thank you and then there is one a a lrr contract which seems like it happened in the P it started already or it's for training it's not for very much but once again I'm just trying to align you know like the date with when the when things started and that's it those are all my comments on contracts thank you anyone else have any questions uh Clark Gonzalez are you moving this item I am I move that we approve the contracts thank you so very much

187Clark Gonzalez ho did I call for public comment um you don't need public comment on I no I don't do public comment on this okay thank you um is there a second to move this item second thank you board do we have any comments from the board hold on one second you're good right do you have a public comment no yes you're good okay great um trusty reckler you have a comment I do thank you so again I think that there's opportunity to align simplify um this process and not 100% sure what the answer is it's a lot of paperwork um I want to I want to think of ways to streamline it um and and make it simpler for everyone so I'm not I'm actually not looking for more I'm Looking For Less um

188so I just want I want to make sure that that's clear um but that it that it works um well for everyone thank you any other comments I have a comment so um first of all thank you so very much I want to thank staff for the work that they do to gather these because you're at the end of the train not at the beginning of the train so because you're at the end of the train and you see something and you catch it and then you go back right so it's like okay let's figure out where the system has a gap in it and then you shut that Gap we have seen more Cleanup in contracts and practices and policies this year than I think ever before and that is huge because that not

189only gets us out of trouble it keeps us out of trouble so for the system cleanup I want to thank you very much for that and that it it needs to be acknowledged out loud because the reason we seee so much now is because the CBO office is so transparent and coming and really educating the board around contracts and consultants and how the budget works and how the money is allocated and so to your credit thank you for the immense amount of education and further to your credit than thank you for the consistent cleanup about what we see and what we do to the credit of all the administrators thank you for being receptive and open to changing the way things are done so you can ensure that your sites get the best that they

190can have so what we're seeing now is this is what cleanup looks like this is what system changes looks like it's slow but it doesn't mean we're not moving it takes consistency over time equals change so what we're doing is we're creating those systems refining those systems maintaining those systems so we can actually see the change and again CBO Moses to your credit every time you come and you're like I get it I'm listening I'm working I'm showing like this is how we're changing and how we're cleaning it up um to the credit of all the administrators thank you for saying yeah I get it we were able to do it this way before but it's not the way that we wanted to be the optimal way of doing it so we're going to change

191so it is this is just a comment of thank you thank you for creating the change and um holding it to the point to where we don't have to continue to do it this becomes our Norm so thank you everyone okay we need a vote all right so we're gonna vote on item C8 and that is contracts trusty pal Carr um I Iain thank you trusty Abdu garar Ro um no thank you trusty reckler reckler no thank you trusty Christian yes thank you clerk Gonzalez Hoy yes thank you and I'm a yes we are now moving to consent item we'll go back to the top C5 board it is now 9:43 I think we're going to have to push to about 105 are we okay with that sorry can I get a motion to push

192to just 10:15 maybe we won't uh take all the time to 10:15 but can we have an extension to 10:15 I move that we extend till 10:15 thank you sir is there a second second thank you can we go to the vote to extend to 10:15 with the hope that we will get out at 10 o'clock trusty pal car your vote ma'am yes thank you truste ABD garain thank you trusty reckler thank you trusty Christian yes thank you truste trusty clerk Gonzalez Hoy yes thank you and I'm a yes we're gonna extend to 10:15 with the hope that we get out at 10 okay we are now on consent item C5 trusty reckler you F this item I did I just have a question about it it says that the power school plugin plugin for

193power school pushes into the parent portal so I'm assuming that is parent square and I'd like to know that if it's adaptable to another similar parent portable portal or um what Parent Portal means good evening trusty reckler this is Tracy can you hear me yes okay um so this is specifically Aug plugin for power school and it pushes to all of the Power School portals so the admin portal the student portal and the parent portal so we also have an integration with parent Square so we'd have the option for reports to go wherever direction we want them to go but this is a specifically a built-in for power school and we'll will um go to the parent portal okay and when you say Parent Portal that's just everything that's in there the schedule the grades

194the whatever that's right that's exactly right yeah so this would give us the ability to build reports so archive reports as well as ongoing reports grad progress Elementary report cards attendance letters etc etc and push them into the Parent Portal so the very same place where you would go and see attendance and grades and um updates from teachers you would also be able to view these reports that we are able to build ourselves okay thank you that's all I have I'll go ahead and move it thank you is there a second second thank you so much or do we have any comments oh right we don't do comments on this all right here we go to the vote trusty palar oh I'm thank you so much trusty ABD gapar abin thank you trusty reckler reckler

195yes thank you trusty Christian yes thank you Clark Gonzalez Hoy yes thank you and I'm a yes we are now moving to consent item number six approval of fundraising activities trusty reckler this is your item thank thank you so uh on miror Vista wathon 412 to 4:15 it is not uh miror Vista staff that is the sponsor it's the PTA so I'd like to amend that to put in miror Vista PTA if that's okay with you uh the next one is Valley View Oakland A there's no for firm start date it's April we're now on April 10th and this is coming to us late and then uh for elero high school we have staff selling baked goods this one I couldn't confirm but I can't imagine we have staff having a bake sale nor desar

196board policy really seems very student focused it isn't focused on staff having fundraisers thank you very much anyone want to move this item can I get an answer is Elo High School staff having a big sale oh you framed that as a question okay is Elso staff having a bake sale that was the question I am trying to locate the backup if you just give me one second I have two sections here no that does look like it's a typo it says that it's the class of 2025 selling bit Goods at Kingston's Farmers Market um so it is not staff it is indeed the students and we'll make that correction I can actually attest to that because I go to Kensington Farmer Market every Sunday and it is kids selling the Bak Goods but someone

197like to move the item now I'll move uh C6 thank you is there a second second thank you very much Bo we're going to go to the vote trusty reckler reckler thank you uh trusty Christian yes thank you Clark Gonzalez Hoy yes thank you and I'm a yes thank you very much board we are now moving to we're moving to comments from the Board of Education and future agenda items we have two minutes a piece and we are starting anyone would like to start with their comments trusty rler go ahead thank you I would i' like to make a recommendation to the comment card um first I'm not sure why they're different colors so I just stapled them together they seem the same to me but can't can't tell anyway I would like to add

198uh for consideration something to the comment card one is if a person is going to speak in a different language if there could be a little box that has a translation and and you check it so that the board has a little bit of time to prepare with headphones or another way so that they're prepared for translation I've found a number of times that people have started talking and I'm still trying to get them on and I'm trying to find the the channel or whatever so I think that might be helpful and then the second thing I'd like to consider adding is that if the speaker is a student they'll be prioritized so that they're not here until midnight because we had a couple of meetings when students came and spoke and they were here

199quite late and if we had known they were students perhaps they could have been um pushed to the front of the meeting and they could have gotten home quicker I'm sure they love the Democracy they saw that evening but you know I'm concerned about their sleep thank you anyone else have comments uh trusty Christian go ahead please yes I just wanted to say you know thank everyone for the presentation this evening and just briefly just give some quick highlights um I'd like to see uh the teacher Workforce housing uh on the future agenda uh item and then also I'd like to um Echo the words that was mention about the do immersion uh school and I'd like to see that somewhere on a future item on agenda and then um also uh Kennedy High School

200i w to um you know ELO the good words of the um trade program there and that's uh you know they doing a good job and so um you know you know it's a pathway where students don't go to college but they go to a trade and so trades play a major role in uh in our district and then also I want to Echo I mean I want to mention about the safety meeting uh for the district for all those who are interested and attending the safety meeting will be the next meeting will be April the 25th and it would be at the facilities on Marina Bay um and it starts at 5:30 p.m. and like to see you come out for the safety meeting uh voice your concerns and then um and then also

201I wanted to say you know you know as we uh continue to build on Community Schools and the wraparound uh services for our students and parents uh Community Schools will play you know continue to play a great major role in our district and so it's a lot of things that you um that we have to just you know the ones I mentioned you know tune in and so forth and thank you um thank you thank you very much I really appreciate it clerk Gonzalez Hoy go ahead please thank you uh for my comments I I wanted to just say a few words of appreciation for our school staff um I think so this week I was visiting a school and it was actually pretty late um and a teacher was walking by I was like

202hey how are you and their first reaction was like oh I'm exhausted right but they were actually heading into a meeting at 4M to plan a field trip and I think that just speaks about our staff right now it's an exhaust it's an exhausting time of the year right very little breaks it's been you know a full year of issues yet they are still going they are still planning amazing things for kids um and you know I think our programs are continuing right and I think I just I felt there in that moment right like I saw this exhausted teacher but was still going that evening to plan this amazing filter for kids who had never been to the Planetarium right so I just wanted to give teachers a quick shout out I wanted to

203give our administrators a quick shout out because I know that you know this also difficult time of year but every day they're showing up early and leaving late right to ensure our kids are safe then they're getting the supports that they need um and our classified staff as well um and of course you know our staff here um who are here late with us um and working incredibly hard every single day so I just want to share that I'm just very appreciative of the things I know that earlier I spoke about a deficiency that we have in our system right and at the same time with the deficiencies that we have I think that we have like 3,500 employees who are working incredibly hard every single day in our system um so I just want

204to appreciate that because um as one of the biggest Employers in this area uh we have some amazing people coming to work every single day uh so thank you to all all of you and thank you to our cabinet uh for being here late and Dr hurse for your work thank you so very much clerk Gonzalez Hoy um director Force could you please step to the podium for a minute [Music] please director force it is your birthday and we are going to sing Happy Birthday to you and someone else has to start it because I have two versions running in my head and I can't I have like the Stevie runda version and then I have like the third grade kid version so we're gonna do the third grade kid version so uh director Flashman

205you can start congratulations and we're all gonna sing and her name is going to be Miss Forest when we get to we we fill in the name go ahead director Flashman thank you you president Smith I want to see red lights everybody all the way down got to be on one two three happy birth you happy birthday to you happy [Music] birthday to yay are you one are you two are you three okay we'll stop there thank you so much director Flashman happy birthday um director fors we really appreciate you being here and all that you do for the district with Communications and um it's just a fantastic job to Echo what clerk Gonzalez Hoy said there's just not enough thank yous for the work that everybody does in this district and it's it's not

206easy but it's we're doing it right we are doing the work there is a a livable breathable shift in this district and it's because of the investment of all of your cabinet you Dr Hurst the majority of the board who is saying enough is enough and now we're going to change so thank you to cabinet and staff and all that you do thank you to our translators thank you to our Tech thank you to our csses that stay here with us thank you to miss Rosa thank you Miss Nancy thank you Miss henness thank you for all that you do thank you to every teacher every staff member every student every parent that is waking up and choosing us because it's a choice and we don't take it for granted that they could be anywhere

207but they choose to be here so we appreciate it we are at 957 what that's amazing so we're at 9:57 and we want to say thank you very much everyone enjoy your night the next scheduled board meeting is oh we have a special meeting sir when's the special meeting April 17th I think April 17th and then we have another scheduled board meeting on April 24th at the uh dejon Middle School come out on Saturday to the family engagement conference because it's going to be amazing all right everyone we are dismissed and enjoy your night